Buirtevaert rode up and waved his whip. 'You know this dirt man?' he asked in Sakje.
Gardan laughed. His Sakje was better than Melitta's. 'Greetings, sky-rider,' he said. 'I am guest-friends with the lady.'
Buirtevaert was not without courtesy, even after a spring spent herding dirt people. He saluted with his whip. 'And you are a smith – dirt man, I mean no insult. The lady's friends are mine. Is your family ready?'
'As you see us,' Gardan answered. He turned to Melitta. 'Do you remember what I told you? When I guested you?'
''Be sure,'' Melitta answered. 'I've never forgotten it.'
'Be fucking sure,' Gardan said. 'We're going to lose a whole season, lady. People will starve.'
'You have your grain store?' Melitta asked.
Gardan shrugged. 'Every grain that I could get in the wagon.'
'And you destroyed the rest?' Melitta asked. She had not picked up the now-familiar smell of dry grain being burned.
Gardan's eyes flicked away. 'Hmm,' he said.
She rode closer, until they were eye to eye. 'Gardan – you ask me to be sure. This is war – I can't be sure. But I'm doing my best. And I know that my duty – my first duty – is to protect my farmers. But if you leave a store of grain in the ground for Upazan, you aren't helping me be sure. You think he won't find your grain, with dogs and horses and men?'
Gardan's wife, Methene, glared at her husband. 'I told you,' she said.
Gardan shrugged. 'People will starve,' he said. 'Twenty years I built this farm.' He had tears in his eyes. 'I'd rather fight for it than leave it to the wolves,' he said.
Melitta nodded. 'Where's the grain, Gardan?'
He hung his head. Accepting her authority. 'Buried in the old well. Come.'
She shook her head. 'No – go and burn it yourself. Hurry.' She didn't have to order him to hurry. As far as she knew, Upazan was still twenty days' ride to the east. But she had ten more farms to visit, or twenty – more families to send to join the river of refugees heading north and west to Tanais.
They left to the smell she had missed, the smell of burning grain. Gardan bowed his head to hide his tears. The children looked at her as if she was a goddess – inscrutable, good and evil all at once. Protector and oppressor. It was a great deal of meaning to be carried in a child's gaze, but she'd seen it so many times now that she didn't need their hushed, embarrassed words to confirm their stares. Dawn, and she made herself roll from her blankets and furs. Spring was fully upon them, and the trees had leaves, but mornings were still cold, and the ground was no mattress, no soft couch. Her hips ached, and her back hurt, and her neck had developed its own special torment that lasted all day. She had to exercise her fingers to get them to behave. She sat by the fire her knights had made and drank two cups of hot liquid before she could face the ritual of lancing the sores on her thighs, dressing them with linen that had once been clean and relieving herself – all in private.
'I miss other girls,' she said to the morning. Her fingers were cold right through as she sat on a downed tree, but she stuck to her task, braiding her hair. She'd have liked help, but asking any of her knights was an invitation to mischief. Every one of them was in love with her, the useless bastards. She made a face. The only warrior woman for a hundred stades? The untouchable queen? Of course they loved her. Hence, she had no one to braid her hair.
Mother, how did you deal with the worship and the love and the foolishness? I need a trumpeter – a girl to be my companion. How do I go about finding one? Any girl she got would have lovers and favourites and clan-friends, all of whom would involve her in a new web of obligations. Better to braid my own hair, she thought.
She heard the hoof beats far off down the valley, even as her thoughts continued questing for an answer to the companionship problem. She looked north and east. There was the rider – a single figure moving fast.
She got up off her log, already annoyed that one of her bandages was slipping, angry at another day of facing the minor pain in her legs. I used to love riding, she thought. 'Scopasis!' she called.
He was standing in the middle of her knights. He had grown in stature so that the tall, handsome man before her, so sure of himself, so genuinely sure of himself, didn't even look the same as the outlaw boy she'd met four months ago. 'Lady?' he asked.
'Rider coming in,' she said. 'Any more tea?'
He handed her his own cup, full to the brim, and then he turned and looked at the distant stand of trees where their northern vedette sat on his horse. 'Scylax has him,' Scopasis said.
Melitta walked over to the Standing Horses' fire and nodded to Buirtevaert, who smiled. He had a long braid that he wore on the side of his face, wrapped in gold wire and braided with gold bells. The love-lock said that he was married. 'What's her name?' Melitta asked.
'Daen,' he said, his face breaking into a smile that raised her opinion of him still higher. One day, may a man light up like that at the thought of me. So far, Buirtevaert was a competent and obedient sub-chief, one of the few men his age not made foolish by her presence.
'I look forward to meeting her,' Melitta said.
'Porridge, lady?' he asked. The Standing Horses had a huge copper cauldron in which they made all their meals. This morning's grain had no doubt been put straight in over last night's deer-meat stew.
When I was in Alexandria I longed for the plains. Now I long for Alexandria. Where is my son? What kind of mother am I?
'You are sad,' Buirtevaert said. 'Do you have a man you miss?' He looked away, as if just asking such a thing was outside the bounds of courtesy. 'I am sorry, lady.'
'Do you know that I have a son?' Melitta asked. 'He'll be eight months old in a few days.' She shook her head. 'My man – is dead.'
Buirtevaert shook his head. 'I had heard that you were widowed,' he said. 'To be young and alone in spring…' He shrugged. 'It is like all the songs…' He trailed off, embarrassed. Most of those songs were about randy widows.
She had to smile at his confusion. Her position as lady seemed to have added twenty years to her age. Young people amused her. Perhaps she was becoming her mother.
'Lady!'
Melitta turned to see her knights mounting. Scopasis was pointing at the approaching rider. At this distance, Melitta knew her as Samahe.
'News!' Scopasis called. He trotted up with Melitta's riding horse, and she made herself mount. All her sores cracked open together, and she felt the blood and pus creep into the dirty linen – already cold where the outside air crept under her coat.
Samahe came up and hugged her. She returned the embrace with interest. 'I was just wishing for a girl,' she said. 'And here you are.'
Samahe smiled. 'You need a trumpeter,' she said laughing. 'Maybe a lover.'
'A girl?' Melitta asked. In Alexandria she knew lots of girls who lay with girls. The whole idea made her laugh. She slapped her thigh and cursed at the pain.
Samahe laughed too. But then she was serious. 'A girl in your bed means no talk and no babies,' she said. She shrugged. 'I've never done it myself.' She rolled her eyes, suggesting that perhaps she had. 'Listen – I am not here for bed-talk. Ataelus thinks Urvara's seen Upazan's advance scouts – yesterday, and far from here. North and east and east again.'
'How old is this news?' Melitta said, suddenly all business.
'Three, perhaps four days.' Samahe looked around. 'You have a fair force. Ataelus asks you to come north to him. If you come, you must come now and ride hard.'
Melitta gestured to Scopasis and to Buirtevaert to join her. 'We've cleared the valley to the ferry. Not much else to be done.' She looked at her commanders. 'Can we move back north and find Ataelus?'
'With Samahe to guide us?' Buirtevaert asked. 'Let's be on our way!'
Scopasis nodded. 'I long to put my sword against this Upazan's throat,' he said.
Melitta nodded, feeling the new crusts of the sores on her thighs. 'Me too,' she said. Five days in the saddle – five nights with a warm companion who braided her hair and talked, sometimes, of things other than how many men she might kill, or how many horses such and such a man took in such and such a raid. Of babies and harmless gossip about who had whom in her blankets.
