Maia

If there were indeed Ortelgans out there in the wasteland beyond the camp, then surely they could only be those whom Ta-Kominion had led to Chalcon as part of Elvair-ka-Virrion's force. Five hundred Ortelgans; she recalled Bel-ka-Trazet saying so at the barrarz. She remembered, too, how he had also said that their assignment was largely a matter of policy. "We have to keep in with Bekla. But see your men come back alive, that's all. And if you have to get out, get out through Lapan."

Could it really be the whole of Kembri's army out there, with the Ortelgans nearest? Or had Ta-Kominion, perhaps, after the defeat on the highway and the deposition

of Elvair-ka-Virrion, decided not to wait for Kembri, but to save his men and make the best of his way home rather than face destruction with the Leopards?

Maia stood abstracted, musing in the darkness, while all around the soldiers made a final search of the shelters, here and there coming across some bewildered woman or terrified, deserted child and guiding them down to the river.

She had liked Ta-Kominion and he had liked her. It was he who had opened the bidding at the barrarz; he had gone to three thousand meld, she recalled-probably most of what he had in the worlds-before being obliged to drop out.

It would be no use trying to talk to Elleroth: no use trying to talk to Anda-Nokomis. As responsible soldiers they could not discount the possibility that it might be Kembri out there; or even if it was not, that whoever it was might strike first and ask questions afterwards. They would tell her to leave their own business to them and join the other women across the river.

But if she herself could only get to Ta-Kominion and tell him that these Sarkidians had no more wish to fight than he had, then any amount of misunderstanding and bloodshed might be prevented. It would be no use waiting until the morning. Once blood had been shed, injury sustained, pride aroused, these men would be at each other like cocks in a pit.

Yet if it was Kembri's whole army? He would most probably put her to death, if only for having been with Elleroth. He desired her death, as she knew. For long minutes she stood irresolute, feeling Sphelthon's invisible presence, his gaze upon her in the darkness. She raised her eyes to the glowing stars.

"O Lespa! Send me a sign! Only send your servant a sign!"

At this moment, from somewhere in the camp, there came faintly to her ears the cry of a lost child. "Mother! Mother!" The voice was Tonildan.

Maia began to run. Bending low and peering this way and that, she dodged between the huts, came to a dry watercourse, dropped silently into it and began making her way along it in the opposite direction from the river. After going about two hundred yards she climbed out on the further side, lay prone until she was sure there was no

one near and then set off eastward through the dried-up bushes and scattered clumps of trees.

She went cautiously, dodging from one thicket to the next and stopping continually to look ahead of her and listen. At all costs she must avoid running into one of Elleroth's patrols and being brought ignominiously back to the camp, for in that case it would certainly be supposed that she had been deserting-or perhaps even worse.

Once she thought she heard voices at a distance, but after waiting for some time decided that it could only have been her own frightened fancy. The scrub was open enough for her to keep direction by the stars, and this she took for a sign of Lespa's favor. Any road, she thought, there's no Valderra here. Whatever happens, I shan't drown.

None the less, she was never for a moment free from apprehension and the fear of death. The solitude, utterly still, seemed menacing. There was not an owl, not a bat to be heard. The very silence of this wilderness seemed unnatural. Twice she almost turned back; and twice glimpsed Sphelthon glimmering among the trees, a wraith that vanished even in the instant that she perceived it. Her tears were falling, but whether for him or for herself she could not have told.

For perhaps half an hour she wandered on through the empty wasteland, a prey to every kind of misgiving. Perhaps it had all been a false alarm and there were no soldiers at all? Or perhaps, whoever they were, they had already gone. Perhaps she had taken the wrong direction and already left them somewhere behind her. If they really existed, perhaps they were not Ortelgans at all, but runaway slaves like those with whom Meris had lived in Belishba. Even if they were Ortelgans, nevertheless Ta-Kominion might not be with them. He might be dead; or they might have mutinied against him. If he was with them, it now seemed to her unlikely that she would be allowed to speak with him at all. Or even if she were, why should he believe her, why should he trust her! What proof could he have that she was not a decoy sent by Elleroth?