This sort of thing was worrying enough, but in addition Maia had once or twice seen Meris glancing at the fourteen-year-old Blarda with a look which she herself understood if no one else did. A baste in the barn, she thought, even with an innocent, might be neither here nor there, but she doubted whether Meris would rest content with that. Before she was satisfied, someone would have to suffer. She was a girl getting her own back on the world, and the innocuous and simple were her natural prey. Even with nothing else to worry about, Meris would have been a nuisance, but with Zenka on her hands Maia simply had no energy or attention to spare.
Next to Zen-Kurel, Bayub-Otal was the worst affected. There could be no question, for the time being, of him helping on the farm. He was worn out and half-starved, and for several days could eat only whey, eggs in milk and such other slops as the kindly Clystis prepared. His feet were in such a terrible state that Maia could not imagine how he had walked from Bekla. She had learned, of course, on the journey to Suba, that he was an exceptionally unflinching, determined man, but she had not hitherto realized how much he was capable of enduring.
Resting by day in the shade of the sestuaga trees on one side of the yard, he told her, at odd times and little by little, all that had befallen him since the fight near Rallur. The prisoners, as she knew, had been sent to the fortress at Dari-Paltesh. Here they had been in the charge of Dur-akkon's younger son, a humane but very ineffectual young
man who, it was generally known, had been promoted out of harm's way before he could discredit himself further in the field. Plotho ("the rabbit"), as he was nick-named, had done what little he could to make their lives bearable, forbidding the soldiers to ill-treat them and ensuring that their wounds received attention. Despite his kindness, however, several had died.
"You were locked up all that time, then?" asked Maia, trying to imagine it.
"No," replied Bayub-Otal. "It's not like that at Dari-Paltesh. There are no dungeons. The lowest floor lies below the level of the moat like the bottom of a great, drained well. We were free to wander about. We looked after each other as best we could. We lost count of time. The food was very bad and there was never enough, and although we'd made everyone swear to divide it fairly there were always quarrels. One man was killed in his sleep-"
"How?" asked Maia.
"Sharp stick driven through his throat. We never found out who'd done it. I keep dreaming I'm back there, though I suppose it'll stop after a time."
In telling her all this Bayub-Otal never uttered any word of reproach against Maia. He might have been talking to someone who had had no more to do with his capture than had Clystis. Nor was there in his manner any suggestion that he particularly wanted to arouse remorse in her. Most of what he told her, indeed, was vouchsafed with his habitual restraint, briefly and bit by bit, in reply to her own questions. „
A day or two later he went on to tell her how Han-Glat and Fornis had given orders to bring out the officers and tryzatts-some nineteen or twenty altogether-to join the march from Paltesh to Bekla. These were supposed to be hostages against the risk of an attack across the Zhairgen by Karnat, but it soon became plain that although that might be a principal reason for their presence, there was another. During the march the Sacred Queen had devised various ways of amusing herself. She had begun by compelling the hostages to beg on their knees for their rations, or else go hungry; but after a day or two had become more ingenious, requiring them to perform various things to their own degradation-things of a nature which Maia recognized as being in accordance with what she herself had
seen in Fornis's bedroom on the morning when Occula had hidden her in the closet.
Bayub-Otal had held out against this cruelty, and accordingly he had starved; or rather, he had half-starved, for it so chanced that one of the Palteshi guards, who had a Suban wife in Dari, knew him to be none other than Anda-Nokomis. This man, moved to pity, had risked giving him scraps when no one was looking: otherwise he would have died.
He told Maia how, very soon after the murder of Durakkon and his son, Fornis, as soon as it was clear that Kerithra-Thrain lacked numbers to destroy her army, had persuaded Han-Glat to join her in a forced march to take Bekla by surprise.
"She knew that Kembri had gone south to fight Santil-ke-Erketlis and that Eud-Ecachlon had no troops worth the name. But she knew, too, that he could still close the gates against her, and she meant to get there before he'd even learned of Durakkon's death.
"There wasn't a single man in that company of Han-Glat's with more speed and endurance than Fornis. I'd never have believed it possible. She led them for twenty-four hours without sleep and with scarcely a halt. They ate as they marched. Half of them were barely on their feet, but only one man tried to drop out. It was in the early morning, just after first light. He said he'd twisted his ankle. She called him out and asked him whether he was married, and he answered yes. So then she said she'd spare him the shame of going home and telling his wife that a woman had more guts than he had. She had a spear in her hand-she was carrying everything the men were carrying-and before he'd had time to say another word she'd run him through. 'Now we'll get on!' she said. 'We've wasted enough time already.' No one else could have done a thing like that and not been faced with mutiny. The men simply left him lying there and followed her like dogs."
"But Zenka-on the march from Dari-was he-forced to-you know-?"
"Zen-Kurel? He held out for quite a time. But that was part of the sport for Fornis, of course, to see how long some people would hold out. It was I who advised him to forget his pride and take his food. I told him that if we ever got out alive it would all be forgotten anyway. But he still got far too little, because for a full ration she used
to make people do-well-things to each other, and that Zen-Kurel always refused."
"Did she bring all the hostages on this dash for Bekla, then?"
"No, only about a dozen, I think, but I'm afraid I wasn't even counting very well by then. How she picked them I can't tell. I doubt she knew herself: she's mad, really, you know. Not raving mad, but-well-deranged. I think she just couldn't deny herself the pleasure of keeping a few with her. Three of us fell down on the way and she speared them, too. To tell you the truth, I remember very little about the last part of the march. But you'll understand now why Zenka's so ill."
"And you walked here with us-the night after that?" "To save my life, yes. What was the alternative?" "You could have stayed with the Lapanese in Bekla." "They'll never be able to hold the city. Eud-Ecachlon's got the citadel, you told me, and once the rest of Han-Glat's troops reach Bekla the Lapanese'll have no chance. Besides, you say Randronoth's dead?"
She nodded. Their talk had tired him-he was still very weak-and after a little she left him to rest while she went to milk the cows. Alone in the shed, she wept to think of her own part in all this misery. "But what else could I have done?" she whispered aloud. "Dear Lespa, what else could I have done? I never wished Karnat's men any harm." She had as yet told Bayub-Otal nothing of Tharrin's story or of whom she had discovered herself to be. Intuitively, she felt that the time had not yet come.
Yet this was not the only cause for weeping which afflicted her during these days. Indeed, she was thankful for the relief and distraction of working on the place, for whenever she was unoccupied, and always when she lay down to sleep, her thoughts were so wretched that in all reality she would rather have had to endure again the pain and illness she had suffered after swimming the Valderra. Worst -obsessive, indeed-was the memory of Milvushina; that futile death which made nonsense of any notion of the gods as kindly patrons of mankind. Many times, recalling the cruelty which Milvushina had endured, the dignity and courage she had maintained in the face of it, her brief span of happiness as the lover of Elvair-ka-Vir-rion and the selfless generosity she had shown at her pitiful end, Maia would begin sobbing, and steal away to some