Eighty of Eskkar’s best riders rode with him, twenty of them Hawk Clan, the elite force whose bravery had marked them above their companions. Formed as a band of brothers after Eskkar’s first battle as leader of Akkad, every Hawk Clan fighter had pledged his loyalty to Eskkar and to his comrades in arms. Hawk Clan warriors not only acted as bodyguards to Eskkar and Trella, but they also insured and enforced the King’s power in Akkad.
For this expedition, no new recruits or untested fighters accompanied Eskkar. Every highly trained rider in the troop had fought in at least one action. All of them knew how to fight on horseback. Whether sword, lance, or bow, these men had mastered them all.
The troop of horsemen traveled light, each carrying only his weapons and a water skin. In the preceding days before Eskkar’s departure, Trella’s clerks and supply people had labored efficiently to ensure that grain for the horses and provisions for the men awaited at each stopping point.
Without worrying about their next meal or what the hunt might bring, the riders covered the miles at a steady gait, pushing their mounts just hard enough to challenge the muscles of both man and beast. Once past the farmlands and irrigation channels that surrounded Akkad on all sides, Eskkar enjoyed the green and lush countryside. The occasional farm or herds of cattle and sheep only made the ride more pleasant.
Eskkar and his men reached the first resupply point, thirty-six miles from Akkad, late in the afternoon, and found it manned by six guards and as many pack men. Food and water waited, with two spare horses in case any of the animals had gone lame. As always, Trella’s planning left little to chance. When Eskkar told his wife that he and eighty men wanted to cover almost two hundred miles in less than five days, Trella made sure that everything needed would be available along the route.
Three cooking fires already burned, sending crooked trails of smoke into the sky. The mouth-watering aroma of burning mutton floated over the campsite.
Eskkar slid to the ground with a grunt of satisfaction and lifted his long arms to the sky in a welcome stretch. Despite all his recent training, many months had passed since he’d spent an entire day on the back of a horse, let alone a long ride that finished with the prospect of sleeping on the hard ground.
Nevertheless, Eskkar knew he would sleep well tonight. He filled his lungs with the clean air of the countryside, so different from the thick city-smells of Akkad.
All around him, hungry men swung down from their mounts and stripped off their horse blankets. All the riders saw to their horses’ needs first, then rushed to join the lines already forming beside each fire pit.
Drakis, one of Eskkar’s senior commanders, stood near the largest cooking fire. Eskkar handed A-tuku’s halter over to one of the camp’s liverymen. The horse had learned to accept the ministrations of others, though it still proved restive if anyone other than Eskkar or Dimuzi attempted to ride it. Satisfied that his horse would be well cared for, Eskkar turned to find Drakis jogging over to greet his commander.
Short, with a wide chest and thick arms, Drakis had a coarse black beard that climbed up his cheeks almost to his eyes, but failed to cover a scar from a Sumerian arrow that had nearly torn his eye out. Even before that battle, he’d proven his courage in the fight against the Egyptian invaders who had once seized Akkad.
“Must you look so happy, Captain?” Drakis clasped his arms around Eskkar and gave him a powerful hug. “I’ve been riding for three days, and every bone in my body aches.”
Only Eskkar’s most senior commanders, or those who had known him in the old days when he was Orak’s Captain of the Guard, dared to call him ‘Captain.’ Still, Eskkar preferred that title to the formal ‘Lord Eskkar,’ as he was known in Akkad or even worse, ‘King Eskkar.’
Such a subservient address, unique to the dirt eaters, always rankled something in his head. A warrior should not need to preen himself before his men, especially while on campaign.
“Serves you right,” Eskkar said, when Drakis released him. “You should spend more time on your horse.” Eskkar found a fresh patch of grass and spread his cloak, to mark it as his sleeping place. “Tomorrow night will be even worse, after another long day’s ride.”
Drakis swore at the outlook. “I had to waste two days taking the hill trail and swinging around Akkad.”
A city dweller most of his life, Drakis spent the least amount of time of any of Akkad’s commanders on the back of a horse. He had ridden in from one of the southern training camps, detouring around the city so that no one would know of his whereabouts.
“Another ten or twenty days riding, and you’ll toughen up.” Eskkar laughed at the look of dismay on his commander’s face.
“You enjoy riding and camping out too much, Captain,” Drakis said. “If this fight wasn’t against the Alur Meriki, we would have insisted you stay in the city.”
Eskkar ignored Drakis’s comment. No one had tried to dissuade him from this campaign, not even Trella. Every one of Akkad’s commanders knew his experience fighting the barbarian Alur Meriki Clan would be needed in this encounter. They also were aware that Eskkar had a personal score to settle.
Born and raised in the Clan, Eskkar’s entire family had died one night in a blood feud, murdered on orders of the clan’s Sarum, or king. Only fourteen years old, Eskkar killed his first man that night, stabbing him in the back with a knife. Nevertheless, the stroke came a moment too late to save the life of Eskkar’s younger brother.
In almost the same instant, and with her dying breath, Eskkar’s mother had cried out for him to run from the Clan and save himself. With his family dead around him, Eskkar had no other choice but to flee.
Luck and his father’s fastest horse had helped him escape the same fate as his kin. Even as he ran for his life, Eskkar swore to avenge his family’s murder. For the next fourteen years, he had endured the lonely life of an outcast, hunted by his own people yet never accepted and always distrusted by the dirt eaters he was forced to live among.
Eventually he arrived in Orak, where he spent three years as a soldier and handler of horses. A slow spiral of apathy ensued, and Eskkar indulged his fondness for ale to hold back the gloom that filled his dreary days.
Then a stroke of chance and the threat of a barbarian invasion by the Alur Meriki had made him Captain of the Guard in Orak, and the gift of a slave girl named Trella had upended his existence. Trella’s keen wits turned Eskkar’s life around, and in time placed the power of Orak in his hands, soon renamed the City of Akkad.
And in saving the City from destruction by the barbarian warriors, Eskkar had extracted the first payment of his blood debt. Now he intended to take the full measure to avenge his family’s murder at the hands of his former clansmen. At the same time, he would end the Alur Meriki’s never-ending depredations against Akkad and its people once and for all.
“By the gods, I haven’t been this hungry in months.” Eskkar heard his stomach growling with anticipation for a haunch of burnt meat. The cooks had already started handing out the thick slices of mutton.
“Well, there’s plenty of food, and ale, too” Drakis said. “Not like the last time we rode out to fight the barbarians. After we’ve eaten, I’ll fill you in on what the men are thinking.”
Later, Eskkar’s belly stuffed with food and the raw ale favored by the soldiers, he stretched out on the ground with his hands behind his head and let himself relax. “How are the men?”
Drakis tossed the last of the bone he’d been gnawing into the fire, dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, then wiped his fingers on his tunic. “Good. All the subcommanders now know that you’re coming. We’ll pick up the rest of the horsemen as we travel north. By the time we reach Aratta, our entire force will be assembled there.”