Maia (78 page)

She nodded. "I'm sure enough."

Within the hour General Sendekar, roused from his bed in Rallur, was sitting beside Maia's as she told him of Karnat's crossing and the plan to destroy the Olmen bridge. After about ten minutes she fell back in a faint, but he had already heard enough.

Throughout the early hours of that night-the night of the 15th/16th Azith-King Karnat's army, supported by an auxiliary force of about two thousand Subans, marched in successive companies to the place downstream of Melvda-

Rain which, his Suban allies had advised the king, was feasible for a crossing. At this point the river was relatively broad and accordingly somewhat (though not a great deal) less swift and deep. Karnat himself, the strongest and tallest man in his own army, waded into the water with a rope paid out behind him, and carrying a forked pole with which to steady himself against the current. Twice he was swept downstream and pulled back to the western bank. At the third attempt he succeeded in crossing and securing the rope to a tree-trunk on the eastern side. Other ropes were then put across.

The rest of the spearhead force, consisting of about four hundred Terekenalters, two hundred Katrians and as many Subans under the command of Anda-Nokomis, their Ban, crossed in something less than two hours and at once set out upstream to destroy the bridge over the Olmen south of Rallur. Unexpectedly, they found it defended by two hastily assembled companies of Tonildans, whom they attacked vigorously, the king himself leading the assault. The Tonildans, however, were able to prevent the destruction of the bridge and, as the confused, nocturnal fighting continued, were reinforced by Beklan troops commanded by Sendekar in person. For a matter of some three hours the main Terekenalt army, to the south, continued their crossing of the Valderra in accordance with the king's original plan, he himself trusting that enough men would get over to enable him to drive back the Beklans and destroy the bridge. At length, however, realizing that with the unexpected loss of surprise success had slipped from his grasp, he sent back orders to Lenkrit to halt the crossing and withdraw across the Valderra. He himself, as the Beklans gradually gained the upper hand, defended his contracting bridgehead by a brilliantly-conducted fighting retreat which effectively discouraged the enemy from pressing home then-advantage, mauled as they were by one determined counterattack after another. During one of these Anda-Nokomis, who in leading his Subans had shown throughout the night a total disregard for his own safety, disappeared among the thick of the enemy, and when Karnat, arrived back at the crossing-point, re-formed his depleted force, remained unaccounted for.

The greater part of the Terekenalt army re-crossed to the west bank successfully, and losses among the king's spearhead troops turned out not to have been unduly heavy.

Among them, however, was the Katrian staff officer Zen-Kurel who, smarting under a stern rebuke from the king for having absented himself at Melvda until the army was on the very point of setting out, had been continually and recklessly taking part in one foray after another. Next morning a wounded tryzatt told the king of having seen the young man slip and go down on muddy, trampled ground, but in the half-darkness there had been much disorder and he could not tell what the end of it might have been.

Having grasped that the enemy were in full retreat across the river, Sendekar broke off the fighting, glad to see the back of them so cheaply. About two hours after dawn they cut the ropes, the king himself being the last man to cross.

There could be no doubt-as Sendekar emphasized in reporting to General Kembri-that the failure of the attack had been largely, if not entirely, due to the courage and resourcefulness of the Tonildan slave-girl Maia of Serre-lind, who, alone and entirely without help among the enemy at Melvda-Rain, had not onry succeeded in discovering their plans but had thereupon escaped, swum the impassable Valderra by night-an all-but-incredible feat, in the course of which she had sustained severe injuries- and brought warning to Rallur in the nick of time. In the circumstances he had thought it only fitting to order the news of her heroism to be proclaimed throughout the army.

It was not often that Selperron-a merchant of Kabin- came up to Bekla. Indeed, he had done so only twice before in his life; once as a youth, together with his parents, though that, of course, had been many years ago now, and in the same of Senda-na-Say. Selperron was a dealer in oxhides and other animal skins, though he was also not above such side-lines as river shells and the plumes marketed by the Ortelgan forest hunters. For some time past business had been improving. Apart from the buoyant state of the market, however, his elder son was now of an age to be useful in the business, while his second wife (for Selperron had been widowed some four years before) was a brisk, competent woman, as good as a man when it came to dealing with customers and reckoning profit and loss.

For the first time in years, therefore, he had felt able, this summer, to afford time and money for a trip to Bekla, leaving the business in safe hands. It should not, in fact, prove an unduly expensive jaunt (unless he were to make it so), since he had arranged to stay with an old friend, one N'Kasit, a Kabinese in the same line of business, who had rather unexpectedly uprooted himself and gone to Bekla four years before. N'Kasit had been fortunate enough to obtain from General Kembri a contract (though not a monopoly) to supply leather to the army, and was now doing well. Selperron had sent him consignments of hides at profit, for Bekla's selling prices were higher than Ka-bin's; and N'Kasit, during a visit home the year before, had suggested that Selperron should himself accompany his next consignment up to Bekla. Selperron had felt attracted by the idea; and now, in short, the trip had really come about.

The journey, in a convoy of ox-cart carriers, slave-gangers and their wares, three or four other travelers like himself and the usual half-company of soldiers for protection (who cost far too much, but it was that or nothing), had been somewhat wearisome. Once, he might rather have enjoyed it, but Selperron had now reached a time of life (and fortune) when he preferred comfort and good food, and somehow the inns along the road had not proved all that he seemed to remember. Among the slaves there had been a girl who wept continually, and this, too-being

a kindly and impressionable man-he had found a trial.

Once they reached Bekla, however, he had at once felt all the fascination and excitement of earlier days. At the first, distant sight of the slender, balconied towers, the Peacock Wall extending above the lower city and the Palace of the Barons crowning the Leopard Hill beyond, his spirits had soared. Coming in through the Blue Gate, he had been delighted by the tumult and crowds all about him. Forgoing a jekzha-for he fancied the idea of stopping as he pleased to look around him-he had hired a lad with a barrow for his baggage-roll and strolled beside him along the streets, noting not so much the buildings, or even the Tamarrik Gate and the temple, as the goods displayed for sale and the trafficking at the shops and stalls. Merely to see brisk business going on and things being bought and sold gave pleasure to Selperron, and by the time he reached N'Kasit's house, near the western clock tower, he was in even better humor and more than ready to reciprocate his friend's greetings and polite inquiries after his family and old acquaintances in Kabin. The first evening they had dined at home, after which Selperron had slept long and comfortably, undisturbed by any night-sounds of the city.

And now here they were together, idling on a midsummer day, taking their leisure and seeing the sights, the sun pleasantly warm on their backs and the city babble and savors and throngs all around them as they sauntered up the Kharjiz towards Storks Hill and Masons Street. On the bridge over the Monju Brook N'Kasit stopped and they leaned side by side over the parapet, looking upstream to where the water ran glittering round the curve at the base of the Tower of the Orphans. Further down in their direction was a little garden, and here a weeping willow overhung the stream, its branches forming a kind of watery arbor as they trailed in the slack current.

"Did you do well this last Melekril?" asked Selperron after a time. He spoke with appropriately off-hand diffidence-a blend between the natural interest of a business associate and a friend wishing to seem politely but not unduly inquisitive.

"That's-well-quite a difficult question to answer, even two or three months after," replied N'Kasit. "As things have turned out, I'm still overstocked. It's a damned nui-

sance having money tied up in stuff that's been on my hands as long as this."

"Well," answered Selperron, "one beauty of our line of business is that at least stock doesn't go bad on you. That market-girl over there's got to sell her fruit quick, but you and I can always hang on to hides and wait for our return."

"Normally, yes," said N'Kasit, "and as a rule, if a proportion of Melekril stock's not been taken off my hands before the spring festival I'm not much troubled; but this time I was fully expecting to be robbed and possibly murdered into the bargain."

Selperron stared and shook his head, looking suitably concerned. "We heard all kinds of rumors in Kabin, but thank Cran everything stayed quiet enough down there."

"You should just have been up here, then," replied N'Kasit. "After the murder of the High Counselor that night, no one knew what to expect. People were burying their valuables and even sending their wives and children away-those who could afford to. A lot of them were expecting another revolution, like the time when Senda-na-Say was killed."

"But of course it didn't come to that," replied Selperron.

"No: but there was a fair amount of robbery and looting, you see, and some people were saying it must have been organized. And then not long after the murder Santil-ke-Erketlis came out against Bekla, and young Elleroth joined him from Sarkid. So we didn't know but what there mightn't be some sort of heldro bunch organizing trouble here in the city-just as Fornis's supporters did before she came up from Dari getting on for eight years ago. I don't mind telling you, I was scared. There simply weren't enough soldiers here, you see; most of them had just left for the Valderra. I asked for an armed guard for the warehouse, but I never got a man. Think of it-forty or fifty thousand melds' worth of portable stock and only me and a night-watchman! I slept there myself for three or four nights- me and my man Malendik. We had one sword and a knife between us, that's all. But nothing came of it, thank the gods; and as I was saying, about half the stock's still there now, waiting to be sold. Well, it's no good worrying."

Wandering on down the Kharjiz, they came to the foot of Storks Hill and then to the edge of the temple precinct and the Tamarrik Gate beyond. Here they stopped to watch Fleitil and his men on their scaffolding, putting the finishing

touches to big-bellied Airtha of the Diadem, while below, a painter was beginning his task of coloring the relief panels round the plinth, which depicted the seven beatific acts of the goddess. Selperron wondered what proportion of the taxes he had paid last year might have gone into the gold leaf of the goddess's cloak, her jeweled nipples and the silver wire braiding her hair. He himself was not much in favor of spending public money on this kind of thing, but maybe such civic splendors were indirectly good for business-who could tell?

"They say Santil's got all of two thousand men under arms in the Chalcon hills," said N'Kasit after a time.

"I suppose he would have, counting Elleroth's lot," answered Selperron. "But surely that's nowhere near enough to bother the Leopards, is it? After all, he can't really do more than lurk about in Chalcon, playing tip-and-run. He couldn't even consider trying to take Thettit, for instance."

"Maybe not," said N'Kasit. "But all the same, the Leopards have got to take
some
notice of him, haven't they? Kembri's had to drop his idea of attacking Karnat in Suba, I know that. Thettit's been garrisoned, you know, and that takes men away from the Valderra for a start."

"Was anyone ever arrested for the murder?" said Selperron.

N'Kasit shook his head. "That's the extraordinary thing. Of course, there were hundreds of people coming into the upper city all that afternoon and evening-guests and so on-and I suppose the surveillance at the gate can't have been as strict as usual. After the murder, of course, the whole place was searched from end to end, but there wasn't anyone who couldn't account for themselves."

Selperron chuckled. "That High Counselor-he was basting one of his girls in a boat, or something, wasn't he? A black girl, didn't I hear?"

"Yes, that's right. They had her into the temple for questioning, and that's the last I remember hearing about her. But if they've put her to death it certainly wasn't in public, so I suppose they must have decided she wasn't involved. She was rumored to be some sort of witch or sorceress, I remember hearing. Quite a lot of the young bloods in the upper city were very taken with her at one time; but that was last year. Once the temple got hold of her she just vanished; dead, for all I know. Anyway, no one's any nearer the truth about the murder."

"There've been arrests in Kabin, you know," said Sel-perron. "Eight or nine since the spring, and more than that in Tonilda and north Yelda, so I heard: people who've been acting as messengers between heldro barons and so on."

"They're contenting themselves with arresting little people because they can't spare troops to tackle the bigger ones," said N'Rasit, "that's about the size of it. They'll bring them up here and execute them and hope that'll damp the heldril down until they can spare more troops from the Valderra and mount an expedition against Er-ketlis in Chalcon."
'

They turned up Storks Hill, N'Kasit heading for the Caravan Market and "The Green Grove," for he was prosperous enough to be able to afford the best class of tavern, and anxious to show as much to his friend.

"All the same, no great loss, Sencho, was he?" asked Selperron in a cautious undertone, as they came within sight of the colonnade. "He was a foul brute, by all accounts."

"That's true enough, but all the same he's a loss to us, as merchants," said N'Kasit. He grinned sideways at Selperron. "Why not admit it? He only did what we'd all like to do. Wasn't it only last night you were talking about Beklan shearnas and saying you wouldn't mind meeting a nice one?"

"I wouldn't, either," replied Selperron. "Beautiful girls, some of them, a captain of the guard in Kabin was saying only the other day. He told me they-"

"Yes, but the really good ones are impossibly expensive," broke in N'Kasit. "Upper city stuff, you know, and inclined to be choosy with it even then. Sencho didn't bother with shearnas, though. Bought his own girls and kept them for himself."

Selperron fell silent. The truth was that he did indeed take a keen interest in girls, but in a somewhat less carnal way than his friend supposed. To him they were less a means of gratification than one of the most delightful forms of beauty, like jewels or flowers. His head was often turned, but he seldom went further, and in his memory certain girls whom he had never actually possessed tended to stand out as vividly as those he had.

"So a lot of your last year's stock's still in the ware-

house?" he asked, to change the subject. "Do you think the army'll buy it off you soon?"

N'Kasit wrinkled his nose and spat in the dust, "Well- they've given me an advance to secure it, though not nearly as much as I was hoping for. The trouble is, as I was telling you, that the Lord General was expecting a hard summer's campaign in Suba, with quite a bit of wear and tear. There'd have been reinforcements to equip and so on. But as things turned out, Karnat moved first, and Kembri and Sendekar were lucky not to be taken completely by surprise. Amazing thing, that; all on account of one girl, acting entirely on her own. You heard, of course? She saved Bekla, did that lass, nothing less. Saved us all."

"Yes, everyone's been talking about it in Kabin," replied Selperron. "Tonildan girl, isn't she? I know she swam across the river and brought news of the attack in time for Sendekar to put paid to it, but there's a lot I don't really understand. I mean, what was she doing in Suba in the first place, and how did she come to find out about Karnat's plans at all?"

"Nobody knows," answered N'Kasit. "Whatever it was, they've kept that part of it very quiet-the Leopards, I mean. I've got a customer I'm on fairly close terms with, a wine-merchant called Sarget, who's done so well that he actually lives in the upper city now, and he told me that even up there no one really knows. All he could say was that the girl belonged to Sencho at the time he was murdered and she was in the gardens with him the night he was killed-she and the black girl. They were both taken to the temple for questioning, but somehow or other she escaped and actually managed to get as far as Suba-"

"By herself? I don't believe it!"

"Nobody knows whether she had any help or not. All that's known is that she happened to be in Suba."

"She must have had something to do with the murder, don't you think, and been trying to clear out of the empire altogether; to Katria or somewhere like that?"

"Well, that's what anybody would have thought, I suppose; but what happens then? Somehow or other she finds out that the Terekenalt army's going to cross the Valderra at a place Sendekar hasn't got guarded. In the middle of the night, she finds her way alone to the Suban bank of the Valderra and proceeds to swim it. Well, that's not just heroism; that's a basting miracle. No one, man or woman,

could swim it; it's a raging torrent for miles above and below Rallur. Even the soldiers who pulled her out couldn't believe she'd swum it; they thought she must be an Urtan girl who'd been trying to make away with herself."

"But
had
she swum it, then?"

"She
must
have, because she knew about Karnat's plan. That's why Sendekar was able to drive him back across the river: otherwise he might very well have reached Bekla in three days. He'd have had complete surprise, you see."

"Well, perhaps she
did
mean to get out of the empire in the first place, but then, somehow or other, she happened to find out the Terekenalt plan and saw it as a chance to make her fortune."