knapper to go and have a look. You know he’s a fast runner. He says they’re friendly enough, and speak the traders’ tongue.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Snailheads. From the south. Many of them.’
‘Snailheads! Why aren’t they at their own beaches?’
‘I don’t know. There are snailheads coming to the Giving feast in the summer. Maybe we can ask them about it . . .’ He sounded distracted; he was staring out to sea.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘Shade. I saw him thrashing around before. He went a long way out. Now I can’t see him at all.’
She frowned. Save for a few children playing at the water’s edge, the sea looked empty. ‘He said he could swim well. He could hold his breath.’
‘He’s a forest boy. Do you believe him? Perhaps he was trying to impress you.’
‘Oh, for the love of the mothers . . .’ She stood and quickly shucked off the rest of her clothes. ‘You’d better go find his brother, priest. Men! There’s always something.’
And, without looking back, she ran down to the sea.
The beach sloped shallowly, even beyond the water’s edge, and she had to cross perhaps fifty paces of clinging, tiring, muddy sand before the water was past her knees. Then she threw herself forward into water that shocked with its chill, and began to swim, heading out the way she had seen the Pretani boy go.
At first the water invigorated her, but she was fighting the current of the incoming tide and soon tired. She stopped and trod water, and wiped the salt water from her eyes and mouth, her hair clinging to her neck. The sea around her glimmered in the low sunlight, and the shore seemed a long way away. ‘Shade! Shade, you Pretani idiot!’
‘Yes?’
The voice was so close behind her ear that it startled her and she lost her tread. She fell back in the water and got a mouthful of brine that made her cough.
Shade took hold of her under her armpits and steadied her, laughing. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No thanks to you. You worried me.’
‘I told you I was a good swimmer.’
‘Well, I didn’t believe you.’
‘And I can hold my breath. Look—’
‘Don’t bother.’ They were holding hands now, circling. ‘How does a boy from the wildwood of Albia get to be a good swimmer?’
‘It’s a joke of the gods.’ He was smiling, his face and beard clean of dirt, his smooth skin marked only by the hunting scar on his cheek. ‘A swimmer in the forest. You may as well give a salmon legs. But I don’t mind. I suppose I’ll never be able to hunt like my brother, or lead men in battle, or boss women around. But at least I can swim.’
His hands were warm in hers, his eyes bright. Their legs tangled, and they moved closer together. She could feel the warmth of his thigh between hers, and then she felt his erection poking at her stomach.
He pulled back. ‘I’m sorry—’
‘Don’t be.’ She pulled him to her. His face filled her vision, shutting out sea and shore and people. The world seemed to recede, taking with it all her responsibilities, her mixed-up sister, her fretting over her father, the workload she guiltily enjoyed. All that existed was the water, and this boy.
She took his shoulders and lifted upwards, clamping her legs around his waist. With a gasp he entered her, and their lips locked.
12
‘Hungry,’ Moon Reacher whimpered. ‘Hungry!’
‘I know, child,’ said Ice Dreamer. ‘So am I. We will stop soon.’
Soon. For now, they walked.
They walked east away from the setting sun, which this late in the day cast a pink glow the colour of Dreamer’s piss when she squatted. To the south, their right, was the forest’s scrubby fringe, birch and pine and a dense undergrowth now shot through with spring green. And to their left, the north, stretched a plain of grass and scrub and isolated stands of trees, where raccoons and voles ran, and sometimes you would see deer or bison or horse in distant herds. Some days it almost looked pretty, with scatters of early spring flowers.
And there were people, fast-moving, elusive hunters on the grass, and enigmatic shadowy foragers in the green depths of the forest. These weren’t Cowards. Dreamer and Reacher had walked far from the Cowards’ range. But they weren’t True People either. They were other sorts of strangers, folk Dreamer had never seen or heard of.
Dreamer kept them heading east, following the boundary between the southern forest and the northern plain, looking for