LITMIR.BIZ

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nodded.

      ‘We really need to get to Sarsos and talk with Sephrenia.’

      ‘You’re going to speed up the journey again then?’

      ‘I think I’d better. I’m not entirely sure what the ones on the other side are doing yet, but they’re starting to move faster for some reason, so we’d better see what we can do to keep up. Take me back to the carriage, Sparhawk. Stragen’s probably finished showing off his education by now, and the smell of your armour’s beginning to make me nauseous.’

      Although there was a community of interest between the three disparate segments of the force escorting the Queen of Elenia, Sparhawk, Engessa and Kring decided to make some effort to keep the Peloi, the Church Knights and the Atans more or less separate from each other. Cultural differences obviously made a general mingling unwise. The possibilities for misunderstandings were simply too numerous to be ignored. Each leader stressed the need for the strictest of courtesy and formality to his forces, and the end result was a tense and exaggerated stiffness. In a very real sense, the Atans, the Peloi and the knights were allies rather than comrades. The fact that very few of the Atans spoke Elenic added to the distance between the component parts of the small army moving out onto the treeless expanse of the steppes.

      They encountered the eastern Peloi some distance from the town of Pela in central Astel. Kring’s ancestors had migrated from this vast grassland some three thousand years earlier, but despite the separation of time and distance, the two branches of the Peloi family were remarkably similar in matters of dress and custom. The only really significant difference seemed to be the marked preference of the eastern Peloi for the javelin as opposed to the sabre favoured by Kring’s people. After a ritual exchange of greetings and a somewhat extended ceremony during which Kring and his eastern cousin sat cross-legged on the turf ‘taking salt together and talking of affairs’ while two armies warily faced each other across three hundred yards of open grass. The decision not to go to war with each other today was apparently reached, and Kring led his new-found friend and kinsman to the carriage to introduce him all around. The Domi of the eastern Peloi was named Tikume. He was somewhat taller than Kring, but his head was also shaved, a custom among those horsemen dating back to antiquity.

      Tikume greeted them all politely. ‘It is passing strange to see Peloi allied with foreigners,’ he noted. ‘Domi Kring has told me of the conditions which prevail in Eosia, but I had not fully realised that they had led to such peculiar arrangements. Of course he and I have not spoken together for more than ten years.’

      ‘You’ve met before, Domi Tikume?’ Patriarch Emban asked with a certain surprise.

      ‘Yes, your Grace,’ Kring replied. ‘Domi Tikume journeyed to Pelosia with the King of Astel some years back. He made a point of looking me up.’

      ‘King Alberen’s father was much wiser than his son,’ Tikume explained, ‘and he read a great deal. He saw many similarities between Pelosia and Astel, so he paid a state visit to King Soros. He invited me to go along.’ His expression became one of distaste. ‘I might have declined if I’d known he was going to travel by boat. I was sick every day for two months. Domi Kring and I got on well together. He was kind enough to take me with him to the marshes to hunt ears.’

      ‘Did he share the profits with you, Domi Tikume?’ Ehlana asked him.

      ‘What was that, Queen Ehlana?’ Tikume looked baffled.

      Kring, however, laughed nervously and flushed just a bit.

      Then Mirtai strode up to the carriage.

      ‘Is this the one?’ Tikume asked Kring.

      Kring nodded happily. ‘Isn’t she stupendous?’

      ‘Magnificent,’ Tikume agreed fervently, his tone almost reverential. Then he dropped to one knee. ‘Doma,’ he greeted her, clasping both hands in front of his face.

      Mirtai looked inquiringly at Kring.

      ‘It’s a Peloi word, beloved,’ he explained. ‘It means “Domi’s mate”.’

      ‘That hasn’t been decided yet, Kring,’ she pointed out.

      ‘Can there be any doubt, beloved?’ he replied.

      Tikume was still down on one knee. ‘You shall enter our camp with all honours, Doma Mirtai,’ he declared, ‘for among our people, you are a queen. All shall kneel to you, and all shall give way to you. Poems and songs shall be composed in your honour, and rich gifts shall be bestowed upon you.’

      ‘Well, now,’ Mirtai said.

      ‘Your beauty is clearly divine, Doma Mirtai,’ Tikume continued, warming to his subject. ‘Your very presence brightens a drab world and puts the sun to shame. I am awed at the wisdom of my brother Kring in having selected you as his mate. Come straightaway to our camp, divine one, so that my people may adore you.’

      ‘My goodness,’ Ehlana breathed. ‘Nobody’s ever said anything like that to me.’

      ‘We just didn’t want to embarrass you, my Queen,’ Stragen told her blandly. ‘We feel that way about you of course, but we didn’t want to be too obvious about it.’

      ‘Well said,’ Ulath approved.

      Mirtai looked at Kring with a new interest. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this, Kring?’ she asked him.

      ‘I thought you knew, beloved.’

      ‘I didn’t,’ she replied. Her lower lip pushed forward slightly in a thoughtful kind of pout. ‘But I do now,’ she added. ‘Have you chosen an Oma as yet?’

      ‘Sparhawk serves me in that capacity, beloved.’

      ‘Why don’t you go have a talk with Atan Engessa, Sparhawk?’ she suggested. ‘Tell him for me that I do not look upon Domi Kring’s suit with disfavour.’

      ‘That’s a very good idea, Mirtai,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘I’m surprised I didn’t think of it myself.’

Chapter 14

      The town of Pela in central Astel was a major trading centre where merchants and cattle-buyers came from all parts of the empire to do business with the Peloi herders. It was a shabby-looking, unfinished sort of place. Many of its buildings were no more than ornate fronts with large tents erected behind them. No attempt had ever been made to pave its rutted streets, and the passage of strings of wagons and herds of cattle raised a cloud of dust that entirely obscured the town most of the time. Beyond the poorly-defined outskirts lay an ocean of tents, the portable homes of the nomadic Peloi.

      Tikume led them through the town and on out to a hill-top where a number of brightly-striped pavilions encircled a large open area. A canopy held aloft by poles shaded a place of honour at the very top of the hill, and the ground beneath that canopy was carpeted and strewn with cushions and furs.

      Mirtai was the absolute centre of attention. Her rather scanty marching clothes had been covered with a purple robe that reached to the ground, an indication of her near-royal status. Kring and Tikume formally escorted her to the ceremonial centre of the camp and introduced her to Tikume’s wife, Vida, a sharp-faced woman who also wore a purple robe and looked at Mirtai with undisguised hostility.

      Sparhawk and the rest joined the Peloi leaders in the shade as honoured guests.

      The face of Tikume’s wife grew darker and darker as Peloi warriors vied with each other to heap extravagant compliments upon Mirtai as they were presented to Kring and his purported bride-to-be. There were gifts and a number of songs praising the beauty of the golden giantess.

      ‘How did they find time to make up songs about her?’ Talen quietly asked Stragen.

      ‘I’d imagine that the songs have been around for a long time,’ Stragen replied. ‘They’ve substituted

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