The ransom was safely hidden in her saddlebags, converted into the copper bars that were the standard Darkovan currency. In Terran exchange it was no more than a couple of months’ salary for a good agent; they probably wouldn’t even bother to take it out of Peter’s “hazard” pay.
Why am I doing this? Peter’s a grown man, able to take his own risks. I’m not his guardian. I’m not even his wife anymore. I don’t love him that much, not anymore, not now. So why? But she had no answer, and it nagged at the back of her mind as she set off down the trail. She stopped at the indicator post near the travel-shelter, locating the next three shelters along this trail. One was at a reasonable distance for a large caravan with heavily laden pack animals; a second was located at a good day’s ride for a party traveling at an easy pace but without much gear; the third was about at the limit of a long day’s hard ride for a solitary traveler. Maybe I can sleep there tonight … She turned from the post and started along the trail, feeling a faint unease she could not identify; then it came to her.
I’m out of character, reading the travel-post. Most Darkovan women can’t read-Literacy even among men on Darkover was by no means universal, though most men could spell out a placard or scrawl their own names; among women it was extremely rare, and her small Darkovan playmates at Caer Donn had been astonished and slightly shocked-and a little envious-when they discovered that Margali could read, that her own father had taught her. Out of character. Damn it, this whole trip is out of character.
Magda clucked to her horse, and started along the trail. Rohana had warned her: “I traveled with the Free Amazons, but not as one of them; I do not deceive myself that I know all of their ways and customs. If I were you, I would avoid any meeting with real Amazon groups; but most of the folk in the hills where you will travel know nothing at all about them. So no one will question your disguise, if you are careful.”
And in seven days she had not been challenged, though once she had had to share the travel shelter with two men, traders from the far hills. By law and custom, these shelters, put up centuries ago, and kept inspected and stocked even in wartime by the border patrols, were sacred places of neutrality, and must be shared by all comers; anything else would have condemned other travelers to die of cold and exposure. By law, even blood feuds were suspended in the shelters, as Magda had heard was the custom during forest fires. The men had glanced briefly at Magda’s short hair and Amazon clothing, spoken a few formally courteous words, and ignored her entirely after that.
But since then she had met no one; the advanced season had sent most travelers home to their own firesides. The clouds had thinned and gone, and the great red sun of Darkover, which some poet in the Terran Zone had christened The Bloody Sun, was rising between the peaks, flooding the high snowfields with flaming crimson and gold. As she rode up into the pass, it seemed that a sea of flame bathed the high snowcaps, a brilliance of solitude that exhilarated and excited her.
But the sunrise subsided, and there was nothing but the lonely silence of the trail. Silence, and too much time to think, to ask herself again and again: Why am I doing this? Am I still in love with the bastard?
Pride, maybe, that a man who shared my bed-however briefly-should be abandoned and left to die, with no one to help him?
Or maybe, when we were growing up in Caer Donn, just the few of us among all the Darkovan children, we absorbed their codes, their ethics. Loyalty, kinship’s dues. To the Empire, Peter is only an employee, expendable. To me, to any Darkovan, that’s an outrageous notion, an obscenity.
She crossed the path before the sun was more than an hour high in the sky, her ears aching with the altitude, and began to descend into the next valley. At noon she stopped at a little mountain village and indulged herself by buying a mug of hot soup and a few fried cakes at a food-stall. Some curious children gathered around, and Magda guessed, from their eagerness, that they saw very few outsiders; she gave them some sweets from her saddlebags, and lingered, resting her animals before the climb to the next pass, enjoying her first taste of fresh food since she had left Thendara.
They were all curious as kittens; they asked where she had come from, and when she told them “Thendara,” they stared as if she had said “From world’s end.” She supposed that to these children, never out of their own hills, Thendara was the world’s end. But when they asked her business, she smiled and said it was a secret of her patroness. Lady Rohana had given her permission to use her name. “I will give you my safe-conduct, too, under my seal. In the foothills there are many who owe service to Gabriel and to me.” She had also cautioned her against any but the most casual contact with genuine Amazons, but had advised her that if she met any by chance, she would be asked for her Guild-house, and for the name of the woman who had received her oath. “In this case, you may say Kindra n’ha Mhari; she is dead these three years”-and a fleeting sadness had touched Rohana’s eyes-“but she was my dear friend, and I do not think she would grudge this use of her name. But if the Gods are kind you will get to Sain Scarp, and, hopefully, back again, without using it.”
She had finished eating, and was watering her animals at the village trough when she saw a pair of men riding into the square. By the cut of their cloaks she knew they were from the far Hellers; they were bearded, and wore wicked-looking knives in their belts. They looked at Magda and, she fancied, at her laden saddlebags, with a regard that made her uneasy. She cut short the watering, clambered hastily into her saddle, and took the trail out of town. She hoped they would stop there for a good, long rest, and she would not see them again.
For a long time the trail led upward between heavily wooded slopes. The ice and snow were melting in the noon sun and the trail was slushy underfoot; Magda let her horse find its own pace, and when the road grew steepest, dismounted to lead it. She paused at a bend in the trail, where the trees thinned at a giddy height, looking down at the narrow line of road far below. There she saw, with consternation, what looked like the same two men she had seen in the village. Were they following her?
Don’t be paranoid. This is the only road northwest into the Hellers; am I the only one who could have legitimate business along it? She stepped to the edge, careful not to slip on the muddy, slushy cliff, and looked down at the men riding the trail. Could she even be sure they were the same two men? Yes, for one man had been riding a roan horse; they were not common at any latitude, and to see two in the mountains in the same day’s ride was entirely unlikely. As if to dispel her last doubt, one looked up, apparently saw Magda silhouetted along the edge, and leaned over to speak urgently to his companion; they drew at their horses’ reins, edging in toward the cliff where they would not be visible from above.
Magda felt panic grip and drag at her, a physical sensation like a cramp along her leg muscles. She hurried back to her horse, ordering herself sternly to be calm. I’m armed. I’ve been combat-trained since I was sixteen, and first knew I was going into Intelligence. On any other world, she knew, she would have been expected to take this kind of chance routinely, man or woman. Here she’d been sheltered by Darkovan custom.
If it came to a fight-she laid her hand on her knife for a moment, trying to reassure herself-it would be better to make a stand in the pass. She could defend herself better there than on the down slopes. But need it come to a fight? Terran agents were trained to avoid confrontations when possible. And she would have bet that even Free Amazons didn’t go around looking for trouble.
Suddenly she knew that she could not, could not force herself to make a stand here and face them. She commanded herself to stay here and think it through, but even while she tried to form her thoughts clearly she was guiding her horse away down the slope, down the trail, hurrying and urging it more, she knew, than a good rider would ever do (there was a mountain proverb of her childhood, “On a steep road let your horse set the pace”), yet she knew she was almost racing downhill, hearing small stones slip and slide beneath the horse’s hooves.
It was not long
before she realized she could not go on like this; if one of her animals should fall and break a leg she would be afoot and stranded. She drew the horse to a stop, patting its heaving sides in apology. What’s wrong with me, why did I run away like that? Behind her, the road to the pass lay bare and unoccupied. Maybe they weren’t following me at all. … But she felt the vague unease, the “hunch” she had learned, in years of successful agent work, always to trust; and it said, loud and clear: run, hide, disappear, get lost. The woman who had trained her, far away on another world, had said: “Every good undercover agent is a little psychic. Or they don’t survive long in the service.”
Now what? She couldn’t outrun them, burdened as she was with luggage and pack animal. Sooner or later they would come up with her, and then it would come to a fight.
She looked at the ground, covered with melting snow and mud, an amorphous trampled brownish mess. Lucky. In new snow they’d see my tracks … and see where I left the trail, which would be worse … But in the running, muddy water and slush all tracks vanished as fast as they were made. She turned aside from the road, leading the animals through a small gap in the trees; turned back to obliterate, with a quick hand, the marks in the snow where she had crossed the edge; led them some distance from the road and tethered them in a thick grove of evergreens, where they could not be seen.
Then she slipped back, found a concealed vantage point where she could conceal herself between tress and underbrush, and gnawed nervously on some dried fruit as she waited to see the success of her trick.
It was nearly an hour before the riders she had seen came down the slopes, hurrying their mounts as much as they could in the mushy trail underfoot. But neither of them even glanced in Magda’s direction as they hurried past. When they were out of sight, she crawled shakily from her hiding place. She noted peripherally that her knees were weak and trembling, and that the palms of her hands were clammy and wet.
What’s the matter with me? I’m not behaving like a trained agent-or even like a Free Amazon! I’m behaving like a-like a bunny rabbit!
And why am I panicking now, anyway? I did the sensible thing. Any of our agents, man or woman, on any world, in that situation, would have done just what I did. Kept out of trouble…
Yet she knew, no matter how she tried to rationalize it, that her flight had not been a considered thing, based on her standing orders to avoid a fight where possible. It had been, quite simply, a rout. I panicked. That’s the long and short of it. I panicked, and I ran.
I behaved like … like … Realization flashed over her. Not like a Terran agent. Not like a Free Amazon. Like an ordinary, conventional Darkovan girl.
The kind I’ve taught myself to be, in Thendara. The kind I was brought up to be, in Caer Donn …
The short winter day was drawing to a close, and she thought, I’ll camp here tonight, in the woods; I’ll let them get a good, long start. By tomorrow they’ll have gone through two or three of those little villages; and with luck they’ll think I just found a place to stay in a village, and give up.
Or, possibly, they were respectable traders on their own lawful business and in a hurry to get home to their wives and children, she considered.
She put up her small tent. It was a compromise, the maximum possible protection in bad weather combined with the minimum possible in weight and size; a combination of an undersized tent and an oversized sleeping bag. It was the standard Darkovan traveler’s model. She knew already that no sane person ever spent a night outdoors if he could possibly help it, which was why the roads were lined with the travel-shelters and huts and why they were sacred places of neutrality.
But she spent that night in the open anyway. By good fortune the weather kept fine, even the predawn snowfall unusually light; but Magda knew, as she emerged shivering, this was a bad sign. Clouds scudded thick and black, away north, and a high wind had already begun to toss the tips of the evergreens, promising a severe storm on the way.
In the lonely silence of the trail she went over and over her failure. However she rationalized it, it was a failure; she had panicked.
I’ve taught myself always to behave that way, whenever I step on the Darkovan side. It was the standard Intelligence conditioning: build yourself a persona, a character for whatever planet you’re working on, and never step out of it, even for an instant, until you’re safely back inside the Terran Zone.
But the personality I built for myself in Thendara won’t work here. Because of the particular society on Darkover, and the way women live. It was different for the men. But I was the only woman; and I never realized how jar I had come from ordinary agent’s training …
She tried to think it through, to analyze just what basic changes she would have to make in her basic Darkovan persona for this assignment, but the attempt made her so overwhelmingly anxious that she had to give up the effort. The trouble if, I’ve been trained never to think of Terra outside the Zone. Now she was trying to bring a process as automatic as breathing under voluntary control; and it wasn’t working.
I can’t be a Free Amazon, I don’t know enough about them. Even Lady Rohana said she didn’t know enough about them. So I can be only my basic Darkovan persona, pretending to be a Free Amazon. Lady Rohana seemed to think it would be effective enough to fool people who didn’t have much to do with Free Amazons; but I’d just better hope I don’t meet any real ones!
This caused another of those weird small repercussions which, for years, she had thought of as “hunches” and learned to trust. Oddly, this one iced her blood; she had physically to pull her cloak tighter about her shoulders against the sudden runnel of cold down her spine. It would be just my luck, to meet a couple!
Peter always said I had a talent for bluffing. Better get used to thinking of him by his Darkovan name.
She had a sudden moment of blank terror when the name refused to come to her mind, when she wholly blanked on it. It lasted only a few seconds, and the panic ebbed away as the name came back to her. Piedro. That’s in the Hellers. In the lowlands they’d call him Pier…-why did I blank on it like that?
It was an hour past noon when she passed one of the shelter huts; it was empty, and she hesitated, tempted to stay there overnight. But she had already lost half a day, and always, at the back of her mind, was the thought of the midwinter deadline. She must not only be at Sain Scarp by midwinter, but she must leave some leeway for return to Thendara before the winter storms closed the passes. I can’t see us camping on Rumal di Scarp’s doorstep all winter.
Nor did she particularly want to spend the winter cooped up anywhere, alone with Peter. Once I used to daydream about something that would isolate us, so we had time only to be alone together. … Even now, it might be … pleasurable. … Exasperated, Magda told herself to snap out of it. She wondered, half annoyed, if Bethany had been right all along; was she still half in love with Peter? I should have taken another lover right away, after we separated. God knows I had enough chances. I wonder why I didn’t.
She checked the notice board, and discovered that there was another shelter just about half a day’s ride distant. As she turned her back on the shelter she felt again the curious, almost physical prickling of the “hunch,” but told herself fiercely not to be superstitious. I’m afraid to go on, so I find reasons, and call it ESP!
The trail steepened and grew rough underfoot; by midafternoon the thickening clouds lay so deep on the mountain that Magda was riding through a thick white blanket of fog. The dim gray world was full of echoes; she could hear her horse’s hooves sounding dimly, behind and before her, like invisible, ghostly companions. The valley was gone, and the lower slopes; she rode high and alone, on a narrow trail above the known world. She had never been afraid of heights, but now she began to be afraid of the narrowness of the dim trail, of the white nothingness that hemmed her in on every side and might hide anything-or worse, nothing. Her mind kept returning to the cliffs and crags below, where an animal, putting a foot down wrong, might step off th
e trail, go plunging down the mountainside to be dashed to death on the invisible rocks far below. …
As the darkness deepened, the fog dissolved into fine rain and then into a thick, fast-falling snow, wiping out trail and landmarks. The snow froze as it fell, and the slush underfoot crunched and crackled under her horse’s hooves; then the wind began to howl through the trees and, where they thinned, to roar across the trail, driving icy needles of sleet into her face and eyes. She pulled up her cloak’s collar and wrapped a fold of her scarf over her nose and chin, but the cold made her nose run, and the water froze on her nose and mouth and turned the scarf to a block of ice. Snow clung to her eyelashes and froze there, making it impossible to see. Her horse began to slip on the icy trail, and Magda dismounted to lead it and the faltering pack animal, glad of the knee-high boots she was wearing; a woman’s soft low sandals or ankle-high, tied moccasins would have been soaked in a moment.
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.