Maia

by Richard Adams

  "Maia-"

  "I can't say anything, Anda-Nokomis. Not now. Leave me, please! Just leave me!"

  At this moment, while the poor, perplexed man, who plainly did not know what to make of it, was still holding her silently in his arms, there were sudden sounds of alarm and commotion outside the grove. A voice shouted, "Stand to!" followed by other voices, running footsteps and the clattering of arms hastily snatched up. Then came actual sounds of fighting, angry cries and the clang of weapon on weapon. These, however, ceased quickly, as though a scuffle had broken off short. Tolis's voice called, "Tryzatt Miarn, get everyone on their feet!"

  Bayub-Otal, without haste or the least sign of disquiet, gently released Maia and stood up. Having listened for a few moments, he said calmly, "I suppose I'd better go and see what's happening," went over to the gap by which he had entered and stepped outside.

  "What is it, sentry?"

  "Robbers, sir-something o' that. Tried to rush us, I reckon, but looks like the lads have seen them off."

  Bayub-Otal returned. "I'll have to go. I'm sorry to leave you, Maia, but at least I know you're equal to it. I'll come back as quickly as I can."

  Left alone, Maia did not take long to decide against remaining where she was. Wrapping her cloak round her, she got up and went outside. Her sentry was standing with his back to her, looking out through the trees,- Beyond, she could make out hurrying figures and firelight. She pushed quickly through the bushes as far as the sentry, who checked her with a movement of his arm. ›

  "I wouldn't go out there, saiyett. Don't let them see you. Might just set 'em off again, like."

  "Don't worry, I won't show myself," she answered. "I only want to find out what's happening. You can come with me if you like."

  They went cautiously forward to the edge of the grove. In the light of the setting half-moon she could see Tolis standing to one side and in front of his men, who were drawn up in extended line. On the ground immediately in front of them lay two bodies: they were without armor and did not look like soldiers. From beyond, out in the dim scrub and fern, came intermittent taunts and cries of defiance.

  "Go on, be off with you!" shouted Tolis. His voice, though clear and confident, was somewhat high in tone, and a mocking falsetto echoed, "Be off with you!" followed by jeering laughter.

  "You'll get nothing here," cried Tolis again, "unless a few more of you fancy being killed."

  At this the hubbub died down, and then a voice shouted, "All right, then; give us food and we'll go."

  Tolis made no reply. A few stones came flying out of the darkness, together with a clumsily-made arrow which one of the soldiers turned aside with his shield.

  "Kind of an awkward situation, sir," said the tryzatt.

  "You'd better get the men back," said Tolis. "They're too exposed. The only reason I put them out there was because I hoped it might frighten the bastards away."

  As the men, still maintaining line, came backing in among the trees, the same voice out of the darkness shouted, "If you won't give us food we'll have to come and get it. We've had nothing for two days."

  "That's not our fault," called back one of the men. "Think we're going to waste our food on a pack of thieving swine like you?"

  "We're not thieving swine," answered the voice. "We're respectable men, give us a chance. We're starving, that's what."

  It was the soldiers' turn to jeer in reply to this; but suddenly above the clamor rose a new voice. "Where are you from?"

  Maia started. It was Zen-Kurel, somewhere over to her left. Getting no answer, he repeated, "I asked where have you come from?"

  After a short pause someone in the dark answered "Be-lishba."

  "Why?" asked Zen-Kurel.

  "You'd bin there you wouldn't ask why." Another voice added, "They're free men in Sarkid, aren't they?"

  "Runaway slaves," said Tolis to the tryzatt. "I thought as much. I dare say they are desperate, poor bleeders."

  "You say you're respectable men," called Zen-Kurel. "Well, now's your chance to show it, because I'm going to take you at your word."

  Next moment he had stepped out from among the trees and was walking purposefully out into the dark scrubland. Anda-Nokomis's voice called, "Zenka, come back!"

  Zen-Kurel turned for a moment and waved his hand; then he continued on his way.

  "Silly basting bastard!" muttered one of the soldiers to his mate, a few yards away from Maia. "What's he reckon to do, then?"

  She sprang forward, startling the two men, who had not known she was there. "No! No! Zenka, come back!"

  She was running, shouting hysterically, when a soldier caught her round the waist and held her fast. She struggled, beating at him with her fists, then dropped her head on her chest, weeping. When Tolis and the tryzatt came up she had fainted and was lying on the ground with the soldier bending over her.

  They splashed water in her face. After about half a minute she came to herself to find Tolis holding her by the shoulders.

  "I beg you, saiyett, don't make a scene. The men are jumpy enough already."

  "O Lespa!" she moaned. "Tolis, can't you stop him? Go and stop him!"

  "Too late for that now, saiyett, I'm afraid. He didn't give me the chance. Get back, Dellior!" he called sharply to a man who had left the line, apparently to relieve himself. "No one said anything about standing down!"

  There was silence all along the line now, and silence from out in the scrubland also. Maia felt as though she had become a string about to snap. This tension was unendurable, this mute waiting in the yellow elf-light of the setting moon; nothing to be heard but the frogs in the half-dry river pools; nothing to be seen but the! stillness of the arid fern. Once she allowed a low whimper to escape her. Tolis, on one knee close by, looked quickly round and shook his head.

  She could not have told how long it was since Zen-Kurel had gone; only that the moon was lower and the suspense worse. She could hear the men whispering to one another, but caught no words.

  "Should we give him a shout, sir?" asked Miarn.

  "Not yet," answered Tolis.

  She realized that Anda-Nokomis was standing behind them, hunched and watchful as a heron in shallows. After a time he murmured almost inaudibly, "Perhaps they've gone."

  "With him?" said Tolis.

  "Or without him: no telling."

  Maia stood up. "I'm going to-"

  "Saiyett, please don't compel me to stop you."

  Just as she was wondering whether to draw her knife and make a dash for it, she caught sight of something moving out in the gray-yellow dimness. A shape;-one person or more-was approaching. In a low voice Tolis said, "Keep still! No one to speak!"

  Within half a minute they could see that in fact three men were coming towards them.

  "Is he there?" asked Tolis.

  Maia passed her tongue over her dry lips. "Yes."

  The men stopped some forty or fifty yards from the edge of the copse. Then Zen-Kurel's voice called, "Tolis, can you hear me?"

  Tolis answered and was about to go forward to join them when Zen-Kurel spoke again. "They don't want you to

  come any closer. I've just come to tell you what we're going to do."

  "Cran's zard!" muttered one of the soldiers. "Basting man don't want to live!"

  "These men aren't criminals," said Zen-Kurel. "They've escaped from slavery in Belishba and they've had a very bad time. They're quite ready to join Elleroth and I've assured them he'll be happy to take them on. So I'm going to guide them as far as the camp and act as surety for them. I expect to be back here by a couple of hours after dawn, but if I'm later than that, just go on to Nybril- don't wait for me." '

  It was plain that none of this was to Tolis's liking. He appeared not only at a loss but flustered. "What the hell are we going to do?" he asked the tryzatt. "Damned Ka-trian! We're responsible to Elleroth for him!"

  "Can't do nothing, sir," replied Miarn. "They've got him out there with them, haven't they?"

  "Yes, but when Elle
roth-" But before Tolis could say more, Bayub-Otal called out, "Zenka, can I come with you?"

  There was a pause, apparently while Zen-Kurel conferred with his companions. Then he answered, "No, they say not."

  "Very well," replied Bayub-Otal. "We'll keep you some breakfast."

  "Elleroth's going to be glad a bunch of men like these weren't wasted," called Zen-Kurel.

  With this he and the other two turned and disappeared once more into the gloom. The frog-croaking silence returned.

  "Stand 'em down, sir?" asked Miarn after two or three minutes.

  "Oh, yes, any damned thing you like!" replied Tolis petulantly. "You'd wonder who was in command here, wouldn't you?"

  "D'you reckon he'll be back, sir?"

  "Of course he won't!" said Tolis. "Men like that? They'll cut his throat as sure as the rains are coming! These blasted Katrians-they're all the same-throw their lives away and call it soldiering! Karnat's wildcats! I believe they'd set themselves on fire just to try and show they were braver than anyone else! Why the hell couldn't he do it some time when we weren't responsible for him? Lord Elleroth's going

  to play hell! 'Why did we let it happen?' As if we could have had any idea what he was going to do!"

  "Going to wait for him, then, sir, or not?"

  "I haven't decided yet," said Tolis. "I'll tell you tomorrow."

  He was walking away when Maia followed him.

  "Can I speak to you?"

  Tolis turned to her with the air of a young and harassed man retaining his self-control with difficulty.

  "Saiyett, you're the last person to whom I'd want to be discourteous, but I've simply had enough for one night. Please go back to bed. We'll talk in the morning."

  Within the hour Maia had become so much demented with fear that she could no longer keep up appearances or conceal her distress. Her thoughts-if thoughts they could be called, that succession of visions and sensations overwhelming her mind like some evil dream-were plunged into a kind of vortex, a vicious circle from which there was no escape save hysteria. It was as though she were running in terror from one room to another, only to find herself fleeing at last back into the first. This first was a sense of panic horror, much like the shock felt by one who suddenly finds herself falling from a height, or wakes to realize that the house is burning. Then followed the images-apprehensions, vivid as flashes of lightning: Zenka surrounded and fighting for his life, Zenka tortured by the fugitive slaves, Zenka's body flung into the river, Zenka bleeding, Zenka murdered. And flying from these she ran full-tilt, as against a wall, into her awareness- like that of one hearing herself sentenced to death-that this was no dream, but reality; and taking place not in the past or the future, but in, that present from which there is no escape. Thence to the weeping, the entreaties to the gods for reassurance-to the gods who could not give it. And so back to the panic, and the horror. The Serrelinda, who had made her way into Pokada's prison and into the Ortelgan camp by night, was not equal to this unremitting torment of inaction.

  A common, general misery, such as a flood or some civic calamity, has at least the effect of bringing people together and uniting them in fortitude and mutual succor: "I mustn't let the others down." Perhaps the worst of a private affliction is its effect of isolation. Personal grief, like deafness or a glass prison, sequesters the sufferer and separates her from others, who cannot by the nature of things enter into

  her agony. Even so may one see a maimed animal limping on among the indifferent herd.

  The near-by soldiers were far away, in a world where people talked together, kept watch, slept or rolled dice by the fire: they were close-as close as sane men standing by the bedside of one who knows he has gone mad.

  Maia was aware that Anda-Nokomis was sitting beside her, since from time to time he spoke to her or touched her hand. Yet it was little he said, seeming as he did to find her affliction almost as grievous as she herself; though his recourse, characteristically, was to silence and to that lonely patience which had so long been habitual with him.

  She knew that most, if not all, of the soldiers felt sure that Zen-Kurel had thrown his life away for nothing and that they thought him a fool for doing it. If anything they despised him, since his valuation of the risk he had taken was beyond their comprehension, much as the incentive of an explorer seems foolish to those who wonder why he could not have stayed safely at home.

  She made no attempt to talk to Anda-Nokomis, simply keeping her lonely suffering, as it were, alight for a lamp which might somehow guide Zenka back. Yet even this flickered and died at last as she fell asleep from exhaustion.

  Her sleep was full of dreams; or rather of visitations, without visual images or even any illusion of sequence in time; dreads and forebodings, by their very universality and formlessness more intense and veritable than any to be suffered in real, waking life: like huge, hazy masses driven before a great wind-transcendental sorrow made manifest-towering over and dwarfing all emotion of which mere humanity was capable. She stifled in clouds of anguish, lay buried under mountains of regret, struggled and drowned in cataracts of loss. And she, who had been unable to sleep-she could not wake.

  At last, contracting, as it were, in order to enter the finite, visible world, the cloud-dreams crystallized into figments she could apprehend and seem to see-persons, time, even a situation. It seemed that Zenka-her own Zenka, her lover as he had once been-had indeed returned and was standing beside her bed in Melvda-Rain. He was weary and travel-worn, yet full of pride and fulfillment; at which she felt no surprise, for it was once more the night when they had become lovers. Yet now Anda-Nokomis was there also; a strangely two-minded Anda-

  Nokomis, at one and the same time glad and despite himself sorry to see Zenka back.

  Zenka spoke to him. She seemed to hear his very words. "It was well worth the risk. Good men, some of them- thousand pities if they'd been killed in a pointless scrap."

  "Why," she cried gladly, "that's just how I felt, too, that night in Melvda! You understand then, don't you? We understand each other now, Zenka, my darling-"

  As she seemed to say this, an enormous relief and happiness filled her, a certainty that now everything would be all right. Yet he appeared not to hear, even though he was looking down at her as Anda-Nokomis laid a hand on his shoulder in congratulation.

  "She was very nearly your only casualty," he said. "I've really been afraid for her reason. She's been in a terrible state."

  She tried to move, to stretch out her hands, tried to speak again, but it had become one of those dreams in which you couldn't. And now Zenka-it seemed to be his turn to appear two-minded. He frowned, looking down and tapping with one foot on-the ground.

  "Then all I can say is, it's been her turn to know what it feels like."

  King Karnat's trumpet was sounding for the muster. Zenka went away and she knew she had to go and swim the Valderra again. The soldiers had pulled her out and were bending over her.

  She opened her eyes. It was Anda-Nokomis. Slowly, she remembered where they were and what had happened last night. Had she then bees dreaming or awake-or both?

  It was broad daylight. She sat up, looking round at the interlaced branches, the drooping, withered trepsis bloom spelling "Serrelinda" and at Anda-Nokomis beside her.

  He smiled his restrained, distant smile. "Our friend's back."

  ,"He's back?"

  "He was here just now, while you were still asleep. He got those men to the camp quite successfully and handed them over to Elleroth. I don't think he was gone nine hours altogether." He paused. "Twenty miles and a sleepless night, but more peaceful than some people's, I think, all the same."

  Relief surged over her as over an exhausted castaway washed up on a beach. She wanted nothing: the immediate

  moment was enough. She lay back, content merely to remain where she was and know that Zenka was alive. So fully did this feeling possess her that for some time she did not even mind that in this woken, real state they were not reconciled
and that of course he could not have heard what she had said to him in her dream. No matter. She would still be able to help him to get to Katria; still be able to make her sacrifice. That was enough, for she had thought herself deprived of it and now she had it back, the bitter solace of her integrity.

  97: NYBRIL

  They brought her some food, and Tolis sent to enquire whether she still wanted to talk to him. Yes, she said, and when he came thanked him graciously and sincerely for looking after her when she'd lost her head the night before: so that he hardly knew what to reply. Well, he'd acted as he thought best: he hoped she didn't mind: decisions weren't always easy: sometimes these things had to be done. Neither of them mentioned Zen-Kurel.

  Maia, little though she knew of soldiering, could not help being impressed by the practiced ease with which the Sarkidians cleaned up and cleared the camp site. Having no axes for a pyre or spades for burial, they could only commit the two dead men to the river. Both were young and not ill-looking, though sadly gaunt and famished. One, so Maia thought, a little resembled Sednil. She felt full of pity for them. At her request (she doubted whether it would have been done otherwise), the tryzatt brought her some grain, salt and wine to fling after them into the river. She picked an armful of flowers, too-thy dis and marjoram, bartsia and planella-sprinkled them on the current and as they drifted away offered a prayer that the young men might meet with Sphelthon and share his peace.

  "You didn't feel in any danger?" she asked Zen-Kurel as they were setting out. She felt able, now, to address him directly, though still avoiding any suggestion of warmth or particularly friendly feeling. He, for his part, seemed to have eome to regard their relationship as one between two people working with mutual respect towards a common end, without seeking or expecting more.

  "No one need have felt in any danger," he replied. "It should never have been allowed to come to blows at all." Then, as Tolis came up, he shrugged and broke off with the air of one refraining from criticism of colleagues, however well justified.