“Let us see if there are men here,” said Abrogastes. He handed the empty drinking horn to a shieldsman. He wiped his face with the back of his right forearm.

Retainers, and clients, pounded on the long tables lining the edges of the hall.

Drinking vessels were brought hastily by former ladies of the empire.

The drinking horn, refilled, was handed to Abrogastes by his shieldsman.

Abrogastes, seated on the bench, between the tall, carved high-seat pillars, looked down from the dais, on the hall, and the tables, grasping the drinking horn, formed from the horn of the hoofed sorit, adorned, enwrapped, with golden filigree, foaming with bror, spiced and honeyed, brewed from golden lee.

This was the season of the storms, of the rain of stones between the world of the Alemanni and its yellow star.

The lionships slept in their steel sheds.

In the season of the storms was sealed the world of the Alemanni, the stones in their annual tides, streaming in the skies, some visible at night, closing the gates of the world, closing it to those without, locking within, as well, those on its surface.

But in the spring the skies would clear.

It was then that the lionships would awaken.

Abrogastes was moody of late.

He stared sullenly into the drinking horn.

Bror was on his beard.

Behind him, to his left, his shieldsman carried his sword. On the bench beside him, at his right, lay an imperial pistol. It was a simple, yet precious weapon. In the empire, only one of senatorial rank, or above, would be likely to possess such a weapon, or a limited number of charges for it, privately. In billions of years, you see, resources which once seemed inexhaustible proved themselves finite, after all, and often unrenewable.