The mask was a bronze eagle’s head. I had supposed it would disturb me, but it did not seem so very ill to wear it. Only the eyepieces of clear blue glass made the strange night stranger yet. A violet moon went down, leaving only the dying fires above, the color of brass, and a sky of stars like flecks of sapphire.

I pulled the dead man’s patchy cloak over my head, and went on up the stepway, toward the ruined fort.

3

The man I killed had been a sentry of sorts, but they regarded the watch like a game. At the head of the terraces another two bronze-masks sat against a crumbling arch. I anticipated interrogation, seeing they would assume I was their fellow from the post below, but neither spoke. One was striking soft chords from a hollow wooden case with strings held across it on silver pegs, a pretty noise to herald what was coming to them. The other raised his hand to me; no more.

So I got inside the fortress.

Through the blue eagle’s eyes I saw their camping bathed in the transparent auburn glow of flames. Here and there men sat or lay beside their fires, mostly silent, as watchful men are often silent in the moonfall of the night, the hour when all tides are turning.

Not much seemed to remain of the building save the outer shell. Centrally, a marble stair ran up to nothing but space; there had been some great hall there once. Along the west wall stretched the picket line of their lean horses, fretful and unslumbering. The play of their muscles was like light on silk, and each neck like the slender curve of a bow. The warrior in me was thinking he should have three or four of those horses after tonight, but it was a remote greed, like a memory.

On the far side of the marble staff, eastward, about thirty tents were pitched. They were not like the tenting of a krarl, but raised on frameworks that gave them many domed and pointing shapes, the fabrics various, exotic, and decaying. Torn banners hung before them, fringed with bullion and jewels.

It was as though I had come into the court of Death, skeletons in bright armor and wormwood in golden cups to drink.

Behind me, the man with the stringed instrument began to sing. He had a fine voice, chiming on the stillness. I did not really catch the words, but it was a love song, not like any music the warriors knew.

Between the picket line of horses and the tents, right under the stair, two cannon stood on carts, motionless nozzled tubings of black iron. They smelled incendiary, as though they were dragons. It was their smell rather than their size that warned me of the danger in them, for they were not large. Perhaps, guessing me a stranger, they would spit fire at me of their own volition. But this was a child’s fancy, something out of my tribal recollection, not my own. Some men slept, sitting by the cannon. They were unlike the rest, dark skinned and also dark haired as I was, while the others in the camp were very fair. Neither did these drip ornaments. Their faces were like knobs of wood, brutal, ugly, and expressionless, even asleep. They were slaves, no mistaking it.