is to give those barbarian nomads more honour than they justly deserve.'
That night, Kevin lay sleepless in the dark. He listened to Mara's breathing and the endless moan of the winds, and the creaking of the lines that lashed the tent. To leave the mountains with an army would be a mistake; he knew it.
But a slave in the Empire was accorded no honour, and his voice would not be heard. But where the Lady of the Acoma went, so he would go also. He loved her too well to stay behind.
The huge centre pole crashed down, and what seemed acres of canvas billowed slowly down to the ground. Kevin dashed, tripping, over a mound of rolled throw rugs and all but knocked over Mara.
'You're taking the command tent?' he asked, using his own clumsiness as an excuse to capture her in an embrace.
Mara raised her eyebrows in reproof. 'But of course.' She sounded as if carting chests of tapestries, carpets, sconces, and braziers into a hostile and barren desert were a foregone conclusion. 'The Acoma are not barbarians. We do not sleep on the ground like peasants, unless we are travelling in disguise.' She waved at the swarms of servants who laboured to dismantle her dwelling. 'Lord Chipino's tent is far larger. By the size of our pavilions, the nomads will know they reckon with great families.'
Kevin pulled a face. 'And seeing the size of your respective tents, they will run like jigabirds from trouble?'
Mara's brows rose a notch higher. 'They are not civilized.'
'Meaning if they were, they'd run like jigabirds,' Kevin qualified.
'You have a habit of repeating the obvious.' Mara pushed impatiently at his hands, which were stroking her intimately through her thin robes. 'Not now, busy man. When I insisted that you stay at my shoulder, I did not mean bed sport in plain view of gods and sky.'
Kevin backed off, smiling. 'The querdidra drivers have rounded up their herds.' He glanced at the growing piles of chests, carpets, and cushions. 'Are you certain you have enough pack saddles for all this stuff?'
Mara looked exasperated. 'One more comment, and I'll have you carrying a share like a bearer slave. Very likely you belong with them anyway, as punishment for incurable insolence.'
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, windcarved 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