‘It’s political, you realise,’ Stragen told her. ‘Tikume’s people are showering Mirtai with attention for Kring’s benefit.’
‘I know, Stragen, but it’s nice all the same.’ She looked speculatively at her golden slave. ‘Sparhawk, I’d take it as a personal favour if you’d actively pursue the marriage-negotiations with Atan Engessa. Mirtai deserves some happiness.’
‘I’ll see what I can arrange for her, my Queen.’
Mirtai readily agreed to Engessa’s proposed test. She rose gracefully to her feet, unfastened the neck of her purple robe and let it fall.
The Peloi gasped. Their women-folk were customarily dressed in far more concealing garments. The sneer on the face of Tikume’s wife Vida, however, was a bit wan. Mirtai was significantly female. She was also fully armed, and that also shocked the Peloi. She and Engessa moved to the area in front of the canopy, curtly inclined their heads to each other and drew their swords.
Sparhawk thought he knew the differences between contest and combat, but what followed blurred that boundary for him. Mirtai and Engessa seemed to be fully intent on killing each other. Their swordsmanship was superb, but their manner of fencing involved a great deal more physical contact than did western-style fighting.
‘It looks like a wrestling-match with swords,’ Kalten observed to Ulath.
‘Yes,’ Ulath agreed. ‘I wonder if a man could do that in an axe-fight. If you could kick somebody in the face the way she just did and then follow up with an axestroke, you could win a lot of fights in a hurry.’
‘I knew she was going to do that to him,’ Kalten chuckled as Engessa landed flat on his back in the dust. ‘She did it to me once.’
Engessa, however, did not lie gasping on the ground as Kalten had. He rolled away from Mirtai instead and came to his feet with his sword still in his hand. He raised his blade in a kind of salute and then immediately attacked again.
The ‘test’ continued for several more minutes until a watching Atan sharply banged his fist on his breastplate to signal the end of the match. The man who had signalled was much older than his compatriots, or so it seemed. His hair was white. Nothing else about him seemed any different, however.
Mirtai and Engessa bowed formally to each other, and he returned her to her place where she once again drew on her robe and sank down onto a cushion. Vida no longer sneered.
‘She is fit,’ Engessa reported to Ehlana. He reached up under his breastplate and tenderly touched a sore-spot. ‘More than fit,’ he added. ‘She is a skilled and dangerous opponent. I am proud to be the one she will call father. She will add lustre to my name.’
‘We rather like her, Atan Engessa,’ Ehlana smiled. ‘I’m so glad you agree with us.’ She let the full impact of that devastating smile wash over the stern-faced Atan, and hesitantly, almost as if it were in spite of himself, he smiled back.
‘I think he lost two fights today,’ Talen whispered to Sparhawk.
‘So it would seem,’ Sparhawk replied.
‘We can never catch up with them, friend Sparhawk,’ Tikume said that evening as they all relaxed on carpets near a flaring campfire. ‘These steppes are open grasslands with only a few groves of trees. There isn’t really any place to hide, and you can’t ride a horse through tall grass without leaving a trail a blind man could follow. They come out of nowhere, kill the herders and run off the cattle. I followed one of those groups of raiders myself. They’d stolen a hundred cattle, and they left a broad trail through the grass. After a few miles, the trail just ended. There was no sign that they’d dispersed. They just vanished. It was as if something had reached down and carried them off into the sky.’
‘Have there been any other disturbances, Domi?’ Tynian asked carefully. ‘What I’m trying to say is, has there been unrest of any kind among your people? Wild stories? Rumours? That sort of thing?’
‘No, friend Tynian.’ Tikume smiled. ‘We are an openfaced people. We do not conceal our emotions from each other. I’d know if there were something afoot. I’ve heard about what’s been happening over around Darsas, so I know why you ask. Nothing like that is happening here. We don’t worship our heroes the way they do, we just try to be like them. Someone’s stealing our cattle and killing our herdsmen.’ He looked a bit accusingly at Oscagne. ‘I would not insult you for all the world, your Honour,’ he said, ‘but you might suggest to the emperor that he would be wise to have some of his Atans look into it. If we have to deal with it ourselves, our neighbours won’t like it very much. We of the Peloi tend to be a bit indiscriminate when someone steals our cattle.’
‘I’ll bring the matter to his Imperial Majesty’s attention,’ Oscagne promised.
‘Soon, friend Oscagne,’ Tikume recommended. ‘Very soon.’
‘She’s a highly-skilled warrior, Sparhawk-Knight,’ Engessa was saying the following morning as the two sat by a small fire.
‘Granted,’ Sparhawk replied, ‘but by your own traditions, she’s still a child.’
‘That’s why it’s my place to negotiate for her,’ Engessa pointed out. ‘If she were adult, she would do it herself. Children sometimes do not know their own worth.’
‘But a child cannot be as valuable as an adult.’
‘That’s not always entirely true, Sparhawk-Knight. The younger a woman, the greater her price.’
‘Oh, this is absurd,’ Ehlana broke in. The negotiations were of a delicate nature and would normally have taken place in private. ‘Normally’, however, did not always apply to Sparhawk’s wife. ‘Your offer’s completely unacceptable, Sparhawk.’
‘Whose side are you on, dear?’ he asked her mildly.
‘Mirtai’s my friend. I won’t permit you to insult her. Ten horses indeed! I could get that much for Talen.’
‘Were you planning to sell him too?’
‘I was just illustrating a point.’
Sir Tynian had also stopped by. Of all of their group, he was closest to Kring, and he keenly felt the responsibilities of friendship. ‘What sort of offer would your Majesty consider properly respectful?’ he asked Ehlana.
‘Not a horse less than sixty,’ she declared adamantly.
‘Sixty!’ Tynian exclaimed. ‘You’ll impoverish him! What kind of a life will Mirtai have if you marry her off to a pauper?’
‘Kring’s hardly a pauper, Sir Knight,’ she retorted. ‘He still has all that gold King Soros paid him for those Zemoch ears.’
‘But that’s not his gold, your Majesty,’ Tynian pointed out. ‘It belongs to his people.’
Sparhawk smiled and motioned with his head to Engessa. Unobtrusively, the two stepped away from the fire. ‘I’d guess that they’ll settle on thirty, Atan Engessa,’ he tentatively suggested.
‘Most probably,’ Engessa agreed.
‘It seems like a fair number to me. Doesn’t it to you?’ It hovered sort of on the verge of an offer.
‘It’s more or less what I had in mind, Sparhawk-Knight.’
‘Me too. Done then?’
‘Done.’ The two of them clasped hands. ‘Should we tell them?’ the Atan asked, the faintest hint of a smile touching his face.
‘They’re having a lot of fun,’ Sparhawk grinned. ‘Why don’t we let them play it out? We can find out how close our guess was. Besides, these negotiations are very important to Kring and Mirtai. If we were to agree in just a few minutes, it might make them feel cheapened.’
‘You have been much in the world, Sparhawk-Knight.’ Engessa observed. ‘You know well the hearts of men – and of women.’
‘No man ever truly knows the heart of a woman, Engessa-Atan,’ Sparhawk replied ruefully.
The negotiations between Tynian and Ehlana had reached the tragic stage, each of them accusing the other of ripping out hearts and similar extravagances. Ehlana’s performance was masterful. The Queen of Elenia had a strong flair for histrionics, and she was a highly skilled orator. She extemporised at length upon Sir Tynian’s disgraceful niggardliness, her voice rising and falling in majestic cadences. Tynian, on the other hand, was coolly rational, although he too became emotional at times.
Kring and Mirtai sat holding hands not far away, their eyes filled with concern as they hung breathlessly on every word. Tikume’s Peloi encircled the haggling pair, straining to hear.
It went on for hours, and it was nearly sunset when Ehlana and Tynian finally reached a grudging agreement – thirty horses – and concluded the bargain by spitting in their hands and smacking their palms together. Sparhawk and Engessa formalised the agreement in the same fashion, and a tumultuous cheer went up from the rapt Peloi. It had been a highly entertaining day all round, and that evening’s celebration was loud and long.
‘I’m exhausted,’ Ehlana confessed to her husband after they had retired to their tent for the night.
‘Poor dear,’ Sparhawk commiserated.
