The first is because he loves you, the second because he too wearies of Ethiopia and this rich, fat life of peace, and the third, because I shall tell him that he must." "Then why trouble to speak of the other two ?" I said laughing.
So I stayed on in the City of the Grasshopper, and busied myself with the questions of how to transport and feed a great army that must hold the field for six months or a year; also with the setting of hundreds of skilled men to the making of bows, arrows, swords and shields.

Nor did Bes say me no in these matters.

Indeed he helped them forward by issuing the orders as his own, wherein I saw the hand of Karema.
Three months went by and I began to think that Karema's power had been at fault, or that her vision was one that came from her lips and not from her heart, to keep me in Ethiopia.

But again she read my mind and smiled.
"Not so, Shabaka," she said.

"Those messengers have come to trouble and are detained by a petty tribe beyond our borders over some matter of a woman.