Kevin rolled his eyes, his hands clamped hard enough to bring white marks out on his forearms. ‘If I’m going to build a fence, I’m not going to do it with rotten posts that will fall down in the wet season sure’s there are flies in the fields. I can see me sitting here being lectured for shoddy “barbarian” workmanship. Not to mention the fact that next year I’ll be stuck with repairing the miserable job.’
‘What you’ll be doing next year is not your concern.’ Mara fanned herself with the slate. However she tried, she could not seem to control this conversation. ‘But taking the merchant who sells us the posts and tying him upside down over the river by the feet is an outrage.’
Kevin unlocked his hands, folded his arms across his chest, and looked smug. ‘Oh? I thought it was perfect justice. If the post held, the merchant stayed dry. If the wood was unsound, he got a dunking. Made him think twice, when we pulled him out of the water, about selling us inferior lumber.’
‘You shamed my name!’ Mara broke in. ‘The man you dunked happened to come from a guild house, and an honourable family, even if they are not noble. Jican had to pay significant compensation to redress the injury done to the man’s dignity.’
Now Kevin sprang to his feet with the sudden wild grace that always startled Mara. He paced the floor. ‘That’s what I don’t understand about you Tsurani,’ he shouted, shaking an accusatory finger in the air. ‘You’re obviously cultured, educated, and the factors you have in your service aren’t stupid. But this confounded honour code you have, it makes me crazy. You cut off your toes to spite your feet with it, keep lying, lazy, or just plain incompetents in positions of authority because they happen to be born to an honourable house while better men are wasted in jobs of low demand and reward.’ He spun in a tight stride and faced Mara. ‘No wonder your father and brother got killed! If your people thought in straight logic, instead of in tangles of duty and tradition, your loved ones might still be alive.’
Mara went white. Kevin didn’t notice, but went on shouting, ‘And my people from the Kingdom might not be in such straits were your generals to play a straight war. But no, they advance here, savage a town without mercy, then retreat for no apparent reason and go off and ravage someplace else. Then they camp for months and do nothing.’
Mara fought to hold her ebbing composure. ‘Are you saying my people are fools?’ Vivid in her mind were the memories of the family killed through Minwanabi treachery. The thought that fate might have provided means to bring them home alive, if Tsurani honour had been somehow ignored, was cause for unanticipated anguish. Though the loss by now was six years past, the grief still lingered.
Kevin drew breath to answer, but Mara interrupted. ‘Say no more.’ Her voice broke over the words, and tears welled in her eyes. Daughter of a proud heritage, she tried to rein them in, but did not succeed. She averted her face to hide this shame, but not quite quickly enough.
Kevin saw the sparkle in her eyes, and his anger abruptly drained away. He knelt down and reached an awkward hand toward her shoulder. ‘Lady,’ he said, his tone gone gritty with honesty. ‘I never intended to hurt you. Mostly I was mad because I thought I pleased you, before you sent me away.’ He took a deep breath and shrugged. ‘I am only a man, and like most, I don’t like to find out I’m wrong.’
‘You weren’t wrong.’ Mara spoke softly, without turning her head. ‘But you frightened me. Many of your ideas are constructive, but others are an affront to the gods – to what I believe in. I would not see the Acoma be ground down into the dust because I listened to your outworld “logic” to the exclusion of wisdom, and spurned divine law.’
Her shoulder spasmed with a sob, and Kevin’s heart went out to her. Had he stopped to think, he would have hesitated, but analysing emotions was not his habit. He gathered her small, tense form into his arms. ‘Mara,’ he spoke softly, into her hair. ‘Sometimes powerful, greedy men interpret the laws of heaven to suit themselves. I’ve learned a bit of your gods from your countrymen. Your Lashima is much like our Kilian, and Kilian is a kind and loving goddess. Do you think Lashima in her generosity would shrivel the hands on your wrists if you took pity and gave coins to the poor?’
Mara shivered in his grip. ‘I don’t know. Please say no more. Keyoke and Lujan lead our warriors to counter a Minwanabi offensive, and at such a time the Acoma must not tempt the gods’ anger.’
His hands gentled her, pulled her around to face him. His calluses felt rough, and his person and his hair smelled of sun-warmed sweat and meadow grass. Yet the feel of his skin upon hers made her heart race. Finding a calm in his presence that until now had eluded her, Mara wrinkled her nose. ‘You need a bath.’
‘Do I?’ Kevin drew her closer and lingeringly kissed her lips. ‘I missed you, though I’m foolish to admit it.’
Mara’s body burned in response and she leaned into him, feeling his strength. The pressure of his hands on her flesh made her throw caution, and Nacoya’s advice, to the winds. ‘I missed you also. Maybe we both need a bath.’
Kevin’s face split into a grin. ‘Here? Now?’
Mara clapped her hands, and servants rushed in, ready to answer whatever request she might choose. Impishly, the Lady of the Acoma looked up at the tall barbarian who held her. ‘Call my attendants and have them draw bath water.’ As an afterthought, she added, ‘And erase these slates. They contain information that could start a rebellion, and I don’t want my other slaves to learn impertinence, as this one has.’ As the servants hurried about their assigned tasks, she reached up and touched the scratch of stubble that grew on Kevin’s cheeks and chin. ‘I don’t know what it is that I see in you, dangerous man.’
Unaccustomed to sharing intimacies in a room filled with bustling activity, Kevin flushed beneath his tan. One by one he pulled out the pins that bound up Mara’s hair. When the rich locks fell free, he reached into the midnight mass and used it to screen both of their faces from public view. ‘You’re quite the Ruling Lady,’ he murmured into the scented gloom, and their next kiss swept away reason. Letting his hands slide playfully along the curve of her neck, he felt her shiver in delight and anticipation. Whispering in her ear, he said, ‘And, sorry sod that I am, I have missed you … Lady.’
Mara moved far enough away to see if his expression was mocking, but instead she read something in his eyes that caused a weakness to flow through her. Leaning against his hard body, the sunburn on his chest hot against her cheek, she answered back, ‘And I have missed you, my barbarian. Gods, how I’ve missed you.’
• Chapter Nine •
Ambush
Keyoke motioned a halt.
Behind him, the first heavily laden silk wagons creaked to a standstill, the stamp of the needra teams scattering ochre dust on the breeze. Keyoke blinked grit from his eyes. The weight of his much-used battle armour made his knees ache and his back cramp; getting too old for campaign in the field, he thought.
Yet the warrior within him prevailed. Neither age nor fatigue reflected in Keyoke’s stance as he turned keen eyes toward the crest of the hill and scanned the roadway ahead. To the men who stood in neat ranks behind their officers, Keyoke was as he had always been: a craggy, sun-beaten figure that seemed carved from indestructible rock.
Ahead, the trail wound like a looped cord through promontories of cracked granite; dirt lay rutted where the rainy season had gouged away soil loosened by needra hooves and caravan wheels. But the rise ahead of the pass was not empty, as it should have been. Against a sky fogged with dust, Keyoke perceived movement, and a sparkle of sunlit green armour. A trailbreaker had lingered in wait for the caravan, sure sign that something was amiss.
Keyoke motioned to his newly promoted Strike Leader, a short man with a scar that marred an eyebrow, named Dakhati. ‘Pass the word to be ready.’
The order was superfluous. Warriors stood poised in their lines, hands rested lightly on sword hilts. They had marched at the ready since leaving friendly borders. Not one had been lulled by the uneventful passage
of days or the fatigue of levering wagon wheels mired in the ruts of ill-kept mountain roads. These lands were rife with bandits, and laid out by the gods for ambush.
Mara’s finest soldiers had been selected to escort the precious silk to Jamar, for while attack was expected upon the decoy wagons, they were defended by a large force. Should Keyoke’s small band encounter battle, each warrior would be required to fight like two. And no one doubted that the scout who waited in the roadway meant trouble. The trailbreakers had been men who had once foraged in these very hills as grey warriors. They knew these valleys and would not be jumping at shadows.
Keyoke motioned broadly, and the scout up ahead disappeared. Moments later, he arrived at the head of the caravan striding out of the roadside brush with the silence of sun-moved shadow. He paused before his Force Commander and gave a stiff nod of respect to Keyoke and Dakhati.
‘Report, Wiallo,’ Keyoke said. His body might feel its burden of years and service, but his memory was yet sharp; he made a point of knowing every soldier’s name.
The scout passed a last, uneasy glance over the slope, then spoke. ‘I’ve hunted here often, sir. Before evening, mulaks and kojir birds should be flying above the lake beyond that ridge.’ He indicated the sun-dappled shade of the forest. ‘And sanaro, li, and other songbirds should never be quiet at this hour.’ He glanced meaningfully toward Keyoke. ‘I do not like the silence and the sound of the wind.’
Keyoke knuckled back his helmet, letting a gust of breeze evaporate the perspiration under his hair. Then, slow and deliberate, his seamed fingers tightened the chin strap. Veteran Acoma warriors knew their Force Commander prepared for a fight. ‘Other birds roost in those trees, do you think?’
Wiallo grinned. ‘Large birds, Force Commander. Ones who wear dogs’ tails instead of feathers.’
Dakhati licked his teeth, uneasy. ‘Minwanabi, or bandits?’
Wiallo’s smile died. ‘Grey warriors would give this company a wide berth.’
Keyoke snapped his chin strap tab through the keeper under his jawbone. ‘Minwanabi, then. Where would they be likely to hit us?’
Wiallo frowned. ‘A clever commander would see us over this next small rise.’ He pointed at the ridge that rose like a knife cut against late-day haze. ‘About halfway up the slope on the far side of the next valley, the road rises sharply again and snakes through a chain of steep gullies.’
Keyoke nodded. ‘The enemy would keep to higher ground, while we, under bowfire, would be forced to whip the needra uphill over rocks to escape.’ His clear eyes met those of Wiallo. ‘That’s where I would strike, with a follow-up company to plug the valley from the rear, and cut off our chance of retreat.’ He glanced around. ‘They are most likely infiltrating behind us right now.’
Behind the rows of nervous soldiers, a needra bawled. Traces creaked, and a carter cursed, and a patter of running footsteps approached.
‘Make way! A scout returns!’ somebody called from the rear.
Neat ranks parted, and a warrior stumbled through, white-faced and gasping for breath.
Dakhati stepped forward and caught the runner as he rocked unsteadily to a stop. ‘Force Commander!’
Keyoke turned with a calm he did not feel. ‘Speak clearly.’
‘Soldiers upon the road behind us.’ The man dragged in a painful breath. ‘Perhaps a hundred, a hundred and fifty, and CorjaZun says he recognized their officer. Minwanabi.’
Keyoke’s first reaction was a softly spoken ‘Damn.’ Then he touched the heaving shoulder of the runner and added, ‘Well done. Is this army travelling covertly?’
The runner scrubbed his palm over his salt-wet brow. ‘They march openly. We estimated the troop size by the cloud of dust they raised.’
Keyoke’s eyes narrowed. Briskly he concluded, ‘That’s no raiding band; that’s a company strength, a hundred men at least, to drive us into the trap.’
Dakhati ventured an opinion. ‘If we have an ambush waiting for us, and an army closing from behind –’
‘They knew we were coming,’ finished Keyoke. The implications were chilling, but academic, unless someone survived to warn Lady Mara she had an intelligence leak within her household. ‘I hate to abandon the silk wagons, but if we don’t, we’re all sacrifices to the Red God and the silk’s lost anyway.’ The Force Commander prepared to deliver grim orders.
A touch from Wiallo stopped him.
‘Force Commander,’ offered the onetime grey warrior. ‘There might be another way.’
‘Tell me quickly,’ Keyoke demanded.
‘There’s a foot trail hidden by boulders near the base of this rise. It leads to a narrow canyon that bandits used as a camp. The wagons cannot pass, but the silk could be hidden, and the position at least offers hope. There is only one entrance, and that can be defended with very small numbers of men.’
Keyoke’s gaze shifted to the horizon, as if searching for sign of the army that approached to destroy them. ‘How long could we last there? Long enough to get word to Lady Mara? Or to recall Lujan?’
Wiallo was silent. He said, on a frank note, ‘A message, perhaps, to our mistress. Long enough to hold until relief arrives from home? The Minwanabi could force their way through if they were willing to endure a terrible slaughter.’
Dakhati slapped his thigh in a startling display of anger. ‘What honour to abandon that which we are pledged to defend?’
Curtly Keyoke said, ‘The wagons are lost in any event. We cannot defend them and sally against a hundred men in the open.’ More important, Mara must not go uninformed of Minwanabi’s access to her secrets. No, better we make a stand, and send a messenger while the Minwanabi are kept occupied at the canyon.
Lashima’s wisdom guide us all, Keyoke prayed inwardly. Then he raised his voice and said, ‘There are better ways to defend a trust than to fight to the death before letting the enemy seize the prize.’ He added a swift string of orders.
The soldiers made a display of relaxing. They removed their helms and shared refreshment from the bucket and dipper carried around by the water boy. They gathered in knots, and told jokes, and laughed as though nothing under the sky could be wrong; while behind them servants worked swiftly to unleash the covers from the wagons, and bundle the precious silk bales inside. Wiallo showed them where the rocks dipped into crevices. A third of the silk was quickly hidden out of sight and covered with brush, but room remained for no more. The servants redistributed what remained in the wagons, and spread the covers to hide the gaps. Then Keyoke shouted, and the soldiers formed up, and the caravan creaked forward once again. The company wound downward from the crest into a valley mantled and deep with late afternoon shadows.
The caravan reached the base of the hill, and the needra bawled as the drovers reined them in once again. Through the rising pall of their own dust, Keyoke squinted behind and saw a sky gone light with the gold of coming sunset; but the heights they had recently left were now marred with a cloud of dull grey. A moment later, a scout confirmed his foreboding over that patch of dirty sky.
‘It’s dust kicked up by marching soldiers. The Minwanabi tire of waiting,’ the runner reported breathlessly. ‘Perhaps they think we camp here.’
Keyoke pursed creased lips. He waved for Dakhati’s attention and called, ‘We’ll need to hurry.’ Then, feeling every mile his feet had travelled, the Force Commander watched his Strike Leader give orders. In an unusual moment of reflection, he wished for Papewaio’s intuitive presence. But Pape was dead, murdered by a Minwanabi assassin while defending Mara. Keyoke hoped he would accomplish as much. For he had no illusions: he knew that every warrior here would likely meet the Red God on the end of a Minwanabi weapon.
Masked from observation by the trees, the silk was unloaded, the needra unhitched. Then, with poles cut from the forest, the Acoma soldiers levered the wagons onto their sides, forming a barrier behind which twenty archers took cover. These men volunteered to stay behind and fight to the death, buying time for the rest of the co
mpany to make their way to Wiallo’s canyon. That such a haven might not exist, or that the ex-grey warrior could have mistaken its location, posed a possible disaster no one spoke of.
Sunlight left the valley early but held the heights in bright aspect like fingers dipped in gilt. The dust raised by the Minwanabi army deepened the gloom down below.
Keyoke ordered, ‘Let every man carry as much of the silk as he may.’ Wiallo returned a puzzled glance. Keyoke said, ‘Those bolts can be better used to stop arrows, or build a bulwark against a charge. Now have the servants lead the needra, and guide us quickly to this canyon.’
Soldiers with silk bales piled on their shoulders marched between drovers and servants who whipped the balky needra over a ragged barrier of boulders. Darkness fell fast, and the footing was poor. The gutted remains of the caravan moved over teacherous terrain, pushing past branches that whipped and caught at armour, and over gullies that grabbed at the ankles. Several times men fell, though not one uttered an oath. In silence they arose and gathered up their dropped bundles, and pressed forward into brush-dense forest.
By moonrise the company reached a narrow defile in the trail. Here forest vines clutched at the trees as if they sought to strangle, and from their choking outgrowth thrust an upstanding promontory of rock on either side.
‘The canyon lies just ahead, perhaps three bowshots from that formation,’ Wiallo said.
Keyoke peered through the gloom and made out a boulder that bulked like an overhang above the path. He raised his hand, and the column behind came to a halt.
A bird called and fell silent; no way to determine whether the creature wore feathers or armour. Keyoke touched two of the nearest warriors and waved them forward. ‘Stand guard here. The moment you see any sign of pursuit, one of you send me word.’
The chosen men shed their bundles and assumed their posts without protest. Keyoke saluted their bravery and wished he had time to say more. But words could not lighten necessity: when the Minwanabi marched on their position, one man would race with the warning, and the other would die to provide his colleague enough of a lead to get through. Mara would be proud, the Force Commander thought sadly.
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