Khai saw all of this through a haze of wavering red shot with the yellow flames of sputtering torches; but then, as Mattas turned to him with a grim smile, he too fainted ….
V
The Keep at Hortaph
When Khai regained consciousness, it was to the sound of muffled sobbing. Opening one eye, he looked down the length of his raised pallet to where Ashtarta clung tightly to one of his projecting feet and sobbed into the fur which covered the rest of him. His body felt so stiff and bruised that for a moment or two he dared not move. The ache in his back was a slow-burning fire that threatened to blaze up if he so much as twitched, but he knew that eventually he must take that chance.
Still using one eye only, he experimentally turned his head to left and right and took in his surroundings. He lay on his pallet in a tiny, low-ceilinged cave which admitted light through a jagged hole in its roof. More light flooded from around a bend in the wall. Apart from a stone pitcher of water and a small pile of clothes, the cave was otherwise quite empty. Done with his inspection, Khai again turned his eye upon Ashtarta.
“Why don’t you wake up? You... you Khemite!” the girl snuffled into the fur. “If only to let me thank you for my father’s life. For his and for my own. And how might I ever pay my debt to you if you insist upon dying?”
“Oh?” said Khai. “Then you admit there’s a debt, do you?” His mouth was clammy and vile, so that he grimaced as he spoke.
Ashtarta started violently and let go his foot. Slowly she looked up, her mouth open, eyes wide and streaked with tears. An astonished smile quickly spread over her face, then gave way to a blush as she saw how keenly Khai’s eye regarded her. She did not quite manage to disguise either her delight or her blushes as she answered:
“A debt, yes—but not the one you mean. I meant a debt of of … of blood! My father’s blood and mine. You saved our lives, Khai, and that is the debt I meant.”
“In that case,” he answered, opening his other eye, “you can forget it. Both of you. All I expect is a place to live and some food to eat, I’ve told you that already. And as for saving your father’s life: it wasn’t of my own free will. Do you suppose I would have sat still on that horse if I had known an arrow was speeding for my back?”
“Nevertheless,” she told him, “your back took the arrow which would have killed him.”
Khai frowned. “It didn’t kill me,” he said.
“It very nearly did,” Ashtarta answered. “It smashed the arrows in your quiver and they deflected it. It went in close to your spine, but not very deep. Since then you’ve been in a fever. Sometimes violent and babbling crazy things, other times so quiet we thought you must be dead.”
“Oh,” he said. “Well, anyway, I feel a lot better now. My back doesn’t hurt too much and I’m hungry. Is that a good sign?”
“I’m sure it is! You’d like some meat, eh? Better than the slop I’ve been feeding you, when you’d take it. You got more down your front than you got in your mouth!” And she burst out laughing. Khai laughed, too, until his back began to hurt again.
“Where are we?” he eventually asked. “And why is it so quiet? You Kushites are supposed to be a noisy lot, and yet here—”
“Here it is quiet because we wish it to be so,” she said. “We mourn those men of Kush who will never return, those brave men who guarded my father’s northern flank and are lost.”
“What of the others,” Khai asked, “who guarded his southern flank?” Her face brightened. “They are safe. Every one spared. We met up with them beneath the walls, and now it is the lull before the storm.”
“Beneath which walls?” he asked. “And what storm do you speak of?” “Now we are on the heights over Hortaph,” she answered. “The Khemites followed us. We left a trail a blind man could follow. They are massed below, on the approaches to the keep. They’ll attack soon—today, maybe.”
“What?” cried Khai, struggling to sit up. “Hortaph? Isn’t that in Kush? How long have I been here? I have to see what’s happening. I—”
“No, Khai,” she said, placing a restraining hand on his chest, “You can’t get up. I’ve not spoon-fed you for a over a week to see you undo my work in minutes!”
He gritted his teeth, firmly moved her hand aside and finally sat up. The pain in his back did not noticeably increase, despite the fact that his head swam a little, and so he swung his feet out from under the pelt and onto the cool, dusty stone floor.
“You’ll be weak as a kitten,” Ashtarta protested, then shrugged and gave in. “Oh, come on then, but at least let me help you.” She pulled his right arm over her shoulder and let him lean his weight on her as he stood up and stumbled on stiff legs. He was naked apart from a linen loincloth and a swathe of bandages tightly bound about his upper body. He leaned against the wall of the cave and shuffled his feet into a pair of sandals, then allowed Ashtarta to ease a shirt onto his back as he belted a kilt about his waist.
“If I had a stick to lean on, I could manage,” he said.
She nodded. “You shall have a crutch … when Mattas says you’re well enough to be up and about. As for now, you can make do with my shoulder to lean on.” She tossed her ropes of hair. “Or is that too distasteful to you?”
He frowned at her for a moment, then shook his head and slowly smiled. “No, Princess, I don’t mind—as long as you don’t ask me to ride behind you on a horse again.”
“Huh!” it was her turn to frown. “Well, at least I know that wasn’t distasteful to you, you dirty-minded—”
“No, Princess,” he held up the flats of his palms, “let’s not fight. I suppose I should be grateful to you—honored, in fact—to have the next Candace of Kush fetching and carrying for me, as if I too were of royal blood.”
“I only fed you!” she snapped. “Others saw to your other needs. And I wouldn’t have fed you if The Fox hadn’t ordered it.”
“The Fox,” he answered, remembering Melembrin’s wound. “How is your father?”
“He has not youth on his side,” she answered, her eyes clouding over. “Also, the dog who shot him dipped his dart in excrement. The Fox is not well—but he’s on his feet. It was him I was shedding tears for when you awoke. …”
“Ah!” he nodded. “I had wondered about that. And where is he now?”
“You shall see him for yourself if you wish. But mind your tongue, Khai, for he holds you in high esteem. You can do well in his army. Indeed, he has asked after your health and will be glad to see you.”
She half-carried him from the cave out onto a boulder-strewn wasteland of stone and sun-baked earth. A sudden and unusually chill wind blew dust in their faces and made sand devils at their feet. When the wind died down Khai blinked dust out of his eyes and gazed at horizons of sky. On every side there was only the wasteland, reaching away for hundreds of yards to enclosing walls of boulders where they had been piled high.
He looked at Ashtarta. She had said that they were “on the heights over Hortaph.” It seemed more like the Roof of the World to Khai.
“This is the rim of the Gilf Kebir,” she said, “a natural fortress mightier by far than the walls of Asorbes. Ten miles north the heights stretch, and ten south. Full of false passes and gorges. Hortaph is just such a canyon, carved by a stream when the world was young.”
She led him to one side where the boulders were piled highest. If he had wondered where the Kushites were, he wondered no longer: they were crouched behind the heaped walls, looking down through gaps in the boulders. All of them were dressed alike, in brown jackets and kilts, so that they merged with the stones and rock formations of the plateau.