‘Not the details, no. What you call “omniscience” is a human concept. It was dreamed up to make people think that they couldn’t get away with anything. I get hints – little flashes of things, that’s all. I knew there was something significant in Kotyk’s house, and I knew that if you and the others listened carefully, you’d hear about it.’
‘It’s like intuition then?’
‘That’s a very good word for it, Sparhawk. Ours is a little more developed than yours, and we pay close attention to it. You humans tend to ignore it – particularly you men. Something else happened in Darsas, didn’t it?’
He nodded. ‘That shadow put in another appearance. Emban and I were talking with Archimandrite Monsel, and we were visited.’
‘Whoever’s behind this is very stupid, then.’
‘The Troll-Gods? Isn’t that part of the definition of them?’
‘We’re not absolutely certain it’s the Troll-Gods, Sparhawk.’
‘Wouldn’t you know? I mean, isn’t there some way you can identify who’s opposing you?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not, Sparhawk. We can conceal ourselves from each other. The stupidity of that appearance in Darsas certainly suggests the Troll-Gods, though. We haven’t been able to make them understand why the sun comes up in the east as yet. They know it’s going to come up every morning, but they’re never sure just exactly where.’
‘You’re exaggerating.’
‘Of course I am.’ She frowned. ‘Let’s not set our feet in stone on the idea that we’re dealing with the Troll-Gods just yet, though. There are some very subtle differences – of course that may be the result of their encounter with you in the Temple of Azash. You frightened them very much, you know. I’d be more inclined to suspect an alliance between them and somebody else. I think the Troll-Gods would be more direct. If there is somebody else involved, he’s just a bit childish. He hasn’t been out in the world. He surrounded himself with people who aren’t bright, and he’s judging all humans by his worshippers. That appearance at Darsas was really a blunder, you know. He didn’t have to do it, and all he really did was to confirm what you’d already told that clergyman – you did tell him what’s happening, didn’t you?’
Sparhawk nodded.
‘We really need to get to Sarsos and talk with Sephrenia.’
‘You’re going to speed up the journey again then?’
‘I think I’d better. I’m not entirely sure what the ones on the other side are doing yet, but they’re starting to move faster for some reason, so we’d better see what we can do to keep up. Take me back to the carriage, Sparhawk. Stragen’s probably finished showing off his education by now, and the smell of your armour’s beginning to make me nauseous.’
Although there was a community of interest between the three disparate segments of the force escorting the Queen of Elenia, Sparhawk, Engessa and Kring decided to make some effort to keep the Peloi, the Church Knights and the Atans more or less separate from each other. Cultural differences obviously made a general mingling unwise. The possibilities for misunderstandings were simply too numerous to be ignored. Each leader stressed the need for the strictest of courtesy and formality to his forces, and the end result was a tense and exaggerated stiffness. In a very real sense, the Atans, the Peloi and the knights were allies rather than comrades. The fact that very few of the Atans spoke Elenic added to the distance between the component parts of the small army moving out onto the treeless expanse of the steppes.
They encountered the eastern Peloi some distance from the town of Pela in central Astel. Kring’s ancestors had migrated from this vast grassland some three thousand years earlier, but despite the separation of time and distance, the two branches of the Peloi family were remarkably similar in matters of dress and custom. The only really significant difference seemed to be the marked preference of the eastern Peloi for the javelin as opposed to the sabre favoured by Kring’s people. After a ritual exchange of greetings and a somewhat extended ceremony during which Kring and his eastern cousin sat cross-legged on the turf ‘taking salt together and talking of affairs’ while two armies warily faced each other across three hundred yards of open grass. The decision not to go to war with each other today was apparently reached, and Kring led his new-found friend and kinsman to the carriage to introduce him all around. The Domi of the eastern Peloi was named Tikume. He was somewhat taller than Kring, but his head was also shaved, a custom among those horsemen dating back to antiquity.
Tikume greeted them all politely. ‘It is passing strange to see Peloi allied with foreigners,’ he noted. ‘Domi Kring has told me of the conditions which prevail in Eosia, but I had not fully realised that they had led to such peculiar arrangements. Of course he and I have not spoken together for more than ten years.’
‘You’ve met before, Domi Tikume?’ Patriarch Emban asked with a certain surprise.
‘Yes, your Grace,’ Kring replied. ‘Domi Tikume journeyed to Pelosia with the King of Astel some years back. He made a point of looking me up.’
‘King Alberen’s father was much wiser than his son,’ Tikume explained, ‘and he read a great deal. He saw many similarities between Pelosia and Astel, so he paid a state visit to King Soros. He invited me to go along.’ His expression became one of distaste. ‘I might have declined if I’d known he was going to travel by boat. I was sick every day for two months. Domi Kring and I got on well together. He was kind enough to take me with him to the marshes to hunt ears.’
‘Did he share the profits with you, Domi Tikume?’ Ehlana asked him.
‘What was that, Queen Ehlana?’ Tikume looked baffled.
Kring, however, laughed nervously and flushed just a bit.
Then Mirtai strode up to the carriage.
‘Is this the one?’ Tikume asked Kring.
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
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.’