the helmet on, trying it for size. She was surprised how heavy her trophy felt. The padded metal cut down her field of vision and muffled her hearing. The padding was missing from the nose guard, and her nose complained about the cold touch of the bare metal.
'Yen Olass!' said the aide-de-camp. 'We're wanted now.’
Yen Olass marched forward through the gloom of the tent, and halted in front of Lord Alagrace, who was seated behind a campaign desk. Behind him was an open flap-window. Flecks of rain came dancing in through the window. On the campaign desk was a basket of bread and gaplax which some fatuous apple-polisher had rescued from the ruins of Lorford. Lord Alagrace, in no mood for gourmandizing, pushed it toward Yen Olass.
'For me?' said Yen Olass, delighted.
'No!' said Lord Alagrace. 'For a prisoner. One of the town women denounced her. She belongs to one of the castle commanders. She's his evening woman. We want her kept in good condition. We may use her for barter if the castle sends an embassy to treat with us. She's your responsibility now. Take her this.’
'Where is she?' said Yen Olass.
'At the security section, of course,' said Lord Alagrace impatiently. 'She's in the same tent as a – what was the thing?’
'A Melski,' said one of his aides. 'A monster from the forest.’
'The monster talks!' said Yen Olass, remembering why she had come to see Lord Alagrace in the first place. 'I'm sure it does,' said Lord Alagrace. 'No, really.’
'Then you can interrogate it for us,' said Lord Alagrace. 'Now go.’
'Sir!' said Yen Olass, slamming her right fist to her heart in a Collosnon soldier's salute.
Then, thinking she might have dared too much, she grabbed the basket of bread and gaplax and scuttled away.
'And Yen Olass-’
She darted between crowding bodies, hugging the basket close to her body. Lord Alagrace's voice, rising to a roar, pursued her:
'Take off that ridiculous helmet!’
On her way to see the prisoner, Yen Olass ducked under a cart, and, skulking down low and out of sight, she gorged herself on bread and gaplax. But there was still some left when she got to the security tent. And she was still wearing her helmet.
Inside the tent, the monster appeared to be sleeping, but the woman prisoner was still weeping. Yen Olass was amazed to think that anyone could go on crying for so long. She nudged the captive with her boot.
The woman scrunched herself up into a little ball, like a hedgehog. Yen Olass nudged her again. Harder, this time.
'Hey, you,' said Yen Olass, not bothering to conceal her contempt.
Slowly, the captive uncurled, and looked up. Her face 151
was soggy with misery. A soft, young face, with brown hair straggling down on either side of it. She might have been pretty, if she hadn't been so bedraggled. So this was the castle commander's woman. Or was it? Yen Olass hunted for a word in Galish, and found one: 'seg', meaning whore.
'Seg?' said Yen Olass, a note of interrogation in her voice.
The woman burst into tears and curled up again. Obviously that was the wrong thing to say. Seeing the damage she had done, Yen Olass began to feel a little bit guilty. Momentarily, she wondered what Yerzerdayla would have thought of this. Yerzerdayla would have been appalled to find Yen Olass terrorizing a captive woman.
'Now then,' said Yen Olass, trying to soothe her victim. 'Now then.’
She squatted down by the bundle of misery and wondered what to do next. She touched it with a soothing hand: and it flinched.
'Am I so dangerous?' said Yen Olass.
Maybe, from the captive's point of view, she was. After all, Yen Olass was a big, bulky foreigner arriving in boots and helmet, her sex anonymous beneath weather jacket and furs. In that context, 'whore' had been a disastrous word to use; realising what the prisoner must have thought, Yen Olass was now thoroughly ashamed of herself.
What was the Galish word for filly? Nom? No, that was a word for a female camel. 'Gamos' was a word for any kind of female horse. That would do. Yen Olass practised a Galish sentence in her mind, then said it:
'I am a gamos.’
Silence. Then the captive looked at her, then looked away.
'Gamos!' said Yen Olass. 'I am a gamos!’
The captive began to sniffle violently, crushing her face into her arms. Was she having a fit or something? Suddenly, Yen Olass realised the prisoner was laughing. What was so funny? Her pronunciation couldn't be that bad.
'I am a gamos,' said Yen Olass, starting to get angry. 'A gamos!’
The captive laughed and laughed and laughed. She was working herself into a state of hysteria.
'Say stanaba,' said the monster, Hor-hor-hurulg-murg, who had been listening all the time.
Yen Olass remembered now. That was the Galish word for a female human.
'Stanaba,' said Yen Olass. 'I am a stanaba.’
But she still failed to see what was so funny. She knew that, sometimes, nearing the final stages of exhaustion and fear, people will laugh for no reason, sometimes following helpless laughter with a crying jag. That must be what was happening here.
The captive calmed herself and sat up. Yen Olass took off her helmet, and then introduced herself. Yen Olass Ampadara and Valicia Resbit.
'Elkordansk,' said Resbit, patting her abdomen.
'Hungry?' said Yen Olass.
Resbit said several sentences, in which Yen Olass caught only the word 'boy'. She could scarcely be hiding a boy child under her clothes.
'What?' said Yen Olass.
Resbit nursed an imaginary baby in her arms.
'Child?' said Yen Olass, pointing at Resbit's abdomen.
'Boy child,' said Resbit. 'Elkordansk.’
Was she pregnant? If so, this was very confusing, for even Yen Olass knew that a pregnant woman cannot tell the sex of her child. And what was an elkordansk?
'Eat,' said Yen Olass, pushing the remaining bread and gaplax toward Resbit.
As Resbit ate, Yen Olass helped herself to a little more, and they began to talk. Neither of them knew very much of the Galish Trading Tongue, which was not Resbit's native language, but, slowly, they began to make sense of each other, helping out language with mime, with imaginary drawings done with a fingertip in the air, and with the occasional astute comment from Hor-hor-hurulg-murg.
They were really starting to get to know each other when there was a commotion outside. Going to the door of the tent, Yen Olass saw a big crowd gathering some distance away; there was a lot of shouting go on.
This looked interesting.
'I'll be back,' said Yen Olass.
But she lapsed into Eparget as she said it, so Resbit did not know what to think when her new friend disappeared.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When Yen Olass managed to push her way into the centre of the crowd, she found a large ugly man, bound
