Kevin shook his head in a flash of impatience and sat on the cushions beside her. He reached up, lifted her masses of loose hair, and gently began to knead the tense muscles in her shoulders. Mara leaned into the caress with a sigh and surrendered knots of tension she had not noticed were there. ‘Why should he?’ she persisted in reference to the Lord of the Xacatecas.
Kevin’s hands rested warmly on either side of her chin. ‘Because he likes you. Not because he has designs on you -though I’ll wager he might indulge in a little discreet dalliance if he thought you were of a mind. But he has no overt designs on you, or your house, or what gain he might make in the Great Game. Lady, not all of life is bloody politics. Too often you seem to forget that. When I consider your gift, and Lord Xacatecas’ motives, I see nothing but a man the age of your father who is pleased with you, and who wishes to give you something that you yourself seldom do: a pat on the back, because you are competent, and caring, and well loved.’
‘Well loved?’ A wicked smile curved Mara’s lips, which Kevin echoed. His hands moved gently and slipped the clothing from her shoulders. Together they sank back into the cushions in the soft warmth of the flamelight, and their passions kindled in swift and wordless rapport.
The patrols marched out the next morning, to a blast of horns blown by the cooks from Lord Chipino’s compound. So long had the Xacatecas troops been stationed here that they had taken on the nomads’ custom, used to inform the gods and the enemy that the day began in triumph. An army marched at sunrise, and the fanfare was intended to make its enemies tremble.
In the months that followed, nothing happened quickly. Mara took to waiting on the heights in the lookout nook manned by the scouts. The windswept table of rock had no shade, so she exchanged her woven straw headdress for a boy’s helmet, wrapped with a gauze-thin silk scarf. As the days passed, she grew as adept as her warriors at spotting the trailing puffs of dust that signalled the return of a cho-ja messenger. At such times she would send a runner slave to inform Lord Chipino, then scramble down the rocky trail at speed to meet the incoming warriors. Her legs grew as firm as any boy’s from such climbing where litter and slaves could not bear her. Lujan was a wise enough commander to observe that the Lady’s presence had the effect of inspiring his men to diligence. Unlike many Tsurani nobles, this Lady gained thorough understanding of the conditions under which her sentries and patrols addressed their duties. She did not demand that they keep impossible hours under the noon sun, nor did she complain when the heat waves off the distant sands obscured the visibility and caused conflicting reports. Although she vastly preferred finance to warfare, she made it her business to study the fine points of strategy and supply. She had as good a grasp of their predicament as any of her officers, but her innovative perceptions could not affect what seemed to lack purpose or pattern.
The reports sent back by the companies assigned to patrol in the desert did little to relieve the border deadlock. One small cache was discovered, and destroyed, along with the nest of nomads that protected it. Two more months passed in fruitless search, and then another, spent chasing down false leads. The cho-ja brought word of an oasis gone dry, and the remains of a stock burrow that had been uprooted in apparent haste. The patrol who gave chase to see if they could overtake the nomads who had deserted the site exhausted themselves in a fruitless march. Of those who remained to investigate, two soldiers were injured when the ground gave wayover a pit trap. Infection claimed the life of one; the other was sent back by litter. He would never walk again, and requested honourable suicide by the blade. Mara granted permission, and barely managed not to curse Chochocan for the waste of a fine man.
Another season passed without event. The Lady of the Acoma grew sharp-tempered with brooding.
‘We should send out more soldiers,’ she snapped to Kevin, while combing her hair with sweet oils, since water for baths was wasteful and one had to remove the dust somehow.
The Midkemian paused, then pointedly went back to restringing a broken lace on his sandal. This discussion had taken place repeatedly, and each time he had insisted that a march from the mountains in strength was what the enemy desired of them. The words had been said. But the one fact that would have lent his advice credence remained an unvoiced secret. Month after sun-blazing month, Kevin bit back any comment that might reveal his prior military experience. To admit that he had been an officer in command on the field in Midkemia was to ask for a sentence of death.