The three warriors strode through the courtyard with an escort of royal guards following. The huge crowd, gathered in the hope that their new king would appear at the balcony, parted before the bronze knight and the savage outsiders beside him.

Javo was a head taller than most men, but the top of his black mane only came as high as the massive chest of Krag. Though Turgar could hardly intimidate any but a child with size alone, his alien appearance was enough to hold townsfolk at bay: red skin; hair of an even darker shade of crimson; yellow eyes with vertical slits for pupils.

Krag glanced at Javo, to his side. “The people certainly seem to adore your king.”

“I have no king,” Javo said. The three of them had each spoken these words many times, but not with quite as much venom as Javo spat now. “But yes, more than half the population believes Ustane and the Transition will solve all their troubles.”

Cemar had been unique among the city-states, not just because of its abundant wealth but, more importantly, because of the representative parliament, the esteem for and practice of freedom. Vast stretches of pasture and forests surrounding the city proper had come under her protection over the generations, and the state grew to become the peaceful envy of the entire world.

“I think we took a risk,” Turgar grunted, “showing contempt for their formalities.”

Krag waved dismissively. “What could they do? Call the guards? We’d tear the walls down around them, and have our way with the whole city.”

“Reckless words, my friend,” Turgar said. “Your open lust for these Cemarite wenches suggests you might try to have your way with the whole city on any account.”

The women of Cemaria, especially those in the city, were a brazen, impudent lot. The comely ones garbed themselves so as to leave little to the imagination. And nowhere were women granted such powers as here. Turgar preferred subservient maidens, like those from the harsh climes of his desert homeland.

Krag’s native islands were also rugged country where women were careful how they spoke and behaved. These brash, aggressive Cemarite damsels thrilled him to no end.

There in the courtyard, even, few in the crowd paid attention to the jesters and acrobats — most (Krag especially) had their eyes locked on the scantily-clad dancing girls or the buxom lass singing bawdy songs to lust-drunk men happy to have her flash them a leg or breathe sultry notes in their ears. Of course, the merrymaking wasn’t nearly as raucous now as in richer times.

Krag laughed. “Yes, indeed! And even in the king’s court! Did you take a good look at that Minister of Information?”

“Who could help it?” Turgar said. “Even our serious Cemarite comrade took notice of her.”

Javo broke his brooding with a momentary grin. “And the legion of assistants in there. If one more of them had rubbed her bottom against me as we awaited His Majesty, I should have given it a good swat.”

They shouldered through the last layer of humanity into a narrow cobblestone street beyond the courtyard. The guard escort halted here, and the three comrades continued without accompaniment. Now they could move faster, and did.

Turgar pointed upwards at a window in one of the buildings towering over them.

“Behold the claw marks.”

Just under the lower edge of the window were two groupings of three short scratches.

“I warrant the gryphon left those when fleeing the scene of its crime,” Krag said. “I see similar scratches below that window across the street. And that one, there!”

“This gryphon is busy,” Turgar mused. “But what use does this creature have for gold and infants?”

“None,” Javo said. “It must steal on behalf of someone who does have use for them.”

They continued walking, the stables now in sight.

Turgar gazed askance at Javo. “You say ‘someone’ as if you know who it is.”

“I know not. I only suspect.”

Krag’s great shaggy head tilted down from examining high windows and claw marks. “Who do you suspect?”

“The sorceress Rothquark.”

“Krag is the superstitious one,” Turgar said. “I’m disappointed that you believe in these imaginary villains invented to scare children.”

“Nobody I know is certain of her real name,” Javo said. “But I believe she is real; and, what’s more, that those secretive folk back at the capitol building — I suppose we should call it a palace, now — owe their foremost allegiance to her and her dark arts.”

“Those who wore the hooded robes?” Turgar asked.

“Aye, hiding their faces. We've met their kind before.”

“I remember,” Turgar said. “But I didn't know, when I put an arrow through one of them—and his hideous pet—that I was slaying part of a myth.”