When Rhavas spotted the farm off to the side of the snow-covered road, he pretended for a few heartbeats that he had not. It availed him nothing, of course, for Ingegerd saw the place, too. "If anyone dwells there, we can beg a place by the hearth," she said. "If not, it is ours to do with as we will."
"So it is," Rhavas said resignedly.
"Do we halloo?" Ingegerd asked as they drew near.
"I see no horses tied close by," Rhavas said. "Where there are Khamorth, there will be horses." He paused to see if she would disagree. When she didn't, he went on, "This being so, I think we may safely call."
They did. No one answered. Ingegerd found another question: "With these cursed quakes continuing, dare we shelter there this night?"
"You were the one who said you would rather not spend the night in the open. Neither would I," Rhavas replied. "The risk is worth taking. If the farmhouse hasn't fallen yet, it probably won't."
When they went in, they found the Khamorth had been there before them. The plainsmen had butchered the family that lived on the farm; only the winter weather kept the bodies from stinking. By all the signs, the nomads had amused themselves with the farm wife and her daughter before killing them. Rhavas and Ingegerd both sketched the sun-sign without realizing they did it. Neither said a word as they dragged the dead outside. As silently, Ingegerd set the woman's clothes, and the girl's, to rights before moving them.
Even after the corpses were gone, bloodstains made the place grimmer than Rhavas cared for. As much to herself as to him, Ingegerd remarked, "We do not what we would, but what we needs must."
"Just so," Rhavas said heavily. "Yes, just so."
The fire in the hearth was as dead as those who had kindled it. Unlike them, though, it could be brought back to life. Rhavas brought in wood from the pile behind the farmhouse. As twilight quickly faded toward night, Ingegerd fumbled with flint and steel. At last, she got a fire going.
"Shut the door, very holy sir," she told Rhavas. "It will hold the heat in and not let the light leak out. And no one in the dark is likely to see the smoke."
Rhavas obeyed. He and Ingegerd both sat close by the fire, eating of the food she had brought out of Skopentzana and letting the warmth soak into their bones. Whenever they moved, the flickering flames sent their shadows swooping along the rough stone of the walls. Two or three aftershocks brought straw sifting down from the thatched roof, but worked no worse than that.
Before long, they were both yawning. Rhavas rose and turned the peasants' wool-stuffed mattress over. That did not get rid of the stains on it, but did mean he and Ingegerd would not have to lie on them.
"I would have done the same, but you were there before me," she said.
As they had the night before, they lay down under the blanket back to back and, with odd formality, wished each other good night. As Rhavas had the night before, he fell asleep as if someone had hit him over the head. He could feel how soft he was. He'd lived too quietly for much too long.
When an aftershock woke him in the middle of the night, the fire had died back to embers. The farmhouse had got colder, and he and Ingegerd had responded by snuggling together and wrapping their arms around each other. She only half woke, and murmured something in his ear. He couldn't tell what it was; she spoke in the Haloga tongue. But the moist warmth of her breath on his skin kept him awake long after he should have slipped back into unconsciousness.
He didn't realize he had gone to asleep till he jerked awake, this time abruptly enough to wake Ingegerd, too. "What is it?" she whispered. "Is it trouble outside?"
"No," he answered, absurdly angry at the world. "A bedbug bit me." He needed a moment to remember to add, "I'm sorry I bothered you."
She shrugged against his shoulder. "You cannot be blamed for that. Like as not, the same will befall me next."
"You are charitable," he said. As long as she was awake, he scratched—it wouldn't bother her. A moment later, she did, too. She laughed about it. Rhavas didn't. He was not accustomed to bugs. He wondered whether the poor peasants had them or the Khamorth brought them. Either, he supposed, or maybe both.
He did some more scratching and then, bedbugs or no, dozed off. When he woke again, morning twilight was seeping through the slatted shutters in place over the farmhouse's windows. He and Ingegerd lay face to face again, and in each other's arms. He knew he ought to get away, if he could do it without rousing her.
Instead, of their own accord—or so it seemed to him—his arms tightened around her. That didn't rouse her, or not quite; she muttered, but then went back to breathing deeply and regularly. But it roused him, much more than he'd imagined it would. The soft pressure of her breasts against his chest, her belly against his . . .
Then there was pressure from him against her belly, and not soft pressure, either. She laughed softly. "Himerios," she murmured. She knew what that pressure was, all right, and was used to it, even welcomed it—from her husband.
Her eyes opened, bare inches from Rhavas'. For a moment, she plainly had no idea who he was or where she was. He waited for her to pull back in horror, even in disgust. And she did draw back, but slowly and deliberately.
She sighed and nodded. "I might have known this would come up," she said, more to herself than to Rhavas. And it had come up; it throbbed almost painfully. But that wasn't what she meant. She looked Rhavas in the face, her eyes still too close to his for him to look away. "You are a man, and I am a woman."
"Yes," he answered miserably. By the way she said what he was, he might have been a child. As far as experience went, he was a child.
Still as if he were one in truth, Ingegerd went on, "I am a wedded woman, and glad to be such. And you, very holy sir, you are a priest, and you know and I know what a priest's vows are."
"Of course," he said, and closed his eyes. That was the only way he could avoid her gaze.
But her voice softened as she went on, "I know what those vows are, and I admire you for holding to them. It cannot be easy for a man. I know of no Haloga who would willingly undertake them."
"There was the holy Kveldoulphios, a couple of hundred years ago during the reign of Stavrakios." Even in his embarrassment, Rhavas could no more help showing off his scholarship than a jackdaw could help stealing a bit of bright, shiny metal on the ground.
"Kveldulf." Ingegerd said the name in the northern fashion. None of the vowels stayed quite the same. "Well, you are right, very holy sir. I have heard of him, as who in Skopentzana has not?" She refused to let herself be distracted. "But we were not speaking of him, but of the two of us. I know your body will do what it will do. It cannot help being what it is. But by your vow—and by the promise you gave my husband—what it would do, you will not do."
Eyes still closed, Rhavas whispered, "You shame me."
"I do not mean to. If I do, I cry your pardon," Ingegerd answered seriously. "We need each other here.
Two together have a better chance than two ones apart. I am not angry at you. Your body said you wanted me. So be it. You did not try to work anything against my will. The one I can forgive—indeed, it needs no forgiveness. The other? That would be different. But it has not arisen, and I trust it will not. Shall we go on from there, then?"
"I think we had better," Rhavas answered. He spoke severely to what had arisen. He was a man of stern, almost ascetic, discipline, and did not anticipate how strongly it would answer back. Priests were taught that desire was a poison. Rhavas had always believed it. No one had ever told him what a sweet poison it could be.
For a moment, he wondered why not. But that was only too easy to figure out. Such teaching would weaken ecclesiastical discipline. Oh, priests succumbed to the lusts of the flesh all the time. But if the hierarchy did not admit as much, it could punish them or transfer them as seemed best, and otherwise ignore the question. It was so large—and so inflammable—that everyone judged it better ignored.