Chapter Eight - Si'Wren Challenges Emperor Euphrates
Solemnly, Si'Wren dipped out her portion from the pot over the fire, pointedly ignoring the Emperor's personal bodyguards and everyone else around her. She retired to her personal tent to eat, and immediately remembered that she must first tie something over the entrance to replace the missing tent flap, or risk another complaint of coquettishness from a certain one of the Captains of Fifty. In mute observance of this she soon had a coarse-woven wool blanket tied up over the entrance. Later, she could get another animal hide from one of the camp skinners.
The brave and fearless souls of the camp, mighty men of old, fearsome warriors all, must not have their valiant spirits inflamed with uncontrollable lust at the carnal sight of a mere maid consuming her food.
* * *
The next morning, she arose and stepped out of her tent, ducking past the makeshift blanket. Still as much asleep as awake, she squinted and blinked uncertainly in the morning light. Merely going through the motions, she made tea, and cleansed her eyes and face with it's clear amber fluid. Then she made gruel and mixed it with some fruit pulp and goat's milk.
After this, she surveyed her surroundings, struck by the uncultivated beauty and wild appearance of the land.
Somewhere in the dense nearby forest, she heard the scream of some fierce monster. The ferocity and bestiality of the sound chilled her blood and sent shivers up and down her spine even as a host of lesser animals took up a warning cry, broadcasting an alarm of the unseen predator's passage through their midst.
She could not identify the repeatedly screaming animal with anything from her memory, for she had never in her life heard such a terrible sound. Eventually, it began to move farther away from the camp, as it's terrible cries gradually diminished into the distance. For a long time, she could still occasionally hear it's banshee screams as it prowled somewhere beneath the high canopy of deep forest. Many of the soldiers, she noticed, seemed greatly discomfited by the savagery of the sound, clutching their weapons tightly as they looked anxiously in its direction.
Si'Wren could not help shivering again when she chanced to hear it one last time, far in the distance, through some quirk of the gentle wind across the uneven land. In spite of the undulations of the terrain, it had continued -day after day- to slope progressively upwards ahead of the expedition as the royal procession had made more or less steady progress to the northwest, marching ever deeper into the wilds.
Blocked by a series of steep ridges looming ever before them, the entire royal expedition had been encamped in the same place these past few days, while the scouts searched for a way to go on.