Shadow's Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein ...

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back as an inner door burst open to the sound of screams and a keening laugh.
Two blue-painted barbarians from Goddess knew where dragged afessas by his ankles, pulling as if he
were a wishbone. They held him head-down over the balcony for a moment before letting him drop onto
the pavement, brain splattering. She waited until they went back in to where their fellows were still looting
and drinking, crossed the hall and through the door on the other side.
Glass doors led into the private gardens, flanked by the lesser wings of the house. Over a yew hedge she
could see a sudden crest of flame spring up: the stable.
She trotted along the wing. "Rasas! Lixand! Rasas! Shkai'ra!" It was almost quiet, the fire-roar muffled
by the estate wall and the brown searing trees between. Ashes choked the fish-pool, golden and spotted
carp gulping at a surface slimed with black. Beyond that a sunken, walled patch of lawn lay smooth and
green-clipped as if waiting for a game ofkrukat , surrounded by overturned chairs and satin-clad
corpses, wine-glasses smashed, a harp rammed over one lord's long-haired head, steel bass strings
driven into the face, rose-petals scattered under it.A last battle of two hundred thousand's being
fought on the plains around their Empire's heart , she thought,and they throw a party .
Two or three black and gold dressed boys lay strewn on the lawn, a youth of sixteen or so cradling
another in his arms.
"Rasas!" she bellowed in her ship-captain's voice. She'd check the dead ones after she'd called; even the
thought brought sickness. "Rasas!" A child's yelp of recognition came from behind a stone bench carved
with griffin arms, across the sunken lawn.
"Rasas?" She stepped forward, sudden hope bringing blood pounding into her head.
A dancing boy with a thin strip of blond mane on a shaven head scrambled out from behind the stone
bench, ran toward her. Behind him there was a shout and three of the blue savages came running from
the stable, after him, pointing. They were all red-haired, two carrying bundles of javelins, one a squat
giant two meters tall with a mace as thick as her leg, topped with what looked like a small boat's stone
anchor. Their leather kilts flapped against their thighs as they ran; they were naked otherwise, except for
the wolves' teeth wound into their shaggy manes. Clotted grey dripped from the giant's mace.
"Yi-yi-yiyiyiyi," they shrilled in exhilaration, as if they'd started a grouse up out of underbrush.
The kneeling youth didn't move, as if he didn't care to save his own life. A spear thumped through his
back, was yanked out, a blue foot braced on his neck. He slowly slumped forward, across the child's
corpse he'd been cradling, and both lay still.
"Rasas!" She vaulted down into the dance area and ran toward the fleeing boy. No wonder they were
after him: he was covered in jewelry. One of the blue-skins raised her javelin to throw, checked, flipped
the weapon around. "Down!" The blue-skin loosed the spear, butt first—not to soil her goods with
blood, grub-eating bitch, that satin's worth ten silver claws—"DOWN!" The boy looked back over
his shoulder instead; her heart clenched but he tucked, rolled on his shoulder as the spear thudded into
the grass next to him, ashwood gouging a hand-span deep.
He dove behind her. "Help me, please, you know him, help me too!" The blue-skins stood at the rim of
the dance lawn, standing, looking at her, considering. She lifted her gloved hands, shook her head, felt
the boy grip her ankle with a shaking hand. "No," she said. "This one's mine."
They said something she didn't understand, except for the gestures, the levelled spear.Koru, I can't