Quest for Honour by Sam Barone Page B

of the camp, toward the man in the blue tunic. He lay facedown, right where he had fallen, and to Hathor’s amazement, the man hadn’t been trampled by any of the following horses. A blood-spattered rock remained beneath the man’s head. Hathor knelt beside him, and rolled him over onto his back.
    The man groaned at Hathor’s less than gentle touch. “What happened . . . who . . . ?”
    Hathor still had his bloody sword in his hand. He put the tip of the blade against the man’s throat and pushed a little, just enough to draw blood. “What’s your name?”
    Fear widened the man’s eyes. He gasped in terror, and lifted his hands as if to move the sword aside.
    Hathor pushed the sword a bit deeper. “I won’t ask you again.”
    “Eridu! King Eridu of Sumer! Don’t kill me!”
    “Well, damn all the demons below!” Hathor said, so surprised that he withdrew the tip of the sword from Eridu’s neck. “King Eskkar wished me good hunting, but I doubt he expected me to catch you in my net.” He lowered his sword, then reached down and using his free hand dragged Eridu to his feet. “You might prove useful, if you do as you’re told and don’t force me to kill you.”
    Eridu might have been as tall as Hathor, but he lacked both the bulk and his captor’s powerful muscles. The king’s shoulders sagged in defeat.
    Hathor shoved him along until they returned to where he left the horses. A handful of his men were busy looting the bodies. “Tie this one up, hands behind his back. Use his sandal straps and make sure they’re tight. We don’t want King Eridu to escape, do we?” Hathor shoved Eridu to the ground, where he lay gasping as the breath fled his body. “And his feet, too.”
    While the soldier trussed up the prisoner, Hathor took another glance around. His men were returning, most leading horses that no longer had the strength to carry their riders. A few even herded prisoners along. Hathor frowned at that. He preferred not to bother with captured soldiers, better to just kill them and get them out of the way, but he knew Eskkar would want to talk to them, to learn why they fought, and what they believed in.
    Such ideas reminded him of Lady Trella’s influence on her husband. Hathor had the greatest respect for Lady Trella. She was, after all, the one who convinced her husband to spare Hathor’s life, putting her will against Eskkar’s rage and desire for vengeance, not to mention the demands of every inhabitant of the city of Akkad.
    Trella, transformed in a moment from slave to queen, offered her enemy his life, even a chance to return to Egypt if that’s what he wanted. Instead, Hathor had sworn an oath on his honor as a warrior to follow Eskkar wherever he led, and Hathor had included Trella in that promise. In the days that followed, when he was greeted with scorn and contempt, if not outright hatred by everyone in the city, only Trella’s influence and firm acceptance of the Egyptian gradually convinced the people of Akkad to separate Hathor from the atrocities of the Egyptian Korthac.
    Since that time, Hathor had discovered a measure of happiness serving Akkad’s leaders. Never before had such feelings filled his life, and he welcomed the opportunity to repay Eskkar and Trella for what they’dgiven him. Destroying their enemies would help pay back the debt that could never truly be redeemed.
    And Hathor had proven himself a skilled leader of horsemen, second only to Eskkar himself. In the last year, he’d worked long and hard with the men he now commanded, turning farmers and villagers into a skilled force of cavalry, a name he recalled from his days in Egypt. The Akkadian cavalry numbered less than fifty men in all, and Eskkar had brought only thirty-two with him on this expedition to the southern border. The rest remained in the city, patrolling the nearby farms. Hathor’s riders had demonstrated their worth today. They’d smashed the remains of the Sumerians and defeated them for the