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She found Ke
Everyone smiled and called greetings. She hadn't quite expected…
I know the Nantukhtar women are not shamefast, she thought-you couldn't walk through one of their camps and not know it. And I know that any who presumes on it, regrets it.
According to the stories going around the allied armies, some men who had made incorrect assumptions would never be interested in women again, or at least not able to do anything about such an interest.
But can I act so, stripping off in sight of all?
Her own men had gone to great lengths to preserve her modesty, which was possible because she was the only woman, camp followers aside, with the Mita
All that went through her mind in an instant. The answer came as quickly: Of course I can. To do otherwise would be to fall from the status of comrade to that of superstitious local in an instant. They would still be polite to her, but… And I will remind Ke
She started to go to her knees before Kashtiliash as protocol demanded; the Babylonian monarch held up a hand. "No," he said, in his deep rumbling voice. "There is… how do you say, my brother?"
"No rank in the mess," Ke
"Mess?"
"Where the officers eat," Kathryn said. She stood and tossed something. "Careful, this end by the stream is hot, better to get in at the bottom."
Raupasha caught it reflexively, and gulped; it was a bar of the Islander cleaning fat-soap-wrapped in a rough cloth.
"Thank you, Ka-th-ryn," she said casually; that took a monumental effort of will. Then she bent to unlace her boots.
When her clothes steamed with the rest in a nearby superheated pool she slid in quickly, soaping and then wading to the head of the pool-just bearably short of boiling hot-to stand under the fall of water and scrub down with a sponge.
"Feels good, doesn't it?" Kathryn asked.
"Yes," Raupasha said, finding a convenient ledge of rock and sitting immersed to her neck.
Did I dream it, or did I see Ke
And it did feel good to be clean again. She sudsed her long black hair once more and submerged, scrubbing at her scalp with her fingers.
"The Mita
"I have heard," Kashtiliash said; his English was strongly accented but fluent.
Kathryn moved behind him and began to work a comb through the sodden mass of wavy blue-black mane lying limp on his shoulders.
"Ai!" he cried, as she tugged at a knot and then used the pick on the other end of the comb. "Are you trying to scalp me bald, woman?"
"I keep telling you to cut it short like mine," she said, face intent on her work. Hers was at the regulation Marine field length, a quarter of an inch. "Then it wouldn't tangle like this, and it'd be easier to keep clean in the field."
"A King's hair and beard are his strength-my people would fear disaster, did I crop it. It is hard enough to make them see why I must travel with so little state; they complain that I move about like a bandit chief of Aramaeans."
"Well, next time you've got lice and I don't, I'm going to boot you out of my bed again."
Raupasha blinked as the King rumbled amusement, and everyone else joined in.
"Kat'ryn and I have been giving the Achaean's southern column much grief," Kashtiliash went on, with a wolf's grin. "There is only one way up the Meneander Valley."
"And their commander on the southern wing, his name's Guouwaxeus, has about as much imagination as an ox," Kathryn said. " 'Hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle' is his style. Kash and I mousetrapped the better part of a battalion last week, and got away clear before his reserves came up."
"It would have been better if my charioteers had the sense to see that they ca
He turned his leonine head to Raupasha and bowed it slightly. "You have instructed your followers better, I hear, Princess."
"The King is kind," Raupasha said, proud that her voice was steady.
This was more nerve-wracking than lying flat at the King's feet while he talked of taking her head. Of course, my breasts and thighs were not then bared for the world to see, she thought wryly, forcing herself not to cross her arms on her chest, and went on aloud:
"I think it may be that my charioteers had to practice in concealment if at all, while the Assyrians ruled Mita
Kashtiliash tugged at a mass of wet beard that bore little trace of the careful curling irons his barbers had plied in the Shining Residence. Raupasha wondered a little at his hardihood in these rough conditions, until she remembered tales of how he'd been fostered with his hill-tribe kinfolk and spent much time in the field as a soldier and hunter while his father was King.
Perhaps he finds it a relief, to be away from court, she thought. From things Kathryn had let drop, that might well be so.
And was Ke
"Hmmm," the Babylonian said at last. "I think that these are words of some worth. Men will remain with their accustomed ways of doing, so long as those are successful. They have spent much time and effort becoming good warriors in the old way; their pride is in it. Is defeat then a better teacher than victory, like a schoolmaster with a heavier switch to beat a boy's back?"
O'Rourke spoke: "Well, that would account for his lack of popularity-as the saying goes, victory has a thousand fathers, and defeat is an orphan."
Kashtiliash laughed, but went on: "And it would account for the cycles in the affairs of men; for a land raised up by fortune would grow complacent, and thus weak." He cocked an eyebrow at Ke
"Nantucket's not in as much danger from pride as the land of the Hittites is in from Walker, thank God," Hollard said. "It all depends on whether we can stop them west of the Halys. Beyond that, they'd be into the Hittite heartlands."
"That is the question," Kashtiliash said. He lowered his voice a little: "And whether Tudhaliyas will remain loyal if they do push us beyond the great river. If not, we must retreat over the mountains in winter and Mita