“You are from the hinterlands?” Zara asked, stepping closer to the stranger.
“Originally, your majesty. Upheavals precipitated my family’s migration to the coast where I was raised.”
“Are you a soldier?”
The stranger nodded. “A soldier, a merchant, an occasional scholar, a traveler.”
Zara’s eyes narrowed in bitter skepticism. “And you think you can defeat the demon-sorcerer?”
Toulou’s reply was almost too casual. “Of course, your majesty.”
“I get the sense that you don’t have a full understanding of the enemy which you are so eager to face,” Zara snapped. She threw up a finger cutting off any response the stranger was about to offer. “I have launched seven attacks against the demon-sorcerer to no avail. After each failure he forces me to take a lover for the night. By morning that lover must die. If not the demon-sorcerer will slaughter innocents at random. The one time I defied him after a failed attack the demon-sorcerer entered my kingdom.” Zara paused, her gaze drifting on the current of a horrific memory. “Fifty of my subjects died by his hand, with impunity!” Her focus raced back to the present. “That is the monster you face. An underworld nemesis who thus far has repelled all of our efforts to vanquish him...at the very least expel him from this land.”
“I understand quite well how formidable this enemy is,” said Toulou. “I also know that you are formidable in your own right. You have not surrendered to him. You continue to fight.”
Zara let out a huff of dismissal. “The demon-sorcerer toys with us. I’m sure if wanted he could have seized my kingdom long ago. Our resistance is just a game to him, one he relishes in playing.”
“Then let’s indulge him again.”
“Indulge him? Do you think this is a game, too?” Zara glared at this presumptuous stranger, the command to have him dragged from her sight dangling on the tip of her tongue.
Toulou shrugged. “I am offering a service, your majesty. Accept it and I will confront your enemy. Reject it and I will move on, leaving you to his tender mercy.”
“And if you succeed what do you want?”
“Zanjii is a wealthy kingdom. I expect you’ll compensate me accordingly given the enormity of the task at hand.”
Zara was greatly tempted to reject the man’s service. She knew nothing about him, was put off by his arrogance and the fact that he had the gall to invade her shrine room...
And yet there was something oddly reassuring about this man called Toulou...if that was his real name, which she suspected it wasn’t.
“Very well. I accept your offer. Now remove yourself from my shrine room and we will discuss the details of your task at sunrise.”
“Thank you, your majesty.” Toulou bowed with a hint of flourish and fell in with the guardsman who promptly escorted him away, but to a guest quarters, not the dungeon.
Zara watched the military maneuvers from her shaded palanquin positioned on the edge of the vast palace parade ground. The stranger, Toulou, had brought with him different men from different lands to aid him in reorganizing the Zanjiian military in preparation for battle. The empee, a regiment of heavily muscled superbly conditioned warriors from the far south trained the main body of Zanjiian foot soldiers in the former’s brand of light infantry tactics.
The Zanjiians fumbled their way through a series of formation marches early on. Constant drilling improved the Zanjiians’ performance, though not nearly to the satisfaction of their perfectionist empee trainers. The harried Zanjiians would receive very little rest that day.
Light skinned horsemen of the type Zara had never seen before worked with her native cavalry. The foreign horsemen were stocky, ruddy faced men with slanted eyes and long braided hair sprouting from the backs of their bald heads like horses’ tails. They were armed with strangely shaped bows made from bone and sinew. The bows cast arrows at distances previously unimaginable to the queen. The Zanjiian cavalry spent hours practicing with those bows. They shot arrows from horseback until they were reasonably proficient. Of course, they would never surpass the foreigners in an expertise ingrained in the latter since childhood.
Zara’s eye settled on Toulou who was conferring with a couple of Zanjiian cavalry and infantry captains. The stranger wore his usual cotton coastal attire, along with a sheathed sword and dagger. She liked how the glaze of sunlight accentuated the deep obsidian cast of his well-toned arms. Zara repressed a smile, scolding herself for her frivolous distraction in a time of crisis. She stepped out of the palanquin, much to the dismay of her attendants who expressed silent disapproval. The queen should not be mingling with soldiers...particularly of the uncouth mercenary variety.
Zara threw her head back authoritatively. Fortunately, the queen’s prerogative outweighed the pettiness of custom.
At the queen’s approach, the Zanjiian captains bowed. In the old days prostrating would have been called for, followed by a sprinkling of dust on the head. Zara did away with that form of obeisance upon her capture of the throne. The stranger bent his head minimally forward before meeting the queen’s gaze with a bold concoction of deference and roguishness.
Zara felt a heating of her cheeks unrelated to the day’s warmth. “Toulou,” she greeted, brushing away the feeling. “You are doing a fine job with the soldiers. They certainly look impressive at drilling, but survivors of past battles against the demon-sorcerer have told me how difficult it is to kill his unearthly minions. Are you sure these new tactics you teach will be effective?”
“They are tried and true, your majesty,” Toulou replied. “He pointed to the empee warriors. “Where they are from empees forged an empire and invoked dread in the hearts of any foe bold enough to face them
