Tales of the legendary thief-king of Parsathe, who had long ago united the tribes that rode the Burning Plains. “Why false?”
“No one could have scaled those walls to steal the pearl from Ephorn’s crown. Easier to scale a wall of greased steel.”
“So it would be. But a man does not become a legend by performing feats that others deem easy,” Maddek said.
“Climbing that wall would not be difficult. It would be impossible.”
Maddek agreed. But a man also did not become a legend by doing what others deemed possible. “Is the feat not as impressive if he climbed the stairs?”
“How can it be? Shall I tell my children how Ran Bantik gasped for breath when he reached the top? Shall I describe how he must have clutched his burning chest as he stole the pearl?”
“If Commander Maddek were to race to the upper chambers, he would not be gasping for breath—and neither would I.” This came from Ardyl, who had also dismounted and now looked up at Kelir with a frown creasing her black-painted brow. “Perhaps if you more often ran beside your horse instead of always sitting on him, you could also reach the top unwinded.”
Kelir looked to Maddek as if for help, but Maddek had none to offer. Instead he could only laugh his agreement. Kelir’s saddle would wear thin before his boots ever did.
“When I see the keep, I do not think of Ran Bantik,” Ardyl added as she took Maddek’s reins. The warriors would not accompany him inside but would remain in the courtyard with the horses. “Instead I wonder what sort of fools the royal family must have been. They built a majestic tower honoring the moon goddess, though it is by Muda’s favor that they all prosper.”
“What insult could that be?” Kelir frowned at her. “Vela gave birth to Muda. What daughter would not see her mother honored?”
Ardyl’s response was a glance at the silent warrior mounted a few paces behind him. Danoh’s feud with her mother was almost as legendary as any thief-king. Many Parsatheans claimed the only time they’d ever heard Danoh speak was when she yelled at the older woman.
Grinning, Kelir bowed his head to acknowledge Ardyl’s point.
Movement on the tower steps drew Maddek’s attention. A seneschal in blue robes approached—a wiry Tolehi man with shaved head and pursed lips.
Omer. Maddek knew him well. He’d first met the seneschal as a boy, visiting the tower while his parents spoke to the council. He’d spent a full morning in an antechamber with Omer watching him as an antelope watches a drepa—with trembling limbs and pounding heart, fearing the raptor’s sickle claw that would spill steaming innards to the ground.
Though a sickle claw from Maddek’s first drepa hunt had already hung from the leather thong around his throat, he hadn’t spilled the Tolehi man’s innards. Instead he’d eaten his way through a platter of roasted boa.
Maddek had pleasant memories of that morning, and of every meeting since. Even if the seneschal did not.
“Commander Maddek.” Omer imperiously swept his hand toward the tower entrance. “The council is ready to receive you, if you are ready to be received.”
The doubt in the seneschal’s tone suggested that Maddek could not be. “I am.”
The older man sniffed as Maddek joined him. “If you wish, I will escort you to the bathing chambers first.”
Grinning his amusement, Maddek climbed the steps. “I do not wish.”
There was no shame in smelling of horse, or in wearing the grime of camp on his skin. The duty of serving the alliance and protecting their people left his warriors covered in sweat and filth, and he would not pretend a warrior’s work was a clean work.
As it was, the council ministers should be grateful he always washed away the blood of battle, or he would have faced them dripping an ocean of it.
With a sword’s worth of steel in his spine, Omer tipped back his head to meet Maddek’s gaze. “I would offer a robe so that you could clothe yourself before meeting the ministers, but we do not have any large enough to cover your mountainous expanse of flesh. But did I not see a mammoth’s pelt rolled up and tied to your beast of a horse?”
Not a mammoth’s but a bison’s—and it was too warm for furs. The last frost had melted during their journey north, and Maddek no longer used his furs except to sleep on.
He said simply, “I am already dressed.”
In red linen folded over a wide belt. The inner length of cloth hung to his knees. When it was raining or cold, he could draw up the longer outer length and drape it over his shoulders, but now it fell almost to the ground, all but concealing the soft leather boots that protected his feet and hugged his calves. The outer length of linen was split to allow for ease of movement, but unless he was riding or fighting, it concealed his skin as well as a southerner’s robe did . . . from the waist down.
On this day, the sun was high and warm, so he needed no other covering—whereas Omer wore enough for two men.
The southerners did not just wrap their cities in walls. Their soldiers wrapped their bodies in heavy armor even when they were not in battle. The citizens wrapped themselves in cloth from neck to ankle, even on days when they needed no protection from the cold or wind.
An entire life they spent wrapped, as if for a funeral pyre.
Maddek spent his life as he lived it. For a full turn of the moon he had been traveling, so he was dressed to ride. He did not anticipate a fight, so he wore no armor, and his chest was bare aside from the leather baldric slung across his shoulder to carry his sword. No black paint darkened his brow. The only silver upon his fingers was the family crest circling the base of his thumb; he’d tucked away the razor-tipped claws that would drip with blood by the end of a battle.
Although he was a commander of the alliance’s army, if Maddek had arrived looking as he did after a battle, he doubted they’d have let him through the gates. Many southerners within the alliance still believed the Parsatheans were little better than the Farian savages. The riders were still called raiders and thieves—and uncivilized.
Maddek had never known the raid. By the time he’d been old enough to mount his first horse, the alliance between Parsathe and the southern realms had been firmly established. But if civilization meant cowering behind walls, if it meant wrapping every bare stretch of skin in linens, then Maddek preferred to be a barbarian.
In a god’s age, when their civilized walls were crumbling to dust, when the names of their civilized cities were forgotten, Parsathean seed would still grow strong amid the ruins.
Omer gave Maddek’s bare chest a despairing glance before sighing and continuing across the marble floor inside the tower’s entrance. In silence they walked, until they reached the anteroom outside the council’s chamber.