The Nameless One did not comment.
'I'm thirsty,'she saidafter a bit.
Wordlessly he brought her a winebag.
She put the nozzle to her mouth and sucked. She gagged. It was some bitter, bubbling concoction. 'That isn't water!' she cried, her anguish real.
'At Pan they have neither hostels nor home-brew?' he inquired.
Then she realized that she had overdone it. Most nomads would know the civilized mode of eating, for the hostels had plates and forks and spoons and cups. And the truly uncivilized tribes must drink brew.
Soil began to cry, sensing beneath this brute visage a gentle personality. It was her only recourse.
He brought her water.
'It doesn't make sense,' he said as she drank. 'Bob would not send an unversed child into the enemy heartland. That would be stupid-particularly at this time.'
Soli wondered how he had learned her chief's name. Oh they had communicated, to arrange the fight on Muse plateau.
'Yet no ordinary child would know weaponless combat,' he continued.
She realized that somehow her very mistakes bad helped put him off. 'Can I take some back to my friend?' she asked, remembering Var.
The Nameless One looked as though he were about to ask a question, then exploded into laughter. 'Take all you can carry, you gamin! May your friend feast for many days, and emerge from his orgy a happier man than I!'
'I really do have a friend,' she said, nettled at his tone. She realized that he was mocking her, supposing that she wanted it all for herself.
He brought a bag and tossed assorted solids into it, as well as two wineskins. 'Take this and get out of my camp, child. Far out. Go back to Pan they produce good women, even the barren ones. Especially those. We're at war here, and it isn't safe for you, even with your defensive skills.'
She slung the heavy sack over her shoulder and went to the exit.
'Girl!' he called suddenly, and she jumped, afraid he had seen through her after all. Bob, the master of Helicon, was like that; he would toy with a person, seeming to agree, then take him down unexpectedly and savagely. 'If you ever grow tired of wandering, seek me out again. I would take you for my daughter.'
She understood with relief that this was a fundamental compliment. And she liked this enormous, terrible man.
'Thank you,' she said. 'Maybe some day you'll meet my real father. I think you would like each other.'
'You were not an orphan long, then,' he murmured, chuckling again. He was horribly intelligent under that muscle. 'Who is your father?'
Suddenly she remembered that the two men had met for the Nameless One had taken the empire and her true mother from her father. She dared not give Sol's name now, for they had to be mortal enemies.
'Thank you,' she said quickly, pretending not to have heard him. 'Good-bye, sir.' And she ducked out of the tent.
He let her go. No hue and cry followed, and no secret tracker either.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Var's body felt weak as he saw Soil come out of the thinning mist, alone. No one was following her; he let her pass him, and waited, just to be sure.
Yet he had heard the outcry and seen the men rushing to the main tent. Its entrance was hidden from him in the fog, but he had thought he heard her voice, and the Master's. Something had happened, and he had been powerless to act or even to know. He had had to wait, clasping and unclasping his rough fingers about the two sticks his and hers nervously. If she were prisoner, what would happen next?
