“Princess,” the man said, dropping to his knees, “I had given up hope… Tell me you are you and that I am not mistaken.”
“What is your name?” she asked, her voice calmer than she felt. She could see his eyes reflecting the starlight. She watched something change in them and realized they had filled with tears.
He said, “I am Melio.”
CHAPTER
Rialus Neptos had once believed that his governorship of the Mein Satrapy had been the great curse of his life. He hated that frozen place, filled with rough, outcast citizens of the empire. He seethed when he thought about the dismissive air with which the Akarans treated him, so much so that he had been willing to do anything to win a better situation in life. Thus, he had called upon low elements among his acquaintances in Alecia-family members, criminals, opportunists of every stripe-to rise and cause all manner of confusion to coincide with Hanish Mein’s attack. He had watched with joy as the city spun into chaos. For a few short days he had lived in complete euphoria, seeing the old order swept away, awaiting the new reign of Hanish Mein, sure that he had earned a place of prominence within it.
How utter a betrayal, then, that Hanish had-in a maneuver that the new ruler must have thought the greatest joke on record-made Rialus personal liaison to Calrach, the headman of the thronging Numrek horde. Rialus often woke screaming from a nightmare of the moment when the chieftain had told him of the appointment. Hanish had pointed out that Rialus was one of the first Acacians the Numrek had encountered. He claimed that the Numrek still spoke warmly of the reception he had given them at Cathgergen. Rialus had demonstrated his fortitude, his skills at dealing with the rough race the Numrek were.
“You’re the man for it, Rialus,” he said. “You’ve more than earned it.”
Rialus had offered a nervous rebuttal. He knew nothing about the Numrek! He wasn’t suited to the cold portions of the country the Numrek were to settle in. He’d much prefer a post nearer the heart of the nation, in Alecia or along the coast near Manil. Perhaps he could serve Hanish as the chief magistrate of Bocoum? Some such position as that. But liaison to the Numrek? He did not even speak their language. He did not wish to seem ungrateful, Rialus had said, but perhaps Hanish could reconsider. The beasts ate human flesh, after all! Hardly the sort of company a valued ally should be keeping.
He regretted afterward that he had protested at all. Maeander was there to hear it and seemed to take pleasure out of his begging. The appointment held, and so began a new period of misery in Rialus’s life.
There was some satisfaction to be taken from the fact that the Numrek ignored Hanish’s proclamations whenever they felt like it. They did not stay in the Mein, or even in Aushenia, as they had agreed to. Instead, they spread down toward the south. Calrach himself set up his court in a seized villa along the Talayan coast. Here, at least, Rialus found the warm weather he so enjoyed. But sun on the skin proved to be scant reward for other miseries of his daily existence.
What activities served to pass the time for the Numrek? What sort of culture did they have and how did they choose to enjoy the bounty their service to Hanish in the war afforded them? Well, they loved roasting themselves in the sun, as if this alone was a pursuit worthy of reasonable beings. On clear days they would lie naked on the sand of the seashore, only moving so as to roll from one side to another, sipping drinks fetched for them by Acacian servants. The young ones were always in among the adults, being coddled one moment and knocked around the next, always afforded a clear vantage to any and all of the carnage.
When not lying about in the sun, they would rise long enough to beat one another with clubs, with curved wooden sticks that often broke bones, with knives they deemed just short enough not to be fatal. They took pride in acquiring scars. Rialus made the mistake of showing his squeamishness around wounds, which meant only that he was daily presented with new gashes and tears, the Numrek watching his face and never failing to be amused by his reaction, no matter how hardened a faзade he tried to present.
He made another mistake regarding the spear-chucking game the Numrek enjoyed. It involved sending a slave dashing forward through an obstacle course as a spearman hurled a selection of javelins at him. Rialus once admitted that he found the spectacle amusing. In answer Calrach made Rialus himself run the course. He had pulled him from his seat and hefted a spear and smiled at him. “The trick,” he said, “is to be lucky.”
Rialus had never run so fast in his life. His heart pounded so hard he imagined others could see it thumping against his chest. Each instant he was in the course, he felt at the edge of death. The spears thudded just behind him each step of the way, marking his progress. He was sure he would either die or spend the rest of his life twisted around some festering impalement. None of the spears struck him, however. And it was not until his heart calmed enough so that he could hear over its bass notes that he realized Calrach and his companions were howling with glee. Calrach had not been trying to hit him. It was a game to them. Everything was, and try as he might Rialus could not find the courage not to make a fool of himself.
“Yes, Neptos, yes!” one of Calrach’s lieutenants said. “Very amusing. You are right!”
They showed no inclination to higher forms of art. No painting or sculpture, no poetry or recorded history. They had no written language. They saw no need for it. In fact, their primitive nature went beyond anything Rialus had observed before. No function of the body embarrassed them. They would eat, belch, fart, defecate, fornicate, or even self-stimulate in clear view of anybody, without regard for sex or age or status. Rialus so amused them by seeking seclusion for his bodily functions that eventually he had to give up on privacy. It made him the butt of jokes; whereas dropping his trousers and piddling in the middle of the courtyard roused not the slightest interest. He sometimes wondered if the Numrek were, in fact, a race of human beings at all. Nine years at his post and he had yet to form a definitive answer to the question.
He had learned the Numrek tongue, however. It was the strangest of languages. Even the simpler words were many-pronged monstrosities. They required contortions of the tongue and inhalations of breath and guttural inflections from low in the throat.
The evening Calrach chose to bestow upon him his first official mission began as any other banquet night. Rialus, at someone’s humorous prompting, no doubt, was situated between two young women, concubines who were attached to no headman in particular. They did not look much different from the males, frankly. They brushed against him often; reached over him to grab morsels of food; prodded him with playful, thick-knuckled fingers.
The worst thing about this placement was that the females actually aroused Rialus. He hated it, was disgusted by it, could not understand it; but truth be known he sat uncomfortably positioned around a rigidity at his groin. The women had a smell to them, a syrupy sort of scent like a fruit overripened and starting to turn. It was not a pleasant smell, but somewhere imbedded in it was an invitation to carnal excess. It was a sort of confused torture to endure the young women’s presence through the evening. Calrach seemed to understand his discomfiture and to relish it. Indeed, the chieftain never tired of observing and commenting on Rialus’s failings.
“Rialus, you still don’t care for our food?” Calrach asked. “How can this be so? I have a dish for you. Try.” As a servant set down a bowl of the concoction, Calrach described it as a stew made of the intestines of their rhinos, fermented in the milk of the females of the species, and stored for months in barrels. It was splashed liberally with alcohol before serving.