Sovereign

CHAPTER 11

Night again. With a long sigh Amemun dug his way out from underneath his cloak. There was food being cooked nearby and he was drawn to it the way fleas seem to be drawn to him of late. One of the Saranah offered him a large piece of beef which he accepted gratefully. He had not been starving on the expedition to the Oceans of Grass, but he found the usual Saranah fare of mutton jerky, dried yogurt and seed cake about as appealing as parchment. As he chewed on the fresh meat Dekelon appeared, giving instructions to a group of wounded warriors. They were being sent back to the Saranah homeland with the surviving cattle and other prizes looted from the Chett clan they had butchered two days before. They could have carried more if they were mounted or just used the Chett's own horses as pack animals, but as Dekelon had explained to him, no Saranah had ridden for over a hundred years, and the desert country could not support a large number of horses. Still, even the wounded were carrying what seemed to be a small mountain of loot. Amemun could imagine the glee with which the train would be received in that poor country.

Dekelon grabbed some food and joined Amemun.

'Where to next?' Amemun asked him.

'West. The plains get drier and the clans are more scattered.'

'Less prizes for your people.'

'Less chance of being discovered,' Dekelon countered. 'And for the moment that is more important.'

'But with most of the Chett warriors in the east with Lynan Rosetheme you should not worry about discovery. You could handle any single clan—'

'As long as Lynan Rosetheme's army stays in the east,' Dekelon interrupted, his voice level.

Amemun eyed him warily. 'What do you mean?'

'A messenger came last night from your king.'

'Marin? What message?'

'An army from Grenda Lear defeated this Lynan in battle not far from the city of Daavis, and this occurred not long after the same army had forced the king of Haxus to retreat from besieging that same city.'

'The Lord of the Mountain be blessed!' Amemun cried. This was better news than he had expected. And so soon! He had feared the war would drag on for months or even years. At this rate, Lynan and his Chett allies would be forced back to the Oceans of Grass before the end of summer.

'I can see what you are thinking,' Dekelon said. 'Does this mean the Kingdom's support for the Saranah will dry up like one of our creeks in summer?'

Amemun thought quickly. 'There is no reason to think one battle will end the war.'

'That is exactly what you were thinking. And you did not answer my question.'

'The money will come, as promised. My own life is surety for that.'

'Exactly my thought,' Dekelon said slowly.

Amemun decided it was time to change the subject.

'Did Marin send any other news?'

Dekelon nodded. 'But it was not good news. The queen lost her baby.'

'Areava?'

'A daughter. Marin's granddaughter, as I understand it.'

'And the queen?' Amemun asked, his voice subdued.

'Marin says nothing of that.'

'Then she survived,' he said with certainty, breathing out a sigh of relief. So much of Marin's plan—their plan!—depended on Areava and Sendarus having a child. If Areava survived, they could try again.

'The message had another part,' Dekelon said carefully. 'Your king says it will bring you great sorrow.'

It was a moonless night. The Oceans of Grass ran away on either side of Amemun like a dark, waveless sea. The Saranah kept up a punishing pace, running at a strange half-lope that ate up the leagues. Up until tonight they had taken frequent breaks to allow Amemun to keep up, but tonight there were no breaks. Amemun, at the end of the line, was using all his energy keeping up with the dim shadow of the runner in front of him. He knew Dekelon was doing this to stop him from wallowing in his grief; in his own way, Dekelon was doing him a favour. But a kernel deep inside Amemun's heart knew the grief would wait. He was afraid it would be so great it might kill him.

Under the clear sky with its myriad stars, running in the great silent air of the great plains, Amemun found his mind drifting between memory and the present. There were times when he believed—knew as a fact—that Sendarus was still alive, and then the universe would wheel around and the weight of the truth would fill him with a pain he had never experienced before. The hardest part for Amemun—the wise counsellor, the patient teacher, the guardian of princes—was that although he knew Sendarus's death was a great tragedy, he could not yet comprehend it. He had never believed that there could exist something in the world that was so beyond his experience, beyond his knowing, and realising that something like that did exist made a mockery of all that he had learned and believed in.

I have become a hollow man, he thought. And then: No, not completely hollow.

Deep within he could feel a bright, terrible canker. He would live long enough to bring about the fall and destruction of those who had slain his beloved Sendarus.

Marin sat alone at the great table in the great stone hall of his palace at Pila. Servants hovered nearby, but never within range of the candlelight. They were like grey ghosts among the tapestries and doorways.

It was a cold night. Summer sometimes forgot to visit Pila high up in its mountainous roost. Marin thought cold lent a great clarity to the world: frost limned stonework and blade, snow revealed landscape, clouds of breath marked life. And cold suited sorrow, he thought; it matched the hard mind lost in grief.

He sneered at the invisible servants. They thought he was indulging himself. After a lifetime striving to improve the lot of his people and Kingdom, they could not stand the thought of him doing something for himself, even if it was self-pity.

He banged his goblet on the table. A servant scurried into view with a jug and poured him more wine, then scurried away again. Marin raised the goblet and silently toasted his dead son. He took a gulp, held the goblet up again and toasted his brother, Orkid, who was so far away. Another gulp, and one more toast. To Amemun, wherever he may be.

The night was four hours old when the column halted. Amemun sunk to the ground in relief, but a warrior found him and told him Dekelon wanted to see him immediately. He followed the warrior back to the van where Dekelon waited with a scout who was panting with exertion.

'You should hear this,' Dekelon said, and nodded to the scout.

'Outriders,' the scout gasped. 'About three leagues distant.'

'How can you see so far in the night?' Amemun asked skeptically.

'I can smell them,' the scout replied in a tone that suggested the answer should have been obvious.

'Which direction are they heading?' Dekelon asked.

'Northwest.'

'Any sign of a herd?'

'Droppings. It is not as large as the last clan's herd.'

Dekelon glanced at Amemun. 'It will be a hard run to catch up with them tonight. We follow them until daylight, rest up, then finish the pursuit tomorrow night.'

Amemun shook his head. 'We will run hard,' he said urgently. 'We will destroy this new clan tonight, and maybe tomorrow night we will find another one to take.'

Dekelon gazed steadily at Amemun, but in the dark he could not read the Amanite's expression. After a moment he grunted his agreement, and signed for the scout to lead them to their prey.

It was a wild run. Amemun, charged with a fierce anger, kept up with the Saranah column as it made its way across the Oceans of Grass. Their feet made a strange and muffled tattoo on the ground, one some of the enemy would hear but only wonder at. Scouts ranging ahead located the nearest outriders and killed them, then ran on until they found the main encampment. When the column caught up with them, the scouts spread out to locate the remaining outriders while Dekelon deployed his force. By the time everyone was in position the eastern sky was just starting to lighten. Dekelon stood and waved his javelin. As one, the Saranah stood, screamed their war cry and charged down on the camp.

Instead of waiting on the fringe of the group, this time Amemun charged with Dekelon. The first enemy he saw was a woman stumbling from the back of a wagon. He slashed at her midriff with his dagger and ran on. He stabbed a face that suddenly loomed before him, tripped over the body, smelled the blood that spurted over him. He scrabbled to his feet, ran around a whinnying horse with a dead rider slumped over its back and straight into a knot of men fighting with javelins and sabres; he drove the point of his dagger into the back of one of the fighters wearing a poncho, and as the Chett dropped grasped the sabre from his hand and used it to swipe at heads and limbs. In the darkness he could not be sure how many he injured, but the Chetts fell back in disorder from the sheer ferocity of his attack and were picked off one by one by pursuing Saranah.

All around him, shouts and screams rang out. He ran on, found himself in the middle of a corral formed by a circle of huts on wagons. In the middle was a large fire, its flames shooting into the sky from the fat it was eating off a body that had been thrown on it. He cut a square of hide from one of the huts and wrapped it around the sabre, dipped it into the fire and used the flaming brand to light all the other huts. A mad Chett woman charged him, swinging a sword over her head. He barely deflected the blow, the force of it making him fall back. He stumbled and fell but managed to hold up his sabre, catching the woman in the flank. She shrieked and ran off.

Winded, Amemun used his sabre as a prop to stand up. By the time he got his breath back the entire ring of huts was ablaze, sparks spinning in the air, creamy smoke curling into the sky. Shielding his face from the heat he broke through the ring. Shouts and screams were more distant now. He turned to follow them, but he had no more strength and his legs would not obey him. His arms slumped to his side and the sword slipped out of his grasp. The heat from the burning huts battered the skin on his face. He searched inside himself for the loss he felt at the death of Sendarus, and was dismayed to find it still there and just as strong.

When the sun rose Dekelon found the Amanite in the same spot. 'Are you alright?' he asked.

Amemun stared at him for a moment as if he did not know where he was. 'Yes,' he said eventually. 'Do you think we will find another clan tonight?'

Dekelon shrugged. 'I do not think so. They are rarely so close together.'

'The night after?'

'It is possible.'

'Good.' He bent over to pick up the sabre, admired its long, steel hardness. The body of a Chett warrior lay a few paces from him and he went over to it. An old man's face stared up into his own, blood caked around his eyes and mouth. For a second Amemun thought he was looking in a mirror. The thought seemed funny to him and he laughed as he undid the dead man's sword belt and sheath and strapped it around himself.

'I like this sabre,' he told Dekelon, and sheathed the sabre.

'You'll have a great need of it in the weeks to come.'

'Did any of the enemy escape?'

'I don't think so.'

Amemun nodded. He looked inside himself again. The pain was a little less, but it would need a great deal more blood before it went altogether.