“Are you okay?” she asked in a low voice, as if afraid someone might overhear the question. “I heard about most of what happened to you, and you don’t look so good.”
I thought about the dirty, sweat-stained clothing I wore, the way my hair hung in knotted, greasy strands, the smears that must have been on my face, and smiled faintly.
“Couldn’t be better,” I answered, making sure the dryness stayed out of my tone. “How have you been doing?”
“I never believed anything could be this good,” she answered, her mind verifying the truth of the statement. I looked at her quickly anyway, as though she might be joking after all, and she blushed and looked down at the haddinn she was carrying. “Okay, okay, I know you don’t look at it that way, but you never lived my kind of life. Hannas is more man than I ever thought I’d find, let alone get for my own, and whatever he wants is fine by me. I’ll do it his way as long as he lets me.”
“In other words you love him,” I said, going back to watching the forest we moved through. “If my good wishes mean anything to you, you have them.”
“Why do you sound so dead inside?” she demanded, and I could feel her looking at my face. “Hannas said Tammad really gave it to you for what you did, but that was because he really cares for you and wouldn’t let anybody else do it. Don’t it matter to you that he did it because he cares?”
My vision of the forest grew momentarily blurry, but I blinked the blur away.
“Don’t you think you’d be doing yourself more good by walking with the other women?” I asked without turning to look at her. “They’re not very fond of me right now, and you could get the same treatment simply because they saw you talking to me.”
“I do my own deciding on who I talk to,” she snorted, totally unworried. “Besides, I don’t think they’re that kind. I can’t say more than four words they understand, but they all took turns coming over with a hello and a helping hand. Sure they’re mad at you now, but they’ll get over it. Probably a lot sooner than you will. Why didn’t you answer what I asked?”
“About his caring?” I sighed, realizing there was no decent way out of the conversation. “Don’t you think I’d know if a man really cared about me? Caring is hard to hide even from a non-empath.”
“What makes you think he don’t?” she asked. “Hannas says everybody knows how much he wants you, that’s why he went after you.”
I opened my mouth to say something else, but my voice was gone, not even a whisper left. My throat burned as if it were on fire, and the tears had started with no warning at all. I tried to push it all away, to keep the grief from shattering me, but the truth was I already had been shattered. I pushed Loddar’s dirty haddinn up to my mouth to keep the tortured sounds from coming out, and the girl beside me quickly put her arm around my shoulders.
“Damn it, you’re not even letting yourself cry!” she raged, furious for no apparent reason. “I used to do that too, to keep it from hurting more than I could stand, but it’s wrong! In a place like this you shouldn’t have to do that!”
The pain was so great I slipped away from her arm and fell to my knees, sobbing into the haddinn. My mind was all feeling and no thought, a small girl lost in the wilderness alone, finally out of the forced courage that had kept her dry-eyed till then. She was so badly lost that no one in the entire universe would ever find her, not even if she continued to live out a very long life. I was unaware of everything around me until many minds came close, their voices soothing, their hands comforting. One set of hands pulled the haddinn away from me and another set pulled me to a sympathetic breast, giving me a sheltered place to cry. The voices were speaking the language of Rimilia, and I finally understood that it was the other women of the group, the ones who had ignored me, the ones who had been so angry. For obvious reasons, that fact made me cry harder.
Surprisingly enough, the crying didn’t last very long. I suppose I was more than tired of feeling sorry for myself, and I was tired in other ways, too. Every one of those women was genuinely willing to help if she could, and I let them feel my gratitude before I assured them I was all right. There was nothing anyone else could do for me, just what I could do for myself. The only problem I had just then was in figuring out what that was going to be.
We continued on through the forest, but our semi-column had become a tight knot, all of it centering around me. The blond-haired tripper—renamed Findra by Hannas from whatever her name had been originally—took turns with the Rimilian women in giving me advice. I was saved from having to discuss the advice by the need to translate, one way or the other, everything that was said. Findra wanted to know if I intended staying on Rimilia—if I did, then I’d have to do what she did. The Rimilian women laughed at that and asked if the denday intended keeping me on Rimilia. If he did, then I’d have to do what the rest of them did. They argued back and forth, not realizing they were all saying the same thing, but the four l’lendaa listening in realized it. The men grinned to themselves after exchanging knowing glances, then let the women continue counseling me. I was being told what the men themselves would have told me, so there was no need to interfere.
I found out almost immediately that the entire camp knew about my disagreement with Tammad that morning. They all agreed I’d been an idiot for defying him, but their suggestions for repairing the damage varied from woman to woman. None of them doubted that Tammad would do as he’d said he would, and all of the suggestions were designed to either minimize the damage or make sure the offense wasn’t repeated. It didn’t surprise me that none of them, Findra included, asked if I’d had a reason for refusing to obey. Reasons didn’t matter on that world, only obedience did, and I’d failed to keep that basic rule clearly in mind. They made sure I knew exactly what would happen to me if I failed again.
We moved on through the forest as we talked, the four l’lendaa surrounding us, the heat of midafternoon reaching us even under the deep green of the forest shade. Our noise had chased most of the usual forest dwellers away from our area, leaving only the minds of the humans to chatter and echo along our trail. We strolled along, more involved with talking than walking, the l’lendaa letting us do pretty much as we pleased. We were the last group going to the stream that afternoon, and it was still early enough to let us take our time.
The skies fell in with no warning whatsoever. One minute everything was usual and unexciting, possibly even dull; the next minute the l’lendaa ahead of us were falling to the ground, arrows in their backs or throats or chests, blood gouting and covering the ground, bodies already lifeless, minds knowing only shocked pain before blackness. We turned in the sudden, dead, unnatural silence, turned as if in a dream, seeing the fourth body on the ground some distance behind us. The dream bubble burst then with the first scream, shattering the silence and calm, touching the outer edge of the shock. More screams followed, sending us running in all directions, running from the blood and death and toward some uncertain safety. I stumbled back and to one side, reaching the bushes and trying to hide in them, choking on the panic from the other female minds around me. I needed to be safe, desperately needed to be safe, but the grin on the face of the giant man who suddenly appeared in front of me said it wasn’t to be. His skin was dyed orange from head to foot, white paint marking the orange here and there, his mind numbed with the drug all savages used. He screamed a highpitched indication of his delight, the sound freezing me with terror, then he moved forward quickly to seize me. The feel of his hands on my arms made me struggle automatically, causing him to hit me hard across the face, sending me to the ground at his feet. I wasn’t supposed to struggle, his mind said, but he was too numbed by the drug to be annoyed. He merely crouched down, stuffed a rag in my mouth, then tied the rag in place with a strip of wet cloth. I raised my hand toward the gag, hoping to pull it away, and then the thick, sweet fumes from the wet strip of cloth reached me. My head whirled, making me feel sick and very light and very weak. I folded back down to the ground, sure I would float away, but I never knew if I did. The savage laughed, a half-insane laugh, and then the world melted away to black.