Kevin bowed with mock deference and hurried off to help bridle the insufferable and fractious-tempered six-leggers. ‘By damn, we’ll be lucky to have this army marching before sundown,’ he muttered as he passed out of earshot.
In fact, it took until noon. The army under Lord Chipino and Lady Mara moved off to a fanfare of horn calls and the snap of querdidra drivers’ goads. The litters of the Lord and the Lady moved in the centre of the column, surrounded by the protection of their soldiers. With cho-ja patrols leading and following, and an advance guard of scouts, the columns wound their way downward from the heights and into the dense heat of the flatlands, looking more like a merchant’s caravan than an army.
The pace set was brisk, despite the unrelenting heat. Once the mountains fell behind, the warriors marched over the loose, ever-shifting sands, their progress marked by a rising trail of dust that was visible for miles in all directions. Any nomad child with eyes would know that a large force was moving against them, and sound carried far on the winds. Secrecy was impossible in any event, with the dunes devoid of plant life or shelter of any kind.
Barren tables of rock thrust up through the sands, wind-carved into fantastic shapes, and sliced by deep-chasmed arroyos that sometimes held springs in their shadowed, almost cavelike depths. Any of these might hide a camp of enemies. The tribes would be watching the armies of the Acoma and the Xacatecas, trying to determine whether to stay where they were and stage ambush, or to slip away under cover of blown dust and nightfall, to avoid getting bottled up inside and slaughtered.
The land was unsuitable for pitched battle of any sort, Kevin decided. Superior numbers were the only assurance of victory, and no one could guess how many desert clans were allied for the campaign against the Empire. They could be holed up in the rocks on all sides, or they might melt away, invisible, while the army marched itself to exhaustion in search of them. Gouging loose sand from beneath the straps of his sandals, and feeling the blisters starting underneath, Kevin swore. If you were a desert man armed with long knives and poisoned arrows, your tactics in provoking a large war force made sense only if you had a trap out there, carefully set, and awaiting the army to spring it. The whole thing reeked of long-range planning.
Yet Mara stayed reluctant to see reason. ‘The desert tribes cannot be bought,’ she said, under the stars, when at last they made camp. It was too hot and still yet to retire into the command tent, and slave and Lady sat com-panionably on a carpet, snacking on dry wine and querdidra cheese. ‘There are too many tribes, and too many split loyalties. Wealth has no meaning to a chief if he cannot carry it with his tents.’
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.