'Quiet,' said Tomen.
All morning they slunk along the verge of cleared fields, neat orchards, a small lake with shores grown heavy with rushes and several wooden piers built out into the shallows, a cluster of villages ringed by carefully husbanded woodlots. About midday, they crept through the abandoned ruins of an old waterwheel housing half-collapsed over a stream. A spur of woodland had grown into decaying outbuildings that had been left to rot long years ago. Moving away from the stream's splashing chatter, they picked their way through underbrush toward a massive tree of a kind Shai did not recognize. Below branches thick as roof beams, a path had been cleared, hard to see unless you were right on it but well maintained along its twisting length. Now they picked up the pace, stopping twice to take swigs of the juice which was only growing more sour as time passed. After a while they left the path and splashed down a stream until Shai thought his feet would freeze.
'You're tough, I'll give you that,' Laukas said when they climbed onto a sliver of trail. 'Not one word of complaint.'
Birds whistled in the canopy as they followed the trail
through branches and dragging vines as likely to slap you in the face as part gracefully at your passing. When twigs snapped or leaves rustled, he could not see what had made the noise. His bundle got caught several times in vines or limbs, forcing him to wait for someone to chop him free. It was as if the forest were clutching at him.
At last he stumbled into a clearing overtopped by trees whose canopies spread like roofs. A fire burned in a brick hearth, two big blackened pots hanging over coals and meat sizzling on a spit. Hammocks swung from the lower branches of trees, while canvas roofs were slung higher up where huge limbs branched and boards had been hammered between to make platforms.
He had expected a larger group, but once he sorted out the faces he already knew from the unfamiliar ones, he counted only thirty-seven fighters. They greeted each other with jostling, hugging, and kissing while he stood in their midst with all that weight on his shoulders, forgotten except for Laukas with an eyebrow cocked toward him. Ketti had his arms full with a tall lass.
She looked over his shoulder at Shai. 'What's this? A new mule?'
'Ouch,' remarked Laukas to Shai. 'You must admit I've been hells more polite to you, eh? That's Geda. Tongue like a dagger.'
'What else it's good for you'll never know,' she retorted, releasing Ketti and circling Shai with the same hungry look Tomen's sister had used, the one that made color rise to his cheeks. Women in Kartu Town never looked at men like that. 'Well built, I must say.'
'Heya!' said Ketti. 'You're my girl.'
'I'm not your girl. I'm just sleeping with you.' She dismissed all three men with a shrug and walked over to greet Tomen and his sister.
Laukas helped Shai out of the straps. 'Poor Ketti. Oof! That's heavier than I thought.'
An elderly woman took charge of the goods with the measuring gaze of an experienced merchant. In the clearing, logs made benches, and folk settled with pleasure to take a meal. Someone with plenty of time on her hands had carved trenchers enough for every two or three to share, using carved spoons to scoop nai porridge and sticks to pluck scraps of meat sliced from the haunch. To Shai's surprise, there was plenty. He ate until he was
full, and they begrudged him none of it even as Laukas kept a seat to one side and Ketti to the other. Talk poured like rain; Shai, exhausted, had trouble following it. There fell laughter and songs, and afterward as he nodded in and out of a sitting doze, men pulled out a table and set it on flat ground. The arm-wrestling began, first among the women — Geda won this tournament — and afterward the men took turns in a complicated system he was too tired to sort out.
Laukas pulled on his arm. 'Up, Shayi_. It's your turn.'
'My turn?' He rubbed his face. 'But-'
They steered him to the table and sat him cross-legged in the local way. They'd pitted him against a weedy young man who was no struggle, a pop down to the table, which made them roar with laughter and sit down another volunteer. He demolished nine before Ketti sat down with a good-natured smile that tightened at the corners of his eyes to betray a man who did not like to lose. It occurred to Shai that he needed to shake off his wool-headedness. An odd scent tickled his nostrils as if in a stinging wind off the sandy desert; he could not identify what it was. Branches swayed, but he felt no wind.
He fixed hand to hand with Ketti. Geda was bent so far over to watch that her breasts seemed likely to pop out of her tightly laced vest right in his face.
Laukas, standing as referee with a hand resting atop their clasped ones, laughed. 'Careful, Shayi. If you win, then you have to sleep with Geda. Enough to suck away a man's strength, eh?'
'I don't have to sleep with anyone,' said Shai, thinking of Eridit.
That set them whooping and laughing. Laukas released their hands.
Eihi!
One thing Shai was, was stubborn. Ketti was as strong, but he'd never learned to focus in and endure. To wait for the opening.
At a wavering in Ketti's grip, Shai pushed, and Ketti's arm sank backward. Catching the tipping point, Shai slammed Ketti's hand onto the table top to a chorus of hollering and clapping and jeering.
The noise ceased between one breath and the next.
Ketti released Shai's hands and sat back, swiping sweat off his forehead as he looked nervously to his left. Folk melted back as
a creature glided through the gathering and halted by the table. Ketti scrambled up, and the creature settled into the vacant place. The creature set its right elbow on the table, hand up, with the left lying beneath. Laukas backed away.
Naked to the waist except for its leather forearm guards, it was quite obviously female, although its broad shoulders and muscled chest made its small breasts seem insignificant in contrast. He forced his gaze up to the face. Although it had lips, nose, and face molded in a familiar form, it was not human. Its skin had the color of leaves, a downy growth of hair also tinted green, and yet as he cautiously grasped its hands, its palms felt exactly like human palms. Its hair dangled in vine-like ropes, as though its head sprouted a garden rather than hair. Its ears were tufted and set slightly away from the human-shaped head. Its eyes were not ordinary eyes: they were many- faceted. When it blinked, a sheer inner lid flicked down; a second more ordinary eyelid flashed and opened. Its eyes had changed: what stared at him now shone black, like polished jet. As he recoiled, it tightened its grip on his left hand.
None in the assembly spoke. No one moved.
Its smell had a humid savor, like the forest.
Hu! The others did not fear it, although their silence implied respect. He shifted his seat to ground himself. It grinned to display a remarkably human set of teeth.
'He's done for now,' whispered Laukas, dropping a hand over their clasped hands and, after a count, releasing.
Shai braced, but was driven down, the press against him. The creature was simply so much stronger that he might have been a child testing its strength against a patient adult, one who didn't want to smash his hand down lest it wound his pride.
He was a fist's-breadth away from defeat.
Its ears flicked.
It released him and rose so quickly that one blink it was braced before him and the next was leaping into the trees as a faintly heard and very low rumble trembled in the air: a horn.
Tomen pushed through the group with a stream of orders: 'Laukas, ten on the path. Archers, to the trees. Ketti, pull the elder back to the cave. Geda, have your slings and nets ready.'
They moved.
Tomen grabbed Shai's vest, hauling him up. He was strong, maybe not strong enough to defeat Shai arm- wrestling but with
enough strength to make his will known. 'If you're a spy who has betrayed us, you'll die.'
'I have not betrayed you. I'm just trying to get to Nessumara.'
A whistle pierced the air, followed by a scatter of cries like flocking birds. With weapons in hand, folk faced the track. A bare-legged and bare-footed youth raced into the clearing, a skinny child not more than twelve or
