Maia (126 page)

Zen-Kurel was hollow-faced and very pale, skeletal in appearance, breathing in gasps and shivering continually. His eyes were half-closed, his cracked lips dry and his mouth fallen open. The soldiers had each drawn one of his arms round their necks and were gripping his wrists; otherwise he would have fallen. His knees were bent and his head hung forward on his chest. He did not look up as he was brought into the room, and seemed unaware of his surroundings.

The sight shocked everyone present. One soldier uttered an exclamation of horror, cut quickly short. After a few

moments Mendel-el-Ekna said to Maia, "You say you mean to take them out of the city-both these men?"

With a great effort she controlled herself. "Yes; I must."

"Well, it's for you to say, saiyett: I'm at your orders. But that man-he's a Katrian, isn't he?-do you think he can do it? He's very bad indeed: anyone can see that."

"If only we can get them both away-just a few miles, captain-I'll be able to look after them. I'd be more than glad of your help."

"Very well; you shall have it." He turned to one of his men. "That damned swine of a governor-go and make him give you a stretcher. We'll get them as far as the Blue Gate for a start."

The stretcher, made of poles and sacking, was stained with what looked like dried blood. Maia recoiled from the thought of its probable use in the routine of the prison.

Zen-Kurel had shown ho sign of recognizing her, but for the matter of that she doubted whether he had any idea at all of where he was or of anyone around him. Bayub-Otal, however, took her hand, looking at her gravely.

"We owe this release to you, Maia?"

"Yes, Anda-Nokomis."

"Strange! You say you're going to take us out of Bekla?"

"Ah, that's if we can; only it's risky, see?"

"I believe you. Who are these men?"

"Lapanese."

"Lapanese? Where's Kembri, then?"

"Gone south to fight Erketlis. The Lapanese are in revolt-they mean to take the city before Fornis can."

"Then I suppose we may-But Zen-Kurel's in a very bad way, Maia: I only hope he can survive."

"We must get him out of here," she answered. "Away from Fornis, that's the first thing. Look, they're ready to

go."

Mendel-el-Ekna himself accompanied them, with eight men. It was not until they came out from the Shilth into the western end of the Sheldad that Maia grasped the full extent of the chaos. Far and near, the entire city was full of flame and clamor. Frighteningly close, in the half-darkness, a running fight was going on between two bands of soldiers; yet she was quite unable to tell which side was which. All around them rose shouting and the clash of arms. Dead bodies sprawled in the road and wounded men

were crying out and cursing. The captain remained entirely unmoved.

"Nothing to worry about, saiyett: our people have got things well in hand. Whatever you do, just keep going."

As they stumbled on, it became clear that the whole length of the Sheldad was taken up with the fighting. Soon they were forced to a halt. Gangs of rogues and beggars, more dangerous than wild animals, were dodging among the soldiers, robbing whom they could and looting booths and shops. In doorways Maia could see grim-faced men with cudgels in their hands, plainly ready to defend their premises against all comers. From upper windows screaming women were pelting raiders trying to break in below. In several places fires had started, and above the all-pervading din rose sounds of crackling flames, falling beams and the intermittent crash of collapsing roofs. A lurid glow blotted out the stars.

"Do you know your way through this damned place?" shouted the captain in her ear.

"Best go down to the Slave Market, I reckon," she answered, "and then try to get up the Kharjiz and past the temple."

Once out of the Sheldad they met with less trouble. What isolated fighting they came upon they were able to avoid, while almost all the looters and footpads who saw them sidled off, daunted by the sight of their breastplates and weapons. They had one brief skirmish, however, with an armed gang too drunk to realize they had met their match. Mendel-el-Ekna went for them with grim relish, dropping two in the gutter before the rest took to their heels. Twenty hectic minutes later they reached the Blue Gate.

Here a noisy, milling crowd were being held in check by a line of Lapanese soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder, spears extended and swords stuck ready to hand into the timbers at their backs. The captain's men, with some difficulty, forced a way through for Zen-KurePs stretcher. The tryzatt in command of the spearmen, sweating and helmetless, saluted Mendel-el-Ekna with a look of relief.

"Any chance you can give us a hand, sir? Count Seek-ron's orders, to let no one through the gate, but they're all in a panic to get out of the city and I don't know how much longer we can hold them."

"Where «Count Seekron?" asked Mendel-el-Ekna.

"Gone to the upper city, sir, to find Lord Randronoth. No one knows where he can have got to."

A stone from somewhere in the crowd splintered the woodwork of the gate, narrowly missing Maia where she stood beside the stretcher. "Give the men bows, tryzatt," said the captain. "Order these bastards to disperse and threaten to shoot if they don't. Be quick, too!"

Suddenly, from near the front of the crowd, a voice shouted, "Maia! Maia!" Turning, she saw Zirek and Meris trying to push their way towards her. She gripped Mendel-el-Ekna's arm, pointing.

"Captain, that's the man and the girl I told you about; the ones who were with me. Please get them over here if you can!"

"Bring them into the guard-room!" shouted the captain to two of his men. "And
you'd
better get in there, too, before you get hurt," he added to Maia. "Go on; I'll see to your friends!"

Thus, after the lapse of a year-and hardly in better case-Maia entered once more the guard-room where she and Occula had been befriended by the soldiers on that sweltering afternoon when they had trudged into Bekla behind Zuno's jekzha.

Two minutes later she was joined by Zirek and Meris. Meris had a swollen lip and a cut on one arm.

"Right; now we've got to get you out," said Mendel-el-Ekna. "Can you walk?" he asked Bayub-Otal.

The Ban of Suba shrugged. "When I can't, I'll stop."

"Then the quicker you're all gone the better. Serrelinda, I can spare you two men to carry the stretcher. But get him to some sort of shelter as soon as you can, do you see? Otherwise he'll die. And then send my men straight back; I need them."

She kissed his hands and thanked him with tears in her eyes, but he made light of it.

"Oh, I'd do more than that for you, Serrelinda. Don't worry, I'll tell Lord Randronoth we got you and your friends away all right. See you when you get back."

The tryzatt opened the postern and in the flickering darkness they slipped through behind the line of spearmen. Immediately the door shut to behind them. In front, on either side, stretched the high, backward-tilting walls of the outer precinct, leading down to the caravan roads below.

"Which way?" asked Bayub-Otal as they reached it. He spoke gaspingly, through clenched teeth.

"That's for you to say, my lord," she replied.

"I'd say south, my lord," said Zirek. "But it might be best to get off the road soon. I reckon the less we're seen thebetter."

"Then south it is," said Bayub-Otal.

Ten minutes later Maia looked back. The eastern walls of the city showed as a black line, beyond which the glow of flames shone luridly on the base of a canopy of smoke. The hubbub, diminished by distance, had become an ugly, throbbing din, like that of some swarm of gigantic insects roused to anger.

"A devils' playground," she whispered, gazing.

"What?" asked Zirek, ahead of her. "What did you say, lass?"

"Nothing," she answered, turning to catch up with him. "Only something as somebody once said to me. Still got the bread and cheese all right, have you?"

She never saw Bekla again.

Maia had been milking the cows. She had not lost the knack-or at all events jt had come back quickly enough- but her soft, white fingers and pampered, upper city wrists were aching, and now the yoke seemed pressing hard on her shoulders. All the same it was reassuring-the feel of wooden pattens on bare feet and the well-remembered sensation of treading on cracked, summer-baked mud and powdery dust. The dark cowshed was heartening, too, with bright spots of light showing through the knotholes of its planks; likewise the stamping and kloofing of the cows and the smells of cow-dung and of evening water from the brook outside. Her mind might prompt her as often as it liked that she was not out of danger, but in her heart these familiar things spoke of security. It is always satisfying to show oneself unexpectedly capable in some chance-encountered situation where one's companions are all at sixes and sevens. Meris was a shocking bad hand about the place, and even Zirek, though willing enough, knew next to nothing and was continually having to be instructed.

Doing her damnedest to look as though she didn't find the pails heavy, Maia carried them across the yard, through the stone-flagged kitchen and into the little, narrow dairy beyond. Here she set them down, ducked out of the yoke and then, lifting first one pail and then the other, emptied them into the big clay vessels on the shelf above the churn.

Even the dairy was not properly cool this weather. The milk would have to be used quickly. A little would be sold round about, but most would go to themselves-drunk fresh or made into butter, cheese or whey. This was hardly more than a subsistence farm, a bit better than Morca's patch on the Tonildan Waste, but still a long way behind the kind of place where Maia had met Gehta. The farmer, Kerkol, his wife Clystis and her fourteen-year-old brother lived almost entirely on what they produced. Still, at least there was plenty of black bread, cheese, brillions and ten-drionas. The strangers weren't eating them out of house and home and Kerkol was glad enough of their money, to say nothing of the extra help.

Coming back into the kitchen, Maia stepped out of her pattens and rinsed her hands in the wooden tub opposite the door. The water was getting greasy, she noticed: she'd

tip it out after supper and refill the tub from the brook. She gave her face a quick rub with her wet hands and was just drying it on a bit of sacking when Clystis came in.

Clystis was a big, healthy girl, happy in her youth and strength!-in being equal to life-and in her first baby, a boy not quite a year old. She had a quick mind and from the first had struck them all as more forthcoming and go-ahead than her husband, a slow, rather taciturn fellow who always seemed happiest out working. It was undoubtedly Clystis who had convinced Kerkol that they stood to gain from letting the strangers stay. He himself, like most peasants, tended to be dubious of anything unfamiliar.

Clystis smiled at Maia, showing a row of sound, white teeth. "Cows done, then?"

"Ah," Maia smiled back. "Gettin' a bit quicker now, see?"

"Didn't take you long, did it? How many days is it you been here now?"

"Ten." Maia looked round towards the passage. "How is he this evening?"

"The poor lad? I reckon he's a lot better. The young chap's with him."

They had never been asked where they came from, nor their names; and Clystis never used any except Maia's. Bayub-Otal was "the gentleman," Zen-Kurel "the poor lad," Zirek "the young chap," while Meris was "your friend" or "the other girl." They were fugitives from the fighting beyond; a "beyond" known only vaguely to Kerkol and Clystis, neither of whom had ever been to Bekla.

During the night of her flight from the city and all the following morning, Maia had been in a state of almost trance-like shock. If she had not been young and in perfect health she would have collapsed. Zirek and Meris, after their months of hiding, were weak and not rightly themselves: nervous, unsteady, starting at everything and incapable-or so it seemed-of normal talk or thought. Only Bayub-Otal, though clearly almost at the end of his tether from fatigue and lack of sleep, had remained comparatively self-possessed, limping on beside Zen-Kurel's stretcher, leaning on a long stick cut with Maia's knife and now and then exchanging a word with the soldiers. Long afterwards, Maia still remembered that night as the worst of her life.

Some time after moonset they stopped in a thicket. Maia,

who alone knew how large a sum of money she was carrying, and remembering the footpads on the way up from Puhra the year before, was so much afraid that she could not bring herself to rest. At the near-by call of an owl she leapt up and would have run if Bayub-Otal had not restrained her. They had been there no more than five minutes before she asked him whether they could not go on.

"But where to, Maia?" he replied in a dry whisper. "We may just as likely be going into danger as away from it."

"Where you making for, then, sir?" asked one of the soldiers who had been carrying the stretcher. "Only we didn't reckon to come this far: the captain's expecting us back."

Maia gave them twenty meld apiece. "I'll write something to your captain," said Bayub-Otal. "It won't be much further, but if we don't get this young man into shelter he's going to die."

The second soldier nodded. "Looks bad enough now. Should I try to give him some water, do you think, sai-yett?"

She shook her head. "He couldn't swallow it."

She herself now believed that Zen-Kurel would die. Since she had first seen him in Pokada's room he had not spoken a word, though once or twice he had muttered unintelligibly and moaned as though in pain. To add to her misery and the nightmare-like nature of all she was feeling, it now seemed to her that she would have done better to leave him in the care of the Lapanese. But-Fornis? She doubted whether, with Randronoth dead, the Lapanese could hold the city. Before long either Kembri or Fornis would recapture it. So in that respect they had been right to escape; yet if only they had stayed, Zen-Kurel would have had a chance of recovery.

She was kneeling beside him when Bayub-Otal, taking her hand, drew her to one side.

"Maia," he said, "I'm too exhausted to think clearly, but can I ask you this? Have you any destination-any plan?"

She shook her head. "No, Anda-Nokomis. All I ever had in mind was to get the four of you out of Bekla."

"You?"
He looked at her in perplexity, apparently wondering whether his hardships might not have brought about some breakdown in his rational powers. "But-er-
why?"

She shrugged. "Well, I did, anyway. What d'you reckon we ought to do now?"

"You aren't counting on help from anyone else?"

"No."

"Have you got any money?"

She gave a wry little laugh. "Much as you like."

"Then we ought to try to find some sort of shelter: a farm; somewhere like that. The lonelier the better: pay them to take us in. Otherwise Zenka'll die. These soldiers, too-we can't keep them. They're impatient now: they want to be back with their friends, looting Bekla."

"I'll pay them to go on, Anda-Nokomis, until we find somewhere."

So in the morning, an hour or two after sunrise, they had come, a hobbling, staggering little bunch of exhausted vagrants, to Kerkol's farmstead-a house and some acres of rough fields about three miles west of the Ikat road. Kerkol and the lad, Blarda, were in the fields, getting in the last of harvest, and Maia had gone in alone and spoken with Clystis in the dairy. They had taken to each other. Besides, the sight of Zen-Kurel would have wrung pity from anyone with the least spark of humanity, and Maia was offering good money. She had assured the girl that his illness was no pestilence. They were fugitives, victims of the hated Leopards. They wanted to stay only until Zen-Kurel was better, and would move on as soon as they could. Kerkol, when he came in at mid-day, had found three of them sound asleep on straw in the barn, with Maia watching by Zen-Kurel, whom Clystis had told the soldiers to put into Blarda's bed. Inclined to be surly at first, he had gradually warmed to the pretty girl so obviously in distress; and being (as they later came to perceive) a man who secretly knew his wife sharper than himself, he was finally persuaded that there was more to be gained from letting them stay than from sending them packing. In any case, with the soldiers already gone, to compel them to leave would certainly have meant Zen-Kurel's death.

By the following day everyone except Zen-Kurel was in better shape. Zirek and Meris, naturally, were only too glad to get out of doors and try to give some help about the place. Zirek made fun of his own ignorance and clumsiness, and sometimes made even Kerkol laugh with his clowning. Maia had forgotten the stormy streak in Meris; or perhaps, she thought, their former circumstances had

prevented her from seeing it in its true colors. In Sencho's house, where they had all been slaves and all afraid of Terebinthia, her continual foul language and swiftness to anger might almost be said to have expressed a common feeling. Now, seeing her tense, glittering-eyed manner among ordinary, decent folk and blushing before Clystis to hear her cursing over the butter-churn, she began to understand why Terebinthia had been so anxious to get rid of her. Meris might be all very well for a concubine, but she was precious little use for anything else. She was a natural trouble-maker, not really capable of steady work, short-tempered as a bear and as prone to outburst. One evening, tripping over Blarda's whip in the dusky passage, she snatched it up, swearing, and snapped it across her knee. Maia, apologizing to Clystis, did her best to make out that Meris had had a very bad time and was not herself.

This sort of thing was worrying enough, but in addition Maia had once or twice seen Meris glancing at the fourteen-year-old Blarda with a look which she herself understood if no one else did. A baste in the barn, she thought, even with an innocent, might be neither here nor there, but she doubted whether Meris would rest content with that. Before she was satisfied, someone would have to suffer. She was a girl getting her own back on the world, and the innocuous and simple were her natural prey. Even with nothing else to worry about, Meris would have been a nuisance, but with Zenka on her hands Maia simply had no energy or attention to spare.

Next to Zen-Kurel, Bayub-Otal was the worst affected. There could be no question, for the time being, of him helping on the farm. He was worn out and half-starved, and for several days could eat only whey, eggs in milk and such other slops as the kindly Clystis prepared. His feet were in such a terrible state that Maia could not imagine how he had walked from Bekla. She had learned, of course, on the journey to Suba, that he was an exceptionally unflinching, determined man, but she had not hitherto realized how much he was capable of enduring.

Resting by day in the shade of the sestuaga trees on one side of the yard, he told her, at odd times and little by little, all that had befallen him since the fight near Rallur. The prisoners, as she knew, had been sent to the fortress at Dari-Paltesh. Here they had been in the charge of Dur-akkon's younger son, a humane but very ineffectual young

man who, it was generally known, had been promoted out of harm's way before he could discredit himself further in the field. Plotho ("the rabbit"), as he was nick-named, had done what little he could to make their lives bearable, forbidding the soldiers to ill-treat them and ensuring that their wounds received attention. Despite his kindness, however, several had died.

"You were locked up all that time, then?" asked Maia, trying to imagine it.

"No," replied Bayub-Otal. "It's not like that at Dari-Paltesh. There are no dungeons. The lowest floor lies below the level of the moat like the bottom of a great, drained well. We were free to wander about. We looked after each other as best we could. We lost count of time. The food was very bad and there was never enough, and although we'd made everyone swear to divide it fairly there were always quarrels. One man was killed in his sleep-"

"How?" asked Maia.

"Sharp stick driven through his throat. We never found out who'd done it. I keep dreaming I'm back there, though I suppose it'll stop after a time."

In telling her all this Bayub-Otal never uttered any word of reproach against Maia. He might have been talking to someone who had had no more to do with his capture than had Clystis. Nor was there in his manner any suggestion that he particularly wanted to arouse remorse in her. Most of what he told her, indeed, was vouchsafed with his habitual restraint, briefly and bit by bit, in reply to her own questions. „

A day or two later he went on to tell her how Han-Glat and Fornis had given orders to bring out the officers and tryzatts-some nineteen or twenty altogether-to join the march from Paltesh to Bekla. These were supposed to be hostages against the risk of an attack across the Zhairgen by Karnat, but it soon became plain that although that might be a principal reason for their presence, there was another. During the march the Sacred Queen had devised various ways of amusing herself. She had begun by compelling the hostages to beg on their knees for their rations, or else go hungry; but after a day or two had become more ingenious, requiring them to perform various things to their own degradation-things of a nature which Maia recognized as being in accordance with what she herself had

seen in Fornis's bedroom on the morning when Occula had hidden her in the closet.

Bayub-Otal had held out against this cruelty, and accordingly he had starved; or rather, he had half-starved, for it so chanced that one of the Palteshi guards, who had a Suban wife in Dari, knew him to be none other than Anda-Nokomis. This man, moved to pity, had risked giving him scraps when no one was looking: otherwise he would have died.

He told Maia how, very soon after the murder of Durakkon and his son, Fornis, as soon as it was clear that Kerithra-Thrain lacked numbers to destroy her army, had persuaded Han-Glat to join her in a forced march to take Bekla by surprise.

"She knew that Kembri had gone south to fight Santil-ke-Erketlis and that Eud-Ecachlon had no troops worth the name. But she knew, too, that he could still close the gates against her, and she meant to get there before he'd even learned of Durakkon's death.