‘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.’