"We got to go much further today, then, my lord?"
"No; we'll get down off this crest and find somewhere to lie up for the night. We daren't risk a village-not in a place as frequented as the plain. We're still in Bekla province, you see, and likely enough there's a price on our heads by now. We'll make for those trees: ought to be some shelter there."
The woodland which they were approaching covered
most of the rocky slope below. Soon they found themselves among outskirts of scrub oak, long-leaved nakai and evergreen sweetspires, several growing almost horizontally out from the faces of steep little bluffs. A few of these were precipitous, and more than once they were forced to go some distance along a sheer edge before they could find a way down.
Maia, at the end of this second long day, was feeling weary, due partly to the rough going, but mainly to her increasing anxiety and uncertainty. Normally, her instinct in such a situation would have been to do what she was told and leave everything else to her older and more experienced companions. But these Subans-she was their secret enemy. If in some way or other they were to find out the truth, they would probably kill her. Not for the first time that day, the idea occurred to her, "Why not tell them? Tell them I was forced into it-that I'd got no choice?" But what would they do then? They might not kill her, but obviously they would unburden themselves of her in one way or another; and what had she to hope for, left alone in unknown country?
Rapt in these dismal meditations and in the listlessness of fatigue, she did not notice, until Bayub-Otal called out to her, that he and Pillan had stopped at the foot of the last bluff they had descended, and were sitting among the rocks. She went back to them. Bayub-Otal nodded over his shoulder. "That cleft-there's quite a fair-sized cave inside. If you don't mind sharing it, I think it'll do us very well. There must be water somewhere fairly near, and we can cut branches and scrub to sleep on. Have a look and tell me what you think."
She smiled. "I'm not used to being asked what I think, my lord."
"Then you can get some practice now," replied Bayub-Otal.
She felt irritated. Whether or not he really supposed he was giving her any power of choice she had no idea. As far as she was concerned he had as good as told her what they were going to do. Why couldn't he have said so and left it at that?
Except for the narrow opening, which made it gloomy and dark, there was nothing wrong with the cave. It was all of thirty feet long, with plenty of room for her to sleep apart. Bayub-Otal set off with the water bottles while she
and Pillan began cutting scrub-willow and oleander branches for pallets.
Later, when they had eaten and drunk, she made her own way down to the brook, washed and bathed her feet.
"I don't think we should make a fire, do you?" Bayub-Otal was saying to Pillan as she returned. "We don't want to risk anyone knowing we're here."
"Wood burns that quick, my lord, we'd never be done gett'n enough."
"I'm afraid we'll have to take it in turns to keep watch, though," went on Bayub-Otal. "You can start, Pillan, and then wake me; and I'll wake you, Maia, an hour or two before dawn. You needn't be afraid: animals are easily scared off even without a fire, and you can always wake us if you think anyone's coming."
Once she had lain down she found herself more comfortable-or else more tired-than she had expected, and slept without stirring until Bayub-Otal woke her.
The moon was almost set. She felt stiff and cramped from the hard floor. He'd left her late, she thought. He'd given himself the most inconvenient watch, too; the one that broke a night's sleep in half. She wished he wouldn't always be so scrupulously courteous and considerate. From a man who had rejected her it came cold, and only made her feel inferior and ill-at-ease.
For a while she sat just outside the cave, wrapped in her cloak and listening, in the yellow moonlight, to the innumerable small noises all around her-patterings, rustlings and the quiet movement of leaves and branches. With moonset, however, it grew very dark and a chilly wind got up from the east. She began to feel shrammed. After a time it occurred to her that since she could see nothing and her watch now consisted only of listening, she could do it as well inside the cave and out of the wind. She went back to her pallet near the cave-mouth and lay prone, her chin propped on her hands: but still she felt cold. She shivered, hunching her shoulders.
Further back in the cave, Pillan lay stretched asleep on the stones. She could just hear his breathing in the darkness. Moving slightly, he muttered an unintelligible word or two and was quiet again. She made a little joke in her thoughts: "Does he say more awake or asleep?"
His strange, alarmed reaction when he had first seen her at Bayub-Otal's lodgings-after two days in his company
it struck her as oddly out of character. This rather grim, unexcitable man, who seldom wasted a word-for some reason the mere sight of her had put him in fear, and that to such an extent that Bayub-Otal had had to check him. Try as she would, she could think of no plausible reason. First time anyone's ever been afraid of me, slje thought, without it was Nala.
She was feeling warmer now. Resting her forehead on her forearms, she relaxed, breathing slowly and deeply. Her thoughts began to wander into fantasy. She imagined herself back in Bekla, a famous shearna, her fortune made; living with Occula in their own house; sought after, receiving and refusing whom she would; lying late, rising in the afternoon, calling their maid to help her bathe and dress for the evening. Five hundred meld a night. A thousand meld a night! A great, soft bed all covered with silk-ah!- soft as-the lake-floating-under the waterfall-scent of water-mint-wavering down, deep water. Deep.
Her body was jarred by a thudding blow. For an instant it formed part of her dream as a kind of explosion, shattering from about her the lake, the sun and the sky above. She struggled against it, trying to hold on to the lake, trying to stop the fragments dispersing. Then came the inrush of shock and she leapt wide awake as a second thud jolted her against the stony floor of the cave.
It was gray daylight; not yet sunrise, but fully light enough to see. A man was standing over her. For a moment she thought it was Pillan; then realized with terror that it was a stranger, a man she had never seen in her life. As she sprang to her feet, stumbling over the hem of her cloak, he grabbed her by the arm, jerking her up and forcing her round to face him.
He was bearded, dark and stocky; broad-featured, perhaps forty years old, with the weathered appearance of a soldier or a hunter. There was about him also the air of a man accustomed to command. Ruthless and hard he certainly looked, yet no ruffian. His eyes, as they stared into hers, had a look of assurance and authority, as though he were one who seldom needed to use violence except in the last resort.
He was wearing a padded leather surcoat, a sword at his belt and a helmet of smooth, hardened leather. His
left hand gripped Maia's arm: his right was holding a dagger, its point towards her.
Speechless with fear and the shock of her awakening, she now saw that this stranger was not alone. With him were two younger men, similarly armed. One of these, also holding a dagger, was kneeling beside Pillan, whom he was shaking awake. The other, black against the light, stood at the mouth of the cave, his sword drawn in his hand.
The dark man spoke in an accent strange to Maia, but perfectly intelligible. "What are you doing here? Who are you?"
The unfamiliar cadence, which seemed all of a piece with his bellicose appearance, frightened her still more. For an instant the thought whirled across her confused mind that perhaps he was not human. Old Drigga had told her of forest demons who had power to take the semblance of men, yet always with some revealing imperfection- ears, hands, voice or the like.
Cowering from him, she would have fallen, but his grip literally held her upright: as her eyes once more met his, he shook her so that she lurched against him.