Jason and Orsos looked at one another. “She’s well enough dressed,” Jason said. He bent and retrieved the girl’s komis. “Could be she’s a household slave.”
“Could be she’s a liar,” Orsos said, but the humour had gone out of him now. “Get her the hell out of here, Jason. Best to be safe. That Kufr bastard doesn’t like to have anyone so much as look at his women.” Orsos stumped away. “I’m going to find a goat to fuck.” And he cackled, weaving his way off through the campfires and shouting insults at the men upon their bedrolls.
Jason studied the girl as she wrapped her komis back about that beautiful face. She looked so human. Then, in Asurian gleaned from his studies, he said, “I’m sorry.”
The girl looked at him like a startled deer, and there came a flurry of Asurian too fast for Jason’s limited scholarship. He held up his hands, smiling. “Slow, slow.”
“You speak our tongue?”
“You speak ours?”
She hesitated. “I am been learning. I have a scroll.”
“I have one also. I am Jason.”
“I am Tiryn.”
Jason gestured to the lines of men reclining about the campfires, their eyes catching the flames as they watched the little exchange. There was a pool of silence about them as the Macht watched, and listened.
“Why are you here?” he asked her. She shook her head, and seemed near to tears again.
“I don’t know.”
His head hurt from recalling the close-written phrases on his precious scroll. Eyes shut, haltingly, he said, “I take you home.”
“Home,” she said in wonder.
“Arkamenes.”
“Ah. Yes. Take me to him.”
“You are his woman?”
“His woman, yes.”
Jason held out his arm, but she recoiled as though he had raised a fist at her. Cursing his ignorance, he led the way and heard the soft hiss of the silk about her thighs as she followed. Through the Macht camp, hundreds of eyes following their every move as they wove in unhurried fashion about the campfires. Everywhere they went the talk was stilled, and the Macht watched them in wonder and surmise: the handsome Macht general, and behind him the tall, veiled Kufr woman with the dark eyes.
Twelve
THE MELTED SNOWS
They crossed the Bekai River in the early spring, and accepted the capitulation of Istar in the city of Kaik, another of those tall fortress-cities the Empire had reared up at every ford of the world’s great rivers. The Bekai was fast-flowing with the meltwater of the mountain snows, for the year had turned at last, and in the east the green line of the lowland world was inching up the slopes of the mighty Magron Mountains, though their peaks were still wrapped in everlasting snow. Beyond those mountains lay Asuria, the heart of the Empire, and the Imperial capital itself: holy Ashur of the endless walls. The army had marched almost two and a half thousand pasangs since disembarking at Tanis, and they had been seventy-eight days on the road. The Kufr troops now marched almost as fast as the Macht themselves, and their numbers had been augmented by contingents from those provinces which had surrendered along the way. Honuran, Governor of Istar, now accompanied the army as one of Arkamenes’s lieutenants. His family had been left behind under guard back in Istar, for their safe-keeping, and to assuage any regrets he might feel at his betrayal of his cousin.
Rictus led his fist up the smooth-sloped hill and stood at the top, breathing and sweating hard. The air seemed heavy, laden with the moisture of the great river at their backs. He turned and stared back into the west. The Bekai was a long, meandering curve of brilliant light upon the carpet of the world, spearpoint-bright where the sun took it, mud-brown and ochre where the passing clouds kept the sunlight from its banks. The city-fortress of Kaik rose high upon its tell west of the river, a pasang to the north, and from the many thousands of its hearths a thin haze of smoke rose to cloud the still air. Even at this distance the hum of its busy streets could be heard, filling the countryside all around. Kaik was a brown city, as so many were in the Land of the Rivers. Constructed largely of kiln-fired brick, it held within its walls a hundred thousand square houses which all looked the same, but on the flat roof of each was a garden, and each of these gardens was like a tiny, distinct little emerald jewel. The mighty Bekai had been bled by man-made channels lined with more brick, and an army of slaves toiled ceaselessly on the waterwheels to keep siphoning off the life-giving water for the greenery of the city. Earth and water, the very stuff of life itself. In this part of the world they were held in reverence, and the Kufr had river-deities and crop-deities by the score. Earth and water: the building blocks of the Empire. The only commodity that could match them in abundance was the labour of slaves.