It was a crude thing to say. And my tone was so rough and loud that she backed away, but only a pace or two. Her eyes held steady on mine. “Too? Am I making Changes with so many people, then? Muurmut and which others, do you think?”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, reddening, wishing I could call back my words. “But Grycindil just came to me to speak in Muurmut’s favor. Well, at least I can see her reasons for that. But now when you show up also—”
She said quietly, “Muurmut is no lover of mine. And what Grycindil does with Muurmut is her own affair. I came to you because the trouble here can only get worse, and it will hurt us all.”
“Trouble?”
“Between you and Muurmut. Oh, no, no, Poilar, please don’t try to look so innocent. The two of you have been butting heads since Hithiat milepost and everyone is aware of it.”
“He thought he was fit to be leader. I knew that I was. We’ve been butting heads because he disagrees with me.”
“The same could be said the other way around.”
“Do you believe Muurmut’s better qualified than I to lead us?”
“No,” she said. “He’s rash and stubborn and he can be very foolish. But you underestimate him, Poilar. He has ideas to offer us. Some of them may be good ideas. And because you refuse to listen to them, you cause pain for him. If this goes on, he’ll force us all to share that pain.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean a battle for the leadership.”
“He won’t try it,” I said. “And if he does, only those few hangers-on of his will follow him.”
“Are you willing to risk it?” Hendy asked. “A struggle for power up here, when we’ve come so far?”
Her dark eyes were shining mysteriously. A soft perfume was rising from her throat and shoulders, and I knew the fragrance must be that of her own skin. This show of strength was bringing a sudden beauty to life in her, and it was having a powerful effect on me.
I said, “Do you have any suggestions, then?”
“A reconciliation between you and him.”
“There can’t be a reconciliation when there was never friendship in the first place.”
“Well, then, peace, at least. A handshake. You were very cruel to him, that time he climbed the rocks to look for Min. You could tell him that you regret that now.”
“You swear to me that you haven’t hatched this together with Grycindil?”
Her nostrils quivered in anger. “I’ve told you already that I haven’t.”
“She thinks the same way you do about this.”
“Many of us do.”
I considered that. I remembered the grumbling I had heard. A leader leads only by consent of the led. That consent might be withdrawn at any time.
“All right,” I said, after a time. “I’ll give him a handshake, if you think it’ll do any good. What else do you suggest, Hendy?”
“That you invite Muurmut to share his ideas with us about the direction we should take.”
“Grycindil said that also.”
“As well she might have.”
She stared me straight in the eyes for a long moment. Then she turned and walked away.
Around the campfire that night Jaif sang the Song of the High Peaks, and Ais and Tenilda made astonishingly lovely music by clicking sticks together, and Naxa told a long, involved, and oddly perverse comic fable that he said he had learned from a manuscript five thousand years old, which dealt with the mating of gods and rock-apes. Though we had achieved nothing useful in our day’s travel, we were strangely cheerful that evening.
When Naxa was done, I walked over to the place where Muurmut sat on the far side of the fire with Talbol and Seppil and said to him, “May we talk?”
“I don’t know. May we?”
“Go easy, Muurmut. This has been too pleasant an evening to have it spoiled now.”
“You came to me, Crookleg. There was nothing I wanted to say to you.”
I could gladly have thrown him into the stream for that “Crookleg.” But I held myself in check and said, with a quick glance at Grycindil—who was watching us from a distance—“I owe you an apology, Muurmut.”
His expression was one of mingled amazement and wariness. “An apology? For what?”
“For some of the things I said to you when you came back after looking for Min.”
He was all suspicion now.
“What are you getting at, Poilar?”
I took a deep breath. And told him that I never would have given him permission to go in search of Min the way he had if he had asked me, but that I had been wrong to accuse him of disobedience, because he had simply jumped up and run off impulsively, without taking the time to ask me whether he could. If there is no refusal of permission, I said, there is no disobedience.
He listened to these dry legalisms with a skeptical expression on his face, and made no reply.
“Furthermore,” I said, “I told you then that it had been wrong for you to go after her. In fact I now realize that you did the right thing. If there was any chance at all that Min could have been found and brought back to us, what you did was worth trying.”
Plainly Muurmut had expected none of this from me. I was amazed myself that I was able to say it. He continued to stare at me, as if weighing my words to find some secret mockery in them. But there was none, and he seemed to be struggling to believe that. Seppil and Talbol looked at each other in complete bewilderment. I saw Grycindil coming toward us, smiling.
“Well—” Muurmut began, and then he stopped, not knowing what to say.
I said, “I spoke too harshly to you that day. I regret that now. And so I wanted to tell you that I’ve come to think it was right of you to go in search of Min. And very brave to attempt it alone.”
“Well,” he said again, almost tongue-tied with perplexity. “Well, then, Poilar—”
He had never seen me in this mode before. No one ever had. And he wasn’t at all sure what to make of it. Part of him must still have thought that I was setting him up for some new kind of humiliation.
I stared at him levelly. This was very difficult for me, but I was determined to see it through.
“Well, Muurmut? Are you going to accept my apology or aren’t you?”
“If it’s sincere, yes, I accept. Why shouldn’t I? But I confess I don’t understand why you’re bothering.”
“Because we’ve used up much too much energy in hatred,” I said, “and now we have none to spare.” There was little warmth in my tone, none in my eyes. It was hard, all right, forcing myself to crawl to him like this. But I held my hand out toward him. “Can we make an end to all this bickering?”
“Are you resigning your leadership to me, then?” he asked coolly.
Again I came close to clunking him. But I clenched my jaw and replied, as evenly as I could, “Our fellow Pilgrims chose me leader by their vote. If they want to remove me by their vote, so be it. But resigning’s not in my spirit. I ask you to accept me ungrudgingly as the leader of this Pilgrimage, Muurmut, as you should. And I’ll promise you in return to put aside the coldness I’ve felt toward you, and draw you into my circle of advisers.”
“You want us to be friends? ” he asked, in disbelief.
“Allies, rather. Fellow Pilgrims, working together for the good of all.”
“Well—”
Grycindil, who was at his side now, nudged him sharply with her foot. He glared at her; but then he rose, unlimbering himself until he stood high above me, for he was a very big man. My hand was still out. He took it, though his expression was a strange, strained one.
“Allies, then,” he said. “Fellow Pilgrims. Yes. Yes. All right, Poilar. Fellow Pilgrims, working together.”