[excerpt from Beyond Wizardwall: TOKEN OF THE GOD] 

Mare, don’t die.

Face shiny with sweat, eyes closed, his back against the stall-boards, Niko prayed silently: Enlil, Storm God of the Armies, please save my horse.

In his lap lay the head of his pregnant sorrel mare, exhausted and blowing hard from her long labor. A flickery torch outside the stall threw shadows, distorted and ominous, around man and horse. She’ll die and take her unborn foal with her, and nothing I can do will stop it. No answer from the mountain storm god. But then, he’d expected none. Stealth called Nikodemos might be the youngest squadron leader in the elite Stepson cavalry, but the gods of the armies didn’t hear him. Nor he them. He wanted to press his face to hers and beg her forgiveness. But he dared not: if he began weeping, he’d never stop.

The straw around them was fouled from her water and scattered from her struggles, but the foal she carried stubbornly refused to be born.

Niko’s mare wouldn’t let anyone else in the stall with her. He was no closer to grabbing the unborn foal’s front hooves and pulling it from her womb than he’d been before nightfall. He’d reached inside her and couldn’t even touch the foal’s front legs. Not good.

Outside a snowstorm raged its last, but in the stall, mare and man were hot and thirsty. He’d been drunk when one of the Stepsons had come to fetch him at Brother Bomba’s in Peace Falls — as drunk and drugged as he could manage, keeping his thoughts at bay.

Heavy snows had put the war against Mygdonia and its Nisibisi wizards into hiatus. Niko’s commander, Tempus, called the Riddler, had employed magic to bring his mixed cadre of shock troops (Rankan 3rd Commando rangers, Tysian “specials,” hillmen of Free Nisibis, and Niko’s unit of Stepsons) back to Tyse for the winter. Fighting had ended inconclusively, with the Mygdonian warlord Ajami still at large. Nevertheless, Tempus’ joint forces had declared themselves victorious: they’d won the battle, if not the war. So they rode through a tunnel of cloud and into Tyse triumphant, and settled in, waiting for spring, content with the season’s work. All except Niko.

But then, none of the Riddler’s other fighters had Niko’s problems: he was the only member of Tempus’ Sacred Band of Stepsons who had a wizard for a partner, a witch for an enemy, and a dream lord after his very soul.

He worried that his mare’s plight stemmed from magical intervention, or some reflection of the accursed luck that had dogged him ever since he’d joined Tempus’ private army of mercenaries.

He must save this horse. He couldn’t bear it if she suffered unto death on his account. He rolled her over, trying to reposition the foal in her birth canal. To no avail. Now there was nothing more he could do. Help-

lessness, of all things, he feared. So helplessness was here with him… and with her.

All Niko had left which mattered to him was this mare, who looked up at him from anguished, exhausted eyes that still were trusting: she expected him to save her.

Full of despair, he rubbed her muzzle, then scratched a favorite spot under her jaw. He couldn’t do much more than sit with her until she died. He couldn’t help her; he couldn’t even help himself.

Suddenly she shuddered and started thrashing. He tried to hold her head. She was tearing herself up inside; the foal was in the wrong position up inside her and couldn’t be born that way. The Stepsons’ healer had told him to put the mare out of her misery, hopeful of saving the foal, half Trôs horse and worth more than its mother.

But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t walk away and let someone else do it either. The remnants of honor-bond within him, reduced to that between man and horse, wouldn’t allow him to sacrifice the sorrel mare. She was all he had left from his life before he’d joined the Stepsons.

Nor could he hold her down, or keep her from hurting herself. He watched impotently, his eyes filling with tears, as she groaned and moaned and bit herself, then sank back, lips curled away from her square yellow teeth, snorting hard through distended nostrils. Where she lay her head, across his padded leather leggings, she left streaks of frothy sweat.

A slim chance remained that he could save her — if he went crawling to the mageguild and begged his estranged partner, Randal the Tysian wizard, to help him. He might make it there in time . . .

The storm outside, blowing southward, no longer howled wildly overhead. He could take one of his commander’s powerful Aškelonian mounts, ride down into Tyse, find Randal, and trade the last bit of his self-esteem for his mare’s life.

Even if he didn’t reach the mageguild in time, he’d be out of here — he wouldn’t have to watch her die.

Coward.

The mare twitched weakly, gave a long, sighing snort, and rolled pleading eyes at him. She was soaked wet with sweat. So was he.

“Mare, it will be all right,” he lied to her. Her ears pricked at the sound of his voice.

Digging with trembling fingers in his belt pouch, he found his drugs and sniffed the last of his krrf. Krrf would make him feel no better, he knew, but would give him the energy to do the cowardly thing and flee this stall before he broke down in tears.

As the drug seeped from his nose into his brain, he gathered his legs under him and pushed himself erect. The mare was watching him as he sidled toward the door, so he said, “You rest. I’ll find help. I’ll come right back.”

Outside the stall, he closed its plank door and leaned his forehead on it, swearing softly in gutter-Nisi. Beside him on a peg hung his sheepskin mantle. Without looking, he pulled the pelt around him. Now he was shivering with cold as his quilted leathers dried. He could smell death approaching, its tang sharper than the pungent odor of horse, the mare’s ammoniac urine, the water she’d passed, or his own acrid sweat.

Niko was still standing there when he heard low voices and the rustle of winter uniforms coming toward him. Along the gloomy stable aisle, its three carefully-placed torches crackled and shimmied.

“We need to do something about him,” a clipped voice said. “He’s eroding morale, discipline… We cannot keep pretending we don’t see, and let him go on this way. He makes the whole unit look bad.”

A deeper voice responded, “What would you suggest, Crit?”

“Either shape him up or shed him. If he were anybody else, you’d have done it long ago. He’s not that special — and if he is, that’s worse. We can’t have one set of rules for Niko and another for everybody else. Even the Sacred Banders don’t try making excuses for him anymore. He’ll not heed anyone but you, Commander. You need to talk to him.”

Their commander sighed rattlingly, speaking so low that Niko could barely hear the words as he turned to watch Tempus and his second-in-command, Critias, armored and mantled, come down the line of stalls in the pooling torchlight.

By the time those two reached him, the words he’d heard and the drugs in his system had combined to make Niko’s greeting abrupt: “If you’ve come to kill my mare to save the foal, you’ll need to kill me first.” He crossed his arms and stood his ground.

Crit was about Niko’s height and build, wrapped in ox-hide, wool and frustration. Tempus was taller, heavier and insurmountable: vast shoulders; willful mouth; highbrow over hooded eyes; snowflakes sparkled in his torchlit hair, in his beard and on his gray wool chlamys. The Stepsons’ commander was undying, as strong as a bull; a quasi-immortal whose flesh regenerated itself and whose fighting skills had been honed through centuries on a multitude of battlefields.

Picking a fight with Tempus might be a face-saving way to end this torture. But a fight with Tempus was no fight that Niko, despite his western training, could hope to win — and both his superiors knew it.

Crit said, “See what I mean? The bastard’s addled — dangerous to himself and the rest of us. Suicide is no honorable —”

“Crit, go tell Randal he can come now,” Tempus ordered flatly.

Critias ran a hand through dark, feathery hair and said, “Yes sir, Commander. Niko, when you’re done here, I want to see you in my office.” With that, a scowl on his patrician face, the Stepsons’ task force leader headed for the barn door.

Niko locked eyes with Tempus, silent until he judged Crit well out of earshot. Then: “Commander, Randal’s not touching my mare. She’s better off dying a natural death than living on, beholden to wizardry.” His voice betrayed him, pleading with Tempus to understand.

“And you yourself, Stepson,” Tempus rejoined, “is that what you want?” The Riddler stared at him through eyes that stripped you to your soul. “To die, rather than live on, beholden to wizardry?”

“Maybe. What if it is? It’s my choice; maybe the only choice I have left. I never wanted to pair with Randal — a mage, a sorcerer.” Niko tried to stop, but the words came pouring out: “I can’t go on this way. I lost my balance — my maat — somewhere up on Wizardwall and everybody sees: the other fighters avoid me like a plague-carrier; the Sacred Band pairs say I’ve violated the spirit of my oath; the Free Nisibisi shun me. Even my blood brother Bashir looks at me askance. I’m an outcast. So let’s end this farce: I quit. I’m out of it, officially resigning my commission. As of this moment, my mare and I are beyond your jurisdiction.”

From inside the stall, a grunt of pain and desperation reached them.

Niko fancied he could see in those long slitted eyes what his commander thought of him: a Sacred Bander, once promising, but now haggard, haunted, and hunted by supernatural forces he couldn’t comprehend — teetering on the brink of madness. For a moment Niko thought Tempus would let things lie; say not another word to him, ever; merely walk away from Niko and all they’d shared.

“Resignation. That might be best for all concerned.” Tempus spoke judiciously, so slowly, voice like wheels on gravel. “But let’s end it properly: you and I should be able to save this mare and foal, if you’ll take direction from me one more time. Then the Stepsons will keep the foal, and you can take the mare with you when it’s weaned.”

Niko squeezed his eyes shut, his mouth suddenly dry, feeling as if he’d been disemboweled. At least he had saved Tempus the painful duty of discharging him. This last moment of their shared destiny was fated, he told himself, long overdue.

Yet the shock of being officially separated from his unit was devastating. Numbly he said, “Fine. Let’s try it, Tempus,” using his civilian prerogative to be impolite to the man he respected above all others.

In the stall, the mare’s ears barely twitched. Her breathing was too loud, too deep. Her distended belly shivered.

Tempus knelt down beside her hindquarters, grabbed her tail, and unsheathed his dagger.

“No!” Niko protested.

“I’ll only cut her enough to make her a little wider, Niko. She’ll hardly feel it, in her condition. Sit on her neck and hold her head.”

Automatically, the ex-Stepson did as he was bid. He couldn’t see what Tempus was doing. His commander was a horseman; but at this moment, in this struggle, no outcome was certain. His pulse thumped in his ears as the mare under him shuddered and twitched.

Then she uttered a shrill scream. Her forelegs jerked madly as she strove to roll over, rise up. Niko had all he could do to obey the order he’d been given and keep her head down by sitting on her neck.

“Good, good. Hold firm. That’s it, Niko,” said Tempus, and then added, “Here it comes . . .. That’s got it.” And: “You can get off her neck. Get me some hot water, cat gut, a hot needle, clean cloths. And . . . take a look, on your way out.”

The straw was strewn with blood and placenta. In its midst a wet iron-black foal kicked shakily. Tempus was wiping the mucus from the foal’s nostrils with his tunic’s edge, while its mother licked moisture from her shivering colt, helping it with her tongue to come to life.

When Niko left the stall, she was yet nuzzling her newborn. Tempus, kill-smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, crouched beside mare and foal, staring after him.

Outside, winter slapped away his drugs with her icy breath. His own breath puffed white in the starlight. The air in his lungs bit like a blade’s edge. Snow crunched beneath his sheepskin boots as he set out across the stable-yard to the barracks.

Coming back to the barn carrying a bucket of water and an armful of cloths from his quarters, Niko met Randal the Tysian wizard, slogging through snowdrifts up to his bony knees.

“Stealth,” Randal called Niko by his war name, “I got your message. Whatever’s wrong with her, we’ll soon —” Randal’s lips were blue with cold, his big ears red; freckles spattered his thin white face.

“Randal, I didn’t send for you, but I’m glad you’re here.”

The scrawny wizard struggled to keep up. “You are?” “That’s right. Not because of the mare. Tempus and I took care of that without any magical incantation or soul-rotting spells.”

Randal’s jaw jutted as he tried to hide hurt feelings. This mageling still idolized Nikodemos. Since coming back from the front, Niko had been treating Randal shabbily, he knew. But with good reason: he was trying to drive Randal away. Niko had been possessed by a witch, sought as an earthly avatar by the entelechy of dream, banned from the Bandaran isles to the west for consorting with magicians. Enough. He wanted nothing more to do with sorcery. Now, finally, he could rid himself of this weakling partner Tempus had forced on him, along with all the evils of the wizard-caste.

Randal sighed and said only, “I’m glad. The mare’s out of danger? And the foal? Then perhaps I should be getting back. ” No retort from Randal. No anger. Only big limpid eyes and chattering teeth and that imploring gaze like a dog kicked too often.

This mageling’s forbearance was in itself an insult. Randal would forgive anything from his failing partner. “Not yet, Randal. You’ll need to stay awhile — long enough for us to finish with my mare. Then we’ll dissolve our pairbond formally. You can do what you wish, but I’ve quit the Stepsons. Plenty of fools will pair with you for status and mundane advantage. Or Tempus will keep you on as a single. I’m —”

“You what? Niko, you’re a son of the armies. What’s happened?” Now the mage showed some spirit; his lips whitened. “The Band is your entire life. What about ‘to the death with honor’? You’re a squadron leader of the finest cavalry unit in the north. What will you do now? What can you do now?”

Niko considered snapping the mageling’s neck. But the Tysian adept had enchanted weapons that evened up his odds in any fight. Worse, Randal was correct: Niko without his squadron was like Randal without his guild-standing or Tempus without his ancient curse: unthinkable.

“You heard me,” Niko said, carefully emotionless, feigning the mystic calm he’d lost. “I’m quit of you and all my former allegiances, after tonight. We’ll go see Critias and say the words, make it official. Then it’s done.” He turned away; the mage should follow him to the barn, back to his waiting mare and her newborn. “Done? Don’t I have anything to say about —?” Randal stood spread-legged in the snow.

“No, rightman. You don’t.” Niko strode on, and this time Randal followed.

“Stealth called Nikodemos, if you’ve truly lost your taste for honor and glory, then…what?”

“Then there’s nothing, Randal, you can do about it. You’ve been part of my problems, not my solutions. That all ends tonight.”

Niko’s rightman tried one more time: “Stealth, I’ve given up a lot to be able to say ‘Life to you, Riddler, and everlasting glory.’ As much as you. My guild distrusts me; my old friends fear me. You taught me that we battle in our hearts, first. Let me help you battle in yours. ”

Tempus came out of the mare’s stall to greet them. Their commander spoke the Sacred Band greeting to Randal alone, not to Niko.

Hearing those words, Niko realized that Tempus expected Randal to stay on as the Stepsons’ staff adept, to rise to this occasion — to ask no questions and trust the Riddler to make things right — as any good Stepson should. So easily did Tempus salvage what he could from this.

But for Niko, it wouldn’t be that easy.