‘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.
‘I had to step in, though. You were just being too meek, Sparhawk. You’d have given her away. It’s a good thing I was there. You’d never have managed to reach that kind of agreement.’
‘I was on the other side, Ehlana, remember?’
‘That’s what I don’t understand, Sparhawk. How could you treat poor Mirtai so disgracefully?’
‘Rules of the game, love. I was representing Kring.’
‘I’m still very disappointed in you, Sparhawk.’
‘Well, fortunately, you and Tynian were there to get it all done properly. Engessa and I couldn’t have done half so well.’
‘It did turn out rather well, didn’t it – even though it took us all day.’
‘You were brilliant, my love, absolutely brilliant.’
‘I’ve been in some very shabby places in my life, Sparhawk,’ Stragen said the next morning, ‘but Pela’s the absolute worst. It’s been abandoned several times, did you know that? Maybe abandoned isn’t the right word. “Moved” is probably closer to the truth. Pela exists wherever the Peloi establish their summer encampment.’
‘I’d imagine that sends the map-makers into hysterics.’
‘More than likely. It’s a temporary town, but it absolutely reeks of money. It takes a great deal of ready cash to buy a cattle-herd.’
‘Were you able to make contact with the local thieves?’
‘They contacted us actually,’ Talen grinned. ‘A boy no more than eight lifted Stragen’s purse. He’s very good – except that he doesn’t run very well. I caught him within fifty yards. After we’d explained who we were, he was very happy to take us to see the man in charge.’
‘Has the thieves’ council made any decision as yet?’ Sparhawk asked Stragen.
‘They’re still mulling it over,’ Stragen replied. ‘They’re a bit conservative here in Daresia. The notion of co-operating with the authorities strikes them as immoral for some reason. I sort of expect an answer when we get to Sarsos. The thieves of Sarsos carry a great deal of weight in the empire. Did anything meaningful happen while we were gone?’
‘Kring and Mirtai got betrothed.’
‘That was quick. I’ll have to congratulate them.’
‘Why don’t you two get some sleep,’ Sparhawk suggested. ‘We’ll be leaving for Sarsos tomorrow. Tikume’s going to ride along with us to the edge of the steppes. I think he’d like to go a bit farther, but the Styrics at Sarsos make him nervous.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Get some sleep,’ he told them. ‘I want to go have a talk with Oscagne.’
The Peloi encampment was quiet. It was early summer now, and the midday heat kept the nomads inside their tents. Sparhawk walked across the hard-packed earth toward the tent shared by Ambassador Oscagne and Patriarch Emban. His chain-mail jingled as he walked. Since they were in a secure encampment, the knights had decided to forego the discomfort of their formal armour.
He found them sitting beneath a canopy at the side of their tent eating a melon.
‘Well-met, Sir Knight,’ Oscagne said as the Pandion approached.
‘That’s an archaic form of greeting, Oscagne,’ Emban told him.
‘I’m an archaic sort of fellow, Emban.’
‘I was curious about something,’ Sparhawk said, joining them on the shaded carpet.
‘It’s a characteristic of the young, I suppose,’ Oscagne smiled.
Sparhawk let that pass. ‘This part of Astel seems quite different from what we ran into farther west,’ he observed.
‘Yes,’ Oscagne agreed. ‘Astel’s the melting-pot that gave rise to all Elene cultures – both here in Daresia and in Eosia as well.’
‘We might want to argue about that some day,’ Emban murmured.
‘Daresia’s older, that’s all,’ Oscagne shrugged. ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s better. Anyway, what you’ve seen of Astel so far is very much like what you’d encou
nter in the Elene Kingdom of Pelosia, wouldn’t you say?’
‘There are similarities, yes,’ Sparhawk replied.
‘The similarities will stop when we reach the edge of the steppes. The western two-thirds of Astel are Elene. From the edge of the steppes to the Atan border, Astel’s Styric.’
‘How did that happen?’ Emban asked. ‘The Styrics in Eosia are widely dispersed. They live in their own villages and follow their own laws and customs.’
‘How cosmopolitan are you feeling today, Emban?’
‘You’re planning to insult my provincialism, I take it.’
‘Not too much, I hope. Your prototypical Elene is a bigot.’ Oscagne held up one hand. ‘Let me finish before you explode. Bigotry’s a form of egotism, and I think you’ll have to concede that Elenes have a very high opinion of themselves. They seem to feel that God smiles particularly for them.’
‘Doesn’t He?’ Emban feigned surprise.
‘Stop that. For reasons only God can understand, the Styrics particularly irritate the Elenes.’
‘I have no trouble understanding it,’ Emban shrugged. ‘It’s their superior attitude. They treat us as if we were children.’
‘From their perspective, we are, your Grace,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘Styrics have been civilised for forty thousand years. We got started somewhat later.’
‘For whatever the reason,’ Oscagne continued, ‘the initial impulse of the Elenes has been to drive the Styrics out – or to kill them. That’s why the Styrics migrated to Eosia much earlier than you Elenes did. They were driven into the wilderness by Elene prejudice. Eosia was not the only wilderness, however. There’s another that exists along the Atan border, and many Styrics fled there in antiquity. After the Empire was formed, we Tamuls asked the Elenes to stop molesting the Styrics living around Sarsos.’
‘Asked?’
‘We were quite firm – and we did have all those Atans with nothing else to do. We’ve agreed to let the Elene clergy deliver thunderous denunciations from the pulpit, but we garrison enough Atans around Sarsos to keep the two peoples separate. It’s quieter that way, and we Tamuls are extraordinarily fond of quiet. I think you gentlemen are in for a surprise when we reach Sarsos. It’s the only truly Styric city in the entire world. It’s an astonishing place. God seems to smile in a very special way there.’
‘You keep talking about God, Oscagne,’ Emban noted. ‘I thought a preoccupation with God was an Elene conceit.’
‘You’re more cosmopolitan than I thought, your Grace.’
‘Just exactly what do you mean when you use the word God, your Excellency?’
‘We use the term generically. Our Tamul religion isn’t very profound. We tend to think that a man’s relationship with his God – or Gods – is his own affair.’
‘That’s heresy, you know. It would put the Church out of business.’
‘That’s all right, Emban,’ Oscagne smiled. ‘Heresy’s encouraged in the Tamul Empire. It gives us something to talk about on long, rainy afternoons.’
They rode out with a huge Peloi escort the following morning. The party moving northeasterly looked not so much like an army on the march as it did a migration. Kring and Tikume rode more or less by themselves for the next several days, renewing their blood-ties and discussing an exchange of breeding-stock.
Sparhawk attempted an experiment during the ride from Pela to the edge of the steppes, but try though he might, he could not detect any traces of Aphrael’s tampering with time and distance. The Child Goddess was simply too skilled, and her manipulations too seamless for him to detect them.
Once, when she had joined him on Faran’s back, he raised an issue that had been troubling him. ‘I’m not trying to pry, but it seems that it’s been about fifty days since we landed at Salesha. How long has it really been?’
‘Quite a bit less than that, Sparhawk,’ she replied. ‘Half that long at most.’
‘I was sort of looking for an exact answer, Danae.’
‘I’m not very good with numbers, father. I know the difference between a few and a lot, and that’s all that’s really important, isn’t it?’
‘It’s a bit imprecise, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Is precision all that important to you, Sparhawk?’
‘You can’t begin to think logically without precision, Danae.’
‘Don’t think logically then. Try being intuitive for a change. You might even find that you like it.’
‘How long, Danae?’ he insisted.
‘Three weeks,’ she shrugged.
‘That’s a little better.’
‘Well – more or less.’
The edge of the steppes was marked by a dense forest of pale-trunked birches, and Tikume and his tribesmen turned back there. Since it was late in the day, the royal escort made camp on the edge of the forest so that they might follow the shaded road leading off through the trees in the full light of day.
After they had settled down and the cooking fires were going, Sparhawk took Kring and they went looking for Engessa. ‘We have a peculiar situation here, gentlemen,’ he told them as they walked together near the edge of the forest.
‘How so, Sparhawk-Knight?’ Engessa asked.
‘We’ve got three different kinds of warrior in this group, and I’d imagine there are three different approaches to engagement. We should probably discuss the differences so that we won’t be working at crosspurposes if trouble arises. The standard approach of the Church Knights is based on our equipment. We wear armour, and we ride large horses. Whenever there’s trouble, we usually just smash the centre of an opposing army.’
‘We prefer to peel an enemy like an apple,’ Kring said. ‘We ride around his force very fast and slice off bits and pieces as we go.’
‘We fight on foot,’ Engessa supplied. ‘We’re trained to be self-sufficient, so we just rush the enemy and engage him hand-to-hand.’
‘Does that work very well?’ Kring asked him.
‘It always has,’ Engessa shrugged.
‘If we happen to run into any kind of trouble, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea for us all to dash right in,’ Sparhawk mused. ‘We’d be stumbling all over each other. See what you think of this. If a force of any significant size tries to attack us, Kring and his men circle around behind them, I form up the knights and charge the centre and Atan Engessa spreads his force out along a broad front. The enemy will sort of fold in behind the knights after we bash a hole in their centre. They always do for some reason. Kring’s attacks along the rear and the flanks will add to their confusion. They’ll be disorganised and most of them will be cut off from their leaders in one way or another. That would be a good time for Engessa to attack. The best soldiers in the world don’t function too well when nobody’s close enough to give orders.’
‘It’s a workable tactic,’ Engessa conceded. ‘It’s a bit surprising to find that other people in the world know how to plan battles too.’
‘The story of man has been pretty much the story of one long battle, Atan Engessa,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘We’re all experienced at it, so we devise tactics that take advantage of our strengths. Do we want to do it the way I suggested?’
Kring and Engessa looked at each other. ‘Almost any plan will work,’ Kring shrugged, ‘as long as we all know what we’re doing.’
‘How will we know when you’re ready for us to attack?’ Engessa asked Sparhawk.
‘My friend Ulath has a horn,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘When he blows it once, my knights will charge. When he blows it twice, Kring’s men will start peeling off the rear elements. When we’ve got the enemy’s full attention, I’ll have Ulath blow three times. That’s when you’ll want to charge.’
Engessa’s eyes were alight. ‘It’s the sort of strategy that doesn’t leave very many survivors among the enemy, Sparhawk-Knight,’ he said.
‘That was sort of the idea, Engessa-Atan.’
The birch forest lay on a long, gradual slope rising from the steppes of central Ast
el to the rugged foothills on the Atan border. The road was broad and well-maintained, though it tended to wander a great deal. Engessa’s unmounted Atans ranged out about a mile on each side of the road, and for the first three days they reported no sightings of men, although they did encounter large herds of deer. Summer had not yet dried the lingering dampness from the forest floor, and the air in the sundappled shade was cool and moist, still smelling of new growth and renewal.
Since the trees obstructed their vision, they rode cautiously. They set up their nighttime encampments while the sun was still above the horizon, and erected certain rudimentary fortifications to prevent surprises after dark.
On the morning of their fourth day in the forest, Sparhawk rose early and walked through the first steel-grey light of dawn to the line where the horses were picketed. He found Khalad there. Kurik’s eldest son had snubbed Faran’s head up close to a birch tree and was carefully inspecting the big roan’s hooves. ‘I was just going to do that,’ Sparhawk said quietly. ‘He seemed to be favouring his left forehoof yesterday.’
‘Stone bruise,’ Khalad said shortly. ‘You know, Sparhawk, you might want to give some thought to putting him out to pasture when we get back home. He’s not a colt any more, you know.’
‘Neither am I, when you get right down to it. Sleeping on the ground’s not nearly as much fun as it used to be.’
‘You’re just getting soft.’
‘Thanks. Is this weather going to hold?’
‘As nearly as I can tell, yes.’ Khalad lowered Faran’s hoof to the ground and took hold of the snubbing rope. ‘No biting,’ he cautioned the horse. ‘If you bite me, I’ll kick you in the ribs.’
Faran’s long face took on an injured expression.
‘He’s an evil-tempered brute,’ Khalad noted, ‘but he’s far and away the smartest horse I’ve ever come across. You should put him to stud. It might be interesting to train intelligent colts for a change. Most horses aren’t really very bright.’
‘I thought horses were among the cleverest of animals.’
‘That’s a myth, Sparhawk. If you want a smart animal, get yourself a pig. I’ve never yet been able to build a pen that a pig couldn’t think his way out of.’