Kurt moved carefully, for the spear was surely still at his back. He knelt down by the rock where the food was warming and took one of the three meal cakes, breaking off half, and a little crumb of the soft cheese that lay on a greasy leather wrap beside them. But he used the fine manners of Bias, not daring to do otherwise with their critical eyes on him and the spear ready.
When he was done he rose up and bowed his thanks. “I will go my way now,” he said.
“No, stranger,” said the second man. “I think you ought to stay with us and go to our village in the morning. In this district we see few travelers from Nephane, and I think you would be safer with us. Someone might take you for Tamurlin and put a spear through you before he realized his mistake. That would be sad for both of you.”
“I have business elsewhere,” said Kurt, playing out the farce with the rules they set and bowing politely. “And I thank you for your concern, but I will go on now.”
The elder man brought his spear crosswise in both hands. “I think my son is right. You have run from somewhere, that much is certain, and I am not sure that you are house-friend to Elas. No, it is more likely the Methi simply missed killing you with the others, and we well know in the country what humans are.”
“If I do come from Djan-methi, you will not win her thanks by delaying me on my mission.”
“What, does the Methi send out her servants without provisions?”
“I had an accident,” he said. “My mission is urgent; I had no time to go back. I counted on the hospitality of the country folk to help me on my way.”
“Stranger, you are not only a liar, you are a bad liar. We will take you to our village and see what the Afen has to say about you.”
Kurt ran, plunged in a wild vault over the brush barricade and in among the startled cachin, creating panic as their woolly bodies scattered and herded first to the rocks and then back toward the barricade, breaking it down in their mad rush to escape. The tilof’s sharp cries resounded in the rocks. The beast and the men had work enough at the moment.
Kurt climbed, fingers and sandaled toes seeking purchase in the crevices of the rocks, sending stones cascading down the hillside. He cleared the crest, found a level, brushy ground and ran, desperate, trusting pursuit would be at least delayed.
But word would go back to Nephane and to Djan, and she would be sure now the way he had fled. Ships could outrace him down the coast.
If he did not reach his own abandoned ship and secure the means to live, he was finished hi this land. Djan would have guessed it already, and now she could lay her ambush with assurance.
If she knew the precise location of his ship, he could not hope to avoid it.
The sun rose over the same grassy rangeland that had surrounded him for the last several days, dry grass and wind and dust.
Kurt leaned on his staff, a twisted branch from which he
had stripped the twigs, and looked toward the south. There was not a sign of the ship. Nothing. Another day of walking, of the tormenting heat and the infection’s throbbing fever in his wound. He started moving again, relying on the staff, every step a jarring and constant pain, his mouth so dry that swallowing hurt.
Sometimes he rested, and thought of lying down and ceasing to struggle against the thirst; sometimes he would do that, but eventually misery and the habit of life would bring him to his feet and set him walking.
Phan was a terrible presence in these lands, wrathfully blinding in the day, deserting the land at night to a biting cold. Kurt rubbed blistered skin from his nose, his hands. His bare legs and especially his knees were swollen with sunburn, tiny blisters which many times formed and burst, making a crack-line that oozed and bled.