Kevin conceded this point in silence. He had observed enough of the desert men taken captive to appreciate the point. They might be diminutive, but they were as fiercely proud as the dwarves of his homeworld, and argumentative as a sand snake: they tended to bite first and worry about survival after. They were children of a harsh country, where death walked behind every man. Most would jump through fire rather than betray their tribes; and their chieftains, as near as Kevin could see, fought and killed one another as readily as they raided the Tsurani border.
'We should sleep soon,' Mara said, interrupting her barbarian's brooding. 'We shall have to be well up before the dawn to allow the servants enough time to dismantle my quarters.'
Kevin shook grit from his tunic and cursed as it contaminated the last few swallows of his wine. 'We might sleep right here,' he suggested.
'Barbarian!' The Lady laughed. 'If there was an emergency, how would my Force Commander find me?'
'If an assassin chanced to come for you, that could be an advantage.' Kevin arose and extended a hand to lift her.
'Show me the assassin who could get through Lujan's patrols,' Mara retorted, slipping comfortably into his arms.
Which was true enough, Kevin reflected, but not in the least reassuring. If the nomads had intended to send assassins, they would have done so without baiting a whole army.
* * *
The next week's march led them into a country of rocky tablelands and dunes crowned with broken clutches of boulder. The army was hemmed in by poor footing, forced to straggle through deep sand in a twisting succession of narrow valleys. The place had a canyonlike feel not at all to Kevin's liking, and even Lujan voiced doubts. But messengers from the advance troops rushed in with excited word that there was a cache, a large one, as well as a sizeable force of desert men encamped on the hardpan on the other side of the hills.
Mara and Lord Xacatecas held parley and decided to press on.
'The cho-ja do not get mired in this sand,' Mara explained to Kevin when the latter questioned the decision. 'They are fast and fierce, and the heat does not slow them. One company of cho-ja is worth two of humans in this desert, and what can the barbarians do as counteroffensive against that?'
There was no ready answer. The army marched on until night fell over the land and the copper-gold moon of Kelewan rose and bathed the dunes in metallic light.
Mara retired to the comfort of her command tent and the soothing voice of a musician, while Kevin paced the camp perimeter and wrestled with conflicts of his own. He loved the Lady; she was in his blood, and nothing could change that. But did he love her enough that he should risk his own life? The Midkemian walked listening to the talk of the warriors and the banter that passed between them. The language might be different, but soldiers on the eve of a conflict were no different here from those in the Kingdom of the Isles. Honour notwithstanding, the warriors of Mara's army diced and joked and upbraided one another; but they did not mention death, and they avoided talk of loved ones left home on the estate.
Dawn broke in a haze of fine dust thrown up by restless breezes. The servants by now had the knack of collapsing the great tents; the querdidra had stopped spitting and grown resigned to their added burdens. Or else they were too thirsty and too wise to waste fluid, Kevin thought, as he worked grit from between his teeth and sipped sour water from a flask. Too soon, the army was gathered into ranks and marching through the defile that wound down between mesas to the hardpan.
The nomads were massed there, waiting, a motley spread of perhaps eight hundred drably clothed warriors, clustered around tribal banners woven in bright colours and embellished with the cured tails of kurek, an animal resembling a fox. Kevin looked on them and felt the skin of his arms crawl with gooseflesh. While the warriors of the Acoma and the Xacatecas formed ranks and readied weapons, he retied the laces on his light, Midkemian-style brigandine and hung close by Mara's litter. There Lujan, Lord Xacatecas, Mox'l, the cho-ja Force Commander, and Envedi, who commanded the Xacatecas army, held conference. They would attack the ragtag force of tribesmen; their honour required it, as performance of their duty as guardians of the Empire's southern border. Kevin wished Tsurani custom allowed a slave to bear weapons; for that this army prepared for disaster he had not the smallest doubt.
'I will lead my two companies into the valley and attack in a frontal charge,' Lord Xacatecas rumbled in his bass voice. 'If the barbarians break and flee before us, your cho-ja company can flank and engage from the rear, and cut them off. If the desert men do not run, then Xacatecas will send a great offering to Turakamu.'
Mara inclined her head. 'As you wish,' she intoned formally. Although Lujan would have preferred to send in a mixed company of Acoma and Xacatecas warriors, Lord Chipino had social seniority. His were the more experienced officers, and Mara had made it clear that she desired alliance, not rivalry, between her house and that of Xacatecas. To contend over war honours and protocol would not be to Acoma advantage.
The sun climbed toward noon, and the shadows shrank beneath the rocks. The army of Lord Xacatecas formed up into battle array and aligned itself for the charge. Mara set observers upon the crests of the escarpments on either side and arranged messenger runners to carry dispatches. The air was still, the silence complete; Kevin stood sweating at Mara's shoulder, almost wishing for the scrape of chitinous shell that the cho-ja made while whetting their bladelike forelimbs to a razor-sharpness for killing. His teeth were on edge anyway, and the sound would have justified the discomfort. Then the horns sounded, and the Xacatecas Force Commander signalled the charge. In a wave, the warriors in yellow and purple broke into a run toward the valley.
Kevin shivered before a horrible, gut-wringing premonition that disaster was about to overtake them.
'Lady,' he said hoarsely, 'Lady, listen to me. There is something I desperately need to tell you.'
Wholly engaged with watching the army that descended at a run toward the hardpan, and the screaming, ragged ranks of desert men who surged yipping to meet it, Mara glanced barely in Kevin's direction. 'Let it wait,' she snapped. 'I'll hear you after the battle.'
12 — Snares
The army charged.
From a niche in a cleft of rock behind the desert men's lines, Tasaio licked his teeth. 'Good, good,' he murmured gently. 'At last we have the Lord of the Xacatecas precisely where we want him.'
The Strike Leader at Tasaio's shoulder restrained an urge to scratch an itch beneath his armour. 'Do you wish our offensive to begin now, sir?'
Tasaio's cat-yellow eyes blinked once. 'Fool,' he said, with no change of tone, but the Strike Leader squirmed back. 'We do not attack now, but when Lord Xacatecas has fully engaged his troops and is absorbed with the slaughter of tribesmen.'
The Strike Leader swallowed. 'Sir, that is not what you told their chiefs in last night's council.'
Tasaio lounged back, his hair like dark copper against his cheek, a fine stubble showing just in front of his ear where his helm strap had worn the growth short. 'Of course not,' he said in the same velvet tone. 'The tribes would hardly have committed their people to a battle to the death, the slinking cowards.'
The Strike Leader of the Minwanabi tightened his lips and said nothing. Tasaio laughed brightly. 'You think I have acted dishonourably?'
'Uh, of course not, sir,' the Strike Leader stuttered hastily. He had heard that laugh before and learned to fear what action might follow.
'Of course not!' snapped Tasaio in disgusted imitation of his junior officer. 'The desert men are barbarians, without honour, and a promise to their chiefs is as wind. Turakamu will avenge no people who question his divine truth. The desert men are soulless bugs, and even a land such as this will be cleaner without them.'
'As you say, sir,' the Strike Leader said obsequiously.
His fawning disgusted Tasaio. He turned aside and watched the oncoming ranks of the Xacatecas crash into the lightly armed desert men. Weapons clattered against weapons, and screams arose as the fi
rst of the fallen watered the dry sands with their blood.
'Wait,' Tasaio soothed his near-to-fidgeting Strike Leader. 'We shall attack in due time.' He leaned against the shoulder of stone, totally at ease, as if the sounds of death and battle were music to his ears.
The Minwanabi Strike Leader maintained his own calm by strength of will. If he was disturbed by the sight of their desert men allies being cut down and slaughtered as a sacrifice, he said no word. Stiffly correct, and obedient to his master, he observed without flinching as the desert men were driven back, and back again, leaving their numbers in thrashing, bleeding heaps upon the sand. The soldiers of Lord Xacatecas were thorough, efficient, and in no mind for showing mercy. They had been prisoned for years in a backlands post with a cruel climate and had suffered the insect stings of a thousand covert raids. Their swords reaped lives in bloody slaughter until the surviving desert men broke and fled.
Tiny as a doll on the distant field, the Lord of the Xacatecas raised his blade and his Force Commander called the companies to form ranks and pursue. For the honour of the Empire, and in hopes that the border unrest might be ended, his warriors regrouped and surged forward.
Tasaio's eyes narrowed slightly, measuring distances. As if the Xacatecas forces crossed a line invisibly drawn in his mind, he said to his sweating subofficer in an inflection that did not change from the beginning, 'Now, Chaktiri. Now signal the start of our offensive.'
On the rise overlooking the hardpan, Lujan nodded to himself. 'They're routed. Look.' And he waved a hand as the ranks of the desert men broke apart into fleeing knots. 'Xacatecas will regroup and pursue now, without needing help from the cho-ja.'
Mara looked up from her seat on the litter, which rested on the ground at the top of a knoll. She pushed aside the gauzy fabric that served as a veil to keep the blown dust off her face. 'You sound disappointed.'
Lujan shrugged. 'What newly appointed Force Commander would be pleased to sit idly by with a battle going on?' He gave a wry smile. 'My Lady's honour is mine. I accept the wisdom of her choice.'
Mara smiled also. 'Nicely spoken. Also a forgivable lie. I promise you all the action you wish when we get out of this desert, and if there is an Acoma natami to return to.'
As if her words were an omen, a horn call split the air. Far down in the valley, on either side of the hardpan where Xacatecas' two companies were pursuing tribal warriors, a dark tide flanked the dunes. Lujan spun, his humour fading, and his hand half-clenched on his sword hilt.
Mara turned also, her veils whipped aside by the motion. She saw tribal banners, and rank upon rank of figures in odd bits of armour and desert garb, advancing to hit Lord Xacatecas' troops in the flank from two sides; where the forces met, they would seal off retreat into the hills, where Mara's support companies waited. Swiftly, with eyes sharpened by Keyoke's training, the Lady counted phalanxes. She estimated quickly and found Lord Chipino's force was outnumbered two to one. Worse — her heart slammed in recognition — these were not desert men. To a man, the advancing army stood full height; there was not a diminutive figure of a tribesman among them, which meant but one thing: they were not of this land, but impostors, enemies from within the Empire in this war to see an end to her house, despite their barbaric aspect.
'Minwanabi!' she cried sharply. 'So this is what Desio planned!' She raised widened eyes to her Force Commander and tried not to show the knife thrust of fear that pierced her. 'Lujan, rally our men. We must hit this new army from the rear, or Xacatecas will be slaughtered in the field.'
Lujan began a hasty bow, his lungs already filling with air to raise his shout of command.
'Wait!' Kevin's cry cut between, with an intensity that demanded hearing. .
Mara turned white. 'Kevin!' she snapped in a near whisper. 'You presume too much if you think to interfere between sworn allies. There is honour at stake here.' She jerked her head at Lujan. 'Continue, Force Commander.'
Kevin shot up from his crouch, very fast for a man of his size. He reached out, caught Lujan's arm, and then froze as the Force Commander's blade cleared its scabbard, snapped down, and stopped, in perfect control, against the bones in his wrist. A fine line of scarlet opened where the skin split under the edge.
'Stop!' Mara said. Her voice shook, as it never had in the memory of any man present. In the valley, the shouts of the armies reached a crescendo, and the rattle of shields and swords clashing together added to the din as the Xacatecas forces wheeled to take the shock of the enemy reinforcements. Mara flicked dark eyes from her Force Commander to her slave, and even her lips were white. 'You might lose your head for this transgression.' Her expression showed that with house honour resting on her aiding Xacatecas, even her feelings for Kevin were of no consequence.
Kevin started to loosen his grip, then reversed the motion. He looked at his Lady, grim with an expression she had never seen. His eyes were too wide, his mouth tight, and his breathing shallow and fast, ‘I have reason.'
Lujan stood like a statue, his blade a whisper of a touch against skin that bled a trickle of scarlet.
'Speak, then,' Mara said tersely. 'Quickly, for Xacatecas soldiers are dying while we delay.' She did not add that if this was another of his barbarian whims, he would hang for it. No matter what her love for him, the name of her ancestors must never be disgraced.
Kevin swallowed. 'Lady, if your warriors charge in Xacatecas' defence, they will all die in a trap.'
Her eyes did not change, but stayed flat without feeling.
'Lady, I know!' Almost, Kevin found himself shouting. He controlled himself. 'I have seen these tactics before, on my world. There was a small company of our people in a glade before a walled city. They routed the local conquerors and were advancing, only to be attacked from the rear. The force that rushed to support was set upon by ambush, and they were, all of them, cut to pieces.'
Mara's manner did not thaw. Still, she jerked her chin at Lujan, who withdrew his blade in silence.
Kevin loosened his fingers. They were shaking. 'Lady, on my life, withhold your charge.'
Her eyes yet bored into him. 'You were a common soldier. How do you presume to advise?'
Kevin closed his eyes, shrugged in his brazen, offhand manner, and seemed to come to an inward decision. Apparently careless, and hiding his inner desperation, he spoke what should have been his death warrant. 'I was an officer on my homeworld of Midkemia. I commanded my father's garrison when taken captive in the field.'
He waited. Mara said nothing. He realized that, against custom, she was granting him further leave to speak. He went on. 'You have said that Tasaio of the Minwanabi was Subcommander of the Warlord's troops beyond the rift. I have fought against him, and I earnestly believe that the battle plan before us on the hardpan has his stamp and signature.'
Mara moved her hand, indicating he should be silent. Kevin stopped talking. He searched her face for some clue upon which to gauge the reception of his remarks.
'You realize,' she said presently, 'that if you are wrong, I must have you hanged. More, you will have brought ruin to us all, even to my young son at home.'
Kevin expelled an explosive breath. 'I am not wrong, Mara.' And he stared levelly back.
Mara seemed to stir, as if from a spell. 'We are better off dying in defence of Lord Chipino than surviving in cowardice by hanging back.'
Lujan nodded grimly at her shoulder.
Exasperated, Kevin rubbed the shallow cut on his wrist. 'There might be a way to save your bacon.'
'Bacon?' Mara said in puzzlement. 'What has this to do with animal fat?'
'I meant turn the tables on the Minwanabi,' Kevin snapped. The clamour of battle on the hardpan was drawing closer, with the Xacatecas taking losses, and the desert men survivors fleeing in small puffs of dust over the farther dunes. 'If I am right, Tasaio will have another war host concealed in these hills. He will expect us to charge onto the hardpan — his reserve troops wait in hiding to hit us from the rear. Then the companies engaging Xacatec
as would split themselves into two forces.' He held his hands to illustrate. 'One company would simply hold Xacatecas in place, while the other counterattacked your force. Your companies would find themselves surrounded and annihilated, with Xacatecas' troops cleaned up afterwards.'
'And you propose?' Lujan prompted urgently.
Kevin raised his eyebrows. 'I say we send a small company down to aid Lord Chipino. We send the rest of our troops back down the valley we marched in through. Then we send a fast-moving company with the cho-ja, to surround the hills where Tasaio's troops are in hiding, and harry them out into the open, over the hills, and into the company in the valley. Our attacking companies will have the advantage of height. With decent timing, our archers can pick a third of them off before they hit our centre lines in force. We'll have a battle in the valley, but one we stand a chance of winning, with all our enemy surrounded. We could drive them into Xacatecas' waiting spears.'
Lujan spun his blade, expertly flicking off the fine traces of blood that marred the edge. His voice held disgust as he answered Kevin's bold plan. 'Your ideas are no better than a dream. Only cho-ja could move fast enough to effect the manoeuvre you describe, and one company of them will not be enough to surround this stand of hills.'
'We'll have to try,' Mara cut in, 'or else be caught in this Minwanabi snare and break our trust with the Lord of the Xacatecas.'
'No,' Kevin corrected. He glanced across the incline to where the cho-ja waited, still as statues in their ranks. He wondered briefly whether the creatures had a prickly sense of dignity, then gave that up as moot. Mara and all of her following were going to be cut down where they stood if Minwanabi had the chance to complete his offensive as planned — not to mention the fact that he, Kevin of Zun, would be hanged in disgrace if he proved wrong. With a fatalistic sigh that approached a laugh, the Midkemian sucked in new breath and related his intentions to Mara and her Force Commander.
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