“Princess, to you!” she frowned, holding out a hand to him. “Come on, jump. Get up behind me—and hang on!”
While her pony continued to shy, Khai grasped the girl’s hand and jumped, throwing himself onto the animal’s back and almost unseating her. “Careful!” she cried. “Steady, there! Some horseman you, Khemite!”
“There are no horses in Asorbes,” he angrily answered, his arms around her waist and his chin bumping on her shoulder.
“Aye, that’s obvious,” she told him. “Grip the pony’s back with your knees and keep them bent. Grip his flanks with your feet. And watch where you put your hands—Khemite!” And she cantered her mount away from the fire and joined the column as it wound westward.
A moment later and the bulky shadow of the massive Ephrais drew alongside, pairing up with Ashtarta. “I see you remembered the lad, Princess,” he said in a lowered voice. “I went back for him, but saw you pick him up. Your good-luck piece, is he?”
“He is not!” she answered hotly. “But a debt is a debt—and now it’s paid in full!”
“I seem to remember it differently,” Khai grated in her ear, just loud enough for her to hear. “The way I remember it—”
“You’d be well advised to forget it!” she hissed. She dug her left elbow viciously into his ribs and deliberately caused her mount to the rear. Khai hung on for dear life and his hand inadvertently clasped her breast. Her shoulder came up under his chin, rattling his teeth and caused him to bite his tongue. Hearing him utter a colorful Khemish curse, Ashtarta’s anger left her in a moment and she chuckled as she drew her pony back into line.
Ephrais had already guided his mount to one side of the narrow trail and brought it to a halt, but he had seen something of the brief exchange between Khai and the princess. Now he watched the column pass him silently by until he was alone, then he too chuckled. Back along the trail at the deserted campsite, the bonfire’s flames reared high, an open invitation to any of Pharaoh’s soldiers who might be watching from afar. Ephrais stared for a moment longer at that fiery pillar and rubbed his chin.
“That’s not the only fire I’ve seen set today,” he told his mount. “It’s going to be interesting when we get back home—if we’re that lucky—to see how this lot works out. Our little Sh’tarra fancies the Khemite, of that you may be sure—and he fancies her, if I’m any judge. And as for Manek Thotak—”
Ephrais grinned again, turned his mount after the column and urged it into a trot. “Manek, my lad,” he said, “it looks like you have a serious rival!”
Fifteen minutes later, the column began to climb through long grass and shrubs toward the humped horizon of a low ridge. Following the flashes of white paint on the hindquarters of the double-ranked animals ahead, Ashtarta craned her neck to see where the forward part of the column was already cresting the ridge.
“See,” she told Khai. “If there are watchers, it will seem that the silhouette is of just two horses and their riders standing on the ridge. No one would suspect that we are over a hundred strong. And note how the ponies bear spots of white paint, so that we may all follow on like a snake in the dark.”
“I see,” said Khai, but his mind was not altogether on her words. So close to her, with her scent in his nostrils and her backside pressed against him— and the not unpleasant motion of the pony between his legs—he had discovered that his angry feelings toward the princess were melting away.
Suddenly he no longer minded the ache in his ribs where she had jabbed him, or the numbness of his tongue where he had bitten it. Instead, in his mind’s eye, he was distracted by vivid pictures of Ashtarta as he had first seen her. Her little breasts, flat belly and firm legs. And the way she had fought the Theraens… . With Ashtarta it would not be the same as with Mhyna. It would be more like fighting a Nile croc! Ah, but wouldn’t that be a fight to win?
But now, aware of how he was beginning to react to Ashtarta’s nearness and his own imagination, he relaxed his hold on the girl a little and gently drew back from her an inch or two.
“Hold tight to me,” Ashtarta immediately hissed, “and sit close! If we have to make a sudden run for it, I’ll lose you.”
Obediently, but gritting his teeth and hoping she wouldn’t notice, he inched closer. Impatiently, she tut-tutted and pushed her rump back against him. He groaned inwardly as he felt her body immediately stiffen. Beneath his hands the muscles of her stomach tightened, and he gritted his teeth as he waited for her outburst.
That outburst never came, for they had reached the crest of the ridge and the sight that opened to them as they stared across the nighted land ahead was one which shook both of them with an almost physical force.
Whatever it was that Ashtarta might have said or done, now she simply gasped: “Look!”
But Khai was already looking.
IV
Melembrin Runs the Gauntlet
Away to the west, at a distance of some two or three miles as Khai judged it, a second line of low hills formed an undulating horizon lit by the residual glow of a sunken sun. Directly in the path of Melembrin’s column, the hills were breached by a deep gash which formed a pass to the west, and this was obviously the war-chief’s escape route. To north and south, however, the hills leveled out until they merged with the shadows and darkness of the lower ground—except that it was not dark now but burning with the light from thousands of torches!
Vast bodies of men were on the march, closing in a massive pincer movement, and already the points of that pincer had passed behind the dark masses of the hills and were doubtless converging upon a meeting place on the western flank—which could only be the far end of the pass. Khai saw all of this in an instant, and as Ashtarta dug her heels in and urged her mount to greater speed, so his eyes went again to the masses of moving lights where they wound like rivers to north and south.
Why, he could almost hear—no, he could hear, even at this distance—a faint blare of brazen trumpets and an even fainter chanting from thousands of throats’ The marching-chant of Pharaoh’s army, the war-chant of a disciplined military machine. Quicker by far than Khai, Melembrin and his warriors had recognized their peril, and as the column sharpened its pace so the chief fell back and hastened his men on, until eventually he spied Ashtarta and brought his massive mount to a gallop alongside hers. Seated bareback astride his great horse—with his naked arms rippling with muscle, his leather-clad back straight and strong, and wearing his horned war-helmet like a metal skull—the Kushite now looked more like some great savage than a wise and respected king, and the flame-eyed beast between his legs must surely be a demon from the depths of blackest nightmare. Khai’s flesh crept and he shrank from the vision; but Ashtarta, reaching out even on the gallop to grip Melembrin’s jacket, merely cried:
“Father, did you see them? How many, do you think?” “Too many, lass,” he barked. “A mighty pride of lions if ever I saw one— and now we must outrun them. If they reach the far end of the pass before we’re through it—” and he left the sentence unfinished. “Father, I—” she began, but he quickly cut her off.
“Listen, Sh’tarra. Whatever else happens, you must get back to Kush. No heroics, girl—though I know you’d fight like a man if you had to—but you must make it home for two good reasons. One: someone has to warn Kush, and you’ve got the fleetest little animal under you that I ever saw. And two: you’ll be Candace one day, and Kush will need you. Are you listening, Sh’tarra ?”
For answer, she nodded, leaning forward as her mount barely cleared a small shrub in its way. “I’ll make it home, father—we all will.”