The tensile strength of living flesh surprised Kesair. For a moment she was not sure the knife had gone in.
Then she heard him gasp. Some reflex made
her snatch her hand back as if to undo the deed. Too late, too late. The tug she had to give to remove the knife told her how deeply it had penetrated. She felt it grate against bone as she withdrew it.
Appalled, she lay frozen.
Ladra coughed. “You ⦔
“I warned you!” she said through clenched teeth. She was alternately hot and cold. Her entire body was shaken by the pounding of her heart.
“I ⦔ Ladra stirred, gathered himself, struggled to his hands and knees. His head swung slowly back and forth.
Warm blood spattered onto Kesair's hand.
Ladra began crawling backward, away from her. She lay immobilized by horror. What to say? What to do? She could not think. Her paralysis of mind was more frightening than the menace of Ladra.
He somehow made his way back to his own bed without awakening anyone else. The wound was deep, his probing fingers discovered, but not close to the heart. Nor did it seem to have penetrated a lung. If he did not bleed to death he might survive.
Fighting waves of dizzying pain, he gathered moss to stuff into the wound. There was a roaring in his ears like the sound of the sea. He lay on his back, clinging desperately to consciousness. He was afraid he would never wake up if he let himself fall asleep.
The night was endless. The slightest sound was an assault on Ladra's raw nerve endings. All around him people slept, blissfully unaware that he might be dying. He hated them for their indifferent comfort.
This is me! he wanted to shout. This is my precious life seeping away!
But he did not shout. He lay in silence, fearing. Hating.
In the morning he was still alive.
Ladra was surprised to discover he was actually seeing the first flush of dawn. I am not going to die after all, he thought. His survival seemed almost anticlimactic.
With a great effort, he dragged himself to his feet and went to the stream to splash his face with cold water. It revived him a little. A close examination of the moss showed that blood was no longer seeping from the wound. He was weak, but he was alive.
Every movement hurt, however.
One-handed, he struggled to wrap his cloak around his body and
fasten it so no one would see the bloody mess at his shoulder. Only then did he allow himself to make enough noise to awaken the others.
Kesair was already awake. She did not think she had slept at all. She heard him get up and go to the stream. She heard him return. He did not come anywhere near her.
At least she had not killed him.
She wondered how she felt about that.
She got up cautiously, surprised to find the world much the same as it had been the night before. Familiar forms surrounded her. Familiar sounds: coughing, farting, a groan of awakening, a muttered, sleepy conversation. The new baby's cry and Kerish's tender answer.
As Kesair bent over to pick up her blankets, the seashell fell from the neck of her gown.
She caught it in midair, instinctively. Holding it to her ear, she listened for a moment to the voice of the sea. Then she tucked the shell back between her breasts.
Though she watched him warily, Ladra gave no indication of what had happened between them. He moved stiffly as he gathered himself for the day, but he was able to walk. No one commented on his obvious discomfort. His women assumed it was a residue of his previous illness. The only one who reacted to it at all was Ramé, who trimmed a branch and gave it to him for a walking stick that he could lean upon.
When they left camp and got under way, however, Ladra moved so slowly even Kerish could outpace him. Eventually Ramé spoke to Kesair. “Ladra is in considerable pain,” she said, “but he won't admit it and he won't let Ayn look at him.”
“That's his right,” Kesair said through stiff lips.
Ramé went to walk with Velabro. “Kesair is an unfeeling woman,” she complained.
Velabro considered. “Aloof, perhaps. I wouldn't say unfeeling. And she may have her reasons,” she added charitably. Velabro had a deep, slow, husky voice. Ramé liked to talk to her for the sake of hearing the music in her voice.
“Ladra's hurting, Velabro. Kesair should be more solicitous of him. She's the leader, after all. Our welfare is her concern.”
“You weren't so solicitous of Ladra,” Velabro pointed out, “after the last time he flung himself on you.”
“That's different, I just got tired of him acting like a rutting stag. But I hate to see him suffer.”
“Perhaps you should suggest to him that we stop, then. He might be willing, if he really is in pain. Leel says this is fertile soil. We could settle here and let the others go on, and Ladra could rest and get well.”
“You make it sound simple enough, but it isn't. Think, Velabro. What will it mean? A band of women alone in a strange place with just one manâand him ill? Aren't you afraid?”
Velabro shook her head. “I was afraid when the sea rose. When the others came and killed our men and tried to steal our boat, I was afraid. I was terribly afraid when we were alone on the ocean. But I wore out my capacity for fear, finally. Now I just want to stop walking and stay somewhere and get on with whatever happens next. I suspect the other women feel the same.”
Ramé quietly canvassed Ladra's other women. She found that they all were willing, even eager, to stop and stay. The weather was mild, the sun was shining, there was fresh water and abundant grass. The women who were in charge of the livestock were the most ready to stop traveling. Getting the animals through the forest had been arduous enough, but on lush pasturage they almost had to be dragged to keep them moving forward, exhausting their herders. “Let's stay right here,” Ramé was told. “Look at the animals, they know best.”
The next time they stopped to rest and let Kerish nurse her baby, Ramé spoke to Ladra. “Your women want to stay here and go no farther,” she told him. “Leel says we could farm this region successfully, our seed would grow here. And you could regain your strength andâ”
“I ⦠am ⦠not ⦠stopping ⦠yet,” Ladra said, forcing each word as if it cost him great effort. But even as he spoke he swayed and almost fell.
Ramé caught him in her arms. “This is as far as we go!” she called to Kesair. “Ladra's ill, he's fainting!”
“We'll stay with you,” Fintan said.
Kesair cried sharply, “We won't! Ladra's women can take care of him.”
Fintan rounded on her. “Do you mean to leave him when he's sick?”
“I'm not ⦠sick,” Ladra insisted, fighting to stand upright again, pushing away Ramé's arms.
“There, you hear him, he's not sick. They just want to stay here, Fintan. So we'll leave them and go on.”
“I'm going ⦠too ⦔ Ladra tried to insist, but waves of weakness were breaking over him. He met Kesair's eyes. His ears began to ring, as if with the roar of the sea.
“You're not going anywhere,” Ramé said gently, taking hold of him again. Velabro hurried to help her.
Leel remarked, “I don't think we could find any better place than this no matter where we go, so we might as well stay here.”
“I think that's a good idea,” agreed Kesair. “The rest of you, prepare yourselves and we'll move on now.”
“We can't just go off and leave them like this!” Fintan protested.
But Kesair would not listen. She seemed almost indecently eager to put distance between herself and Ladra's group. Byth was anxious to move on as well, he kept talking about the valley he wanted to find.
Fintan gave in, realizing that Ladra had not endeared himself to the others and no one would be heartbroken about leaving him. Besides, that had been the plan.
Still ⦠he sensed something of a mystery about Kesair's attitude. When they were under way again, and Ladra and his women were dots in the distance, setting up their camp and staking out their animals, Fintan fell into step beside Kesair.
“Was something wrong between you and Ladra?” he wanted to know.
“Not.”
“Then why were you so anxious to get rid of him?”
She spun around and glared at him. “You wouldn't know, would you?”
“That's why I'm asking you. If there is some sort of problem, you should share it with me.”
“I tried. You weren't interested.” Her voice shimmered with icicles. “Now I'm not interested in sharing anything with you. Just service your women and leave me alone.”
Fintan was mystified. The incident with Salmé was trivial to him, already forgotten. He found Kesair's attitude inexplicable.
But then, he reasoned, who could ever understand women?
They traveled on until Byth found his valley. As always, Kesair was following a river. It led between two hills that rose in gentle curves from the plain. Within the sheltering arms of the hills, which blocked the wind and trapped the sun, the river spilled into a crystal lake. An ecstasy of birds was in full song, and the valley surrounding the lake was fragrant with flowers.
“Here we are!” Byth cried, flinging his arms wide and ignoring his arthritis. “I knew we would find this place. We're home, chicks.”
Indeed, the valley was beautiful enough to bring a lump to Fintan's throat. Had Byth not already claimed it, Fintan would have wanted it for himself. But he could not deny the old man. “This is your land, then,” he agreed, “and we shall go on and find someplace for ourselves.”
“Stay with us until we get settled in,” Ayn urged Kesair. “Byth is not as strong as he thinks he is, and we would be grateful for some help.”
Kesair had no hesitation about staying to help this time.
It was fortunate, because that meant they were still there several days later, when Ladra's women caught up with them. Several were already thickening with pregnancy.
Ramé led the group. Her face was haggard, her eyelids swollen as if she had been crying. Ashti, the youngest of the party, was still sniffling and wiping her nose on her sleeve.
Kesair hurried forward to meet them. “What happened to you?”
“He died!” Ashti wailed. “He was just sitting there, propped against a stone, and then he gave a sort of gurgle and blood started coming out of his mouth and he ⦠and he ⦔
“Died,” Ramé finished. “There was nothing any of us could do.”
“It was horrible!” Ashti was crying. “Horrible! He kept struggling, and his legs were running but he wasn't going anywhere, and ⦔
Kesair said to Velabro, “Take her over there, away from the others, and give her a drink, will you?
“Now, Ramé, tell me just what happened.”
“That is what happened. At first we could hardly believe he was dead. You saw how he was, he wouldn't even admit to being ill. Then all at once he was gone.”
Listening to the conversation, Ayn was obviously puzzled. “I
don't understand this at all,” she said. “He was sick, then he got better. Then he was weak again, then he bled at the mouth, convulsed, and died? What sort of illness is that?”
“And how did he get it?” Fintan questioned. “Something fatal like that ⦠could we all be subject to it?”
Seeing the fear in their faces, Kesair wanted to tell them. But she could not. She dared not. “No one else feels sick,” she pointed out, “so we must assume this is something that affected only Ladra. Maybe an illness he'd had for a long time that we didn't know about.”
They wanted to believe her but they were obviously frightened. Even Velabro was frightened. She found herself trying to comfort Ashti with words she did not believe. “Everything will be all right, we're safe, it's all right.”
There was no conviction in the words. Ashti continued to cry.
In their panic to rejoin the others, Ladra's women had left most of their supplies behind. The cattle and other livestock had been abandoned to graze and run wild. Ramé, knowing Kesair would cling to the river courses, had been able to guess which way to go and so had found them, but her practicality had not extended to taking time to pack up and bring everything. She had been too afraid of being left behind.
There was only one thing to be done. Kesair arbitrarily divided Ladra's women among the two surviving men. She was annoyed with Ramé for leaving the animals, but assigned her to Fintan.
The urgency had gone out of them. They spent most of the rest of the summer getting Byth and his flock comfortably settled in their valley. It was only when the first chill winds blew over the hills that Kesair recognized the approach of autumn, and decided Fintan's group must be on its way. The valley would not support all of them on a permanent basis, and they would need to find their own place before another winter set in.