The Shasht War (49 page)

"I wanted to. I tried." He closed the ox hide across the narrow opening once more and cut out the bright light.

Their eyes readjusted to the gloom. The air was warm but not stale. They'd freshened their bedding before the storm's arrival, and Thru had put up bunches of wood mint, which filled the space with a fresh scent.

Simona felt the stone around them, felt it's imprisoning clutch, felt her spirit quail in front of its cold massiveness and the doom it spoke of for both of them. Instinctively seeking comfort she groped her way into Thru's arms.

The simple animal contact with his strong, young body, awoke a primal desire.

"I am dying, Thru. But I don't want to die unfulfilled. I have never had a man. I was denied that basic right."

Thru understood. He would not have liked to die without knowing what it was to make love to a mor. And beyond that he had felt the tension growing between them. It was strong, and tormenting. They were living as one, knotting together in this narrow, intimate space. He was male, she was female, and her shape was no different from that of any mor.

A sense of shame often overwhelmed him when he found his thoughts drift toward arousal by her presence. What would Nuza say? And he would pray that she was well and safe with her family in Lushtan. Most often this calmed him and allowed him to think about something else. But, the thoughts would return. He was male and in the prime of life, it was inevitable that this would gnaw at his mind.

"Simona," he whispered, wanting to stop her. But her hand slipped inside his jerkin and stroked his flank, enjoying the feel of the soft fur.

To Thru, her touch was like a stroke of lightning. A vast wave slammed against the dam built across his heart.

"Thru, you are so beautiful to me. I know we are different, I know how ugly I must seem to you. I wish I could have fur, too."

Thru felt the dam break. Her simple wish was so heart-breakingly impossible. He wondered which betrayal was the more fundamental. That of his love for Nuza, or that of his very being, as a mot.

"Thru," she whispered in his ear. "Do not fear this. We are alone, we may never see another living soul. Why shouldn't we taste this fruit?"

"Simona." He was poised on the edge of a precipice.

She came to him willingly, their lips crushed together. After the weeks of closeness and frustration, the physical passion broke free at last. He forgot who he was or where they were. He simply took her, bore her back down into the bedding as their hips became conjoined in the beast with two backs.

For a long time they were like this, for they had lit a fire between not only themselves but between two worlds, two races and two ways of being.

And in these flames Simona found answers to some of the questions that had haunted her these many years.

Afterward she lay there beside Thru, listening to him snore very softly. She reached out and stroked the soft fur on his back. What had she done? Was she "abomination" for this? If so, why? What was the difference between them that made it forbidden? Try as she might she could think of nothing, except the crude physical differences. She had hair, he had fur, she had full lips, he had thin ones. Other than that they were just people, and she saw that there need be no barrier to love between them.

She amused herself for a while by imagining that she might even be quickened with a child from their mating. And if she was, what would that child be like? Would she have both hair and fur? Simona laughed inside. It would be hard explaining all this to such a child.

"She will be gifted, I think. Like her father," she murmured aloud.

Her remorse died away. She felt very strong all of a sudden. If she truly had conceived a child, then she had a new reason to try and live. She was a bridge between two peoples. For a moment she was able to laugh at herself for this conceit. But then the seriousness of this possibility overtook her, and she lay there quietly, absorbed in her thoughts. Such a child would indeed be a bridge between the two kinds of people. She would demonstrate to both the fundamental equality between them. So Simona had to live, to allow this child to be born.

And, just as importantly, she understood that Thru had to live to take his message back to the Assenzi. It was the only way they could win the war. She couldn't let him die here of starvation. Suddenly she had an idea, and she sat up with a sudden rush of breath as it burst into her mind.

She prodded him.

"Thru, darling Thru, we have to leave these hills. We can't just die here."

Thru struggled out of sleep. He was filled with shame for what he had done, but Simona did not seem angry in the slightest.

"I am sorry, I should not have done what I did. It was wrong..."

"No it wasn't!" She seized his hand and bit it gently, then squeezed it between her breasts. "I love you, Thru, and what we did was not wrong. Even if we never do it again, it will never be wrong. We are different, but we are the same."

He blinked, stared into her eyes. His lips moved, but he said nothing. Her breast felt warm, inviting, just like Nuza's.

"If we leave, where will we go?"

"If we go to Aunt Piggili she might be able to help us hide."

"But that would endanger her. You said the Red Tops would go after all your relatives."

"Oh, don't say that." This was Simona's great fear. That she might have brought down the wrath of the priests upon her family.

"I'm sorry, Simona, I wasn't thinking."

He put his arms around her, and she rested her head on his hard, muscled shoulder.

"We can't just die here, Thru. You at least must go back to the Land. You can tell the Assenzi what they need to know."

He nodded. "Yes, but how?"

"We have to leave this place."

"Wherever we go, there will be Red Tops."

"No. We shall go to the coast and buy a ship. We will sail back to the Land."

"Buy a boat?" he grinned at her in the dark. "We have no money."

"We do. Or I do. At the zob, years ago, my mother gave me the jewels she had collected for my inheritance from her. They were for my dowry. I buried them in the courtyard of the purdah house."

"And that would be enough to buy a boat?"

"There is an emerald there that will be enough on its own. My mother told me never to give that stone up, unless my life depended on it."

She squeezed his hand.

"And it does."

Thru's mind fairly spun at the implications of this.

"Then we can buy a boat. The next question is whether we can sail it."

"We will have to learn."

Thru rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He had been around fishing boats, had traveled in them and handled nets. "I have watched them setting the sails, I think I could do that."

"I will steer. I will help you with the sails."

But how would they navigate? Thru knew that navigation beyond the sight of land was very tricky.

"And when there is no wind?"

"Then I will row the boat."

In the murk of a late winter afternoon, the big house was a dark hulk within the cold fog. From what they could see, only a single light glowed in the kitchen. They moved closer.

"There's hardly anyone here."

The windows on the upper floors were shuttered, no lights showed there at all. The Red Tops had already scoured the place.

"Poor Shalee," muttered Simona. No doubt her old friend had gone to the city, destined for the altar to the Great God; all her friends at the house, probably.

They had investigated the stables. Only a couple of horses there and a single small carriage were left. Otherwise it had been stripped. Simona had had to fight back tears at the sight. Poor Silvery, her beloved white horse had been taken. She hoped that Silvery had been given to someone who was kind to horses and not some brutal Gold Top with a heavy whip.

They moved closer to the house. Movement was much easier now, since the packs on their backs held hardly anything. They passed quickly through the shrubberies behind the grand lawn. The gallery at the western end of the house was shut tight. Wide windows that were opened in the summer were shuttered, and the door was locked. But Thru tested them and found one that was slightly loose at one hinge. He climbed up to work on the other one with his knife. The fastening pegs needed repair, and he dug them out quite easily.

With a careful heave, he and Simona were able to lift the shutter off the window and set it down quietly. Rather than leave their snowshoes there, they tied them together and slung them on a thong behind their packs.

They slipped inside. Thru had given the sword to Simona. He held the bow at the ready, with an arrow nocked. They listened carefully, but heard only the sigh of the wind around the upper gables.

Simona knew the layout of the house with the familiarity of a girl who had spent all her summers there. They skirted the grand salon, took a stair to a mezzanine floor, and flitted through grand rooms, all shuttered and silent. None of these rooms had been used for years. That was in the other life, the happy time before Filek received the imperial summons sending him on the colony fleet.

Simona had buried the casket from her father under a brick in the garden of the purdah courtyard. The mezzanine floor took them to a cloistered gallery overlooking the court. Rooms set back around the central space were for relaxation by women of the leisured class on hot afternoons. In the center, ten feet below this floor, lay the garden, laid out in a circle with clipped shrubs in terra cotta tubs set around the outer edge.

Simona pointed. "You see the statue of St. Gizan in the center? Beside it on the right is a flower bed. The flower bed is surrounded by ornamental bricks. The casket is buried under the brick closest to the statue."

Thru nodded, identifying the orange brick in question.

And then they jumped as a door slammed somewhere far off in the house. A reminder that they were not alone in the great zob.

They stepped across the hallway and pushed open the door to a room. It gave a loud creak as it opened, and Simona felt a stab of fear. What if they were detected here? She held the sword in her right hand, but she had no idea how to wield it. She didn't really know if she could even bring herself to kill another person.

Then she thought of Shalee and Silvery and all the other victims of the Red Tops and found renewed determination. If she had to use the sword then she would, or die trying at least. The Red Tops were responsible for so much misery. Her mother's face swam up in her memory. Her mother would still be alive if they hadn't been sent to the Land. Poor Chiknulba would have been appalled to see her country zob in the hands of these vicious swine.

They listened, ears straining for the slightest sound, but heard nothing. Thru was reluctant to open the door again, since it made that loud squeak the first time. He examined the hinge, moistened it with spit, and started working it slowly open. Suddenly, the door opened just a few inches, they heard loud voices coming closer. Another door boomed open and feet strode down the hall, passing right by the door behind which they waited. The two men went past without breaking stride, engrossed in complaints about the food cooked by Dzumbud, whoever that was. They were gone in a moment, and another door slammed behind them. Simona found that she was trembling. Thru laid a hand on her shoulder. She looked up with a start.

"Whoo! That was close, eh?" he grinned.

She nodded, wanting to laugh. The fear mastered once again.

Another door down to their right slammed shut. The voices receded farther away. Apparently, the pantries of the great house had been stripped by the Gold Tops.

Thru and Simona waited, crouched silently behind the partly opened door. But the men did not return. Now, very carefully Thru opened the door enough for them to slip out again. After a minute or so of careful listening, they felt safe enough to creep down the stairs that lead to the central garden.

On the ground floor the garden was surrounded by a pillared cloister. They hid themselves in the shadows here and watched and listened.

After giving the space a thorough study, Thru entered the garden. The little statue was of a robed woman, holding her arms up in supplication to the skies. Thru crouched down and dug around the brick. After a little work the brick came out, and he looked down on a small black box, no bigger than his fist, buried underneath.

He scooped it up, set the brick back in place, and turned to leave. Whereupon the door above them boomed open again, and the loud-voiced Red Tops came back, now carrying pillows taken from the furniture in the distant salons.

With no time to do anything but freeze, he stood next to the statue, just a darker shape in the general gloom, and prayed they didn't notice him.

The Red Tops looked right at him and kept going. They still complained about the damned flour. Apparently, they hadn't had meat in days.

The door pulled open. One of them said something and turned back. Thru knew instantly that he'd been spotted, he rose and ran for the shadow of the cloister, but it was too late.

"Thief!" snarled the Red Top, and the two men came hurrying down the stairs.

Thru and Simona ran for the far set of doors, but the doors were locked. They turned at bay, and the two young Red Tops charged straight at them with raised batons.

Thru had no time to nock an arrow. He pulled his knife and dodged the first wild swing of the truncheon. Simona swung the sword at the other Red Top, who parried it with his baton.

And then both Red Tops saw that Thru was not a man. And that Simona was a woman.

They sprang back with peculiar looks of hatred and horror on their faces.

"What!" said one of them.

Thru leaped on them with Simona right behind.

Thru pulled one of the young men down, he stabbed home with the knife, and felt the Red Top convulse. Then he turned. Simona was down, the Red Top was hitting her with his baton while screaming curses. Thru crashed into him, knocked him into a pillar, and then bore him down. The knife rose and fell, and the Red Top lay still.