Oh, damn. I should go on. Why take chances? But the next shelter might be another half-day’s ride away; and she was soaked, chilled and freezing. Her cheeks felt numb beneath her hand, and her eyes smarted. Just to get out of the wind for a minute or two….
While she delayed, her horse and pack animal had made up their own minds; they tugged at the reins, plunging ahead of her inside the dark barn. There was a good, dusty smell of fodder and hay. It seemed warm and pleasant. She set her saddle-lantern in a safe place, and set about unsaddling the horse, off-loading her pack beast. I wouldn’t have the heart to take them out in this storm again. Several horses and pack animals were already chomping on fodder and grain; Magda fed her animals, then sat down by the light of the saddle-lantern and pulled off her boot. She drew a sharp breath of dismay as she saw the whitish patches along the reddened flesh under the wet stocking. 7 need fire, she1 thought, and something hot to get the circulation going. She had lived oh Darkover much of her life, and knew the danger signs. There could be no question, now, of camping outdoors.
She would simply have to rely on the traditional neutrality of the travel-shelters, and on the disguise she wore. After all it had excited no comment of question from the traders she had met that other night.
She gathered up her saddlebags and started into the main building. Almost automatically she drew up her cloak collar to cover her bare neck; then, self-consciously, put it down where it belonged. Her Amazon’s dress and short hair were the best protection in this situation; ordinary female dress and manners would make what she was doing unthinkable.
She pushed the door open and stepped into the light of several lanterns. There were two parties of travelers in the long stone-floored room, one at each end, around the fireplaces. As she saw the men near the door, her heart sank; she almost wished she had taken her chances in the woods. They were a party of big, rough-looking men, wearing strangely cut cloaks, and Magda fancied there was something more than impersonal curiosity in their eyes as they turned to look at the newcomer.
The laws-of the road meant it was for Magda to speak first. She spoke the formal, almost ritual words, hearing her voice, light and almost little girlish in the huge echoing room:
“As a late-comer I crave leave from those who have come before to share shelter.”
One of the men, huge and burly, with fierce-looking reddish-gold moustaches, spoke the formal greeting, “Be welcome; enter this neutral place in peace, and go in peace.” His eyes rested on her with a look that made her skin crawl. It wasn’t just that the man was unshaven, and his clothes far from clean; that could be bad weather and traveler’s luck. It was something in his eyes. But the laws of the travel-shelter should protect her. She clutched her saddlebags and edged past. Both fireplaces had been preempted, but she could build a small fire near the stone shelving along the center wall. She need not even struggle with tinder; she could borrow a light. (But not, she resolved, from the big man with the moustaches!)
At the far end, five or six figures were gathered; they turned when Magda spoke, and one of them, a tall, thin figure, lean to gauntness, came toward her.
“Be welcome, sister,” the figure said, – and Magda heard the voice in astonishment. A woman’s voice, low-pitched and almost husky, but undeniably a female voice. “Come and share our fire.”
Zandru’s hells, thought Magda, involuntarily calling on a Darkovan God in her dismay, what now?
They’re Free Amazons.
Real ones!
The tall gaunt woman did not wait for Magda’s acquiescence; she said, “I am Camilla n’ha Kyria, and we are traveling on a mission to Nevarsin. Come, lay your things here.” She relieved Magda of her saddlebags, led her to the fire. “You are half frozen, child! You had better get out of those soaked things, if you have dry ones to put on; if not, one of us can lend you something, till your own garments have felt the-fire.” She pointed to where the women had strung cords and “hung spare blankets over them for privacy; by the light of the lantern they had hung there, Magda saw the stranger, Camilla, clearly. She was tall and emaciated, her face deeply lined with age-and what looked like knife scars-and her hair all gray. She had taken off outer cloak and tunic, wearing only the embroidered linen under tunic of a Thendara woman; beneath it her body was so spare and flat that Magda knew her for what she was: an emmasca, a woman subjected in adolescence to the illegal neutering operation. ,