They ate their meal with the usual hungry gusto. Living like this, cold most of the time, fueled a hearty appetite. As always Simona finished the last scrap, thinking she could eat the whole thing over again twice and not be full.
They cleaned up, scouring the plates with sand then wiping them with hot damp cloths. Thru lit two lamps and took up the weaving, and Simona came and sat beside him, and they talked of what they would have to do.
Even though he knew that his work was doomed, Thru put all of his passion into laying more lines of his portrait of human warriors.
To sit like that, as they had most nights since arriving up here on the mountaintop, was enormously comforting. She realized that it might not be so comfortable again for a long time. She marveled internally at how she'd adapted to this hard life.
She felt as though she'd become the wife of a good-hearted craftsman. Except, of course, that they did not make love like man and wife; however, Simona secretly had begun to wonder what it would be like. She had seen Thru naked, knew that he was just like men in those regards. Just looking at his body excited her, with the hard muscles so tightly defined on chest and shoulders. At times of frustration Simona would find herself aching to know what it was like to make love, to be gripped in the heat of passion. At times she thought that she would die without ever knowing it. Sometimes these feelings made her snap angrily at Thru or behave coldly, though she knew he deserved far better, and always ended up feeling guilty and remorseful.
And she had often reflected that Thru was better to her than most men would ever have been. He was thoughtful, unfailingly kind and patient. Without him she knew she could not have survived on Beegamuus. Someday, she hoped she could repay him, somehow. But she did not like to think about the future. Too many threatening clouds hovered on that horizon.
She put her hand up to the "Chooks and Beetles" hanging on the wall.
"It makes me sad to think that someone might destroy this beautiful thing."
Thru did not seem fazed by the idea.
"If it makes them think, even for a moment, about what they are doing, then it will have repaid me for the labor of making it."
"What will we do about the donkey?"
"Well, we can't take it through the deep snow. We can wear snowshoes and make good time. The donkey will have to go back with the men. Don't forget, the Red Tops don't have snowshoes. They are probably digging a path through the snow to get here."
Simona nodded. She didn't want the men to get even the donkey. But it would solve the problem of the donkey's feed, which had been worrying her. There wasn't enough for the whole winter, not at the rate Thru was feeding the animal.
"They must hate us very much to go to such trouble."
"They need their hate. It gives them their strength. Without it they would have nothing."
They slept soundly, huddled together under the blankets, but in the middle of the night Thru awoke, hearing the wolves crying again. They were back at the den on Small Hummock Mountain, and they were calling back and forth with other wolves, much farther south and perhaps to the west as well, though Thru could not be absolutely sure of that because of the distance.
He rose, put on his outer leggings, boots, and tunic and went out to watch and listen more carefully. The moon was high in the sky and three quarters full, and by its light he quickly retraced his steps to the crag. Too dark to attempt climbing the quick way, he simply trudged up the long route. At the top he stilled his own breathing and listened intently.
For a while there was nothing but silence, then he caught it again, a faraway howling, wolves farther north than Small Hummock, deeper into the hills. He'd seen that pack once, there were seven wolves, but he did not know where they denned, except somewhere much farther south.
While he strained to hear the distant cries, he studied the northern approaches to Mount Beegamuus. Under the moonlight the dark slopes of the high ridge were dappled with brilliant streaks of snow, while the valleys were rivers of darkness under the trees.
How long would they have? He had packed food, warm clothing, and the most essential tools. Even a bundle of dry pine twigs. In the morning they would set off, and head east, back into the hills that he'd explored before. The cave would serve the two of them. Not a comfortable life after living in Beegamuus lodge, but they did not have a choice. At least they had food and snowshoes.
The snow in the stream valleys was very deep now. The Red Tops would have a difficult march getting up to Beegamuus. While they struggled along, he and Simona would go the other way, southward, then curve around to the west on the Yellow Canyon River until it reached the wider river valley. Then they would strike out down the river. By his calculations that would take them to the edge of the country where he had lived when he first entered the hills. He knew those hills well enough.
Then a motion on the ridge caught his eyes, and his heart sank. Coming over the high mass of the ridge was a light, a torch. Another joined it, and another, and more. Beneath the torches he could just make out a dense struggling mass of men, wielding shovels, digging their way through the drifts. By the Spirit, there was an army of them! When the count reached twelve torches, he turned and hurried back to the lodge. The Red Tops had decided not to wait until daylight. The enemy really wanted to make sure of them.
Simona came awake in a moment and they hurriedly packed the rest of the food they planned to take plus all the blankets and an ox hide that Thru had rolled up and tied in a tight roll. They boiled hot tea, ate meal biscuits, and washed them down with the tea, then set off.
When it was all on her back, Simona realized just how heavy it was going to be. Flour, beans, the meat barrel, it all added up. She took a breath and renewed her determination. She would survive.
Thru had the escape route worked out in his head. They went out down the east chute, a steep little vale that opened onto a rock-filled canyon, deeply drifted with snow.
The drifts were crusted and firm, they had no difficulty in staying on the surface in their snowshoes and made relatively good time considering their burdensome packs.
Thru wondered how the Red Tops would pursue them here. If they didn't have snowshoes, it would take them a long time to get down this streambed. The moon fell below the horizon, and movement became more difficult for the final hour before dawn. The stars glittered brightly in the vault above in the bitter cold. Red Kemm was below the horizon.
Dawn found them on the lower slopes of Small Hummock Mountain at the opening of the Yellow Canyon, so named because of the ocher sandstone that lined its northern side.
They were well beyond Simona's family zob now, on land that belonged to another family, the Zempatti clan. Their big house was at the far end of the Yellow Canyon, where it opened out into the valley of the River Esk. Simona had been to Zempatti zob several times when she was a girl. The Zempattis were good friends of her parents. However, the big house would not be open at this time of the year. Elgh Zempatti was a lay deacon of the pyramid. He had to be in the city for the festival season.
Thru asked Simona questions about the land ahead, especially the crossings of the River Esk.
"There are two bridges that I know about. One carries the Emperor's road, and it has a guard post all year-round, because they collect taxes on that bridge, and the other is a bridge on the road to Yamich, a small village."
Thru was impressed. "You must have been observant when you were young."
"You don't know what it's like to be shut up in the purdah wagon. I always wanted to know everything about the places we visited. When we went to Zempatti, there was more purdah than in our own home. So I was not allowed outside the house and the women's garden. It has a high wall, and any woman of noble birth found outside it has to be impaled and her remains cremated and scattered in the wind. It says so right on the wall, carved there by the men who built it."
Thru's eyebrows rose involuntarily, as they did so often when Simona told him about the strange way of life called purdah. To have
one half of the population permanently locked indoors, restricted and kept almost useless, struck him as fundamentally insane. It was so strange that he could not comprehend why men would live this way.
They halted to eat some hard biscuit with cheese and dried herbs. They washed it down with water from the stream; Simona broke the ice with a rock to get to it. The water was so cold that it stung her hands at first, but she warmed the tin cup against herself until the water could be drunk.
While the cold was still causing an ache in her throat, she marveled at herself for a moment. Here she was talking of purdah and she was outside all restrictions, wearing men's clothing and accompanying a single male. Not exactly the way of life her mother had brought her up to enjoy!
She laughed. Thru's eyebrow rose in question, but she couldn't tell him what she was thinking.
"It's nothing." She put her mittens back on. "You said we would turn west here, and go down the Yellow Canyon."
Looking due west they could see the canyon wind through the foothills, on its way to join the river in the broader valley beyond. Much farther away, silhouetted against the strengthening light of dawn, were the hills on the far side of the Esk.
"That is where we go, to those hills."
Simona nodded. "I have never been that far, I don't even know what they're called. I do know that Shesh lies beyond them."
"Yes, I have seen it from those hills. We have a long walk ahead of us."
Now they went on up narrow trails cut in the same yellow sandstone that they saw glowing ahead of them in the early morning light. The canyon was steep-walled and stark. The river splashing its way down a bed strewn with boulders and slabs of the same rock buried under snow. Dense thickets of alder grew here and there in the valley, making it almost impassable in places.
But Thru always found the deer trails. These weren't the easiest trails to follow for the two of them, burdened by their heavy packs, but they got through each barrier, no matter how impenetrable it appeared at first.
Later, hidden in a grove of aspens and small pines they stopped to eat more biscuit and cheese. The canyon had broadened out dramatically, and the River Esk was not far off.
"The big house is not far from here I think." She pointed south and east. "I think it is over there, above the river. We always came in on the road from the south, which runs up along the riverbank. We could see the yellow canyon and then we would turn into the gate that leads to the house."
Simona wondered what her earlier self would have made of the way she was visiting the Zempatti zob this time. She shuddered slightly. She didn't want to think of it either. But it was hard not to contrast this visit with those summers of long ago. Riding up in the screened wagon, wearing her favorite summer dress made of silk the color of apricot, sitting with Mother and sometimes Aunt Piggili, and talking about the wonderful parties they would be attending for the next five days. Simona would be enjoying mango ice cream and meeting all the Zempatti girls, who she really liked. She shook her head to erase the vision. That life seemed so far away now, as if it belonged to another person. The Simona of the past had never planned on being snatched away to the new world to witness war and a multitude of other horrors. That little girl in her apricot silk dress had been so innocent, so naive, so protected that she was almost like another person. Even though she'd known that her world rested on the shoulders of a million slaves, she had thought that as long as she obeyed the rules and kept her head down, she would be allowed to live out her life in relative comfort, surrounded by books and art and intelligent conversation. Fate had not been so kind.
Thru, meanwhile had more practical concerns. The first one of which was the river. Was it iced over? The fast-flowing stream in the Yellow Canyon was only partially iced, which worried him. The water was freezing and too cold to swim across. After studying the broader valley view very carefully, he turned back to her. The house was not far away, the pencil lines of smoke from its chimneys were visible.
The river was not yet iced over. The crossing would be difficult.
"Which of the bridges would be the nearest?" he said.
"The Yamich Bridge. It is much smaller than the imperial bridge of course. We always passed close by it when we came up toward the house."
"Is it in view of the house?"
"I don't think so, but I only came here in the summer, and then it's hidden by the trees from the main house."
"But it is unguarded?"
"As far as I know."
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
With great care they worked their way through the ornamental shrubbery in the outer park of the great house. From the distance of half a mile, Thru thought that this house was not quite as large and showy as the great zob of Simona's family, but still it impressed him with its turrets and upper balconies. These country houses were all the size of the King of Dronned's palace. Just another indication of the difference in scale between Shasht society and that of the Land.
They left the house behind and went on through the woods, keeping parallel to the road, which was traveled by a few wagons, occasional parties of slaves and once, by a messenger on horseback who kept his mount to a fast trot and soon disappeared.
At length they reached the Yamich Bridge, which was wide enough to take a village cart. Across the bridge, tantalizingly near and yet so far, was the village of Yamich, visible as a cluster of dun-brown roofs.
Unfortunately, standing on the near end of the bridge was a party of six Red Tops. Wrapped in heavy robes with thick socks under their sandals, they chatted together while stamping their feet and swinging their arms. Now and then they looked up and down the road.
Clearly crossing this bridge was out of the question, at least for now. With a sinking feeling in his heart, Thru guided Simona farther downstream. At least the woods along the road were filled with dense underbrush so it was easy to stay out of sight of the Red Tops by the bridge.
A mile or two farther on, at the large stone imperial bridge, Thru's hopes of an easy crossing evaporated completely. Four more Red Tops stood guard alongside the two soldiers normally posted there.
Giving up for the moment, they moved farther south again and came to a low-lying area where thick beds of reeds lined the bank and the road moved inland for a ways. They made their way down into the reeds, and Thru pushed on to the water's edge to study the riverbanks.
The water was on the verge of freezing, fragile sheets of ice had already formed in the quieter sections. There were no boats to be seen on the river itself, but with a great feeling of frustration Thru observed a dozen boats of various sizes pulled up on the far shore.
Disconsolate, they ate some biscuit and cheese, drank from a small running stream, and hid themselves in the woods. They huddled together under their blankets in the cold. Simona rested her head on his shoulder, as she had done so many times and thought to herself how very normal this had become for her. Denied all contact with men of her own kind, she had been thrust into intimacy with a "man" who was not even human. And though they had traveled together before, spending more than a week on foot in the hills of Creton, they had not been forced into this desperate kind of intimacy. Now they held each other, just to get a little warmth into their bodies. For Simona, a well-bred girl of the upper class, this had been a considerable adjustment. No man other than her father had stroked her cheek or marveled at the color of her hair. But Thru Gillo had done these things often, and she had responded with occasional strokes of his own fur, usually on the back of his neck.
Thru waited until the sun was well down in the sky. Then they gathered up their burden and made their way cautiously back to the Yamich Bridge.
Thru's hopes rekindled. Only two Red Tops remained. The rest had either gone across the river, or up to the big house. Still, two Red Tops would not make this easy. He studied the bridge, watched the young men in their brown robes with their shaved and painted pates aglow in the late afternoon sunlight. His hopes became tempered by his determination to live.
"Better we wait until dark. Perhaps when they get tired we can take them."
Simona felt her eyes widen. Take them? She knew that Thru, for all his gentle demeanor with her was well versed in violence. His face was covered in scars from combat. She'd been there when he'd killed a mot in the river in Creton. She, on the other hand, was not so trained. She doubted her ability to kill anyone, even a Red Top who wanted to kill her.
"Is there no other way?"
"No. We cannot swim, the water is too cold. All the boats are on the village side."
Thru understood that they were in a race against time as well. They had come all the way down from the deep snows of Mount Beegamuus on their snowshoes in just a few hours. But by this point the Red Tops would be getting close to the lodge on Beegamuus. The snowshoe trail would be still visible, and when that was reported, there would soon come an increase in the watch on these bridges. These Red Tops on the bridge at Yamich were clearly a precautionary move. The Red Tops might be searching for many people, after all. This was a "time of danger," as the folk of Shasht called it, a time when political enemies were likely to kill or be killed. So all bridges would be monitored as a matter of course. But once the Red Tops from Hilltop got here, the guard on the bridges would be massively reinforced. Thus, it was now or never.
From their hiding place, Thru keenly watched the Red Tops. The daylight waned. Thru estimated the Red Tops must have reached the lodge on Beegamuus by now. The word was being taken back to Hilltop, then down to the zob that the fugitives were no longer there.
The Shasht War Page 36