Again I wandered around the outside of the herd once it had settled to grazing, waiting until the feeling of being watched was no longer with me. I wondered if it was Pember or my father who had taken to watching me, then realized that my father had work of his own to do and would have stayed with it longer if it had been him. Pember must have been the one, possibly checking to see if it was likely that I would try to run away. For a moment I raised my head, vowing silently that I would never give him the satisfaction of running, and then the moment was gone and I was left with the truth.
I would have loved to run, pelting at top speed into the woods and not stopping until the lack of breath threatened to break my body apart. I wanted escape so badly I would have sold the soul Mr. Skeel thought so tarnished in order to get it, but the only one interested in buying my soul was a devil I would never sell it to. True devils, I’d learned, tell you exactly what damnation you can expect from the exchange, and I’d begun to suspect that it was hurt and weariness and despair that caused people to give in, not evil and greed and sinfulness as Mr. Skeel insisted. I bowed my head and hugged myself around against the chill wind blowing beneath the clouds of the day, wondering how many other people had been lost in the name of the privileges of the righteous.
I spent quite a bit of time trying to fight off the despair of the damned, but only managed to get closer to losing the struggle. I knew I needed a distraction from my thoughts if I was to survive, and only then remembered I had stolen food waiting to be delivered. I took a deep breath, using the moment to be sure I was no longer being watched, then sought out the bush the savage was behind.
The bush the savage had been behind. I think I was more startled and shocked to find him gone than Fd been to find him ready to attack me, and I stared stupidly at the empty grass, which retained nothing of his previous presence, taking a long while to understand what I was seeing. When it was finally clear that he really was gone, I moved forward three slow steps and then’sank down to the place that had been his, feeling worse than I had just a few minutes earlier. The savage had been nothing to me, really, no more than an injured animal I had taken the time to help, which meant there was no reason for the way I was reacting. There was a hole inside me I couldn’t understand, as though a friend I had trusted had been taken from me, but I had no friends and certainly no one I could trust. There’d been nothing Fd wanted to say to him, but he’d spoken once about his people and might have again. I didn’t have people like his, but maybe if I’d heard enough about them I could have pretended . . .
“You’ve returned after all!” a pleased voice said from behind, startling me into twisting around. He stood there, looking much stronger than he had the day before, two rabbits dangling from his belt. “I was hoping you would, and now you have. Will you pity me further by this time staying longer?”
“I don’t pity you,” I said as I watched him sit down beside me in the grass, not knowing what else to say. “I see you’ve soaked your bandage in an herb mixture of some kind, and the effort has obviously helped you. People who can take such good care of themselves have no need to be pitied.”
“We all of us can do with gentle pity every now and again,” he answered with a grin, reaching right-handed to his belt to unhook the rabbits. “My time comes when I try skinning rabbits one-handed, as I had to do yesterday. If my family and friends had been watching, they would have been too horrified at the results to give me anything but pity. My name is Jak Maklaruhn of Krooguh.”
He put the rabbits down in the grass in front of him and just waited, his pretty blue eyes smiling gently. I knew what he was waiting for and almost got up and left, but something kept me right where I was. It had been years since I’d tried sharing anything with anyone, but such a little thing like a name couldn’t hurt. . . .
“My name is Banni Akins,” I offered with more difficulty than I’d thought I’d have. “Of—here, I guess you would have to say. Where is Krooguh?” “Krooguh is a clan, not a place,” he answered with another grin, but not a ridiculing one. “My mother was a Maklaruhn who married into clan Krooguh, which makes me Jak of sept Maklaruhn of clan Krooguh. Dirtmen don’t know much about Horse-clansmen, do they?”
“They know enough to put an arrow through the shoulder of one,” I returned, just short of feeling insulted on behalf of people I didn’t even like. “If you’re so smart and capable, what are you doing still hanging around here?”
“Something has caught my interest,” he said, his grin lessened but still very much there, those eyes looking directly at me. “I mean to leave as soon as I find it possible to satisfy the root of that interest, but for now must remain. You certainly have a fine herd of goats you bring out here each day.”
“The herd isn’t mine,” I began to say, then grew immediately indignant when I thought I understood what he’d been talking about. “And even if they were, I would never let you take any of them! They’re mine to guard, not give away as gifts, and if you try putting a single hand on any of them, I’ll—I’ll—”
I began getting to my feet, seriously thinking about looking for a good, heavy stick, but the savage laughed and shook his head.
“No, no, Banni Akins, I have no intentions of stealing the goats you guard,” he said in amusement, putting his right hand to my shoulder to keep me from rising. “If I took the notion, I would make them mine when another stood guard, never when it was you who— What is it? What have I done?”
I couldn’t have held back the gasp of pain even if I had been expecting the touch of a hand, and suddenly I was sitting again on the grass, fighting to keep from being overwhelmed. My back was one large mass of welts, and the previous night’s rest had done no more than stiffen my body and make the welts even more painful than they’d been. I sat with my eyes closed and breathed deeply for a moment or two, demanding silently that the dizziness go and bedevil another, and finally it cjid.
“You did nothing,” I husked when I could, waiting for the stolen strength to return to my arms and legs. “I—injured myself not long ago, and its time of pain has not yet passed. I think I had better go now.”
“No, wait,” he urged, his hand now on my arm with a grip of exquisite gentleness, upset clear in his voice. “You must rest a short while longer because of the— injury, and I would tell you more of us who are called Horseclansmen. Once you have rested you may leave.”
He began talking then, giving me no chance to argue, giving me no chance to ask why he had sounded so strange when he had said the word “injury.” He spoke of many clans roving the plains, all of them free and happy and knowing they were where they belonged, and I lost myself in the words and the pictures they evoked. After a while I opened my sack and gave him the food I had brought without interrupting him, and he took it and shared it with me without breaking into his narrative. He ate and talked and I ate and listened, and every now and then I nudged the goats back to where they were supposed to be. The first time I did it coincided with a pause and a look of surprise from the savage—from Jak—but after that he went on smoothly, doing nothing more than smiling more strongly.
The day ended long before I wanted it to, and I was nearly back to the stockade with the herd when I remembered I hadn’t done anything to help Jak skin his rabbits. Such thoughtlessness would have bothered me under other circumstances, but just then I was too filled with confusion for other feelings to have a chance. I had never known it was possible to share that completely with another person, and yet not share anything of myself. Jak was the one who had done all the sharing, but it hadn’t been a burden it had been a delight. I almost wished I could have added something of my own, but then I admitted the wish was useless. Jak would return to his people, his unbelievably wonderful people if he’d been telling the truth, and I would stay in the community. There was no sense in getting used to sharing, as there were no opportunities for sharing in my world. The only things my people shared were accusations and pain.