Mika sat by the fire while they slept. Hornsbuck, Lotus Blossom, and RedTail hunted for fresh meat to replenish their dwindling supplies.
Mika sat and watched Tarn's sleeping form. Despite everything, he admitted he was glad that his wolf had returned. Mika had missed him sorely. It was not Tarn's fault that they had clashed over the female-such things were a madness beyond reason.
Abrupdy Tam opened his eyes and looked direcdy at Mika. They stared at each other in silence, and Mika read a reflection of his own thoughts in the warm amber of the wolf s eyes.
Hornsbuck, Blossom, and RedTail returned some time later with a brace of plump rabbits and three fat guinea hens. Mika sat down and helped pluck and gut the catch. Hornsbuck quirked an eyebrow at Mika, knowing that the younger man had something on his mind.
'Hornsbuck, I don't want to go to Exag,' Mika said finally, frowning down at the guinea hen in his hands. 'I'm afraid that once this demon has me where he wants me, he'll kill me.'
'Be you afraid?' Hornsbuck asked in astonishment.
'Wouldn't you be?' countered Mika.
'Never! Wolf Nomads are never afraid! We welcome danger! We wrestle with fate! We laugh in the face of death!' shouted Hornsbuck as he thumped himself on the chest, his eyes growing glazed, overwhelmed by his own propaganda.
'Oh, Hornsbuck, come off it,' groaned Lotus Blossom. 'That Wolf Nomad mumbo-jumbo is going to rot your brain or get you killed yet. I love a good brawl, same as the next man, but I stop short of dying.
'The boy's got a point,' she continued. 'He doesn't want to get killed on account of some stupid code of manhood. Isn't there some way he can get rid of the princess and duck out on this demon? What good is honor if you're dead?'
Mika looked at Lotus Blossom with admiration, his heart singing as she expressed his very thoughts with eloquence. He heard a choked noise and looked up to see Hornsbuck, his face suffused with purple, his eyes nearly starting from his head, clutching feebly at his chest.
'Hornsbuck! What's the matter!' cried Mika, leaping to his feet to grab Hornsbuck by the shoulders, supporting him as the huge man's knees threatened to buckle.
Hornsbuck's breath rasped in his throat and the big man slowly sank to the floor, his hand still pressed to his chest.
'Woman, you know not of what you speak,' he said in a gravelly voice, giving Lotus Blossom a cold stare.
'Wolf Nomads would sooner die than live without honor. We be different than other folk, our code means more to us than life. I would sooner die than live without the code, and I would kill any Wolf Nomad who diminished the honor of the clan by cowardice. You must wipe out cowardice as you would blight on a tree. All Wolf Nomads think as I do, even Mika. Be it not so, lad?' Hornsbuck said in a voice that was thick with tension. His green eyes drilled into Mika, waiting for his answer.
'Of course,' Mika said with barely a pause, even as his heart plummeted within his breast. 'I welcome danger! I wresde with fate! I laugh in the face of death! On to Exag!' he cried, his voice ringing hollow in his ears. 'Let the demon beware!'
Hornsbuck looked at him with pride and Lotus Blossom gazed at him with a bemused expression, but Mika saw none of it. His heart hung frozen, impaled on the quivering dilemma of his fear and the inflexible Wolf Nomad code of courage.
They set off early the next morning, before the fog had left the ground, their horses anxious to travel after being hobbled for six long days.
They swung south, paralleling the River Fler on the narrow strip of land that separated it from the Yatil Mountains. Traveling was good. The land was flat, with ample grazing for the horses. The mountains held back the winds from the east and created a massive barrier that deflected the worst of the winter storms.
Game was plentiful and even though Hornsbuck distrusted water, they spent a pleasant afternoon fishing on the shores of Lake Quag before turning east toward the Mounds of Dawn.
'I do not know much about Exag,' said Mika as they left the fertile lakelands behind them, the land growing drier and stonier as they advanced. The mountains bordered them on the north and rose before them to the east.
'No one knows too much,' said Hornsbuck. 'They be an unfriendly and uncivilized bunch of barbarians. Pah!' he exclaimed, spitting to the side to show his dislike of the Exagians.
'I hear that they don't even gamble,' Lotus Blossom said in disbelief.
'Pah!' spat Hornsbuck. 'Religious dogbodies, that's what they are. Spend all their days looking up at the sun and all their nights gazing at the stars and the moon.
'They say that everyone has a destiny that's foretold in the stars. Your entire life be planned out for you by the priests depending on when you were born.
'They even make human sacrifices. If you be born under a particular star, you live knowing that you must die, sacrificed to the Goddess of Dawn.'
'Why?' asked Mika, his flesh crawling at the thought.
'Because they are uncivilized barbarians, not cultured folk like ourselves,' Hornsbuck explained patiently. 'When you've traveled as long as I have, you'll learn that we Wolf Nomads be far superior to everyone else.'
'Hornsbuck, why would the demon want me to come here?' Mika asked nervously, not at all reassured by what he had heard of the citizens of Exag.
'Not afraid, are you?' Hornsbuck asked suspiciously, tilting one shaggy eyebrow.
'Me? Afraid of a bunch of uncivilized barbarians who sacrifice their own? Hah!' exclaimed Mika, who was very much afraid.
'Good! Nomads never run from danger! Nomads love a challenge!' roared Hornsbuck. 'What is life without danger?' He stood up in his stirrups and howled. 'Come on lad, you don't want to grow old and die in your bed, do you? A nomad lives only to die!' Roaring out the last words, Hornsbuck kicked his horse into a gallop and rode off across the harsh land, howling and brandishing his spear above his head.
Mika and Lotus Blossom watched him ride away.
'Die in my bed… I don't think that's likely,' Mika muttered. Feeling as though his own life was as preordained as the unlucky Exagians, he howled his own cry and galloped after Hornsbuck, the wolves trailing at his heels.
CHAPTER 22
The land they crossed was hard and dry, the color of ochre, and studded with large boulders. They had seen no water for the last two days, and their throats and bellies were begging for relief when they caught their first glimpse of Exag.
It appeared low on the horizon; a series of squares and pyramids, built of the same red ochre that they rode upon.
As they came closer, they saw that the curious shapes were enclosed within a high adobe wall that appeared to encircle the city without a single visible break. The strange geometric shapes within grew out of a series of low rises, actually an extension of the mountains that rose up behind the city like a dark curtain.
There was no sound coming from the city, no sense of the bustle and activity that normally marked any great gathering of people. In fact, the walled city seemed to exude an ominous air that sent a chill of foreboding creeping over Mika.
It soon became apparent that all traffic-what little there might be-entered the city through a single, tall, narrow gate, seemingly the only break in the wall that towered over them for more than ten man- heights.
Looking up at the great expanse, Mika could not even imagine how the immense wall had been built or, for that matter, by whom, since there seemed to be no junctures in the smooth surface, no indication of human construction. It seemed to rise straight up out of the hard ground itself.
Turning to ask Hornsbuck about the wall, he discovered that the older man's face was sharp, his watchful green eyes alert and focused on the gate.
