‘Did he share the profits with you, Domi Tikume?’ Ehlana asked him.

‘What was that, Queen Ehlana?’ Tikume looked baffled.

Kring, however, laughed nervously and flushed just a bit.

Then Mirtai strode up to the carriage.

‘Is this the one?’ Tikume asked Kring.

Kring nodded happily. ‘Isn’t she stupendous?’

‘Magnificent,’ Tikume agreed fervently, his tone almost reverential. Then he dropped to one knee. ‘Doma,’ he greeted her, clasping both hands in front of his face.

Mirtai looked inquiringly at Kring.

‘It’s a Peloi word, beloved,’ he explained. ‘It means “Domi’s mate”.’

‘That hasn’t been decided yet, Kring,’ she pointed out.

‘Can there be any doubt, beloved?’ he replied.

Tikume was still down on one knee. ‘You shall enter our camp with all honours, Doma Mirtai,’ he declared, ‘for among our people, you are a queen. All shall kneel to you, and all shall give way to you. Poems and songs shall be composed in your honour, and rich gifts shall be bestowed upon you.’

‘Well, now,’ Mirtai said.

‘Your beauty is clearly divine, Doma Mirtai,’ Tikume continued, warming to his subject. ‘Your very presence brightens a drab world and puts the sun to shame. I am awed at the wisdom of my brother Kring in having selected you as his mate. Come straightaway to our camp, divine one, so that my people may adore you.’

‘My goodness,’ Ehlana breathed. ‘Nobody’s ever said anything like that to me.’

‘We just didn’t want to embarrass you, my Queen,’ Stragen told her blandly. ‘We feel that way about you of course, but we didn’t want to be too obvious about it.’

‘Well said,’ Ulath approved.

Mirtai looked at Kring with a new interest. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this, Kring?’ she asked him.

‘I thought you knew, beloved.’

‘I didn’t,’ she replied. Her lower lip pushed forward slightly in a thoughtful kind of pout. ‘But I do now,’ she added. ‘Have you chosen an Oma as yet?’

‘Sparhawk serves me in that capacity, beloved.’

‘Why don’t you go have a talk with Atan Engessa, Sparhawk?’ she suggested. ‘Tell him for me that I do not look upon Domi Kring’s suit with disfavour.’

‘That’s a very good idea, Mirtai,’ Sparhawk replied. ‘I’m surprised I didn’t think of it myself.’

CHAPTER 14

The town of Pela in central Astel was a major trading centre where merchants and cattle-buyers came from all parts of the empire to do business with the Peloi herders. It was a shabby-looking, unfinished sort of place. Many of its buildings were no more than ornate fronts with large tents erected behind them. No attempt had ever been made to pave its rutted streets, and the passage of strings of wagons and herds of cattle raised a cloud of dust that entirely obscured the town most of the time. Beyond the poorly-defined outskirts lay an ocean of tents, the portable homes of the nomadic Peloi.

Tikume led them through the town and on out to a hill-top where a number of brightly-striped pavilions encircled a large open area. A canopy held aloft by poles shaded a place of honour at the very top of the hill, and the ground beneath that canopy was carpeted and strewn with cushions and furs.

Mirtai was the absolute centre of attention. Her rather scanty marching clothes had been covered with a purple robe that reached to the ground, an indication of her near-royal status. Kring and Tikume formally escorted her to the ceremonial centre of the camp and introduced her to Tikume’s wife, Vida, a sharp-faced woman who also wore a purple robe and looked at Mirtai with undisguised hostility.

Sparhawk and the rest joined the Peloi leaders in the shade as honoured guests.

The face of Tikume’s wife grew darker and darker as Peloi warriors vied with each other to heap extravagant compliments upon Mirtai as they were presented to Kring and his purported bride-to-be. There were gifts and a number of songs praising the beauty of the golden giantess.

‘How did they find time to make up songs about her?’ Talen quietly asked Stragen.

‘I’d imagine that the songs have been around for a long time,’ Stragen replied. ‘They’ve substituted Mirtai’s name, that’s all. I expect there’ll be poems as well. I know a third-rate poet in Emsat who makes a fairly good living writing poems and love-letters for young nobles too lazy or uninspired to compose their own. There’s a whole body of literature with blank spaces in it that serves in such situations.’

‘They just fill in the blanks with the girl’s name?’ Talen demanded incredulously.

‘It wouldn’t really make much sense to fill them in with some other girl’s name, would it?’

‘That’s dishonest!’ Talen exclaimed.

‘What a novel attitude, Talen,’ Patriarch Emban laughed, ‘particularly coming from you.’

‘You aren’t supposed to cheat when you’re telling a girl how you feel about her,’ Talen insisted. Talen had begun to notice girls. They had been there all along, of course, but he had not noticed them before, and he had some rather surprisingly strong convictions. It is to the credit of his friends that not one of them laughed at his peculiar expression of integrity. Baroness Melidere, however, impulsively embraced him.

‘What was that all about?’ he asked her a little suspiciously.

‘Oh, nothing,’ she replied, touching a gentle hand to his cheek. ‘When was the last time you shaved?’ she asked him.

‘Last week sometime, I think – or maybe the week before.’

‘You’re due again, I’d say. You’re definitely growing up, Talen.’

The boy flushed slightly.

Princess Danae gave Sparhawk a sly little smirk.

After the gifts and the poems and songs came the demonstrations of prowess. Kring’s tribesmen demonstrated their proficiency with their sabres. Tikume’s men did much the same with their javelins, which they either cast or used as short lances. Sir Berit unhorsed an equally youthful Cyrinic Knight, and two blond-braided Genidians engaged in a fearsomely realistic mock axe-fight.

‘It’s all relatively standard, of course, Emban,’ Ambassador Oscagne said to the Patriarch of Ucera. The friendship of the two men had progressed to the point where they had begun to discard titles. ‘Warrior cultures almost totally circumscribe their lives with ceremonies.’