Not that anyone was taking the trip lightly. “Routine” was quite a different thing from “unimportant,” and the two large wagons at the heart of the formation were piled high with supplies and raw materials for Kalatha’s craftswomen, especially for Theretha, the town glassblower. Garlahana didn’t know exactly how much their contents were worth, but the weight of the purse Erlis had turned over to their agent in Thalar had been impressive, and the wagons were heavily laden enough to be an unmitigated pain in the arse. That would probably have been true under any circumstances, but the condition of the road didn’t help a bit.
The muddy track (even Sothoii notions of a “highway” would have made an Axeman engineer cringe, and this ribbon of muck was little better than a country lane) ran between tall walls of prairie grass. The good news was that it was still early enough in the summer that the grass hadn’t had time to turn into the sort of sun-dried tinder which all too often flared into rolling walls of flame later in the year. The bad news was that there was absolutely no wind today and the rains of spring, while nourishing the grass quite nicely, had not only turned the road into a quagmire which seemed bottomless in spots but stoked a humidity that turned the grass-hemmed roadbed into a steam bath.
The entire escort, including Erlis, had just finished helping the drivers and their assistants wrestle both wagons out of yet another knee-deep pothole full of soupy mud, and Garlahna had not been amused. Nor had her horse, when he’d found himself hitched to the lead wagon to add his own weight to the effort. The gelding was no prize example of the Sothoii warhorses which were the pride of the Kingdom, but he’d obviously found the role of dray horse far beneath his dignity…as he’d demonstrated with an indignant crow hop or two when she’d climbed back into the saddle.
Garlahna wasn’t the horsewoman her friend Leeana was. Most war maids were infantry, more comfortable on their feet than in a saddle under the best of conditions, and she’d been born to a family of yeomen, not in the house of a great noble. For her, horses were simply a means of transportation-a way to get from one place to another without using her own feet-and while Leeana would undoubtedly have taken the gelding’s misbehavior in stride and actually enjoyed it, Garlahna was just relieved she hadn’t parted company with her saddle. Well, by that and the fact that her spine seemed not to have collapsed after all.
She chuckled at the thought and wiped another stripe of mud across her forehead as she blotted fresh sweat and thought longingly of her chari and yathu. The short, kilt-like chari was definitely not the most comfortable garment for a lengthy horseback ride, however. Trousers were a far better idea for that (another reason to prefer feet to saddles, she thought darkly). They were at least a little less offensive to traditional Sothoii patriarchs than the short, revealing, comfortable chari (and even more scandalous yathu!), too, and unlike some of her sister war maids, Garlahana didn’t have a problem being unconfrontational for trips to non-war maid towns, at least when it could be done without appearing weak. Outside such towns, the traditionalists could like it or lump it as far as she was concerned, and if she’d been traveling on foot, she’d have worn chari and yathu this time, as well, and let the townsfolk think whatever they liked. The war maids weren’t about to kowtow to anyone’s prejudices after their long, bitter fight for equality. Yet she had to admit that, as towns went, Thalar was more accustomed to and comfortable with war maids than most. Now, at least. Garlahna wasn’t going to object if the trousers she’d donned for utilitarian reasons soothed any potential ruffled feathers someplace like Thalar-she wasn’t that enamored of making a statement everywhere she went-but that didn’t mean she liked the wet, sticky misery her present attire helped create in this kind of humid heat.
At least her horseback perch put her high enough to see across the green sea of grass baking under the windless sun. That was fortunate, given what she was pretty sure was out there somewhere doing its best to sneak up on them, and she shaded her eyes with one hand, making a slow, conscientious sweep of her own area of responsibility. So far, so good, with no sign of trouble, and she nodded in satisfaction, then glanced back at those muddy, creaking wagons with mixed feelings. She would far rather have spent the last couple of days in one of the Kalatha Guard’s nice, shady barracks, but she did have a proprietary interest in the larger of the two vehicles, since it carried (among a host of other things) a dozen bolts of fabric in rich colors and textures destined for Tomarah Felisfressa. Tomarah and her freemate Selistra were the best seamstresses and dressmakers in Kalatha, and Garlahna had paid the better part of two months of income for the length of amber-colored silk that was going to turn into her new gathering gown. At, she reflected, the expense of another week or so of her income for Tomarah…whose skilled fingers and flair for design would be worth every copper kormak.
Of course, my income would be a little better if it wasn’t my year for Guard service, Garlahna reflected wryly. Still, even with little jaunts like today’s, serving in the Guard isn’t that bad. Aside from Erlis’ and Ravlahn’s idea of “restful” morning calisthenics, that is!
Unlike certain others of Kalatha’s younger citizens, she didn’t really object to serving her stint in the City Guard. It was inconvenient, and it interfered with her thriving business as a tinker, yet she’d never even considered hiring a substitute, as quite a few Kalathans did. Partly because it would have cost at least half of her earnings, but also because she was young enough it was no physical hardship…and because it was important for the town to maintain a reserve of trained and experienced war maids to back up the standing Guard just in case. It wasn’t all that many years since Kalatha had come entirely too close to finding itself under attack, after all, even if the town hadn’t known anything about it until it was all over.
Garlahna’s good humor dimmed at the memory, and she grimaced and reached down to adjust the short sword at her hip. No one in Kalatha liked to think about how close the Dark Gods had come to setting the town and Trisu of Lorham at one another’s throats. And Garlahna suspected very few in Kalatha liked to think about the fact that Trisu had been in the right during their bitter dispute over land and water rights, either. There was no love lost between Kalatha and Trisu even now, but any fair-minded war maid would have been forced to acknowledge that he’d actually shown remarkable restraint under the circumstances. Not that all war maids were precisely fair-minded, of course. In fact, some of them seemed to prefer to go on blaming Trisu rather than accept that Shigu had perverted the Kingdom of the Sothoii’s most sacred temple of Lillinara and affected the minds of quite a few Kalathans along the way. If it hadn’t been for Dame Kaeritha Seldansdaughter…
Garlahna decided-again-not to think about where it all could have ended. War maids were accustomed to being less than popular, especially with hard-core traditionalists like Trisu Pickaxe, but it was frightening to think how close Shigu had come to provoking an open, violent confrontation between them and the rest of the Kingdom. If the Twisted One had succeeded, the consequences would have been catastrophic. Indeed, she might have achieved her goal of destroying the war maids once and for all.
That hadn’t happened, and it wasn’t going to, either, but it had come frighteningly close to reality, and relations with Thalar had become strained and overtly hostile as a result. They’d recovered their normal, even tenor once the townsfolk realized what had happened, though…which was actually quite generous of them, given the way Jolhanna Evahlafressa, Kalatha’s previous agent in Thalar had acted. Jolhanna was one of the war maids who’d gone completely over to the Dark, and she’d done her very best to completely destroy Kalatha’s relations with the largest town in the Wardenship of Lorham. Thalar’s willingness to accept Dame Kaeritha’s explanation of what had led to her actions-and that they’d been her actions, not Kalatha’s-was one reason Garlahana didn’t mind making at least a few concessions to the town’s sensibilities where things like attire were concerned.