"Is that the only reason you love me, Jestia, because I love you?" Ufalla asked.
"Ufalla," Jestia sighed. "You are magnificent, beautiful, funny, strong, brave to a fault and in bed," she rolled her eyes and sighed again though in a different tone, "you did something to me that very first time we made love. I didn't know what it was at first, I thought it was strictly great technique and then I realized that what you did was that you made me feel. I never really had before."
"But . . . Why did you bed me in the first place?"
"Because you were my dearest friend and I knew you loved me that you wanted me. I thought you were going to die so I just wanted to make you happy."
Ufalla just glared. "You didn't even want me physically? You were just sleeping with me out of pity? I at least thought you found me attractive."
"I always have, just not that way. I do now so what does it matter? Why are you so mad?" Jestia laughed and kissed her. "Don't be mad at me, Ufalla," Her features suddenly changed and then she lay her head back down on Ufalla's chest. "Never be mad at me."
Ufalla wrapped her arms around Jestia to reassure her. She moved to kiss the top of Jestia's head. "I could never be really mad at you, Jestia, you know that."
"I do," she said. "Fate put us together, Ufalla. Fate bound us when we could hardly walk. We were always meant to be, you knew that, I was just too ignorant to know it because I had no idea what love was. How could I have learned?"
Ufalla could feel Jestia's tears fall against her skin, "Oh baby, I'm sorry I didn't mean to upset you."
"Why Ufalla? Why doesn't she love me? Why did she never love me? What's wrong with me?"
"There is nothing wrong with you. She doesn't love anyone, Jestia. She is a bitter woman old before her time because she's never let anyone in," Ufalla said angrily. She took Jestia by the shoulders, lifted her up and shook her. Jestia just let her head hang and didn't look up. "Hey stop it, look at me." Jestia lifted her head and their eyes met. "It's her loss, not yours. You can't fix what you didn't break. You belong to me now. I'll do the wedding ceremony because it's what you want but I don't need anything or anyone to tell me that we belong together. You are part of my family, my pack now, and you know they all love you. Why care at all what people think who are too stupid to care about you?"
Jestia smiled. "You make every pain go away. You fill my heart 'til it wants to burst."
Ufalla kissed her and set her back down on her chest. "You were amazing tonight," she whispered.
"I want to make you feel the way you make me feel," Jestia said uncharacteristically shy, "I have to make sure you never want to leave me."
"Oh Jestia, if you don't know it now you never will, I could never leave you." She paused then added, "after all you'd hunt me down and kill me."
Tarius and Eric had been sitting around the fire outside his family's huts when the news came that Kasiria was going to be all right. They had celebrated by running down to the lake and having sex 'til they both passed out.
He really liked Eric. He didn't care that they looked ridiculous with her at six feet and broad shouldered for a woman and him five four and of small stature for a man. Did such differences really matter? Didn't such difference make for better stories? And she loved his stories.
Tarius and Eric and some others had been going through the Amalite weapons they had taken from the battle. They had started burning the shields as soon as they realized what they were—two and sometimes three layers of human skin stretched over a frame made of horse's rib bones. Most of the weapons were abominations, too. Blades with human bones for handles. Bones—most probably human—carved into spear heads and knives. They threw all of the bones into the fire and they broke the bone off the tongues, threw the bone fragments into the fire, and set the blades aside to be cleansed.
"How could any gods condone such behavior?" Eric asked in disgust, picking one of the shields up from the back of the wagon and slinging it into the fire. "I keep telling myself not to think it but I keep thinking that when we face them again they will have the skins of my friends stretched across their shields."
"Aye, I have been thinking the same thing," Tarius said, picking up another shield. He was preparing to throw the shield on the fire when he saw what had been under it and the shield just dropped to the ground beside the wagon. He reached down and picked it up, turned it in his hand, and his blood ran cold. He let out a yell and jumped out of the wagon and just started running. Eric jumped out of the wagon and ran right after him, not that anyone could catch Tarius on foot. Tarius found Arvon outside his own huts, and he skidded to a stop at his feet.
"Tarius what on earth?" Arvon started. For answer Tarius held up the item he had found. At first Arvon had no idea what all the excitement was and then his eyes looked haunted. He took it from Tarius's hand and looked at it, "Where did you find this?"
"Among the weapons we took from the Amalites."
"We must get this to Tarius at once. She is at the capitol. I will wrap it for the journey, you go and pack and tell your parents you must go."
"Me, master Arvon?"
"Yes you. You're the one who found it," Arvon said with a smile.
In minutes he and Eric were on their way to the capital.
* * *
Jabone stood around the huge round table beside Kasiria looking down at the map and feeling resigned. They were going, but he had none of the passion for the fight that they did. Kasiria knew this and she kept a comforting hand on his shoulder, as if she could keep him from saying what he felt by will alone.
He looked over at Ufalla and Jestia who were mostly just whispering and smiling at each other only occasionally half paying attention to the discussion around them at all. Hestia mostly ignored them as she talked to his madra and the kingdom's other military advisors.
What was funniest about them standing over this map of the Jethrik as they talked was that the territories hadn't actually been mapped out yet and there was just a huge white space that said "territories" on the map with no details, so it was mostly useless. Of course his mother had a quill trying to rectify that problem.
"Kasiria, help us with the mapping," Tarius said, and Kasiria let go of him and moved to his madra's side taking the quill she handed her and starting to draw the road, guessing at distances.
"The road is here and here are the ruins of Grey Noke—all approximate of course. There is a river that runs here and a creek here and . . . "
Jestia had untangled herself from Ufalla and she held her hands over the map she said nothing but suddenly color started to swirl and when next he looked it was as if someone had made a model of the area.
"Is this accurate Jestia?" Tarius asked in amazement.
"As well as my brain has kept it," Jestia said.
"Thank you," Tarius said.
Jestia looked straight at her mother and said, "You're welcome Great leader, such things are
very
easy for me." Then she purposefully walked back over to Ufalla and wrapped herself around her again.
Jabone turned away from the table. He didn't want to see it.
"Bravery is not governed by a man's desire to fight but his conviction to do so even when he doesn't want to," his mother whispered in his ear.
"My madra's words, do they rattle in your head all the time, too then?" he asked in a whisper looking down at her and smiling.
"After all these years I often think she and I only have one mind and then we'll disagree and then I realize we are still ourselves within our oneness. I wouldn't quote her if I didn't agree with what she'd said. You know that."
"Even to make me feel better?" Jabone asked.
Jena smiled, "Well maybe for that."
"I'm trying, I really am, but I see no reason, none at all to go to this far away place to fight a war the Jethrikian king should fight. Why should anyone I love be put in danger for them?" He looked at Kasiria then.
"She told you?" his mother said, obviously a little shocked.
He didn't have to ask what she meant. He knew because Kasiria had told him his parents already knew. "Yes, she told me this morning. I woke mad at the world and I was going on and on about what a coward King Persius was and she told me."
"How do you feel about it?" Jena asked carefully.
"She is not her father and just because she is his daughter doesn't make me think less of her or more of him." He smiled at his mother. "But I suppose for the sake of her feelings I won't be calling him a coward in front of her anymore. Or at the least I'll try not to."
Then the door to the war room flew open and young Tarius ran in, closely followed by Eric. Jabone started to run to his friend and give him a hug but then something about the urgent look on his face made him stop. Tarius walked right up to his madra, carrying something wrapped in cloth. He put it on the table in front of her.
"What is all this then, Tarius?" his madra asked.
Tarius motioned for her to lean down to him and she did. He whispered something in her ear and her features went ashen and she just looked at the bundle in front of her. Jabone found himself wishing he'd been trying to hear. His mother had left his side without him noticing and she was pushing young Tarius out of the way and moving to stand beside his madra.
"What is it?" she asked in a voice so low human ears couldn't have heard it, and only he did because he was trying this time.
His madra didn't answer, she just started to unwrap the package and her hands were shaking. He couldn't imagine what would cause her to react so. Then the wrapping was pulled away and he could see it was a sword. She just looked at it for what seemed like a lifetime, and then she carefully picked it up and flipped it over. When she did she laid it gently back on the table and then she staggered and almost fell. His mother caught her.
"Madra what's wrong?" Jabone asked. But tears swam in her eyes, and she didn't seem to be able to find her voice.
"It is her father's sword," his mother said.
"Found among the weapons taken from the Amalites," young Tarius explained.
Jabone's blood started to boil and his desire for the fight was rekindled ten fold, remembering all that these things had done to his family to his madra.
"We must smoke these bastards from their caves and kill them to the last man," Jabone swore. "We must find them where they are sleeping and slit their throats. Let none of them live to utter the names of their accursed gods ever again. No Amalite," he spit as did every person in the room, "will ever again threaten any peoples. Let us waste no more time here when our enemy sleeps at peace in the territories thinking us defeated. Let us take a great force, meet with this coward of a King of the Jethrik and go in great numbers and destroy our enemy in the hive."
They had stopped in Montero just long enough for Jestia to gather up some herbs and potions and then they had headed straight on for the Valley of the Katabull. Hestia had sent out ten ships with five hundred soldiers and one hundred horses aboard. They would reach the territories before them. A page would be sent out with a request for Persius to meet them at Port Sagal. Hestia had written the letter he would carry to the king in her own hand.
Kasiria looked at Jabone where he rode beside her. There was no longer any doubt in him. In fact, his face was set in the same single-minded, determined scowl his madra's was.
She had told him who her father was expecting a Katabull rage and he had looked somewhat puzzled and said this rather confusing thing about he wasn't his madra and she wasn't her father and that the news made him care no less for her or more for him. And that seemed to be exactly true because she had never doubted his love for her even once and he had never stopped saying damning things about her father. It was her father's fault this old enemy had been allowed to grow and menace them anew, he and all those who had sat on the Jethrikian throne before him—so in other words all of her ancestors too—they were short sighted and just kept making the same mistakes over and over again. Which apparently included treating the Katabull and women like cattle while allowing the Amalites to thrive and practice their filthy religion which everyone knew never brought anything but death.
She wanted to be furious with him but all she kept thinking was that she was just so glad that he wasn't mad at her. He didn't even question why she hadn't told him. In fact, he seemed to understand exactly why she had thought she couldn't and had sounded only a little put out as he said, "Kasiria what you would have to do to make me not love you hasn't been thought of yet. You should have known that."
They were going up a small rise and Jabone told her, "The Valley of the Katabull is just over this hill."
She nodded, smiling at him. As they crested the hill she took one look and gasped. She didn't know what she had been expecting, but it wasn't this. Crop fields and animal pens and huts—so many huts—as far as the eye could see right up to a huge stone wall that was a good fifteen feet tall with four watch towers along the length of it.
"And suddenly not so all alone," Tarius the Black said from where she'd ridden up beside her.
"How did you. .?"
"Because that's what I thought when I came over the hill and saw it. It was almost overwhelming, and yet there were considerably fewer of us then," she said, and then put her horse into a trot. "Come on! There is much to be done and not much time to do it in."
They rode down into the "compound"—she didn't know what else to call it. The Katabull Nation wasn't laid out like a village but more like a military encampment. Even as she thought it she realized why. Tarius the Black was their leader, and she had laid this "town," out so that it was easily defensible with very few if any other considerations. The wall had been built between them and the sea and it started several feet into the lake and ended—she was told—where a one hundred foot cliff met the sea and went up the coast for several miles. There were guard towers set up at intervals all around the compound and Kasiria noticed that not a single one was left unmanned.