“Cah,” said Tibo, making a little ritualistic gesture to the goddess of her country. The dog crouched growling at her side, and the first snowflake, descending, fell sizzling in the lantern.
Orbin raised his head, sly-eyed, as the door was opened out of the white night.
“Hoh, Tibo,” he said softly. “Where is your flower gone, eh? I’ll tell you. You were loafing so long out there, we needed another log on the fire. So I put your flower on it instead. Didn’t make much of a blaze.” He watched, as Tibo glanced at the empty crock, and pointlessly, into the hearth. But Tibo always ultimately disappointed Orbin. She never sniveled, or groveled, as the other women had. Even when he clouted her, she only got up again. And he had to clout her often, for Orhn was too stupid to see to it. Orbin had even had to arrange their marriage, although it was not unusual for the closest male relative of the groom to attend to such things. Due to Orbin’s clever management, however, no one had been able to notice just how slow the elder brother was. The farm, and all its stock, belonged to Orhn, who had the name of Alisaarian kings. By law, Orbin belonged to Orhn. That was a fine joke, that. In a practical sense everything actually was Orbin’s, in all but name, kingly or otherwise. As for the slut, Orbin could have had her, too. But he never ordinarily saw much in women. During the Red Moon, when the urge was on him, he knew better than to tamper with his brother’s legal wife. She might get herself pregnant, and then there could be questions, because the village somewhat suspected Orhn’s ability, even while they spoke of Tibo as a barren parasite. Orbin was reverent of Cah and made the goddess regular offerings. He did not want to tell falsehoods before her statue, afraid of what she might then do to him. So he left Tibo alone, and paid to go with the temple’s holy-girls, fat lumps good only for such sticking.
On the other hand there was no law, religious or otherwise, against a man thrashing his brother’s wife.
“All the dogs?” he asked her now.
“Yes, brother-master.” She paused, her eyes lowered respectfully. What else was she waiting to say? Had she hed about the dogs? “Brother-master,” she said, “give leave that I speak?”
“What rubbish have you got to say? All right. Babble on. You women, never quiet.”
“There’s a man. Blackness showed me.”
Orbin was alerted.
“What man?”
“A stranger. Robbers set on him. He’s bleeding, and may die.”
“Then let him,” said Orbin.
He watched her covertly, to see what she would do now, but she only went to the fire, and began to put bits of wood on it. The deed woke up Orhn, who had been slumbering on a bench one side of the hearth. The other side the old woman slept on in her chair, dribbling and twitching her blanket. Orhn smiled at Tibo. He reached out and touched one of her slim black braids. She wore her hair parted into twelve of these, each braid hanging to her waist and ending in a copper ring. But the rings were unpolished, she took no pride in them, although they were the mark of her married status. Her hair, though, glistened. She constantly washed and combed and rebraided it. In the same useless way she picked flowers and herbs, and gossiped to the dogs. These practices annoyed Orbin, but they were no real grounds for a complaint. She did not ever neglect her work.
“This man,” said Orbin now, as Tibo dragged the iron cauldron from the fire, and returned with it to her pot-scouring. “Where is he?”
“In the yard, Orbin-master.”
“The shed—bleeding and dying in Orhn’s shed?” (Stirred by his name, Orhn made a sound of mild outrage, copying Orbin. This mimicry, taught him long ago, had often let him pass as normal in Ly.)
Tibo scoured her pots, humble, apologetic. She had some cause to be, having, with Blackness’ aid, hauled the semiconscious stranger to shelter. Though treacherous, the glassy ground had taken scarcely any imprint, the falling snow had also helped, obliterating every trace of her connivance. All the time, the man had marveled, dizzily amused, swooning and clinging to her, that her frailty could support him. Of course, she was strong. Fourteen years of fetching and carrying, lugging and straining, had made her so. When she left him in the straw with the surprised dogs all around to warm him, she had been sorry to get him go, his body, its frame and texture and scent, an assemblage she had never before experienced. She had torn his shirt to bind the knife-cut in his arm, not daring to use anything of her own, as yet. And she had worshiped at his flesh, as the old song said Cah did with her lovers. There was no denying it. Never having known such a feeling in her life, Tibo recognized infallibly her desire and hunger.
He should not die. She would not allow it. She knew the properties of herbs. And she had learned in childhood, for self-preservation, how to deceive.
So she went on with the pots, all stupid and careless, until Orbin, having questioned her sharply about the man’s story, his garments, his foreignness, pushed her out again shedward, between the curtains of the snow.
By the time the next thaw came, twenty-five days later, the stranger was whole and on his feet, and assisting Orbin about the farm.
Orhn had been very gracious. That was, Orbin had permitted the stranger certain rights and Orhn, standing by smiling, had made appropriate sounds at proper intervals. Having interrogated the stranger, Orbin had asked for his money. If Orhn was to provide the man a roof and nursing, and a share of the food until he recovered, that was only just. Orbin suspected the stranger did not give all his cash, and was correct in this. He instructed Tibo to search the stranger when next she tended him during his fever, and she brought back a handful of small coins. In return, the man lay in the dog-shed, with a brazier for warmth for which Tibo firstly, and he himself when fit, must obtain the kindling. He was also given a piece of bread or slab of black porridge to eat, and a bowl of the evening soup or stew, generally with no meat in it. Tibo’s herbal medicines she had prepared in secret.
“He’s tough, some mercenary off the roads,” said Orbin with lazy contempt, unease and faint envy mixed in his tone. “He’ll mend. If we keep him here until Big Thaw he can help with the spring ploughing. Orhn can save on hired men, in that case.” (The farm was not rich enough to keep workers over during winter.)
The entire project entailed, of course, trapping the man for as long as possible, and making him pay in any way that was feasible for the privilege. He was an easterner, a Lan, he had said, with a name the Iscaian-Lydian drawl had instantly turned to “Yems.” He said, too, he was a soldier, which might be the truth, for he had a fighter’s body, trained and tall, and sword calluses on both hands, though he had arrived with only a knife. Even this Orbin confiscated. “You won’t be needing that, on Orhn’s farm.”
Meanwhile, there was no real means for the man to escape their hospitality. Ly village was nearly a day’s journey away over the snow, and that was only if you knew the route. Ly Dis, which Yems had stubbornly mentioned more than once in his fever, was seven days distant, unreachable till spring. As for saddle-thoroughbreds, the big animals that, unlike the Dortharian chariot teams, could carry a full-grown man on their backs, they were as mythical here in Ly as were the fabled horses from the southern lands.
It was a wonder, in fact, how the fellow had got here himself. He had told Orbin a tale of going to join the Vardish troops over the border, of being diverted west on some other mysterious errand, next falling in with the mountain bandits—who let him go to bleed or freeze to death, having taken his mount, a hardy zeeba, and all baggage and accoutrements.
“Some yarn,” said Orbin. “Who cares? We’ll work him.”
And soon he was up and about and busy, making the repairs Orbin wanted to the ramshackle hovel-buildings of the farm, cleaning out the few thin cattle in their byre, getting and chopping wood—which he even professed himself willing to do, to prevent his arm from stiffening. He made, certainly, no demur about any of it. Probably he had expected no other treatment.