him laugh, slowly, opening his mouth wide. "I know," he said. "I know! All right."
The heavy, stained, discolored purse was swallowed up in his big hand. He went back into the cave with it and was gone some while. He came out and nodded at me. "Come on," he said. And he set off at his loping walk that seemed slow but ate up the miles.
I was fit again, and could keep up with him all day, though by evening I was weary and footsore.
At the last stream we came to he told me to drink deep. We crossed it, climbed a long slope, and halted on the top of the hill, the last of the hills. From it the land fell slowly away into vast forest, treetops going on and on into blue dimness, no end to them. The sun had not set, but the shadows were long.
Cuga was busy immediately; he gathered wood and built a fire, a large one, using green wood, not dry. The smoke went curling up into the clear sky. "All right," he said. "They'll come." And he turned to go back as we had come.
"Wait," I said.
He stopped, impatient. "Just wait," he said. "They'll be here."
"I'll come back, Cuga."
He shook his head angrily and went off, striding through the dry grass, holding his body in a slight crouch. In a minute he was out of sight through the trees under the crest of the hill. Over the dark treetops the sunset flamed.
I slept alone by the fire on the hilltop that night, wrapped in my blanket and the fur cape. The smoky stink of the fur was pleasant to me. I had been healed in that stink.
I waked again and again in the night. Once I built up the fire, as a signal, not for warmth. Towards morning I dreamed: I was sleeping in Sentas, in the fortress of dreams. The others were there with me. I heard their soft voices murmuring in the dark. One of the girls laughed ... I woke and remembered the dream. I clung to it, trying to stay in it. But I was thirsty, thirst had waked me. Telling myself I'd go look for water at the foot of the hill as soon as it was light, I lay waiting for the light.
We never slept in Sentas, I thought. We always slept out near the farmhouse, under the trees. We always saw the stars through the leaves. We talked about going out to Sentas to sleep but we never did.
8
Four of them were around me before I saw one of them. I was barely awake. I had sat up, on the open hillside by the dead fire, alone. They were around me, without movement, out of the grass, out of the dim grey air of early dawn. I looked from one to the next and sat still.
They were armed, not like soldiers but with short bows and long knives. Two carried five-foot staffs. They looked grim.
One of them finally spoke in a soft, hoarse voice, almost a whisper. "Fire out?"
I nodded.
He went and kicked at the few half-burnt sticks left, trampled them carefully, felt them with his hands. I got up to help him bury the cold cinders.
"Come on then," he said. I bundled up my blanket and the last scraps of dried meat to carry. I wore the cape of rabbit and squirrel skins for warmth.
"Stinks," said one of the men.
"Reeks," said another. "Bad as old Cuga."
"He brought me here," I said.
"Cuga?"
"You was with him?"
"All summer."
One stared, one spat, one shrugged; the fourth, the one who had spoken first, motioned with his head and led us down the long hill towards the forest.
I knelt to drink from the stream at the foot of the hill. The hoarse-voiced leader nudged me with his staff while I was still drinking thirstily. "That's enough, you'll be pissing all day," he said. I scrambled up and followed them across the stream and under the dark eaves of the trees.
He led us all the way. We moved hastily through the woods, often at a trot, until mid-morning, when we stopped in a small clearing. It smelled of stale blood. A pack of vultures flapped up heavily on great black wings from some remnants of guts and skulls. The carcasses of three deer had been butchered and hung, glittering with flies, high from a tree limb. The men brought them down and divided and roped them so each of us could carry