CHAPTER TWO

"And it is written that the dark gods of Chaos are more fickle than mortal minds can concieve. Not only do they seek to churn the fields of harmony into slush, but to sow that mire with priceless diamonds to tempt and lure the foolhardy. For such is their nature, not to do evil alone, but to break the laws that set Good aside from Evil.
	"Some there are who wonder how we endure in their despite after so long a struggle - let those take heed of the wisdom of the Goddess Dhoreen, and admire but not emulate. Long ago had her powers been stolen and misused by the chaotic Sparghetter, Spawner of Legions, and by Til the Improver, to make the foulness that we know as the Entropes.
	"But though then as now the Entropes can spread their taint across the world like weeds in the fields of fairness, amongst them were some that had been born fair and strong, in mockery of the natural beasts and fair folk despoiled in their making. And these the Goddess took pity on, and chose to heal them. A gift she gave to her followers, to embrace and be yet untainted by Chaos, and bear if they desired not an Entrope but a Newblood, free and unstained by that which had gotten it, to add its new vigour to our cause.
	"And the other Powers made a place for the twenty-three new peoples in their great plans, though it meant rewriting much that had been long ago agreed upon, and sharing out many of the great deeds and triumphs that had been destined for others. But it is also written that they kept a closer eye on the Goddess Dhoreen ever afterwards."

	(From the Second Book Of Horazar, Dystope Central Lending Library).

	"There's only two things wrong with Newbloods. What they are, and what they do."
	(Quote by Duke Elbreez, overheard at the end of an exceptionally late-running party.)


Evening shadows were long on the low lands of the delta. The world's two small moons already looked down on the high-walled city of Dystope, rising from the canal-laced fields like a ship run ashore on a mudbank.
	If this place was a ship, then logically it somewhere had a ship's brig. It did - and some of its occupants were not looking forward to being hung from the yardarm.

	There was only the slow drip of water on stone at first, echoing through the complex of vaults and cellars beneath the Duke's ancient keep. Suddenly, one of the silent figures huddled in the corner stirred.
	Gralius Greywashed, feline priest of Primane The Preserver, had finished his nightly devotions - but it scarcely seemed to have reassured him.
	"Beauvette ! Machsan !" he shook the minotaur and Icebear awake "We've got to get out of here - it's not just our neighbours in the next cell who've got a date with the headsman tonight - it's US !"
	Beauvette Mareethra came awake instantly, her deep-set eyes ablaze as she sprang to her feet.
	"Since when toes a tavern brawl get you the death sentence ? 'Specially since we got as good as we gave already."
	The feline shook his head, fingering his sacred toolkit nervously. "Primane didn't say. But he told me we have to get out before dawn - and we can do it. If we can find a mage who's never cast a spell beneath the two moons."
	Beauvette grunted, and turned to her equally massive comrade. "NOW do you see why I leave the Gods well alone ? Their idea of helping you, tell you you're going to die and not how to avoid it." She gestured up at the heavy vault of stone, almost within reach. "Where do we 'find' anyone down here without getting out already ? "
	Gralius's whiskers twitched. "I'm not sure about the "two moons" bit myself. You've either got the powers or you haven't - and if you have, the whole world's beneath the two moons anyway. But that's what our Chief Mechanic said."
	There came a discreet cough from the tiny grating to the next cell, where the four travellers were imprisoned. Gralius looked up - it was the black-haired human, Mangana, who had healed Machsan earlier that night.
	"I said we'd come a long way to get here," she whispered "the world we started off in has only GOT one moon ! Horst - " she reached out to the muscular boar beside her "the local deity reckons it's Politically Correct for you to do your stuff over here. Get to it."

	The cellars of the Great Keep had been rebuilt many times over the centuries. Sorcerous meltdowns from within and psycho-thermal blast weapons from without had changed the layout in a bewildering variety of ways.
	But a neat two-metre hole bored straight through the spell-reinforced concrete of the outside walls - THAT was something new.

	"I don't know how he did that." Gralius whispered into Beauvette's folded ear as they hid in an alleyway ten minutes later "He didn't invoke anyone, and it didn't feel like sorcery - besides, all those walls had cold iron bars built into them, should have earthed any sort of magic. And that worries me." He had secretly scanned the boar's aura for the arhythmic might of Chaotic power, and found none. First the world had seen Entropes doing what some people could describe as good, and now there was alien magic on the streets of Dystope. He hoped the Dystopian Mages' Guild didn't detect it...
	"Oi - coast's clear." Machsan's great white muzzle poked round the corner "The travellers are meeting us at the Fallen Uni - then it's four streets through to the South Gate. Luck holds, an' there'll be just the one hand of Guards watching. Lookin' forward to that."
	The feline inwardly sighed as he cast his grey hood over his ears. As if heading off into the wilds with one berzerker wasn't bad enough - now there were two to clean up after. He hoped the travellers were of a more retiring disposition.....

	"Well now, I think he looked dishy.... the cat, anyway." It was Kazuko, the straw-yellow haired human, who swung her feet idly from the first-story windowledge looking over towards the inn. But her fellow human snorted.
	"You're out of luck, Kaz - didn't I tell you about Primane priests ? Clerics of almost all the other gods here can take time off - Brazakar The Avenger doesn't have a battlefield to order every day, and the hunting gods have slack seasons. But Primane's priests are set on an immortal mission... spending time and energy on your furless little body isn't a luxury he's allowed."
	Kazuko sniffed. "OK then, it'll have to be the bear. Poor little me. And we're leaving town before I've time to rejoin the Goddess's temple - she sort of loses track of me when we go back to Japan. So I've not got any of my ACCOMMODATE or TRUEMUSK spells yet to use with him.... just my poor, poor little.."
 	Her cousin good-humouredly swiped her across the head with an empty bronze chamberpot. "You see what I've got to put up with ? Every holiday I take her home with me it's the same. If she hadn't taken a week off in the Verdine woods we wouldn't have been here to get into this mess !"
	Horst snorted, the boar's coarse fur rasping on the stone of the windowsill as he kept a wary eye on the street below. "Am hoping her Love Goddess supports worshippers better than this Primane tinkerer. Some good he did his priests - told him the best thing to do was to leave the work to me !"
	Mangana put her arm around his shoulder. "That's why they've got seven Powers over here, not just one. If that'd been a Brazakar Battle Bishop locked up, he'd have taken the place to pieces. But a Preserver God's not going to ladle out MegaThaum destructive powers for his priests to tear holes in the Royal Palace - it's not his style."
	"Sounds like the different martial arts," put in the vixen from the corner "they're all the same sort of thing in a way - but with different priorities. " She suddenly grinned. "If you're good enough with any of them, you can focus enough energy to smash bricks with. But I suppose Primane's magic is like the ones where you can only do it if the brick attacks you first !"
	Suzuko Hoki was not finding it easy to adjust to this new world. It was bad enough coming to terms with a world that ran on magic rather than technology, where she had none of either. Still, a magic-heavy world was no stranger than some of the physics she had studied.... compared with Quantum Gravity and Hyperspheric Inflation Theories, being able to call on real deities like a soldier calling down an airstrike was something she could learn to handle. She hoped.
	But her gaze was curious as she gazed at the powerful boar, still scanning the street watchfully. She had known Horst for quite some time - indeed, he had been there for her during her first desperate month at the Academy, when she had realised that she was the only fox on the island, and was faced with going into season all alone. But only in the last few months had it been rumoured that he was any kind of psyker, after one of the lecturers had detected the telltale patterns in the gruff boar's aura.
	As if to confirm her thoughts, Mangana gave her bristly mate an affectionate hug. "Oh, Horst can chuck Vrill power around like nobody's business, you'd better believe it. The only trouble back in Japan was that there just ISN'T any there - it needs what he calls the "Mystic Strength Of The Volk" to draw on, and that's gone out of fashion on our timeline. Seems like the Art is something that's latent in people - you don't have to be born somewhere it actually works. Even Kazuko's got that sorcerous gift, "Look Cute And Mean At The Same Time" over here - " she made an arcane gesture, and a faint glow appeared on her fingertips "and Vrill power's called by another name, but it's still Horst-compatible ."
	"Humph." The object of her affections gently disengaged from her arms. "Talking of fashion, did you get all the equipment we left in our inn ? Everything we were captured in, the guards took."
	Suzuko's eyes wandered to the four saddlebags. There had been five bags of clothing and equipment that had left Japan bound for this place - but one of those had been Kazuko's. And if there was one thing she could rely on Kazuko for, it was that she ALWAYS tried to smuggle things past the Dimensional Customs Police.

	The silent, hooded guardians of the various Interdimensional Gateways are one of the major mysteries of the Multiverse. It is said by some that they are the immortal worshippers of some ultra-lawful God Of Economics. Whatever the truth may be, most astral travellers only run into them on their second or third trips - or however soon they realise how they can make a fortune by whatever the local equivalent of Selling Guns To The Indians might be.
	One of the few concrete facts is that nobody can smuggle any scrap of unlawful technology past them to a world where it can make a difference. Mangana's enchanted items could travel to Earth at the start of term, since once there they would be nothing but precious stones. But Kazuko simply could never resist trying to get the better of them, as she had found out when they confiscated the very shirt off her back.
	"Well, how did I know these dyed patches are the exact drilling templates for a Mark Two Sten gun ?" she had fumed in tones of injured innocence. "Besides - on the first page of the Survivalist book I got them from, it said VERY clearly, "This information is intended for reference and historical use ONLY" : and anyway - I haven't even got gunpowder to work, where we're going..."

	The returning darkness saw a greatly expanded party leaving the Southern Gate of Dystope On The Delta, bound by good luck for the same general direction.
	"Ha ! " Beauvette rumbled, taking her last breath of the Dystopian air "Damn strange. One night they arrest us, and they're planning to shorten us by a head apiece - now we stroll out of a guarded gate and nobody looks twice. What you reckon, Gralius ?"
	The feline priest turned round in the saddle; he had been pondering the same question while they picked their way through the gloom of the city's wall-shadowed evening. All weapons were ready, including his own consecrated blade; a priest of Primane was allowed to defend himself against any unjust attacker. And he had been sentenced to death for being in the same room as a tavern brawl where nothing more than a few sore heads had resulted - that was what he called unjust, and he knew his God would back him on it.
	"Well.... it COULD be that nobody knows we're gone," the grey cat mused mainly to himself, as the hill pony's trotting hooves put more distance by the second between them and the mysteriously perforated keep. "That amount of energy the boar used should have woken every mage in the city - I'd have thought it'd have blasted them out of their beds.... but it has such a strange sort of tone to it. Maybe it's like the cries of night-flyers. I can hear those with my ears, although maybe you can't; I was standing right next door when the spell went off and even then I could scarcely tell anything was happening."
	There was a grunt from the minotaur, as she checked her Great Axe was both secure and within an instant's grasp of her mailed fist. For once, she was glad of the city laws that had made her leave it safe with the baggage and horses; everything they had carried on their arrest was long gone. Dystope had been proud of its Town Guards once; it was their proud boast that they could get a confession from anyone, for any crime desired. But now - her massively boned head was troubled. Things were at work that knocking a few skulls together would not fix. And to a minotaur, that was trouble indeed.
	Satisfied that her weapons were to hand, Beauvette turned to the saddlebags, glad now that Gralius had insisted they resupply before going to the inns. Yes, all was in order with the baggage..... and thinking of useless baggage.....
	"OI ! Vazeeq ! Get moving, you sad excuse for a soldier !" With nobody else on the road, she could see the baboon bringing up the tail end of the party "I don't know where you've been and I don't care - right now you're coming with US !"
	At the rear, Vazeeq struggled to coax more speed out of the pack ponies. He had turned up not a minute too soon; only Beauvette's haste had saved him from a savage pummelling for being late on duty. But he was certain she would save it up for later.....
	The baboon's doglike muzzle grimaced as his soreness chafed on the saddlehorn, and he studied the additions to their party. A Newblood fox, a boar, a great white Icebear that rode familiarly at Beauvette's side, and two human females, of some strange long legged, tarsier-eyed race he had never seen before. As he concentrated on keeping his tired eyes open, from the conversation going on ahead he gathered that he had enjoyed his night far more than they had.
	Not all humans disliked Newbloods. Indeed, it had been humans serving the Goddess Dhoreen that had brought his ancestors into the world, and some few of their descendants had retained that preference. A very few, in fact, even specialised in his species....
	"Captain !" His urgent shout rang out; what he had spotted behind them pushed all thoughts of rouged and willing rumps from his mind "We've got Company ! About a dozen riders come out of the gate, hammering right after us !"
	Beauvette wheeled round. They were trapped on a narrow road between two half-flooded fields, lying fallow after the Spring rains. No way to go left or right - and with the pack mules in tow, not a hope of outrunning their pursuers. Moonlight glittered on her sharp teeth as her grin widened and the massive double-bitted axe seemed to leap into her hand from its spring holster.
	At the head of the party, Gralius winced. "Those are Town Guards, just doing their duty," he warned "if we wade into them just like that, we'll be guilty of truly resisting arrest - I can't help you fight them." His night-wide feline eyes strained to pierce the gloom. "All humans, this bunch - Primane won't like it if ...." 
	Suzuko noticed him suddenly stiffen in the saddle, and his eyes dilate as if he had been knocked unconscious. "The priest - what's wrong with him ?"
	Machsan grunted, sparing the slight feline a glance as he unsheathed a sword almost two metres long. "Pal of mine was a Battle Vicar, did that every time his God whispered tactics in his ear. Primane don't do that, though - too busy by half, so they all tell us. That ain't our problem, though - those skinnies are going to be here in two minutes." Huge white teeth bared in a savage grin. "If they wants my hide, they're going to have to come and EARN it."
	Suddenly Gralius gave a twitch, and looked wildly around him. "I'm only a simple priest...." he whispered to himself, so softly that only Suzuko's sharp ears heard him "Primane - if it's your will - so be it."
	"Well ?" Beauvette barked "who's got weapons here ? And who can use 'em ?"
	Gralius dug his heels into the sides of the shaggy hill pony he rode, and urged it across to stand at the minotaur's flank, towering over twice his height. With a ring of steel, his own sword pulled from its lead-sealed scabbard.
	"HE just told me." The grey cat's voice was strong now, as he strapped on the battered helmet that served most days as a washing bowl "Primane, my GOD, he just told me what we have to do to preserve peace and justice round here."
	"And ?" 
	Short grey whiskers twitched nervously. "In the interests of Peace, we can't let ANY of those horsemen get back to the city alive."

	The moons looked down ten minutes later onto fields stained crimson. Kazuko and Suzuko surveyed the corpse-strewn road, eyes wide in horror. Suzuko gave a weak, hesitant laugh.
	"They didn't even call for us to stop," her voice was dry and hoarse "they just put their lances down and charged the instant they saw us .... good thing we took those archery lessons before coming out here."
	The two girls gripped some lethal hardware fully the equal of what Kazuko always tried to bring in through Dimensional Customs, in terms of effect if not technology. Traditional Japanese asymmetric bows, the grips barely a third of the length from the bottom, fired arrows fully half a metre long with a pull of sixty kilogrammes. Fibreglass and carbon fibre would have been stopped at Customs, but what they held were composites of equally effective yew wood and treated sinew.  And though Suzuko had never been in the top grade at school in traditional arts, she had found it frighteningly easy at thirty metres to send a three-fingers wide hunting broadhead straight through the leather neck joint of the first charging figure.
	"Ha." Beauvette wrenched the helmet off one of the fallen. "Nice work, you two - clean kills, and here's armour worth a fortune." Her deep-set eyes glittered. "It is, too - reinforced field plate, much too fancy to sit on a lantern-carrying town Guard. Something way funny about this whole thing..."
	Machsan splashed up from the canal bank, his freshly cleaned two-handed sword glistening in the pale light. For a second he looked down at the stiff human face, and then unbuckled two more helmets for a critical look.
	"Priest," his voice was uncertain "this looks more your territory than mine. For deaders, they don't look that unhappy about it. What d'ya reckon ?"
	Gralius trotted over, having recaptured and soothed the horses with a minor cantrip. He looked down, and winced. The knight wore a dull green fabric smock covering over his armour, totally unlike the gorgeously engraved and sculpted uniforms that Duke Elbreez was introducing for the Peacetime reforms. This was the one Machsan had tackled in a flying leap from the ground, grabbed by the head and cracked like a whip, the noise of breaking bones clear even in the battle - but for all that, the dead face had a calm, almost smiling expression.  
	As did the other ten. None of whom had the bouffant hairstyles affected by the current serving Guardsmen they had expected to be their pursuers.
	A shadow blotted the moonlight, and he looked up to see the boar and the black-haired humanoid girl - Horst and Mangana, the two strange force-users. Mangana's wide eyes were bright with tears.
	"Peace, child," Gralius whispered, with more conviction than he felt himself "we had no choice in this."
	Mangana snorted angrily, wiping her moon-face with a gloved hand. "Neither did they ! And I don't just mean they were obeying orders - somebody did a job on their minds. That man there - she gestured at the still form by Gralius's paws "I was in Dystope to meet him ! He's - or, he WAS - one of the old King's personal guard. Last time I was here, he'd been broken down to quartermaster and supplies staff. I was here to sell him the designs for some decent kit." Kneeling at the side of the fallen figure, she gently closed the staring eyes, and touched the waxed green canvas covering bronze armour beneath. "Oh, Jaskan," she sighed, a harsh note creeping into her voice "what DID they do to you ?"
	

	Three hours later, they reached the edge of the delta, where the hillsides rose steep and wooded out of the rich farmland, sparkling behind them with distant pools and canals like an immense jewelled cobweb under the moonlight.	
	"This is as far as we can take him." Mangana was riding ahead with Suzuko and Gralius, as the road turned steeply into the wooded hills. "Jaskan was - well, he wasn't really a friend, but I liked him. We'd done business, he liked my ideas. "
	Beauvette pulled her helmet off, as they rode into a clearing a little way off the road. "Jaskan Tanira ? I heard of him. Good solja." Closely she inspected the human, now stripped of his armour and lying at peace in the open clearing as the moons and stars wheeled overhead in the silence of the night. "Last time I heard of him, he was being sent off to guard some wet-tail fishing port on the Delta. Mud for as far as you can see at low tide - shiftin' sandbanks - no place for anybody to want to invade. Nothin' to guard, the armour on the knights'd pay to rebuild the huts twice over."
	Suzuko glanced up at her. "He's someone who fell out of favour at about the same time you did ? You got sent to rot in the forests, he was sent down to watch over a swamp - and all his men looked like someone pumped them full of battlefield stimulants - that's a sort of drug we've got back home. Some countries have suicide squads they send in first, whenever they KNOW the first attack's bound to fail."
	Mangana nodded, and waved her mate forward. "Horst - somebody did something to them, and there's three of us who stand a chance of picking this up. Gralius has had his ration of help for tonight - and there's ways of hiding things from my Talent. You're the wild card on this...."
	Suddenly the clearing seemed to be very quiet. Eight figures stoo around the fallen shape, while twelve horses and mules cropped the moonlit grass between the treestumps. Off in the distance, the delta lay like a silver-veined hand clutching the cold stone walls of Dystope.
	Horst Graben closed his eyes, and cleared his mind the way he had been taught by the Tibetians at Wewelsberg, on a timeline that meant nothing to the friends who surrounded him now. Eyes were meaningless for this; his aura gradually seeped out into the surrounding space as if it was water soaking through a sponge.
	The boar's muscular frame twitched as its aura meshed with the disintegrating patterns of Jaskan's body. Cells were dying by the second; whatever spirit had vitalised them was long gone to its reward. But that was not what he was looking for. Superimposed crudely on the flickering aura was  a pattern that did not belong - it was as if someone had drawn on a bed of embers with a stream of cold, foul water, extinguishing whatever it touched. Enough of that pattern remained for him to recognize - though it meant nothing to him now, the sight would remain. And the instant Horst saw it again...
	"They gutted his mind like cleaning out a fish," he rasped, his tusks glittering sharp in the pale light. "Then they just pointed him down our trail, and told him to go Kill. " He winced. Physical violence was something he was not unfamiliar with, but this was the psychic equivalent of getting creative with the power tools. "Whoever did this - I don't want to keep alive."
	

	An hour later, the camp fire was lit to shed some light on the clearing as the moons set below the treeline. Jaskan would sleep undisturbed beneath the tree roots - though his armour was of some use to his avengers, the dagger and broken sword they placed at his side in the rich loam of the forest earth.
	Fire crackled, and meat hissed and spat on the peeled green stick, fat spattering brief flashes of flame on the ember beds, as Mangana and Gralius told their tales in as few words as they could. It was past midnight, and every joint and limb ached after a day of strain and danger.
	Kazuko's nocturnal eyes gleamed bright in the firelight. Her designer chainmail sparkled like the scales of a healthy fish, wrapped in comfort round her slim frame courtesy of the "Glamourise Ironmongery" spell that the Goddess Dhoreen provided to her worshippers who had the need or preference for "la couture ferrique". Despite the lateness of the hour, sleep eluded all except Beauvette, who was sprawled flat on her back and snoring loudly, just outside the circle of firelight.
	"So, you're chasing this Entrope somewhere in the Southern Dukedoms ? That's sort of wild territory, at the edge of your Empire. Mangana says it's a HUGE great tangle of mountains, all the way to the Queendom of Amenharl. " She gave a dreamy smile. "I've heard of that place. They've got this real neat Witch-Queen, she likes to do cool experiments with human stock and -"
	"Well, anyway, -" Mangana broke in hurriedly. "That's the way we're going. My Mother's tower's on the edge of the Twisted Zone, it's in the same direction for weeks of travel. If Kazuko here hadn't got a son to visit, we'd have been well on the way already."
	Gralius's whiskers twitched. "You've left a child here ? And you only VISIT him ?"
	The great eyes flashed dangerously. "I'm - that is, I WAS, an acolyte of Dhoreen. And my son's a satyr, like his father - get the idea ?"
	The feline ears relaxed, as he nodded. Thousands of years ago, as the sagas told, there had been the great Empire of Kentranchan, which had fallen long before even the first of the Chaos wars. It had been in the days before the first of the Newbloods, when only Humans built cities and farmed the world - and Gralius's other ancestors had been small four-footed dwellers in barns and alleyways. Yet better treatment had they than the human females of Kentranchan, who were valued only for their ability to make more males of the breed - or if barren, valued less than an edible animal.
	For centuries the Gods and Goddesses had looked down, sending such hints as they might, without disturbing the Pattern they had planned. But at last the Goddess Aspata The Just looked on the Empire that spread so wide, and pronounced its doom. There would be no more Kentranchan girls born into misery - since males were so highly valued, let them and no other children be born to the Kentranchan race !
	As the sagas told, the Empire first surged out - and then faltered, rotting at the roots as the years rolled on and only sons were born. At last, the cities lay deserted and the old men died, their lines ended. Ended, that is, but for a very few.

	(Although perhaps he could have phrased it better, Gralius would not have disagreed with the summary Kazuko had given her vulpine friend, before they had left their Earth that December.
	"My Goddess, like, she couldn't break the curse her Sister laid down, even if she'd wanted to," she had enthused "so she put a twist in it. Kentrachans were humans, and Dhoreen'd got sort of bored with them. So she made a few changes, improved them the way she'd wanted to make'em in the first place - that was way before any of the Newbloods, centuries earlier. There aren't any Satyr girls - so they've got to get in somebody's VERY good graces, if they're going to survive !" Her eyes had misted over ."It's the perfect sort of revenge - instead of the Kentranchans being the worst males on record, they've got to be, like, the best.")

	Gralius nodded slowly. "They belong in the deep woods, since Dhoreen remade them," he agreed "taking one out would be like making a house pet of a wild deer. It's been tried, and it never ends happily. And if you aren't suited yourself to stay in the greenwood forever," he shrugged "Well, it's no more than a lot of the martial cults do, I suppose. Make sure your line's carried on, without being obliged to look after it." Like the Newblood races that appeared twelve hundred years later, satyr children grew swiftly to independence, being born with instincts more like a wild animal's than a helpless human babe, and gaining their sentient wits only years later. Katyo had been weaned at three weeks, and running around the woods long before his mother had to put her sailor-suit back on and return to Earth.
	Kazuko grinned. "Little Katyo's a real cutey. He's coming up on five now, and he's the only blonde satyr I've seen. Whenever I'm in something like today's scrap, it's nice to know he's safe back there, whatever happens to me."
	Mangana coughed discreetly. "Yes, I think that's QUITE enough about that little escapade of yours. Anyway, we're going off to see MY Mother, Kaz's aunt, now we've finished our business in Dystope." Her gaze wandered to the fresh mound of earth at the edge of the clearing "Or rather, we've had it finished for us."
	The great white bear squatting opposite her sank huge canine teeth into the haunch of meat, and crunched bone with great gusto. "What'ya been trying to sell ?"
	
	It had been Suzuko's idea in the beginning. The Dimensional Customs Police could (and did) confiscate merchandise, but there was nothing they could do about a design carried in a living memory. So, Duke Elbreez was re-organising the Town Guard and the Army ? Fine - he was famous for his Efficiency and Innovative tactics. Suzuko had come up with the idea of sneaking the idea of modern, effective equipment and clothing into the Empire, to replace the personal melange of gear the old Newblood regiments bought or scavenged. Having stood the armies and militias down, there should be labour enough to work the mills and fields, and enough wealth to pay for the improvements.
	Theories are beautiful, fragile things - and that theory exploded in the streets of Dystope exactly like gunpowder didn't under the local laws of physics. There was re-equipping, for certain - in the kind of splendid uniform that Mangana had described as "Ruritanian Full Dress" - complete with feathers, epaulettes, and enough bright colours to be seen from high orbit. Beauvette could have told them, had they asked her in time - the army she had served so well, lived for battle. And now the last battle was over - and the army lived to parade. The waterproofs, the windproofs, the camouflage gear was about as out of place in the Dystope of the present as Beauvette herself was. Next time, Mangana had vowed, she would see about importing ostridge plumes and artificial gold braid rather than the surplus Urban Indoor Pattern Camouflage suits.
	As a trading venture, this trip had been a distinct flop. Which did not explain why both parties had been slated for anonymous execution before they had even got within offending range of the Duke.

	The embers of the camp fire were growing dim, as Suzuko unrolled her sleeping bag. This was another innovation that they had brought through to trade - simply an oiled leather skin of the native foodbeast, shaped into a sack with the fur on the inside. From what Mangana had said, it no longer surprised her that such simple ideas could go undiscovered - the Aztec civilisation on Earth had built great cities and forged an empire without the aid of the wheel, or metals save cold-worked gold.
	"You know, this isn't turning out much like the holiday I'd promised you", Mangana commented wryly, unbuckling her weapons belt. "Sorry about that. We try and stay clear of the Capital; it's always been one big hotbed of infighting and palace politics. But until now, there's always been the threat of some Chaos horde rampaging around on the borders - you don't get mutinies on a sinking ship."
	Suzuko nodded. She lay her bow down, carefully checking that the waterproof cover was securely fastened, and that the antique Arisaka rifle bayonet that served her as a dagger was near at hand. This was one of a batch she had bought at a Network linked worldwide auction as soon as she had decided to follow her friends on this trip; all the modern blades in Japan were at least stainless steel, if not monomolecular edged - and she had wanted something that would get through Dimensional Customs.
	"Gralius - he seemed sort of surprised that his God contacted him again," her voice was quiet in the darkness. "He's a Priest, though - what's so strange ?"
	"Ah.... I can't say what Primane The Preserver does most days, apart from stopping the imminent collapse of spacetime." Mangana's button nose twitched. "But Gralius is only a junior Priest, and Primane's a VERY busy God, he's said to almost NEVER answer the phone. That's twice he's directly intervened, in six hours ... I don't think Gralius was expecting that twice in his lifetime, even if he gets to be High Lord Preserver." The humanoid girl fell silent. The simple world she had been born into was not looking so simple any more. 

	Morning came with a pressing mass of grey fog, the birdsong seeming stifled and heavy in the gloom.
	Beauvette stretched and yawned. As usual, she had slept in her armour - and unlike a soft fragile human, she could sleep well.
	"Good." She grunted, looking into the tree shadows. "Good day to hide in. We'll hear anything before we see it. They might catch us, they won't surprise us." Vazeeq had already checked that there were no fresh tracks on the main trail. Breakfast was a silent meal; despite their haste to be off, Suzuko noted that her new companions still ate with the slow caution of a world without refined foods or dental care.
	In half an hour, the horses were saddled and ready; Suzuko and Horst had managed to find a Virtual Reality tape dealing with the subject. Catching each other's glances, Suzuko gave a wry smile.
	"Even after hearing about this place - I can still hardly believe it." Her whiskers were beaded with cold dew, and she flicked them dry with a brisk shake. "I keep thinking what a great Interactive game it is - except that people keep dying for real in it. Why is it that so many of these sort of worlds look so much like a "Dungeons and Kittens" scenario ?"
	From the other side of her, Mangana swung into her saddle, looking thoughtful. "Mother has a theory about that one," she said quietly "the same sort of thing keeps cropping up, much too often to be just paralell evolution. It's as if things like axe-wielding barbarians, mounted nomad hordes and thousand-year old necrocracies are independent ideas, threading through layer after layer of paralell space. They aren't just a consequence of History - they Shape it." 
	"Horst's got his Vrill power here - and THAT'S definitely not generated in the same was over as back in his own timeline." Suzuko commented "It cant't be based on Gods - I know he's not religeous, except to the Mystic Strength - so whatever that is, runs through at least two worlds."
	Mangana was silent, as the soft ringing of their horse's hooves faded away into the mossy softness of the forest morning. It would be three weeks before their paths diverged - if indeed she stuck with her plan to take Horst back and meet the family on this trip. But this was unprecedented - by all the signs, the forces of magic were undergoing one of their periodic declines, which would usually make for a quiet year, with no great portents or catastrophes. But in a world that had experienced little peace from Outside meddling, perhaps even peace itself could be a destabilising new factor.
	She looked around, past the wet cowled shapes of her friends, into the endless sea of dripping leaves fading imperceptibly into unseen shadows. Something had happened to this world, that could cause more deep-seated harm than any of the mindlessly destructive Chaos raids of old.
	"Enjoy the War," she quoted under her breath "For the peace will be terrible."

	Still only a day's journey away, the castle of Dystope swarmed like a nest of ants stirred with a stick. A certain newly created exit to the dungeons had been noticed by the jailers before any of the mage's guild had even woken up - and neither group were at all happy about what they found.
	"Ayshalah ! Ayshalah !" Duke Elbreez's voice roared down the great stone-flagged floor, almost seeming to set the heavy tapestries swinging "Get me my councillor, Ayshalah !"
	Three stories above, in the tower that had been his for over a year now, the highest Mage in the capital awoke, and smiled. No sound that ears could hear reached the heavily curtained room, but he knew what was being said just the same. 
	In a chamber lined with clean and cheerful tapestries, the morning sun sparkled on a profusion of mirrors and bright polished silver, as Ayshalah checked that he still resembled a tall, patrician human, with the naturally grey hair and eyes of the city's Old Nobility. Mages were not immune to waking up in a different form they had been used to - for their powers were intrinsic, and not turned off when their dreams had access to their waking spells - but he had another reason, more pressing by far.
	Duke Elbreez hated Newbloods, and everybody hated Entropes. If anyone as much as suspected that the Council Of Mages was being ruled by a being that had been gotten on a herdbeast, and shaped to human form and sentience by gods whose temples were not found on Dystopian streets - then it would go hard with the Council of Mages. 
	Not a bad two years it's been, Ayshalah mused as he opened his chamber door to the Duke's approaching shouts - chaos shaman to Archmage - Somebody up there likes me !