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Kring nodded happily. ‘Isn’t she stupendous?’
‘Magnificent,’ Tikume agreed fervently, his tone almost reverential. Then he dropped to one knee. ‘Doma,’ he greeted her, clasping both hands in front of his face.
Mirtai looked inquiringly at Kring.
‘It’s a Peloi word, beloved,’ he explained. ‘It means “Domi’s mate”.’
‘That hasn’t been decided yet, Kring,’ she pointed out.
‘Can there be any doubt, beloved?’ he replied.
Tikume was still down on one knee. ‘You shall enter our camp with all honours, Doma Mirtai,’ he declared, ‘for among our people, you are a queen. All shall kneel to you, and all shall give way to you. Poems and songs shall be composed in your honour, and rich gifts shall be bestowed upon you.’
‘Well, now,’ Mirtai said.
‘Your beauty is clearly divine, Doma Mirtai,’ Tikume continued, warming to his subject. ‘Your very presence brightens a drab world and puts the sun to shame. I am awed at the wisdom of my brother Kring in having selected you as his mate. Come straightaway to our camp, divine one, so that my people may adore you.’
‘My goodness,’ Ehlana breathed. ‘Nobody’s ever said anything like that to me.’
‘We just didn’t want to embarrass you, my Queen,’ Stragen told her blandly. ‘We feel that way about you of course, but we didn’t want to be too obvious about it.’
‘Well said,’ Ulath approved.
Mirtai looked at Kring with a new interest. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this, Kring?’ she asked him.
‘I thought you knew, beloved.’
‘I didn’t,’ she replied. Her lower lip pushed forward slightly in a thoughtful kind of pout. ‘But I do now,’ she added. ‘Have you chosen an Oma as yet?’
‘Sparhawk serves me in that capacity, beloved.’
‘Why don’t you go have a talk with Atan Engessa, Sparhawk?’ she suggested. ‘Tell him for me that I do not look upon Domi Kring’s suit with disfavour.’
‘That’s a very good idea, Mirtai,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘I’m surprised I didn’t think of it myself.’
Chapter 14 (#ulink_0d1fbccf-aac9-5c41-8819-91916aa25694)
The town of Pela in central Astel was a major trading centre where merchants and cattle-buyers came from all parts of the empire to do business with the Peloi herders. It was a shabby-looking, unfinished sort of place. Many of its buildings were no more than ornate fronts with large tents erected behind them. No attempt had ever been made to pave its rutted streets, and the passage of strings of wagons and herds of cattle raised a cloud of dust that entirely obscured the town most of the time. Beyond the poorly-defined outskirts lay an ocean of tents, the portable homes of the nomadic Peloi.
Tikume led them through the town and on out to a hill-top where a number of brightly-striped pavilions encircled a large open area. A canopy held aloft by poles shaded a place of honour at the very top of the hill, and the ground beneath that canopy was carpeted and strewn with cushions and furs.
Mirtai was the absolute centre of attention. Her rather scanty marching clothes had been covered with a purple robe that reached to the ground, an indication of her near-royal status. Kring and Tikume formally escorted her to the ceremonial centre of the camp and introduced her to Tikume’s wife, Vida, a sharp-faced woman who also wore a purple robe and looked at Mirtai with undisguised hostility.
Sparhawk and the rest joined the Peloi leaders in the shade as honoured guests.
The face of Tikume’s wife grew darker and darker as Peloi warriors vied with each other to heap extravagant compliments upon Mirtai as they were presented to Kring and his purported bride-to-be. There were gifts and a number of songs praising the beauty of the golden giantess.
‘How did they find time to make up songs about her?’ Talen quietly asked Stragen.
‘I’d imagine that the songs have been around for a long time,’ Stragen replied. ‘They’ve substituted Mirtai’s name, that’s all. I expect there’ll be poems as well. I know a third-rate poet in Emsat who makes a fairly good living writing poems and love-letters for young nobles too lazy or uninspired to compose their own. There’s a whole body of literature with blank spaces in it that serves in such situations.’
‘They just fill in the blanks with the girl’s name?’ Talen demanded incredulously.
‘It wouldn’t really make much sense to fill them in with some other girl’s name, would it?’
‘That’s dishonest!’ Talen exclaimed.
‘What a novel attitude, Talen,’ Patriarch Emban laughed, ‘particularly coming from you.’
‘You aren’t supposed to cheat when you’re telling a girl how you feel about her,’ Talen insisted. Talen had begun to notice girls. They had been there all along, of course, but he had not noticed them before, and he had some rather surprisingly strong convictions. It is to the credit of his friends that not one of them laughed at his peculiar expression of integrity. Baroness Melidere, however, impulsively embraced him.
‘What was that all about?’ he asked her a little suspiciously.
‘Oh, nothing,’ she replied, touching a gentle hand to his cheek. ‘When was the last time you shaved?’ she asked him.
‘Last week sometime, I think – or maybe the week before.’
‘You’re due again, I’d say. You’re definitely growing up, Talen.’
The boy flushed slightly.
Princess Danae gave Sparhawk a sly little smirk.
After the gifts and the poems and songs came the demonstrations of prowess. Kring’s tribesmen demonstrated their proficiency with their sabres. Tikume’s men did much the same with their javelins, which they either cast or used as short lances. Sir Berit unhorsed an equally youthful Cyrinic Knight, and two blond-braided Genidians engaged in a fearsomely realistic mock axe-fight.
‘It’s all relatively standard, of course, Emban,’ Ambassador Oscagne said to the Patriarch of Ucera. The friendship of the two men had progressed to the point where they had begun to discard titles. ‘Warrior cultures almost totally circumscribe their lives with ceremonies.’
Emban smiled. ‘I’ve noticed that, Oscagne. Our Church Knights are the most courteous and ceremonial men I know.’
‘Prudence, your Grace,’ Ulath explained cryptically.
‘You’ll get used to that in time, your Excellency,’ Tynian assured the ambassador. ‘Sir Ulath hates to waste words.’
‘I wasn’t being mysterious, Tynian,’ Ulath told him. ‘I was only pointing out that you almost have to be polite to a man who’s holding an axe.’
Atan Engessa rose and bowed a bit stiffly to Ehlana. ‘May I test your slave, Ehlana-Queen?’ he asked.
‘How exactly do you mean, Atan Engessa?’ she asked warily.
‘She approaches the time of the Rite of Passage. We must decide if she is ready. I will not harm her. These others are demonstrating their skill. Atana Mirtai and I will participate. It will be a good time for the test.’
‘As you think best, Atan,’ Ehlana consented, ‘as long as the Atana does not object.’
‘If she is truly Atan, she will not object, Ehlana-Queen.’ He turned abruptly and crossed to where Mirtai sat with the Peloi.
‘Mirtai’s certainly the centre of things today,’ Melidere observed.
‘I think it’s very nice,’ Ehlana said. ‘She keeps herself in the background most of the time. She’s entitled to a bit of attention.’
‘It’s political, you realise,’ Stragen told her. ‘Tikume’s people are showering Mirtai with attention for Kring’s benefit.’
‘I know, Stragen, but it’s nice all the same.’ She looked speculatively at her golden slave. ‘Sparhawk, I’d take it as a personal favour if you’d actively pursue the marriage-negotiations with Atan Engessa. Mirtai deserves some happiness.’
‘I’ll see what I can arrange for her, my Queen.’
Mirtai readily agreed to Engessa’s proposed test. She rose gracefully to her feet, unfastened the neck of her purple robe and let it fall.
The Peloi gasped. Their women-folk were customarily dressed in far more concealing garments. The sneer on the face of Tikume’s wife Vida, however, was a bit wan. Mirtai was significantly female. She was also fully armed, and that also shocked the Peloi. She and Engessa moved to the area in front of the canopy, curtly inclined their heads to each other and drew their swords.
Sparhawk thought he knew the differences between contest and combat, but what followed blurred that boundary for him. Mirtai and Engessa seemed to be fully intent on killing each other. Their swordsmanship was superb, but their manner of fencing involved a great deal more physical contact than did western-style fighting.
‘It looks like a wrestling-match with swords,’ Kalten observed to Ulath.
‘Yes,’ Ulath agreed. ‘I wonder if a man could do that in an axe-fight. If you could kick somebody in the face the way she just did and then follow up with an axestroke, you could win a lot of fights in a hurry.’
‘I knew she was going to do that to him,’ Kalten chuckled as Engessa landed flat on his back in the dust. ‘She did it to me once.’
Engessa, however, did not lie gasping on the ground as Kalten had. He rolled away from Mirtai instead and came to his feet with his sword still in his hand. He raised his blade in a kind of salute and then immediately attacked again.
The ‘test’ continued for several more minutes until a watching Atan sharply banged his fist on his breastplate to signal the end of the match. The man who had signalled was much older than his compatriots, or so it seemed. His hair was white. Nothing else about him seemed any different, however.
Mirtai and Engessa bowed formally to each other, and he returned her to her place where she once again drew on her robe and sank down onto a cushion. Vida no longer sneered.
‘She is fit,’ Engessa reported to Ehlana. He reached up under his breastplate and tenderly touched a sore-spot. ‘More than fit,’ he added. ‘She is a skilled and dangerous opponent. I am proud to be the one she will call father. She will add lustre to my name.’
‘We rather like her, Atan Engessa,’ Ehlana smiled. ‘I’m so glad you agree with us.’ She let the full impact of that devastating smile wash over the stern-faced Atan, and hesitantly, almost as if it were in spite of himself, he smiled back.
‘I think he lost two fights today,’ Talen whispered to Sparhawk.
‘So it would seem,’ Sparhawk replied.
‘We can never catch up with them, friend Sparhawk,’ Tikume said that evening as they all relaxed on carpets near a flaring campfire. ‘These steppes are open grasslands with only a few groves of trees. There isn’t really any place to hide, and you can’t ride a horse through tall grass without leaving a trail a blind man could follow. They come out of nowhere, kill the herders and run off the cattle. I followed one of those groups of raiders myself. They’d stolen a hundred cattle, and they left a broad trail through the grass. After a few miles, the trail just ended. There was no sign that they’d dispersed. They just vanished. It was as if something had reached down and carried them off into the sky.’
‘Have there been any other disturbances, Domi?’ Tynian asked carefully. ‘What I’m trying to say is, has there been unrest of any kind among your people? Wild stories? Rumours? That sort of thing?’
‘No, friend Tynian.’ Tikume smiled. ‘We are an openfaced people. We do not conceal our emotions from each other. I’d know if there were something afoot. I’ve heard about what’s been happening over around Darsas, so I know why you ask. Nothing like that is happening here. We don’t worship our heroes the way they do, we just try to be like them. Someone’s stealing our cattle and killing our herdsmen.’ He looked a bit accusingly at Oscagne. ‘I would not insult you for all the world, your Honour,’ he said, ‘but you might suggest to the emperor that he would be wise to have some of his Atans look into it. If we have to deal with it ourselves, our neighbours won’t like it very much. We of the Peloi tend to be a bit indiscriminate when someone steals our cattle.’
‘I’ll bring the matter to his Imperial Majesty’s attention,’ Oscagne promised.
‘Soon, friend Oscagne,’ Tikume recommended. ‘Very soon.’
‘She’s a highly-skilled warrior, Sparhawk-Knight,’ Engessa was saying the following morning as the two sat by a small fire.
‘Granted,’ Sparhawk replied, ‘but by your own traditions, she’s still a child.’
‘That’s why it’s my place to negotiate for her,’ Engessa pointed out. ‘If she were adult, she would do it herself. Children sometimes do not know their own worth.’
‘But a child cannot be as valuable as an adult.’
‘That’s not always entirely true, Sparhawk-Knight. The younger a woman, the greater her price.’
‘Oh, this is absurd,’ Ehlana broke in. The negotiations were of a delicate nature and would normally have taken place in private. ‘Normally’, however, did not always apply to Sparhawk’s wife. ‘Your offer’s completely unacceptable, Sparhawk.’
‘Whose side are you on, dear?’ he asked her mildly.
‘Mirtai’s my friend. I won’t permit you to insult her. Ten horses indeed! I could get that much for Talen.’
‘Were you planning to sell him too?’
‘I was just illustrating a point.’
Sir Tynian had also stopped by. Of all of their group, he was closest to Kring, and he keenly felt the responsibilities of friendship. ‘What sort of offer would your Majesty consider properly respectful?’ he asked Ehlana.
‘Not a horse less than sixty,’ she declared adamantly.
‘Sixty!’ Tynian exclaimed. ‘You’ll impoverish him! What kind of a life will Mirtai have if you marry her off to a pauper?’
‘Kring’s hardly a pauper, Sir Knight,’ she retorted. ‘He still has all that gold King Soros paid him for those Zemoch ears.’
‘But that’s not his gold, your Majesty,’ Tynian pointed out. ‘It belongs to his people.’
Sparhawk smiled and motioned with his head to Engessa. Unobtrusively, the two stepped away from the fire. ‘I’d guess that they’ll settle on thirty, Atan Engessa,’ he tentatively suggested.
‘Most probably,’ Engessa agreed.
‘It seems like a fair number to me. Doesn’t it to you?’ It hovered sort of on the verge of an offer.
‘It’s more or less what I had in mind, Sparhawk-Knight.’
‘Me too. Done then?’
‘Done.’ The two of them clasped hands. ‘Should we tell them?’ the Atan asked, the faintest hint of a smile touching his face.
‘They’re having a lot of fun,’ Sparhawk grinned. ‘Why don’t we let them play it out? We can find out how close our guess was. Besides, these negotiations are very important to Kring and Mirtai. If we were to agree in just a few minutes, it might make them feel cheapened.’
‘You have been much in the world, Sparhawk-Knight.’ Engessa observed. ‘You know well the hearts of men – and of women.’
‘No man ever truly knows the heart of a woman, Engessa-Atan,’ Sparhawk replied ruefully.
The negotiations between Tynian and Ehlana had reached the tragic stage, each of them accusing the other of ripping out hearts and similar extravagances. Ehlana’s performance was masterful. The Queen of Elenia had a strong flair for histrionics, and she was a highly skilled orator. She extemporised at length upon Sir Tynian’s disgraceful niggardliness, her voice rising and falling in majestic cadences. Tynian, on the other hand, was coolly rational, although he too became emotional at times.
Kring and Mirtai sat holding hands not far away, their eyes filled with concern as they hung breathlessly on every word. Tikume’s Peloi encircled the haggling pair, straining to hear.
It went on for hours, and it was nearly sunset when Ehlana and Tynian finally reached a grudging agreement – thirty horses – and concluded the bargain by spitting in their hands and smacking their palms together. Sparhawk and Engessa formalised the agreement in the same fashion, and a tumultuous cheer went up from the rapt Peloi. It had been a highly entertaining day all round, and that evening’s celebration was loud and long.
‘I’m exhausted,’ Ehlana confessed to her husband after they had retired to their tent for the night.
‘Poor dear,’ Sparhawk commiserated.
