“It will be a long journey. Get yourself a cloak. And one of your father’s mantles for me.”
“No! Please, we must think of something else.”
As she would not stir, he went himself into the next room and poked about in a cupboard until he found what he wanted. He came back and draped the cloak about her. “Come on, I want to be well away from here before morning.”
“You go,” she sniffed. “I’m staying.”
“I wouldn’t leave you to face them all, Histrina. Besides—I want you with me.”
He yanked her towards the door. She hesitated.
“Shouldn’t we leave a letter?”
“No. They’d come after us. There’s only one way to do it, and that’s just to go and never think of them again!”
“Oh, my mother! My father!”
Still weeping, she allowed him to lead her outside, where he took up his lance.
“Be quiet!” he hissed. “Do you want the whole village to hear you?”
Histrina became compliant. They stole past the huddled houses of the village, from the chinks of whose shutters vagrant light gleamed. Beyond were the fields. These were eventually crossed, bringing the two fugitives to the thin soil and scrubland that covered most of Erspia.
She was not sure which feelings they were that made her obey him—fear of what would happen if she stayed, a lickerish anticipation of the delights she would experience by going with him, or simply abject acceptance that she was Ahriman’s. All these feelings jostled within her as she left her lifetime home and set off across the narrow landscape.
The stars shone bright, casting a thin glow that made it possible to make out what was around them. The temperature had dropped but the air was not too chill; Histrina had never known it to get really cold since she had been born.
They said little during the journey. This was the first time she had wandered so far afield and there was, to be sure, a fascination in seeing parts of the world she had never set eyes on before. Not that Erspia seemed to change much as one moved across it. She was surprised, for instance, to find that the star patterns remained the same despite the distance that she and Hugger travelled. Surely things should look different if one saw them from a different angle? But all the stars did was move across the sky unchanging, just as they did at home.
For some hours they walked over the coarse grass and through soft, clinging bushes, and the night-time experience was so new to her that after a while she scarcely thought of what she was leaving behind. At about midnight Hugger called a halt for rest. They sank down on the turf. Histrina’s feet ached.
“I wish we had brought something to eat and drink,” she said.
Hugger grunted. Then he moved closer to her, until she fancied she could smell his masculine sweat. He put a hand on her thigh. “We’ll feed on love,” he said.
“Please, I’m tired,” she said. “Besides, it isn’t love. It’s… Something else.”
He leaned across and gave her a full, lingering kiss.
And it started all over again. The kissing, the fondling. Then a frenzied undressing until they were both naked under the starlight. Then their bodies, sliding, pressing and oscillating, all enveloped in a most delicious aroma of venery. Their scents mingled with that of the heathery turf and with the faint night breeze. She sighed, she moaned, she uttered insane little chuckles in her throat, and during the next hour and a half they found so many ways of gratifying themselves that it was as if they had been reborn into a new world.
Afterwards, when their bodies would respond no more, they lay on their backs and stared at the stars.
“So,” Hugger said dryly, “how do you like being evil?”
“Evil?” She tasted the word, as though savouring it. “Oh, Ormazd help me, but I love it!”
“Hmph. Ormazd. Ahriman. Let me tell you something, Histrina. I don’t believe in either of them any more.
It’s all imagination. Something the priests thought up.”
“But you must believe in them. Where else do our thoughts come from?”
“What makes you think they come from anywhere?”
“They must. They just seem to appear in our minds.”
He was silent for a while. “Yes,” he said then, “I can see how the idea must have arisen. Our minds are bombarded with thoughts and feelings all the time. So we have the Good Lord, Ormazd, to send us good thoughts, and the Evil One, Ahriman, who tries to overthrow him by sending us bad thoughts. But look up there, Histrina, into the sky. Do you see either Ormazd or Ahriman? I don’t.”
“They live among the stars.”
“Where are they, then?”
“So how do we get our thoughts?”
“They come from inside us. They result from natural urges, just like being hungry or thirsty. That’s all there is to it. There aren’t any gods in the world. That’s it.”
He turned on his side, facing away from her, and picked idly at the grass. Histrina was shocked. She had heard of atheism. It was the greatest sin of all.
It was also the Evil One’s greatest triumph. When a human being began to believe that there was no such thing as temptation, no such thing as the struggle of the gods, then he offered no resistance to that temptation.
She smiled mischievously to herself. Hugger was caught by Ahriman better than he knew!
Then she found herself drifting off to sleep.
Hugger was shaking her. She opened her eyes with a start.
The sun had risen, and its point-source shone just over the horizon. A warm breeze blew from it, making the bushes wave.
“Come on, we have to get going.”
“I’m thirsty.”
“So am I.”
“We should have brought water,” she complained, struggling to her feet.
“No, we shouldn’t. I didn’t bring any on purpose. We’d take our time if we had water. Your parents might be looking for us by now.” He sounded annoyed. “We shouldn’t have stopped!”
She was shivering; they had both slept naked. She picked at the untidy heap of her clothes and began getting into them. He watched her with interest, then started pulling on his own.
They set off again, in the direction of the sun. The ground was giving up its moisture in the new warmth of day, forming a faint mist just a foot or two deep. It was a familiar sight to them both. Often they had gone to work in the fields at dawn, striding through the transient haze.
On and on they toiled. At midday the heat was uncomfortable, and began to seem fierce, parched as they were. They trailed their mantles behind them. Histrina grew weary and depressed, thinking often of turning back for home, until Hugger nudged her with his elbow.
“Look.”
A stream tinkled ahead of them. With a cry of delight Histrina quickened her pace, running ahead to throw herself down and cool her bare arms in the water, scooping it to her eager lips.
Hugger joined her and she heard him gulp greedily. When they had slaked their thirst she took off her sandals and dangled her feet in the running stream.
“Why is this the first water we’ve found? Does the world have so little of it, except at the village?”
“You don’t see a stream unless you’re right on top of it. We might have passed plenty.”
She looked about them. Apart from the water the scenery was unchanged. “Where are we?”
“By now we must be almost a quarter of the way to the other side of Erspia.”
“How far is it to the horde?”
Hugger shrugged. “They say the main camp is directly opposite the village. Right on the other side of the world.”
“Oh no! You mean we have to go on like this for another four days?”
“I don’t know. The horde moves about sometimes, attacking villages of the faithful. Perhaps we won’t find it at all.”