“You think that I am a Witchman, is that it?” She laughed unhappily. “You do not know by how little I escaped . . . but it is no matter. I always knew that it would probably come to this, but I did not want to die—or worse than die—among Witchmen.”
Milo grimaced. This girl was a matter for King Solomon, not for Milo Morai or even God Milo, as some of the plainsmen still called him. She was perfect, either as a spy or a victim. Damn, I wish I had Aldora or Bili here, he wished. If only we were in Kehnooryos Atheenahs. The experts could interrogate her more skillfully than he, with his limited mindspeak.
Already, the old nakharar had spat at her feet in repudiation and was striding from the tent. Shahron watched him go, her eyes hot with shame and anger and unshed tears. When he was gone, she suppressed a shudder. Clearly, she had expected to be killed.
Perfect, Milo thought.
“God Milo?” Just as the rangy, shock-haired man of Clan Sanderz spoke up, advancing on the girl, Steeltooth yawned. Milo snapped his fingers. “TTianks for reminding me, cat-brother. The Test of the Cat!” Milo muttered. He set his chin and walked toward Steeltooth. After all, why fear her? Any knife that she bore could cost him but a few instants’ pain.
“Girl,” he asked, “do you know aught about the Test of the Cat?”
She glanced at Steeltooth and jerked up her own chin in the Ahrmehnee negative.
“You know that the great cats can talk to those people with mindspeak. They can also probe and learn when people, even those who lack mindspeak, are lying to them. This is the test: Steeltooth opens his jaws. You place your head within them, and let him listen to your story, which he will relay to us. If you are lying—” Milo brought his hands together in the gesture of jaws snapping shut.
“Will you submit to this test?” He asked. And what if she does not, Milo? he asked himself. Will you kill her right now, right here? One innocent, injured girl. She could be an enemy; years ago, such girls had
proved to be his enemy. But old prejudices and old chivalries died hard.
She smeared her free hand across her face, rearranging grime and tears. “It is good to know,” she said, “that one creature here does not already despise me. But—what is that? The cat says that if I am lying, he will send me gently and mercifully to Wind?
“God Milo, I shall take your test,” she declared and knelt quickly before the great cat. “Here and now. What reason can I have for delay?”
She knelt, and after Steeltooth had opened massive jaws, she placed her head between them with almost no sign of fear.
“No, down this way!” Shahron heard. Her skirts, the cumbering, heavy layers that Ahrmehnee girls wore, threatened to trip her with each step that she ran, and as for climbing—! But she and Rohzah had taken out the herds, refugee herds of a refugee clan, when they themselves had been taken. Having little choice, they had accepted food and fire from their captors, and those' only long enough to escape. Shahron’s only regret was that she had left the tiny knife from her felt boot behind. She did not, however, regret where she had left it scabbarded. Fear clawed at the two girls, fugitives now from a Witchman’s hearth, and made them run faster.
To fall unarmed into the hands of the Witchmen! That was worse than war, worse than feud. Witchmen did not fight fair. They had those long tubes that spit fire and dealt death to the tribe’s flocks, and probably, for all they knew, to the tribe itself.
The girls ran gasping through the forest and finally brought up short against a sheer rock face. “The ropes,” gasped Shahron. Each pulled from beneath her skirt the ropes that they had braided from petticoats and blankets in haste and in secret. They tied their rough ropes together, then knotted them around a projecting stump.
“Test it!” Rohzah insisted.
“But they’re coming! I can hear them!” Shahron cried. Nevertheless, she jerked twice on the rope. “It looks strong enough. Let me go first.”
“I’m eldest,” Rohzah protested, as she had protested since they were tiny girls. Older she might be, and the daughter of the nakharar, but Shahron was stronger and fiercer. She had always protected her cousin, and she would do so now.
“Yes,” she agreed, “you are the elder, but you are the nakharar's daughter, while I am but his niece. So I go first.” Wrapping the rope about her, she swung down, hoping that she could walk down the rock face the way that she had seen young men, jealous of their reputations for bravery, do long ago, when they still had a village and time for the luxury of such games.
She froze as an ominous tearing came from above her. The rope vibrated. Then, abruptly, the rending noise stopped.
“I’ve got it!” Rohzah cried.
Shahron went totally still. If the rope tore apart, she would fall. Bright lady, don’t let me fall, with my brains splattered all over the rocks, I beg you! she prayed. She kicked out with her feet, seeking toeholds, then reached with one hand. There! Panting in #triumph, she clung to the naked rock. Below her lay a ledge toward which—she heard the sound of ripping once more as her rope gave way—she must aim. As the rope gave way, she coiled herself, hoping to land on the ledge . . . and none too soon.
“Cousin!” shrieked Rohzah, as the rope frayed and snapped, and she fell. Her last thought before the rock ledge rose up to strike her down was a kind of furious irritation at the noise that her cousin made. Did she really want to bring their pursuers down upon them? Silver Lady, what an idiot!
Which idiot? she thought, a moment—or an hour— later. Her head ached, but not as savagely as her left arm. She lay in a tumble of fabric, and found herself staring at the pattern of red on white of the shreds of cloth that had once been an undergarment. Overhead, with an annoying regularity, came Rohzah’s shrieks.
“Don’t! They’ll hear you!” she tried to beg her cousin, but all that she could force from her mouth was a croak. Red specks of flame danced in front of her eyes and threatened to engulf her vision. Then darkness beckoned, a spinning black tunnel of it that drew her into its depths.
As she entered, it occurred to her that being recaptured by Witchmen might be the best fate that she could hope for now. I would rather die! she thought. But she was blacking out, and she was very much afraid. . . .
“This should bring the little bitch around!” A slap jolted Shahron back to consciousness, and that was very bad. Worse yet, the slap sent jagged streaks of pain, like steel slivers from a shattered sword in a wound, up and down her left arm. Just in time, she bit her lip against a shameful cry of pain. Behind her, her cousin Rohzah showed no such self-regard; she wept, as a nakharar's daughter should not do in the presence of enemies even if her cousin, almost her sister in fosterage and in love, did lie injured before her. And if her enemies were Witchmen, she must definitely not show feanor grief.
“For God’s sake, Ehrikah,” came a man’s voice, “do you want the girl to scream and spew all over your boots?” Shahron set her jaw and vowed, even as a stab of pain made her dizzy with nausea, neither to cry nor (if she could at all prevent it) to vomit. The man who warned the woman called Ehrikah was of no account: a warrior, perhaps, of some minor house, warning a great lady. But, Shahron thought, if she broke her vow, she would try to break it by spewing all over that Ehrikah.
“Let her be, both of you!” ordered another member of the party that had hunted them down. Shahron remembered that voice, rumbling against her ear. Its owner had swung down on a rope and borne her off the ledge that had bid fair to be her bier. The man speaking was a tall, heavily muscled warrior whose dark hair and clean-shaven chin belied the impression that Shahron had had of him since she and her (praise the Silver Lady!) now quiet cousin had been dragged in, the last survivors that she knew of from their village on a mountain slope ... a slope no longer.