If she was ever to pass herself off as a boy – and she was more resolved than ever that she would not travel as a woman in these mountains – she must find some better way of concealing this personal necessity. She had heard gossip about the woman soldiers, the Sisterhood of the Sword, who were pledged never to wear women’s gowns nor to let their hair grow. She had never seen one, only heard gossip, but it was rumored that they knew of a herb which would keep women from bleeding at their cycles, and she wished she knew their secret! She had learned something of herb-lore for doctoring animals, and she knew of herb-medicines which would bring a cow or bitch – or, for that matter – a woman into the fertile cycles, but none to suppress it, though there was a drug which would keep a bitch, briefly, from going into heat when it was inconvenient to breed her. Was that what they used? Maybe she could try it, but she was not a dog, and a dog’s cycle of heat was very different from the female human’s. It was all theoretical speculation at the moment anyhow, for she had no access to the herb, and would not know how to recognize it in the wild state anyhow, but only when prepared for use by a beast-healer.
On the fourth day, when he rose, Rory said, smirking, “Tonight you shall sleep with me in the inner room. We have shared meal and fireside; it needs only now to bed you, to make the marriage legal in all ways.”
And in the mountains, she had heard, a law would return a runaway wife to her husband. No matter that she had been wedded without her consent, a woman had small recourse in law; so if she escaped after Rory had bedded her, there would be two people seeking her, her father and her husband; would a Tower even take her in under those circumstances?
Well, she would ride that colt when it was grown to bear a saddle. But she would try very hard to find a way of escape today.
All day, as she went about the drudgery of the household, she pondered a variety of options. It was possible that she could wait till he had taken her . . . then slip away when he slept afterward, as she had heard that men were likely to do. Certainly the old woman could not follow her – but she might rouse Rory from sleep. Somehow, one way or other, she must manage to prevent Rory from following her….
And if she did that, she might as well have let him take her on that first night. Her throat closed in revulsion at the thought of being a passive victim, letting him take her unchallenged.
Possibly, when they undressed for bed, she might somehow contrive to hide his boots and his leather breeches, so that he could not at once follow her; barefoot and unbreeched, would even he manage to chase her, afoot – for she would also cut loose his riding-chervine and drive it into the woods. By the time he found boots and breeches, and rounded up his chervine, she and her horse would be well on the way to Nevarsin.
But she would have to submit to him first….
And then she thought; when we are undressed for bed, a well-placed knee in the groin would cripple him long enough to evade pursuit, certainly. Only she must have the courage
to kick hard; and hit her target at the first touch; otherwise, he would certainly half kill her when he caught her, and would never trust her again. She remembered what her own mother had taught her when she and Ruyven were very small, that she must never hit or kick him there even in play, because a relatively light blow to that area would cause serious and possibly permanent damage; if the parts were ruptured, even death. And that made her stop and think.
Was she prepared to kill, if she must, to prevent him from taking her?
After all, he had first tried to kill her; if she had truly been a boy, or if her tunic had not torn, revealing her as a woman, he would have cut her throat for her horse and her cloak. Yes, he had been kind to her after his own fashion when he discovered she was a woman, but that was because he thought that rather than a corpse, he would prefer to have a slave . . . for surely that was what her life with him would be, drudging daylong at heavy work and waiting on the whims of the old woman; he could get more from her, that way, and have horse and fine cloak too. No, she would not scruple.