Whatever.

Then out we went into the camp.

And it was, mostly, a camp. A bunch of tents with firepits out front, some had tables at the side of the tent with primitive looking cooking stuff on it, big buckets resting beside them and other tools like axes and hatchets and the like. Some had smaller tents around them which Diandra told me were where slaves slept or where food and supplies were kept and meals prepared (around my tent, we had one of both).

There were a lot of torches stuck in the ground on the pathways which I knew from the night of the parade but also from seeing it hit the side of the king’s tent were lit at night. The only official area, as it were, was the dais which I noticed now was roughly carved from a huge, wide, long, cream slab of stone, the area in front of it deep and wide, made up of the same stone. A firepit did, indeed, run the length of the back with two pits at the top, though while we wandered the camp, these were not lit mostly, I guessed, because it was sunny and, I knew, it was stinking hot. The drums, incidentally, the big ones and small ones, were still set up.

And there were people. Lots of them. All of them looked at me and many of them smiled, many of them nodded, many of them looked happy to see me. Some of them, however, looked at me with interest or intensity, not exactly happy – cautious, I figured, undecided. And a few avoided my eyes.

This, I didn’t get. I also didn’t dwell. I had enough to dwell on.

Diandra chattered on and she tucked my hand in her elbow and kept me close as we walked. She informed me this was only a camp, not a settlement, The Horde was nomadic. They came to this location for the Wife Hunt every two years and the warrior selections, three times a year. They had homes, of sorts, in some Korwahk city but they visited them infrequently during their roaming although, she explained, they did settle in them for two months over the winter.

She told me tents were called chams. She told me shahsha was thank you. She told me poyah was hello.

“What does me ahnoo mean?” I asked after the words the king had spoken to the cruel warrior and she looked at me, her brows up.

“Me ahnoo?” she asked back.

“The king said, ‘Kah Dahksahna me ahnoo,’ to that warrior he threw off the dais during the wedding rite. What does that mean?”

She patted my hand in the crook of her elbow, looked forward and smiled. “It means, my dear, ‘my queen does not like’.”

“What?” I asked.

She looked back at me. “He told Dortak that you do not like… in other words, you did not like what he was doing to his bride. And, I will add, not many of us did. Definitely not the peasants, merchants, slaves or wives and, I’m certain, many of the warriors.” She bobbed her head at me. “You made that clear, even though you do not speak their tongue, it was plain for all to see you didn’t like what he was doing. He was challenging you by continuing to do it even though you told him not to. It is, in truth, not a woman’s place to command a warrior, even if that woman is queen.” She looked forward and I got the sense she was avoiding my eyes when she went on. “Sometimes,” she paused, “I will admit, the wedding rite can get lewd, the warriors get wound-up, if a battle is mightily fought to claim a bride, they need to expend some energy and sometimes do so in…” she paused again then finished cautiously, “unsavory ways.”

Fabulous.

Diandra carried on after looking at me again. “But you are not just any queen. You are King Lahn’s Lahnahsahna. But more, you are the Dax’s golden warrior queen. You made a command. It went unheeded. The king acted to make Dortak adhere to your command.” Her fingers squeezed mine. “It was a bold statement. This is not done. In saying simply that you do not like, but in punishing Dortak before all, he was telling his people you rule at his side.” She grinned at me. “It was very sweet and very uncharacteristic… of a warrior, of a king but especially of Dax Lahn. He, my dear, is not normally sweet. Seerim was even shocked.” She looked away and muttered, “A sight to see. A good one.”

I looked forward too and these words moved through me. I wasn’t certain I believed he was sweet, that would take a lot of convincing. But she had told me he’d bragged about me to his people and he had acted on my wishes to stop that girl from continuing to be defiled publicly.

Not to mention, he made it clear I ruled at his side.

I supposed that was nice.

“That warrior’s name is Dortak?” I asked because I needed a change of subject, pronto.

She nodded, didn’t look at me but her face lost its friendliness. I still saw it, even in profile.

“Dortak. A bad seed. As was his father before him and, as Seerim’s father tells me, his father before him. He covets the throne of horns. They all did. He will challenge the Dax.”

My body started at this pronouncement. “But King Lahn tossed him bodily down a flight of steps,” I reminded her.

She looked back at me. “I said he was a bad seed, Dahksahna Circe,” she leaned in and grinned, “but I did not say he was a clever bad seed.”

I knew what she was saying.

“The king will defeat him,” I whispered and she looked forward again murmuring, “Without doubt.”

“This Dortak tried to claim me, the Dax severed his chain and –” I stopped talking when she abruptly halted us and her eyes snapped to my face.

“He severed his chain?” she whispered.

“Uh… yeah,” I confirmed.

“Oh my,” she breathed.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh my,” she breathed again and her eyes had a faraway look in them.

I shook her arm and hissed, “What, Diandra?” and her eyes focused on me.

“Warriors battle for their brides, as you know, my dear, and there are very few rules with anything to do with any fight, indeed anything to do with The Horde or the Korwahk nation, but the warriors of The Horde do honor their brothers. Although it is not unheard of for things to get out of hand and one warrior kill another for his bride, or, perhaps, deliver a wound that will eventually kill or one that festers and brings the warrior low. But this is very infrequent. Because of this, there are other whispers around the Daxshee, not just those about you. These other whispers are about Dortak and the Hunt. It is known that Dortak took the life of a warrior for the bride he was claiming. I just did not know it was you. Was it you?”

I nodded and whispered, “It was me.”

Her eyes went soft as she realized what I witnessed then she carried on. “This has not been taken positively as the warrior he brought low was well-liked and Dortak is not. Although the kill was not witnessed, because of his reputation many believe that it was not due to both warriors descending into bloodlust as the battle raged on but that he did not give the fallen warrior the opportunity to surrender before he delivered his killing blow.”