Maia, liking her and grateful for her help over the clothes, longed to be of some comfort. "I reckon you're troubling yourself too much. I've heard General Kembri talking; I've--well, I've waited on him at dinner, you know, and that kind of thing. And I've never heard him speak as if he thought they couldn't stop King Karnat crossing the river. As for the heldril, well, it's true you hear a lot of talk about trouble and rebellion and so on, but it never seems to come to anything."
"Oh, I do just about hope you're right," said Gehta. "It's such a worry. 'Course, I know there's nothing I could really do to make Dad any safer if I did go home, but all the same, if there's going to be trouble I'd rather be there than here; it's only natural." She paused. "Anyway, thanks, Maia. At least it's some relief that you don't seem worried. We'd best go back now, 'fore old Brindo starts shouting after us."
Before the night was over Maia experienced another instance of the easy-going ways of the farm. Given a very comfortable spare bed at one end of the girls' big sleeping-shed, she quickly fell asleep. Waking some time during the night she sensed, drowsily but surely enough, a kind of muted disturbance near-by. After a few moments she realized what it was. One of the girls was not alone in bed, and unless she was much mistaken her companion was not another girl. Turning over, she saw in the moonlight that Gehta, next to her, was also awake. Putting a finger to her lips, Gehta beckoned to her and, leaning a little way out of bed, put her mouth to her ear.
"We never tell: you won't?"
Maia shook her head and fell asleep again.
As she had expected, the girls were up soon after dawn to milking, fowl-feeding and the other tasks of the farm. After breakfast they said good-bye to Maia with warmth and regret on both sides.
"We don't often get someone like ourselves stopping by," said the little, black-eyed girl. "Makes a nice change." She kissed Maia. "What a pity you couldn't have stayed a bit longer." Maia was soon to find herself in full agreement with this.
44: LENKRIT
"You got your clothes and sandals all right, then?" asked Bayub-Otal, as they set out across the big meadow.
"Yes, thank you, my lord; no trouble."
"Did you have to pay much for them?"
"Nothing at all, my lord. Only they wouldn't take anything, see? Here's the money."
"You'd better keep it. You may need it. That was very kind and hospitable, don't you think, Pillan? Very kind indeed."
"No such thing."
"Dear me, why ever not?"
"That coat what she had on yesterday: them yellow buttons must 'a bin worth a sight more 'n anything they've give her."
There could be no answer to this, even though Maia did not believe that either Gehta or the old woman had thought twice about the topaz buttons. Still, neither had she, and she felt annoyed to have been so careless. She ought to have pulled the buttons off and kept them.
"Did you enjoy your company last night, Pillan?" asked Bayub-Otal.
Pillan became unwontedly fluent. "One of 'em I'd have given something to remember, only for you bein' up at the house and we didn't want no trouble."
"Oh dear! I suppose he called you a Suban marsh-frog, did he?"
Pillan grunted.
"One gets used to it. You never know, you might have the opportunity to do something quite drastic about it be-fore much longer. Did you manage to buy any food?"
Pillan jerked his thumb at his pack. "Bit in here."
"And you, Maia?"
" 'Fraid not, my lord." She had never given it a thought.
"It doesn't matter," said Bayub-Otal. "I got some, too, so we'll have enough between us for today."
They came to a rough track running north and followed it. It led to no farm or dwelling, let alone a village. All that day, as they went steadily uphill and northward, the country became more lonely, barren and wild. It was, in-deed, the most desolate Maia had ever seen; part sandy waste covered with rough grass and scrub, part rocky, with a few stunted trees and tracts of some mauve-flowering, sage-like shrub which harbored clouds of flies. During the late afternoon, as she was plodding onward with eyes half-closed against the glare and sucking a pebble to ease her thirst--for they had no water left, having come upon none since mid-morning--she suddenly realized that at last they were on level ground: in fact they had begun, though al-most imperceptibly, to descend. Shading her eyes, she saw ahead and below a smooth, green plain, speckled with brown and gray patches which were mud-built villages. Far ahead, perhaps ten miles off in the heat haze, she could just make out what looked like the irregular line of a river.
Bayub-Otal, wiping the sweat from his face, pointed towards it.
"That's the Olmen. With luck we'll cross it tomorrow; then we'll be in Urtah."
"We got to go much further today, then, my lord?"
"No; we'll get down off this crest and find somewhere to lie up for the night. We daren't risk a village--not in a place as frequented as the plain. We're still in Bekla province, you see, and likely enough there's a price on our heads by now. We'll make for those trees: ought to be some shelter there."
The woodland which they were approaching covered most of the rocky slope below. Soon they found themselves among outskirts of scrub oak, long-leaved nakai and evergreen sweetspires, several growing almost horizontally out from the faces of steep little bluffs. A few of these were precipitous, and more than once they were forced to go some distance along a sheer edge before they could find a way down.
Maia, at the end of this second long day, was feeling weary, due partly to the rough going, but mainly to her increasing anxiety and uncertainty. Normally, her instinct in such a situation would have been to do what she was told and leave everything else to her older and more experienced companions. But these Subans--she was their secret enemy. If in some way or other they were to find out the truth, they would probably kill her. Not for the first time that day, the idea occurred to her, "Why not tell them? Tell them I was forced into it--that I'd got no choice?" But what would they do then? They might not kill her, but obviously they would unburden themselves of her in one way or another; and what had she to hope for, left alone in unknown country?
Rapt in these dismal meditations and in the listlessness of fatigue, she did not notice, until Bayub-Otal called out to her, that he and Pillan had stopped at the foot of the last bluff they had descended, and were sitting among the rocks. She went back to them. Bayub-Otal nodded over his shoulder. "That cleft--there's quite a fair-sized cave inside. If you don't mind sharing it, I think it'll do us very well. There must be water somewhere fairly near, and we can cut branches and scrub to sleep on. Have a look and tell me what you think."
She smiled. "I'm not used to being asked what I think, my lord."
"Then you can get some practice now," replied Bayub-Otal.
She felt irritated. Whether or not he really supposed he was giving her any power of choice she had no idea. As far as she was concerned he had as good as told her what they were going to do. Why couldn't he have said so and left it at that?
Except for the narrow opening, which made it gloomy and dark, there was nothing wrong with the cave.
It was all of thirty feet long, with plenty of room for her to sleep apart. Bayub-Otal set off with the water bottles while she and Pillan began cutting scrub-willow and oleander branches for pallets.
Later, when they had eaten and drunk, she made her own way down to the brook, washed and bathed her feet.
"I don't think we should make a fire, do you?" Bayub-Otal was saying to Pillan as she returned. "We don't want to risk anyone knowing we're here."
"Wood burns that quick, my lord, we'd never be done gett'n enough."
"I'm afraid we'll have to take it in turns to keep watch, though," went on Bayub-Otal. "You can start, Pillan, and then wake me; and I'll wake you, Maia, an hour or two before dawn. You needn't be afraid: animals are easily scared off even without a fire, and you can always wake us if you think anyone's coming."
Once she had lain down she
found herself more comfortable--or else more tired--than she had expected, and slept without stirring until Bayub-Otal woke her.
The moon was almost set. She felt stiff and cramped from the hard floor. He'd left her late, she thought.
He'd given himself the most inconvenient watch, too; the one that broke a night's sleep in half. She wished he wouldn't always be so scrupulously courteous and considerate. From a man who had rejected her it came cold, and only made her feel inferior and ill-at-ease.
For a while she sat just outside the cave, wrapped in her cloak and listening, in the yellow moonlight, to the innumerable small noises all around her--patterings, rustlings and the quiet movement of leaves and branches. With moonset, however, it grew very dark and a chilly wind got up from the east. She began to feel chilled. After a time it occurred to her that since she could see nothing and her watch now consisted only of listening, she could do it as well inside the cave and out of the wind. She went back to her pallet near the cave-mouth and lay prone, her chin propped on her hands: but still she felt cold. She shivered, hunching her shoulders.
Further back in the cave, Pillan lay stretched asleep on the stones. She could just hear his breathing in the darkness. Moving slightly, he muttered an unintelligible word or two and was quiet again. She made a little joke in her thoughts: "Does he say more awake or asleep?"