Aspe’s horse was the largest in the known universe, and the cobblestones cracked under its hooves. And its rider, too, was gigantic; he raised his whip and cut the beast in its tenderest flank, making it scream with rage and flog the air with its vestigial wings. Together, horse and man towered over their attacker, but the antinomial never spoke a word to check his gallop, nor allowed any note of doubt to creep into his song. He shot like a projectile, a thing with no will or consciousness of its own, an instrument of some larger vengeance. In the middle of the square they came together in a smash of metal and a flurry of wingbeats, and as the axe descended and the mare rushed past, Aspe caught her beak in the coils of his whip. Standing in his stirrups, he wrenched her neck around, using her own impetus to splinter her beak and snap her neckbone. She lurched and stumbled, throwing wide the stroke of the axe. It fell not on Aspe but on his horse, imbedding at the juncture of its neck and shoulder, and touched the life of the great beast. There was no time for another stroke. As the antinomial tried to wrench his axe out of the horse’s neck, Aspe caught him in his claw, and held him and crushed him, the horses subsiding around them as if deflating in a gush of blood.

Aspe stepped free and stood among the wreckage of the horses, still holding his brother by the face. And then he raised his head and shouted, and at first the circle of soldiers heard nothing but a furious roar. But again he shouted, screaming from his heart, using all the rage he knew, and this time his cry was so harsh and so articulate that even that circle of barbarians could see an image taking shape above him, high up in the air, indistinct at first. And then it burst out of the clouds as if out of a wave, a great sea monster made of music, and every modulation of the colonel’s voice gave it new color and new form. Fins and a tail it had, but also it seemed part lion and part bird, a mixture of distorted terrors. Aspe raised his steel fist.

Shouting aloud, he shook it in the indignant face of day.

The monster stretched its talons out over the city. And then it vanished, dashed to pieces on the wind, as the colonel’s singing died away. But Chrism Demiurge, standing on his balcony, still caught a glimpse of the illusion. He saw it as a blear of color in the sky. He touched his wristwatch as he left the balustrade, though he knew it wanted hours till sunset. Behind him in the marble courts, a musician stroked the hour.

“It seems later than it is,” murmured the priest. “Is my captain there?”

“Yes, sir,” said a soldier, coming forward, his face blackened with powder and soot.