Rimgia, who had grabbed a shawl from some peg on the wall, froze where she had started to wrap it around herself.
“Go on!” Uk barked. “Cover yourself, you dirty hussy! If you’d done that last night — ” The hand with which he had struck the boy was shaking. What he’d started to say was that the little guy might be alive now! But that was stupid. They’d never known his friend — even the girl. “Come on!”
The cloth went over her head, wrapped down tight on her shoulders. Her blinking eyes were suddenly shadowed by the indifferent print covering her hair.
Uk took her by the arm and pulled her outside, while she kept trying to look back over her shoulder at her brother within still sitting on the floor. “Rimgia — ?” That was the boy.
She called out once: “Abrid. !”
Which made one of the other soldiers with them grab her and push her further into the dark: “Come on, now — !” which, Uk realized a moment later, might have been to keep him from hitting her; for, at her cry, Uk had raised his shaking hand again.
Why could he not control this absurd anger at these silly, frightened children?
One of the other soldiers gave him the rope when he asked for it. He and the one with the light over his shoulder bound her, clumsily, in the dark; then the soldier who’d pushed her said: “Come, behind the horse — and don’t dawdle. If you’re thinking about running, forget it. We’ll just come back and kill your brother — before we catch you again!”
And a moment later, they were riding through the town, while, now and again, Uk heard — or felt — the girl at the tether’s end stumble or, once, cry out.
She’d winced with each of big Uk’s barks. She’d bitten down hard as he’d struck Abrid. Now, from doorway to doorway, Naä hurried on beside the three mounted soldiers, with Rimgia going, bound, behind. And Naä thought, as she had thought before: They really don’t look back.
And then: Suppose I did it …?
Fool, she thought. This isn’t some ballad or folk tale about some bit of bird-brained bravery! This is my life… but, she thought, it’s her life too…
Then she thought: This time, I am going to do it.
And, as she thought it, she realized she was, rather, going to do something else!
The web was bound wholly around her now, glittering against her back, her cheeks, her calves, her forehead, her thighs. (Let it, she thought, be an energy flowing into me, not a draining…!)
Naä thought: If I do what I know I’m about to, I am going to be killed. If I do what I know I’m about to, I’m going to be…I’m going to be killed — she repeated it in the darkness until it meant nothing to her. And dashed for the next doorway. But I have a knife — and so I will kill one or three or, who knows, even more of them. Maybe I’ll get away. And Rimgia will get free. That’s what’s important. That’s —
Then, in a movement that was beyond thought, she sprinted out to Rimgia, reached the stumbling girl, put one arm firmly around Rimgia’s shoulder and her other hand over Rimgia’s mouth, and kept her pace moving forward. “It’s Naä!” she whispered — less then whispered: mouthed rather, with just the faintest trace of breath, her lips touching Rimgia’s ear, and she was still sure the girl didn’t hear.
With her free hand, Naä tugged at the rope, loosening it, pulling it up to Rimgia’s shoulders. In the faintest light from some passing shutter, Naä saw Rimgia staring at her (their faces were only inches from each others’) in terror; yet her head shook a moment, with some recognition of what was happening. As Naä got the rope free, she glanced toward the horses before her, where none of the men had as yet looked back. “I’m changing places with you …!” she whispered suddenly to Rimgia.
There was a convulsive movement from the girl, beneath Naä’s arm, that, though it was wholly without sound, might as easily have been a laugh as a quiver of fear.
“Go!” Naä went on. “Get Abrid — take him somewhere out of the village, into the hills, the both of you!” She had gotten the rope over her own shoulder, when, from Rimgia, still against her, clinging to Naä even though she was no longer bound, there was abrupt movement — for a moment Naä was confused, and frightened, and sure that, in a moment, the whole thing would end. But Rimgia was pushing her shawl over Naä’s head, pulling it forward, tucking it down under the rope, now here, now there, all the time half running along beside her in the dark. “All right!” Naä whispered, again, in that whisper less than sound.
Now, at once, Rimgia pulled away — or perhaps Naä pulled from Rimgia. Naä stumbled for real, but did not fall. Ahead, the horse to whom she was bound made a corresponding adjustment in his step. And the big soldier astride him — once again — did not turn around to look! Beneath Rimgia’s shawl, Naä felt the length of blade at her belt; it seemed small and silly and the idea of killing somebody with it even sillier. Her mouth had gone dry. Her heart was thudding loud enough to make her stagger in her tracks. At least the children might actually get away —
I will be killed, Naä thought once more. But, blessedly, it was still without meaning.
They crossed a stretch that, from the smell and the stubble underfoot, was a burnt field. Fires were burning in the distance. Then other fires were closer. The black-cut gray of birches leaned off into the dark. In front of a tent, the soldiers stopped the horses; dismounted — and, believe it or not, still did not bother to look at her!
The big soldier, whose horse she was tied to, pushed back the flap and, leaning within, said: “I’ve got your girl for you, Lieutenant.”
The voice she’d heard before, the one called Kire, said: “Bring her in and leave us, Uk.”
Naä clamped her jaw, clutched the shawl tight over her hair, her other hand on the knife hilt under the long cloth, under the rope. Strike, she thought. Who? Which one? Would it be the brutal, vicious soldier who’d struck Abrid and bound Rimgia? Or the lieutenant? Or maybe the prince, if he were still there…? If things had gone this well so far, perhaps it was not so foolish to expect success after all? But she mustn’t get cocky. Bravery, daring, courage, yes — but don’t abandon common care and sense — though, she wondered, was there anything of sense about this? Remember, she thought, men who do what these men have done are not human, are without feelings, are dogs, are maggots, are worms…
Who will it be first, she thought. Will it be the lieutenant or one of his hulking, beer-gutted guards?
The big guard, Uk — what a name! — came back and took her arm. As he pulled her into the wedge of lamplight that was the tent opening, she started to look away, so that he might not recognize her. Then something made her stare straight at him.
His heavy featured face was looking directly ahead, neither to the right nor left. A soldier, she realized, following orders — doing nothing more, nothing less. For all his brutality to Rimgia and Abrid, that’s all he was. A pig, a dog, a worm; and yet as much without will, she thought, as without sensitivity. He really doesn’t see me at all, Naä reflected. Do any of them —
“Thank you, Uk. Dismiss the others and return to duty.”
And the big soldier, with a fist flung high, backed through the flap.
The lieutenant stood by the desk against the tent’s striped wall. There was a smell in the tent that made her recall both the smell in Qualt’s yard and the stronger smell in the malodorous basket from the afternoon — without it’s being exactly like either. Was it the mildewed canvas itself? But no, it was a spoiled scent far closer to animal than vegetable.