"He gave no reason, when he spoke to the man from Venus. But perhaps
I can guess. He knows that you're as strong as he is, and so he fears
you. Also, the Lady Berild looked at you in a certain way."
"I thought Berild was Kynon's woman."
"Perhaps she is--for the time," answered Fianna enigmatically. Then
she shook her head, glancing around with what was almost fear. "I have
risked much already. Please--don't let it be known that I've spoken to
you, beyond what I was sent to say."
Her eyes pleaded with him, and Stark realized with a shock that Fianna,
too, stood on the edge of a quicksand.
"Don't be afraid," he said, and meant it. "We'd better go."
She swung her beast around, and as she did so she whispered, "Be
careful, Eric John Stark!"
Stark nodded. He rode behind her, thinking that he liked the sound of
his name on her lips.
* * * * *
The Lady Berild lay among her furs and cushions, and even then there
was no indolence about her. She was relaxed as a cat is, perfectly at
ease and yet vibrant with life. In the shadows of the litter her skin
showed silver-white and her loosened hair was a sweet darkness.
"Are you stubborn, wild man?" she asked. "Or do you find me
distasteful?"
He had not realized before how rich and soft her voice was. He looked
down at the magnificent supple length of her, and said,
"I find you most damnably attractive--and that's why I'm stubborn."
"Afraid?"
"I'm taking Kynon's pay. Should I take his woman also?"
She laughed, half scornfully. "Kynon's ambitions leave no room for me.
We have an agreement, because a king must have a queen--and he finds my
counsel useful. You see, I am ambitious, too! Apart from that, there is
nothing."
Stark looked at her, trying to read her smoke-grey eyes in the gloom.
"And Delgaun?"
"He wants me, but...." She hesitated, and then went on, in a tone
quite different from before, her voice low and throbbing with a secret
pleasure as vast and elemental as the star-shot sky.
"I belong to no one," she said. "I am my own."
Stark knew that for the moment she had forgotten him.
He rode for a time in silence, and then he said slowly, repeating
Delgaun's words,
"Perhaps you have forgotten something, Berild. There is nothing for you
in me, the creature of an hour."
He saw her start, and for a moment her eyes blazed and her breath was
sharply drawn. Then she laughed, and said,
"The wild man is also a parrot. And an hour can be a long time--as long
as eternity, if one wills it so."
"Yes," said Stark, "I have often thought so, waiting for death to come
at me out of a crevice in the rocks. The great lizard stings, and his
bite is fatal."
He leaned over in the saddle, his shoulders looming above hers, naked
in the biting wind.
"My hours with women are short ones," he said. "They come after the
battle, when there is time for such things. Perhaps then I'll come and
see you."
He spurred away and left her without a backward look, and the skin of
his back tingled with the expectancy of a flying knife. But the only
thing that followed him was a disturbing echo of laughter down the wind.
Dawn came. Kynon beckoned Stark to his side, and pointed out at the
cruel waste of sand, with here and there a reef of basalt black against
the burning white.
"This is the country you will lead your men over. Learn it." He was
speaking to Luhar as well. "Learn every water hole, every vantage
point, every trail that leads toward the Border. There are no
better fighters than the Dryland men when they're well led, and you
must prove to them that you can lead. You'll work with their own
chieftains--Freka, and the others you'll meet when we reach Sinharat."