“For a husband it should be the same.”
“Not for a husband who’s a Hero.”
“Maybe not, if he’s an Ozman. But I’m not a Hero any longer anyway.” He paused. “If I was married to you, would you like me to, uh, hump other women?”
That stopped her only for a moment. “I wouldn’t care. It’s expected. As long as I had you when I wanted you. But you wouldn’t, because I’d give you all you could handle.
“Your vow’s already broken,” she went on. “Last night at my place. You remember; I know you do. You weren’t unconscious; you couldn’t have been. Even beat up like you were, you were pushing, helping out.”
He almost said he couldn’t help himself—that he’d been confused from his beating. Then asked himself, Who do you think you’re kidding, Macurdy? You were confused when she put it in, but when you realized, you could have pushed her off. Instead he nodded. “I remember. I let it happen; it was too good to stop. But that was once. Doing it once doesn’t make it all right a second time.”
He thought she might get angry, but her mouth didn’t tighten and her aura didn’t darken. She lay thoughtful a minute. “What’s she like, Macurdy? This wife of yours.”
He didn’t actually think about it, but answered on the premise that he needed confederates, and that she’d need to know sooner or later. “She’s a member of the Sisterhood, Melody. She’d run away from them. Then, one day when I wasn’t home, they came and stole her. Brought her back to Yuulith. But she had time to write me a note, and put it where I’d find it, so I followed her.”
Melody’s eyes reflected belief. And concern. “That’s where we’re going, isn’t it,” she said. “That’s why we’re going east instead of some other direction: to get her back.”
He nodded.
“What’s her name?”
“Varia.”
“Varia.” She tasted it. “Does she love you?”
“Yep.”
“I’ve heard stories about the Sisters. If they stole her back, you know what kind of life she’s leading now. In spite of any vows.”
“I don’t know.”
“They put them with studs, like you do mares, but not just one stud. Different ones hump them till they’re pregnant. And when they’ve weaned their kid, they send the studs around again. And the story is, they like it, like the slave girls do that get taken to the House of Heroes.”
His face was swollen and discolored, but she could read the bleakness in it, even in the failing light. “Forget I said that, Macurdy,” she murmured. “I was being an asshole, and I’m sorry. You’ve been a real Hero, not like some of those others. What I said is true, or at least it’s what people believe, but—shit!”
She sighed gustily. “I ought to wish I wasn’t in love with you, but I am.” She raised herself on an elbow, and reaching, caressed his better cheek with her fingertips. “If you change your mind, I’m right here beside you. And I don’t think your Varia would be mad at you for humping me.”
She turned away, and Macurdy went to sleep thinking that maybe Varia wouldn’t be angry, but a vow was a vow. He wondered if Melody would try anything after he went to sleep, and found himself half hoping she would.
He woke to Jeremid’s hand tugging his foot—his turn on watch—and got up quietly, his stomach complaining with hunger. Outside the horses looked at him briefly, then returned to grazing. The cook fire was stone cold. Cautiously he touched the pot, then reached into the still-warm water, scooped out a piece of turkey cooked soft by long boiling, and chewed painfully as he walked to the nearest watch fire. They were burning strongly; Jeremid had re‑fed them before coming in.
The thin moon had already set, but he guessed it was still somewhat short of midnight; three hours would be about right for his shift, he decided; maybe three and a little bit. Recalling something Mr. Anderson had taught them at school, he found the Big Dipper; it was supposed to circle the North Star once a day. So in three hours, the dipper should go a quarter—no, an eighth of the way around the North Star. Which meant that when the pointer stars got around to—about there—he’d go wake up Melody for her watch.