50: DESPERATION

Dressed once more, she stood in the doorway, gazing across the meadows faintly lit under the setting half-moon. In one or two houses, beyond the foot of the little slope, lamps were burning, but she could hear no voices and there was no one to be seen. The news, she supposed, had by now spread through Melvda, and almost everyone would be down at the camps, whence the first companies must already be on the point of leaving.

Below her she could see the Star Court and the faint, glinting line of the stream up which her boat had come that morning. The courtyard itself was lit by the smoky, orange light of pine torches, and people—black shapes against the flares—were appearing and disappearing, some walking, some running, but all moving purposefully in the same direction. The camp sites beyond were indistinguishable in a hazy distance of moonlit marsh-mist. Their fires, she thought, must all have been quenched. Even as she gazed she caught sight, far off, of a twinkling spray of sparks which vanished altogether on the instant—a bucket of embers, no doubt, flung into the stream. Yet there was little noise—only that same far-off muted commotion into which the sound of Zen-Kurel's footsteps had been swallowed. Probably the men had been ordered to keep silence as they formed up and marched off.

Those black figures moving against a background of leaping fire—they filled her with unease; with dread, in-deed. Where had she seen them before? In the gardens by the Barb? No, not that: no, something worse—worse. Suddenly, with a low cry of horror, she recalled crouching beside Pillan in the undergrowth as the Subans crept forward to attack the Tonildan patrol at the ford.

Now she saw again—dreadfully clearly—the staring eyes of the lad lying on his back beside the fire, the blood oozing through his hooked, clutching fingers: and the other—him, Sphelthon—the boy from Meerzat, crying for his mother. The sodden earth, the butcher smell. It would never leave her now; she was tainted with it forever.

Dizzy and nauseated, she clutched at the doorpost; then, burying her face in her hands, sank down on the step. She thought of the detachment of three hundred Tonildans downstream of Rallur; and of Karnat's troops crossing in the night, cutting them off from the Beklan army. "The Tonildan outpost downstream—they'll be completely destroyed—cut to pieces—cut to pieces—" Boys from Thettit, from Puhra, from Meerzat—

And Zenka, her beautiful lover, who had begged her to marry him—all warmth and ardor, a very gods' pattern of young manhood—one of the king's personal aides, in the thick of it, carrying the king's messages on the battlefield; what were his chances? She began to sob again, as much with frustration as with grief. She was helpless; a woman. A terrible vision of war—of a world defiled and desolated by separation, fear, wounds, death and bereavement— opened before her inward eye. She beheld an infinity of waste, of mutilation and agony; of sobbing wives, mothers, children, their lives spoiled forever.

She tried to imagine three hundred men lying on the blood-soaked ground, each one crying like Sphelthon. "Destroyed—cut to pieces." How many people—how many women like herself knew what really happened—what it looked like—when men fought and pierced and killed one another?

After a time the intensity of her paroxysm began to subside. She stood up, leaning against the wall inside the doorway. Becoming aware of a voice, she realized that it was her own, emptily repeating aloud, "How many women? How many women?"

There came into her mind the memory of Gehta, the girl at the farm; Gehta walking beside her at dusk in the big, smooth-grazed meadow. The scent of the distant pines.

"If King Karnat makes for Bekla, dad's farm's slap in the way. I'm afraid—afraid—dad's farm's slap in the way—"

Passionately, she stood and prayed, arms extended, palms raised.

"If only I could stop it! O Lespa, I'd give anything to stop it, to save the Tonildans, to save my Zenka—"

Suddenly the goddess spoke in her heart. "Very well—"

Maia turned cold and faint with apprehension. She sank down, crouching on her knees.

"Lespa! Dear goddess, no, not that! That would be death! I can't do that! Not that!"

Afraid—afraid—afraid—the beating of her heart seemed jolting her body.

"Very well," replied the goddess. "Never ask me for anything again."

Going back into the bedroom Maia, having selected the dagger with the slimmest and sharpest blade, cut the coverlet into long strips. These she wound round her legs from ankle to knee, tucking the edges under at the top to hold the binding in place. After this she bound her upper arms in the same way from elbow to armpit. There was one strip left; this she threaded through the sheath of the dagger and then knotted it round her waist like a belt.

Two minutes later, having blown out the lamps and shut the door, she was making her way eastward across the outlying fields of Melvda towards the edge of the distant woodland beyond which lay the Valderra.