The Complete Empire Trilogy (94 page)

‘Then you have no use for my opinion,’ said Kevin, biting back exasperation. ‘I believe there is strategy in the movements of these nomads. You insist there is not –’

‘They are barbarians!’ Mara cut in. ‘They raid across our borders because the land is rich and green. Why should tribes of desert men suddenly organize against a nation armed and prepared against them? What could they hope to gain, except obliteration?’

Kevin heard her anger, and took no offence, aware as he was that the time away from home had stretched out into almost a year, and the separation from her son was wearing at her. Each month the traders’ ships made port at Ilama, and Jican’s messenger reached her, but no word arrived of an attack by the Minwanabi. She had left her best troops to guard the estate; here, with the ones that remained, she had expected to lend support to Xacatecas, and then be free to depart. But the attack at home had not happened, or at least, if it had, word had not reached them; and on this side of the Sea of Blood, the campaign was unexplainably drawn out and showed no signs of resolution.

‘We must find the nomads’ supply caches and burn them out,’ she insisted emphatically. ‘Or else grow old in this wretched waste, and never see satisfaction against Minwanabi.’ Her pronouncement ended discussion.

The scouts went out. They made a five-day sweep of the lowlands that extended into a month of seeking. The nomads could not be tracked across sands continuously shifted by the winds, nor over swept slabs of rock. The Tsurani were forced to search for the smoke of cooking fires in a land that had no trees but imported oil or charcoal for heat and light. The warriors had to lie for days in hiding, scanning the barren horizons for signs of enemy encampments. They marched across smouldering hardpan, and found nothing; just old fire rings filled with ash and burned bones, and sometimes the imprint where a hide tent had stood, or broken bits of discarded crockery. The nomads’ caches of supplies remained elusively hidden.

After three unfruitful months, Xacatecas and Acoma soldiers began taking captives. These unfortunates were dragged back to Chipino’s tents for questioning. The desert raiders were small, of wiry stature, and often bearded. They smelled of querdidra and sour wine, and they wore leather
studded with bosses of the pack beasts’ horn and bone. Over this primitive light armour they threw loose-fitting robes in beige colours, tied with beaded sashes that held talismans denoting their prowess and tribe. Very tough, with skins weathered by the climate, few could be induced to talk. The ones that had looser tongues were not highly placed in their clan hierarchies; the caches they disclosed in the following four months were of little consequence; just a few skins of wine and some grains stored in earthen jars. Not enough to be worth losing warriors over, Lord Chipino said to Mara in a frustrated talk after a day spent in blazing sunlight, digging one such cache from the sandy floor of an arroyo.

The Acoma command tent was still under the gloom of twilight. The calls of the sentries as the watch changed mingled with smells of roasting meat that drifted in through the flaps, opened to the cooling evening breeze; charcoal smoke arose in blue puffs against darkening hills, and inside, the smouldering of oiled rags threw cherry-coloured light through the decorative pierced patterns in the light sconces.

Mara clapped hands for a servant to bring the Lord of the Xacatecas some tesh, sweetened as he preferred it. She said, ‘Then you think we waste our time by searching the foothills?’

‘I do.’ Lord Chipino emphasized his frustration with a jerk of his chin. ‘The supplies of the nomads must be held in the deep desert, beyond our scouts’ line of sight, and where no trails exist to leave tracks. I believe we must attempt an incursion with perhaps two companies of warriors.’

The servant arrived with the tesh, lending Mara a moment for thought. She had also come to feel that some similar tactic was necessary, and Lujan supported her. The only dissenter was Kevin, who tirelessly insisted that the nomads might be planning for just such a contingency. She gave a small shake of her head. Why should barbarians
taunt her people to invade? What possible need might motivate them?

‘None of this makes sense,’ Chipino said, tugging the straps at his neck to loosen his dust-caked armour. He scratched the leathery skin of his throat, almost frowning, then wet his gullet with the tesh. Its sweetness rinsed the taste of the desert grit from his mouth and also eased his temper. ‘Isashani wrote to me to say that Hokanu of the Shinzawai came visiting in Ontoset.’

Mara raised her eyebrows. ‘Is your wife by chance trying to matchmake?’

Xacatecas laughed. ‘Perpetually. But in this case with Hokanu’s enthusiastic interest, so it would seem. The younger Shinzawai misses you. He asked after you, more than once.’

‘And Isashani kept score?’ Mara prompted. At Chipino’s resigned nod, she added, ‘What brought Hokanu to Ontoset? That’s a bit far afield for him, I should think.’

‘That’s just what Isashani pointed out,’ Chipino added. ‘The interfering woman suggests that the young man came to trade for spices that can as easily be purchased in Jamar.’

Which implied he had gone specifically to speak with Lady Isashani to hear direct news of Dustari. Mara was unsure how to react to this, not certain that Hokanu’s overt interest in news of her might not simply mask his father’s latest ploy in the Great Game.

The thought was interrupted by the return of that day’s officer of the watch, with the dispatches brought in by the scouts. He bowed in deference. Mara gave him permission to speak before her guest, saving herself the trouble of sending word across to the Xacatecas camp later.

‘No findings to report, my Lady,’ the armoured man recited, his plumed helm crooked in one dirty elbow. ‘One man was injured in a rockslide, and two more were killed in an ambush. The wounded are being tended in the camp by
the south mesa. The other five bands of scouts found nothing.’

Which added up to a loss that had no purpose, Mara concluded in silence. Needled by the progression of useless days, useless deaths, and no sign of change beyond attrition, she found her patience at an end. The nomads were just toying with them – about this Kevin was correct – but to sit and wait without action was unacceptable. Mara excused her tired officer from duty, then met the dark, sardonic eyes of the Lord of the Xacatecas. ‘The Acoma offer one company, to march out in a foray beyond the foothills. My First Strike Leader, Migachti, will command, and a half patrol of cho-ja will go along to act as message bearers between here and the main camp.’

Lord Chipino of the Xacatecas inclined his head. He set his tesh cup on the low table, between the stone-weighted corners of the map scrolls, and the slates, and the ground-down ends of chalk, and reached for his sun-bleached helm. ‘To the honour of our houses, and the ruin of enemies,’ he intoned. ‘I will send a company also, and a gift, to recompense for your cho-ja, whose abilities I cannot match from my own ranks. The hive on our lands had no warriors to spare, with the unrest of House Zirentari on the northern borders of our home estate.’

Mara did not venture the fact that she had bargained with her own Queen to breed extras; one did not divulge the unnecessary even to friends, for in the Great Game today’s allies could be tomorrow’s bitterest enemy. She arose out of politeness and bowed to her social superior, though between herself and the Lord the forms were not always observed in private. ‘I waive the need for the gift.’

Lord Chipino studied her, squinting slightly in the spangled light thrown off by the pierced designs of the sconces. ‘You are wrong,’ he said gently, as he might perhaps have corrected a daughter. ‘A woman in the beauty
of her youth should never be permitted to languish in a desert without gifts.’

Mara flushed. She found no words to cover her intense moment of self-consciousness, so Lord Chipino smoothed over the embarrassment for her. ‘Hokanu made Isashani promise to see that your charms were not forgotten in this desolate, barbarian land.’

The Lady of the Acoma laughed, freely, which was a change after two years that felt, in isolation, like captivity. ‘You and Hokanu both are flatterers!’

Chipino turned his head, then shoved his helm over rumpled grey hair and left the chin strap hanging. ‘Well, it’s true there are no women here to exorcize that failing of mine. I’d flatter the querdidra mares, if I could.’ He shrugged. ‘But they spit. Do you spit? No? I didn’t think so.’ Then the true compliment came, underhandedly, so she would not brush it off in a change of subject. ‘Hokanu is a man of shrewd sense, and fine taste, else Isashani would have shown him and his questions out her door, you can be certain.’

The gift, when it came, was a copper bracelet, wrought in the form of a shatra bird on the wing, and set with a solitaire emerald. It was beautiful, made specially for her, and at a cost beyond the worth of a mere half patrol of cho-ja, even were such warriors to die in the course of their duty. Mara laid the jewellery back in the velvet-lined box it had been delivered in. ‘Why would he do this?’ she asked what she thought was an empty tent.

Kevin spoke up from behind her shoulder, making her start. ‘Chipino admires you, for yourself. He wants you to know that.’

Mara’s frown deepened. ‘Lord Xacatecas? Why should he admire me? He is of the Five Families, preeminent in the Empire. What does he hope to gain from a house under siege by the Minwanabi?’

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 way over 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.