“I hope I have not angered my brother by choosing him,” I said.
“I was happy,” Asutoo said. His color deepened further. “It seems strange to me my chief did not see you are a woman too.”
“One thing, my brother,” I said. “You know I will not uncover my face.”
“I did not expect it. The whores will uncover for any man, but you are warrior and princess too.”
He seemed to know me beyond his knowledge of me, even allowing for the formal courtesy of the tribal tongue.
We undressed, the torchlight glittering around us, and, for all his youth, he was well-formed, and economical in his movements. He dipped the torch into the sand pouch of the stand, and we lay down in the dark. I was very careful that he should not realize my physical differences. I was not this time defenseless with love, and vulnerable.
I was afraid I should make him Darak in my mind, but it would have been difficult, and I was glad of it. He was very different in every way-I had only to touch his clubbed hair, his skin; the smell and taste of him were unfamiliar. The act was pleasure, but there was no true possession. Darak took, but Asutoo borrowed-there is no other way to describe it. Beyond the pinnacle, on either side, hung an expectancy that never quite went out. We were too well-mannered with each other, that is all.
Dawn slid under the door in a white thread.
Outside I heard movement, horses, and shouting, and the sounds of departure to which I was so used. I dressed, leaned over Asutoo and gently touched his face. His eyes opened on me sleepily, and he smiled.
“They are leaving,” I said. “I must go.”
His face changed. He woke up fully, stretched himself, began to dress.
I was at the flap when he said, “Why do you ride with that man?”
There was something in his voice I had not heard there before.
“I am one of Darak’s people,” I said.
“No. You are of the tribes.”
“I must go, Asutoo. There has been happiness between us,
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but the dawn parts day from night, and this is our parting, too.”
He was silent, and I went out.
They were going earlier than expected. Men were bringing the horses due to Darak, and bales of colored cloth. Food was coming too, and the bandits were eating as they moved about. The chief looked indulgent at this breach of etiquette, for he was well satisfied. The knives and other weapons they had chosen lay in heaps, the warriors pawing among them anxiously. There would be a meeting later, and an official handing out.
Darak was on his horse. His head was thrown back as he poured some drink or other down his throat from a clay bowl. Maggur came striding to me and grinned.
“That one is very angry,” he remarked, not looking at Darak. “He would have stopped you last night, but these naked braves got in the way.”
Darak had turned and seen me. He spat the last mouthful of drink onto the ground, and moved his horse around.
Maggur had found me my horse, and mounted his beside me. Most of the men were up now. It was time to be away. A sense of storm hung in the air.
“Our thanks for your hospitality,” Darak said to the chief.
The chief nodded. I saw Asutoo walk forward, and stand a few feet from his father’s side. He looked at Darak, and Darak pulled hard on his rein so that his horse jerked up its head, and kicked its front legs through a cook fire, showering Asutoo’s feet with charcoal.
Asutoo did not move. He said: “Give me leave, my chief, to speak to our guest and brother before he goes from us.”
The chief, frowning, made the gesture of consent.
But Asutoo did not speak at once.
“Well?” Darak said.
“My words are not for you only, Darak hill-rider. I speak to your warrior, the woman.” Asutoo looked at me across the horses. “You know the little I have to offer you, but if you will be my wife, and live with my tribe, you shall have all the honor you merit. I will not stop you riding to battle; you shall ride before me. You shall not be as a woman in my tent, but as my brother. I will have other wives to tend me. I ask you because I know you are a woman too.”
A pain went through me, sharp as a knife. There was a sudden longing in me to stay, to be his wife, and ride with him, and later perhaps to bear him children, and be a female only, and a slave as the others were. I knew he would love
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me, and leave me myself. He would let me search out my past and the Green Jade, once I had persuaded him. But somehow I could not speak.
There was a silence. I could not look at Darak’s face, I knew the contempt that would be on it. In a moment he would say to me: “Well, then, take him, and my blessing on you both.” But Darak did not speak either.
The chief said: “Such a woman would bring honor to us. One day, if it was her will, she might bear sons and make our tribe great. I will answer for my son Asutoo. He is a brave warrior, and has killed many of our enemies. One morning he will wake to be chief of the Star.”
Darak wheeled his horse then. He rode back to me, and snatched the rein out of my hands.
“We are honored by your words, chief. But our laws are different ones. This woman is mine.”
Asutoo’s face whitened. His hands clenched.
I wanted only to break away, to say, “No, Darak, I am not anything of yours,” and go to the white-faced boy. But I could not do it.
Darak did not glance at me. His arm went up to salute the tribes and their chieftains, and then he spun us around, his free hand still on my reins even before he had regained his. I had no free will left, he had stolen it, yet I had given it, too. It was so terrible to be in his power, doubly terrible because it delighted me. Anger and joy to have him drag me with him away from all safety and hope of freedom, and to have no say in it.
“Darak,” I called, “let go of him, you will cut his mouth.”
“Don’t tell me, you damned bitch,” he shouted back. The sky rushed in our faces. “I’ve handled horses for three years or more before you broke your egg.”
But he was laughing. Both of us were laughing. I had forgotten Asutoo already, and the ruins of any hopes he might have had, and his shame.
Part IV: Ankurum
We did not return to the road, but moved parallel to it on a newer track. A little beyond Kee-ool it seemed the paving had broken up, and it was no longer fit to ride. An ignominious end for the master-built Way of Kings.
It seemed to be the finish of my troubles. No more dreams and no more strange happenings. Not even any longings beyond what I had. Only the dull hot ride, the jokes, the sense of comradeship, however absurd. And Darak. That was a good time for him too, I think. I do not know if he loved me or not, or how he could, but there was something between us then. I do not forget.
And then we reached Ankurum, the Red-Haired, her feet on the footstool of high rock hills, her back against the low mountains, and beyond her altogether, the sky-touching shapes of the Mountain Ring, faint and far off, their caps already creamed with snow. There is an old legend about Ankurum that the scarlet vine which grows all over her, and will never grow in another place, brings her prosperity.
For a day or so, before we even sighted her, we went through villages and towns that grew in size as we got nearer. A complex struggle of houses, inns, and markets wound up the rock hills to her gates. It should have been an inhospitable region, and barren as the plain, but somehow there were orchards and woods, and fields cut through by little streams. Perhaps they were right to worship the goddess of the vine.
Beyond the walls, the city rose up in banks and terraces, and twisting alleys, carved out of the hillside. The buildings were almost entirely of stone, a warm yellowish stone like the ramparts. Apart from the color of the vine, which ran wild everywhere, pictures had been painted on house and garden walls, and all over the fronts of inns and drinking