Maia

Thus, after the lapse of a year-and hardly in better case-Maia entered once more the guard-room where she and Occula had been befriended by the soldiers on that sweltering afternoon when they had trudged into Bekla behind Zuno's jekzha.

Two minutes later she was joined by Zirek and Meris. Meris had a swollen lip and a cut on one arm.

"Right; now we've got to get you out," said Mendel-el-Ekna. "Can you walk?" he asked Bayub-Otal.

The Ban of Suba shrugged. "When I can't, I'll stop."

"Then the quicker you're all gone the better. Serrelinda, I can spare you two men to carry the stretcher. But get him to some sort of shelter as soon as you can, do you see? Otherwise he'll die. And then send my men straight back; I need them."

She kissed his hands and thanked him with tears in her eyes, but he made light of it.

"Oh, I'd do more than that for you, Serrelinda. Don't worry, I'll tell Lord Randronoth we got you and your friends away all right. See you when you get back."

The tryzatt opened the postern and in the flickering darkness they slipped through behind the line of spearmen. Immediately the door shut to behind them. In front, on either side, stretched the high, backward-tilting walls of the outer precinct, leading down to the caravan roads below.

"Which way?" asked Bayub-Otal as they reached it. He spoke gaspingly, through clenched teeth.

"That's for you to say, my lord," she replied.

"I'd say south, my lord," said Zirek. "But it might be best to get off the road soon. I reckon the less we're seen thebetter."

"Then south it is," said Bayub-Otal.

Ten minutes later Maia looked back. The eastern walls of the city showed as a black line, beyond which the glow of flames shone luridly on the base of a canopy of smoke. The hubbub, diminished by distance, had become an ugly, throbbing din, like that of some swarm of gigantic insects roused to anger.

"A devils' playground," she whispered, gazing.

"What?" asked Zirek, ahead of her. "What did you say, lass?"

"Nothing," she answered, turning to catch up with him. "Only something as somebody once said to me. Still got the bread and cheese all right, have you?"

She never saw Bekla again.

PART IV THE SUBAN

87: WHAT MAIA OVERHEARD

Maia had been milking the cows. She had not lost the knack-or at all events jt had come back quickly enough- but her soft, white fingers and pampered, upper city wrists were aching, and now the yoke seemed pressing hard on her shoulders. All the same it was reassuring-the feel of wooden pattens on bare feet and the well-remembered sensation of treading on cracked, summer-baked mud and powdery dust. The dark cowshed was heartening, too, with bright spots of light showing through the knotholes of its planks; likewise the stamping and kloofing of the cows and the smells of cow-dung and of evening water from the brook outside. Her mind might prompt her as often as it liked that she was not out of danger, but in her heart these familiar things spoke of security. It is always satisfying to show oneself unexpectedly capable in some chance-encountered situation where one's companions are all at sixes and sevens. Meris was a shocking bad hand about the place, and even Zirek, though willing enough, knew next to nothing and was continually having to be instructed.

Doing her damnedest to look as though she didn't find the pails heavy, Maia carried them across the yard, through the stone-flagged kitchen and into the little, narrow dairy beyond. Here she set them down, ducked out of the yoke and then, lifting first one pail and then the other, emptied them into the big clay vessels on the shelf above the churn.

Even the dairy was not properly cool this weather. The milk would have to be used quickly. A little would be sold round about, but most would go to themselves-drunk fresh or made into butter, cheese or whey. This was hardly more than a subsistence farm, a bit better than Morca's patch on the Tonildan Waste, but still a long way behind the kind of place where Maia had met Gehta. The farmer, Kerkol, his wife Clystis and her fourteen-year-old brother lived almost entirely on what they produced. Still, at least there was plenty of black bread, cheese, brillions and ten-drionas. The strangers weren't eating them out of house and home and Kerkol was glad enough of their money, to say nothing of the extra help.

Coming back into the kitchen, Maia stepped out of her pattens and rinsed her hands in the wooden tub opposite the door. The water was getting greasy, she noticed: she'd

tip it out after supper and refill the tub from the brook. She gave her face a quick rub with her wet hands and was just drying it on a bit of sacking when Clystis came in.