He awoke next morning with his first hangover, mild but unpleasant, which along with his near seduction, he considered a lesson on drinking.
The next day, Sarkia left for the Cloister with her Tigers and guardsmen, taking Idri with her. And a copy of a previously drafted treaty of alliance that had been signed by King Pavo that morning as his first official act. Liiset stayed at Teklapori as Sarkia’s ambassadrix. Macurdy had no doubt she’d been ordered to seduce Wollerda and become his bride, and said as much to the new king. Who grinned as if that was all right with him.
Macurdy was scheduled to leave Teklapori on a special mission for the Alliance, but earlier he’d had several evenings to work on activating his friend’s latent psionic talent. The question, he told himself, was what, if anything, he’d accomplished.
* * *
Meanwhile, he, Wollerda and Liiset had sat down together one evening and designed new uniforms for the army. It would take time of course, to provide them. Officers would have theirs first, from the top down, and the uniforms of noncoms and men were already relatively simple and practical. The officers’ looked rather like that of the commander of Sarkia’s guard company, with the addition of the “Teklan Bear” on shoulder patches, the bear being the symbol of Teklan royalty and the kingdom. Also, for generals, the new dress uniform included a silver-plated cuirass and helmet, decorated and polished.
A week after Wollerda’s crowning, a company of the 2nd Light Cavalry, wearing new uniforms, rode off westward down the Valley Highway, with General Macurdy and Majors Jeremid and Melody. Macurdy bore credentials from both Wollerda and the Dynast, as their joint envoy to the courts of Miskmehr and Kormehr, and to the Chief of Oz, authorizing him to negotiate an agreement of alliance with each of them.
It was the first mission in what would be the busiest fall, winter, and spring of Macurdy’s life.
33: An Introspective Morning at the Zoo
The Emperor’s Animal Park had a foot of wet granular snow on the ground, but the morning was calm and sunny, and before noon already somewhat above freezing. A trickle of citizens strolled through the gate, many of them couples with one or more children hopping ahead.
One couple entered the park hand in hand. The woman was more warmly dressed than most, to humor her husband; with her talent, she’d have been comfortable with no coat at all. But she was pregnant, and he’d never been a father before.
Besides, she’d reasoned, it’s best not to draw attention. Her husband had serious enemies, and among all of Duinarog’s nearly sixty thousand people, there’d hardly be a hundred redheads other than herself. So she wore a fur cap well down over her ears.
There was no map on display, nor any directional signs. One simply walked the path until the large loop was completed; then you’d seen it all. But Cyncaidh had been there before, and knew what he wanted to show her first, so he turned left; that would take them first past animals of other regions. Briefly they stood watching the small herd of pronghorn, Cyncaidh telling her briefly about them, for he’d read the Animal Park booklet years earlier, and as a boy, other books on animals, and had excellent recall. Varia found the pronghorns uninteresting. It seemed to her that running, they’d be beautiful, but here they simply stood in the sun chewing their cuds, their auras reflecting placid contentment.
Beyond the pronghorns were wapiti. The bulls had shed their antlers, but a cast-off pair had been mounted on a post, their spread approaching five feet. She thought she’d like to see wapiti in the wild someday, but didn’t expect to. Next they came to the plains bison, with Cyncaidh describing the hunting tactics of the nomads. They sounded to Varia rather like descriptions she’d read of the Plains Indians on Farside. How marvelous it would be, she thought, to ride with them.
Next were the much larger long-horned bison. This was an animal of the near-arctic, with its broad mosaic of tundra, stunted forest, and bogs. These animals truly impressed her. One old bull had horns as wide as a man’s outspread arms, and at the hump it stood as tall as Raien. She guessed its weight at two tons—more than Will’s team of big Belgians, the gelding and mare combined. According to Raien, these animals didn’t form great herds, but wandered in bands of two or three dozen, grazing on grasses and sedges, browsing the low shrubs. She wondered how they’d been brought here. As calves, she decided.