“Then-he had no true cause to punish me,” I said, struggling to break free of the confusion. “His punishment was a denial of my skill.”
“No, wenda, you fail to grasp the point,” Cinnan said with a sigh of forced patience. “As you wear Tammad’s bands, it is his duty to give you punishment. Even should he know he will be struck down for it, he is bound to make the attempt. His error lay in refusing to acknowledge your skill, a skill we are all of us well aware of.”
“Then you believe I should continue to be punished, no matter the power I have exhibited,” I said, staring at Cinnan while exasperation added to the confusion. “You see no reason for such a doing to be discontinued.”
“Certainly not,” Cinnan agreed, his attitude firm and without a trace of doubt. “The skill you possess demands and merits the respect of men, yet do you continue to be wenda. You, too, must give respect, and obedience as well, else may you confidently look forward to punishment.”
He turned then to say something to Dallan, but I was too upset to bother listening. I turned around and wandered away from them, my mind spinning and my emotions flying in all directions at once. Rimilian men were impossible, every one of them, and I couldn’t understand how they could think that way. They were willing to give me respect for my abilities, but beyond that would give nothing at all. I was a female, a wenda. and punishment season was always open.
I was trying to stomp through the unhappy grass, but the stones were hurting my feet and another thought suddenly came to stop my upward progress. What about Tammad’? He was right to be upset with me for hurting him, but was Dallan just as right’? He hadn’t only accepted my challenge he’d added a side bet, and then he’d tried to win by cheating. When he lost he rode away to sulk, too put out over his defeat to even stay around and talk about it. And why had he said he was going to unband me? Was that the extent of the love I’d thought was so deep and endless?
“Come, Terril, I will explain the decision Cinnan and I have agreed on as we ride,” Dallan called, looking up toward me where I stood. “We must find the reasons for Tammad’s actions, and you will assist us.”
“How much clearer might his actions be?” I asked, reluctantly moving downhill toward him. “He no longer wishes me in his bands.”
“Should his defeat be the sole reason for this, you will be well rid of him,” Dallan stated, taking my arm as I reached him, his eyes hard. “When a man feels true love for a woman, he will forgive her anything, even superiority in some matter. Should his pride be too sensitive to allow this, he is best left alone with that pride.”
I was then gently propelled toward the seetarr, Dallan’s heavy annoyance aimed elsewhere than at me. Cinnan seemed to be shaking his head in disgust, but also not with me. I bent briefly to retrieve the fur I’d dropped before continuing on to the mounts, but I was now almost as upset as I had been earlier. At some point my shield had dissolved to leave nothing but the curtain, and the grim determination filling both of the men made me very uneasy.
It wasn’t long before we were back on the road, and I rode astride in front of Dallan, the fur wrapped around me. Although the cold had begun to get a grip on me again I hadn’t wanted the fur, but Dallan had refused to let me ride without it. His arms around me kept me in the saddle while I held to the fur, and this time I had no trouble seeing where we were going. Downhill was where we were going, ever downhill, without any sign of Tammad’s passage that I could see. I kept having the feeling that he would keep going rather than stop at some point, and I would never see him again. I didn’t expect things to ever be the same between us, but I couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing him a final time.
The sun was nearly gone before we found the place Tammad had chosen for a campsite. Cinnan and Dallan had been growing more and more annoyed the longer we had to ride, and the sight of the barbarian’s camtah did little to calm that annoyance. Dallan had told me that he and Cinnan had decided on a plan of action, and all I had to do was remember not to interfere. He had refused to go into more detail than that, which had added to the confusion whirling around inside of me. I wasn’t sure about how I should feel, and the closer we got to the barbarian the more unsure I became. I’d known where he’d stopped for some time before we reached it, but I hadn’t said anything to Dallan and Cinnan.
The two men rode their seetarr to a spot near Tammad’s before dismounting, and when Dallan lifted me to the ground I had to stop near the barbarian’s mount to calm his distress and outrage. As far as the big black seetar was concerned, I had no business riding anywhere but on him, and he couldn’t understand why I had. Maybe “refused to understand” would be a more accurate phrase, but I wasn’t in the mood to go into long, involved explanations. I let him feel my apology for upsetting him, and he accepted the apology with a small snort of pleasure. He seemed to feel the error wouldn’t be repeated, but I couldn’t say the same.
Dallan and Cinnan unburdened their seetarr and then began to set up their camtahh, and to look at the barbarian you would believe we were all invisible. He sat in front of the fire he had built, roasting a large piece of meat, more intent on what he was doing than on what was going on around him. I stood off to one side, paying a great deal of attention to what my two traveling companions were doing, very glad that the cold wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been even that morning. The fire would then have been the only really warm spot around, and although that was the place I most wanted to be, I couldn’t quite find the courage to go over there.
When Dallan finished with his tent he went to the fire, glanced at the roasting meat, then settled himself on the ground with a small grunt. The barbarian was wrapped in a thick, brooding calm, and didn’t come out of it until Dallan made a noise in his throat.
“The meat will soon be done,” Tammad told him with an air of preoccupation, obviously ready to sink back into his mental stewing. “I trust the afternoon was as uneventful for you as it was for me?”
“Likely even more so for us,” Dallan agreed with a smooth unconcern he wasn’t entirely feeling. “As you mean to unband the woman and have already given her over into my care for the journey, I take it you will have no objection to her sharing my furs this darkness?”
I hadn’t expected Dallan to say that, and I wanted Tammad to refuse as he had the night before, wanted him to stride over to me and pull me furiously and possessively into his arms; instead he held very still for a moment at the abrupt, unexpected question, his mind whirling with agitation, and then he shrugged.
“What objection might I have?” he asked, still staring into the fire. “Should you also wish to band her, my own bands may be returned with the new light.”
My throat had been tightening up at the way he’d been ignoring me, but when I heard what he had to say I sobbed once, dropped the fur, then stumbled away into the growing darkness. He really wanted to have nothing further to do with me, didn’t want to come near me again even to retrieve his bands. There was such a terrible pain inside me that I thought I would die of it, then I began to pray that I would. No matter what Dallan said it was my fault that he didn’t want me, and I felt uglier and more grotesque than I ever had in my life. I was a monster, and no one could love a monster.
I ran a short way downhill until I was well away from the light of the fire, sobbing raggedly, then stopped to fold to the ground with the rock at my back. I’d been trying not to be such a weepy infant, trying to be as strong as possible to make my hamak proud, but the tears running down my cheeks were tears of pain, an agony I’d never have the strength to overcome. The ground was hard and cold and the grass stiff and damp, but I lay curled up on my side without caring about any of that. If only it was just a bad dream, my mind kept saying, if only it wasn’t real. But it was real, and not a dream, and nothing would be able to change that.