Jasmine flushed and leaned over the foal. ‘What would I say?’
Thewson shrugged, laughed again. ‘You must say. You must tell the price.’
The foal turned to put its soft lips against Jasmine’s thigh and at that touch the centre of her broke to let tears flood down her cheeks as her breath caught deep. ‘Oh, Thewson, if you want me, you can have me for Hu’ao. Get me Hu’ao back again and I will be your wife.’
He nodded where he sat, searching the far sky as for an answer which pleased him. Finding none, he looked at her sternly. ‘This is a high price, you with the hair of smoke and dark eyes. Who knows can I pay it or not? So, you have said it. I will try it.’
‘You have never even said you love me,’ whispered Jasmine.
He made a mocking noise, deep in his throat. ‘In the Lion Courts, this is not said.’
Dhariat trotted back toward them. ‘What is all this tarrying? Come up and ride beside Lain-achor. We did not want to come so close to Mount Hermit, but we cannot go farther down the slope because of those cursed Gahlians.’
Jasmine wiped her eyes on her sleeve, pretended an interest in what Dhariat was saying. ‘Who was the Hermit, Darry? Was it in the Axe King’s time?’
‘Ask Daingol, or Lain-achor. This is their territory more than mine. I know only that it is an area better avoided.’
They caught up to the rest and began the traverse of a long slope of scree on which the horses slipped and scrambled for purchase. By noon they had come only halfway across it, but they stopped on an outthrust of stone to eat and to feed the foal. It was then she asked Daingol about the Hermit.
He hushed her. ‘It is not a story to be told while on the mountain, Lady. He whom we call Hermit was not quite that. He wakened things which might better have slept forever. Better we not talk of it here.’ Jasmine contented herself with making up her own stories and with thinking how much the four from the Hill resembled one another. Sowsie was tall, Dhariat short, Lain-achor and Daingol of medium height. Dhariat was round, the others lean, and she had black hair while Sowsie’s was grey and the brothers’ rusty gold. Still, all had the same alert bearing of head and shoulders, the same quick perception, though Lain-achor moved with the sullen grace of a heron while Daingol was swift as a hunting dog. They had the same lines around their eyes. There was about them the simplicity and habit of persons long together in similar circumstances, and when Daingol shook his head about the Hermit, Lain-achor, too, shook his head warily.
To look at Thewson was to see something else again. She found him strange and wonderful with his high-bridged nose and full mouth, hair pulled high into yarn-bound tails which fluttered behind him. He loomed above them all, taller far than Sowsie, so tall that Jasmine’s head came only to his chest. Here in the north he wore a woven cloak as the others did, but beneath the flowing wool were his leather loin guard and leggings, his breast and back plates of stiffened hide, thick and hard as wood. Always the spear was at his side. If Jasmine slept at one side, the spear lay at the other. Jasmine felt that the spear never slept, that it watched through the night like a sentinel. She had almost asked Thewson if this could be true, but something kept her from the question.
They mounted again, except for Thewson who chose to lead his horse across the shifting stone. He did not mount until they came into the trees once more. Even then, he did so abstractedly, as though alert to something else. Suddenly he pushed by Jasmine to ride forward and touch Daingol on the shoulder.
‘Scout. I smell it now. Upslope on the wind.’
They halted. Then they could all smell it, musky and foul, not overpowering but unmistakable. ‘Would the wagon have come near?’ Thewson asked himself. ‘Yes. Here the road is almost below us.’
They went on into the evening, coming to a narrow way which led between tall stones into the next valley. In the half darkness they did not see the squat figures which swarmed out of the rock until they were surrounded. Even Thewson was covered by them in an instant, a lion brought down by a thousand dogs. All was silent. Daingol had time to mutter a curse, that was all. Then they were trussed up, gagged, and carried away into the deepening shadows of the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE WARTY MEN
Day 14, Month of Thaw
When Jasmine caught her first glimpse of their captors she thought they were men, men somehow gnarled and twisted as stumps, warty and rough, bright orange where they were lit by firelight, black where they were in shadow, demonlike, troll-like. Jasmine felt that she should be trembling with horror, and yet she was strangely calm. It may have been the way that the warty hands patted the foal, or the shy stroking which she felt along her thighs; there seemed no menance from these creatures. They seemed, she thought, to do some violence but not to feel it.
Lain-achor and Daingol did not share her calm. They struggled like trapped stallions in the nets with which they were bound. Thewson lay beside the fire, so trussed he could not move. Across the fire Dhariat and Sowsie leaned together to struggle to their feet.
Now began a strangeness. One of the warty creatures knelt at Jasmine’s feet and began to smell her, sniffing like a curious dog at her feet, ankles, thighs, crotch, up her
