Maia

No sooner had Maia grasped this than she flung herself once more at the front of the quilted box, battering and shouting in a frenzy. When at length she paused for breath she became aware that the cart had stopped. There followed the click and squeak of the opening padlock and a moment later the door swung open to reveal the tall man peering in at her.

With a keen sense of her tousled, undignified appearance, Maia slid forward, lowered her feet to the ground and stood up.

It was early evening; the air was cooling and the sun sinking behind the trees. They were halted on the edge of a dusty, rutted track. The bullocks, having pulled the cart at an angle to the verge, were cropping the dry grass and heat-withered flowers. On her left was a belt of trees, on her right a few fields among wasteland stretching away to the lake in the distance. This was nowhere she knew. The cart was pointing southward, certainly, but the road and surroundings were strange to her. They must, therefore, now be beyond Meerzat and further along the shore of the lake than she had ever been.

Turning to face the tall man, she saw that he was holding in one hand a kind of thin, leather leash, like those used for hounds. He rather resembled a large, unpredictable

hound himself, she thought: though there was nothing amusing in the comparison. His scowling silence was frightening but, as with a hound, it was important not to show fear.

"There's been a mistake," she said. "I don't know what my mother's told you, but I can't go with you now, or start the work yet. I never said as I would, you know. You'll just have to take me back home."

The man snapped his fingers and pointed into the back of the cart.

"Well, if you won't take me back," said Maia, "reckon I'll just have to walk back myself."

She took a step past the man, who immediately caught her by the wrist and, with a kind of snarl, flung her back against the cart so violently that she cried out with fear and pain.

"Steady, Perdan, steady!" said the sandy-haired fellow, appearing round the end of the cart. "Mustn't damage the goods, y'know. Might lose commission, yer, yer." He turned to Maia. "Come on, now, miss. No good crying over a broken pot, you know. What you want? You want to shit or just piss, which is it now?"

Maia choked back her tears. A cunning thought had come to her. Once she had got a little way clear of them she would run. She might or might not be a match for the tall man, but it was worth trying.

"The first," she answered, avoiding the coarse word.

The sandy-haired man took the leather leash from his companion, fastened it round her neck and gave it a gentle tug.

"Come on, then," he said, sniggering. "Good doggie! No, don't try to undo it, miss, else I'll only have to get rough. Don't want that, do we?" He patted her cheek.

"How dare you treat me like this?" blazed Maia. "You just wait till my stepfather hears of it! I'll be damned if I'll work for you, or your master either; no, not for a fortune I won't!"

The tall man seemed about to speak, but the other cut in quickly.

"Don't tell her, Perdan. Makes it easier, yer, long as possible. Come on now, miss, d'you want to shit or not?"

Holding the leash, he led her across the road and a few yards in among the trees. Here he stopped.

"Well, go away!" she said, pointing. "Right away, too! Back there!"

"We better get this straight," replied the sandy-haired man. "I can't leave you; got no chains, see? But it'll be a good two hours to Puhra, so if you want to do anything you'd better get on with it, yer, else you'll only be laying in there in your own muck."

"You mean you're taking me to Puhra by force? How can you s'pose I'd work for your master after that? Does he know what you're doing?"

The man made no reply but, still holding the leash, turned his back on her.

"Go on if you're going."

Weeping with shame and humiliation, she crouched and relieved herself; then allowed him to lead her back to the cart and lock her in.

The creaking and rumbling began again, but soon afterwards the cart stopped once more. From the murmur of voices and the bovine stamping and blowing, Maia realized that they must be changing the bullocks. Probably they had already been changed once earlier in the afternoon, while she lay asleep. Evidently these men had standing arrangements along the roads they used.

It occurred to her to call out for help from whomever might be talking to the men. Yet instinctively she sensed that this would be useless. Besides, she had conceived a terror of the man with the broken nose. Though born poor, Maia had never experienced any violence worse than her mother's fits of temper, and unconsciously she had grown up not to expect it. The tall man's unhesitant use of force had frightened her badly, leaving her with the flinching realization that here was someone to whom terror and the infliction of pain were all in a day's work.