Domes of Fire by David Eddings Page B

his wife quite often found excuses to travel to Demos. Her childhood had been bleak and motherless, and anytime she felt insecure or uncertain, some reason seemed to come up why her presence in Demos was absolutely necessary. Aslade’s kitchen was warm, and its walls were hung with burnished copper pots. It was a homey sort of place that seemed to answer some deep need in the Queen of Elenia. The smells alone were enough to banish most of the cares of all who entered it.
    Elys, Talen’s mother, was a radiant blonde woman, and Aslade was a kind of monument to motherhood. They adored each other. Aslade had been Kurik’s wife, and Elys his mistress, but there appeared to be no jealousy between them. They were practical women, and they both realised that jealousy was a useless kind of thing that never made anyone feel good. Sparhawk and Kalten were immediately banished from the kitchen, Khalad and Talen were sent to mend a fence, and the Queen of Elenia and her Tamul slave continued their intermittent education in the art of cooking while Aslade and Elys mothered Danae.
    ‘I can’t remember the last time I saw a queen kneading bread-dough,’ Kalten grinned as he and Sparhawk strolled around the familiar dooryard.
    ‘I think she’s making pie-crusts,’ Sparhawk corrected him.
    ‘Dough is dough, Sparhawk.’
    ‘Remind me never to ask you to bake me a pie.’
    ‘No danger there,’ Kalten laughed. ‘Mirtai looks very natural, though. She’s had lots of practice cutting things – and people – up. I just wish she wouldn’t use her own daggers. You can never really be sure where they’ve been.’
    ‘She always cleans them after she stabs somebody.’
    ‘It’s the idea of it, Sparhawk,’ Kalten shuddered. ‘The thought of it makes my blood run cold.’
    ‘Don’t think about it then.’
    ‘You’re going to be late, you know,’ Kalten reminded his friend. ‘Dolmant only gave you a week to get to Chyrellos.’
    ‘It couldn’t be helped.’
    ‘Do you want me to ride on ahead and let him know you’re coming?’
    ‘And spoil the surprise my wife has planned for him? Don’t be silly.’
    They were no more than a league southeast of Demos the next morning when the attack came. A hundred men, peculiarly dressed with strange weapons, burst over the top of a low knoll bellowing war-cries. They thundered forward on foot for the most part; the ones on horseback appeared to be their leaders.
    The courtiers fled squealing in terror as Sparhawk barked commands to his Pandions. The twenty black-armoured knights formed up around the queen’s carriage and easily repelled the first assault. Men on foot are not really a match for mounted knights.
    ‘What’s that language?’ Kalten shouted.
    ‘Old Lamork, I think,’ Ulath replied. ‘It’s a lot like Old Thalesian.’
    ‘Sparhawk!’ Mirtai barked. ‘Don’t give them time to regroup!’ She pointed her blood-smeared sword at the attackers milling around at the top of the knoll.
    ‘She’s got a point,’ Tynian agreed.
    Sparhawk quickly assessed the situation, deployed some of his knights to protect Ehlana and formed up the remainder of his force.
    ‘Charge!’ he roared.
    It is the lance that makes the armoured knight so devastating against foot-troops. The man on foot has nodefence against it, and he cannot even flee. A third of the attackers had fallen in the initial assault, and a score fell victim to the lances during Sparhawk’s charge. The knights then fell to work with swords and axes. Bevier’s lochaber axe was particularly devastating, and he left wide tracks of the dead and dying through the tightly packed ranks of the now-confused attackers.
    It was Mirtai, however, who stunned them all with a shocking display of sheer ferocity. Her sword was lighter than the broadswords of the Church Knights, and she wielded it with almost the delicacy of Stragen’s rapier. She seldom thrust at an opponent’s body, but concentrated instead on his face and