I knew immediately what he meant and tried to slide out of his grip and off the seetar but his arm was a sixth band around my waist. I rocked back and forth futilely, screaming and cursing in every language I knew, but it helped not at all. He was going to beat me again, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
The pack seetar was standing quietly when we reached it. The camtah had been rolled and tied onto its back, and there was nothing left of the camp, The barbarian lifted me off his seetar chained me to another tree, then went to the pack seetar. When he finally came back to unchain me, the camtah was standing again.
He dragged me to the camtah without a word, and I was shivering too much to speak. It was difficult to believe that I had ever been dry or warm in my entire life. Once inside the camtah, my clothes came off fast, and the barbarian gave me a small cloth to wipe myself with. It didn’t go very far, and the water still dripped from the ends of my hair even after I’d wiped it. My furs were on the floor, and I didn’t have to be told twice to get into them, but I wasn’t just left lying there. The barbarian attached something to the ankle bands that held them together, then he left the camtah.
Even with the furs it took a while to stop the violent shivering. The chill was slowly sucked out of my marrow, and by concentrating on the calm, ponderous thoughts of the seetarr I was able to submerge the memory of the deaths of the men. Seeing a man die, no matter how violently, can’t compare with feeling him die. The memory would be with me forever, but one day I might be able to cope with it.
My curiosity finally got the better of me, and I moved the furs aside to see what the bands were being held with. If I could remove it, I still had a chance to reach the embassy. My feet were stained with the memory of mud, and the ankle bands, once a bright bronze, were dull with still remaining traces of the mud. The bands themselves were held together with a bronze clip that gleamed between one link of each band. I tried to remove the clip, tried to loosen at least one side of it, but it worked on the same principle that the bands themselves did. I didn’t have the strength needed for pressing the thing open.
“Still you do not learn,” the barbarian said from the leather curtain. “There is work which must be done before you may return to your people. Before I allow you to return to your people.”
He held the dry imad and caldin, but he also held the switch. I licked my lips from a suddenly dry mouth, then took a breath.
“And how well do you think I’ll work if I’m beaten?” I asked weakly. “You’ll have to take my word about things that can’t be seen by you. If I tell you the wrong things, you’ll have no way of knowing that they’re wrong, and you won’t get what you’re after. You need me on your side, not against you.”
He sighed heavily-threw the imad and caldin to the floor, then crouched down to shake his head at me. “Wenda, this thought had not occurred to me,” he said with considerable patience. “Had I been reluctant to take your counsel, I would not have accepted you from the Murdock McKenzie. All have assured me that my cause may be won with your aid. Should this fail to occur, I will know that true counsel was not given me. You will then be rewarded by being unbanded and given away to any who would have you. Perhaps one day you may see your people again, but many men will have passed between the times. If this is what you wish, the decision is yours to make. But for the time you remain my belonging, I will have your obedience.”
He forced me to my stomach then, and the switching was terrible. He held me down with one hand and used the switch with the other, and the pain made me fill the camtah with my screams. I’d never been treated the way this man, this barbarian, was treating me, and I hated it and hated him. I lost control and let my pain and desperation flow loose, and the seetarr bellowed an accompaniment, but the barbarian refused to be touched by it and continued to beat me with calm in his mind.
Afterward, he sat and oiled his sword until I’d stopped crying, then he had me dress and fold the sleeping furs. He took the furs and my wet clothes outside while I put on the rain cape he had retrieved, then I stood by while he folded camtah. The roof braces lay flat when he pushed on them, and the whole thing rolled up into something a seetar could easily carry. The packs had been distributed among the three spare seetarr and none of them noticed the amount they had to carry.
In order to resume the journey the barbarian sat me behind him on his seetar not on the saddle but on the saddle fur, even though I would have much preferred walking. I sat astride, the caldin being full enough to permit it, and was forced to hold the barbarian around his broad waist to keep myself from falling. I cursed myself for a triple-damned fool, but couldn’t stop what touching him did to me in spite of the pain he had caused, and when the chill came back, I slid my hands beneath his rain cape to share his warmth.
We rode continuously through the day, eating in the saddle to make up for the time we’d lost that morning. When we stopped for the night, I was almost too stiff to stand, let alone walk. I’d spent the entire, almost endless, day thinking, and the conclusions I’d come to were inescapable.
I was to be trapped on that terrible planet forever. Something would go wrong with the barbarian’s plans, I would be blamed, and then I would be given away. No one would listen when I asked to be taken to the embassy and I would never see Central or my friends again. Throughout the long day I’d thought about that, and I was completely resigned to my fate. I had no chance of escaping the brute who claimed to own me, and I would never escape the ones who owned me after him. I would be lost forever.
I wasn’t able to eat that night, and even the barbarian’s touch failed to rouse me. I pictured myself at the mercy of endless brutes, and I cried with deep, hurting sobs. The barbarian was puzzled and held me to him with gentle arms, but it was no comfort. I cried until I had no more strength left, and then I slept.
9
The rain still fell the next day and my world, too, was grey and cold. I found it impossible to look at the barbarian without tears starting in my eyes, so I avoided the sight of him as best I could. I was still able to eat none of the cold meat, so I threw it away when the barbarian turned his back, then folded the sleeping furs without comment when told to do so. The camtah was put on another of the seetarr and we began traveling again.
We might have been traveling continuously over the same stretch of road for all that I could tell. The rain fell in thick, steady torrents, the road was an endless stretch of mud, the trees looked the same, the fields looked the same. Sometimes the trees were to the right and the fields were to the left, sometimes the other way around, and sometimes there were no fields at all. Other than that, there was no variation.
We stopped at midday for another meal, but the sight of the meat, white-dotted with its own congealed fat, turned my stomach. I managed to throw it away again, wishing only for a place where the rain would not beat at me, one that did not continually rock from side to side. I could feel the barbarian’s eyes on me, feel the puzzlement he felt, but happily he said nothing.
It was late in the day when I almost fell. The dizziness had crept up on me and slowly increased until I clung to the barbarian’s rain cape in desperation. My cheek was tight against it, trying to draw every bit of coolness from it, coolness that would drive the dizziness away. The coolness wasn’t enough, the dizziness continued to increase, and then my fingers lost their grip. I slid to the left, drawn by the sea of mud beneath, expecting to go down to meet it, but was stopped instead by the giant hand of my captor. He gripped my arm tightly and drew me to the saddle in front of him, frowning as he studied me.
“What ails you, woman?” he muttered, putting his hand to my face. The touch of it was like ice, and I shivered even as it revived me somewhat. He drew his hand away again, leaned me against him, then changed the direction of the seetar. We entered the woods again, found another clearing, and stopped. I didn’t know why we’d stopped when there was still light left, but I was too dizzy to care. I sat on the seetar while the carntah went up, drawing what comfort I could from its grumbling concern.