By the time he had gotten both women to their feet, the storm was upon them, shrilling like a thousand demons, sheets of dark red sand hissing between the pillars. Brant loosed the loper, let it precede him into the interior of the nearest building while he half-carried and half-dragged the two women to shelter. The tall one with the dancer’s legs shouldered him aside, to take the smaller one in her arms, hands locked under soft, plump breasts.
“Okay then, do it yourself,” growled Brant under his breath. But he loosened the power gun in its worn holster on his thigh. That one would as lief put a knife between his ribs as look at him, water-sharing or no water-sharing.
They sought refuge in the cellars, which were as bone dry as most of Mars. Crouched in the gloom, they heard the weird, high song of the dust screaming by overhead.
He unlimbered the saddlebags and took out a squat little cooker powered by dielectric accumulators, and began warming up food. It wasn’t much of a meal, beef stew and canned beans, but all three devoured it hungrily, although the women wrinkled up their noses suspiciously at the odd, foreign smell and taste of it.
He gave them brandy mixed with water, got up, took out his sleeping bag and strode to the corner of the cellar that was the farthest from where the two women sat, and made his bed for the night. Then he tended to the loper’s needs, giving it dried plant-fiber cakes in a leather sack and a few plump leaves and stems for the moisture they contained. Like earthly camels, the ungainly reptiles needed little water and that seldom, but they did need some. Replete, the reptile curled up like a huge dog in a corner, and slept.
And then Brant sought his own rest. Greatly daring, he rolled over and turned his back upon the women, leaving them to their own devices.
In a while, the tall one got up to rummage through the loper’s saddlebags. She found loose robes of warm cloth, and she and her “sister” curled up together, wrapped in the robes against the night’s chill.
Brant lay awake and wary a long time, waiting, but nothing chanced.
After a time, he slept.
His gun had been in his hand all the while.
Above them, the storm-wind shrilled like a flock of banshees.
But after a time, the storm slept, too.
2 The Women
With dawn he woke to delicious odors and rose to find that the tall woman had arisen before him, and had heated the remnants of last night’s meal, pouring equal portions into three ceramic bowls she had found God-knows-where.
She and her plump “sister” squatted on their heels, wrapped in the clinging robes they had discovered in the saddlebags, wordlessly waiting for him to join them and to share the meagre meal.
It was a gesture of peace, he knew. He flashed them a hard grin and went to sit across from them, squatting as easily as did they. And they ate together, and “shared water.”
That little ritual was very important. There was water-truce between them now, he knew; neither would violate the unspoken truce unless he attempted to harm them, or tried to take them by force.
The ritual done, Brant addressed them, laying his hand upon his hard-muscled chest and speaking his name carefully.
The women frowned slightly at the odd name, but the tall one laid her long-fingered hand between her thrusting breasts and said in the ancient speech, “I am Zuarra; this is my ‘sister,’ Suoli.” Her speech had the tang of the Low Clans in it, he noticed. And again he wondered for what sin they had been staked out by their people to die, but knew better than to offend Custom by daring to ask.
He nodded, finished the last drop of his meal, then rose.
“Best that we get started,” he said gruffly. “We may have to dig ourselves out of here.”
The storm had passed overhead sometime during the night, and the dawn sky was clear. Fine dust squeaked and crunched grittily underfoot as they emerged onto the square and looked about them, grateful to be alive.
While he was saddling the loper, the taller woman approached him.
“Whither do you go, O Brant?” she inquired.
He shrugged good-humoredly. “Nowhere in particular, girl. Where do you want to go? I guess you will not be returning to the camps of your people?” It was really not intended as a question, nor did she take it for one.
“The Moon Hawk nation are our people no longer,” she said without inflection. Then, with a little cold smile that bared sharp teeth in an ugly grimace, she added: “Suoli, my ‘sister,’ says we should go to the city of the f’yagh, there to open our thighs to your kind for bread and meat.”
Brant said nothing, but grinned inwardly. The Earthsider colonist who tried to bed this wench would find a knife between his ribs before he got her thighs apart, he knew. But, after all, what else was there for the two women to do? It is hard enough for a man, even a warrior, to be aoudh—an outcast. It was even harder for a woman.
But he was not going back to the colony at Solis Lacus yet, not for another month, at least, and he said as much. And there was not another Earthsider colony in these southerly parts between here and the Pole.
Zuarra took the news stolidly.
“We will cook for you and clean for you and gather plants for water, and guard you while you sleep,” she said in her husky, deep-throated voice. “But we will not open our thighs for you, neither my ‘sister’ nor myself.”
Brant felt his temper rise at that cold, flat, level statement. He had been too long without a woman, and this one was damnably attractive in a lean, boyish sort of way. But he had his pride, too, and it was as fierce as was Zuarra’s.
“I have not asked you to,” he grated, meeting her eye to eye. “Nor shall I.”
“Then we understand each other, O Brant,” she said tonelessly. He nodded, and turned his back to finish saddling the reptile.
The last thing he needed was to have two helpless women on his hands, and women, too, that he could not go to bed with. But he clamped his lips over a growled curse. What could he do? He couldn’t just leave them here to die.
His had been a hard life, had Brant’s, since the courts sent him to Mars, to the penal colony at Trivium Charontis. Since working his way to freedom, he had run guns to the High Clan princes, and sold them liquor and forbidden tobacco, and peddled narcotics to the soft, timid Earthsider clerks and stenographers. He had killed a man more than once; he had cheated at cards; he had stolen.
But he had never treated a woman harshly or unjustly. It was not in him, for a certain rude chivalry flickered in his soul.
He would not betray the best that was within him now.
They rode east, into the Argyre, with the women taking turns in the saddle while he plodded along, leading the loper.
He had no way of knowing it, but he had already taken the first few steps toward the most fantastic adventure any man had ever lived… .
The sky above them was clear, grape-purple, with a few long, thin ribbons of pink cloud-vapor high and to the west. The sun was a small, dull, hard disc of yellow-white fire to the east.
They kept to the high country, to the top of the level rock plateau, with Suoli riding astride the loper, as she was the weakest of the three. Brant and Zuarra strode afoot, alternately leading the reptile by the loop of the reins.
After a time, the loose robe entangling her legs, making her stumble, she swore, removed the garment, and went forward naked. Brant dropped back behind her a little, admiring her long-legged, tireless stride and watching the roll of her firm buttocks as she led the way.
She was damnably desirable, and in the beauty of her nakedness she struck fire in his loins. But he neither said nor did aught to let her know it. He had enough trouble on his hands just then, without aggravating this tawny wildcat of a woman.