But once they camped, in consideration of possible violence, he suggested to Tofi they pitch only two tents for shade, and close to one another. The women who had suffered were out of the northwest lowlands and certainly had no idea how to manage in the desert. He suggested the women join Tofi and the two slaves, and keep Tofi comforted, while the two ex-soldiers went to Ontori’s tent.
The Lakht brought out the best or the worst in men, and men who had abused their tentmates for three days while they all were in danger of dying were fools. Likewise the women, who had lived through it all and still were on their feet, were not fools, and had gathered the means to defend themselves.
“If these women complain after this,” Marak said to Kassan, senior of the two ex-soldiers, the most likely instigators, in his opinion. “If they complain, you’ll never see the east.”
A suitable fear went across the man’s face. “It wasn’t me,” Kassan said. “It was Foragi.”
“Then change his mind,” Marak said, “or kill him. I’ve set the stonemason over you: Ontari. If either of you ever offends these women, I’ve given him authority to kill you both.”
“Omi,” Kassan said. Kassan was the one of the two soldiers with the wit to understand the proposition; and he hoped Kassan had the wit to be afraid. Kassan went away, doubtless to warn the other man they were in danger, and if his threat produced mutiny in the ex-soldiers, he was sure their looks would show it: they were not men for deep intrigue.
After noon, they broke camp, and the two soldiers avoided his gaze and ducked their heads.
It was, over all, the women who looked different. Hati had been talking to them, and one of them, Maol the farmwife, glowered and fingered something beneath her belt when she looked at those men.
As for Tofi, still mourning his father and his brothers, Maol and her friend among the three women took him as their special charge, a handsome, quick young lad, and in need of comfort. The third woman, whose name was Malin, seemed to have had a falling-out with the other two. She approached the soldiers, who tried to have nothing to do with her.
They broke camp at sunset and moved on, following the stars Tofi named.
Marak, the voices said, Marak, Marak, but they did not seem displeased. The voices still whispered—hourly now—and the visions still came, and he knew that Tofi’s guide stars were the same stars they had followed, the bright ones, to the east.
And if the morning and the evening pitched him east so reliably he never could have lost his way, so with all of them: they were not lost, nor dissuaded, and needed not have worried about knowing the way. The boy Tofi, who owned the beasts and the tents, was increasingly confident of their direction.
So was Hati, who with Norit shared his mat at night. Since the storm, he had no shame left in that regard, only hung a robe for a curtain, and so he heard two of the three women did, with Tofi, and together they got along.
But one of the three, on the outs with the women from the start, had set up to content various other men, and had them, two and three an evening, outside near the beasts, before they would get under way for the night, so he wondered whether the soldiers had been entirely at fault in the tent and who had started the business during the storm.
“Malin takes pay,” Hati said when he asked her opinion.
“What do they pay?” Marak asked, feeling like an innocent. There was none of the men rich in coin or bracelets.
“Food,” Hati said.
“They will not.” He was outraged. Taking part of a man’s ration weakened the man and strengthened a woman who by now had made her choice, and who, if prostitution was not her trade, might have revenge on her mind… or who, if it was, might become the object of revenge from the other women. “The hell! Tell them they may not use force. But they can’t use their rations, either. Let Malin choose what to do. Tell her let them win her favors.”
Marak, Marak, Marak, his inner voice said, impatient with him. He had more and greater worries than Malin.
But after Hati had a talk with them, the men who courted Malin, the prostitute, vied with small favors, helping her down from her beast, carrying her mat, unrolling it as if she ruled the camp. Malin flourished, better served than many a wife, and Norit and Maol and the other woman, Jurid, frowned daggers at her, but Hati shrugged and carried her own mat and hauled her own saddle with a wry and amused look.
They had cooked meals with the sun-mirrors in clear weather. But they had lost their cook, among the dead slaves, give or take Hati’s occasional merciful intervention, and now the cooking changed: it was Tofi’s two women, Maol and Jurid, who provided the skill. They were profligate with the spices; and Marak thought it a great improvement.
He found leisure for such thoughts. In Hati’s arms and in Norit’s he was happy, and that, too, was a new thought. He discovered he had seldom been happy, in his life. He had never been free in his life. But now… he had no idea whether he was, or not.
He found himself looking at Hati during their rides simply for the pleasure the sight gave him. Norit was a fine woman, and a comfortable one, and he liked her despite her other qualities: if he had met her alone, in such circumstances, he might have declared he loved her. But Hati stirred something in him that had never waked to anyone. He found all her movements a fascination. He found every expression memorable, and she had so many. If Hati should leave their journey, he thought he would follow Hati rather than the visions… it was that potent a lure.
But because they shared the visions, they went together, and wondered together what they might come to.
“Do you suppose there is a tower?” Hati asked. “Or is it a spire of rock?”
“If it’s a tower, men built it,” he said. “And the stars are clearly the stars we follow. And what shall we find?”
“Great treasure,” Hati said expansively, with the wave of a hand toward the dark, “and we won’t go back to the Ila. We’ll be rich, and have fifty white beshti and lie on dyed cloth, under tents with gold fittings. We’ll have a hundred slaves to do the work, and we’ll eat melons twice a day.”
The au’it slept, gently snoring. It was safe to talk treason.
“We’ll grow fat,” he said, and asked Norit, who lay at his other side, “What would you have if you were rich?”
“A house with a vineyard,” Norit said, “and a fine bed with a mattress.”
“No slaves?” asked Hati.
“Oh, four. They can work in the vineyard,” Norit said, ”and every one of them will have a house and a good soft bed and wine with supper.“
“You’re too kind,” Hati said. “They’ll cut your throat if you don’t beat them.”
“I was wishing,” Norit defended herself. “If I’m wishing, I can wish them to be honest workers.”
“If we’re wishing,” Marak said, entranced with this folly, “we can wish for peace between the Lakht and the lowlands, and sane minds for all of us.”
“Perhaps the visions will stop when we see this high place,” Hati said, putting an arm over him and snuggling close. “Most of us hope so. Those of us who have hope. And I do.”
“I hope so,” Marak said. He had not put it in words before, but that was the promise in the madness, that there was something to find, something to do, something to see that they must see, and once they had found it and done it and seen it they would be sane, and at peace, and free forever.
There was a flaw in this notion, of which he was keenly aware. He had promised the Ila his return, and a report. More, on the Lakht and around it for as far as the lands stretched, he knew nowhere else to go to postpone that report, especially since he had the au’it in his care.
Live as an’i Keran? He could, but he would reject the tribal life. He had no wish to fight their battles, when he had had his belly full of his father’s.
Besides, he had made a pledge, and still kept it, and knew that this freedom of his lasted as long as the journey… at least, he had had it clear in his mind until there was Hati; and now his pledge left him a tangled maze of choices.