"Even Meris?"
"Meris? She's got more motive than all the rest of us put together."
"What's that, then?"
"To be basted by more men than any girl yet. Do you know, she even managed to have a few while we were hiding in the warehouse? Malendik, of course; and even N'Kasit, now and again. But others, too. I was always terrified she was going to get us caught, only somehow she never quite did."
He looked up at the scatter of stars visible above the clearing. Then, turning aside and making as though to rake the fire with his wooden spear, he asked, "Did you know it was me that gave the information about Tharrin?"
"About Tharrin? To Sencho, you mean?"
"Well, Tharrin was--he meant something to you once, didn't he?"
"How did you know?"
"Oh, pedlars hear everything, you know; and people in Meerzat are no blinder than anywhere else. I've often felt very bad about Tharrin. But you see, I had to give some sort of worthwhile information to Sencho if I was going to keep him convinced that I really was a Leopard agent. And anyway, the plain truth was that Tharrin had as good as done for himself before ever I spoke a word."
"It doesn't matter now," she said. "Not any more it doesn't."
"I'd warned him to get out," went on Zirek, "but he was always such a fool. Tharrin--he never really understood what he'd taken on, you know. It was all just a matter of easy money--kind of a game--to him; until the day he found it wasn't, I suppose. 'Oh, I'm a master of cunning!' he said to me once. Cran! That was about the last damn' thing he was! Santil had already come to see him as a liability--he could never keep his mouth shut, you see. All the same, I've been very sorry, Maia. I wanted to tell you and get it off my chest."
"It doesn't matter now--not any more," she said again. "Tharrin--if he hadn't 'a done for himself one way he'd 'a done it another; I c'n see that now. But Bekla--Sen-cho--the Leopards--it's all so far away now, isn't it?"
"Not for Occula it isn't. She's pledged herself to her goddess, you know, to revenge her father; to revenge him or die. I was there, in Thettit, when she did it. I believe she'll succeed, too."
"I pray for Occula night and morning," she answered. He nodded: then raised her hand to his lips for a moment.
"I reckon my watch is finished and more than finished. The demon pedlar's given good value, as usual: I'm going to wake the young master. Why don't you get some sleep now, Maia? It's a short enough night and you'll need it all tomorrow. There isn't really anything to be afraid of, you know. None of those bastards out there's going to come any nearer, and we've plenty of wood to last till morning."
She gave him a quick kiss on each cheek and went back to her place. Her head still ached, but she felt in better spirits for their talk. Yet how strange--what he had said of Zen-Kurel and Anda-Nokomis! She couldn't tell what to make of it. Both the forest clamor and the eyes were still as present as ever, yet now she was so tired that she was past all caring. They can eat me in my sleep, she thought; I wouldn't even bother to wake. Soon she was sleeping as soundly as any healthy sixteen-year-old in the world.
90: DOWN THE DAUUS
When Maia awoke, in daylight, the first sight that met her eyes was Zen-Kurel standing a few yards away and looking intently down at her. Somehow she had the feeling that he had been doing so for a little while. His expression was certainly not one of dislike. It was difficult to feel sure exactly how it struck her; it suggested at one and the same time both aloofness--well, distance, say--and a kind of wistful admiration; rather as a man might look while standing beside a lake and watching a graceful boat passing offshore. However, it was only there for a second, for she had hardly met his gaze before he had glanced away.
She looked around her. There was no one else in sight. Uncertain and alarmed, she addressed him directly for the first time since Suba.
"Where are the others?"
"They've gone hunting."
But he hadn't, she thought. Why not? If they were going hunting, the obvious person to leave behind would have been Anda-Nokomis.
He said no more, and she began to feel tense and embarrassed. After a little she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, got up and went into the undergrowth to pass water and get cleaned up as best she could.
She remained there until she heard the others coming back.
The only person who had had any success was Meris, who had shot a fair-sized monkey. Zirek had missed a parrot and lost the arrow. It was clear, however, that both he and Bayub-Otal were in better spirits, while Meris, when Maia congratulated her, came close to smiling.
"I always could shoot," she said. "Latto used to say I had a natural eye. You never know what's going to come in useful."
"Oh, I don't know; sometimes you do," said Zirek, looking at her with his head on one side. Maia had to turn away to conceal her amusement. Yet all the same, she thought, perhaps there had once been a time when Meris's ways had had power to give him pain.
Zen-Kurel gutted, skinned and quartered the monkey with Maia's knife and they roasted it over the glowing ashes. It tasted better than she had expected; especially the kidneys, which they shared between them. Wiping her knife and sheathing it at her belt, she recalled what Zirek had said about the gods intending them to survive. Well, it wouldn't hurt to believe it: he himself evidently did. She only wished that she, like him, had the assurance of gaining everything she desired in the world.
Setting off westwards into the forest, they soon found themselves lost in the same dim maze as before.
Indeed, thought Maia, one might suppose it to be the very ground they had covered yesterday. In this place there were no landmarks, no localities, no distinctive features at all. The thought of the identical miles of jungle extending round them began to fill her with despair.
She was plodding behind Zirek, thinking wretchedly of her house in Bekla and wondering what might have happened to Occula, when Zen-Kurel, who was in front, turned quickly round, a finger to his lips, and gestured to them to remain still. For a moment she felt afraid, until she saw that he was not. The next instant he had crouched down, pointing towards a place a little way ahead where the undergrowth and bushes appeared to have been trodden al-most fiat.
As they waited silently, her ear caught a sound familiar enough from days gone by--the grunting of pigs.
A moment later the leaders came in sight between the trees; two big boars, tusked and bristle-backed, making their way along what must for them be an accustomed track. They were followed by about a dozen sows and as many piglets.
Zen-Kurel whispered first to Bayub-Otal and Meris. Then, having crept silently over to Zirek and herself, he murmured barely audibly, "They'll be making for the water. We'll follow them."
It was an eerie business--proper job for a ghost, she thought--this stealing through the gloom in the wake of the unhurrying sounder. Zen-Kurel led the way, flitting from one tree-trunk to another and often, without looking round, motioning to them to stay where they were.
At last, after what she judged to have been well over two hours, Maia found herself peering cautiously down into a shallow dell of bare earth. Here the pigs were gathered; several, on the far side, wading and rolling in a muddy, shallow morass. Beyond lay the river, overhung with trees and flowing smoothly from right to left.
Meris touched Zen-Kurel's arm. "Can't we kill one? Choose a piglet: all shoot together."
The nearest piglet was hardly more than twenty yards away below them. Zen-Kurel, Zirek and Meris crept back among the trees, strung their bows and laid arrows on the strings. Then they stood up together, came quickly forward and loosed within a second of one another.
Zirek missed, but the other two arrows pierced the pig-let's flank. It squealed shrilly and on the instant the whole sounder, heaving themselves up from the mud, went blundering away through the undergrowth. As the wretched piglet tried to follow, Meris hit it with a second arrow and it fell to the ground, jerking and kicking. Zen-Kurel, leaping down, transfixed it with his stake.
"Eat it now, sir?" asked Zirek, following with Maia and pulling his arrow out of the ground. Zen-Kurel nodded and Zirek at once set about making a fire.
About an hour later, as they were quenching the ashes and Zirek was getting together what little remained of the meat to carry with them, Maia finally gathered courage to speak.
"Captain Zen-Kurel, I want to make a'suggestion. I hope you'll listen to it fair and square, 'cos I reckon it might make a lot of difference."
They all stopped what they were doing and looked at her with some surprise, for not once in their hearing had she addressed him directly before. Zen-Kurel, too, was obviously startled.
"Naturally I'll listen," he answered after a few moments; his manner suggesting that while he did not particularly wish to, he had no alternative, "if you've got something to suggest which you think's important."
She forced herself to look him in the eye and assume an air of detachment.
"Trying to walk down the bank of this river's going to be next to impossible. I don't reckon it can be done, not with all the undergrowth an' that." She waited to see whether he would interrupt her, but he said nothing. "What we ought to do is use the river. I don't mean swim; even without tools we can make a raft as'll be plenty good enough. Three or four logs, that's all, lashed together down their length. You don't sit on it: you just hold on to it and it'll take us down."
He was looking at her uncertainly and frowning slightly. She hurried on, "I wouldn't have said anything, only I reckon it might very well make all the difference 'tween being dead and staying alive."
It was Bayub-Otal who broke the pause. "I think she's probably right, Zenka, but before we make up your minds I'd like to get a clearer idea of this raft and how we're to make it."
"I've helped to make them on Lake Serrelind 'fore now," she said. "Of course we had proper cord for binding then, but I reckon creeper'll do near enough, long as we use plenty, right down the length. 'Sides, we can use some of our clothes as well."
As they discussed the idea, it was clear that Zen-Kurel was anxious to avoid giving any impression that he might be prejudiced against Maia. He sat silently, looking from one to another and listening intently. It struck her that he had probably realized, as had she, that in fact the practicability of her plan depended on whether the rest of them decided in favor of attempting it.
"Maia," asked Meris, "are you sure there's nothing in the river that might attack us?"
She shook her head. "River's safer than the forest. All we'd have to look out for would be sunken branches an' that under water, might go into you, but 'tain't very likely. 'Course, we don't even have to make a raft. If everyone had a log it would be enough to keep afloat. Only we could put our stuff on a raft, see."
Having said this much, she kept quiet. To be too insistent would only spoil everything. Anyway it could, she felt, only be a matter of waiting until they had accustomed themselves to the idea. After all, the only alternative was the forest, and surely to Cran they must have had enough of that by now?
"But this raft--it can only be a very rough sort of job, Maia, can't it?" asked Zirek. "What happens if it hits something in the river and falls to pieces?"
"We'd still be able to get to shore holding on to the logs," she said. "I taught myself to swim holding on to a log, when I wasn't no more 'n five or six years old."
"Years and years ago," said Zirek solemnly. Even Zen-Kurel smiled.
Anda-Nokomis was with her, she knew; the least fit for it of them all. Even as she realized this, Zirek put it to him point-blank.
"Do you want to try it, sir?"
"Y-es," he replied pausingly. "Yes, on the whole I think I do. Even if we don't get very far, you see, we'll still be no worse off."
"I think we must try it," said Zen-Kurel. "I admit I had no idea the forest would be as bad as this. If we're to get through at all it's the river or nothing."
They toiled for three or four hours, and with every hour Maia's standing gained. Though she was, of course, careful to avoid any suggestion of it, they were dependent on her.
Zen-Kurel, obliged from time to time to confer with her as the work went on, spoke to her with detachment, his manner suggesting that their joint need made it necessary, for the moment at all events, simply to concentrate on what had to be done.
Finding suitable logs took longer than Maia had expected. When she had first put forward her suggestion, she had had in mind the idea of a raft about five feet long and three feet wide, made of no more than four logs. They were lucky enough to find two good ones almost at once. One was already smooth along its entire length, while the other had a few outgrowths and small brandies which they were able more or less to trim with her knife. After this, however, they hunted in vain for the best part of an hour. Finally Maia decided that they would have to be content with two smaller rafts.
For the second raft they made do with three thinner logs of unequal length. One was more crooked than she really cared about--there would not be a snug fit along the lengtli-- but as long as there was enough lashing she judged that it would probably serve at a pinch.
There was no lack of creepers, but the difficulty was to disentangle them from the branches and one another. Maia, knowing that possible collisions, prolonged immersion and the force of the current were bound to soften and slacken them, insisted on their using a great many--up and down the whole length of the logs, like a weave. When this task was at last finished, they strengthened the bindings with their tunics, knotted together by the sleeves. The creepers might break up, thought Maia, but at least these would not.
Her own tunic, however, with the money in it, she kept on, reckoning that it would not be too heavy for her to swim in. Both rafts were far from perfect, but it was now well after noon and if they wanted to escape a second night in the forest they must get on.
In the event, two rafts proved better than one would have been. In the first place they were, of course, lighter and therefore easily carried out through the inshore mud. As Bayub-Otal said, they could hardly have hoisted anything bigger. And once in the water they were more ma-neuverable and easily controlled.
All but Maia, as soon as they found themselves out of their depth, drifting with the current and entirely dependent on the support of the logs, were hard put to it not to give way to fear. To them, this was an altogether strange and hazardous experience. Even Zen-Kurel was tense, bit-ing his lip and clutching tightly as the raft he was sharing with Meris began to bob and gather the full speed of the current.
The river, running strongly between dense trees and half-dried swamps, was for the most part narrower than Maia had expected; and therefore deeper, too, she thought with relief. The last thing she wanted was for someone to become entangled in weed or ripped by a submerged branch, and then perhaps to panic and lose hold. Any quick, unexpected tHt would be unfortunate, too, for their few belongings--their bows, arrows and spears, their shoes and what little food was left, together with three cloaks (Zen-Kurel and Bayub-Otal had none), were stacked on the rafts; lashed down, of course; but they would be better dry than wet.
As soon as Maia had shown Meris how to trim her raft by pressing down on it more strongly than Zen-Kurel, she left them, swam across to the other and held it back until the first had floated past, so that the two were in line instead of side by side. In this way both could drift on the midstream current without risk of fouling each other.
For the first quarter of an hour and more she remained hard at work, continually swimming back and forth between the rafts to right them as they drifted one way and another and above all to keep an anxious eye on the lashings. However, they seemed to grow none the looser for being soaked and after a time she decided that they would probably hold up well enough, unless either raft were to get snagged or rammed.
She could not help feeling, now, that she was lucky in her companions. Meris, agile, and hard as nails, had never been one to ask or expect indulgence from anybody. Things might have been very different, thought Maia,
if it had happened to be Nennaunir or Otavis. As for Bayub-Otal and Zen-Kurel, both had soon fought down their initial nervousness and begun to steer their rafts by using their free hands. Only Zirek--to his own chagrin and annoyance--remained tense and clumsy, so that for a while Maia stayed beside him, patiently demonstrating again and again what she wanted him to learn.
After they had been drifting for nearly half an hour there came into sight, about two hundred yards ahead, what she had been dreading--a fallen tree spanning almost the entire stream. A quick look showed her that under the right bank, where the base and the torn-up roots were lying, there was probably just room for the rafts to pass below the trunk where it slanted down to the water. From midstream to the left bank extended a hopeless tangle of branches and trapped flotsam.
It was not going to be possible to guide both rafts across to the right bank in time.
"Anda-Nokomis," she said, "try to do all you can to stop your raft ramming the tree hard, 'cos that might break it up. I'll be back as quick as I can."
With this depressing advice--all she had time for--she left him, swam ahead to the other raft, gripped it with both hands and succeeded in swinging it over to the right, just upstream of the overhanging trunk, where she let it go. The raft slipped away from her, passed under the trunk and continued on its way.
Meanwhile Bayub-Otal and Zirek had drifted into the branchy tangle in midstream. To free them proved beyond her powers. For several minutes she struggled, sawing at the sodden branches with her knife and trying as best she could to pull the raft backwards and sideways. At last she was obliged to tell Zirek and Bayub-Otal to scramble up onto the transverse tree-trunk and crawl along it as far as the right bank, thus lightening the raft sufficiently for her to drag it across to the gap and hold it while they slid back into the water on either side. A moment later they were through.
Meanwhile, however, Meris and Zen-Kurel had drifted alarmingly far ahead. It took Maia twenty minutes or more to overtake them and then to halt their raft inshore until the other had closed the distance. She felt exhausted and was glad enough to hold on beside Meris until she had recovered herself.