Maia полностью

Maia was about to reply but Zen-Kurel, his eyes alight with excitement, went on, "There's a general for you! Every man in the army would follow him anywhere! Now you'll understand, my dearest Maia, won't you, that it's not just some fiddling little business that I've got to leave you for? Until the meeting after supper I didn't know it was to be tonight. No one did. We've been waiting, you see, for the last few hundred Subans to arrive. But apparently this afternoon U-Nasada warned the king very seriously that the Suban camp was in such a filthy state that pestilence might break out at any moment. "And if that happens," he said, "you won't have an army at all. If it's the bad-water sickness, they'll just go down in cursing rows in a matter of hours-the Subans and your men as well." That decided the king: he made up his mind for tonight.

"The men are being told at this very minute. We're due to start in an hour. I'm supposed to be with the king now- on instant call, anyway-but I came here to be with you. No one but you, Maia-believe me, no one in the world- could have made me take a risk like that-my place with

the king, my reputation, future, everything. Now do you realize how much I love you?"

She could find no words.

"But whether or not you believe in my love, my darling, there's no two ways about it, I must go now."

Hastily, he got out of bed and began dressing. "Wish me luck! Oh, the daggers! Never mind! Keep the lot!"

Dazedly, hardly knowing what she said, she asked, "But- but how will you reach the river in the dark? The swamps-"

"The river? Why, it's not far from where we are now- over that way." He pointed. "Didn't you know? The woods screen it, else you could almost see it."

"But you said-downstream-"

"Yes, the crossing-place is about three miles downstream from here. There's a track. We've got guides posted along it already. Now kiss me, Maia; dear, darling Maia! I can't tell you how much I love you! I was going to kill ten Beklans: I'll make it twenty for you."

"Oh, Zenka, don't go! You'll be killed, I know it!"

He laughed. " 'Don't go!" What kind of talk's that, Miss Maia? You know I must."

"Oh, I love you, Zenka! I can't bear to let you go! I love you!"

"I love you, too. And this isn't the end; it's only the

beginning, Maia, as far as we're concerned. Believe me,

"we'll meet again in Bekla, when Karnat's taken it; and I'll

marry you, if only you'll have me. Will you? Will you marry

me?"

"Yes-yes! Of course I will! I'll marry you and make you happy forever! I'd go anywhere, do anything for you!" She clung to him, weeping. "If only there wasn't to be the fighting-"

At that moment a distant trumpet sounded. Zen-Kurel, starting, thrust her quickly from his embrace. "O gods, the king! I never dreamt it was so late! The king'U be furious!"

Fumbling at the buckle of his belt, he ran out the door. The sound of his pelting footsteps receded and vanished, merging into the distant tumult of assembly that now reached her ears across the intervening meadows.

Dressed once more, she stood in the doorway, gazing across the meadows faintly lit under the setting half-moon. In one or two houses, beyond the foot of the little slope, lamps were burning, but she could hear no voices and there was no one to be seen. The news, she supposed, had by now spread through Melvda, and almost everyone would be down at the camps, whence the first companies must already be on the point of leaving.

Below her she could see the Star Court and the faint, glinting line of the stream up which her boat had come that morning. The courtyard itself was lit by the smoky, orange light of pine torches, and people-black shapes against the flares-were appearing and disappearing, some walking, some running, but all moving purposefully in the same direction. The camp sites beyond were indistinguishable in a hazy distance of moonlit marsh-mist. Their fires, she thought, must all have been quenched. Even as she gazed she caught sight, far off, of a twinkling spray of sparks which vanished altogether on the instant-a bucket of embers, no doubt, flung into the stream. Yet there was little noise-only that same far-off muted commotion into which the sound of Zen-Kurel's footsteps had been swallowed. Probably the men had been ordered to keep silence as they formed up and marched off.

Those black figures moving against a background of leaping fire-they filled her with unease; with dread, indeed. Where had she seen them before? In the gardens by the Barb? No, not that: no, something worse-worse. Suddenly, with a low cry of horror, she recalled crouching beside PiUan in the undergrowth as the Subans crept forward to attack the Tonildan patrol at the ford.