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now.”
    “The traders are supposed to be the best in the Polypontian Empire. They supply the Imperial cavalry and are supported by General Scipio Bellorum himself.”
    Redrought looked thoughtful. “Yeah, odd, that. If these horses are everything the traders claim them to be, why did that firebrand general of theirs let them out of the country? You’d think he’d want them for his own forces.”
    Kahin smiled conspiratorially. “The word amongst the merchants and buyers is that Bellorum knows nothing about the trade mission. He’s busy with another one of his wars far to the south, in a land known simply as The Desert Kingdom where it never rains and it’s blisteringly hot every day of the year.” The country actually bordered Persis, the homeland of the Zoroastrian people, where they’d lived for many generations before they were driven out by terrible persecutions.
    Redrought shuddered. “Imagine that. It sounds like hell. Oh well, come on, let’s get down to the market and buy these horses before Bellorum finds out.”
    The smell hit them before anything else. A thousand large animals packed into a relatively small square in the centre of the city wasn’t likely to be the freshest of places, but all of them had been well fed and watered throughout the journey to keep them in tip-top condition for potential buyers, and that morning had been no exception. The best hay and oats had soon been efficiently converted to steaming mounds of droppings and then liberally sprayed with gallons of urine.
    Kahin was mother and grandmother to over twenty children, so she was very well used to all types of bodily wastes of both solid and liquid varieties. But no child could compete with a war horse when it came to waste production. She could hardly breathe for the stench, and the air was alive with flies of every size and type. Even Redrought was moved to comment.
    “A bit ripe, don’t you think?”
    Kahin nodded in agreement, her mouth and nose covered with a perfumed handkerchief.
    “Still, we want to ride them to war, not invite them to dinner,” Redrought went on. “Where are these merchants?”
    He didn’t have to wait long as a group of richly dressed men immediately singled him out and headed towards him. Redrought felt a bit of a lout when he saw their beautiful clothes and exquisite manners, but he soon dismissed such worries as a waste of time and effort for the ruler of a country at war.
    He did wonder, though, how they knew he was the King.He’d arrived with no pomp or circumstance, no servants and not even a banner to denote who he was. Kahin, of course, could have told him that a tall muscular youth with flaming red hair, a voice like a hurricane and a face that already looked as though it could have been used to smash granite was a pretty rare sight anywhere. It was also common knowledge that the new King had a Royal Adviser who was an old merchant of the tribe of Zoroastrians. And as the flame-haired youth was accompanied by an elderly lady who looked like a fat belligerent mouse, then he couldn’t really be anyone else.
    The merchants joined him just as the surviving cavalry troopers from the Battle of the Northern Plain walked up.
    “My Lord, My Lord!’ said one of the traders. ‘May we be the first people from beyond the borders of the Icemark to congratulate you on your ascension to the throne.”
    “Yeah . . . right . . . thanks,” said Redrought, for some reason embarrassed by the man’s oily manner. Quickly he changed the subject and got down to business. “Now, what about these horses?”
    The spokesman for the Polypontian traders immediately rearranged his expression from that of impromptu envoy to the open honesty of an ethical businessman. “My Lord will find none better in the north or the Empire. Were General Scipio Bellorum not on campaign far to the south in the land of burning sands, then he would undoubtedly have bought them for his own cavalry.”
    “All right. You won’t mind