Sanglant grinned, feeling the familiar rush of exhilaration as he considered not whether but how far to leap. He called to the men at the gate. “I’m coming down. Throw a plank over the ditch. Keep your arrows and spears ready.”
“My lord!” Their astonished cries were answer enough, but they obeyed, as they always did. Otherwise they would not have followed him so far and on such a dangerous road.
He scrambled down the ladder, leaving most of his attendants above to keep watch, and jogged over to the barrier. Clambering over the wagons, he set foot on a broad plank just now thrust out over the ditch by one of the soldiers. From below, Bulkezu’s mocking laughter rose to greet him. The prisoner’s figure stood half lost in the shadow, face upturned to study him, features ghostly and indistinct.
“Is the prince come to fight me? Will the dog leap into the pit to battle the griffin? Or does it fear me still?”
Sanglant heard the approaching hooves, and his blood sang with the pitch of approaching battle as he strode over the plank. The wood rocked beneath him, but he did not lose his balance. He did not fear a fall.
“Throw down the worm, so that I might make a meal of it. Or does the dog-prince take his pleasures with the crawling things?” He jumped lightly onto solid ground as the riders rounded the corner of the fort and stopped, as he stopped. They faced each other. The woman was too young, surely, to be Bulkezu’s mother; her nose was too flat, more stub than nose, for her to be handsome, but she had brilliant black eyes, as wicked as those of a hawk, and a ferocious frown so marked that his grin faded and he paused, wondering if he had miscalculated their intentions.
The slave woman beside her looked Sanglant over quite frankly, as though appraising his worth and his possibilities for stud, while her mistress, ignoring Sanglant, rode to the lip of the ditch and looked down. The slave really had quite an attractive shape under that leather tunic, full, round breasts, red lips, an amorous gaze—
It was too quiet. No one was talking.
Looking down into the pit, he was so startled he almost lost his balance and fell.
Bulkezu had bolted away from the shadow of his kinswoman. Up against the far end of the pit, he cowered like a rabbit run into a corner. The fearsome begh who had united the Quman hordes, slaughtered untold hapless Wendish-folk, and defeated Prince Bayan in battle was utterly terrified.
Sanglant’s soldiers cried out, jeering at the man they had all come to hate. They pressed up along the walls, against the wall of wagons, every one of them, crowding next to each other to see him shamed.
“Silence!” cried Sanglant.
They gave him silence.
The woman lifted her gaze to look at Sanglant. A hawk might look so, measuring its prey. He kept his gaze steady on hers, neither retreating nor advancing, and after a moment she reined her mount away. By now, Gyasi had reached the wall of wagons, standing up on the bed of one to survey the scene with alarm.
“Great lord! Have a care!”
The gold-crowned woman reached her attendants and spoke to the lad. When she had finished, the boy spoke.
“What does he say?” asked Sanglant when the lad stopped.
“She ask if you are the stallion to be held in kind until Bulkezu is returned to them.”
“She wants a hostage to ensure our good faith.”
“It is common among the tribes to exchange a valued daughter or son for another, to keep the peace. She makes a powerful offer, great lord. If you give her yourself in surety, then her tribesmen will grant you escort across the plains. This we call the gift for the knives.”
“The gift for the knives?”
“So no man will stab you in the back.”
“Will other Quman tribes respect that, should we come across them?”
“Perhaps, great lord. They scatter to the winds after the fall of Bulkezu. Maybe there are wolves who will nip at your heels, but no army will fight you when you have so many soldiers to yourself. No tribe will be so bold to fight the man who defeated the dreaded Bulkezu. He is the man who killed two griffins. No other begh in the generations of our tribes have done so.”
“An escort and a pledge of safe conduct—in exchange for a hostage? One valuable enough to me, and to them, that they will expect me not to abandon my hostage into their hands? One of worthy rank? One too valuable to lose?”
“Until you depart this land and return Bulkezu.”
Brother Breschius appeared beside Gyasi, looking wan and troubled. “You know what savages the Quman are, my lord prince. How can you seal a treaty with them, knowing they are Wendar’s great enemy?”