As I went through the leather curtain, the barbarian appeared at the edge of the veranda, stepped onto it, and crouched down. He had two pieces of the meat I’d cooked the day before, and he handed me one of them with a grin.
After we have eaten, we will pack the camtah and go,” he said, pushing back the hood of his rain cape. “I would be at this night’s camping place as soon as possible so that I may take you quickly to the furs. Never again will a woman without the power have the ability to satisfy me. You are wenda without equal.”
“Is that so.” I muttered, chewing on the meat and staring at him. No men had ever touched me when I was awakened before, and it had been completely my choice. I hadn’t really known what I would feel from them, but the polite words that covered hot emotions annoyed me too much to give me an interest in trying. I had a blurred memory of the night before, and I didn’t care to feel that small again.
“You and I have a few things to discuss, barbarian.” I told him coldly “I don’t like being had. It finally came to me last night that when you agreed with Murdock McKenzie that you would be taking your ‘house-gift’ home with you, you were bluffing. You were lying to back up his threat.”
“The Murdock McKenzie had chosen you to accompany me.” He shrugged. “That he did not use a switch to obtain obedience was also his choice. In the face of that, his generosity to you, could I do other than support him?”
“Generosity?” I exploded. “He blackmails me into something I wanted no part of, and you call it generosity? But of course! You would! Well, the game is over. I’m going back to the embassy and from there I’m going home. Find another fool to do your dirty work for you!”
“I return to my people and my belongings return with me,” he answered, refusing to react to my outburst. “I will not find my people at the embassy.”
“I can manage on my own.” I said, wiping the meat grease on my fingers off on the caldin. “It will be my pleasure to tell Murdock McKenzie that you need another victim. As important as he thinks this is, he’ll find someone fast enough.”
“He has already found someone,” the barbarian returned. “And have you forgotten that you were also given to me to band as my own? I paid well for you, wenda, and shall not lose my purchase price.”
“You might as well forget that nonsense.” I snorted. “How long do you think you can fool me with it? You know as well as I do that I’m not for sale and never have been. Even you admitted that your barbaric customs don’t apply to my world. I’m a free woman and always have been!”
“But we do not now stand upon your world.” He grinned. “We stand upon mine, where the Murdock McKenzie said I might band you. I have banded you, and will take you to my people where you shall aid me. Fold the furs, wenda, so that I might place them on the seetar”
He pulled his hood back on, and went out into the rain again, leaving me to fume. If he thought I would be doing any more of his housekeeping for him, he was crazy I took the rain cape down from the peg, put it on, then slipped out of the camtah.
The barbarian had his back turned, too busy with the pack seetar to see me go. I made my way deeper into the woods, fairly sure that I knew the way back to the road. I splashed through the mud beneath the dripping trees, watching for signs of the road, listening for thoughts of predators. I picked up a few fleeting emotions, but they were too far away to worry about.
Reaching the road took longer than I thought it would, but I finally found it. I’d had one close call in the woods when something hungry had picked up my scent, but I’d done the right thing. I’d projected the feeling of being enormous, unconquerable, and very hungry too, and had pretended to turn in the direction of the predator. The thing had felt my projections clearly, and had slunk quickly away.
I walked down the center of the road, wondering what walking there was like when it wasn’t raining. The quiet hum of satisfied burrow animals came to me from both sides of the road, keeping me company. I sloshed along in the monotony of the mud, remembering every sloppy step of it to add to my hatred of Murdock McKenzie.
I had almost no warning at all. I picked up stray feelings of boredom and resigned annoyance almost at the same time that I heard the sound of hoofbeats. I looked up in surprise to see three seetarr and riders coming down the road toward me, but they were still some distance away I darted quickly off the road into the trees, hoping I hadn’t been seen, but no such luck. The feelings changed to curiosity and interest, and the rhythm of the hoofbeats increased.
I cursed myself for an idiot, and went deeper into the woods. If I’d had the sense to walk at the side of the road, I could have been into the woods before anyone had a chance to see me. Now I had to avoid the riders without getting hopelessly lost.
Suddenly I felt the curiosity searching in front of me instead of behind. I realized that the riders must have left the road farther up and had swung around to cut me off. I turned back to the road again, sweating under the rain cape.
I was halfway back to the road when the burst of exultation told me I’d been a fool. The man stepped out in front of me, grabbing me easily when I tried to run. He had been on foot, stalking me with the patience and lack of emotion that marked the true hunter, and I’d been wasting my time worrying about the ones who came openly.
“What do you do here alone, wenda?” the man asked as I struggled against him. He was almost as big as the barbarian, but I still had to try “Why do you travel the road without a man, eh?”
“Perhaps she has run away from him to whom she belongs,” another voice put in. The other two men had ridden up to us, and were dismounting.
“If she has run away,” the third man said with an ugly grin, “we shall not displease her by returning her. She shall find much to occupy her in our company, and shall not run away again.”
“She has green eyes.” The first one laughed, holding my back up against him with my head up so the others could see my eyes. “I have never had a woman with green eyes.”
“It is not her eyes I care to see,” the third one said, stepping closer. He opened the rain cape with a single tug, then pulled it off me. They stared at me in silence, their emotions rolling.
“Five-banded,“ ‘the second man said at last. “Dark-haired, green-eyed, and five-banded. A woman for no ordinary man.”
“I, too, would keep her five-banded!” the third man snarled, fear trying to fill his mind. The rain rolled off his rain cape, but it soaked into my clothes and hair. “The one who owns her cannot be the greatest of warriors, else she would not have run away. Do you fear the wrath of one who cannot keep his woman beside him?”
“Perhaps he is but a wealthy merchant,” the first said, grabbing at the thought to calm his own fear. “Yes, a fat, wealthy merchant who has the price of such a woman, but not the ability to keep her.”
“Aye!” the third laughed, relief flooding him. “She tired of empty furs and went seeking a man. She may now rejoice that she has found three!”
“She is five-banded,” the second said quietly. “No merchant would five-band a woman, save were he warrior, too. Let us return her from whence she came.”
“No!” the third man said angrily, his blue eyes flashing at the second man. “She has fallen to us, and we shall keep her! My sword is sharp enough to answer any man, merchant or not! Has yours grown dull from lack of use, you may ride on alone! I do not care to ride with darayse!”
The second man’s jaw set and his hand moved beneath his rain cape, but he controlled the burst of anger he’d felt at the insult.
“I shall not kill you,” he told the third man coldly “I shall leave that to be done by the warrior to whom she belongs. It is his right.”
He turned to his seetar, mounted quickly, then rode away without looking back. The third man watched him go, then snorted.