Tatzel mused a moment. "You are most pertinacious. Very few slaves have escaped Castle Sank."
"I was recaptured and sent to Poelitetz," said Aillas. "I escaped from there as well."
"All this is confused and complex," said Tatzel crossly. "It is beyond both my comprehension and my interest. All I know is that you have caused me pain and inconvenience. Your slavish yearnings seem disgusting and truly insolent, and you show a gracelessness in bruiting them about."
Aillas laughed again. "Quite right! My hopes and daydreams now seem nothing less than callow when I put them into words. Still, I have only answered your question, and with candor. In the process I have clarified my own thinking. Or, better to say, I have been forced to admit certain things to myself."
Tatzel sighed. "Again you speak in riddles. I care nothing for their solving."
"It is simple enough. When the day-dreams and romances of two persons run alike, they become friends, or, as it may be, lovers. When this is not the case, they find no pleasure in each other's company. It is an easy concept, though but few take the trouble to understand it."
Tatzel looked into the fire. "Personally, I care not a fig for your mournings and vagaries. Explain them to persons whom you think they may fascinate."
"For the present I will keep them to myself," said Aillas.
After a few moments Tatzel stated: "I am surprised that your band dared venture so far from South Ulfland."
"The explanation again is simple. Since we came to attack Castle Sank, it was necessary to come at least so far."
Tatzel at last showed startlement. "And you were repelled?"
"To the contrary. We left the citadel intact only because we had brought no siege engines. We destroyed everything in sight, then rode off to do battle elsewhere."
Tatzel stared at him in wonder. "That is a cruel deed!"
"It is no more than long-delayed justice, and it is only a start."
Tatzel looked glumly into the flames. "And what do you propose to do with me?"
"I have impressed you into servitude after the Ska style. You are now my slave. Henceforth, conduct yourself accordingly."
"That is not possible!" cried Tatzel furiously. "I am Ska and of noble birth!"
"You must adjust yourself to the idea. It is a pity that you have broken your leg and so cannot obey my commands."
Tatzel, leaning on the table with chin on her two fists, scowled into the fire. Aillas rose to his feet and spread her cloak across the bed of grass. "Chew some of the willow bark, that you may sleep without pain."
"I want no more bark."
Aillas bent over her. "Put your arms around my neck and I will carry you to the bed."
After a moment's hesitation Tatzel obeyed, and Aillas transferred her to the bed of grass. He unlaced the thongs of her boots and drew them from her feet. "Are you comfortable?"
Tatzel looked up at him blank-faced as if she had not heard the question. Aillas turned away, and went outside to listen to the night.
The air was still. He heard the murmur of water in the river but otherwise silence. He returned into the hut. Tilting up the table, he placed it across the doorway, and wedged it in place with the bench. He banked the fire and after removing his own boots, lay down beside Tatzel and covered them over with his cloak. He looked toward the pale blotch of Tatzel's face. "Have you ever slept with a man before?"
"No."
Aillas gave a noncommittal grunt. "Thanks to the broken leg your virginity is secure. It would be too much distraction to hear you yelping in pain because your leg was hurting... . I suppose that I am a man of too many niceties."
Tatzel made a scornful sound but otherwise had nothing to say. She twisted about so that her back was toward Aillas, and presently he heard her regular breathing.
In the morning the sun rose into a cloudless day. Aillas brought hardtack and cheese from his wallet for their breakfast. Immediately after he took Tatzel to a secluded little glen fifty yards up the ravine behind the hut. Tatzel protested and grumbled but Aillas was firm. "These hills are not unknown to true bandits who are little more than wild animals. I lack bow and arrow and if there were more than two I could not protect you. If more than two Ska found us, I could not protect myself. So you must hide during the day until we leave this place."
"When will that be?" demanded Tatzel, somewhat peevishly.
"As soon as possible. Do not stir from here until I come for you. Unless several days go by; then you will know that I am dead."
Aillas returned to the valley. From a crook of driftwood and a pole cut from a birch sapling he contrived a crutch. He cut a strong willow branch, scraped and shaved it and produced a bow of no great quality, since willow lacked the strong resilience of ash or yew. Hickory and oak were too brittle; alder was too weak; horse-chestnut served tolerably well, but none grew to hand. He cut willow shoots for arrows and fletched them with ribbons of trailing cloth. Finally he contrived a fishing-spear by splitting one end of a birch pole into four prongs, sharpening each, wedging the prongs apart with a pebble, and lashing a foot from the end to prevent the pole from splitting along its whole length.
The time was now an hour into the afternoon. Aillas took his fishing spear to the river, and after an hour of the most patient and crafty effort, managed to spear a fine brown trout of three or four pounds. As he cleaned the fish by the water's edge he heard the sounds of approaching horses and instantly took to cover.
Up the road came two mounted men, followed by a wagon drawn by a pair of shaggy farm-horses. A tow-headed peasant boy of fourteen drove the wagon. The riders were of a different, more sinister sort. They wore makeshift vests of chain and leather helmets with neck- and earflaps. Heavy long-swords slanted back from their belts; bows and arrows hung at their saddlebows, along with short-handled battle-axes. The larger of the two was somewhat older than Aillas, dark, burly, with small mean eyes, a coarse beard and a fleshy beak of a nose. The other, older by perhaps fifteen years, rode crouched in the saddle, as lean, sinewy and tough as the leather on which he sat. His face was pale and disturbing; strangely wide cheekbones with round gray eyes and a small thin-lipped mouth gave him an almost ophidian semblance.
Aillas instantly knew the two for outlaws, and he congratulated himself on his foresight in hiding Tatzel up the gully, inasmuch as the riders had taken note of the dead horse, and were somewhat puzzled as to its significance.
Arriving at the hut the horsemen halted and muttered together, then bent to examine tracks in the sand. Warily dismounting, they tied their horses to the wagon and started to approach the hut, then stopped short in surprise.
Aillas went cold and stiff with shock. Tatzel had also heard the approach of the horsemen. She came hobbling around the side of the hut and, facing the two, spoke in a voice of confident authority, though Aillas could not hear her words. She gestured toward the wagon; Aillas assumed that she had given instructions that she wished to be transported to the nearest Ska castle or administrative depot.
The two men looked at each other, grinning in some mutuality of understanding, and even the boy, gaping open-mouthed from the wagon, blinked in perplexity.
Aillas seethed with contradictory emotions: fury at the enormity of Tatzel's folly, then a gust of great sadness for what she must endure, then another surge of anger, of a different sort: no matter how he raged and cursed, he could not now withdraw from her troubles and hope to keep his self-respect. In her arrogance and vanity, Tatzel had endangered not only herself, but Aillas as well.
The two men approached Tatzel and halted close in front of her. They looked her up and down, and exchanged appreciative comments. Tatzel, drawing back, issued a set of desperate new commands.