"You were so shy in those days," Swindapa said. "I knew Moon Woman had sent you to rescue me and put down the Sun People, and that Her stars meant us to be together always, but I had to drag you into bed," she went on.

"Well, whatever else the Fiernan Bohulugi are, they aren't shy," Marian agreed. Lordy, no. Got me out of the closet, for starters.

Swindapa sighed again. "I thought once the Sun People were beaten, we'd have peace. Sailing, work, and the children."

Marian's expression turned grim. "Not while William Walker's above-ground, I think." Her fist hit the saddle horn. "Damn, but I should have finished him off!"

"You were nearly dead with wounds, yourself. And he was prepared to flee if he lost."

Alston shook her head. There were no excuses for failure. "A rat always has a bolt-hole. All our problems since, they're because he got away."

"When I was a fighting-man, the kettle-drums they beat;

The people scattered roses before my horse's feet.

And now I am a mighty King, and the people dog my track;

With poison in the wine-cup, and daggers at my back."

"Self-pity, Will?" Dr. Alice Hong asked mockingly.

"Robert E. Howard," William Walker replied. "Kull the Conqueror, specifically."

He turned from the tall French doors and their southward view over the palace gardens and the city of Walkeropolis. The valley of the Eurotas reached beyond, drowsing in a soft palette of green and brown and old gold, up to the blue heights of Mount Taygetos. The city's smoke and noise drifted in, mixed with flower scents from the gardens, and a warm hint of thyme and lavender from the hills.

The King of Men smiled at her. "I thought it was appropriate."

He was a little over six feet, tall even by twentieth-century standards, towering here in the thirteenth century B.C.