Kettrick allowed his face to fall, but not too far.
"So," said Flay, "let the trading wait for a while. The goods will keep, but my hounds are spoiling for a run. Come and hunt."
Kettrick hesitated. "Ten days," he said. "That's too bad."
"Why, Johnny?"
"It's still a long way to the White Sun."
"Learn patience. It will wait."
"Well, since there's no help for it…" Kettrick shrugged. "Maybe it's a good thing at that, when I think about it. Kirnanoc is the next jump from here…"
Flay appeared to be waiting politely for him to explain.
"I mean, Seri has to go there, too, so it's just as well for us to sit here for a while, give him time to do his business and clear out. I wouldn't want to run into Seri, especially on Kirnanoc." Kettrick's smile was dazzling in its sincerity. "Partner or not, I wouldn't trust him not to turn me in to the I–C office there. He had enough trouble on my account two years ago."
He knew that this possibility was exactly what was on Flay's mind, only in reverse. He was worried about Seri, not Kettrick, and he wanted no risk of a chance meeting.
Kettrick went hunting with Flay. Chai ran by his stirrup. The hounds did not like her, nor she them, and they stayed apart. The hounds killed twice. Something red and strange came into Chai's gaze. When they sighted a third quarry she said, "Kill, John-nee?"
He spoke to Flay and the hounds were leashed. The men watched while the great gray Tchell went coursing, transfigured with a deadly beauty. Her body bent and swayed and stretched itself in the steps of a ballet dancer with a horned and fleeing creature across the red-gold grass, a swift ballet climaxed with a single leap. Flay grunted, with mingled admiration and distaste.
"You have a peculiar friend."
"She is loyal," Kettrick said. "Her people are still too close to the beast for treachery."
They rode back toward the city with the lolling carcasses strapped behind saddles and Chai cleaned herself daintily with handsful of grass.
It was dusk and coming on to snow when they met a boy, riding like the wind.
13
The company reined up, waiting while the boy talked to Flay, his voice urgent and excited. Because of the way the boy kept glancing at him, Kettrick knew that this was no domestic matter. It concerned him. He sat very still in the saddle, his hands tight on the reins. Snowflakes brushed his face with their cold, delicate touch. It seemed a very long time before Flay turned to him and said in lingua, "An I–C ship has landed, Johnny."
Kettrick's heart gave a great leap. Luck was with them for once. They would not have to wait until they reached Kirnanoc. Help was here. They could tell the I–C men about Seri and the Doomstar, and with their faster ship they…
A veil of snow blew between him and Flay, and through it in the dusk he could feel what he could not clearly see; Flay's eyes straining to read his face.
And he realized that luck was not with them at all.
Until the two ships were jump ready, they were all guests of the Firgals. And if the Firgals became suspicious, because of one slight word or action, that either or both groups might be on the track of Seri and the Doomstar, then none of them would live to take off.
And the I–C could not possibly have chosen a worse time for a random spot check of Thwayn. Their arrival so close behind Grellah, and both of them so close behind Starbird, was enough to make anyone suspicious.
He was surprised at the steadiness of his own voice when he spoke.
"This is what we were afraid of, why we brought the trade goods and tried to make everything look normal. But now comes the real test, Flay."
"Test, Johnny?"
"Boker and the others can take care of themselves. The I–C has nothing against them. So it comes down to me, and you. Will you hide me, or will you turn me in?"
He had never thought to see the day when he would hope that the answer would be, "I'll turn you in and be damned."
"Turn you in, Johnny? My friend? May the Frost King freeze me into white, stone if I could think of such a thing?" Flay pondered a moment, shaking the snowflakes from his red braids. Then he spoke to the boy, who moved over beside Kettrick. "Go with him, Johnny. Don't worry about the I–C!"
In a minute Flay and his party had vanished into the darkening snowfall. Kettrick looked after his friend with something less than gratitude, and prayed that Boker and Hurth and Glevan would keep their mouths shut. The boy called to him and started away in a different direction. Kettrick followed, keeping close so as not to lose him. Chai ran easily beside him with her hand on his knee.
Presently, in what was now full dark and increasing cold, Kettrick smelled smoke and the heavy sweet-sour reek of penned animals. Stone walls appeared on either side of him, narrow as a cattle chute, and he realized that that was what it was. The boy halted and opened a gate, and they passed through into one of the big caves, half natural and half man-made, where stock was held over the winter.
Kettrick was aware of dim shuffling mass movements as the creatures got Chai's scent and shifted away from it, snorting. The air became warmer and free from snow. The boy leaned over and took hold of Kettrick's bridle. They moved on very slowly and then stopped in pitch darkness. Kettrick heard the boy jump to the ground. A moment later a sulphur match spluttered brightly, dimmed, and brightened again to the larger glow of a lantern. The boy beckoned.
Kettrick dismounted and followed him with Chai, into a hallway or tunnel cut in the stone at the back of the cave. They followed it for a long way. The floor slanted sometimes up, sometimes down. In places, the rock walls and ceiling were replaced by stout timbers chinked with clay. At irregular intervals there were doorways. Those on his left hand opened into buried storerooms. Those on the right belonged to houses, and through them he could hear the many sounds of families getting their dinners. The boy had brought them in at the lower end of one of the streets and they were now going behind the houses in one of the network of tunnels that gave access to storage cellars and to the cattle pens on days when extreme cold or heavy drifting made the street undesirable.
At length the boy halted and knocked on one of the doors. It opened a crack and Kettrick saw the same buxom red-braided girl who had brought the food up to them, and he knew they were back at Flay's.
There was some hurried low-voiced conversation, only this time Kettrick knew it did not concern him. The boy caught one of the red braids in his hand and pulled on it until the girl's face was in a position where she could not avoid being kissed, and she pushed at him with a great show of rage but no determination, and they both laughed, and Kettrick was glad that there were some people still with no more on their minds than kissing. He wished he were one of them.
The girl beckoned him in finally, with a sidelong look at Chai. This was a different part of the house from the one Kettrick had seen before, and temporarily deserted, though there was noise enough beyond. The girl whisked him up another narrow stair that was like a ladder, her thick sturdy legs in knitted stockings as agile as a goat's. Under her woollen skirt she wore knickers made out of material as thick as a horse blanket. It was a cold world, Kettrick thought, and wondered if he would ever see another.
At the top of the ladder was a room with a close bed and a shaggy hide rug on the floor. A tray of food and a clay bottle were laid ready on a table, and a lantern burned. A feeble fire struggled against a down draught in the small hearth, so that the room was well supplied with smoke but little warmth. The girl crooked her ringer importantly and he followed her to the bed. She scrambled into it and pointed with her finger to a place in the wall where the chinking was gone from between the stone and a massive support post. He was about to ask her a futile question when she made a gesture of wild impatience, as though to a very stupid child, bidding him be quiet. At the same time he heard voices from beyond the wall.