Thorn gripped the door bolt helplessly as the Kubalese trotted off, Squally running behind.
*
It was five days that Thorn languished in the Landmaster’s jail; the floor was deep in filth, water was brought only once a day and that little enough, and the food was cold mawzee mush gone sour, not fit even for pigs. For two days he did not eat at all, then when he did eat, the food came up again. But on the third day, before dawn, he woke in the near darkness to see a silent figure standing outside the bars. Fear gripped him; but it was a small figure. He rose and went toward it, and could sense a quiet urgency beneath her stillness. Was it a girl? Or a young boy? The light was better on the basket: and the smell of food made his mouth water. But the hands holding the basket—yes, a girl’s hands.
He could barely see her face as she handed the basket and waterskin through the bars: dark eyes, dark hair pulled down inside her collar, and wearing something baggy and shapeless. “I can’t leave the waterskin or the basket,” she whispered. ‘They’ll find them. Take the food out, it’s in a napkin. Hurry!”
He reached out to do as she told him, felt her hand brush his. He glanced around the courtyard, but could see nothing else in the darkness. “How did you get in?” He put the basket down. “Zephy? Is it Zephy?” She was trembling.
“I slipped through behind the men coming to drill for the Horse. I put on Shanner’s clothes and walked behind him. He didn’t know, no one noticed. I—I have to go back so I can get out when the horses go through. I tried to come yesterday but there were Deacons by the gate.”
He took the napkin, drank deep of the fresh water then emptied the rest into the crock the guard had left.
As he finished he reached through again and took her hand, and a strange, quick feeling touched him; he felt her sigh rather than heard her, and the only thing he could think to say was, “Why? Why did you come?”
“It’s going to be light soon, the drill is making up, the torches are already lit” She reached hastily for the waterskin and basket. He touched her hair once, then she was gone into the shadows along the wall.
He stood staring after her, then put his strange feeling down to hunger, and turned eagerly to the meat rolls and mawzee cakes and bread. Why had she bothered about him? If she were caught . . . He had felt she was trembling almost before he touched her. Fear, he guessed. Fear . . .
He was unwilling to leave any food judiciously for later, afraid it would be found. He drank the rest of the water, too, and when the Deacon came with his sour gruel at mid-morning, Thorn threw the bowl in his face.
She came the next morning. He was awake and waiting for her, though he had supposed she would not come again. He heard the early morning grumbling of Burgdeeth’s men, then saw her dark shadow slipping along the wall. He heard the horses nicker and the sound of hooves on the cobbles, but he was aware only of her, close to him. “There’s only salt cow meat,” she whispered. “The goat meat is gone.” He knew, again, that she was trembling. The torches flared on the other side of the Set. He took the napkin and waterskin from her, then held her by her thin elbows, so she stepped closer and stood looking at him. In the near-dark the sense of her was strange and heady. He couldn’t ask, today, why she had come.
When she did not come the next morning, he tried to feign sickness so the Deacon with the key would come and open the cell—surely he could overpower one Deacon. But it didn’t work; they didn’t care if he was sick; they didn’t care if he died there. He was ashamed he could not devise a way to escape. He thought of Zephy again and hoped she was all right. Then on the fifth day when she had not appeared and his hunger was worse than before, he looked up to see Oak Dar striding across the Set Like a conquering lord came the Goatmaster, with the Deacons trailing sullenly behind.
It all happened in an instant The lock slid back, Thorn stepped out of the cell. By Oak Dar’s eyes he knew to say no word. He strode off by his father’s side in silence, and only when they were through the gate and free at last did Thorn turn to stare at him. “What did you have to do? You didn’t bargain for me?”
“I bargained,” Oak Dar said shortly. “I bargained all of Dunoon for you.”
“You did what?” Then he saw the laughter behind his father’s eyes. “You bargained what?”
“I bargained all of Dunoon. I told him if I did not take you home with me, there would be not a goat carcass nor a hide come to Burgdeeth and not a man or animal on the mountain in any place where Burgdeeth would ever find them. I told him they’d be living on their milk cows, for all Dunoon would furnish their meat.”
Thorn roared with laughter. “But how did you know I was there?”
“A little Urobb miner slipped into Dunoon bruised and bleeding, with a rope still around his waist
“Squally! How did he get away? He must have cut the rope.”
“He did just that—after killing that Kubal’s horse with a stone and slipping the Kubal’s knife out.”
“He didn’t kill the Kubal?”
“No, the fool.”
“Squally had better make himself scarce. If that Kubalese finds him . . .”
“He’s gone up over the Rim into Karra; no Kubal would be fool enough to hunt a man there.”
No sensible man would hide in the high barren deserts, either. And behind Karra the mountains were utterly unknown. Thorn felt a wave of sadness for Squally.
They made their way quickly through the whitebarley field to the river. Above them the mountain was washed with low rain clouds; Thorn thought he had never seen anything so welcome or smelled such a scent as the tang of damp sablevine that blew down to them. Cloud shadows lay dark against the bright pastures on the slope, and to his left over the highest peaks, something in the heavy clouds moved so he caught his breath—but then it was gone. He stood willing it back but it did not come, and at last he caught up with Oak Dar, eager to be home. As they climbed above Burgdeeth he glanced back once, feeling some disquiet; the clouds were very low so that even Dunoon was covered; and they lay down over Burgdeeth’s fields behind him.
*
Zephy knew when Thorn was released because Meatha saw Oak Dar striding into the Set and ran to tell her. By the time Zephy got to the square, Thorn and his father were going up through the whitebarley field toward the river, sun and shadow striking them. Thorn didn’t look back, he didn’t turn to see her standing there.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said fiercely, turning away from Meatha’s sympathetic gaze. She went back to her field alone, picked up her abandoned hoe, and set to work. Had Thorn felt nothing for her then? Had the way he looked at her meant only that he was glad to be fed? Her angry hoeing made the dry mawzee leaves rattle, and she knocked a grain pod to the ground so it split open to scatter its precious store. She looked up the mountain and saw the two figures, dark against a patch of sun. Thorn did not pause, and her longing was terrible. Was he looking back in her direction? Well he couldn’t see her anyway here among the crops in the cloud shadow.
Here in the cloud shadow?
The shadow was moving! Not drifting, moving! It was alive! She stared upward, reached upward as the wings swept above her surging against cloud and sun wings lifting—the beautiful Horses of Eresu, their necks stretched in flight, their wings knifing and turning the wind. She reached, loving them, searching for a god among them . . .
But they were gone in a cloud so suddenly, in the rising wind. Gone.
She saw them once more, a darkness surging over the Kubalese hills and vanishing quickly. She stood staring, her pulse pounding, her whole being enflamed.