Slowly, I drew the silver mask from my face, looking at her eyes. They did not flinch at all. I put the mask in her large strong hands, and drew on instead the strange familiarity of the shireen.
The dawn came, and I went to Ettook’s painted tent, walking at first but soon creeping, with head bowed and shoulders slumped, as I saw the other women did who were of no importance in the krarl. Tathra would not creep, but then she was the wife of Ettook and, like his horse, had acquired some value from his interest.
I had thought, despite the early hour, Ettook would not be there with her, for I had come to imagine she wished to have me there on her own, to learn those City ways she had hoped I knew. But he was still there, on his back among the rugs, naked and snoring. And he did not snore as other menrhythmically-but in fits and starts after irregular intervals-great snarling, snorting explosions, that had a sound of wild pigs at war.
Tathra sat beside him, but when I entered she pushed the rugs away and rose. She wore no garment and no mask; as a slave, apparently, my eyes on her face counted for nothing. Despite her pregnancy, she was, as I had already been aware, incredibly lovely. There was a lushness to her, a ripeness, yet with no sense of excess, as sometimes there is in women who carry this kind of beauty. And she had delicacy, too, narrow slender hands and feet, catlike chin and eyes and nose, and a mouth that might have been painted it was such a perfect shape, and colored like a pale red flower.
She nodded at Ettook, and put two fingers on this witch’s mouth, in the warning I must be quiet. In sign language she
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pointed out perfumes and other cosmetics in a carved chest. Silently I washed her and applied her scents, and finally brushed her hair as she kneeled before a mirror of polished bronze. I did not feel in any way demeaned by this. She was too beautiful. I became aware of something in me which gave a kind of reverence to beauty-that special beauty I had seen in Asren, in the palace girl he had loved, and which now I found so unexpectedly among the tents of barbarians. I. after all, bore the curse of ugliness; even my body, which Darak had found lovely enough, was disfigured now.
I plaited strands of her hair and fastened on their ends little bells of silver. From a jar she took a blue cream and smeared it on her eyelids, and from another jar a red cream which she rubbed over her lips. I did not like her to do this. It offended me in some curious way, for it was neither necessary nor an improvement.
She got back among the rugs with him then, and a pang of anger clenched in my belly-not for myself, but for her, so special in her looks, to court the favor of the disgusting, snorting creature on its back at her side.
With gestures she sent me off for his food, and I made my way among the goats to the morning fire. There were no men about that I could see, and the women at the pit called out shrilly at me. When I went nearer one picked up a piece of wood and threw it at me. It glanced off my shin, and they laughed raucously.
I rummaged in my mind for words.
“Tathra,” I said, “I am sent by Ettook’s wife-for the food for the chief.”
They muttered and drew together, and presently one of them, rather tall and full-breasted, with a vivid red-blonde tide of hair, came up to me and slapped me across the head. There was more laughter.
“You want food,” she said, “you ask me.”
“I ask you, then.”
“I ask-I ask-listen to the City one, the Eshkir.” She mimicked me, and was applauded. “I am Seel’s daughter,” she said. “You have angered Seel. Those who anger the seer do not feed among the tents.”
“Not for me-but for the chief, Ettook.”
She hit me again, casually, and before I had reckoned what I did, I had given her blow for blow, and she was on her back among bits of charcoal from the fire.
The women shrieked and screamed at me, and Seel’s
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daughter got up slowly, and then would have come running at me, but another voice cut across the clamor and they were still. Kotta stood at her tent door, her blind eyes which seemed to see fixing on each of us in turn, unerringly.
“What trouble are you causing, daughter of the seer? She wants only to serve the chief. She is Tathra’s now, so you should mind your manners with her.”
Seel’s daughter lifted the veil of her shireen a little and spat on the ground, then stamped on the spittle with obvious symbolism.
“Tathra,” she snapped, “out-tribe, spear-bride whore.” She stood away from the fire, and pointed to a row of cooking pots sitting on the flames. “Take, then, white-hair.” I went by her, and she hissed at me: “You will remember later which one you struck.”
Reluctantly a woman filled platters for me, one with a kind of thin porridge smelling strongly of goat’s milk, one full of ripe black-red berries, a third with dark brown bread. There was also a jug of frothy beer which she ran off to fetch. The items were placed on a tray of stiffened woven matting and left on the ground for me to pick up. As I crouched to get it, a foot struck me in the side and I rolled over.
I did not know which of them had done it, but Kotta called out from her tent door, “No more of that. She has a child in her. Ettook won’t thank you if you lose him a warrior with your bitch ways.”
I did not know how she realized what they had done. There had been little sound. I picked up the tray and hurried away from them, back to the painted tent.
Going in, I found Ettook was awake, sitting up and glaring at me.
“What were you at, slut?” he roared. “Did you have to do the berrying and brewing yourself before you could bring it?”
“The women-” I said.
He roared me into silence, and snatched the tray so that everything fluid on it slopped over the sides of its container. He began to thrust food into his mouth, while Tathra filled his silver-hound cup with beer. Abruptly he snatched at her nearest breast in much the same way as he had snatched the tray. He laughed. Tathra nodded at me.
“Go now. I will have you brought when I need you.”
I turned and went out, and stood in the harsh sunlight, struggling with disgust.
The women were still at the fire, except for Seel’s daugh-
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ter-gone to feed her father probably. Kotta also had gone in. I did not know what I was expected to do now.
I crept across the camp, and found a narrow stream running through the pines, a little beyond the tents. I wondered if I should follow this stream which would perhaps find a river course between the slopes of the dark mountains beyond the trees, a course which would guide me, not toward Eshkprek, but ultimately south, toward the unknown sea. Nothing, after all, bound me here.
I took half a step, and an unseen wall seemed to block my path. I do not know what it was, prescience, perhaps, perhaps only a desire for whatever security I could find, however precarious. I shook my head, as if to the stream and the road it might offer, and turned back into the krarl.
I found out soon enough what my duties were.
I had sat down in the dust near Kotta’s tent, puzzling a little over the blocked path at the stream, when the women called out their men and children to eat around the fire-pit Not for them that first meal abed, which was Ettook’s right, and Seel’s too, presumably. I was roused to action by one of the krarl warriors, who dragged me to my feet, and cuffed me on the ear for sitting idle, and soon a thin woman, more anxious than unfriendly, recruited me to serve the men and boys their food, with all the other women. This took a while, and not once did the females of the camp eat, sit, or even stand still in the male presence. It was tradition with them, but they were more enslaved than the Dark People. Even I was less of a slave, for rebellion had stirred in me at last, and though I could do nothing about my lot, I did not accept it. The krarl women, even their little girls, did so wholeheartedly and without question; even Seel’s daughter, who ministered with the rest. When the men were done, they got to their feet, wiping their mouths, not glancing at their servitors, and went about their mens’ business: preparations for a hunt (for these ate meat, when they could get it), sharpening of knives, grooming of horses, and general important talk and discussion, not to be let slip into our ears. The boys slouched after in imitation. Their male glory began early, it seemed.