"Huh?" Shagot took a moment to orient himself. "He isn't watching the pass anymore?"

"It isn't that, Grim. Since you went to sleep we had three messages from Vondera Koterba. The Emperor wants us to move down past al-Citizi and cut the east-west road. Not to block it, just to intercept messengers." Svavar spoke softly so Rashaki's intimates would not hear. "He says he's holding out for a bigger payoff. I think he's afraid to show us what a stupid ass he really is."

"He defied orders from Koterba and the Emperor both?"

Svavar relaxed slightly. Shagot had been diverted from a strangeness surely to do with Arlensul.

Shagot wolfed down more than his share of the hare. As he cleaned his fingers, he said, "I need you to back me up, little brother." He produced the monster head and the enchanted sword forged in the time before time.

Members of the band, scruffy bandit scum rather than real soldiers, gaped as Shagot strode toward Rashaki's hut. Shagot shattered the feeble door. Inside, he removed the head of one lieutenant and the face of another before saying, "You defied the Emperor's command." His tone was soft, gentle. It betrayed no strain. It was the tone of a man disinterestedly asking the price of a sack of turnips. He kicked his surviving victim for bleeding on his leg.

Ockska considered the old head, the bloody sword, and Shagot. "I thought we could get more money."

"The Emperor is an honorable man. He keeps his word. He expects you to do the same. It's time for a leader who will do his job."

"I suppose you're right."

"Good. Good. You're a reasonable man, after all. You won't find me a harsh captain. And my brother and I will move on soon. Little brother, help our lieutenant rise so we can shake hands on the new arrangement."

Rashaki was an average size man who had made himself leader by being more clever and hard than the others, rather than through sheer wicked brawn. "Are you the Emperor's special agents?"

"Something like that," Shagot admitted. He drove the ancient sword into Rashaki's chest. Svavar held Rashaki for the strike. "Though we serve a power higher than any ephemeral lord of the earth."

Ockska heard that before the light went out of his eyes. He believed because he saw what no one else could see.

Rashaki's surviving lieutenants quickly reported the change to the rest of the band.

No one argued. Everyone recognized that agents of the night walked among them.

Svavar knew Rashaki's lieutenants harbored the same thoughts that Rashaki had before the bronze sword relieved him of a need to think. Play along with the mad foreigner. It would be no trouble to murder his brother, then him, once demonic sleep reclaimed him.

Shagot counted on the Old Ones to get him through. If he thought at all. Svavar trusted Arlensul. Arlensul was immediate and real and had a vested interest in sustaining the Grimmssons.

The band moved out. The snowfalls were no less vigorous down there in the warmer foothills. They melted and created mud as though mud was a treat favored by all gods great and small.

The first six days of the new administration produced four coup attempts. The conspirators all died horribly. Some were mutilated and drained of blood before they moved against the Andorayans.

The day Shagot killed Ockska Rashaki the band numbered eighty-eight, counting all bodies but those of the sad handful of slatterns who followed the band with their snotty-nosed brats. When the band moved into the position Vondera Koterba desired they numbered sixty-five. Most of the missing had deserted, along with their women and children.

The band disrupted Calziran communications for two months. Lone riders and small groups just did not get through. Prisoners went to Ferris Renfrow somewhere to the east He paid excellent bounties. Life was no daydream but neither was it awful. And it showed promise of getting better.

Svavar soon realized that he was running things. Shagot the Bastard was this wild berserker thing he could conjure up at need. Daily administration and decision-making were his. And he did well. He held the band together. He got it through its assignment without another death, and with only four more desertions.

The Emperor's troops, with those of Vondera Koterba, overran the eastern third of Calzir far more easily than either side imagined possible. The Praman defenders were stunned by their own ineffectuality.

Those Calzirans, even inspired by advisers from Lucidia and backboned by cadre from overseas, could not withstand the disciplined Imperial heavy infantry and heavy cavalry. The Lucidians strove valiantly but insisted on fighting the wrong war. Johannes Blackboots was not interested in elegant maneuvers. He trudged from one town, city, port, or castle to the next, ignoring enemy forces unless they attacked – always a disaster for the Pramans. Imperial pikemen held them off while thousands of missiles sleeted down on them. When they ran, horsemen followed and butchered them.

Warships from Dateon and Aparion blockaded the eastern and southern coasts. The heel end of the Firaldian boot fell. Few Praman troops tried to flee west to join the armies there. Svavar dispatched any stupid enough to use his road.

He first saw Johannes Blackboots when the Emperor's own Braunsknechts Guards passed through, headed west in hopes of outgrasping the less vigorous forces fielded by Sublime and the Brothen Church.

"He's a fucking dwarf," Shagot observed.

Not quite, but close.

The Emperor's whole family accompanied Johannes, a measure of his confidence. The brothers did not see the daughters or learn of their existence until later. They occupied a closed coach surrounded by large, alert, scowling, short-tempered Braunsknecht horse guards.

The Imperial heir, Lothar, rode beside his father, as miserable as one child could be, yet persevering with a will suited to much a stronger body. He was determined to make his father proud.

Ferris Renfrow found the brothers after the Emperor had passed. "You've done a great job. Vondera Koterba says you deserve a bonus. I agree. Would you like to continue your service?"

Svavar accepted a sack of coins while Shagot said, "We will go with you. We're looking for a man. He's west of here. He has to die."

"All men die."

"Soon. It's a holy mission."

Svavar sensed that Renfrow knew who they were. He would have had reports from his agents.

"Tell me about the man you're hunting. Maybe I can help."

Svavar, distracted by passing heavy infantry, which he had never encountered before, replied, "All we know is that he's in Calzir and that we'll know him when we find him."

A Patriarchal company passed. They had participated in the Imperial thrust in the east. Svavar glared at black crows from the Brotherhood of War. They unnerved him. Their order would harbor an eternal grudge because of what had happened in Brothe.

Renfrow kept him talking. Svavar knew Renfrow had pegged him as dim and naive. He didn't mind. He might be those things, but not so much that he could not let someone underestimate him.

Once Renfrow left, Svavar told Shagot, "That fellow thinks he knows our man. He knows where he is, too. And he thinks he knows who we are."

"With the Patriarch's armies?"

"I think so."

"Makes sense. Fits my dreams. We'll get him this time."

Svavar nodded. But he had doubts. Arlensul had not been factored into the All-Father's plan.

There would never be a better time to tell Grim about Arlensul.

Words would not come.

Svavar paid off the members of the band. "Anybody who wants to stick can go west with me and Grim. They still want us." Only a dozen men who had nothing else in their lives stayed on. The rest ran back to their cold, barren mountains with their newly found wealth.