Her head ached, her mouth was dry and she felt frowzy and sweaty. What had happened after she had fainted? Why wasn't she at home? All of a sudden the answer occurred to her. Her mother must have been so keen for her to take the wonderful job and make the family's fortune that rather than lose the opportunity she had sent her off with the dress-dealers then and there. The more she thought about this, the more stupid she felt her mother had been; and she would tell her so, too, the moment she got back. To let her be driven away in a closed cart, without her tidy clothes (such as they were), without her own agreement and without telling her where she was going or when she'd be coming back; probably spoiling the bargain, too (whatever it might be), by showing such eagerness to clinch it at any price! Maia fairly gritted her teeth with annoyance. Tharrin should hear all about it the moment he came home--which was where she herself must set about returning immediately, even if she had to walk every step of the way. Where was she, anyway? On the Meerzat road, presumably, which she would therefore, by nightfall, have covered four times that day.
Turning on her stomach, she thumped her fist on the quilting in front of her, shouting "Stop! Stop at once!" There was no reply and no alteration of the slow, uneven movement. Quickly she turned head-to-tail and pushed hard on the door at the back. It gave a fraction before being checked against the padlock and staple. She was locked in.
No sooner had Maia grasped this than she flung herself once more at the front of the quilted box, battering and shouting in a frenzy. When at length she paused for breath she became aware that the cart had stopped. There followed the click and squeak of the opening padlock and a moment later the door swung open to reveal the tall man peering in at her.
With a keen sense of her tousled, undignified appearance, Maia slid forward, lowered her feet to the ground and stood up.
It was early evening; the air was cooling and the sun sinking behind the trees. They were halted on the edge of a dusty, rutted track. The bullocks, having pulled the cart at an angle to the verge, were cropping the dry grass and heat-withered flowers. On her left was a belt of trees, on her right a few fields among wasteland stretching away to the lake in the distance. This was nowhere she knew. The cart was pointing southward, certainly, but the road and surroundings were strange to her. They must, therefore, now be beyond Meerzat and further along the shore of the lake than she had ever been.
Turning to face the tall man, she saw that he was holding in one hand a kind of thin, leather leash, like those used for hounds. He rather resembled a large, unpredictable hound himself, she thought: though there was nothing amusing in the comparison. His scowling silence was frightening but, as with a hound, it was important not to show fear.
"There's been a mistake," she said. "I don't know what my mother's told you, but I can't go with you now, or start the work yet. I never said as I would, you know. You'll just have to take me back home."
The man snapped his fingers and pointed into the back of the cart.
"Well, if you won't take me back," said Maia, "reckon I'll just have to walk back myself."
She took a step past the man, who immediately caught her by the wrist and, with a kind of snarl, flung her back against the cart so violently that she cried out with fear and pain.
"Steady, Perdan, steady!" said the sandy-haired fellow, appearing round the end of the cart. "Mustn't damage the goods, y'know. Might lose commission, yer, yer." He turned to Maia. "Come on, now, miss. No good crying over a broken pot, you know. What you want? You want to shit or just piss, which is it now?"
Maia choked back her tears. A cunning thought had come to her. Once she had got a little way clear of them she would run. She might or might not be a match for the tall man, but it was worth trying.
"The first," she answered, avoiding the coarse word.
The sandy-haired man took the leather leash from his companion, fastened it round her neck and gave it a gentle tug.
"Come on, then," he said, sniggering. "Good doggie! No, don't try to undo it, miss, else I'll only have to get rough. Don't want that, do we?" He patted her cheek.
"How dare you treat me like this?" blazed Maia. "You just wait till my stepfather hears of it! I'll be damned if I'll work for you, or your master either; no, not for a fortune I won't!"
The tall man seemed about to speak, but the other cut in quickly.
"Don't tell her, Perdan. Makes it easier, yer, long as possible. Come on now, miss, d'you want to shit or not?"
Holding the leash, he led her across the road and a few yards in among the trees. Here he stopped.
"Well, go away!" she said, pointing. "Right away, too! Back there!"
"We better get this straight," replied the sandy-haired man. "I can't leave you; got no chains, see? But it'll be a good two hours to Puhra, so if you want to do anything you'd better get on with it, yer, else you'll only be laying in there in your own muck."
"You mean you're taking me to Puhra by force? How can you s'pose I'd work for your master after that? Does he know what you're doing?"
The man made no reply but, still holding the leash, turned his back on her.
"Go on if you're going."
Weeping with shame and humiliation, she crouched and relieved herself; then allowed him to lead her back to the cart and lock her in.
The creaking and rumbling began again, but soon afterwards the cart stopped once more. From the murmur of voices and the bovine stamping and blowing, Maia realized that they must be changing the bullocks. Probably they had already been changed once earlier in the afternoon, while she lay asleep.
Evidently these men had standing arrangements along the roads they used.
It occurred to her to call out for help from whomever might be talking to the men. Yet instinctively she sensed that this would be useless. Besides, she had conceived a terror of the man with the broken nose.
Though born poor, Maia had never experienced any violence worse than her mother's fits of temper, and unconsciously she had grown up not to expect it. The tall man's unhesitant use of force had frightened her badly, leaving her with the flinching realization that here was someone to whom terror and the infliction of pain were all in a day's work.
She was still unshaken in her determination to go home at the first opportunity, but clearly there could be no attempting anything for the time being. She would have to wait until they reached Puhra. She had never been to Puhra in her life, and knew of it only as a small fishing town, presumably much like Meerzat, at the southern end of Lake Serrelind; though of a trifle more consequence on account of lying not far from the high road between Thettit and Bekla. No doubt there would be ordinary, decent folk there who would help her to get away from these disgusting men.
The time dragged on. Her headache, as she lay in the stuffy, musty-smelling box, grew worse, until she felt near-feverish and too much confused to think clearly. At last, from sheer exhausti
on, she dozed off again, and woke to feel the cart rumbling over a paved surface.
A minute or two later it stopped and she heard the men talking together as they got down. She waited for the door to be opened, but instead the voices receded and vanished. Listening, she could hear various sounds from outside: clattering pots, the shutting of a door, a thudding noise like someone beating something soft and heavy--bedding, perhaps--against a hard surface. There was a smell of wood-smoke and cooking, but no bustle, cries or other normal sounds of a frequented place. Wherever they were, it was evidently neither a tavern nor any sort of big house full of servants.
After some time she heard footsteps returning; the lock clicked and the door opened. The sandy-haired man, holding up a lantern, was grinning in at her, his face a half-and-half mask of light and shadow. As she was about to slide out of the cart he put down the lantern, grasped her ankles, pulled her towards him and began to stroke her thighs.
Maia, struggling, kicked him in the stomach, and he staggered back, cursing. A moment later her satisfaction turned to terror as she realized that there was no escaping him, confined as she was in the box. She lay cowering like a rabbit, staring and waiting.
The man, winded but recovering his breath, leant forward, his hands on the sill of the opening. She realized that she had excited rather than deterred him.
"Steady, missy, steady now," he said at length, smirking and showing his horrible teeth. "I might go and fetch Perdan; wouldn't like that, would you? He's apt to forget himself, y'know, is Perdan. Now I just want to be nice,"
Maia once more burst into tears. "O gods, can't you let me alone? I'm tired out, I'm took bad. Surely to Cran you can understand that much?" She scrambled out onto the cobblestones.
Plainly her anguish had no more effect on him than that of a snared animal on a trapper, who has seen the like many times and in the circumstances would be surprised not to see it. For some seconds he stood in silence, looking her up and down. Then he raised a dirty hand to her cheek.
"Well, y'can just make yerself comfortable now, yer," he said. "I'll take y' in where yer going, that's right."