The Blood Star
“. . . .
I knew the Medes would be back, if only to collect their dead for burial according to their own barbaric rites, and I had no desire to risk another confrontation before Khshathrita had been made aware of my presence in his domain. Thus I departed the scene of battle at once, camping toward sunset on a bluff several beru distant, from which I would have some notice of any approach of strangers.
I did not light a fire that night, but I had no illusions that I could keep myself concealed f...or very long. It would be just as well if tempers had a few days to cool, but in the end I had come here to be found.
Yet for five days no one ventured near me—I even lost the sense of being watched from a distance. I might have been alone in this vast landscape.
I had not seen Khshathrita since he was a boy, not since that summer, nearly ten years before, when my armies had held him hostage while I recovered from the wounds I had received in mortal combat against his father. We had grown to be good friends then, but the boy was now a man and the leader of his people, and anyone who counts on the friendship of kings to save him has mud where his brains should be.MoreLess
I knew the Medes would be back, if only to collect their dead for burial according to their own barbaric rites, and I had no desire to risk another confrontation before Khshathrita had been made aware of my presence in his domain. Thus I departed the scene of battle at once, camping toward sunset on a bluff several beru distant, from which I would have some notice of any approach of strangers.
I did not light a fire that night, but I had no illusions that I could keep myself concealed f...or very long. It would be just as well if tempers had a few days to cool, but in the end I had come here to be found.
Yet for five days no one ventured near me—I even lost the sense of being watched from a distance. I might have been alone in this vast landscape.
I had not seen Khshathrita since he was a boy, not since that summer, nearly ten years before, when my armies had held him hostage while I recovered from the wounds I had received in mortal combat against his father. We had grown to be good friends then, but the boy was now a man and the leader of his people, and anyone who counts on the friendship of kings to save him has mud where his brains should be.MoreLess
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