But since then she had met no one; the advanced season had sent most travelers home to their own firesides. The clouds had thinned and gone, and the great red sun of Darkover, which some poet hi the Terran Zone had christened The Bloody Sun, was rising between the peaks, flooding the high snowfields with flaming crimson and gold. As she rode up into the pass, it seemed that a sea of flame ‘bathed the high snowcaps, a brilliance of solitude that exhilarated and excited her.
But the sunrise subsided, and there was nothing but the lonely silence of the trail. Silence, and too much time to think, to ask herself again and again: Why am I doing this? Am I still in love with the bastard?
Pride, maybe, that a man who shared my bed-however briefly-should be abandoned and left to die, with no one to help him?
Or maybe, when we were growing up in Caer Donn, just the few of us among all the Darkovan children, we absorbed their codes, their ethics. Loyalty, kinship’s dues. To the Empire, Peter is only an employee, expendable. To me, to any Darkovan, that’s an outrageous notion, an obscenity.
She crossed the path before the sun was more than an hour high in the sky, her ears aching with the altitude, and began to descend into the next valley. At noon she stopped at a little mountain village and indulged herself by buying a mug of hot soup and a few fried cakes at a food-stall. Some curious children gathered around, and Magda guessed, from their eagerness, that they saw very few outsiders; she gave them some sweets from her saddlebags, and lingered, resting her animals before the climb to the next pass, enjoying her first taste of fresh food since she had left Thendara.
They were all curious as kittens; they asked where she had come from, and when she told them “Thendara,” they stared as if she had said “From world’s end.” She supposed that to these children, never out of their own hills, Thendara was the world’s end. But when they asked her business, she smiled and said it was a secret of her patroness. Lady Rohana had given her permission to use her name. “I will give you my safe-conduct, too, under my seal. In the foothills there are many who owe service to Gabriel and to me.” She had also cautioned her against any but the most casual contact with genuine Amazons, but had advised her that if she met any by chance, she would be asked for her Guild-house, and for the name of the woman who had received her oath. “In this case, you may say Kindra n’ha Mhari; she is dead these three years”-and a fleeting sadness had touched Rohana’s eyes-“but she was my dear friend, and I do not think she would grudge this use of her name. But if the Gods are kind you will get to Sain Scarp, and, hopefully, back again, without using it.”
She had finished eating, and was watering her animals at the village trough when she saw a pair of men riding into the square. By the cut of their cloaks she knew they were from the far Hellers; they were bearded, and wore wicked-looking knives hi their belts. They looked at Magda and, she fancied, at her laden saddlebags, with a regard that made her uneasy. She cut short the watering, clambered hastily into her saddle, and took the trail out of town. She hoped they would stop there for a good, long rest, and she would not see them again.
For a long time the trail led upward between heavily wooded slopes. The ice and snow were melting in the noon sun and the trail was slushy underfoot; Magda let her horse find its own pace, and when the road grew steepest, dismounted to lead it. She paused at a bend in the trail, where the trees thinned at a giddy height, looking down at the narrow line of road far below. There she saw, with consternation, what looked like the same two men she had seen in the village. Were they following her?
Don’t be paranoid. This is the only road northwest into the Hellers; am I the only one who could have legitimate business along it? She stepped to the edge, careful not to slip on the muddy, slushy cliff, and looked down at the men riding the trail. Could she even be sure they were the same two men? Yes, for one man had been riding a roan horse; they were not common at any latitude, and to see two in the mountains in the same day’s ride was entirely unlikely. As if to dispel her last doubt, one looked up, apparently saw Magda silhouetted along the edge, and leaned over to speak urgently to his companion; they drew at their horses’ reins, edging in toward the cliff where they would not be visible from above.