"I don't want to talk about the Ledges," said the girl quickly.
"The Ledges?" Maia was mystified.
"Berialtis grew up on Quiso," said Ta-Kominion, "but she didn't fancy becoming a priestess--sensible lass--so she went back to Ortelga. She's come along to look after me while we help Elvair to tidy up in Chalcon."
"You'll be a bit of a traveler time you're done, then; same as me," said Maia to the girl.
Herself feeling amiable enough, she was nevertheless aware that for some reason the girl did not like her.
Could this be merely resentment--envy--she wondered; or did Berialtis perhaps suppose that she might have designs on Ta-Kominion? Somehow, she felt intuitively, neither of these explanations quite fitted.
There was something else about the girl--a kind of general detachment and preoccupation, hard to define exactly, but as though she were not, for some reason or other, heart-and-soul in the occasion.
Yet she was evidently a free woman and no slave. She was expensively, if rather quietly, dressed, in a plain blue robe and matching sandals which must have cost a good deal, and she had just spoken to Ta-Kominion as no slave-girl would. But if she was a shearna, why this inappropriate aloofness and lack of warmth, the very reverse of Nennaunir or of any competent professional? Perhaps this was the best Ortelga could put up in the way of a shearna? Probably it wasn't so very different there from Suba. This girl was just a variant of Luma, only she happened to be pretty. (But I'm a Suban, she thought yet again: O Shakkarn, I'm a Suban!)
As they seated themselves and the slaves began serving food and drink, Maia entered upon her task of making herself agreeable to Bel-ka-Trazet. She soon perceived what Elvair-ka-Virrion had meant. This must once have been a warm-spirited, accomplished young nobleman, full of ardor and enjoyment of his own ability and of the promise before him. He felt his disfigurement bitterly--however could it have happened? she wondered. Elvair-ka-Virrion had spoken of his skill as a hunter: a wild beast, then, perhaps?--but he'd be damned if anyone was going to be given the slightest cause either to pity or reject him because of it. Authority, self-possession, restraint, formidability, irreproachable correctness; these were the weapons with which he compelled the respect of his own people--no doubt a rough, superstitious lot who, unless he could make them fear, trust and admire him, would probably regard him as a man accursed. These were his harsh comforters, the tutelary demons who companioned him and gave meaning and purpose to his ravaged, deprived life. He lived with eyes in the back of his head. "Look at Trazet trying to exploit his affliction." "Look at Trazet making up to that shearna. Wonder how she's feeling, poor girl?" No one was going to be given any least opportunity even to think things like this, let alone to utter them. What was it that Elvair-ka-Virrion had said--he was turning his is-land into a fortress? He's turned himself into a fortress an' all, she thought.
The High Baron's face was incapable of adopting the normal expressions which commonly complement speech, yet soon she began to find his conversation full of interest and his company absorbing. Her beauty--which, she knew, constrained so many men because of their self-conscious sense of their own desire for her--plainly caused him no more of a tremor than Fordil's hinnari would bring to a man tone-deaf. Yet he was neither detached nor incurious; and this was flattering. He quickly set about establishing to his own satisfaction that peasant or no, she was no fool. And this discovery once made, he showed his respect for her by talking more freely and making his conversation more demanding. They spoke of Terekenalt and Katria, of King Karnat (with whom, he told her, he had hunted leopards) and the waterways of Suba. He asked her for opinions, and seemed to weigh them as seriously as he might those of his own barons. She found herself talking to him of Meerzat and Serrelind, and then even of her life in Sencho's house; for here, she felt, was a man without contempt for another's misfortune; one who, on the contrary, actually admired suffering and loss which had not been allowed to defeat the sufferer. To him, as to no one else she had met--unless indeed it was Nasada--all human beings, men or women, slave or free, evidently came alike. That was to say, he had slight regard for their rank or station, but treated them in accordance with his own estimation of their capacities. Unlike Nasada, however, he had little use for compassion. She recalled that he was widely renowned as a hunter. Perhaps, she thought, he saw men and women as he might see a quarry. The courageous, resourceful and adroit--these he respected and felt to be worth contending with. The timorous or slow were merely tedious and a waste of time.
Now and then Ged-la-Dan, by contrast uncouth and insensitive, put in a few words, sometimes complimenting her on something which did not deserve a compliment or again, asking her some question which unconsciously revealed a half-envious and half-contemptuous notion of her life in Bekla as a kind of stream of luxurious and extravagant frivolity, and of herself as a girl available to anyone who could pay. Her response to this was a blend of Occula and Nennaunir--part worldly-wise banter, part simulated warmth. Yet Ta-Kominion, she sensed, could perceive very well that she was thus employing the courtesan's skills to humor a boor. He, for his part--a young man in the company of his elders--said little, but his eyes seldom left her, so that she found herself feeling an altogether un-shearna-like sympathy for Berialtis. True, she herself had come with a motive, and to this end she spared no pains to arouse the two Ortelgans. Yet she wished that, in accordance with the usual way of things, there could have been a third girl in the company. Perhaps Bel-ka-Trazet disdained such concessions to convention: no one need bother themselves to provide a girl for him. Or perhaps Elvair-ka-Virrion had been over-zealous to leave her a free hand. Still, it was becoming clear that conventions were going to matter less and less as the barrarz got under way. Several of the guests were fairly drunk already, and she had seen Nenoaunir and another girl whose name she did not know openly walking here and there among the tables, graceful, pausing and predatory as herons in a stream.
As the feasting began to draw to an end and she got up to fetch the Ortelgans a tray-full of sweet things from the central table already filled by the slaves, there suddenly broke out a roar of acclaim and elation, and some ten or twelve young officers wearing the wolf cognizance of Belishba sprang up and made their way purposefully to the center of the hall, not far from where she was standing. By no means sure what they might be up to, she made haste to get out of their way.
Having pushed the central table to one side and rather blusteringly persuaded several people near-by to move their benches and couches to make an open space, the young men formed up in a line. Then, Unking arms and taking their time from the tallest of their number, whose bare chest was tattooed with two fighting leopards in red and blue (he could have done with some soap, thought Maia, wrinkling her nose as she made her way back to the Ortelgans), they began to sway and intone all together, gesturing as they did so with uniform, rhythmic motions.
Happening to meet Nennaunir--who had thrown off her cloak to display her transparent robe and silver ornaments to full advantage--she smiled and raised her eyebrows inquiringly.
"Oh, it's an old Belishban custom, dear," said the sheama. "A kind of wild warriors' dance: they call it a straka. In the old days they always used to do it before a battle: I thought somehow we wouldn't get off without one."
The leader had begun a series of what seemed to be chanted adjurations to his followers, though these were in no language even remotely known to Maia.
"Kee-a, kee-a, kee-a! U-ay kee-a, u-ay kee-a!"
"Ah,hi hal" responded his comrades, side-stepping as one.
"Bana, bana, bana! Hi-po lana, hi-po lana!"
"Bah,way mal"
They sniffed at the air like hounds, baring their teeth and tossing their heads as they stamped and turned, grimacing fiercely, clapping their hands and brandishing imaginary spears.
Gradually the ferocity and pace of the dance increased. Their wide-stretched eyes glittered, they stooped their shoulders and bent their heads towards the floor, growling and sn
arling as they uttered the responses. They turned about with upstretched arms, then paired off and made believe to stab and savage one another. At times the leader's utterances would cease and then, after a moment's silence, they would burst all together into a kind of demonic chorus, as inarticulate yet plain in meaning as the baying of wolves.
The unhesitating unanimity with which they pounded the floor, clapped, suddenly paused to thrust out their tongues or slap their buttocks before resuming their ritual clamor, was hypnotic and infectious, stirring the onlookers until the hall was filled with battle-cries, yells of approbation and the hammering of knives and goblets on the tables. The Belishbans, leaving the center of the room, began to prance and stamp their way in a line among the tables, making believe to stab the men and drag the girls away as they maintained their chanting. At length, nearing the door that led out onto the terrace, the leader, suddenly introducing a quicker, pattering chant--"Willa-wa, willa- wa, willa-wa"--snatched the beautiful Otavis--who happened to be the girl nearest to hand--almost out of the arms of Shend-Lador and tossed her bodily to his followers. As two of them caught and held her, the others closed about her in a group, whereupon the whole crowd, setting up a kind of quivering motion with their shoulders, formed a rotating circle about her as she was carried out of the room in their midst.
Maia, who had watched the whole extraordinary act with the breathless absorption always aroused in her by any dance--she would have liked to join in, or at least to have had the chance to learn it--turned to her companions to see Ta-Kominion grinning with excitement and obviously as much affected as herself.
"Oh, that was just about something! I've never seen the like of that before," she said. "Have you?"
"Only once, and that was at Herl, when I was no more than about nine."
"Can you do it?"
He shook his head. "Oh, no; it's not half as easy as it looks. You have to be a Belishban to be able to do it properly. It's the desert blood in them, they say. They used to do it out in the Harridan desert, where the sound carries for miles, to let the enemy know they were com-ing."
"What enemy?"
"Oh, any old enemy," answered Ta-Kominion, fondling her shoulders. "I'm glad we're going to have them with us: I don't think Erketlis is going to care for them at all, do you? What do you think of them, my lord?" he asked, turning to Bel-ka-Trazet. "Fierce enough for you?"
The High Baron paused, laying aside his unfinished apri-cots in sweet wine with an air of having made a sufficient concession to the practice of eating such rubbish.
"Why don't you tell that young Elvair to take along a herd of bulls to drive at the enemy?"
"Oh, you do them an injustice, my lord, I'm sure. There's a lot more to them than that."
"I'd be glad to think so," replied Bel-ka-Trazet. Ta-Kominion waited respectfully, and after a few moments the High Baron went on, "What happened at Clenderzard, Ta-Kominion; do you remember?"
"The Deelguy thought they'd beaten us, my lord, but we made fools of them."
"Do you remember me forbidding your father to attack them?"
Ta-Kominion roared with delighted laughter and at once turned to Maia as though she were the perfect companion with whom to share the joke.
"My father had us all lined up in a wood, Maia, and we were just going to dash out to meet the Deelguy when the High Baron here came up through the trees. 'You'll do no such thing--no such thing!' My father said, 'Why, my lord, we'll all be taken for cowards.' 'No such thing! No such thing!' "
Even Ged-la-Dan was grinning. It had evidently become a legend on Ortelga. "So what happened then?" asked Maia politely, since it seemed to be expected of her.
"Why, so then the Deelguy came rushing in among the trees, but they couldn't get to grips with us. They couldn't see properly after the bright light outside, you see. Besides, they're plains people; they're not used to woodland at all and they got confused. We broke them up into groups and made a horrible mess of them. Oh, but I'll never forget my father's face, my lord! 'No such thing! No such thing!' " Still laughing, he reached across the table and refilled Maia's goblet.
"When you get to Chalcon you'll do well to remember my advice to your father."
Bel-ka-Trazet's low, hoarse voice rasped like a hoof on dry stones. "I asked you, didn't I, whether you wanted to lead this expedition, and I gave you a fair and honorable chance to refuse?"
"You did, my lord; but I didn't refuse, did I?"
"We have to keep in with Bekla," said Bel-ka-Trazet, "so we've agreed to send five hundred men against Erketlis. Either you'll gain experience, Ta-Kominion, or you'll be no great loss to Ortelga."
"Thank you, my lord," replied Ta-Kominion happily. He seemed, Maia thought, quite used to this sort of thing from the High Baron.
Bel-ka-Trazet leant forward and gripped his wrist so hard that he winced. "You're a reasonably good leader, Ta-Kominion--the men trust you--but you're very young. See your men come back alive, that's all: not everything's to be achieved by rushing head-down at the enemy. Remember the wood at Clenderzard. And if you should have to get them out on your own--"
"Get them out, my lord?"
"If you have to get them out on your own, which wouldn't surprise me at all," said Bel-ka-Trazet, "get out through Lapan. It's further, but you'll be safer than if you try to get out through Tonilda. In Tonilda they hate the Leopards."
Ta-Kominion was about to reply when there was a further distraction. The Belishbans had come back into the hall, carrying Otavis shoulder-high in their midst. It was plain that she had made a hit among them while they had been out on the terrace. Excited and full of self-assertion among strangers, they felt that they had won a prize and meant to show it.
"Give her back!" yelled Shend-Lador, playing up to them, clenching his fists and squaring up in mock rage.
"Not on your life!" answered the tattooed leader. "She's a soldier now, this girl! She's too good for you! She's joining up with us!"
"We'll have to initiate her," cried another of them, "if she's to be a Belishban officer. Isn't that right, boys?"
There was a general outburst of agreement, above which the leader shouted, "What's it to be?"
"Toss her in a blanket!" bellowed a voice.
"Yes! Yes!" they cried. "Get a blanket! Send her up to Lespa!"
Shend-Lador and two or three of his friends began protesting and were obviously ready to quarrel in earnest; but Otavis, sitting on high among the Belishbans, only shook her head, laughing. "No, let me alone, Shenda! Don't be a spoilsport! You don't think I'm afraid, do you? What's the bounty?" she called down to one of the Belishbans.
"What bounty, sweetheart?"
"When you join up as a Belishban officer, of course! How much d'you get?"
"Oh, I see. Five hundred meld we get when we join."
"Right!" said the beauty, taking off her earrings and necklace and passing them down to him. "Just look after those for me, then. Five hundred meld, and don't forget it, any of you!"
After a few more unavailing protests from the young Leopards, two slaves were sent out and returned with a woven coverlet taken from some bedroom near-by. The Belishbans spread it on the floor and Otavis, as lightly and readily as though she were going to make love, lay down on her back, folding her arms under her breasts.
As eight of the Belishbans, four on each side, stooped to grasp the edges of the coverlet, hiding Otavis from view, Maia turned to Ta-Kominion.
"It's crazy! She'll be hurt for certain! Can't you go and ask Elvair to stop it?"
He shook his head. "If she'd said she didn't want to do it, I would; but she's a clever girl. She's after her five hundred meld, isn't she? And a bit more than that, if I know anything about it."
Before Maia could answer there broke out among the Belishbans a quick, chantey-like chanting. As it culmi-nated, Otavis suddenly appeared flying upward, her gauzy Deelguy breeches billowing, one of her plaits come adrift to expose the breast beneath. She seemed entirely in command of herself and showed no
least sign of fear as she went up about ten feet and then, her body tilting a little to one side, fell back into the taut coverlet among yells of delight.
"Higher this time!" shouted one of the Belishbans. "Come on, get some zip into it, boys!"
Again Otavis shot up, this time with so much force that she actually half-vanished for a moment into the vaulted dimness above the lamplight. As, flushed and dishevelled, she fell back into the coverlet without having uttered a sound, cheers and applause broke out all over the hall, and Elvair-ka-Virrion called "That'll do!"
"No, no!" shouted the big Belishban leader, holding up his hand as though exercising the authority of the frissoor (which he never asked forethought Maia). "Three times! Three times it's got to be, before she's an officer! Let her go, boys!"
"The beam! Mind the beam, you fools!" yelled Elvair-ka-Virrion suddenly. But Otavis had already been heaved out of the coverlet, this time in a kind of half-crouching posture which suggested that she had not been entirely ready.
The vault of the hall was spanned, at a height of about fifteen feet, by tie-beams, and straight towards one of these the shearna (Cran, she must weigh next to nothing! thought Maia) was sailing up as lightly as a squirrel. At Elvair-ka-Virrion's cry she turned her head, instantly saw her danger and flung out her hands. Then, as deftly as if she had intended it from the outset, she caught the beam, let her body swing down until she was hanging vertically, paused a second and then dropped back into the outspread coverlet. A moment later she had climbed out and was standing among the Belishbans, smiling as she deliberately wiped her grimy hands on the leader's cheeks.
A perfect tumult of acclaim broke out, lasting for almost ,.a minute. Elvair-ka-Virrion, striding forward, embraced Otavis and kissed her.
"Right, that's it! Now--where's her lygol?" he shouted, turning to the surrounding Belishbans. "This is going to cost you all forty meld apiece, and I never saw it better earned in my life!"
"Ay, it damned well was, too!" answered one of them, slamming down four ten-meld pieces on the table.
Drawing his knife, he offered it hilt-first to Otavis and knelt at her feet. "Give me a ringlet, saiyett! Gut me off a curl to take to Chalcon and I'll wear it every day till I come back!"