Two weeks pa.s.sed, and we'd heard no word about the reinforcing units upriver. Worse, the Palace of War informed us that heliograph stations along the river were not answering signals.

Where was the army?

It was ugly riding the streets of Nicias. There was no more open violence, but only because no soldier or member of the government rode alone, but with a full escort. Bodies were still found in the streets at dawn.

It looked as if there were only two cla.s.ses left in the capital: the commoners, who held the streets in sullen anger, and the gentry, who huddled in their enclaves. The merchants, clerks, traders-all the middle levels of Nicias-seemed to have either vanished or joined the lower cla.s.ses, waiting for something to happen.

I started awake, hearing the chanting of many voices. Torchlight flared into my open window, and I rolled out of bed, naked, fully awake, reaching for the sword hanging from its sheath on the bedstead.

Mardn sat up, sleep-dazed.

"What is it?'

I didn't know, but I hurried to the window and peered out. Our rooms were on the third level of the tower, looking toward the city, away from the Palace of War.

The night was a sea of bobbing torches, the streets alive with marching men and women. I could hear bits of what they were chanting, but no more than a word here, a word there: "Bread... peace... down with the Rule... voice of... people... Numantia... burn or live..." and through it a thin chorus: "Saionji... Saionji... Saionji..."

Maran was beside me, wearing only the thin shift she'd been wearing when I came to bed, exhausted from work, hours after she'd retired. She leaned out the window, elbows on the sill, fascinated.

"Can you feel it, Damastes?" she whispered. "Can you feel it? The G.o.ddess is calling."

It was just the roar of the crowd, but then it came to me,she came to me, the G.o.ddess, the destroyer, the Creator calling to my blood, and it stirred.

Powerful magic was abroad this night, and it moved me, and I wanted to go out, to be down there, amid the crowd, ready to rend and tear, then, from the ashes, to build a new realm, a realm of absolute freedom, where all that could be wanted was there for the taking.

Maran turned, and I saw her eyes gleam in the torchlight "It's like Tenedos said," she whispered. "A new world. A new time. I can feel it, Damastes, I can feel it like the Wheel turns. Can't you?"

I could indeed, and it gripped me, seized me by the throat, and all the dark pa.s.sions rose high, and now there might have been drums out there in the night, or it might have been my pulse, but then it changed, and it was not Saionji's manifestation of Isa, six-headed war G.o.d, but rather Jaen, and my c.o.c.k rose hard, throbbing, painful.

I was behind Maran, pulling her shift up above her waist, forcing her legs apart, and then I impaled her on my c.o.c.k, burying it in one thrust, and she whimpered and Jaen took her as well, and she thrust back against me and cried out I pulled back, until the head of my c.o.c.k was at her inner lips, then rammed forward, my hands finding her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, pulling her against me, and she screamed, scream buried in the crowd-roar outside, and again and again, each time thrustingKdeeper, reaching, tearing deeper into her body, into her soul, and I shouted as I came, gushing hot, hot as the fires inside the earth that made Thak.

After a time, time came back, and I realized I was lying half-out the window across Maran, crushing her against the sill.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Don't apologize," she said. "Just... give me a little warning next time. So I can put a pillow down."

I slipped out of her, took her in my arms, and we stumbled back to the bed.

"I have the feeling," she murmured, after we'd calmed, "I'll be a little sore tomorrow."

She stroked my chest.

"I think, my love, that what we just did is what I've heard called s.e.x-magic. Amiel loaned me a book about it once."

Darkness touched me for a second. "s.e.x-magic for who?" I asked. "Who called it?"

"I don't know," she said. "But I've never felt anything like it. And^I don't know if I want to ever again. I feel like... like we were, not used, but part of somebody that's not us. No, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we were no more than someone's va.s.sal."

The Tovieti's sorcerers? Thak himself?

Or-and the thought made me shudder-Saionji herself? Was the G.o.ddess of destruction out there, hanging over Nicias, smiling as she saw the order that had always been tremble?

I don't know if s.e.x-magic was cast that night, if others were grabbed and shaken by a spell, or if it was just MaraVs and my own sudden l.u.s.t.

But the next day Nicias shattered into chaos.

TWENTY.

The Fires of NiciasI here are many tales of what caused the riots. Some I say a peasant's child was ridden down by a n.o.ble- JL man's carriage, others that a young girl was brutally beaten by the wardens, others that it began in a drunken bar fight between some government clerks and some carters.

I don't doubt any of them, but I don't believe the city erupted over a single incident-the madness spread too rapidly. There'd been too many years of the poor being neglected and downtrodden, too many years with their leaders not leading, too many years of instability, and so the city was like a pile of dry wood that a burning ember is touched to there ... there ... there ... and the wildfire explodes.

The commoners ran rampant, burning, looting, beating, killing, and raping when they encountered an enemy, or simply someone who looked better off than they were.

The wardens fled to their stations and barricaded themselves in; the soldiers hid in the barracks; the rich cowered in their mansions; while the Rule of Ten and the Nicias Council met in emergency session and did nothing.

Again the disorders struck home. Rask, one of the Rule of Ten, Farel's comrade, simply disappeared, and no one knows*what became of him to this day. A mob sacked the Council Hall, happened on four of the city councilors, and tore them apart.

Scopas came to the tower to consult with Tenedos, and the seer told me what their conversation had been. Tenedos made the same suggestions he had before, and once again Scopas weaseled on taking such drastic steps. Perhaps, he said, since the commoners are mostly looting their own quarters, they should be let alone until their frenzy dies away.

Surprisingly, Tenedos agreed with what was happening, at least partially. "Let the poor burn their tenements and slums," he told me. "When this is over, we'll be able to rebuild Nicias as it is supposed to look." That callousness shocked me, but I think I was able to hide my reaction. "But anyone who thinks this rising will run out of combustibles is a fool. The Tovieti, and Chardin Sher's agents, will make sure that will not happen."

The insanity grew worse and worse.

Days pa.s.sed, and there was still no sign, nor word, of the soldiers who'd been summoned from the Frontiers. Tenedos tried casting a spell, but said nothing happened. It was, he said, like trying to peer through a dense fog. He said this could mean only one thing--sorcery, which meant the Tovieti were keeping the troops from the capital.

I'd had Tenedos use his emergency powers to move the Golden Helms, the Nineteenth Foot, and two other of the parade regiments into tents in Hyder Park, equidistant from our tower, the Palace of War, and the Rule of Ten's palace, for security and as an immediate reaction force. They whined about having to forsake their comfortable brick barracks. I suspected if the rioters left them alone, they'd be quite content to sit there polishing bra.s.s and practicing empty roundelays on the parade ground until all Nicias was ashes around them. Instead, they rode, and walked, guard; and made short patrols through the city's major thoroughfares, complaining all the while. Terrible soldiers, but they were the only game in town. At least, I wryly thought, I probably didn't have to worry about any of the complainers being Tovieti-those would be most grateful for any chance to get close to Tenedos, the Rule of Ten, or the army staff.

It was a terrible time, and there were terrible sights.

I saw a screaming, drunken woman run into the middle of a square just as a column of the Helms rode into it. She was waving something I couldn't distinguish. But another soldier could, and a horseman spurred his horse into a gallop, his lance dropped into position, and the woman went spinning away, blood spattering the cobbles.

The soldier pulled his lance free, and came back to us, and by that time I had my sword out, and at his throat.

'Tell me one reason," I said, "you should not die for murder, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"

"Sir... you didn't see what she had in her hand. Sir, it was a man's jewels ... c.o.c.k an' all!" Paying no heed to my blade, he vomited suddenly. I could not kill him, but at least I told Troop Guide Karjan to deal with him later. Perhaps I should have slain the man. I don't know.

I told Maran some of what I saw in my daily rounds, but not about the emasculator. No woman of her youth should know about such evil. I just considered that thought, and realize how foolish it is. No one of any age orany s.e.x should be subjected to what we went through in those days.

After a week, the city was paralyzed. But that was not enough. Now the Tovieti moved out, smoothly taking command of the mob.

They didn't burn their own hovels anymore, but rather sent raiding expeditions into the rich parts of Nicias. Stores miles from the slums were ripped apart and fired. There was no doubt as to who was leading the rabble-bodies would be carefully left for the patrols to find, always with the yellow silk cord around their throats.

Next signs appeared, scrawled huge on walls demarcating certain districts like Chicherin. Sometimes they held messages: * NO ARMY WARDENS DIE FROM HERE ON NO RULE OF TEN BEYOND THIS SIGN.

FREE CHICHERINOr sometimes it was simpler, just a scrawled, twisting line in yellow.

"Quite interesting," Tenedos observed. "The Tovieti's progress would make an excellent case study.

First chaos, then strike directly against the enemy, then delineate your own territory, where you'll make the laws and customs. They'll keep the pressure on us, making sure the Rule of Ten never have a chance to take a deep breath, let alone think or listen to what I'm trying to tell them. As the days pa.s.s the Tovieti will gain recruits, since all mankind flocks to join a winner. When they think they're strong enough, then they'll come for us. Fascinating.

"What puzzles me is who was the mastermind of this plan? It isn't Thak-no demon, no matter how powerful, could be expected to understand the affairs of man so closely. Nor would it be Chardin Sher or his errand boy Malebranche.

"It could only be that unknown being who first summoned Thak to carry out his dreams for mankind.

"It is a pity Thak slew him, for now I know that must be the case, or he would have resurfaced and tried to bring his juggernaut under control.

"I wish I'd known the man, for his ideas are most interesting."

I rather hoped Thak had spent a long time enjoying himself with his master before letting him return to the Wheel, and that it would be many turnings before Irisu allowed him to reincarnate as anything above a slime-worm.

The n.o.bility were almost as insane with terror as the mob was with blood l.u.s.t. They would hire, and pay any amount, for the services of a man who owned a sword and promised to keep them alive.

Naturally, some of these men, and I heard of a few women as well, were phonies or, worse,

thieves who used this trust for opportunity. And some of them were Tovieti.

Mahal, hurrying home to his l.u.s.tful young wife, was pulled from his carriage and strangled by his own bodyguard. The man was cut down by Mahal's driver, but the Rule of Ten was now seven strong.

No one had much time to mourn Mahal. In the predawn hours of the next morning the rabble formed around the barracks of the Second Heavy Cavalry, whose domina had refused to deploy them closer to the palace. The sentries were silenced, and men with torches, pikes, and strangling cords slid into the compound.

The unit woke to screams, flame, and death. Perhaps one or two of the men of the Second Cavalry managed to escape. If so, none of them ever returned to the army. In less than three hours, an entire regiment of the Numantian Army was obliterated. This had never happened in all the army's proud history, at least not for the last thousand years records had been kept.

At noon that day General Urso Protogenes rode out to the still-flaming ruins of the Second's barracks.

He'd refused a heavy escort, saying he'd be gone only a few minutes, hardly time enough for any of "those villains" to put together an ambush.

The legate in charge of the five-man party said General Protogenes had taken a look at the sprawled bodies of what he sincerely believed had been fine soldiers, and heavy sobs had shaken his chest. He kept shaking his head in disbelief, but his eyes could find no ease.

"My people," the legate heard him whisper, and no one knows if he was talking about Nicians or his soldiers.

He bade the legate wait a moment; he wished to step inside the regimental office, which was no longer aflame. There was something he hoped to find there.

Ten minutes later, when the general had not reemerged, the alarmed young officer went looking for him.

The general had evidently gone out the back door of the office, across the rear of the compound, and out into the city.

*He was another who was never seen again, nor did his murderers ever claim credit for helping a sad old man find the death he sought By now we were so hardened that the next deaths almost made us smile. Another of the Rule of Ten's councilors, notorious for preferring the most brutal of bedpartners, couldn't restrain his l.u.s.t. He, along with the mealymouthed chamberlain, Olynthus, went looking for satisfaction one night.

Their bodies were found sprawled in front of the Rule of Ten's palace the next morning. The cords that strangled them would have come as a blessing, from the savage wounds on the corpses.

This was finally enough for the Rule of Ten. They determined to negotiate with the mob, with the Tovieti, even though there'd been no leaders show themselves, nor any demands made.

The Rule of Ten's speaker, Barthou, managed to convince five of Nicias's smoothest-tongued diplomats to take on this vital mission. Tenedos said he'd been asked if he wished to accompany them, and he'd told Barthou he thought the speaker was mad.

With a full troop of the Helms, who actually were beginning to shape into something vaguely resembling soldiers, I escorted the five to the edges of the Chicherin district, where the riots had first broken out, and where the Rule of Ten had somehow decided the heart of the rebellion was.

The negotiators had white flags tied to staves, and, holding them high overhead, the five walked down the winding street into the slum.

Half an hour later, I heard a single scream, a scream that reflected all of the pain the world could hold.

Then silence. We waited for another hour, until rooftops began bristling with slingers and even a few archers, then wheeled our horses and rode back to the tower.

General Turbery took over command of the army, and ordered all troops to withdraw into a ring around the Rule of Ten's palace. We would hold, and then strike back from there.

With them came those wardens who'd faithfully tried to hold their outlying stations. The regiments were ordered to loot as they came, so every granary and warehouse was stripped bare. As the troops marched or rose into the parks around the palace, the rich, the n.o.ble, all those who were the Tovieti's or the mob's targets, came with them. Makeshift camps were set up everywhere.

Among them were Amiel and her husband, Pelso, still loyally guarded by Legate Yonge and his three scoundrels. I wished I could find a way to move the count and countess into the tower, but knew there wasn't one. Rasenna had also arrived inside the perimeter from wherever Tenedos had been keeping her hidden, and at least she was allowed to be with the seer.

I took Yonge aside, and told the hillman his charges were now safe in the bosom of the army, his responsibility was over, and I needed him and his friends desperately.

Yonge looked sly. "Ah, Captain Damastes, but I cannot. You remember what I told you once, how impressed I was with your way of honor and loyalty, even unto death?" "I do."

"Then I must hold to my oath and still serve the Lord and Lady Kalvedon." He looked most pious.

"Besides," I said dryly, "I wouldn't be paying you in good red gold."

"There is that," Yonge said, brown teeth flashing. "There is that, indeed."

I went to Tenedos and asked him how long would we have to prepare for the attack.

"I'm not sure," he said. "I've been having better luck with my magic, and whatever spells Thak has been spreading are wearing thin. I canfeel it building, feel them readying their weapons. I'd say, oh, three days.

Five at the outside." "What do you think our chances are?" "Well, let's count, or guess, really, since I haven't counted noses. Let's think as small as we can. We have four regiments around us, two thousand men. A thousand wardens. Another six or eight thousand fugitives, let us imagine, although I'llHiwager there's twice that many. Then there's the government clerks, diplomats, hangers-on, magicians ... other useless types.

"Against us, what? Half a million? A million?" "Sir, aren't you supposed to be a pillar of inspiration?"

"Only to legates and below. Captains can keep their own lips stiff. Besides, I'm certain with truth and justice on our side we'll win through," he said bitterly.

"Oh. One other thing." He reached in his pocket, took out a small ornate metal case, and handed it to me. "There are two tablets inside. If the G.o.ds don't find it in them to change our luck, you and the countess are welcome to these.

"They're painless and shall return you to the Wheel in seconds."

I left his cheerful company and started detailing men to dig trenches.

When the sun rose the next morning, welcome warmth cutting through the mists, the Latane River was a cacophony of ships' bells and whistles.