Aillas found within himself no inclination to scramble down yet another slope on this day. Cwyd had recommended the third brake for an overnight camp, and the advice seemed good. Aillas turned away from the edge and rode to a little meadow where a stream trickled from the forest; here he decided to camp.
Dismounting, he dug a shallow trench in which he built a fire of dry oak. To the side he arranged the meat on a spit, where it might roast and drip into the pannikin, with Tatzel turning the spit as needful. The drippings in the pannikin would later be used to fry the mushrooms, which Tatzel also had been ordered to clean and cut. Glumly accepting reality, she set to work.
Aillas staked out the horses, set up the tent and gathered grass for a bed, then, returning to the fire, sat with his back to a laurel tree with the wine-sack ready to hand.
Tatzel knelt beside the fire, her black locks tied back with a ribbon. Thinking back to his time at Castle Sank, Aillas tried to remember his first sight of Tatzeclass="underline" then a slender creature of thoughtless assurance walking with long swaggering strides by reason of natural verve.
Aillas sighed. Upon a heartsick young man, Tatzel, with her fascinating face and jaunty vitality, had made a deep impression.
And now? He watched her as she worked. Her assurance had been replaced by sullen unhappiness, and the bitter facts of her present existence had taken the luster from her verve.
Tatzel felt the pressure of his attention and turned a quick glance over her shoulder. "Why do you look at me so?"
"An idle whim."
Tatzel looked back to the fire. "Sometimes I suspect you of madness."
" ‘Madness'?" Aillas considered the word. "How so?"
"There would seem no other reason for your hatred of me."
Aillas laughed. "I feel no such hatred." He drank from the wine-sack. "Tonight I am kindly disposed; in fact, I see that I owe you a debt of gratitude."
"That debt is easily paid. You may give me a horse and let me go my way."
"In this wild country? I would be doing you no favor. My gratitude, moreover, is indirect. You have earned it despite yourself."
Tatzel muttered: "Again the madness comes on you."
Aillas raised the wine-sack and drank. He offered the sack to Tatzel, who disdainfully shook her head. Aillas drank again from a sack now sadly flabby. "My remarks are probably somewhat opaque. I will explain. At Castle Sank I became enamored of a certain Tatzel, who in some respects resembled you, but who was essentially an imaginary creature. This phantom which lived in my mind possessed qualities which I thought must be innate to a creature of such grace and intelligence.
"Ah well, I escaped from Sank and went my way, encumbered still with this phantom, which now only served to distort my perceptions. At last I returned to South Ulfland.
"Almost by chance my most far-fetched daydreams were realized, and I was able to capture you: the real Tatzel. So then—what of the phantom?" Aillas paused to drink, tilting the wine-sack high. "This impossibly delightful creature is gone, and now is even hard to remember. Tatzel exists, of course, and she has freed me from the tyranny of my imagination, and here is the source of my gratitude."
Tatzel, after a single brief side-glance, turned back to the fire. She rearranged the spit, where the roasting pork exhaled a splendid odor. She prepared batter for griddlecakes, then started the mushrooms to fry in the drippings from the roasting pork, while Aillas went to gather a salad of watercress from the stream.
In due course the pork was done to a turn; the two dined on the best the land could afford. "Spirifiume!" called Aillas. "Be assured that we take great pleasure in your bounty, and we thank you for your hospitality! I drink to your continued health!"
Spirifiume gave back neither flux of colour nor whisper of sound, but when Aillas went to lift the wine-sack, which had arrived at a state of discouraging flatness, he found that it bulged to its fullest capacity. Aillas tasted the wine; it was soft and sweet and tart and fresh, at one and the same time. He cried out: "Spirifiume! You are a god after my own heart! Should you ever tire of North Ulfland, please establish yourself in Troicinet!"
The sun still illuminated the panorama. Tatzel came to sit under the tree and idly picking little blue daisies, strung them into a chain. Suddenly she spoke. "I have been thinking of what you told me. ... I feel a whole torrent of emotions! Because you brooded over your daydreams, I all unwittingly must suffer! Discomforts, dangers, indignities—I have known them all! Even though at Sank I spoke never a word to you—"
"Ah, but you did! After a trifle of sword-play with your brother! And do you not recall stopping in the gallery to talk with me?"
Tatzel looked blank. "Was that you? ... I barely noticed. Still, no matter how closely I resembled your illusion, the realities remain."
"And what are they?"
"I am Ska; you are Otherling. Even in dreams, your ideas are unthinkable."
"Apparently so." Aillas looked back across his memories. "Had I known you better at Castle Sank, I might never have troubled to capture you. The joke is on both of us. But again, no matter. You are you and I am I. The phantom is gone."
Tatzel took up the wine-sack and drank. Then, rising to her knees, and sitting back on her heels, she swung around to face squarely upon Aillas, displaying for almost the first time the animation of the old Tatzel. She spoke with fervour: "You are so wonderfully wrong-headed I can almost find it within myself to laugh at you! After chasing me over the moors, breaking my leg and causing me a dozen humiliations, you expect me to come creeping to you with adoration in my eyes, happy to be your slave, soliciting your caress, hoping with all my heart that I may compare favorably with your erotic daydream. You profess to find the Ska lacking in pathos, but your conduct toward me is absolutely self-serving! And now you sulk because I do not come sobbing to you and begging for your indulgence. Is it not a farce?"
Aillas heaved a deep sigh. "Everything you say is true. In all justice, I must admit as much. I have been driven by romantic passion to act out a dream. I will say this, with only glancing reference to the fact that the Ska made me their slave and that I am entitled to retaliation: you are a prisoner of war. Had the Ska not taken our town Suarach, we would not have attacked Castle Sank. If you had submitted at once to capture, you would not have broken your leg, nor been exposed to humiliation, nor isolated here on the moors with me."
"Bah! In my place, would you have done other than try to escape?"
"No. In my place, would you have done other than try to capture me?"
Tatzel looked at him for a full five seconds. "No... . Still, prisoner of war or slave or whatever, I am Ska and you are Otherling, and that is the way of it."
III
IN THE MORNING, while packing the wine-sack, Aillas found it bulging full as if it had never been broached, and he gave a most fervent thanks to the genial god Spirifiume for what would seem an incalculable treasure. After ordering the campsite with meticulous care, out of respect for their host, Aillas and Tatzel set off down the slope. There was an easier quality to their relationship, as if the air had been cleared, though camaraderie was still lacking.
The slope was steep, the brambles and thickets troublesome, but in due course they came down upon the fourth brake: the narrowest and most heavily forested of all the brakes, and in some areas less than half a mile in width. Tall trees: maple, chestnut, ash, oak, held high green umbrellas of foliage to shroud the brake in sun-flecked shadow.