Domes of Fire by David Eddings

golden woman’s neck. ‘I love you too, Mirtai,’ she said in an

emotion-filled voice. ‘You’re my dearest friend.’ She kissed her. ‘This is

a special occasion, Ehlana,’ the Atana said, ‘SO it’s all right just this

once.’ She gently detached the queen’s arms from around her neck. ‘But it’s

not seemly to display so much emotion in public – and girls shouldn’t kiss

other girls. It might give people the wrong sort of ideas.’

CHAPTER 19

‘Hang it all, Atan Engessa,’ Kalten was saying, ‘you heard the story the

same as the rest of us. She said she hadn’t even entered training when the

‘Arjuni captured her. Where did she learn to fight the way she does? I’ve

been training more or less constantly since Sparhawk and I were fifteen,

and she throws me around like a rag doll anytime she feels like it.’

Engessa smiled slightly. It was still very early and a filmy morning mist

drifted ghost-like among the trees, softening the dark outlines of their

trunks. They had set out at dawn, and Engessa strode along among the

mounted Pandions. ‘I’ve seen you in a fight, KaltenKnight,’ the tall Atan

said. He reached out and rapped one knuckle on Kalten’s armour. ‘Your

tactics depend heavily on your equipment.’

‘That’s true, I suppose.’

‘And your training has concentrated on the use of that equipment, has it

not?’

‘Well, to some degree, I suppose. We practise with our weapons and learn

to take advantage of our armour.’

‘And the sheer bulk of our horses,’ Vanion added. Vanion was wearing his

black armour for the journey. His choice of wardrobe had occasioned a

spirited discussion between him and the woman he loved. Once she had

removed herself from the restraining presence of all those Elenes,

Sephrenia had become more vocal, and she had shown an astonishing apttitude

for histrionics during the course of the conversation. Although she and

Vanion had been talking privately, Sparhawk had been able to hear her

comments quite clearly. Everyone in the house had heard her. Probably

everyone in Sarsos had. ‘At least half of your training has been in

horsemanship, Kalten,’ Vanion continued. ‘An armoured knight without his

horse is very much like a turtle on his back.’

‘I’ve said much the same thing to my fellow-novices, Lord Vanion,’ Khalad

said politely. ‘Most of them take offence when I say it to them though, so

I usually have to demonstrate. That seems to offend them even more for some

reason.’ Engessa chuckled. ‘You train with your equipment, Kalten-Knight,’

he repeated. ‘So do we. The difference is that our bodies are our

equipment. Our way of fighting is based on speed, agility and strength, and

we can practise those without training grounds or large fields where horses

can run. We practise all the time, and in the village where she was born,

Atana Mirtai saw her parents and their friends improving their skills

almost every hour. Children learn by imitating their parents. We see threeand

four-year-olds wrestling and testing each other all the time.’

‘There has to be more to it than that,’ Kalten objected. ‘Natural talent

perhaps, Sir Kalten?’ Berit suggested. ‘i’m not that clumsy, Berit.’

‘Was your mother a warrior, Kalten-Knight?’ Engessa asked him. ‘Of course

not.’

‘Or your grandmother, or your grandmother’s grandmother? Back for fifty

generations?’ Kalten looked confused. ‘Atana Mirtai is descended from

warriors on both sides of her family. Fighting is in her blood. She is

gifted, and she can learn much just by watching. She can probably fight in

a half dozen different styles.’

‘That’s an interesting notion, Atan-Engessa,’ Vanion said. ‘if we could

find a horse big enough for her, she might make a very good knight.’

‘Vanion.’ Kalten exclaimed. ‘That’s the most unnatural suggestion I’ve

ever’ heard!’

‘Merely speculation, Kalten.’ Vanion looked gravely at Sparhawk. ‘We might

want to give some thought to including a bit more hand-to-hand fighting in

our training programme, Preceptor Sparhawk.’

‘Please don’t do that, Vanion,’ Sparhawk replied in a pained tone. ‘You’re

still the preceptor until the Hierocracy says otherwise. I’m just the

interim preceptor.’

‘All right, Interim Preceptor Sparhawk, when we get to Atan, let’s pay

some attention to their fighting style. We don’t always fight on horseback,

you know.’

‘I’ll put Khalad to work on it,’ Sparhawk said. ‘Khalad?’

‘Kurik trained him, and Kurik was better at close fighting than any man

I’ve ever known.’

‘He was indeed. Good idea, Interim Preceptor Sparhawk.’

‘Must you?’ Sparhawk asked him.

They reached the city of Atana twelve days later – at least it seemed like

twelve days. Sparhawk had decided to stop brooding about the difference

between real and perceived time. Aphrael was going to tamper no matter what

he did or said anyway, so why should he waste time worrying about it? He

wondered if Zalasta could detect the manipulation. Probably not, he

decided. No matter how skilled the Styric magician might be, he was still

only a man, and Aphrael was divine. An odd thought came to Sparhawk one

night, however. He wondered if his daughter could also make real time seem

faster than it actually was instead of slower. After he thought about it

for a while, though, he decided not to ask her. The whole concept gave him

a headache. Atana was a utilitarian sort of town in a deep green valley. It

was walled, but the walls were not particularly high nor imposing. It was

the Atans themselves who made their capital impregnable. ‘Everything in the

kingdom’s named Atan, isn’t it?’ Kalten observed as they rode down into the

valley. ‘The kingdom, its capital, the people – even the titles.’

‘I think Atan’s more in the nature of a concept than a name,’ Ulath

shrugged. ‘What makes them all so tall?’ Talen asked. ‘They belong to the

Tamul race, but other Tamuls don’t loom over everybody else like trees.’

‘Oscagne explained it to me,’ Stragen told him. ‘It seems that the Atans

are the result of an experiment.’

‘Magic?’

‘I don’t know all that much about it,’ Stragen admitted, ‘but I’d guess

that what they did went beyond what magic’s capable of. Back before there

was even such a thing as history, the Atans observed that big people win

more fights than little people. That was in a time when parents chose the

mates of their children. Size became the most important consideration.’

‘What happened to short children?’ Talen objected. ‘Probably the same thing

that happens to ugly children in our society,’ Stragen shrugged. ‘They

didn’t get married.’

‘That’s not fair.’ Stragen smiled. ‘When you get right down to it, Talen,

it’s not really very fair when we steal something somebody else has worked

for, is it?’

‘That’s different.’ Stragen leaned back in his saddle and laughed. Then he

went on. ‘The Atans prized other characteristics as well – ability,

strength, aggressiveness and homicidal vindictiveness. It’s strange how the

combination worked out. If you stop and think about it, you’ll realise that

Mirtai’s really a rather sweet girl. She’s warm and affectionate, she

really cares about her friends, and she’s strikingly beautiful. She’s got

certain triggers built into her, though, and when somebody trips one of

those triggers, she starts killing people. The Atan breeding programme

finally went too far, I Guess. The Atans became so aggressive that they

started killing each other, and since such aggressiveness can’t be

restricted to one sex, the women were as bad as the men. It got to the

point that there was no such thing in Atan as a mild disagreement. They’d

kill each other over weather predictions.’ He smiled. ‘Oscagne told me that

the world discovered just how savage Atan women were in the twelfth

century. A large band of Arjuni slavers attacked a training camp for

adolescent Atan females the sexes are separated during training in order to

avoid certain complications. Anyway, those half-grown Atan girls – most of

them barely over six feet tall – slaughtered most of the Arjuni and then

sold the rest to the Tamuls as eunuchs.’

‘The slavers were eunuchs?’ Kalten asked with some surprise. ‘No, Kalten,’

Stragen explained patiently. ‘They weren’t eunuchs until after the girls

captured them.’

‘Little girls did that?’ Kalten’s expression was one of horror. ‘They

weren’t exactly babies, Kalten. They were old enough to know what they were

doing. Anyway, the Atans had a very wise king in the fifteenth century. He

saw that his people were on the verge of selfdestruction. He made contact

with the Tamul government and surrendered his people into perpetual slavery

– to save their lives.’

‘A little extreme,’ Ulath noted. There are several kinds of slavery,

Ulath. Here in Atan, it’s institutionalised. The Tamuls tell the Atans

where to go and whom to kill, and they can usually find a reason to deny

petitions by individual Atans to slaughter each other. That’s about as far

as it really goes. It’s a good working arrangement. The Atan race survives,

and the Tamuls get the finest infantry in the world. ‘ Talen was frowning.