and she coughed deep from her lungs as they passed where Diana stood. Mud sucked and squelched under the hooves of the horses.
Then Diana saw the king. He could be nothing else. Even brown with mud, his surcoat glinted with gold where the rain washed the mud away in patches. He wore a crown, too, fixed somehow to his head so that when he fell, stumbling, sliding in the mud, struggling up again, it did not fall off. It was more like a mockery of a crown, because of that. A belt of ropes at his waist tied him to the harness of two horses, which were ridden at a taut rope's length on either side of him. Just in front of Diana he slipped and fell to his hands and knees, and the riders kept moving, so that the ropes dragged him on through the mud. He wept, scrabbling to gain purchase, but he could not get up.
She could not stand to watch him. Whatever else he might be, he did not deserve this kind of treatment; it was inhuman. She dashed forward and yelled at the riders to stop. They obeyed immediately, unthinkingly. They stared, astonished, as she bent down beside the man and laid a hand on his arm. He flinched away from her.
'Here, let me help you up,' she said in khush, though she doubted he could understand her. Perhaps her tone reassured him; perhaps her woman's voice amazed him. Perhaps he had long since given up hope. In any case, he did not resist as she helped him to his feet.
Lines etched his face. White streaks ran through his hair and his beard, where it wasn't splashed with mud. Tears and rain melded together on his face, so that it was impossible to tell one from the other. His nose was red. His mouth quivered. He stared at her. A strangled noise came from his throat, and more sound, like choked words, and when his lips parted to reveal red-stained teeth, she realized that his tongue had been cut out.
Like a wave, revulsion washed over her, revulsion for the act and pity for the man. The rain poured down. Water seeped into her boots. She felt chilled to the bone.
'What is going on? Who gave you permission to stop?'
The king cowered, ducking his head and lifting an arm to ward off a blow. Diana turned.
Standing, Anatoly was no taller than she was. On a horse, he loomed above her. The horse itself invested him with power. His saber, his spear, the weight of his armor, invested him with authority. Flanked by his captains, he glared down at her, and she knew, in that instant, what it felt like to be a woman-any person, indeed-trapped and cornered by the conquering nomads. Like savages, like devils, ruthless and driven, they stood ready to strike down anything or anyone that blocked their path.
'Diana!' Without looking away from her, he spoke to one of his captains. 'Mirtsov, get a horse for my wife.'
It was done. Given no choice, she let go of the king and mounted up on a gray mare, next to Anatoly. 'The girl-' she said, and faltered.
'Mirtsov, take the girl up behind you and escort her to her family. The rest of you- Go on!' His men started forward again. The king stumbled along between them. Anatoly waited, reining in his horse, until the others had splashed past them, and then he started forward as well. Diana rode beside him. He said nothing. He looked angry. She studied him, noting how he had grown a straggling beard, how his fair hair was caught back in a short braid to keep it out of his face. Of the leather segments hanging from his cuirass to protect his thighs, three looked new, as if his armor had been repaired recently; as if he had been in a battle not too long ago. His red silk surcoat was frayed at the hem and mended all down the left side. She saw no trace of the cheerful young man who had left her more than three months ago; this man looked like Anatoly Sakhalin, proud and handsome, but he looked aloof and heartless and hard as well, as if out there in the hostile territory he and his men had ridden through, hunting down the king, he had become a predator in truth.
They rode together in silence until they came to the ring of guards that surrounded Bakhtiian's encampment. With an escort of ten riders, plus the prisoners and the king still bound by ropes, Anatoly passed through with Diana and they came to a halt on the muddy stretch of ground that fronted the awning of Tess Soerensen's tent. Bakhtiian emerged from the tent.
'Bakhtiian, I have brought to you the coat, the crown, and the head of the Habakar king,' said Anatoly.
'Still attached, I see,' said Bakhtiian mildly. The king simply stood there, looking stupefied. 'Who are these others?'
'They attended the king. Wife and sister and daughter, perhaps. The child belongs to the young woman. There were two other children, but they died along the way. They were already sick when we found them. He ran like a coward, Bakhtiian, and in the end, he tried to barter the life of every woman and man in his jahar in order to save his own. He wasn't worth the trouble.'
Diana saw how Bakhtiian looked up from the king with a sharp glance to examine Anatoly. 'That may be so, but he killed my envoys and blinded Josef. Thus must he and his city serve as an example to the rest. It was well done, Anatoly. You may hand him over to my riders. Send your captains to my niece immediately. She'll want intelligence, all your observations, on the lands you passed through. You yourself may attend me tomorrow.' With that, Bakhtiian retreated back inside his tent.
Thus dismissed, Anatoly handed the prisoners over to Bakhtiian's guards and dismissed his own men in their turn, to return to their camps and families.
'I must go pay my respects to my grandmother,' he said, only now turning to regard Diana. His steely expression made her nervous. The rain had slackened finally, and drops glistened in the exposed fur lining of his hat. His helmet hung on a strap from his belt. The armor made him look burly and thuggish. What on Earth had possessed her to marry him in the first place? Well, nothing on Earth, of course. The picture had seemed much more romantic at first. Now it merely seemed primitive and brutal.
He guided his horse around and they rode back through the ring of guards and crossed a narrow strip of field and came into the Sakhalin encampment. Clearly, someone had alerted Mother Sakhalin to their coming. She waited under the awning of her great tent. Anatoly dismounted, handed the reins over to an adolescent boy, and went to greet her with the formal kiss to each cheek. Diana swung down and followed, hesitating at the edge of the awning.
'Grandson. You are welcome back into camp. I'm not sure what your wife has arranged…'
Diana felt like an idiot, as she was sure Mother Sakhalin intended her to. 'I didn't know-I just found out that Anatoly had returned.'
'Ah. Well, then, Anatoly, I have water and a tub for you to bathe in. You look filthy. Your cousins will help you remove your armor, and they'll see that it's cleaned.' Several boys hovered anxiously off to one side; at her words, they hurried forward, evidently eager to help their famous cousin, the youngest man in the army to have a command of his own. Diana wrung her hands. Anatoly glanced at her once, twice, and all the while kept up an easy flow of small talk with his grandmother.
'… and the water is still hot, so you must beware. Mother Hierakis has shown our healers how if we boil all the water we'll have fewer fevers in camp.'
'Have there been fewer fevers in camp?' he asked.
'The khaja die in greater numbers than we do, it is true, but they are weak in any case. Still, Mother Hierakis is a great healer, and one must not discount her words.'
Stripped down to his red silk shirt and black trousers and boots, Anatoly looked suddenly much more-human. He handed his saber and sheath away to one of the boys, and he looked suddenly much more-gentle. His clothes smelled of sweat and of grime, but the sodden scent of rain dampened even that, although Diana imagined that he hadn't bathed in weeks. Not on such a journey as he had ridden.
'Boris and Piotr will help you with the bath, if you wish,' said Mother Sakhalin. Two boys waited, each bearing a saddle pack.
Anatoly's gaze flashed to Diana and away. 'If that is your command, Grandmother, of course, but I had hoped that you might allow Diana to attend me.'
'Your wife has her own tent, and if it was not ready for you-' She sighed.
'Grandmother.' The dread conqueror softened, settling a dirty hand on the old woman's sleeve. 'Please.'
She gave way at once, before his blue eyes and pleading expression. 'For you, Anatoly, but for no one else would I allow it!'
'Of course, Grandmother. You're too good to me.' He kissed her again on either cheek.
'Hmmph.' She stood aside and gestured for them to go past, into the tent. Anatoly grabbed the saddlebags from the boys and went inside. Diana had no choice but to go with him.
Mother Sakhalin's tent was huge, twice the size of any other tent in camp. To the right of the entrance a
