And the thought came back, And she would do the same with any other here, and so I am one of them. It was bittersweet, that thought. The Rekef in him jeered at it, but that part of him whose actions had seen him brought in for treason, that man understood. He launched himself to his feet and followed her off into the dark.
'What would you hear of my deeds, O Warlord?' he asked her, trying to match her tone. Away from the fires, he could not see her face clearly but he knew she was smiling.
'I shall tell you of them. You are a cunning creature, Of-the-Empire. You knew that the giant would escape my people.'
He shrugged. 'I was a slaver for the Empire. You learn about the Art of the lesser races. I knew that some of his kinden could walk within the earth.'
'How do you ever keep them enslaved?' she asked.
'Many don't have the Art. Most have kin that don't. For every runaway, every act of rebellion, we punish those we still have.' He spread his clawed hands. 'That man bought his freedom with the blood of his people. He's unusual. They're clannish, the Mole Crickets, and most of them just offer their backs to the lash and get on with their work.'
She gave a brief laugh. 'So your generosity gave the giant to my people.'
'And if they had killed him, they'd have thanked me,' Hrathen said. 'And if we'd gone for him and he'd escaped, we'd look weak. Do you disapprove?'
'No. I love cleverness. There are chieftains stronger than I, more skilled, more savage, but none is more clever, Of-the-Empire, remember that.'
'Must you call me that?' He surprised himself with the complaint. It was a weakness, to seek to avoid the name, but it jabbed him like a stone in his boot every time she used it. Perhaps it had surprised her, too, for she paused, appearing nothing but a darkness within the night. He sensed her staring back at him.
'What else am I to call you? That is all you are, to me: you are the Empire's halfbreed hand.' She sat down, looking back at the fires, at the hasty tents of her people. 'So tell me, Of-the-Empire, tell me of yourself — if there is more than that.'
He joined her carefully, within arm's reach of her. Now that his eyes were growing used to the dark, he saw how the distant wash of the oil flames gave her pale skin the faintest touch of blue fire.
'I was a slaver for a long time, working the Silk Road mostly,' he said. 'Then I was a Rekef man, keeping an eye on the slavers. It looked like that was all I'd ever be, travelling up and down the Dryclaw with the Scorpion-kinden-'
'I know of them,' she interrupted dismissively. 'The tame ones, we call them.'
He digested that, nodding. 'Then the war came,' he continued. 'War with the Lowlands. First strike was against an Ant city-state off the Silk Road, an army moving through the desert to get there. Throwing money at the Scorpions to act as guides. Suddenly I was important: the Rekef were leaning on me, wanting the Scorpions this place or that.'
'And who did you betray?' she asked, keen as a razor, enough to make him pause for one second, thinking: Is she Rekef? Is this the reckoning for me, here and now?
'To run with your kinden, even the "tame ones", one must live like you, share your values,' he explained. 'When the time came that they seized on the hand that fed them, I did not restrain them. Perhaps they could not have been restrained, anyway. Imperial supplies began disappearing. It was only a matter of time. If they hadn't gone on to hatch this plan, I'd be on crossed pikes by now.'
'Yes, this plan.' After that she was silent for a long time and, although he opened his mouth to speak several times, he could not find the words.
Eventually she sighed. 'Your Empire thinks us stupid,' she said, and then, 'I had the omens read, today, from the blood spilt on the sand.'
He had nothing to say to that, so he waited for her to elaborate.
'The haruspex told me that we would advance like the desert wind, that we would break the walls of Khanaphes and scourge them from the city's streets.'
'That sounds a good omen.'
'Does it?'
He gave her time to explain but she said nothing, and her melancholy was now infecting him. Eventually he said, 'I don't … we don't have omens and such in the Empire. Even amongst the Dryclaw tribes. I don't know what you mean.'
She laughed softly. 'Oh, the desert storm is a terrible thing, but where does it go to, when the wind is blown out? When the sand has settled again, where shall we be? The world is changing, Of-the-Empire. The Khanaphir do not realize it, and so they will be destroyed, but the world is changing. As for us, what do we build? What do we craft, save weapons? What do we create? And now we have your Empire to our north, and we look upon the tame ones and we can see our future. How long will it be before the Nem is no longer ours to rule? Perhaps I am the very last who can truly call herself the Warlord of the Many.'
He said nothing to this, because he could deny none of it.
'But in these last days we are strong,' she said, and with that she had banished her mood back to where it could not be heard or seen. 'And if the grave-marker of my people shall be the ruin of Khanaphes, so be it. Let them look upon those broken walls and know that once the Nem was free.' He saw the faintest movement of her face turning to him with its distant phosphorescence. 'You will never be one of us, Of-the-Empire, but I think you will never be of the Empire either. Men like you are cast simply for moments when the desert storm strikes. And then they are cast away. And then cast away, remember that.'
Next morning found Hrathen out of sorts, Jakal's words still echoing faintly inside his head. All around him the war-host of the Many was mobilizing, buckling on their armour and forming into their mobs. Their cavalry was already harnessed and ready. Riders with long lances sat in offset saddles strapped on to great scorpions that had been plated with armour, clattering forth with claws agape and stings raised high. Lesser beasts were put in pairs or fours to draw the Nemian chariots with their jagged-hubbed wheels, each beast with its outer claw sheathed in metal, like a shield. The chariots were traditional, light, chitin-built things for shock assaults, but now, behind the charioteer, they carried two crossbowmen apiece.
The great mass of the host went on foot, and it surged and quarrelled and milled as it formed up into marching order. There was a discord to them that he had not witnessed before: someone had drawn lines and boundaries about their naturally chaotic exuberance. That someone was Hrathen himself. While once they had all been warriors, now he had sieved them, divided them. Some of them were checking over the leadshotters, now drawn by animal carts and the Imperial automotives. Some carried their crossbows, standing distinctly apart from the rest. Others were simple soldiers with greatsword and halberd and axe. There was barely a shield amongst them, these hard, close-quarters traditionalists. Their place would be to bleed for the Nem when the battle was joined.
These were a people who possessed little, and put it all into their wars. Metal was not so scarce in the desert, for they melted down the wealth of past ages, from the Nem's ruined cities, to make their sword blades and axe heads. They scavenged armour of a dozen different styles then stretched and mauled it to fit their larger frames. Wood was harder to find, but they hunted the desert locusts, in their season, for the strong chitin shafts of their legs. A thousand insects had been trapped and killed to make hafts for the forest of halberds that Hrathen saw waving and weaving amid the host's advance guard.
'It makes you laugh, really, doesn't it?'
Hrathen turned to see the engineer, Angved, who had been busy these last few days, working with his picked artillerists. He might not like his students, but Hrathen could not fault him on his duty.