Gath stared north, then whirled toward a subtle movement at the vine-covered entrance to his root house. It was the wolf, ready to go for a walk.
An hour later Gath and Sharn spotted the brown boulders of Calling Rock above the treetops. They moved warily to the clearing at the south side and stopped in the concealing shadows.
Thirty strides across the clearing, beyond Summer Trail, the sheer southern face of Calling Rock rose fifty feet. Creepers and vines fought against fallen rocks and dirt spilling out of crevices to embrace the lower boulders. Above this foliage, the late day sun caressed brown stones with an orange glow. In the gullies, caves, jagged cracks and crevices of the rock were deep shadows, black places of mystery designed for demons and unseen hands to hide. But they were not responsible for the brightness that entered Gath’s eyes.
A small figure at the top of the rock knelt over a smoking fire at the base of the blackened thorn tree. It looked no more vulnerable than a bite of meat on the end of a fork.
Frowning, Gath looked around. At the eastern end the rock broke apart in a tangle of massive boulders penetrated by three deep crevices. They zigzagged and grew narrower as they approached the heights. There they vanished among shrubs and thorn trees. Except for an unusual silence there was no sign of anyone hiding among the crevices or within the surrounding forest.
The man and wolf shared a wondering glance, and looked back up at the figure. It was a girl. She had moved to the thorn tree, and, climbing halfway into its burnt-out shell, came away with the bullhorn. It was as thick as her waist at the bell end. She wrestled with it until she had the bell propped on a branch, then took hold with two hands, inhaled deeply and blew hard. A clear strong note left the horn, and a covey of crows lifted out of the trees to the east to spatter the gold sky with black-winged specks. With resolve, she blew again. The note started strong, then lost force and whined like a lonely dog.
Gath grinned, then laughed as the girl, gasping for breath, collapsed in a lump against the tree, bringing the horn with her. It banged her knee, escaped from her hands, and defiantly rolled out of reach while the girl held her knee and rocked painfully in place.
Gath, with his eyes on the girl, stuck his leaf-bladed spear upright in the ground, lifted the waterskin slung on his back along with his axe, and poured a long drink into and over his grinning mouth. The girl glanced at the bullhorn as if it were deliberately picking on her, and he laughed again and choked.
Sharn looked at him with critical eyes, as if he were suddenly a stranger, then turned to leave. Gath drew in his grin, whispered, “Hey!”
The wolf looked back at him as if he were as useless as a dead leaf dancing on the wind, then vanished behind shrubbery.
Gath glared after the wolf, but the amusement was still at play behind his eyes. He ripped his spear out of the ground, glanced down their back trail, then headed for the eastern end of the rock keeping to the forest. Reaching the eastern end, he quietly moved up through one of the crevices to the top. There he found a shadowed recess in the sprawling boulders. From its shadows he peered through shrubs, saw the girl sitting quietly under the tree about thirty strides off.
She was dressed simply in a bone-colored tunic, a cloak of harvest yellow. Her walking stick rested on the ground beside her. The girl looked like she had neither the will nor the strength to stand. Then she stretched and sat up with renewed vigor, as pleasant and as promising as a budding daffodil.
Gath found a spot behind some shrubs and watched as the girl placed rocks around her fire, then removed a hen from her shoulder pouch and prepared and cooked it. She drank from her waterskin, dined on the hen, and cleverly made herself a cozy bed of needles between the exposed roots of the thorn tree. When the daylight died, she rebuilt her fire, covered herself with her cloak and a blanket, and lay down to sleep. When sleep did not come to her, he watched her scratch her nose, raise her eyes to the first star in the night sky, then count the needles in her pillow, smelling each one. He watched her get up, pace around the tree, haul the bullhorn back to its hollow, then try to sleep again. This time she drew her knife from its sheath and held it tight in her small fist.
Gath continued to watch.
When sleep came to her it was fitful. She twisted, rolled onto her back, arched her soft supple neck, exposed a length of thigh, twisted and rolled again until she was a ball of soft shadows exposing only a pink earlobe, warm, tender and inviting.
The moon was high in the night sky when Gath emerged from his hiding place. Making no sound, he moved through shadowed boulders, then across to squat beside the sleeping girl.
She was cradled between the thorn tree’s roots. Her fire glowed with red hot embers at her feet. Greasy stains marked the circle of rocks surrounding the fire. Bits of fat and bones from the hen clung to them. Her leather fire pot, walking stick, belt and pouches, and waterskin rested on the ground beside her. Her knife had fallen half out of her sleeping hand. The fire’s orange glow stroked her sleeping form, and cast deep shadows which hid her face.
Gath inspected her walking stick and knife. He opened her pouches. One carried several tiny corked vials of stone and clay, and smaller pouches holding pungent herbs. Another held an apple, raisins and the remains of the roasted hen wrapped in a cloth. The third held coins, and a small, wooden spinning whorl painted gold. This he knew. It was the sacred sign of the Cytherian maidens who wove cloth in the temple at Weaver. Gath set her belt and its pouches back beside the girl and started to rise.
The girl shifted restlessly, and her small red mouth with its plump lower lip emerged from the concealing shadow. She yawned slightly, and the vermilion flesh of her lips glistened wetly in the fire’s glow. Then she sighed in musical surrender, the prisoner of a sleep fashioned by dreams.
Gath’s eyes warmed within the deep shadows of his brow. The brutal glint was gone. The pupils were large and brilliant reflecting the fire. The eyes of a hard, savage man, but one who refused to forget his childhood, a time which had held a dream distant and supreme, like those clung to only by boys raised in cages.
The girl’s lips massaged themselves, then a pink tongue emerged and tickled a corner until it glistened wetly. The lips closed and, to the accompaniment of another soft sigh, danced back into the darkness and were gone.
Gath unconsciously lifted his spear and scratched his knee with the haft. He took a breath, waited. When the two red dancers failed to reappear, he reached with the spear tip, caught the blanket with it and lifted it away from Robin Lakehair’s face so the orange glow of the dying fire could stroke it with moving color.
As her beauty knifed into him, he did not turn away or move. Then he lowered the blanket and took a step backward out of the firelight.
He glanced about furtively, suddenly aware again of the night and its sounds: the crickets’ song, the hoot of an owl, the scattering feet of nocturnal lizards. He looked back at the sleeping girl.
The soft rise and fall of her shadowed form had a subtle, compelling strength, a power which stretched time, proportion, size. It was as if her lips were a perch where a soldier could stand guard, her red-gold hair ropes to climb, the upper slope of her breasts rising and falling above her square-cut collar a place to lie down and sleep. As if she were an inviting landscape where gods rode on white chargers, and goddesses wearing chains and luxurious virtue were held captive in the towers of shadowy castles.
Gath forced himself to turn away, then retreated across the clearing and through the boulders and shrubs to his hidden recess. There he picked up his axe and waterskin, and slung them on his back. He started down the crevice, but paused hearing a slight, vague sound. He edged back to see.