peaceful here,’ Soutan remarked one morning. ‘Peaceful and prosperous.’
‘For now it is,’ Warkannan said. ‘If there’s another round of new taxes, I don’t know what people are going to eat. The salt tax has damn near broken the farmers as it is. They have to work out in the sun, and salt’s no luxury to them. That’s something that Gemet will never understand, the greedy bastard – hard work and what it does to a man.’
‘Unfortunately, you’re quite right. I have no doubt that Jezro will take a very different view of the matter.’
‘Neither do I. God blessed us when He spared Jezro.’
‘As he damn well should, considering all the trouble you people have gone to for his sake.’
‘Now just what do you mean by that?’
‘Only that you left the Homelands to come here. Haven’t you ever wondered about those Homelands, Captain?’
Warkannan considered as they rode past a long maroon field of vegetables. Out among the rows farmers were harvesting, cutting leaves and piling them high in baskets. He could hear them singing as they worked.
‘From what I understand,’ Warkannan said at last, ‘we’re a lot better off here. The Homelands were filled with infidels and evil magic. It was so bad that the great Mullah Agvar was afraid the true faith would be lost.’
Soutan rolled his eyes heavenward. ‘No doubt that’s what you’ve been taught. Don’t you ever wonder if it’s true?’
‘No. Why would I? The mullahs are the ones who have all the old books and such. They’d know the truth.’
‘Maybe. What if they’re not telling the truth, though?’
‘Why wouldn’t they?’
‘To keep you from regretting what you’ve lost, the Homelands, I mean.’
‘Why would I regret a pack of filthy infidels and their tame demons?’
Soutan looked at him for a long moment, eyes wide in exaggerated amazement. ‘You belong in a museum, Captain,’ he said finally. ‘A pure example of a pure type.’
‘Now, watch it, Soutan!’
Soutan flinched as if he expected a blow. ‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to be insulting.’
Warkannan snorted, then changed the subject.
As they travelled north, they stopped now and then at a cavalry fort to see if they could pick up gossip or news that might point them to the Chosen’s spy. Warkannan’s twenty years of service had left him with plenty of friends, many of them stationed at one or the other of the chain of cavalry forts that bound the khanate together. It was at Haz Anjilar that he heard more about the officer cashiered out at Blosk.
Warkannan had left Soutan and Arkazo at the inn and gone alone to pay a courtesy call upon the commander, a colonel named Hikko who had once shared a border posting with him. Over glasses of arak, they agreed that the cavalry wasn’t what it used to be, that the young officers nowadays were slack and ill-educated, and that the enlisted men lacked a proper respect for authority.
‘What we need,’ Hikko said, ‘is a war. A good long campaign against the ChaMeech – now that would weed out the unfit. There’d be none of this lying around the barracks and arguing with the sergeants then.’
‘Can’t blame the men, I suppose,’ Warkannan said. ‘When you consider what they’ve got for officers.’
‘Now that’s true.’ Hikko shook his bald head sadly. ‘I’ve got a story along those lines. A fellow named Zayn Hassan. Everyone said he had a brilliant career ahead of him. He was stationed in Bariza, on his way up, but he couldn’t keep his hands off of some official’s wife.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He ended up cashiered, that’s what. Down in Blosk, they flogged him and turned him out. A comnee took him in, apparently. But you know what’s damned odd? No one knows the name of this very important cuckold or his wife. You’d think the womenfolk would have spread the gossip over half the khanate.’
Warkannan found himself very sober very fast. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’d think so. How many lashes did this Hassan get?’
‘Twenty.’
While Hikko poured himself more arak, Warkannan considered the matter. Twenty stripes – the thought made him wince. Would the Chosen inflict them on one of their own just to make his story more convincing? Possibly, considering what they were, but not likely. When Hikko offered him the bottle, Warkannan shook his head.
‘I’ve had plenty, thanks. You know, the husband in the Hassan case could have spread money around to keep his name out of it. Who wants to be known as a cuckold?’
‘Now that’s true. And the fellow must have been rich as a khan to get the cavalry to take his revenge for him.’
‘Rich or well-connected.’
‘That too. Damned poor way to run an army, letting civilians meddle with discipline, but there you are.’
Warkannan found himself thinking about Zayn Hassan as he walked back to the inn. Something about the story nagged at him. He kept coming back to the lack of names and realized that the tale required more detail to be fully convincing as juicy gossip. Still, Blosk lay nearly four hundred miles to the south, while Haz Evol, where their other suspect had turned up, stood only a hundred and eighty to the east. Warkannan decided they’d best stick with their original plan.
On the morrow they left Haz Anjilar early. Some five miles along the khan’s highway they rode up to an intersection where a square-cut stone pillar stood in a little island at the cross of the roads. Carved arrows pointed north to Merrok, west to Kazrikki-on-Sea, south back the way they’d come, and east to Haz Evol and the border. They paused their horses beside the pillar, and Warkannan pointed to the north road.
‘All right, Arkazo,’ he said. ‘What do you say you keep riding north and take some letters to your mother for me?’
‘No!’ Arkazo’s face flushed scarlet. ‘You said I could come! I mean, with all due respect, Uncle.’
Warkannan laughed. ‘Respect, huh? All right, Nephew. I wanted to give you one last chance to stay out of this.’
Arkazo shook his head, glaring at him all the while.
‘All right,’ Warkannan said. ‘I’ll just have to pray that your mother forgives me.’
They reined their horses to the east and rode off, heading for the border. Not far along the east-running road the land began rising in a long slope. Ahead a ripple of purple hills stood at the horizon like a fort wall, guarding the civilized life they were about to leave behind.
‘And beyond them lie the plains,’ Warkannan said to Arkazo. ‘And the ChaMeech. It’s a damned shame the Third Prophet didn’t wipe them out when he had the chance. Kaleel Mahmet, blessed be his name of course, but I can’t help wishing he’d driven them across the plains and slaughtered the lot.’
‘Indeed?’
