Desio sighed heavily. His body servant rushed to set a cushion under him as he settled his bulk upon the grass. ‘I wish I had your patience, Tasaio.’ Envy showed through his petulance.
‘But I am not a patient man, cousin.’ The arrows flew at regular intervals, and a straw figure toppled, riddled like a seamstress’s pincushion with feathered shafts. ‘I chafe at delay as much as, perhaps more than, you, my Lord — I hate waiting.’ He studied his distant targets as if evaluating his performance. ‘But I hate the flaw of impatience within myself even more. A warrior must strive toward perfection, knowing full well that it will forever be unobtainable.’
Desio pulled his robe away from sticky flesh and fanned himself, ‘I have no patience, I admit, and I was not gifted with coordination enough for the field, as you were.’
Tasaio waved his servant off to fetch arrows, though the line by his feet was not depleted. Then he set his bow across his shoulder and looked at his more corpulent cousin. ‘You could learn to be, Desio.’ There was no mockery in his tone.
The Lord of the Minwanabi smiled back. ‘You have finalized your plan to destroy Mara.’
Tasaio remained still a moment. Then he threw back his head and sounded a Minwanabi battle cry. When he finished his ululation, he looked back to his cousin, a sparkle of excitement in his eyes. ‘Yes, Lord, I have a plan. But first we must speak with lncomo and discover if the runners he dispatched have returned with word of the ambush.’
‘I will go back and call him,’ Desio grunted as he pushed to his feet. ‘Join us in my chambers in an hour’s time.’
Tasaio acknowledged that his Lord paid him deference by complying with his request for a meeting. Then his eyes narrowed. He spun, slipped his bow, and set another war arrow to his string.
The servant on the field retrieving arrows saw the move and dropped to earth just a heartbeat before the shot hissed past the place his body had just vacated. He remained prone as more shafts whined by, peppering the dummy by his elbow. Wisps of straw drifted down and made his face itch, yet he did not move to brush them away until he saw that his master had depleted his arrows.
‘You play with your men as a sarcat plays with his prey before the kill,’ Desio observed, having lingered to watch the display.
Tasaio raised one cool eyebrow. ‘I train them to treasure their lives,’ he amended. ‘On the battlefield, they must fend for themselves against our enemies. If a servant cannot keep himself alive, and be where I need him, he is of no use, yes?’
Desio conceded the point with an admiring chuckle.
Tasaio said, ‘I am done, I think. No need to wait an hour, my Lord. I will accompany you back now.’ Desio clapped his cousin on the shoulder, and together they started down the hill.
The Minwanabi First Adviser met them in the private study, his grey hair damp from his bath, and his back erect as a sword blade. He was an early riser, inspecting the estates with the hadonra in the morning hours. Afternoons he spent over paper work, but years of watching sunrises had given him the weatherbeaten appearance of an old field general.
He watched with a commander’s perception as he made his bow before the cousins.
Lord Desio was sweating, though he had already consumed three mugs of rare, iced drinks. Runners continually drove themselves to exhaustion to provide him with the luxury; as the summer progressed, and the snowline receded up the northern peaks, the young Lord’s craving for cold dishes could no longer be satisfied. Then he would turn to drink to dull the heat, but unlike his father Jingu, he did not slacken his intake after sundown. With an inward frustrated sigh, Incomo regarded Tasaio, who still wore his armour and archer’s glove, but who showed no fatigue from his hours of practice in the hills. His only concession to comfort was the slightly loosened lacing at his throat; at all times, even just after rising, Tasaio seemed but a half second away from being ready to answer the call of battle.
‘Tasaio has finally devised his plan to defeat the Acoma,’ Desio opened as his First Adviser took his place on the cushions beneath the ceremonial dais.
‘That is well, my Lord,’ answered Incomo. ‘We have just received word of our ambush on the Acoma thyza wagons.’
‘How did it go?’ Desio rocked forward in his eagerness.
‘Badly, my Lord.’ Incomo’s expression remained wooden. ‘We were defeated, as we expected, but the cost was much higher than anticipated.’
‘How costly?’ Tasaio’s voice seemed detached.
Incomo shifted dark eyes to the cousin. Slowly he said, ‘Every man we sent was killed. Fifty raiders in all.’
Desio sat back, disgust upon his face. ‘Fifty! Damn that woman. Is every move she chooses ordained to win her victory?’