In truth, while he enjoyed sparring with friends, he had no stomach for real fighting in which he might actually be injured, and he truly disliked killing, doing so only when all other avenues of escape had been closed to him. But Hornsbuck, grizzled veteran that he was, had no such objections and would regard Mika's qualms as cowardice, which, in fact, they were.
Mika patted and soothed the horses, calming their jangled nerves with soft-spoken words until they stood quiet with their heads bowed low.
With the horses tended to, Mika quickly broke camp, packing what little remained of the adventurers' supplies, viewing, with a shudder, his broken and splintered spear. Had Tam not wakened him when he did, Mika would now be lying alongside that spear, equally broken and splintered.
A sudden thought struck him, and he looked up to see the princess watching him. She turned aside, but not before Mika wondered whether it had been she, not Tam, who had wakened him… and saved his life.
The group packed their booty and mounted their horses, riding out even though it was still long before dawn, unwilling to spend another heartbeat in the pit that had almost become their grave.
They rode steadily, keeping watch in case those at the pit had been part of a larger whole, but they neither saw nor sensed any others. By first light, they had left the area far behind.
Hornsbuck dozed in the saddle, trusting to Red- Tail and Mika to warn him of danger. For once, Lotus Blossom was silent, wrapped in her cloak against the morning chill. But Mika's mind was on other thoughts. He found himself watching the slim flanks of the princess as she trotted ahead of the horses and wondering what she really felt… and for that matter, what it was he really felt, as well.
CHAPTER 13
Hornsbuck awakened with a number of snorts and loud sneezes. He glowered about him suspiciously as though suspecting that someone else was responsible for the noise. He scowled at Mika.
"What's the matter with your hair?" he asked, frowning angrily like a bear wakened from its winter sleep.
"My hair? Nothing. Why?" asked Mika, putting his hand to his head in confusion.
"It's all loose. Hanging down on your shoulders like a harridan's," growled Hornsbuck, looking away as though he had seen something indecent. "Fix yourself."
It's happening! thought Mika, horrified that Hornsbuck had compared him to a woman. He hurriedly scraped his hair together and, brushing it thoroughly, worked it into the intricate braid that ran from the center of his forehead, down the middle of his skull, and ended at the nape of his neck; he tied it off with a strip of leather. The complicated procedure was made more difficult by the metal gauntlet, which caught on the hair itself and caused his motions to be awkward and clumsy. Mika was forced to work carefully, and it took him twice as long as usual to finish the braid.
It was nomad tradition for men to wear their hair in this fashion; the high, thick braid cushioned the skull from all but the hardest of blows. Men often wore their hair loose when in camp or in the safety of the clan, but Hornsbuck seemed to view it as a sign of personal laxity and would not permit it in his presence. Mika had never once seen Hornsbuck unbraid, or even comb or wash his hair, in all the time he had known him. He tried to avoid thinking about it.
"Quit yer fooling, Mika. You be worse than a woman with all this hair business!" grumbled Hornsbuck.
Mika was mortified and confused as well. What was he to do? He tried to finish the job, braiding his hair as quickly as possible, ignoring the painful catches as he drew the hair far tighter than normal, pulling it so hard that his eyes watered. But even the pain was a welcome antidote to the lurking curse.
The princess had listened to the exchange with interest and watched Mika with a look of cool amusement in her strange blue and green eyes.
Tam watched the interplay between Mika and the princess, and a strange, hostile look appeared in his eyes. What exactly was the relationship between the man he had followed since his earliest memories and this wolf who was no wolf? Tam did not know, but it seemed to him that Mika thought less and less of him and more and more of the princess. He had not even commended Tam for saving his life the night before. Tam looked away with obvious hurt in his eyes.
Mika took special care to watch his actions all that day, speaking in an extra deep voice and making decisions in a firm, masculine manner. When they made camp that evening, he strode about brusquely and hawked and spat many times. He even leered at Lotus Blossom as she shrugged out of her heavy- leather tunic before dinner and walked around camp, scratching her ample belly and heavy breasts before she changed into a loose shift that thankfully covered her from neck to knees.
He leered, but in truth the sight of all that pink flesh made him quite ill, and he worried more than ever over the fact that it did nothing to excite him. This stirred him to greater eccentricities, capped by his pinching Lotus Blossom's enormous backside, earning him nothing but angry glowers from Hornsbuck.
Even this did not curb his activities, and Hornsbuck and Lotus Blossom were both staring at him openly before the evening was out. Unable to stand the strain any longer, Mika went to sleep early… without unbraiding his hair.
"Don't know why you bother, you haven't enough of a beard to matter," Hornsbuck commented casually the next morning as Mika prepared to shave as he did every day, scraping his face with the edge of his knife.
"Yes, I do! Why I… I could shave twice a day and still have bristles!" Mika exclaimed as he leaped to his feet and faced Hornsbuck, his face dripping with lather, the blade trembling between his fingers.
"Well, all right. If you say so!" said an astonished Hornsbuck. "It's no matter to me. I just don't see why you bother. Growing a beard's much easier than cutting your face to ribbons every day. Never could see the sense of it myself."
Mika blinked and backed away. Got to get a grip on myself, he thought, his hand rising to his lathered chin. This is getting out of control. He saw the princess grinning at him, her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth. Suddenly enraged, he flicked a gob of foam at her.
His aim was good, but she was faster; she scampered away, her upturned tail spattered with foam and her eyes crinkled into slits of wolvish laughter as she looked back at him over her shoulder.
They went on like that for the next ten days. Mika stopped shaving and grew a beard which he was forever stroking and pulling and examining in pools of water to check its growth.
He spoke in deeper and deeper tones, causing Hornsbuck to ask him whether or not he was ill. Lotus Blossom stopped pinching him, even when he grew worried enough to make it easy for her. He strode and hawked and spat and gestured with masculine vigor and took to going about with the top half of his tunic unlaced, baring his chest to the coldest of breezes. "Ah! Invigorating!" he would roar with appreciation and inhale deeply, while trying to hide the fact that he was covered with goose bumps, splotched and trembling from the cold.
Hornsbuck began to look at him strangely, eyeing him from beneath his shaggy eyebrows and studying him when he thought Mika would not notice. But of course he did, and immediately thought that Hornsbuck was seeing through his charade and so increased his virile mannerisms even further, until he became a ludicrous caricature of himself.
One night, as they sat in front of the fire after the evening meal, Mika began relating a fanciful tale that involved himself and seven nubile beauties performing a variety of incredible and totally unbelievable sexual acts. Hornsbuck interrupted the story and took the mug of ale from Mika's tightly clenched fist.