Maia (Beklan Empire 1)

n, all of two miles downstream from where we shall be crossing. Above Rallur, of course, they've covered every single ford. That's a good joke--we shan't be there!"

"You're sure of getting across, then?"

Her voice held little warmth, but his ardor and confidence took no account of this. He meant her to feel his own pride in the great victory in which he was about to take part. There would be no more doubt in her heart then.

"We've got Ortelgan ropes, brought here secretly. An advance party under the king himself will reach the ford about midnight. I shall be one of those with him. He's going to wade across with the first rope himself, and even he'll be up to his neck--over his ears in places, probably. Then we'll get two more ropes across. After that, we reckon the best part of a thousand men will be able to cross in an hour. They'll go straight upstream and destroy the Olmen bridge--it's only rough timber, of course. Then they'll stay there to stop the Beklans getting over the Olmen while the rest of the army crosses the Valderra. Even allowing for accidents, everyone should easily be across by mid-day tomorrow. By that time the Tonildan outpost downstream will have been completely destroyed--cut to pieces--and we'll go hell for leather for Bekla. The Leopard army will follow us, of course, but we can deal with that. We won't have to fight our way through them to get to Bekla, that's the point. It's sheer genius!"

Maia was about to reply but Zen-Kurel, his eyes alight with excitement, went on, "There's a general for you! Every man in the army would follow him anywhere! Now you'll understand, my dearest Maia, won't you, that it's not just some fiddling little business that I've got to leave you for? Until the meeting after supper I didn't know it was to be tonight. No one did. We've been waiting, you see, for the last few hundred Subans to arrive. But apparently this afternoon U-Nasada warned the king very seriously that the Suban camp was in such a filthy state that pestilence might break out at any moment. "And if that happens," he said, "you won't have an army at all. If it's the bad-water sickness, they'll just go down in cursing rows in a matter of hours--the Subans and your men as well." That decided the king: he made up his mind for tonight.

"The men are being told at this very minute. We're due to start in an hour. I'm supposed to be with the king now-- on instant call, anyway--but I came here to be with you. No one but you, Maia--believe me, no one in the world-- could have made me take a risk like that--my place with the king, my reputation, future, everything. Now do you realize how much I love you?"

She could find no words.

"But whether or not you believe in my love, my darling, there's no two ways about it, I must go now."

Hastily, he got out of bed and began dressing. "Wish me luck! Oh, the daggers! Never mind! Keep the lot!"

Dazedly, hardly knowing what she said, she asked, "But-- but how will you reach the river in the dark? The swamps--"

"The river? Why, it's not far from where we are now--over that way." He pointed. "Didn't you know? The woods screen it, else you could almost see it."

"But you said--downstream--"

"Yes, the crossing-place is about three miles downstream from here. There's a track. We've got guides posted along it already. Now kiss me, Maia; dear, darling Maia! I can't tell you how much I love you! I was going to kill ten Beklans: I'll make it twenty for you."

"Oh, Zenka, don't go! You'll be killed, I know it!"

He laughed. " 'Don't go!" What kind of talk's that, Miss Maia? You know I must."

"Oh, I love you, Zenka! I can't bear to let you go! I love you!"

"I love you, too. And this isn't the end; it's only the beginning, Maia, as far as we're concerned. Believe me, we'll meet again in Bekla, when Karnat's taken it; and I'll marry you, if only you'll have me. Will you? Will you marry me?"

"Yes--yes! Of course I will! I'll marry you and make you happy forever! I'd go anywhere, do anything for you!" She clung to him, weeping. "If only there wasn't to be the fighting--"

At that moment a distant trumpet sounded. Zen-Kurel, starting, thrust her quickly from his embrace. "O gods, the king! I never dreamt it was so late! The king'll be furious!"

Fumbling at the buckle of his belt, he ran out the door. The sound of his pelting footsteps receded and vanished, merging into the distant tumult of assembly that now reached her ears across the intervening meadows.

50: DESPERATION

Dressed once more, she stood in the doorway, gazing across the meadows faintly lit under the setting half-moon. In one or two houses, beyond the foot of the little slope, lamps were burning, but she could hear no voices and there was no one to be seen. The news, she supposed, had by now spread through Melvda, and almost everyone would be down at the camps, whence the first companies must already be on the point of leaving.

Below her she could see the Star Court and the faint, glinting line of the stream up which her boat had come that morning. The courtyard itself was lit by the smoky, orange light of pine torches, and people--black shapes against the flares--were appearing and disappearing, some walking, some running, but all moving purposefully in the same direction. The camp sites beyond were indistinguishable in a hazy distance of moonlit marsh-mist. Their fires, she thought, must all have been quenched. Even as she gazed she caught sight, far off, of a twinkling spray of sparks which vanished altogether on the instant--a bucket of embers, no doubt, flung into the stream. Yet there was little noise--only that same far-off muted commotion into which the sound of Zen-Kurel's footsteps had been swallowed. Probably the men had been ordered to keep silence as they formed up and marched off.

Those black figures moving against a background of leaping fire--they filled her with unease; with dread, in-deed. Where had she seen them before? In the gardens by the Barb? No, not that: no, something worse--worse. Suddenly, with a low cry of horror, she recalled crouching beside Pillan in the undergrowth as the Subans crept forward to attack the Tonildan patrol at the ford.

Now she saw again--dreadfully clearly--the staring eyes of the lad lying on his back beside the fire, the blood oozing through his hooked, clutching fingers: and the other--him, Sphelthon--the boy from Meerzat, crying for his mother. The sodden earth, the butcher smell. It would never leave her now; she was tainted with it forever.

Dizzy and nauseated, she clutched at the doorpost; then, burying her face in her hands, sank down on the step. She thought of the detachment of three hundred Tonildans downstream of Rallur; and of Karnat's troops crossing in the night, cutting them off from the Beklan army. "The Tonildan outpost downstream--they'll be completely destroyed--cut to pieces--cut to pieces--" Boys from Thettit, from Puhra, from Meerzat--

And Zenka, her beautiful lover, who had begged her to marry him--all warmth and ardor, a very gods' pattern of young manhood--one of the king's personal aides, in the thick of it, carrying the king's messages on the battlefield; what were his chances? She began to sob again, as much with frustration as with grief. She was helpless; a woman. A terrible vision of war--of a world defiled and desolated by separation, fear, wounds, death and bereavement-- opened before her inward eye. She beheld an infinity of waste, of mutilation and agony; of sobbing wives, mothers, children, their lives spoiled forever.

She tried to imagine three hundred men lying on the blood-soaked ground, each one crying like Sphelthon. "Destroyed--cut to pieces." How many people--how many women like herself knew what really happened--what it looked like--when men fought and pierced and killed one another?

After a time the intensity of her paroxysm began to subside. She stood up, leaning against the wall inside the doorway. Becoming aware of a voice, she realized that it was her own, emptily repeating aloud, "How many women? How many women?"

There came into her mind the memory of Gehta, the girl at the farm; Gehta walking beside her at dusk in the big, smooth-grazed meadow. The scent of the distant pines.

"If King Karnat makes for Bekla, dad's farm's slap in the way. I'm afraid--afraid--dad's farm's slap in the way--"

Passionately, she stood and prayed, arms extended, palms raised.

"If only I could stop it! O Lespa, I'd give anything to stop it, to save the Tonildans, to save my Zenka--"

Suddenly the goddess spoke in her heart. "Very well--"

Maia turned cold and faint with apprehension. She sank down, crouching on her knees.

"Lespa! Dear goddess, no, not that! That would be death! I can't do that! Not that!"

Afraid--afraid--afraid--the beating of her heart seemed jolting her body.

"Very well," replied the goddess. "Never ask me for anything again."

Going back into the bedroom Maia, having selected the dagger with the slimmest and sharpest blade, cut the coverlet into long strips. These she wound round her legs from ankle to knee, tucking the edges under at the top to hold the binding in place. After this she bound her upper arms in the same way from elbow to armpit. There was one strip left; this she threaded through the sheath of the dagger and then knotted it round her waist like a belt.

Two minutes later, having blown out the lamps and shut the door, she was making her way eastward across the outlying fields of Melvda towards the edge of the distant woodland beyond which lay the Valderra.

51: MAIA ALONE

At first the way, though rough and awkward, was clear enough. Her eyes adapted quickly to the half-darkness and she was able to keep a more-or-less straight course, looking up every minute or so at the black line of the trees against the night sky. As in the camps that afternoon, she continually came upon little streams and ditches, but now there were no bridges across them, makeshift or otherwise.

Stubbornly she clambered down and up, down and up, wading and scrambling until she was coated with mud from head to foot. Twice she passed through herds of cattle, the beasts looming suddenly out of the night, gathering about her inquisitively, breathing hard, plodding after her until at the next dyke she left them behind. Lonely sheds, too, she passed, and a ruined hovel, its bare rafters a lattice of blue-black squares against the night sky, with here and there a dim star twinkling through.

Were those the same woods in front of her, or had she unknowingly altered direction? She stood still, trying to hit upon something--anything--which might help her. Which way had the ditches been flowing?