Many did die. But this one hadn’t lifted its blade toward Maddek, so it would not.
Slowly Maddek backed away, gaze never leaving the crouching savage. His mare nickered softly behind him. Eyes still on the Farian, he swung up into his saddle.
Kelir laughed at him as they rode toward the bridge. “Now you wait for that savage to attack our camp?”
Poking at him with the same words Maddek had said to the young soldier. Maddek grinned, for despite Kelir’s teasing, he knew that the warrior would have made the same choice. Perhaps the savage would cross the river with intention of raping and killing every human it encountered. But Maddek would not kill even a Farian for what it had not yet done.
If the savage crossed the river, however—then Maddek would tear its head from its shoulders.
His attention was caught by the mounted figure watching them from the opposite end of the bridge. Enox, his first captain—who ought to have been at camp, sleeping in her furs after a night spent along the river.
Silver beads glinted in her dark braids as she cast him a dour look. “A thousand warriors you have at your command. Could you have not sent them to kill that beast instead of taking it upon your own head?”
Never would Maddek send warriors into a battle he was not also willing to fight. Nor would Enox. If Maddek had not been upon the Lave this morning, it would have been she who led that charge and felled the maddened siva. “Warriors accompanied me across the bridge,” he pointed out. “It is no fault of mine if my mount was fleeter than theirs.”
Her snort echoed Kelir’s. Yet she had not come to reprimand him, Maddek knew.
Drawing his mare alongside hers, he asked, “What brings you?”
“Dagoneh has arrived with a company of Tolehi soldiers,” she said, reining her horse back toward camp. “And a message for you from the alliance council.”
Maddek frowned and urged his mare to keep pace. “What message?”
“He would not give it to me, but is waiting to speak with you.”
Unease slithered through his gut. Not many years ago, he’d delivered a message from the alliance council, too.
Maddek had assumed command at the Lave eight years past. In the six years following, not once had Maddek journeyed home to the Burning Plains, until his parents had requested from the council a three-year leave, so that they might find him a bride and see him married. In his absence, Iova of Rugus had assumed command of the alliance army. Before even three seasons had passed, however, the alliance council bade Maddek to return to the river with a message for Iova—the Rugusian king was dead—and to resume command while that realm’s affairs were sorted. Iova was to have returned when all was settled. Yet despite the passing of a winter, she had not.
Now the alliance council sent another message, and Dagoneh would not tell Enox what it was? That could not bode well.
Yet Kelir’s mind had taken a happier route. “Perhaps they have finally found you a bride.”
His parents. Though Maddek had returned to the Lave, a bride for him they’d still intended to find—one who might strengthen ties between Parsathe and the five realms that made up the alliance. A royal daughter, or a noblewoman.
Very likely a woman like Iova, who was not only a fine soldier but also aunt to the dead Rugusian king. If Iova had been younger, or if she’d had a daughter, Maddek suspected that he would already be married.
For all that it would be a marriage designed to strengthen the alliance, however, never would his parents choose a bride unsuited to him. Though finding a warrior among the noble houses might prove too difficult a task, no doubt she would be honest, never lying or speaking with sly tongue, for she would become Maddek’s closest advisor. If from Toleh, then she would be educated by the monks, with a mind both clever and fair. And as befitted a woman who might one day be a Parsathean queen—and if she wished to gain his mother’s approval—she would be tall and strong and a skilled rider, and possess a heart that burned with fire.
Such a woman Maddek would be eager to meet—and take to his bed. For he’d been celibate after assuming command at the Lave eight years past, mindful of his parents’ warning that when the High Commander of the Army of the Great Alliance asked someone to share his furs, there was not much difference between an invitation and an order. And during his short return to the Burning Plains, he’d taken no lovers. Not when his parents were already seeking a bride. Touching anyone else seemed a betrayal of the vows Maddek would make to that woman, and it mattered not that he hadn’t yet met her.
A fine thing it would be, to finally fuck something softer than his fist.
So it was with anticipation that he rode into camp, where Parsathean tents made of mammoth hides and tusks housed the alliance army. Dagoneh had brought with him a hundred soldiers . . . as if expecting Maddek to leave with a large number of Parsatheans.
As Maddek would, if there was to be a wedding.
Yet there was to be no wedding. He entered the commander’s tent with Kelir and Enox at his sides, and one glance at the Tolehi man’s face told Maddek that he was not to receive news about a bride.
Dagoneh still wore his armor, yet had removed his helm, revealing his shaven head. Uncertainly he looked to Enox and Kelir before returning his solemn gaze to Maddek’s. “Perhaps we might speak privately, Commander?”
As if fists had clenched around his lungs, Maddek told him tightly, “There is nothing you can say that they cannot hear.”
Yet what Dagoneh did say, Maddek seemed not to hear. Not through the roaring in his ears.
Yet Enox must have also heard what Maddek could not accept. Fiercely she advanced on the captain, as if the sheer threat of her approach might force him to retrieve what he’d said and shove it back into his mouth.
“That cannot be truth,” Enox spat. “It cannot.”
“It is.” Grave and steady was Dagoneh’s reply. “Ran Ashev and Ran Marek have returned to Mother Temra’s embrace.”
Ran Ashev and Ran Marek. The Parsatheans called them their queen and king.
Maddek called them Mother and Father.
All fierceness leaving her, Enox fell to her knees on a keening wail. With her fists she pounded the ground as if she might reshape the world, as Mother Temra had. As if she might shake her queen and king free of that goddess’s eternal grip.
A harsh sobbing breath came from beside Maddek before Kelir threw back his head. The warrior’s howl of grief sounded as if torn from a bloodied throat.
Maddek’s own howl swelled in his chest, yet it seemed there was no release for it, the grief too deep, a cavernous hollow that had suddenly opened within him.
“How?” So empty was his voice, he knew not how Dagoneh heard it.
Yet the captain must have. With grim regret, the other man shook his head. “I have no answers for you. My message and orders from the council were so bare, I suspect they were sent to Toleh in great haste.”