Her first step was to depopulate the palace. Everybody had to join her entourage. The queen needed ladies-in-waiting. The ladies-in-waiting needed maids. They all needed grooms and footmen. Lenda and Platime, who were to remain in Cimmura to maintain the government, were left almost unassisted.

‘Looks almost like an army mobilising, doesn’t it?’ Kalten said gaily as they came down the palace stairs on the morning of their departure.

‘Let’s hope the Archprelate doesn’t misunderstand,’ Ulath murmured. ‘He wouldn’t really believe your wife was planning to lay siege to the Basilica, would he, Sparhawk?’

Once they left Cimmura, the gaily-dressed Elenian Court stretched out for miles under a blue spring sky. Had it not been for the steely glint in the queen’s eyes, this might have been no more than one of those ‘outings’ so loved by idle courtiers. Ehlana had ‘suggested’ that Sparhawk, as acting preceptor of the Pandion Order, should also be suitably accompanied. They had haggled about the number of Pandions he should take with him to Chyrellos. He had held out at first for Kalten, Berit and perhaps one or two others, while the queen had been more in favour of bringing along the entire order. They had finally agreed upon a score of black-armoured knights.

It was impossible to make any kind of time with so large an entourage. They seemed almost to creep across the face of Elenia, plodding easterly to Lenda and then southeasterly toward Demos and Chyrellos. The peasantry took the occasion of their passing as an excuse for a holiday, and the road was usually lined with crowds of country people who had come out to gawk. ‘It’s a good thing we don’t do this very often,’ Sparhawk observed to his wife not long after they had passed the city of Lenda.

‘I rather enjoy getting out, Sparhawk.’ The queen and princess Danae were riding in an ornate carriage drawn by six white horses.

‘I’m sure you do, but this is the planting season. The peasants should be in the fields. Too many of these royal excursions could cause a famine.’

‘You really don’t approve of what I’m doing, do you, Sparhawk?’

‘I understand why you’re doing it, Ehlana, and you’re probably right. Dolmant needs to be reminded that his authority isn’t absolute, but I think this particular approach is just a little frivolous.’

‘Of course it’s frivolous, Sparhawk,’ she admitted quite calmly. ‘That’s the whole point. In spite of all the evidence he’s had to the contrary, Dolmant still thinks I’m a silly little girl. I’m going to rub his nose in “silly” for a while. Then, when he’s good and tired of it, I’ll take him aside and suggest that it would be much easier on him if he took me seriously. That should get his attention. Then we’ll be able to get down to business.’

‘Everything you do is politically motivated, isn’t it?’

‘Well not quite everything, Sparhawk.’

They stopped briefly in Demos, and Khalad and Talen took the royal couple, Kalten, Danae and Mirtai to visit their mothers. Aslade and Elys mothered everyone impartially. Sparhawk strongly suspected that this was one of the main reasons his wife quite often found excuses to travel to Demos. Her childhood had been bleak and motherless, and anytime she felt insecure or uncertain, some reason seemed to come up why her presence in Demos was absolutely necessary. Aslade’s kitchen was warm, and its walls were hung with burnished copper pots. It was a homey sort of place that seemed to answer some deep need in the Queen of Elenia. The smells alone were enough to banish most of the cares of all who entered it.

Elys, Talen’s mother, was a radiant blonde woman, and Aslade was a kind of monument to motherhood. They adored each other. Aslade had been Kurik’s wife, and Elys his mistress, but there appeared to be no jealousy between them. They were practical women, and they both realised that jealousy was a useless kind of thing that never made anyone feel good. Sparhawk and Kalten were immediately banished from the kitchen, Khalad and Talen were sent to mend a fence, and the Queen of Elenia and her Tamul slave continued their intermittent education in the art of cooking while Aslade and Elys mothered Danae.

‘I can’t remember the last time I saw a queen kneading bread-dough,’ Kalten grinned as he and Sparhawk strolled around the familiar dooryard.

‘I think she’s making pie-crusts,’ Sparhawk corrected him.

‘Dough is dough, Sparhawk.’

‘Remind me never to ask you to bake me a pie.’

‘No danger there,’ Kalten laughed. ‘Mirtai looks very natural, though. She’s had lots of practice cutting things – and people – up. I just wish she wouldn’t use her own daggers. You can never really be sure where they’ve been.’

‘She always cleans them after she stabs somebody.’

‘It’s the idea of it, Sparhawk,’ Kalten shuddered. ‘The thought of it makes my blood run cold.’

‘Don’t think about it then.’

‘You’re going to be late, you know,’ Kalten reminded his friend. ‘Dolmant only gave you a week to get to Chyrellos.’

‘It couldn’t be helped.’

‘Do you want me to ride on ahead and let him know you’re coming?’

‘And spoil the surprise my wife has planned for him? Don’t be silly.’

They were no more than a league southeast of Demos the next morning when the attack came. A hundred men, peculiarly dressed with strange weapons, burst over the top of a low knoll bellowing war-cries. They thundered forward on foot for the most part; the ones on horseback appeared to be their leaders.

The courtiers fled squealing in terror as Sparhawk barked commands to his Pandions. The twenty black-armoured knights formed up around the queen’s carriage and easily repelled the first assault. Men on foot are not really a match for mounted knights.

‘What’s that language?’ Kalten shouted.

‘Old Lamork, I think,’ Ulath replied. ‘It’s a lot like Old Thalesian.’

‘Sparhawk!’ Mirtai barked. ‘Don’t give them time to regroup!’ She pointed her blood-smeared sword at the attackers milling around at the top of the knoll.

‘She’s got a point,’ Tynian agreed.

Sparhawk quickly assessed the situation, deployed some of his knights to protect Ehlana and formed up the remainder of his force.

‘Charge!’ he roared.

It is the lance that makes the armoured knight so devastating against foot-troops. The man on foot has no defence against it, and he cannot even flee. A third of the attackers had fallen in the initial assault, and a score fell victim to the lances during Sparhawk’s charge. The knights then fell to work with swords and axes. Bevier’s lochaber axe was particularly devastating, and he left wide tracks of the dead and dying through the tightly packed ranks of the now-confused attackers.