Instead, his black hair hung loose and long and moved with his white kaffiyeh. A rope of red silk secured his headgear. His arms were bare that summer day, the sleeves rolled to his biceps, and his forearm was circled with tattooed wreaths and trade-bracelets of silver beads and pewter charms and gleaming yellow brass. His horse was a good one, solid black, with long straight legs and jingle charms braided into his mane. I watched him with intent interest. Scouts were a breed apart, it was said. They were ranked as officers, lieutenants usually and frequently were nobly born, but they lived independent lives, outside the regular ranks of the military and often reported directly to the commander of an outpost. They were our first harbingers of any trouble, be it logjams on the river, eroding roads or unrest among the plains-people.

A girl of twelve or thirteen on a chestnut gelding followed the scout. It was a smaller animal with a finely sculptured brow that spoke of the best nomadic stock. She rode astraddle as no proper Gernian girl would, and by that as much as by her garb I knew her for a mixed blood. It was not uncommon, though still deplored, for Gernian soldiers to take wives from among the plainspeople. It was less common for a scout to stoop so low. I stared at the girl in frank curiosity. My mother often said that the products of cross-unions were abominations before the good god, so I was surprised to see that such a long and ugly-sounding word described such a lovely creature. She was dressed in brightly layered skirts, one orange, one green, one yellow, that blossomed over the horse’s back and covered her knees, but not her calves and feet. She wore soft little boots of antelope skin, and silver charms twinkled on their laces. Loose white trousers showed beneath her bunched skirts. Her shorter kaffiyeh matched her father’s and displayed to advantage the long brown hair that hung down her back in dozens of fine braids. She had a high, round brow and calm grey eyes.