Mistress of the Empire (54 page)

Mara swallowed. ‘Do they have no courtesans in this land?’

Iayapa looked offended. ‘Only a few, in Darabaldi. Not many women choose that life, with no honor to their tribe. The young men may go to them once or twice a year, but that gives no comfort during long winter nights.’

Over the little herdsman’s head, Lujan and Saric exchanged glances. ‘Funny place, this,’ Saric muttered, again glancing sourly at the dung-littered ground upon which, it appeared, they must all wait out the night. These Thuril
thought nothing of stealing a girl or a woman from her home in a bloody raid. Even the most repressed Tsurani wife had the right to be heard in public by her Lord. ‘Barbaric indeed!’ Saric muttered. Then he shivered as a cold wind cut down off the heights. He glanced at his diminutive Lady, and admired the grit that enabled her to keep her dignity. That she should be bound, and handled, and treated no better than a slave by total strangers, made him furious enough to kill.

As if she read his thoughts, she turned to him that sweet smile which never failed to inspire loyalty and pride. ‘I will manage, Saric. Just keep that warrior cousin of yours from losing his temper over things that do not matter. For this’ – she raised her hands, still tied with rawhide strips – ‘and this’ – she scuffed her foot at the soiled ground – ‘are unimportant. The Assembly of Magicians would do worse. If I can speak to the Thuril High Chief at Darabaldi, that is all that must concern us.’

Then, as the gloom deepened, and tallow candles shed an orange glow behind the oiled-hide windows that fronted the square, she bent her head and appeared to be meditating as the priestesses of Lashima’s temple had taught her during a girlhood that now seemed far in the past.

Warmed by Saric and Lujan, pressed close, and protected from the cold and filthy ground by the cloak her Force Commander had insisted upon lending her, Mara awakened to a touch on her shoulder. The sleep of total exhaustion left her slowly. She blinked, stirred, and opened her eyes to darkness broken by a thin glow cast from the few windows still lighted across the square.

‘What is it?’ Her body was stiff, and aching with every bruise and sore she had gotten in the day’s long march.

‘One comes,’ Saric whispered, and then she, too, saw the cresset that weaved across the square.

The cloaked figure who carried it was a woman. She bobbed her head, but did not speak, to the sentry who guarded the pen. A token changed hands, a flash of carved shell reflected briefly by flame light.

Then, with a rich laugh, the sentry admitted her. She stepped into the livestock compound, her lantern held high over her hooded head. She scanned the rows of Mara’s warriors, roused from their rest, and banded together in wary defensiveness.

‘Lady of the Acoma?’ Her voice was gruff and rich, not that of a young woman, but one that had seen many years of life and laughter. ‘My Lord has relented, and says you may shelter for the night with your servant, in the hut with the unmarried women.’

‘Dare you trust her?’ Saric said in his Lady’s ear. ‘This could be a ploy to separate you.’

‘Well I know it,’ Mara whispered back. Then, loudly enough to be heard, she said, ‘If your intentions are honest, cut my bonds.’

The Thuril woman stepped closer with the torch, lighting a path for herself between Mara’s warriors. ‘But of course, Lady Mara.’ She reached inside her cloak with her free hand and removed a dagger.

Mara felt Lujan flinch taut against her at the sight of the bared blade. But with his hands tied, he could do little to defend her.

He watched in sick anxiety as the highland woman reached down and deftly cut the rawhide that bound the Lady’s hands.

Mara rubbed her wrists, forcing her face not to reflect her discomfort as the circulation returned to her cramped fingers. ‘Free my officers and my men also,’ she demanded imperiously.

The woman stepped back, sheathing the knife at her belt. ‘I may not, Lady Mara.’

‘Then I do not come,’ the Lady of the Acoma said icily in return.

The cloaked woman shrugged, indifferent. ‘Stay out here, then. But your servant girl has need of you. She will not stop shaking.’

Fury flowed through Mara. ‘Has Kamlio been hurt?’

Pride held the highland woman silent; and from the dark outside the ring of torchlight, Iayapa said, ‘Good Servant, you offer insult. This is the chieftain’s wife come to offer you better hospitality, and to imply harm to your serving girl is to give affront to all in this tribe. Her gesture of kindness is genuine, and I advise you to accept.’

Mara drew in an icy breath. It was all very well to allow these barbarians their own honor – but what of her own! To leave her warriors here in this dung pit shamed her as their Lady.

Saric felt her uncertainty through the contact of her body with his. ‘Lady,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I think you must trust her. We gave up our option to fight already. As prisoners, what can we do but chance the consequences of that earlier decision?’

At heart, Mara knew her adviser was correct. But the part of her that was born and raised Tsurani refused to yield so easily to such honorless practicality.

Lujan elbowed her gently in the ribs. ‘My Lady, do not worry for your warriors. They will sleep in this querdidra pen as an honor in your service, and if any complain of it, I will see him whipped as a man in need of toughening! I have brought my best soldiers as your guard into this land. Each of them had to prove himself to be here, and I expect them all to die on command if need be.’ He paused, and added wryly, ‘To lie in a little dung is a lot less painful than a trip at a sword’s point to Turakamu’s halls.’

‘True,’ Mara agreed, too sore and heartsick to raise a laugh at his attempted humor. To the torch-bearing woman
she said, ‘I will come.’ Stiffly she clawed her way to her feet. Her blistered soles stung as she stepped forward, and with an exclamation of sympathy, the chieftain’s wife reached and steadied her. Slowly Mara limped across the pen toward the gate that the sentries held open.

One of them commented in Thuril as she and the chief’s wife passed. The highland woman did not turn at his noise, but instead said something back in contempt. ‘Men!’ she confided to Mara in fluent Tsurani. ‘A pity it is that their brains are not as quick as their organs to rise when the occasion warrants cleverness.’

Surprised enough to have smiled, had she felt less miserable, Mara gave in to curiosity. ‘Is it true your people take their women to wife by stealing them from their families in a raid?’

The cloaked figure by her side turned her head, and Mara received the impression of a visage lined by hardship and amusement. ‘But of course,’ said the Thuril chief’s wife. Her tone was half laughter, and half blistering scorn. ‘Would
you
lie with a man who had not proven himself a skillful warrior, a man to make his enemies afraid, and a handy provider?’

Mara’s eyebrows arose. Tsurani girls, after all, sought the same qualities in a husband, even if they held different rites of courtship. The Lady of the Acoma had never thought to view a custom she had presumed barbarous in such a light. But in an alien way, this woman’s words made sense.

‘Call me Ukata,’ the chief’s wife said warmly. ‘And if I am sorry for anything, it is that it took me this long to drum sense into my silly husband’s head, to allow you reprieve from the cold!’

‘I have much to learn of your Thuril ways,’ Mara admitted. ‘By the talk of your warriors and your chief, I would have thought that women held little influence in this land.’

Ukata grunted as she assisted Mara up the low wooden steps of the centermost house in the square, a long, beamed hall with a thatched roof. The smoke from the chimney smelled of aromatic bark, and strange fertility symbols were scratched into the doorposts. ‘What men claim and what they actually are make different tales, as you must know at your age!’

Mara held her silence. She had been blessed with a husband who heard her as an equal, and a barbarian lover who had shown her the meaning of her womanhood; but she was not unfamiliar with the lot of others whose men held dominance over them. The most unfortunate were like Kamlio, helpless to gain influence over decisions that affected them; the best were formidable manipulators, like Lady Isashani of the Xacatecas. Men regarded her as the supreme example of the Tsurani wife, and yet neither Lord nor ally nor enemy had ever gotten the better of her.

Ukata raised the wooden latch and pushed open the door with a creak of hinges. Gold light washed out into the night, along with sweet smoke from the bark that burned in the stone fireplace. Mara followed the chief’s wife inside.

‘Here,’ said a kindly female voice, ‘take off those soiled sandals.’

Mara was stiff and slow to bend; hands pressed her into a wooden chair. There, accustomed as she was to cushions, she perched awkwardly while a girl with russet braids removed her footwear. The soft, woven carpet on the floor felt luxurious to her chilled toes. Weary enough to fall asleep where she sat, Mara fought to stay alert. She could learn a great deal about the Thuril people if these women were interested in talk. But listening to the burred accents, and seeing shy smiles among the unmarried maidens whose home she would share, Mara realised she lacked Isashani’s finesse when it came to gatherings among women. More at home with the politics of a clan meeting
and the seat of rulership, the Lady of the Acoma rubbed one blistered ankle and strove for the inspiration to cope.

She needed a translator. The unmarried girls at a glance all appeared to be under sixteen years of age, too young to have lived at the time of the last war and to have learned any Tsurani. Mara looked through the lamplit ring of faces until she located Ukata’s grey head; as she suspected, the chief’s wife seemed to be extricating herself for departure.

‘Wait, Lady Ukata,’ Mara called, giving the address her own people would award a woman of noble rank. ‘I have not properly thanked you for my rescue from the livestock pen, nor have I had the chance to tell your people why I am here.’

‘Thanks are not necessary, Lady Mara,’ Ukata replied, turning back. The youngest girl of the company gave way to allow their elder a clear path, until she stood before Mara’s chair. ‘Our people are not the barbarians that you Tsurani suppose. As a woman who has borne children and seen them die in battle, I understand why our men still hold your kind in hatred. As to why you are here, you may tell that to our high chief at Darabaldi.’

‘If I am allowed to be heard,’ Mara responded with a snap of acerbity. ‘Your men, you must admit, have short attention spans.’

Ukata laughed. ‘You will be heard.’ She patted the Tsurani Lady’s hand, her touch calloused but gentle. ‘I know the high chief’s wife. She is Mirana, and we were raised in the same village, before the raid in which she was taken to wife. She is tough as old rock, and garrulous enough to break the will of any man, even that meat-brains who is her husband. She will see that you are heard, or insult his manhood before his warriors until his sex parts wither from shame.’

Mara listened with startled surprise. ‘You seem very calm when you speak of the raids that take you from home and
family,’ she observed. ‘And do your husbands not beat you for saying uncomplimentary things of them?’

A flurry of questions from the young girls, and many cries of ‘Da? Da?’ followed Mara’s statement. Ukata gave in and translated. This raised a round of giggles, which quieted as the chief’s wife spoke again. ‘Raids to win wives are … formal … a custom in these lands, Lady Mara. They stem from a time when women were even more scarce than now, and a husband established his standing by the age when he successfully stole a wife. Nowadays women are carried off without bloodshed. There is much shouting and pursuit with terrible oaths and threats of retribution, but it is all for show. Once that was not so – the raids in past times were bloody and men died. Now a husband earns his accolades by how far afield he goes to bring home a mate, and how vigorously she was defended by her village. This house for unmarried girls lies deepest inside our defenses. But also, you will note, only girls of an age and an inclination to have a mate come to live here.’

Mara regarded the ring of young faces, smooth and unmarked yet by life. ‘You mean that all of you here
want
to be taken by strangers?’

At their look of blank incomprehension Ukata answered in their stead. ‘These youngsters watch the lads who visit the village, who spy in turn on the girls.’ With a smile she said, ‘If they deem a boy is lacking in grace, the girl will scream with conviction, instead of the mock shouts of fear, and the suitor so rejected will be chased away by the fathers of the village. But few young girls would wish to be left when the warriors come naked to raid. To be overlooked is to be considered ugly or blemished. If a girl is not stolen by a raider, the only way she may win a husband is to wait until two suitors come for the same girl, then throw herself on the back of the one who failed, and ride him home without being pushed off!’

Mara shook her head, mystified by such a strange custom. She had much to learn if she was to gain understanding enough to negotiate for help from these foreigners. Ukata added, ‘It is late, and you will be starting out early in the morning. I suggest you allow the girls to show you to a sleeping mat, and that you rest through the night.’

‘I thank you, Lady Ukata.’ Mara inclined her head in respect and permitted herself to be led into a small, curtained cubicle that served as sleeping quarters for Thuril girls. The floor was lined with furs, and the small oil lamp left burning showed a drift of yellow hair scattered amid the bedding. Kamlio lay there already, curled motionless on her side. Her fair skin showed no bruises. Relieved that Arakasi’s pretty courtesan had taken no harm, Mara gestured to the Thuril girl who lingered that her needs were met. Then, she gratefully slipped off her soiled robe. Clad in her thin silk underrobe, she crawled under the furs, and reached up to extinguish the lamp.