By the time Crit had retrieved his horse, his fingers were playing with the luckcharms in his beltpouch. Normally, he'd have pulled them out, squatted down,shaken and thrown them in the straw for guidance.
But the storm was guidance enough; he didn't need to ask a question he wouldn'tlike the answer to. If his partner Strat had been on his right tonight, he'dhave bet his friend any odds that, when the weather broke, Tempus would comerousting Crit without so much as an explanation and they'd be heading south toSanctuary where the Sacred Band was quartered for the winter.
Not that he didn't want to see Strat-he did. Not that he wasn't happy that theStorm god Vashanka, God of the Annies, of Rape and Pillage, of Bloodlust andFury and Death's Gate, was manifest-he was. What he'd told the Rankan bitch wastrue-you couldn't win a war without your god. But Vashanka, the Rankan StormGod, had deserted the Stepsons, Crit's unit, in their need. So the unit hadtaken up with another, perhaps greater, god: Father Enlil.
And the black, roiling clouds above, the voices which spoke thunder over thefighter's head, were telling a man who didn't like gods much better than magicand who was first officer to a demigod who meddled with both, that Vashankamight not be too pleased with the fickle men who once had slaughtered in Hisname and now did so in Another's.
Things were so damned complicated whenever Tempus was .involved.
Grabbing a tuft of mane, Crit swung up on his warhorse and reined it around so