“I may perhaps keep Cinnan as my own slave,” Aesnil mused, still half-fantasizing. “He has great skill in pleasing a woman’s body, though his manner is far too brash. How did you find him?”
Her eyes came to me with the question, her curiosity genuine despite its mildness. Caught unawares, all I could do was stare in confusion, not knowing what to say. When she saw the pink in my cheeks, her amusement came out in tinkling laughter.
“For what reason do you feel embarrassment, girl?” she asked, back to raising her hair up off her neck. “You have known far more men than I, yet I feel no embarrassment discussing their various qualities. Did you find Cinnan awkward and inept?”
“N-no,” I stumbled, somehow even more embarrassed at her amusement. “He was . . . adequate to the task.”
“Adequate to the task!” She laughed, slapping her knee. “Indeed is he adequate. His manhood was so thick and adequate that I thought it likely I would die from the pleasure of it. His manner of use is somewhat different from that of him who claims you, he called Tammad. He, too, is more than adequate, and I found myself helpless to resist his demands. Cinnan, though, is far more exciting than Tammad. Tammad, I think, would quickly bore me as a slave.”
“I could not imagine holding that beast as a slave,” I muttered, still uncomfortable with the conversation. “How might I ever approach him, with fury and pain blazing from his mind as he struggled in his bonds? How would it ever be possible to sleep, knowing he might break free of his chains and come seeking me? I believe I would be even more eager to run from him as a slave than I am to run from him while he remains free. ”
“You fear him,” Aesnil said, and the amusement was gone from her as she stared at me. “You fear him so deeply that you cannot even consider holding him in chains. I spit on one such as he, who gives such fear through pain as he has done. You are well rid of him, Terril, well free.”
In anger she rose to her feet, holding one sandal, and began to walk toward the place she had earlier pointed to, where water might be found. As I watched her take her anger further away, I tried to consider her statement objectively. Was it true that I feared the barbarian as Aesnil believed? I knew I couldn’t seem to face him when he was angry with me, and I knew how panic-stricken I grew at the prospect of being punished by him, but those two considerations paled to nothing when I thought about trying to keep him as a slave. I knew I hated him, so why shouldn’t I find pleasure in the thought of chaining him up with metal the way he had chained me up with strength? The only logical answer was that I did fear him, even more deeply than I hated him, but it wasn’t something he had done to me. The world of Rimilia had proven my cowardice to me any number of times, and he had merely noted the fact and used it. That I hated him for helping to show me my cowardice didn’t mean I blamed him for causing something that had been there all the time. I turned slowly in the fur until I was face down, then tried to do something about the pain I felt. Cowards don’t like pain, and I was no exception.
I didn’t realize I’d drifted off to sleep until Aesnil woke me, excited over what she had found. She’d begun searching the seetarr in the hopes of finding something which would hold water, and had succeeded. Each seetar had a good-sized water skin in its leather saddlebags—right next to an unbelievable amount of leaf-wrapped food. The food was enough to last at least three or four days, the leaf wrappings certain to keep it mostly unspoiled during that time.
“Clearly, those l’lendaa were not the woods patrol,” Aesnil summed up, replacing the food she had pulled out to show me. “Perhaps they were passing through the woods, and not of my guardsmen at all. Had I disregarded the wishes of the Council and commanded that all members of my guard be properly clothed, rather than merely those who served about the palace, it would be possible to know for certain.”
I distracted her sharp-edged anger by suggesting that we eat some of the food she’d found, then made sure not to ask why she found those shirts and trousers so attractive. The sun couldn’t have been up more than two or three hours and was partially obscured by clouds to boot, but I was already sweating in the sacks hanging on me even without the fur that had originally covered me. Aesnil’s hair looked damp and stuck together, but there wasn’t a word out of her about being uncomfortable; as well as I was beginning to know her, I didn’t expect any such words in the future, either.
As soon as we finished eating, refilled the water skins, and fed the seetarr, we resumed our journey. The small amount of sleep I’d had gave me back some of my strength, but it wasn’t likely to last long in the heat of the day riding a seetar. Aesnil wasn’t allowing herself to acknowledge the exhaustion she felt, and again I had the impression that she was pushing herself to reach a particular destination. The depression that had settled on me didn’t seem to let up, and it took me a long while before I understood why Aesnil had the determination I seemed to have lost. Aesnil was running to something, but all I was doing was running away from something. I had nowhere to go and no purpose awaiting me when I got there, nothing that promised to solve all my problems if I just reached one particular goal. I had run to keep myself from being sold like a slave, but that was beginning to look as though it had been a major mistake. Now that I had my freedom, I didn’t know what to do with it.
We continued moving most of the day, stopping briefly only once to stuff down some food. Aesnil was just about ready to drop—with me not far behind her—when we reached the place she’d been heading us toward. The dulled afternoon sunshine showed us a tiny but fast-moving stream beneath a few thin shade trees, about twenty-five feet from the mouth of a cave. I checked the area carefully for signs of life before we dismounted, paying special attention to the cave. Nothing but insects and bird life came through, which made Aesnil and me laugh giddily with relief. We had no weapons to defend ourselves with, and if anything native to the area had argued our presence, we would have had to move on. We took ourselves into the cave in record time, bringing the seetarr along to make sure we didn’t lose them to restlessness or predators, then dragged brush in front of the cave entrance to keep everything out and the seetarr in. The brush didn’t strike me as being much of a hindrance to the exit of the seetarr if they really wanted to go, so I made the effort to impress the command to stay in their minds before dragging my furs off the saddle and arranging them on the cave floor. Aesnil had already collapsed into hers, their softness and the pleasant cool of the cave dragging her immediately down to sleep. Her example was the best one I’d seen in a long time, and I lost no time in following it.
When we awoke again it was still dark out, but that didn’t mean we turned over and went back to sleep. We had to assume there was pursuit behind us, even if the pursuit was only one of a number of search parties, beating the bush of the countryside trying to flush us out. We led the seetarr out of the cave, got us all fed and watered, then began traveling again.
It was a number of hours before the sun came up, and I spent the time we moved along the road stretching my mind. Everything in the dark seemed so quiet and deserted to Aesnil peaceful and empty except for the sound of our seetarr’s hooves, clopping evenly against the stones of the road. To my mind the dark was anything but peaceful, with predators and prey hunting and fleeing throughout the woods we rode near. A cough sounded not far away to our left, registering in Aesnil’s awareness but immediately ignored, registering in the seetarr’s awareness and bringing them alert for further sounds like that. The cough had come from a night hunter in the woods, standing with bloody feet over the kill it had just made, hearing our passage and immediately prepared to challenge us if we tried to approach its spoils. I had felt the kill when it had been made, the shock and terror of the victim as its throat was slashed out, the keen, gnawing satisfaction of the hunter as it knew victory, the fading of the shocked mind force as life faded and drained away. I’d shuddered at the raw savagery of the scene as it came to me, sickened but in some manner also fascinated. How did that predator develop the emotions that let it kill without regret? What told it its survival was so important that it had the right to take other lives in order to continue its own? And what kept its victim from fighting back, from trying to do more for its own survival than merely running? What if its victim did fight back; how would its emotions be affected then? Would it be angry, outraged, shocked—intimidated? Would it fight anyway, or would it turn tail and run? The answers to those questions would be totally useless in any frame of reference I would care to find myself, but something inside me still wanted to know. It was an itch that couldn’t be scratched, and probably never would be.