“Most certainly you do not intrude, brother,” Cinnan assured him, expansively happy and totally unaware of the strained reserve of the man he beamed at. “The length of time taken was due to the magnificence of your wenda, whose like one would be hard put to find. You are a truly fortunate man, truly fortunate.”
Cinnan turned away then to find his swordbelt and cast-off shirt, and Tammad’s reaction to what he’d said was fascinating to see. None of it reached his face, of course, but inside he was hopping around like a bird in a worm field, not knowing which way to jump first. Cinnan’s praise of me had automatically made him feel proud and pleased, but part of his mind seemed to want nothing to do with such happy emotions. That renegade part was feeling jealous and possessive, unhappy over the fact that I wasn’t miserable over what I’d just been made to do. The barbarian knew that feelings such as those were irrational and was doing his best to fight them, but he couldn’t seem to bring much strength to the struggle. Then some sort of idea came to him, and he walked over to me oozing sympathy—but feeling a good deal better.
“My poor Terril,” he murmured, raising one hand to stroke my hair as he looked down at me. “Your pride refuses to allow you to show your hurt, yet am I well aware of its presence. The thing is now behind you, hama, and you must comfort yourself with the knowledge that your actions were more than honorable. I shall comfort you as well, and between the efforts of both of us, you will be assured that what you have done was fully worthwhile.”
“But I feel no hurt,” I replied with ruthless naivete, giggling again just to sink the knife in deeper. “You were completely correct, hamak, and I was much of a fool. To be held in the arms of a man such as Cinnan is more pleasure than tragedy, and I shall not be such a fool again. I had not before realized how-capable-he is, how much of a man he is. Aesnil must have lost her wits, to run from a man such as that. ”
I gave Cinnan a last, secret look over my shoulder before walking away from Tammad’s stroking hand as if I didn’t know it was there, strolling along in a floating sort of way designed to indicate complete satisfaction and a purposeful submersion in recent, very pleasant memories. The stricken feeling in him was very sharp before he jumped on it and pushed it away from him, but that was the thing that really pleased me. So he would lend me to other men as though I were a patched and raggedy coat, would he? I didn’t care how old or well-accepted the custom was among his people; by the time I got through with that mighty denday, the custom would be a former one.
Dallan and Tammad had already eaten lunch, so that left just Cinnan and me to attack the packs. For some reason we both had excellent appetites, and Cinnan never noticed how I kept looking at him while we ate. Of course, I didn’t want him to notice, and his lack of enlightenment was perfect to keep any real trouble from starting. The man was searching for his own woman who had gone astray, it hadn’t been his idea or request that had put me in his furs, and he wasn’t showing the least post-sex interest in me. Those facts together kept the big barbarian who had banded me from charging over to Cinnan with blood in his eye, and that made things worse for my memabrak. He had bullied and manipulated me into going to Cinnan in the first place, but he had expected me to walk away as upset and miserable as I always had been until then. The fact that I was not only not miserable but was ignoring him to take secret peeks at Cinnan was driving him wild, and he spent the entire time while Cinnan and I ate pacing up and down trying to locate the self-control he seemed to have misplaced. Lending your woman to another man was fine if she came running back to your own strong arms once it was over; I hadn’t thought Tammad was aware of how down I’d been when I’d left Dallan that morning, but it suddenly came to me that he’d known precisely how I’d felt, and couldn’t have been more pleased.
Once the meat was washed down by drinks of water, we took to the road again. All three of the men had packed their shirts away, so every time I leaned up to look over Tammad’s shoulder at Cinnan, the barbarian was more than aware of the movement against his bare back. He stood it for a good ten minutes, then flatly ordered me back to his lessons in emotional control. He was practically wide-eyed with disbelief over the way he was feeling and acting, and couldn’t understand why it was happening to him. I could have explained the psychology behind his reactions, stemming from the way he’d almost lost me and the way Dallan had forced him to give me up for the previous night, but true Rimilian women didn’t do that with mighty l’lendaa. L’lendaa were the ones who did the thinking and had the knowledge, and who was I to buck the system?
The afternoon lesson didn’t go very well, and I didn’t make any effort to explain that, either. What I did make an effort at was letting my attention wander, if not to pleasant memories then to the changing scenery all around us. By mid-afternoon we were definitely coming down out of the pass, and on this side it widened rather than narrowed. Trees and bushes and real grass began appearing, and the longer we rode, the warmer the air became. One stretch of the widened road had to be slowly and carefully negotiated because of the brown boulders and rocks strewn all about, but that was the last of it. After that we were on a road stretching through gently rolling grassland and graceful stands of trees, and the presence of animal minds returned to the background.
After a while the grassland became farmland, and there was even more traffic than us on the road. A couple of carts and one seetar rider passed us going in the opposite direction, but none of them stopped or even exchanged greetings with us, which surprised my three traveling companions. Apparently it was unusual for people to be that unfriendly, and Tammad frowned over what had come at him from the rider’s mind. The man had been so depressed and angry that it was surprising he’d managed to get himself up and moving; he’d withdrawn so deeply into himself that he hadn’t even been aware of passing us. I’d noticed a vague upset and dissatisfaction in the people on the carts, two men first, and then a man and a woman, but the feelings had been faint and undefined. The rider had been a different story entirely, and if there had been a little more strength behind the feelings, he would have been projecting instead of just leaking them.
It was getting on toward sunset when we reached the town, a place that was a lot smaller than Tammad’s city. There seemed to be only a couple of streets of square, one-story buildings, with correspondingly fewer people moving about them. The stands and shops between the buildings were for the most part still being patronized, but a few were in the process of being closed for the night. Torches had been lit on the outsides of the buildings, children chased each other around with less enthusiasm than they would have if it were earlier in the day, and I could feel my curtain thickening to keep out the increased output of so many more minds. The clamor and hubbub came to the barbarian as a surprise, but then his shield of calm swirled over his mind and he forgot all about it.
“The public grounds are to the right, through that lane ahead,” Dallan said, pointing to a fairly narrow opening between two buildings that was lined with shop booths. “Shall we make camp first, or shall we make inquiries first?”