The Shattered Chain (19 page)

I should have stayed in that last shelter. That was what that hunch was all about. Confound it, I ought to listen to myself!

Her feet were freezing, and she was seriously beginning to wonder if her cheeks and nose were frostbitten. Normally cold did not bother her, but she was chilled now to the bone; her thick fur-lined tunic and cloak might have been dancing silks.

She sternly told herself not to be frightened. The woman who had trained her in Intelligence work had told her that human stock was the hardiest known in the Empire. Man’s home planet, Terra, had contained extremes of temperature, and, before civilization, ethnic types had developed who could, and did, live in unheated houses made of ice blocks, or on burning deserts sufficient to blister the skin. She could survive outdoors, even in this storm.

But frostbite could delay me, beyond the midwinter deadline.

The light of her saddle-lantern glinted on one of the small arrow-shaped signs of a travel-shelter. Her antlered pack beast threw back its head and whickered. Magda turned off the trail and trudged down the narrow path, leading toward the dark building she could just see. The road crunched with rutted and frozen sleet, much trampled. As she came through the trees, she saw the loom of two buildings; it was one of the large shelters, with a separate building for animals. Then she swore softly to herself: Through the crack of the door a faint light was visible: the shelter was occupied.

Oh, damn. I should go on. Why take chances?
But the next shelter might be another half-day’s ride away; and she was soaked, chilled and freezing. Her cheeks felt numb beneath her hand, and her eyes smarted.
Just to get out of the wind for a minute or two. …

While she delayed, her horse and pack animal had made up their own minds; they tugged at the reins, plunging ahead of her inside the dark barn. There was a good, dusty smell of fodder and hay. It seemed warm and pleasant. She set her saddle-lantern in a safe place, and set about unsaddling the horse, off-loading her pack beast.
I wouldn’t have the heart to take them out in this storm again.
Several horses and pack animals were already chomping on fodder and grain; Magda fed her animals, then sat down by the light of the saddle-lantern and pulled off her boot. She drew a sharp breath of dismay as she saw the whitish patches along the reddened flesh under the wet stocking.
I need fire,
she thought,
and something hot to get the circulation going.
She had lived oh Darkover much of her life, and knew the danger signs. There could be no question, now, of camping outdoors.

She would simply have to rely on the traditional neutrality of the travel-shelters, and on the disguise she wore. After all it had excited no comment of question from the traders she had met that other night.

She gathered up her saddlebags and started into the main building. Almost automatically she drew up her cloak collar to cover her bare neck; then, self-consciously, put it down where it belonged. Her Amazon’s dress and short hair were the best protection in this situation; ordinary female dress and manners would make what she was doing unthinkable.

She pushed the door open and stepped into the light of several lanterns. There were
two
parties of travelers in the long stone-floored room, one at each end, around the fireplaces. As she saw the men near the door, her heart sank; she almost wished she had taken her chances in the woods. They were a party of big, rough-looking men, wearing strangely cut cloaks, and Magda fancied there was something more than impersonal curiosity in their eyes as they turned to look at the newcomer.

The laws of the road meant it was for Magda to speak first. She spoke the formal, almost ritual words, hearing her voice, light and almost little girlish in the huge echoing room:

“As a late-comer I crave leave from those who have come before to share shelter.”

One of the men, huge and burly, with fierce-looking reddish-gold moustaches, spoke the formal greeting, “Be welcome; enter this neutral place in peace, and go in peace.” His eyes rested on her with a look that made her skin crawl. It wasn’t just that the man was unshaven, and his clothes far from clean; that could be bad weather and traveler’s luck. It was something in his eyes. But the laws of the travel-shelter should protect her. She clutched her saddlebags and edged past. Both fireplaces had been preempted, but she could build a small fire near the stone shelving along the center wall. She need not even struggle with tinder; she could borrow a light. (But not, she resolved, from the big man with the moustaches!)

At the far end, five or six figures were gathered; they turned when Magda spoke, and one of them, a tall, thin figure, lean to gauntness, came toward her.

“Be welcome, sister,” the figure said,—and Magda heard the voice in astonishment. A woman’s voice, low-pitched and almost husky, but undeniably a female voice. “Come and share our fire.”

Zandru’s hells,
thought Magda, involuntarily calling on a Darkovan God in her dismay,
what now?

They’re Free Amazons.

Real ones!

The tall gaunt woman did not wait for Magda’s acquiescence; she said, “I am Camilla n’ha Kyria, and we are traveling on a mission to Nevarsin. Come, lay your things here.” She relieved Magda of her saddlebags, led her to the fire. “You are half frozen, child! You had better get out of those soaked things, if you have dry ones to put on; if not, one of us can lend you something, till your own garments have felt the fire.” She pointed to where the women had strung cords and hung spare blankets over them for privacy; by the light of the lantern they had hung there, Magda saw the stranger, Camilla, clearly. She was tall and emaciated, her face deeply lined with age—and what looked like knife scars—and her hair all gray. She had taken off outer cloak and tunic, wearing only the embroidered linen under tunic of a Thendara woman; beneath it her body was so spare and flat that Magda knew her for what she was: an
emmasca,
a woman subjected in adolescence to the illegal neutering operation.

Magda went behind the curtaining blankets, and got out of her wet clothing, slipping into spare trousers and tunic. She was glad of the privacy of the blankets, less because of the rough-looking men at the far end—they could hardly have seen her in the dim shelter—than because of the other women. Had Lady Rohana been right about every detail of her clothing and gear?

A slight woman, with hair the exact color of new-minted copper bars, put her head around the blankets. She said, “I am Jaelle n’ha Melota, elected leader of this band. Are your feet frozen?” She bent down to look carefully at Magda’s feet and toes.

“No, I don’t think so,” Magda said, and Jaelle touched one foot with careful fingers. “No, you were lucky. I was going to say Camilla has some medicine for frostbite, if you need it, but I think even your cheeks are all right; you got out of the wind just in time. Put your stockings on, then, and come to the fire.”

Magda gathered up her wet clothes and hung them on the poles the women had rigged there for drying their own garments. On a small grille over a bed of coals, some small birds were roasting, and they had slung a hook and kettle, in which some kind of hot steaming soup was cooking. It smelled so good that Magda’s mouth watered.

Jaelle said, “May we know your name and Guild-house, sister?”

Magda gave her alias, and said she was from the Guild-house at Temora; she had purposely chosen the farthest city she knew, hoping that the distance would cover any small differences in dress and manners.

“What a night for travel! I do not think there will be so much as a bush-jumper stirring in these hills between here and Nevarsin,” Jaelle said. “Have you journeyed all the way from Temora? Surely your clothes are of Thendara make; that leatherwork and. embroidery is found mostly in the Venza hills.”

There was nothing to do but brazen it out. Magda said, “They are indeed; such warm clothing cannot be bought on the seacoast—it is like trying to buy fish in the Dry Towns. My patroness was generous in providing me with clothing for my journey, and well she might be, sending me into the Hellers at this season!”

“Will you share our meal?”

Prudence dictated having as little to do with the strange women as possible. Yet they seemed to take it so much for granted that it might cause comment and arouse suspicion. Besides, the food smelled too good, after days of powdered porridge, to refuse. She made the usual polite reply: “Gladly, if I may be allowed to contribute my share.”

Jaelle gave the expected answer, “It is not necessary, but will be welcome,” and Magda went to her saddlebags for some confectionery with which she had provided herself for just such an occasion. The woman who was cooking accepted the sweets with a little cry of pleasure. “These, too, are made in the Thendara valley. I have not tasted this sort for years, and I am afraid we shall all be shamefully greedy! Except for Jaelle, who hates sweets like a true Dry-Towner!”

“Shut your silly face,” said Jaelle, turning harshly on the cook, and the older woman bridled and looked sullen. Magda could see now that all the women were older than Jaelle, though most of them seemed young, except for Camilla.
So young; and their elected leader. She is younger than I, I am sure! And beautiful. I don’t think I have ever seen any woman so beautiful!
Jaelle, like the rest; wore the shapeless Amazon clothing: loose trousers, tunic; but this did not conceal the slender, feminine body, the delicate poise of the flame-colored head on her shoulders, the features delicate and pale, and so regular that they would have been almost ordinary, except for the eyes, which were very large and framed in thick dark lashes.

“You have met Camilla,” Jaelle said. “That is Sherna”—she pointed to the woman who was cooking their meal—”and that is Rayna, and that is Gwennis. And in a few minutes, we will have something to eat. Oh, and there are two latrine closets in this shelter; we have taken this one”—she pointed—”for our own use, so that you need not go down among the men to…” She spoke, with complete insouciance, a word Magda had never, heard a Darkovan woman speak; she had seen it only in textbooks, for no man would have used it before her.

I’d better not talk much. Among themselves, at
least, they don’t use the euphemisms thought polite for women!

She noticed, too, that a roughly printed sign hung on the outside of the latrine the women had preempted, warning the men away. The trained anthropologist made another assumption at the back of her mind:
They expect me to know how to read. And some of them, at least, can write.
That, too, was a faint shock.

“Here, come and eat.” Sherna ladled hot soup into Magda’s own cup; divided one of the roast birds with a knife and handed her a share. Like the others, Magda sat on her unrolled blankets to eat. She told herself not to be nervous; she had eaten in Darkovan company often enough before this.

The Amazon Jaelle had pointed out as Gwennis—Magda thought she must be about thirty, a slender pretty woman in a blue linen under tunic asked, “May we know the nature of your mission, Margali, if it is not secret?”

Magda had begun to suspect that among strange bands of Amazons this kind of polite interrogation was customary. In any case, after accepting the invitation to share their fire and meal, she could not retreat into churlish silence.
I was a damn fool. I should have camped in the woods.
But outside the walls of the shelter she could still hear the howling of the storm, giving her the lie.

“It is not secret, no; but it is a family matter of my patroness.”

Rayna, a tall, slender woman with hair so curly that it frizzled all about her head like a small halo in the firelight, said, “And no doubt you will be proud to name her for us?”

Lady Rohana foresaw this. Bless her; I’d never have dared to name her without her permission.
“It is my privilege to serve the Lady Rohana Ardais on a mission to Sain Scarp.”

Camilla, who was sitting next to Jaelle on her rolled-out blankets, pursed her lips and glanced quickly at the rough-looking men, now sitting around their fire and talking loudly as they gobbled food from a big kettle.

Magda thought,
Can those men be bandits? Is it possible they are from Sain Scarp?
The thought set her to prickling with her “hunch” again; she did not hear Jaelle speaking to her and had to ask her to repeat what she had said.