Though the dale, as far as she could see, seemed deserted, Brixia still moved with caution. There might be unpleasant surprises in any unknown territory. Her life for the past three years taught her the very slim edge which lay between life and death.
She closed her mind firmly on the past. It was weakening for the spirit to try and remember how it was once. To live for this day only was what kept one sane and alert. That she did live and had reached this place unharmed was, she thought, a matter for self congratulation. The fact that once she had known such a keep as home, worn soft wool, fancifully woven and dyed, over her now muscular and famine thinned body, no longer mattered. Even the clothes she now had were looted—
Those breeches, worn so thin, were of coarse and harsh material, her jerkin was of leaper skin, cured crudely, then laced together by her own hands, the shirt under she had found in the pack of a dead Dalesman, she having come upon the site of an outlaw ambush. The Dalesman had taken his enemies with him. She wore the shirt as she made herself believe as a gift of a brave man. Her feet were bare, though she had a pair of wooden-soled sandals in her pack, ready for the harder trails. Her soles were tough and thick, the nails on her toes rough and broken.
Her hair sprung from her scalp in an unruly, wiry mass, for she had no comb but her fingers. Once it had been the color of apple-ale at its most potent, sleek, shining, braided. Now, bleached by the sun, it looked more like autumn-killed grass. But she no longer possessed any pride in her person, only that she was strong and clever enough to survive.
Uta, Brixia thought fleetingly, as she slipped from one stand of brush and tree to the next (ever alert to any warning, ear, eye or nose might give), was far better named “lady” now. She was large for a house cat. But it might well be that she had never warmed herself before any man-set fire—being feral from birth. Only then her calm uniting with Brixia would be doubly strange.
Brixia had awakened from very uneasy slumber one night near a year gone, as far as she could reckon, though she kept no calendar, to discover Uta seated by her fire, the cat’s eyes reflecting the light like large reddish coins in the air. Brixia had sheltered then in one of the moss-grown, roofless husks of some building the Old Ones had left. She had discovered that those drifters she must name enemy had little liking for such relics. But there had been no harm in this one—just walls fast returning into the earth.
She had been a little wary of Uta at that first meeting. But, save that the cat’s unblinking stare made her feel that she was being in some way weighed and measured, there had been nothing remarkable about Uta. Her fur was a deep gray, darker on the head, paws and tail—with a blueish gleam when the sun touched it. And that fur was as thick and soft as some luxury cloth the traders had once brought from overseas in the lost years before the invaders’ war tore the dales from top to bottom, east to west, and broke life apart into shattered pieces perhaps none of the survivors might ever gather together again.
In that dark face Uta’s eyes were strange color, sometimes blue, sometimes green, but always holding a red spark by night. And those were knowing eyes.
Sometimes, when they were turned on Brixia, the girl had been uncomfortable—as at their first meeting—as if, behind the slitted pupils was an intelligence matching her own to study her in serene detachment.
Girl and cat, they now made their way to shrubs which formed an overgrown and untidy hedge-wall about the larger ruin Brixia had guessed to be an inn. Remains of two walls stood, fire marked and crumbling, no higher than the girl’s shoulder. There was a cellar hole in the ground now near filled, and she had no mind to grub in that.
No—the best hunting ground was the lord’s domain. Though that would have been the first to be looted, of course. Still if the fire had gotten out of control before the looters had finished, then—
Brixia’s head went up. Her nostrils expanded to catch that scent. In the wilds she depended upon scent as did any of the animals, and, though she did not realize it, nor ever think about such things much, that sense was now far keener from constant use than it had been before war had made of her a rover.
Yes! Burning wood!
She dropped to hands and knees, crawled with a hunter’s caution along the side of the inn, seeking a thinner place in that wall of brush which enclosed it. At length she lay flat, pushing forward the boar spear inch by inch, to lift back low-hanging branches and increase her field of vision.
Fire at this time of the year, when there had been no storm with lightning to set a spark, could only mark a camp of humans, Which in this country usually meant—outlaws. That some who had once lived here might have drifted back to see what could be salvaged—She considered that possibility and did not altogether dismiss it.
But even if the village Dalesmen had returned they could be her enemies now. They need only catch sight of her for her to be their quarry. To their eyes in her present ragged state she was no different than the outlaws who had despoiled them before. They might well take her for the scout of another such band.
Though Brixia searched the scene before her with close attention she saw no signs of any camp. The house was, she decided, too destroyed to provide shelter. However, the tower still stood, and, though its window slits were unshuttered to the wind and storms and must have been so for a long time, the rest presented an appearance of being less ill used.
Whoever sheltered here must be in the tower. She had no more than decided that when there was movement in the doorway and someone advanced into the open. Brixia tensed.
A boy—undersized—his fair head near as unkempt as her own. But his clothing was whole and looked in good condition. That was dark green breeches, boots, and his jerkin was of metal rings sewed on to leather, provided with sleeves to his wrists. He wore a sword belt and, in the scabbard, a blade with a plain hilt.
As she watched, he threw back his head, put his fingers to his lips and whistled. Uta stirred, and then, before Brixia could stop her, the cat flashed out of hiding and sped into the courtyard before the keep, her tail banner high. But it was not she alone who answered that summons. A horse trotted from around the tower and came to the boy, dropping its head to butt against his chest, while fingers scratched the root of its forelock caressingly.
Uta had come into full view of the boy and now she sat down, primly folding her tail end over her front paws; turning on him, Brixia was sure, that same measuring gaze which she used with the girl from time to time. She, herself, was unwontedly irritated at the desertion of the cat. For so long Uta had been her only companion—Brixia had come to think of her as she might a comrade of her own species. Yet now the cat had gone from under her very hand to visit with the stranger.
The girl’s frown grew the sharper. There was nothing here for her—no chance to go searching for any useful loot. What remained, if anything did, would be discovered by this intruder. Best slip away as soon as she might and leave Uta to her fate. After all it looked as if the cat wished to change her allegiance.
The boy looked down at the cat. Now he loosed the horse and went to one knee, his hand outstretched.
“Pretty Lady—” he spoke with the accent of the upper dales, and his words were startling to the listening girl. It had been so long since she had heard any voice except her own.
“Come—Lady—”
“Jartar?”
She saw the boy’s body stiffen as he glanced back over his shoulder at the tower door.
“Jartar—” That other voice was low and there was something in it—Brixia crooked her arm to rest her chin as she lay in hiding—even her breath slow and light.
Two of them—at least. She had better not try to move yet—even though she was nearly sure that the craft she had learned by force of need was equal to covering any retreat.