“Are they cannibals, then? Do they murder one another for their flesh?”
“Cannibals, yes. They see nothing wrong with eating their own dead. A thrifty folk, they are. But murderers, no. Killing their own kind is a sin they don’t seem to practice, cousin. My guess is that this one ran into something even nastier than itself. Yissou knows there’s danger all over the place in this open country, wild beasts of a hundred sorts.”
“Thrifty, you say!” Thu-Kimnibol spat. “Demons is what they are! We should exterminate them to the last one!”
“Ah, you think so, cousin?”
“I do.”
Salaman smiled broadly. “Well, then we think alike. I thought you’d find this ride instructive. Do you see what we face here, now? Why my wall, which I know you all find so amusing, is of the size that it is? We journey just a short way from the city, and there they are, committing their abominations right in front of our eyes, and not caring in the slightest that we’re watching.”
Thu-Kimnibol glared. Something throbbed in his forehead. “We should go down there and kill them as they eat. Two of us, four of them — those aren’t bad odds.”
“There may be a hundred more behind those trees. Do you want to be their next meal, cousin?” The king tugged at Thu-Kimnibol’s arm. “Come. The sun has gone down, and we’re far from the city. We should turn back, I think.”
But Thu-Kimnibol was unable to take his eyes from the grim scene in the canyon below.
“A vision comes to me as I stand here,” he said softly. “I see an army, thousands of us, riding out across this land. From your city and ours, and all the small settlements between. Traveling swiftly, striking quickly, slaughtering every hjjk we find. Going right on without stopping, right into the heart of the great Nest, right into the Queen’s own hiding-place. A lightning strike that they won’t be able to withstand, no matter how many of them there are. The Queen is their strength. Kill Her and they’re helpless, and we’ll be able to wipe the rest of them out at out ease. What do you say, Salaman? Isn’t that a wondrous vision?”
The king nodded. He looked pleased. “We think alike, cousin. We think alike! Do you know how long I’ve waited for someone from Dawinno to say such things to me? I had almost given up hope.”
“You never considered launching the war on your own?”
What might have been annoyance awoke in the king’s eyes for a moment. “There aren’t enough of us, cousin. It would be certain disaster. Your city, once it took in all those Bengs — that’s where the troops I need are. But what chance is there that I’d get them? Your city’s too comfortable, Thu-Kimnibol. Dawinno’s not a city of warriors. Yourself excepted, of course.”
“Perhaps you underestimate us, cousin.”
Salaman shrugged. “The Bengs were warriors once, when they were wanderers in the plains. But even they’ve grown fat and easy down there in the warm southlands. They don’t remember how much grief the hjjks gave them long ago. Dawinno’s too far from hjjk territory for anyone down there to care about them. How often do you see hjjks roaming as close to your city as these are to ours? Once every three years? We live with their presence every day. Among you there’s some little flurry of anger when a child is stolen, and then the child comes back, or is forgotten, and everything is as it was before.”
Tightly Thu-Kimnibol said, “You make me think my mission’s pointless, cousin. You tell me to my face that I speak for a nation of cowards.”
There has been a sudden shift in mood. The two men stare at each other in a way that is very much less friendly than it was only a little while before. The rebuke hangs in the air between them for a long silent moment. Down below, the feast is still going on: harsh sounds, sounds of rending and crunching, drift upward on the cool evening air.
Salaman says, “It was weeks ago that you said you’re here to propose an alliance, that Dawinno wants to join forces with us and make war against the hjjks. Exterminate them like vermin, that’s what you said you’d like to do. Fine. Excellent. And now you put forth this pretty vision of our two armies joining and marching north. Splendid, cousin. But forgive me if I’m skeptical. I know what people are like in Dawinno. Alliance or no alliance, how can I be sure that your people will actually come up here and fight? What I want is a guarantee that you can deliver the army of Dawinno to me. Can you give me that guarantee, Thu-Kimnibol?”
“I think I can.”
“Think-you-can isn’t good enough. Take another look down there, cousin. See them gnawing and grinding their comrade’s flesh. Can you make your people see what you see now? Those are hjjks, just a few hours’ ride from my city. Every year there are more of them. Every year they get a little closer.” Salaman laughs bitterly. “What does it matter to the people of Dawinno that the hjjks are camped on our doorstep, eh? It’s the flesh of our sons and daughters, not theirs, that they’ll be feeding on one of these days, eh, cousin? Do they realize, down south, that when the hjjks are through here, they’ll go on to pounce on Dawinno? Their appetites can’t be checked. They’ll go south, sure as anything. If not right away, then twenty, thirty, fifty years from now. Are your people capable of looking that far ahead?”
“Some of us are. Which is why I’m here.”
“Yes. This famous alliance. But when I ask you if Dawinno will really fight, you give me no answer.”
Salaman’s eyes are bright with fierce energy, now. They drill remorselessly into Thu-Kimnibol’s. Thu-Kimnibol’s head is beginning to ache. Diplomatic lies are on the tip of his tongue, but he forces them back. This is the moment for utter honesty. That too can sometimes be a useful tool.
Bluntly he says, “You must have good spies in Dawinno, cousin.”
“They do a decent job. How strong is your peace faction, will you tell me?”
“Not strong enough to get anywhere.”
“So you actually think your people will go to war against the hjjks when the time comes?”
“I do.”
“What if you overestimate them?”
“What if you underestimate them?” Thu-Kimnibol asks. He stares down at the king from his great height atop his xlendi. “They’ll fight. I give you my own guarantee on that, cousin. One way or another, I’ll bring you an army.” He points with a jabbing finger into the canyon. “I’ll find a way of making them see what I see now. I’ll wake them up and turn them into fighters. You have my pledge on that.”
A disheartening look of continuing skepticism flickers across Salaman’s face. But almost immediately other things seem to be mixed into it: eagerness, hope, a willingness to believe. Then the whole mixture vanishes and the king’s expression once more becomes guarded, stony, gruff.
“This needs further discussion,” he says. “Not here. Not now. Come. Or we’ll be riding back in the dark.”
Darkness was indeed upon them by the time they reached the city. Torches blazed atop the wall, and when Salaman’s son Chham rode out from the eastern gate to greet them the look of anxiety on his face was unmistakable.
The king laughed it away. “I took our cousin out toward Vengiboneeza, so that he could smell the breeze that blows from that direction. But we were never in danger.”
“The Protector be thanked,” Chham exclaimed.
Then, turning to Thu-Kimniboclass="underline" “There’s a messenger here from your city, lord prince. He says he’s been riding day and night, and it must be true, for the xlendi he arrived on was so worn out it looked more dead than alive.”
Thu-Kimnibol frowned. “Where is he now?”
Chham nodded toward the gate. “Waiting in your chamber, lord prince.”
The messenger was a Beng, one of the guardsmen of the justiciary, a younger brother of the guard-captain Curabayn Bangkea. Thu-Kimnibol recalled having seen him on duty at the Basilica now and then. Eluthayn was his name, and he looked ragged and worn indeed, a thin shadow of himself, close to the point of breaking down from fatigue. It was all he could do to stammer out his message. Which was a startling one indeed.