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 companionably 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, a.
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 fee! 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.
'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 s 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.