Coalition of Lions (17 page)

“You can lay a road. I’m digging a reservoir.”

His nurse and the cooks and porters must surely have thought me a madwoman, the princess of Britain at play in the dirt. But it was contenting work.

“When will Gebre Meskal wrestle his lion?” Telemakos asked, without looking up from his excavations.

“He is not supposed to wrestle it,” I said, tipping handfuls of pebbles along the road. “He is supposed to kill it with a spear.”

“He is supposed to bring back a lion to the New Palace for a totem,” said Telemakos. “What use is it if he kills it?”

“More use than it would be chained in the lion pit!”

“It does not need to be chained.” Telemakos straightened for a moment, and spread his hands open on his knees. “You can keep a thing without tying it up. You know.”

Then he shook his head and went back to digging in the earth with a pottery dish.

“Anyway, the emperor had better get going. He missed another chance yesterday, as well as last week. There were three lionesses and twice that many cubs chewing over a zebra in the rocks behind the spring, the last place we camped.”

The gravel slipped from my palms. I sat back on my heels and stared at my nephew’s shining head, bent in concentration over his miniature reservoir. “Where did you hear that?” I asked.

“I did not hear it,” Telemakos said with scorn and pride, still without looking up from his work. “I found them myself. I watched them all through the noontide, while everyone was napping. They were lazy, too. It would have been an easy fight.

“Noon is the best time for exploring,” he added. “Everyone else is too idle to chase you, and the animals are all asleep. You should come with me.”

“We are going to have to put a guard over him,” I told his nurse.

Wazeb killed his lion that morning. The hunters came striding back before noon, giddy and triumphant, with Wazeb borne aloft on their shoulders, his customary white bloodstained in their midst. Telemakos was not so wildly disappointed to have missed the grand occasion as I expected him to be; he was scornful of the killing.

I took his advice and went riding in the heat of that day. I had gone no more than three hundred yards beyond the perimeter of our camp when Priamos caught up with me.

“Peace to you, my princess.”

“You’ve been lost,” I answered, and found I was biting back tears, again, again. I looked away from him. “How do you come to be released from your post?”

“Gebre Meskal has dismissed me for the afternoon. It has been a trying morning, and he thinks I need to rest.”

His horse seemed skittish, and he had constantly to gentle it and whisper to it as we spoke. The short spear he carried against a sudden meeting with lion or leopard became a hindrance.

“Tell me of the hunt,” I said. “Was Wazeb heroic?”

“He did seem fearless, yes. He is fearless. Though so should I be with Ras Meder at my right hand. Sometimes I think your brother has ice running in his veins.”

“Sometimes I think so, too,” I said impatiently. “Tell me what happened!”

“We drove a lone male lion for something close to twenty miles before Gebre Meskal wounded him. And then our new emperor had to finish it on foot, face to face with fang and claw. Oh, your brother, I have never seen him happier.”

“I am sorry to have missed it.”

Priamos managed to control his mount at last, and we rode some way farther. Before long we found ourselves surrounded by a herd of bushbuck antelope. They moved with us at a leisurely and steady pace, so that they seemed to be escorting us. The females were plain, but the males were deep black with slashes of white at their throats, and crowned with spiral horns.

“You cannot go anywhere without a following of vagrants,” Priamos said to me.

He wore the drawn look of exhaustion that I had seen in him after Camlan and during the tribunal. I reached to touch his sleeve, in sympathy, and he glanced at me with a quick look almost of fear—as though he were surrounded by tyrants and expected blows from anyone who came near him.

“You do look tired,” I said. “You look like you are under interrogation.”

He smiled ruefully. “That is nothing to do with the hunting. I did not imagine I should ever have to face Abreha’s Lieutenants again.” He sighed. “Tharan, the older man with the handsome mustache, had charge of me before I was brought to Abreha at al-Muza. I am embarrassed to think what he remembers of me.”

“Abreha told me you bore yourself with great dignity.”

“I do not remember anything like dignity. I fought like a bull elephant when they bound me, and vomited over Tharan’s feet when it was finished. He told me I had blinded a man in one eye with the end of a chain, fighting them, but I do not remember it.”

I closed my eyes and swallowed hard.

Priamos said unhappily, “I should not tell you such things. I am sorry.”

“I wish you had told me more six months ago! I wish I could bear some of your blows for you!”

“Never.”

“Always!”

He, too, bit his lip, as though he were my mirror. We looked away from each other.

I shook my head angrily. “I wish you had told me about Abreha. If I had known how like you are, I would have understood the bala heg’s inordinate fear of you.”

“I did tell you.”

“So, you said you were alike, but I did not take it to mean you might well be identical twins!”

“I am not Abreha,” Priamos answered patiently.

“So I know,” I said. “So I know. You are Priamos.”

I glanced sideways at his sharp, frowning profile, and it made me ache in heart and body.

“It is very silly to judge a man by his face,” Priamos said defensively.

“I don’t.”

“That is true,” he agreed, and gave a real smile at last. “You do not.”

He added, “Neither did Caleb.”

Then I knew why Priamos had served him so faithfully, despite all Caleb’s contradictions.

“Neither does Gebre Meskal,” I said.

The bushbuck left us, and my horse fell prey to her companion’s nervousness, so we turned back. We could see men stirring in the camp when we drew neat again. Abreha himself met us, also on horseback.

“Be warned, Princess,” he said, half in jest and half serious. “You run a great risk in making such escapes from the emperor’s protection.”

“I did not go far,” I said. “And I have my bow.”

Priamos said apologetically, “Well, but he is right. It is outside the bound of protocol. You are not riding with your brother or fleeing a death sentence. You are representing your kingdom in a ceremonial pageant, and I am an inappropriate companion.”

“A true and brave companion,” I contradicted. My horse startled, as though in great fear, and it was all I could do to stay seated and calm her.

Abreha dismounted and took his own horse by the head, softly coaxing the trembling animal. Priamos bent low over his saddle to whisper in the ear of his mount and came so near to being thrown that he dropped his spear. He looked frowning over his shoulder at me.

“What is the matter with these horses?”

Mine danced in a nervous circle, fighting her reins, and I saw what startled them so.

Telemakos came toward us out of the bush. He carried a lion cub over each shoulder, two large, squirming, glorious bundles of tawny golden fur spotted with fawn.

“Idiot child,” Abreha scolded, “don’t carry them like that, the teeth so close to your face!”

We three were no more able to aid Telemakos than if we had had our hands tied to our terrified horses.

“Put them down,” I ordered.

“I will not!” Telemakos said. “These are for the emperor.”

I hesitated, then let my horse have her way. She ran headlong toward the camp, I dragging her back as much as I dared, so that I was able to slide from the saddle once we were safe within the circle of tents. Constantine caught me.

“Lady!”

“Let go of me! Bring Medraut!” I shook him off. “Where is Medraut? Tell him to take a spear and run southeast of here—”

I had Medraut and Constantine, both carrying spears, on either side of me as we raced back on foot toward the place where I had left Telemakos. I gasped out what was happening as we ran.

“Only approach quietly,” I managed to say. “The horses are frantic.”

“There’s a lioness about,” Constantine guessed briefly.

Abreha, Priamos, and Telemakos were exactly as I had left them. Priamos had managed to dismount also, but neither he nor Abreha could do anything with the frightened horses. Telemakos also had his hands full, and his path blocked. He looked very cross.

“Which way have you come?” I asked him. “Where was the lair?”

“It is only a little distance,” Telemakos said angrily, his slate blue eyes gone smoky and cold. “You need not all make such a fuss. They are a gift for the emperor. I would not let them hurt me.”

Oh—fearless, as in my dreams.

The great, golden kits writhed and swarmed over his shoulders, struggling to break free. Telemakos held them as firmly as he held Candake’s cats, and with as little regard for the strength of their claws.

Medraut laid down his spear and knelt to look into his son’s eyes. Whatever Telemakos saw there was so fearsome that he burst into tears.

“Do not kill them,” he begged. “I will let them go, if I must, but don’t kill them. I was only trying to bless the kingship.”

“You mad thing!” I exclaimed, half inclined to laugh. “What of their mother? She will come hunting for them! What if she had caught you alone?”

Medraut saw the real danger first. He snatched for the spear that lay at his side, and stumbled to gain his feet. The knee that he had broken earlier that year collapsed beneath him; he missed the spear and missed his footing. In the moment before the lioness was upon us, he cried out in a terrible voice,
“’Ware Telemakos!”

One of the brothers Anbessa threw himself at the child. They went down together in a flash of gold and dark limbs. I could not tell whether it was Priamos or Abreha.

My bow was in my hand unbidden, and I set arrow upon arrow in the lion’s throat. I shot as Medraut shoots, coldly, accurately; but my bow was not strong enough to kill her outright. The man who had flung his body over Telemakos lay crouched with his narrow hands locked behind his neck, in the desperate hope that if he were attacked he would lose only his hands and not his life. The lioness stood over the man and the child for a fragment of a second, bewildered by the stinging arrows in her throat, scenting the kits.

Then Constantine gave a great cry of fear and anger, and lifted his spear and caught the snarling creature through her breastbone. I shot another arrow into her throat, so close to her now that the shaft buried itself to the fletching. Between spear thrust and arrow’s point we took her at last, between us, Constantine and I.

Constantine worked his spear out of the heavy, golden carcass and stood panting, stunned, his hands smeared with blood. The rest of us flung ourselves at the cowering man and boy. I should say the cowering man, for the child was not in the least cowed. He still clung to his lion cubs as though he would never let them go. They had torn his shirt to ribbons. Medraut, moving with his own recovered leonine stealth and speed, plucked the cubs from Telemakos’s hands by the backs of their necks. The great cats went limp, as kittens do when carried so. They were enormous kittens.

It was Priamos, of course Priamos, who had chanced being rent to pieces in defense of my nephew. The cubs had torn long scratches across his face, traveling from the bridge of his nose over his cheek and down his throat. Abreha let the horses go, now that the danger was past, and crouched at his brother’s side searching for any more serious injury. I snatched Telemakos close against me, and he wound beguiling arms about my neck.

“Can I keep them? I mean, can we keep them? May I present them to the emperor?”

Medraut stood helplessly holding a lion cub at arm’s length in either hand. Constantine rubbed one hand against his sandy forehead and left a great red streak there.

“Well, so it was you,” he said wearily to Priamos. “I wondered which of you could be so selfless.”

“You did not know—” said Priamos, and stopped. Then his flyaway hornbill’s tongue, and perhaps the shock of expecting the perilous teeth to close on the back of his neck, overrode all reason or gratitude in him.

“You did not know! You did not know who you were defending! If you had known it was me, you wouldn’t have done anything! You did not know, you did not care!”

“By God, I did not care!” cried Constantine. “Why, it was either you or the Himyarite king! How should I stand by and watch either one of you have your throat torn out?”

Priamos rose to his knees, shaking off Abreha’s concerned touch. He offered Constantine his open hand, as though holding something precious and invisible in its cup. His pale palm was still faintly striped with the marks of the beating he had taken in the season just past.

“My lord. My king,” he breathed. “Forgive me. I owe you my life and my allegiance.” He closed his eyes. “I beg your forgiveness.”

Constantine paused, looking down at the ambassador’s bowed head and open hand.

“You shall have mine when I have yours,” he said then, and took his rival’s hand.

He raised Priamos to his feet. They stood firm in their shared grip, gazing down at their clasped hands, pale and dark.

“You are welcome to our coalition,” Priamos said at last.

Constantine looked over his shoulder at me, and smiled.

“You noble pair of predators,” I cried, in high spirit. “You are both welcome to my pride.”

“Look, Gebre Meskal is coming,” said Telemakos, and struggled free of my embrace.

Abreha took one of the cubs from Medraut. In the exchange, as they both stood smiling with their heads bent over the young lions, I saw all that Medraut might have been.

Telemakos stood his ground before them, desperate. “Please,
please
don’t let them go. Let me present them to the emperor, oh,
please,
sir.”

He was all that Medraut might yet be.

Medraut nodded once to Telemakos. Abreha said to the child, “Stay calm and wait.”

Telemakos did so. He loped at Medraut’s side with his mouth pressed shut, occasionally glancing over at the lion cubs and breaking into his secretive, incomplete smile, but mostly focused on the meeting with the young emperor. When our parties came together, he knelt before Gebre Meskal with princely dignity, his impossible hair gleaming bright as any crown, and said, “Your Highness, I offer you these gifts to grace your palace as a symbol of your kingship.”