Melitta’s heart quailed with sickening pity, but she grasped Allira firmly in both hands, held her off and shook her hard, until her head flapped loosely up and down. “Lira, in Aldones’ name, stop that squalling! That won’t help you—or me, or Edric, or Storn, or our people! While I’m here, let’s think. Use what brains you have left!”
But Allira could only gasp, “He—he—huh— Buh—Brynat—” She stared at her sister with such dazed, glassy eyes that Melitta wondered in a spasm of terror if harsh usage had left Allira witless or worse. If so, she was frighteningly alone, and might as well give up at once.
She freed herself, searched, and found on a sideboard a half-empty bottle of firi. She would rather have had water, or even wine, but in these straits anything would do. She dashed half the contents full into Allira’s face. Eyes stung by the fiery spirits, Allira gasped and looked up; but now she saw her sister with eyes at least briefly sane. Melitta grasped her chin, tilted the bottle and forced a half-cup of the raw liquor down her sister’s throat. Allira gulped, swallowed, coughed, choked, dribbled, then, anger replacing hysteria, struck down Melitta’s arm and the cup.
“Have you lost your wits, Meli?”
“I was going to ask you that, but I didn’t think you were in any shape to answer,” Melitta said vigorously. Then her voice became more tender. “I didn’t mean to frighten or hurt you, love; you’ve had more than enough of that, I know. But I had to make you listen to me.”
“I’m all right now—as much as I can ever be,” she amended, bitterly.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Melitta said quickly, flinching from what she could read in her sister’s mind; they were both wide open to each other. “But—he came and mocked me, calling you his lady wife—”
“There was even some mummery with one of his red-robed priests, and he sat me in the high seat at his side,” Allira confirmed, “with knife near enough my ribs that I didn’t dare speak—”
“But he didn’t harm you, apart from that?”
“He used neither knife nor whip, if that’s what you mean,” Allira said, and dropped her eyes. Before the accusing silence of the younger girl, she burst out, “What could I have done? Edric dead, for all I knew—you, Zandru knew where—he would have killed me,” she cried out on another gust of sobs. “You would have done the same!”
“Had you no dagger?” Melitta raged.
“He—he took it away from me,” Allira wept.
Melitta thought, I would have used it on myself before he could make me his doxy-puppet in his high hall. But she did not speak the words aloud. Allira had always been a fragile, gentle girl, frightened by the cry of a hawk, too timid to ride any horse but the gentlest of palfreys, so shy and home-loving that she sought neither lover nor husband. Melitta subdued her anger and her voice to gentleness. “Well, love, no one’s blaming you; our people know better and it’s no one else’s business; and all the smiths of Zandru can’t mend a broken egg or a girl’s maidenhead, so let’s think what’s to be done now.”
“Did they hurt you, Meli?”
“If you mean did they rape me, no; that scarface, a curse to his manhood, had no time for me, and I suppose he thought me too fine a prize for any of his men offhand—though he’ll probably fling me to one of them when the time comes, if we can’t stop it.” In a renewed spasm of horror, she thought of Brynat’s rabble of renegades, bandits, and half-human things from far back in the Hellers. She caught Allira’s thought, even the brutal protection of the bandit chief was better than that rabble’s hands. Well, she couldn’t blame Lira—had she had the same choice what might she have done? Not all porridge cooked is eaten, and not all brave words can be put into acts. Nevertheless, a revulsion she could not quite conceal made her loose her sister from her arms and say dispassionately, “Edric, I think, is in the dungeons; Brynat forbade me to go there. But I think I would feel it if he were dead. You are more psychic than I; when you pull yourself together, try to reach his mind.”
“And Storn!” Allira broke out again in frenzy. “What has he done to protect us—lying like a log, safe and guarded by his own magic, and leaving us all to their tender mercies!”
“What could he have done otherwise?” Melitta asked reasonably. “He cannot hold a sword or see to use it; at least he has made sure that no one can use him for a puppet—as they are using you.” Her eyes, fierce and angry, bored into her sister; “Has he gotten you with child yet?”
“I don’t know—it could be.”
“Curse you for a whittling,” Melitta raged. “Don’t you, even now, see what it is he wants? If it were only a willing girl, why not one—or a dozen— of the maids? Listen. I have a plan, but you must use what little sense the gods gave you for a few days at least. Wash your face, robe yourself decently, try to look like the Lady of Storn, not some camp follower torn from the kennel! Brynat thinks he has you tamed and well-married, but he is a ruffian and you are a lady; you have the blood of the Seven Domains; you can outwit him if you try. Play for time, Allira! Have the vapors, play at mourning, put him off with promises—at worst, tell him that the day you know you are pregnant you will throw yourself from the battlements—and make him believe it! He daren’t kill you, Allira; he needs you robed and jewelled in the high seat beside him, at least until he can be sure no follower or enemy will try to topple him from this height. Put him off for a few days, no more, and then—”
“Can you waken Storn to help us?” Allira gasped.
“By all the gods, what an idiot you are! Storn in trance is all that keeps us safe, Lira, and gives us time. Storn roused and in his hands—that devil’s whelp would stick a knife in Edric’s guts, toss me to his soldiers for a few hours’ sport while I lived, and who knows if he’d even want a child from you? No, Lira, pray Storn keeps safe in trance till I can think of a plan! You do your part, keep up your courage, and I’ll do mine.”
In her heart a small desperate plan was maturing. She dared not tell Allira. They might be overheard, or, if she formulated it in words, there might be among Brynat’s rabble, some half-human telepath who would win favor from his outlaw lord by bearing tales of the plot. But a seed of hope had been born in her.
“Come, Allira, let us dress you as befits the Lady of Storn, and bedazzle that ruffian into respect,” she said, and prepared, again, to face Brynat without revealing anything.
* * *
III
« ^ »
BARRON had been in the service of the Terran Empire since he was a lad in his late teens and he had served on three planets before coming to Darkover. He discovered that afternoon that he had never left Terra. He found it out by leaving it for the first time.
At the designated gate from the Terran Zone, a bored young clerk looked him over as he examined the slip from Transportation and Personnel, which stated that Barron, Class Two, was being released on liaison assignment beyond the Zone. He remarked, “So you’re the fellow who’s going back into the mountains? You’d better get rid of those clothes and pick up some sort of suitable outfit for travelling here. Those togs you’re wearing might do for the Zone, but back in the hills you’ll get frozen—or maybe lynched. Didn’t they tell you?”
They hadn’t told him anything. Barron felt nonplussed; was he expected to go native? He was a Terran Empire liaison man, not a secret agent. But the clerk was the first person since the accident who had treated him like a human being, and he was grateful. “I thought I was going as an official representative. No safe-conducts, then?”
The clerk shrugged. “Who’d give it? You ought to be planet-wise after five years here. Terrans, or any Empire men, aren’t popular outside Trade City. Or didn’t you bother reading Official Directive Number Two?”
“Not the fine print.” He knew that it made it illegal, on penalty of instant deportation, for Empire men to enter, without permits, any portion of the planet outside the designated trade zones. Barron had never wanted to, and so it never entered his head to wonder why. An alien planet was an
alien planet— there were thousands of them—and his work had always been inside the Zone.
But it was no longer.
The clerk was feeling talkative. “Almost all the Terrans in Mapping and Exploring or the other liaison jobs wear Darkovan clothes. Warmer, and you don’t collect a crowd that way. Didn’t anybody tell you?”
Barron shook his head stubbornly. He didn’t remind the clerk that nobody had been telling him anything for some days. In any case, he was feeling stubborn. He was doing his proper work for the Empire—he was officially appointed to it—and the Darkovans were not to tell him how to dress or act. If the Darkovans didn’t like the clothes he was wearing, they could start learning the tolerance for alien customs which was the first thing required of every man who accepted work for the Terran Empire. He was satisfied with his light, warm synthetic tunic and breeches, his soft, low-cut sandals, and his short lined overcoat, which kept out the wind. Many Darkovans had adopted them in Trade City; the clothing was comfortable and indestructible. Why change it? He said a little stiffly, “It isn’t as if I were wearing Spaceforce uniform. I can see where that might be a breach of good taste. But these?”
The clerk shrugged enigmatically. “It’s your funeral,” he said. “Here, I imagine this is your transport coming now.”
Barron looked down the roughly cobbled street, but saw no sign of any vehicle approaching. There were the usual crew of loungers, women in heavy shawls going about their business, and three men leading horses. He started to say “where” and then realized that the three men, who were coming straight toward the gate, were leading four horses.
He swallowed hard. He had known in a general way that the Darkovans had small technology and used no motor transit. They used various pack and draft animals, indigenous relatives of the buffalo and the larger deer, and horses—probably descended from a strain imported from Nova Terra about a hundred years ago—for riding. It made sense. The Darkovan terrain was unsuited to roadbuilding on a large scale, the population didn’t care about it and in any case there were none of the massive mining and manufacturing operations which are necessary for surface transit. Barron, safely inside the Zone, had noticed all this and his reaction had been “So what?” He hadn’t really cared how the Darkovans lived; it had nothing to do with him. His world was spaceport dispatch: spaceships, cargo, passenger transit— Darkover was a major pivot on long-distance hyper-travel because it was situated conveniently between the High Arm and Low Arm of the Galaxy—mapping ships, and the various tractors and surface machinery for servicing all of those. He was not prepared for the change from spaceship to pack animals.
The three men paused, letting go the reins of the horses, which were well-trained and stood quietly. The foremost of the three men, a sturdy young man in his twenties, said, “You are the Terran representative Daniel Firth Barron?” He had some trouble with the name.
“Z’par servu.” The polite Darkovan phrase, at your service, brought a faint agreeable smile from the young man as he replied in some formula Barron couldn’t understand and then shifted back to Trade City language, saying, “I am Colryn. This is Lerrys, and this, Gwynn. Are you ready? Can you leave at once? Where are your baggages?”
“I’m ready when you are.” Barron indicated the duffel bag, which held his few possessions, and the large but light case which held the equipment he must use. “The bag can be knocked around as much as you like; it’s only clothes. But be careful not to drop the crate; it’s breakable.”
“Gwynn, you see to that,” Colryn said. “We have pack animals waiting outside the city, but for the moment we can carry them with us. It isn’t easy to manage pack animals on the streets here, as narrow as they are.”
Barron realized that they were waiting for him to mount. He reminded himself that this assignment was all that stood between him and ruin, but that didn’t seem very important at the moment. He wanted, for the first time in his adult life, to run. He set his mouth hard and said very stiffly, “I should warn you, I’ve never been on a horse in my life.”
“I am sorry,” Colryn said. His politeness was almost excessive. “There is no other way to go where we are going.”
The one introduced as Lerrys swung Barron’s duffel bag up to his saddle. He said, “I’ll take this, you’ll have enough trouble with your reins, then.” His Terran was substantially better than Colryn’s, being virtually accentless. “You’ll soon pick up riding; I did. Colryn, why don’t you show him how to mount? And ride beside him until he gets over being nervous.”
Nervous! Barron felt like snarling at the youngster that he had been facing strange worlds when this boy was playing with his toys, then he relaxed. What the hell, I am nervous, the kid would have to be blind not to see it.
Before he realized how it had happened, he was in the saddle, his feet slipped through the high ornate stirrups, moving slowly down the street and away from the Terran Zone. He was too confused and too busy keeping his balance to give it a single backward look.
He had never been at close quarters with Darkovans before. At the restaurants and shops in Trade City, they had been dark impassive faces serving him and strangers at a safe distance to be ignored. Now he was among them for an indefinite period of time, with only the most casual of warnings, the dimmest of preparations.
This never happened in the Terran Empire! Damn it, you were never supposed to be assigned work outside your specialty; then if they actually sent you into the field on a strange planet, you were supposed to get all sorts of briefing and training! At the moment it was taking all the concentration he could muster to stay on his horse.
It was the better part of an hour before he began to relax, to feel that a fall was less imminent, and to spare a few minutes to look at his three companions.
All three were younger than Barron, as well as he could judge. Colryn was tall, lanky yet delicately built, and his face was narrow and fine, with a shadow of brown curly beard. His voice was soft, but he seemed unusually self-possessed for so young a man, and he talked and laughed with animation as they rode. Lerrys was sturdy, with hair almost red enough for a Terran, and seemed hardly into his twenties. Gwynn, the third, was swart and tall, the oldest of the three; except for a nod and brief greeting, he had paid no attention to Barron and seemed a little aloof from the younger men.
All three wore loose heavy breeches, falling in flaps over high, carefully-fitted boots, and laced tunic-like shirts in rich, dark colors. Gwynn and Colryn had thick, fur-lined riding cloaks, and Lerrys a short loose fur jacket with a hood. All three wore short gauntlets, knives in their belts and smaller knives in pockets at the top of their boots; Gwynn had a sword as well, although for riding it was swung across the crupper of his horse. They all had hair cut smoothly below their ears and a variety of amulets and jewelry. They looked fierce, bright and barbaric. Barron, aware of his own thoroughly civilized clothing, hair, grooming and manner, felt queerly frightened. Damn it, I’m not ready for this sort of thing!
They rode at first through cobbled streets, between the crowded houses and markets of the Old Town; then along wider stone roads where the going was smoother, between high houses set back behind gardens and unfamiliar high towers. Finally the stone road ended to become trampled grass and the riders turned aside toward a long, low enclosure and through wooden and stone fences and gateways into a sort of compound of reddish, trampled earth, where several dozen unfamiliarly dressed men were doing various things: loading and unloading animals, saddling and grooming them, cooking over open fires or on braziers, washing and splashing in a wooden trough, and carrying buckets of feed and water to the beasts. It was very cold and very confusing, and Barron was glad, at last, to reach the lee of a rough stone wall, where he was permitted to slide from his horse and turn it over, at Colryn’s nod, to a roughly dressed man who came to lead it away.
He walked between Gwynn and Lerrys, Colryn remaining behind to see to the animals, under a shelter roofed and walled against the wind. Lerrys said, “You’re not
used to riding; why don’t you rest while we get food ready? And haven’t you any riding clothes? I can bring your bag—it would be better to change into them now.”
Although Barron knew that the youngster was trying to be kind, he felt irritated at the continued harping on this point. “The clothes I have with me are just like this; I’m sorry.”
“In that case you’d better come with me,” Lerrys said, and led him out of the shelter again, through the opposite end of the long enclosure. Heads turned to follow them as they passed; someone shouted something and people laughed loudly. He heard repeated murmurs of Terranan, which didn’t need any interpreting. Lerrys turned and said firmly, “Chaireth.” That caused a momentary silence and then a brief flurry of quiet words and mutters. They all moved away with some deference as the young redhead motioned to them. Finally the two came out into a market or shop—mostly clay jars and coarse glassware, a multitude of loose garments lying over baskets and barrels. Lerrys said firmly, “You can’t possibly travel into the mountains in the outfit you’re wearing. I don’t mean to sound offensive, but its impossible.”
“I wasn’t given any orders—”
“Listen, my friend”—Lerrys used the Darkovan word com’ii—“You have no idea how cold it gets, travelling in the open, especially back in the hills. Your clothes may be warm”—he touched a fold of the light synthetic—“but only for conditions between walls. The Hellers are the very bones of the earth. Your feet will be sore, riding in those things, not to mention—”
Barron, now fiercely embarrassed, had to say flatly, “I can’t afford it.”
Lerrys drew a deep breath. “My foster father has ordered me to provide everything that is necessary for your well-being, Mr. Barron.” Barron was surprised at the manner of address—the Darkovans did not use honorifics or surnames—but then, Lerrys apparently spoke excellent Terran. He wondered if the young man were a professional interpreter. “Who is your foster father?”