I told him we were going to join Vaskor, and he seemed surprised but pleased at this prospect of action. Yet it was a strange business. I waited patiently until the fourth day after Vazkor’s departure. In the afternoon five hundred riders and two hundred foot arrived from Ammath, under the command of a huge blond man, fully armed for the march, as his men were not. They quartered themselves under the walls in the palace field, or found billets in the city, and it was a noisy night. At dark, lit by the torches of my escort, I crossed the short grass among the tent lanes, and arrived at the vast scarlet pavilion. Under a black cloak I wore the full regalia of
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the goddess. The sentries knew me at once, and within minutes I had entered and was facing the nervous, startled commander. He had been drinking not long since, and was at great pains to conceal the fact. He gave me a tall chair and paced about the table, not knowing what to do witk me.
“Commander,” I said at last, when his jerky courtesies had petered out, “I have been expecting your answer all day.”
“My-my answer!” he exclaimed, stopping still.
“To fit my men for the march.”
His unmasked eyes were round and stupified.
“I can see, commander,” I said, “the messengers did not reach you. I am to ride with my husband the overlord on this campaign. The honor of arming me has been left to Ammath.”
His face red with shock, he began to apologize and assure me of immediate concurrence with the wishes of the overlord.
It entailed a delay of two days for Ammath, but nevertheless Mazlek and his eighty were superbly fitted from among the march-wagons, both for themselves and their horses. The commander nervously inquired what I would choose for myself, but the armor was no use to me at all. They do not, as a rule, make it for women, and so it cannot be fitted secondhand; in addition to which, every piece was far too large and bulky, and would probably have fallen off the instant my horse achieved a gallop. I chose only knives, therefore, and a long bright sword without a device. When he began to protest that I must be fitted separately-further delay of many days, and, in addition, iron breastpieces which would chafe me raw-I told him I needed only to attack, not to defend. He cleared his throat and nodded, assuming me, I suppose, clothed in my god-head and invulnerable. Yet every hurt I would suffer from, even if I could not die. It simply did not seem important. I do not think I had even visualized battle as such, I was thinking only of how Vazkor had determined to shut me away in Za, and that I would not be shut.
During this time, a cohort of So-Ess rode in and out of Za, and soldiery from Za itself went clattering under the vaulted archway, southward. The last night, as I sat late in my apartments, preparing a formal letter to my host, the yellow-crested Javhovor, one of my women ran in to me and informed me he had come in person.
He entered and bowed deeply, and fidgeted with his mask. I asked him what he wanted.
“Goddess, pardon me, but I understood you were to remain here, in Za.”
“How did you understand such a thing?”
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“Lord Vazkor …” He hesitated. “The overlord entrusted your well-being to my care. He-explained matters. Your delicate condition…”
I looked at Mm stonily, and he flushed.
“Delicate?” I asked him. “Why?”
“The-pregnancy,” he got out in a throaty whisper.
It was at once laughable and macabre.
“The Lord Vazkor is, I am afraid, quite mistaken,” I said. “Therefore you have no need to dissuade me from going, and indeed, I should strongly advise you not to do so. You will dismiss your guards from my doors at once. Any further attempts to restrain my person will be dealt with by my own guard. You will remember who I am and the Powers I possess. Did you wish me to demonstrate?”
He whitened and drew back, trying to find adequate words.
“I understand your dilemma,” I said kindly. “You are torn between your desire to obey Vazkor, and your desire not to anger me. However, it is really quite easy. I am here, and Vazkor is not. Now go, and do not trouble me with any of this again.”
He bowed, and withdrew shakily, and I never saw the guard I had guessed he brought with him, poor confused fool.
We rode out at daybreak into hard bright sunlight.
The road sloped down from the platform of the city, out into the white empty desert, yet it seemed very beautiful that day, sparkling like diamond under the clear pale sky. Far away to the east, I could make out now the faintest ghosts of those mountains which led to and enclosed Eshkorek Arnor. There a man had sat, waiting on the Council at Za for the death of a tortoise, and Vaskor’s word, “Now you are Javhovor.”
We made good time, for the wagons were few and did not slow us overmuch. At night the metal walls went up, the fires flared. Mazlek would come to me and teach me a little of war, but not too much; tired from the riding, I found sleep easy and pleasant. I was treated with great respect and courtesy. Ammath’s commander clearly thought he was pleasing everyone. No doubt he was actually looking forward to the time when he might deliver me safe, honored and duly armed to my delighted husband.
I gathered Vazkor had set the meeting place for all his forces at a spot they called Lion’s Mouth. Near this place,
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where great rock hills thrust up to make a stockade around Purple Valley, was a narrow pass leading downward. In winter such passes were blocked by snow, and there was some speculation and discontent as to how Vazkor planned to make a way through, or how long the wait would be until the spring thaw did the work for him. In any case there was grumbling. A winter campaign across the War March was a rare and uncomfortable thing.
As we rode nearer to the hills, we passed into a strange new landscape-frozen water courses, thin sprinkling of woodland, the trees stripped, the branches broken by snow. There were a few villages here, and the usual soldierly thefts took place, but there was no rape this time, perhaps only because they kept their women better hidden. Here also we began to catch up with and pass the long grinding processions of great wheeled cannon, siege-towers and other machines of war, dragged along by chains of mules or dead-eyed dark men. They left great black rut-trails over the white ground. Overseers prowled along the straining lines, long whips flicking up and down like the writhing tongues of serpents. On the tenth day two mules dropped dead at once as we passed, their hearts burst by the great metal ram they were hauling. The men with the whips cursed and shouted angrily, but it caused a great deal of laughter among the Ammath soldiers. I turned my head away from the twin shapes lying like a pattern on the snow. I do not know why it distressed me so much to see an animal die when human death did not move me. Perhaps because they were more beautiful, and there is no corruption in them, while in the best of men there can always be found some guilt or wickedness which seems to have earned him death.
The rocky hills grew and hardened into purple darkness ahead of us. The broken woodland clustered and withdrew. Birds embroidered the sky from time to time, and dawn brought a scattering of white wolves with it, nosing about the camp walls, and howling their flesh-lust.
“There are animals in the hills, then?” I asked Mazlek.
“A few, goddess.”
“More now,” I said, nodding around me at the soldiers and horses. He grinned.
Having sighted the hills, it took us two days to reach them, three to scale the first slopes, for they go up and down, and there is no road or short way around. On the morning of the
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fourth day of climbing the Ammath commander rode back to me politely.
“Up there, goddess”-he pointed-“the Lion’s Head. Top it, and we’ll reach the Mouth-probably before sunset”
I looked where he indicated, and saw a great formless chunk of black and snowed-white rock. It did not to me look even remotely like a lion, though I suppose in days long past it must have, presumably.
“There are the jowls,” he was proudly telling me, “and the eye, and that stratification forms the mane.”
“Ah, yes,” I said.
Topping the head, a horse fell and broke a foreleg and they killed it. The shadows lengthened, the sky was low-slung and empty of sunset color. A sense of coldness and melancholy seeped into me. I had begun to fear my meeting with Vazkor after all.