They could not ride through the Kharsaanu Saquutu on the path that Eigou had chosen, not with the many branches that hung low enough to knock a mounted person from their horse’s back. It slowed their progress considerably, but the boughs above were densely packed enough that the undergrowth was relatively manageable. For all their endurance on the backs of their horses, Shir Del and Roshanak clearly felt the long walk far more intensely, bowed legs and long, narrow feet ill-suited to such a trek. Ilati suspected that part of their quiet was discomfort from being hemmed in on all sides by trees as well. For children of the silver-grass steppes, this place no doubt seemed unnatural.
A hush lingered around them, even the clopping of hooves softened by the thick layer of loam and needles underfoot. The perfume of cedar filled their senses, sweet and clean. Breezes rustled in the branches high above as a gentle susurrus of needles and soft birdsong still filtered down alongside the patches of sun sculpted by the branches. The peace of the place soothed some of Ilati’s fears like Eigou’s healing balms.
Ilati struggled to imagine a man like Ilishu striding down a forest path, every inch a king even as a boy, with combating a great beast on his mind. Ilati wondered if he had stopped to observe the beauty of the place he would one day order logged for its wealth. Had he run his fingers over the rough bark and brought fingers away sticky from aromatic sap? Had he smelled the red-brown needles crushed underfoot and the clean scent of sweet waters flowing as little streams through the forest like silver threads in a tapestry? Had he, for an instant, thought of anything except conquest and domination? Was there once a wondering boy there or only the hardened old man she had known?
“You are being very quiet, Ilati,” Menes observed. The two of them were at the rear, since Shir Del and Eigou had taken the lead and Roshanak was most protected in the middle.
“Just letting my thoughts turn.” The priestess heard Shir Del snapping at Eigou by tone, even without catching the words. The press of trees and bushes was getting to the warrior woman after several days of travel. “This place is so strange.”
“After the desert and grasslands of Kullah, I agree. It reminds me of home.” Menes spoke with a wistful hint in his voice.
Ilati cocked her head slightly in question. “I thought Magan was rocks and desert.”
“It is, but I spent my boyhood south of that kingdom. I was not taken into the King’s service until I had seen ten summers in the place of my birth, Kashta.” Menes smiled fondly, taken back to some halcyon days. “It is a place thick with broad-leaved trees and rain, mists and red clay. There is not one great river, but many, and lakes, all rimmed with great banks of tangled roots. I used to fish amongst them, sitting in a canoe made of a tree so large a man could not link his arms around it, the center burned out and the wood carved to suit, while my older brothers herded cattle. Flowers like you have never seen bloomed everywhere. I remember my mother collecting them for my sisters and nieces…” He trailed off, a shadow passing over his joy.
“Why did you leave?” Ilati asked gently.
“You must understand, Ilati, that Magan has a great hunger for many things from the south: hardwoods and ivory, incense and gold. They invaded when I was a boy, destroying much and stealing more, including many of its people. Some would work in the construction of their magnificent monuments or serving their people. I was strong even then, strong enough to learn the soldier’s life. My brother Tebeb and I were pressed into service. We did not see our family again, not after Araka.”
The priestess felt a sympathetic ache in her chest. She was all too familiar with that feeling. “What became of Tebeb?”
“A spear to the stomach,” Menes said quietly. “He was older. He had to challenge them, prove he was still a man of Kashta, to honor the blood of ancestors demanding revenge. I took the coward’s path and bear the name of Magan to prove it.”
Ilati put a hand on Menes’s arm and squeezed gently. “What did your father name you?” she asked quietly.
He offered her a small smile, but his gaze did not rise from below hers. “In Kashta, it is the mothers who name, for the child could be any man’s but is most certainly hers. I was closer to her brothers than my father.”
“So, what did she name you?”
“Zenabu.” Menes spoke the name with a hint of shame still lingering. “It is the name of the rain-spirit that brings new life.”
Ilati squeezed his arm again gently before letting go. “You could wear that name again. We are not in Magan and you are free of those bonds.”
The charioteer shook his head. “It is a good name for the boy who grew playing on the lake, far from every thought of war, but men outgrow such things.”
Her heart ached for her friend. “Perhaps they will meet again, the man of war and the boy playing on the lake.”
“I wonder what he would think of me,” Menes said quietly.
“Ho there!” an unfamiliar voice called out ahead on the small path. “Is that Master One-Eye I see?”
Ilati caught a flash of bronze above their heads, a raised spear’s head gleaming in one of the falling beams of sunlight through the branches. Her stomach knotted. In a move more instinctive than considered, she put a hand on her quiver, but the sound of Eigou’s laughter tempered her caution. As strange as the sorcerer was, she doubted he would be so welcoming to an enemy.
The path widened slightly ahead into a small clearing, which allowed them to move their horses out into a less cramped space. Shir Del pushed Roshanak up into the saddle before turning to face the new arrival. The movement allowed Ilati and Menes to see several guards with wicker shields and bronze-tipped spears greeting Eigou, led by a man whose breastplate gleamed like gold in the sun's light. He wore no purple, but carried himself with confidence that seemed to bolster the surrounding men. The stranger’s beard came to a sharp point, carefully trimmed and oiled in accordance with Sarru’s style.
“Ah, Captain, what an unexpected delight!” Eigou embraced the man fondly, squeezing his vambraces. “You are a ways from the palace, my friend.”
“And you are not far from trouble, I am certain. I hope you are returning to Ulmanna. The great king will be most pleased to see his most honest soothsayer.”
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Eigou grinned at that, a familiar mischievous twinkle in his good eye. “Will he now? A change in tune.”
“Well, you know how he is. Nor do you help by speaking truth to all and then fleeing the consequences of displeasure, not that I blame you.” The captain shrugged expressively and then looked over the rest of them, his own smile still in place even when confronted with the wariness of Shir Del and Ilati both. “You have such interesting companions every time I see you, Eigou, but your rudeness persists in not introducing them.”
“Of course.” The sorcerer cleared his throat. “May I introduce the deadly Shir Del and her delightful daughter Roshanak? They hail from the sea of silver grasses, Sut Resi who have graciously aided us on our path. The man of Magan with us is Menes, a charioteer, and the young lady with him is my granddaughter, Hedu.”
Ilati understood by his introduction that she was not to use her real name while in Ulmanna, which made sense given how many scribes and tradesmen went to Kullah to learn cuneiform, particularly from royal court to royal court. She was much more likely to be identified, though the scars on her face would do much to conceal her visage.
“A pleasure,” the soldier said with a courtly bow. “Now allow me to correct my own poor manners. I am Kulziya, son of Prince Duhusili, Captain of the Royal Guard.”
Ilati raised an eyebrow despite herself. “King Tudhaliya sends his brother’s son out into the woods with only a small guard?”
Kulziya grinned. “Hardly a favorite nephew. My late father was most unpopular with his older brother, and as the son of a slave concubine, I enjoy the privileges of station without the odious responsibilities. It is so much easier to simply follow orders.”
“Orders that brought you here, I imagine,” Eigou said more thoughtfully.
“It is so,” Kulziya confirmed, leaning his spear against his shoulder. It was clear he found them no threat, or at least trusted Eigou. “The King had a strange dream that he made known to all who might interpret it: a red star rising in the East. A few days ago, a huntsman saw your group at the edge of your forest and told the guard. When he gave his description of the bandits, well, you are hard to miss, Eigou. I assumed the two were connected and came this way myself.”
“Leaving your post?” The sorcerer clucked his tongue. “For shame.”
Kulziya shrugged, still clearly amused. “To please the great king by returning with you is surely worth the inconvenience of him having to bellow at another for a while. Shall we camp and speak in the clearing? The sun grows nearer to the horizon with every breath and it is not wise to move through the forest in the dark.”
Eigou nodded and started to continue down the path in the direction where Shir Del and Roshanak waited. “I am most eager to hear the situation in Ulmanna.”
Ilati glanced over at Menes, who shrugged and relaxed. She let her fingers fall away from her quiver, limping after the group. Days of walking were much harder on her healing leg than riding was. Youtab followed behind her, never far away. The mare needed no lead or reins to follow, just as Araka and Thriti shadowed their respective riders. Even with the strange beauty of the forest all around, Ilati grew homesick for open fields, vast marshes, and though it was perhaps odd, even the endless expanse of the Desert of Kings.She had never set foot beyond Kullah before and the thought that she might never return to it troubled her more than it probably should have.
Kulziya’s eight soldiers tromped along behind them, spreading out and quickly raising tents in the clearing. They kept their distance from Shir Del, Roshanak, and Ilati. The priestess imagined their hesitance came from her style of dress, not very different from a Sut Resi warrior, though she did not expose a breast the way Shir Del did. Ilati was not going to correct them, not until Eigou said it was safe to do so. The forest already was starting to grow dark as evening set in, so they hurried through setting up camp.
The Captain made no move to hide his curiosity about Ilati as he sat down with them at Eigou’s fire. “I did not realize you had a granddaughter, Eigou.”
“Much of my intent,” Eigou said airily. “Why should a girl be exposed to such dangers as the court of Ulmanna, hmm?”
Kulziya chuckled, stroking his beard. “Those scars say she is no stranger to danger.”
“There are many kinds of danger. Some are much more easily navigated. I preferred she enjoy her innocence while she could.” Eigou’s lies were smooth as silk and easily stomached as honey, for Kulziya seemed to swallow them without any suspicion. “Now tell me, how does the great king fare?”
The soldier shrugged, glancing back at his men. “Do you want his words or mine?”
“You know the answer to that, my friend,” Eigou said.
“He does not have much longer under the sun.” Kulziya seemed blunter now, almost jarringly so after his jovial bearing earlier. “His illness consumes him and he coughs up the very life-blood that drowns him, though he is too stubborn to die just yet. Hattusa mourns him already and Zidanta counts the days until he is free of his father’s shackles to murder his brother and claim the throne. Meanwhile, Sarhad slavers like a hound at the thought of the war to come.”
Their sorcerer’s eyes narrowed. “Sarhad?”
“Ah, forgive me. An emissary from Nadar arrived in your absence, a commander named Sarhad. We have permitted him a sizable honor guard in the city, but the bulk of his ‘escort’ waits outside the borders in the form of a force designed to test us. He has attempted to wring tribute from the great king with the threat of a fate alike to Kullah’s as his cudgel, but King Tudhaliya is stubborn as a mule and the King of Serpents has not made an overt move.”
“Has he courted the favor of the princes?” Eigou’s tone sharpened as he spoke, clearly turning the situation over in his mind.
Kulziya smiled humorlessly. “Of course. Hattusa placates him as best he can without committing to anything that might anger his father. He has no desire for Ulmanna to suffer for the sake of his pride. As for Zidanta…he spends much time in the company of Sarhad, but what they discuss on their hunts is as unknown to you as to me. Whoever wins the struggle of brother against brother will have to answer to Sarhad, a position the serpent enjoys overmuch.”
“You do not like him,” Menes commented as he placed their cookpot over the fire and began adding plants that Eigou had told him to gather along the way.
Kulziya shrugged expressively, spreading his hands wide. “He is a man of excellent manners, but his blood flows with the cold of a serpent’s. As any good Nadaren commander, I suppose. They say his battle standard is the flayed body of one who has insulted him, changing as each begins to rot. How his patience has borne Tudhaliya’s tongue is beyond me.”
Eigou glanced towards Ilati for a split second, golden eye flashing in the firelight.
The priestess pursed her lips for a moment before speaking, trying not to think of Shadi. “He knows that he will have the last laugh at your king’s expense.”
The Captain studied her scarred visage for a long moment, clearly trying to place something about her. “We will see. Sarru threw off the yoke of one King of Kings. We can do it again.”
Ilati closed her eyes, trying not to think of the army that had swarmed Shadi. The reek of blood and smoke filled her nose all the same. She doubted Kulziya would be so confident if he knew that the eastern armies were likely already bearing west, sweeping up from the plains and back across their mountain passes, headed for Ulmanna through their friendly territory like a sea of demons. They were so many that their fires could blot out the stars, and you think you can simply turn them back alone?
Perhaps the gods of Ulmanna would be more merciful than the gods of Shadi, and destroy the city themselves before the Nadaren could unleash their own hell.