Maia

She smiled. "That's tomorrow. But tonight, let's jus' forget the damned lot of them and have a bit of a nice time! Come here, banzi, so that I can forgive you! Oh, aren't you jus' the prettiest thing this side of a rainbow? How couldn' I be good to you? You make me feel like a nice girl again. I can stop cheatin' with you. Isn' it lovely to be able to give somethin' for nothin'?"

Maia shivered deliciously as the black girl's hands caressed her from her forgiven shoulders to her pardoned thighs. Blowing out the candle, she drew Occula down on the bed.

13: THE GIBBET

Next day they travelled fourteen miles and spent the night uneventfully at Naksh. Zuno having determined on a late start to cover the last seven miles of their journey, they set off an hour before noon in a blinding glare.

The white, dusty road across the plain lay empty in the mid-day heat. Zuno dozed where he sat. Soon the Deelguy

had slackened their pace to a mere dawdle, now and then surreptitiously passing a flask between them.

"They're not going to offer us any, the lice," whispered Occula.

"It's enough to make anyone take on bad," panted Maia, for the twentieth time wiping the sweat from the back of her neck. Her body, under her clothes, felt covered with a kind of paste of sweat and road-dust. Her hair was full of dust and every now and then she spat a mouthful of gritty saliva into the road.

"Doan' keep doin' that," said Occula. "Just throwin' away moisture: you need it."

"Well, I'm blest if I'm going to swallow it," replied Maia.

"Gettin' particular?" panted the black girl. "I wouldn' say no to a pint of cold piss, myself. Never mind, banzi. We'll soon be there now-less than two hours, I'd say."

The girls had gradually edged away from behind the jekzha and were now trudging a little in front of it, on the opposite side of the road. Here, although there was no shade-for the baked, cracked plain, covered with sun-dried grass and withered flowers, was treeless for miles- they were at least out of the dust raised by the slaves and the wheels.

"Am I dreamin'," said Occula, "or is this soddin' road goin' uphill again?"

"Ah, that it is," answered Maia. "Funny, isn't it? You don't notice the slopes till you come to them. It looks flat in front, but then you find-oh, I say, Occula, what's that, look, up there on the top?"

"Jus' doan' talk to me, banzi, while I finish meltin'," grunted the black girl, lowering her head like a straining bullock as the slope grew steeper.

Maia, tottering and closing her eyes against the dust, felt ready to fling herself down by the roadside and be hanged to what might follow. She watched a grasshopper leap out of the weeds and travel twenty feet, gliding on brown-edged, rosy wings. "Wish I could do that," she thought. "S'pose they don't need to drink, else they couldn't live here."

Reaching at length the top of the long rise, the Deelguy halted, supporting the shafts on their backs as they leaned forward, drawing deep breaths. There was still no shade, but the,girls, past waiting for permission, flung themselves

down on the verge. Occula's face looked as though it had been chalked in long, uneven smears.

Maia grinned. "You look like you was got up for the mumming."

Suddenly she broke off, staring in speechless horror at the rising ground on the opposite side of the road.

About fifty yards away, in front of a clump of sage bushes, stood a narrow, wooden platform, from which rose two stout posts, about ten feet high and as far apart. The top of the square was completed by a crossbar, deeply notched in four places. From each notch hung a short length of chain ending in a fetter.

The fetters were secured round the ankles of what had once been two men. The dried bodies, hanging motionless in the still heat, were indescribably ghastly, so dreadful as to seem unreal, like spectres encountered in nightmare or some drug-induced trance. The expressions of agony and despair in their crumbled, lip-retracted faces were no less appalling for being inverted, eyeless and half-flayed by insects and birds. Their lank hair was bleached almost white by the sun. The three arms still hanging below the heads were nothing but bundles of gray sticks, to which, here and there, adhered rags and fragments of flesh. One still ended in a fist of tight-clutched fingers: below the others, small, white bones lay scattered on the turf.

Maia, with an inarticulate cry, buried her face in her hands. At this moment, as though the abomination had power to pursue her and pierce whatever feeble barrier she could raise against it, the ghost of a breeze stole down the slope, bringing with it a vile, carrion odor.

Occula, after one brief glance, turned back to Maia, shaking her gently by the shoulder.

"Never seen a crows' picnic before, banzi? Come on, they woan' bite you, poor bastards. They might have once."

"Oh-" Maia lay retching and shuddering in the grass. "I never-"