struck a light. The little oil lamp bloomed yellow, changing all the shadows in the room and leaving the moon’s cold radiance out in the sky. I didn’t want to lose our quiet mood, and was about to ask Diero, petulantly, why Irad was playing hide-and-seek. But there was the noise of heavier feet on the staircase, and now Barna stood in the doorway. His face was almost black, swollen, in the tangled mass of his hair and beard. “Where is the bitch?” he shouted. “Is she here?”
Diero looked down. Trained in submissiveness all her life, she was unable to answer him with anything but a shrinking silence. And I too shrank from the big man blind with rage.
He pushed past us, flung open the bedroom door, looked around in the bedroom, and came out again, staring at me. “You! You’re after her! That’s why Diero keeps her here!” He rushed at me like a great, red boar charging, his arm upraised to strike me. Diero came between us crying out his name. He knocked her aside with one hand. He seized me by the shoulders and lifted and shook me as Hoby used to do, slapped my head left and right, and threw me down.
I don’t know what happened in the next minute or two. When I could sit up and see through the dazzling blackness that pulsed in my eyes, I saw Diero huddled on the floor. Barna was gone.
I managed to get to my hands and knees, then get up. I looked into the bedroom. No one was there but a tiny shadow cowering against the wall by one of the beds.
I said, “Don’t be afraid, Melle, it’s all right.” I found it difficult to talk. My mouth was filling with blood and a couple of teeth were loose on the right side. “Diero will be here in a moment,” I said.
I went back to Diero. She had sat up. The lamp was still burning. In its weak pool of light I could see that the soft skin of her cheek was bruised. I could not bear to see that. I knelt down by her.
“He found her,” she whispered. “She hid in your room. He went straight there. Gav, what will you do?” She took my hand. Her hand was cold.
I shook my head, which made it ring and spin again. I kept swallowing blood.
“What will he do to her?” I said. She shrugged.
“He’s angry—he could kill her—”
“He’ll hurt her. He doesn’t kill women. Gav. You can’t stay here.” I thought she meant this room.
“You must go. Leave! She went to your room. She didn’t know where to hide. Oh, poor child. Oh, Gav! I have loved you so much!” She put her face down on my hand, weeping silently for a moment, then raised her head again. “We’ll be all right. We’re not men, we don’t matter. But you have to go.”
“I’ll take you,” I said. “And them—Irad and Melle—“ “No, no, no,” she whispered. “Gav, he’ll kill you. Go now. Now! The girls and I are safe.” She got up, pulling herself up by the table, and stood shakily a minute; then she went into the bedroom. I heard her soft voice talking to the child. She came out carrying her. Melle clung to her, hiding her face.
“Melle-sweet, you must say goodbye to Gav.”
The child turned and held out her arms, and I took her and held her tight. “It will be all right, Melle,” I said. “Do your lessons with Diero. Promise? And help Irad with them. Then you’ll both be wise.” I didn’t know what I was saying. I was in tears. I kissed the child and set her down. I took Diero’s hand and held it against my mouth a moment, and went out.
I went to my room, belted on my knife, put on my coat, and put the small copy of the
I left Barna’s house by the back way and went round through the streets to the cobblers’ barrack. In the great’ wash of moonlight the city of wood was a city of silver-blue, shadowed, silent, beautiful.
PART THREE
¦ 11 ¦
Chamry roused up quickly when I sat down on his bunk. I told him I wanted to stay with him a while, as there’d been a misunderstanding at Barna’s house. “What do you mean?” he said. He got the story out of me, though I didn’t want to say much. “That girl? She was in your room? Oh by the Stone! You get clear out, clear away, tonight!”
I argued. It had merely been a misunderstanding. Barna had been drunk. But Chamry was out of bed, rummaging under the bunk. “Where’s that stuff you left, your fishing gear and all—There. Knew it was here. All right. Take this stuff of yours and go to the gate. Tell the watch that you want to be at the trout pool before sunrise, it’s the best fishing just at sunrise—”
“The best fishing’s at sunset,” I said.
He looked at me with pained disgust. Then his look sharpened. He touched my cheek. “Got a whack, did you? Lucky he didn’t kill you right there. If he sees you again he will. He turns on men like that. Over women. Or somebody trying to shake his power. I’ve seen it. Saw him kill a man. Strangled him and broke his neck with his bare hands. You take this stuff. Here’s your old blanket, take it too. Go to the gate.” I stood there blank as a post. “Oh, I’ll go with you,” he said crossly. And he did walk me, hastily and by the back streets, towards the city gate, talking with me all the way, telling me what to say to the watchmen, and what to do when I was in the woods. “Don’t go by the paths! Don’t take any path. They’re all guarded, one time or another. I wish—Yes! that’s it, he can take you—Come on, this way!” He changed course, turning off on the street where Venne lived with his raiding group. He left me standing in the black shadow of the barrack and went in. I stood there looking at the silver-blue roofs, which danced a little to the throbbing in my head. Chamry came out again, with Venne. “It’s hunting you’re going,” he said, “not fishing. Come on!”
Venne was carrying a couple of bows and had his quiver on his back. “Sorry you’re in trouble, Gav,” he said mildly.
I tried to explain that I wasn’t in trouble, Barna had just been drunk, and all this panic was unnecessary. Chamry said, “Don’t listen to him. Got his brains knocked loose. Just take him to where he can get clear away.”
“I can do that,” Venne said. “If they’ll let us out the gate.”
“Leave that to me,” said Chamry. And indeed he talked us out the city gate with no trouble. Chatting with the guards, he made sure at once that Barna hadn’t sent out anybody after me. The guards knew all of us, and let us go with nothing but a warning to be back by sunset. “Oh, I’ll be back in no time,” said Chamry. “I don’t set out on hunting trips at midnight! I’m just seeing these idiots off.”
He went with us till we were past the gardens and at the forest’s edge. “What’ll I tell them when I come back?” Venne asked.
“You lost him. At the river. Looked for him all day. He fell in, or maybe he ran off.—Think it’ll do?”
Venne nodded.
“It’s thin,” Chamry said judiciously, “pretty thin. But I’ll say I’d heard Gav talking about running off to Asion. So, he tricked you into taking him out hunting, and then gave you the slip. You’ll be all right.”
Venne nodded again, unworried.
Chamry turned to me. “Gav,” he said, “you’ve been nothing but a burden and trouble to me ever since you turned up and tried to wear my kilt on your head. You dragged me back here, and now you’re running out on me. Well, have a good run. Go west.”
He looked for confirmation to Venne, who nodded.
“And stay out of the Uplands,” Chamry said. He put his arms round me in a hard embrace, turned away, and was gone in the darkness under the trees.
Unwillingly, I followed Venne, who set off without hesitation on a path I could scarcely make out at all. The flashes of moonlight through the branches and trunks of the trees dazzled and bewildered me. I kept stumbling. Venne realised that I was having trouble and slowed down. “Fetched you a whack, eh?” he saidv “Dizzy?”
