‘So, by all means, dash the rest of your life into the dirt!’ His anger matched her own.
‘And what do you suggest?’
Ki had the last word. Vandien had no answer. They settled deeper into the coverings, huddling closer to one another. The wind did not scatter snow over them tonight. It seemed to have changed direction. There was only the cold night full of icy stars that pressed down on them, keeping their bodies curled for warmth. Ki closed her eyes.
‘I could make you an offer,’ Vandien ventured cautiously, almost as if he did not wish Ki to hear him. The night held its breath, listening. ‘I could offer to never give you anything that I didn’t give freely, with no thought of repayment, without even a thought of the giving.’
Ki was silent, sleeping perhaps. Or she had not heard him. Or she did not care to answer. Or she would not.
‘And what would you ask in return, Vandien, you scrawny bit of road baggage?’ he asked himself in a strained falsetto.
‘Why, exactly the same from you, Ki,’ he resumed in his normal voice.
Silence. The stars pressed down on the earth, and Sigurd slowly followed his teammate’s example. He placed his large body close to Sigmund’s, sharing warmth.
‘Since you put it so attractively, Vandien,’ the falsetto replied, ‘I’ll have to leap at the chance. Why don’t I travel with you to Thesus? We could horrify all your relatives, and they would probably give you twice as much money as usual to make yourself scarce.’
‘Wonderful, Ki,’ Vandien resumed. ‘I dreaded the thought of walking that far alone. We’ll leave for Thesus first thing in the morning.’
‘Go to sleep, fool,’ Ki growled.
‘Now, there’s a thing we both agree on,’ Vandien mumbled.
Salt meat and cold measured their days. The grays grew thin, Sigurd becoming more snappish, Sigmund more docile with privation. Ki re-bandaged Vandien’s face at intervals with the remaining scraps of tunic. The slash was red across his olive skin, but it stayed closed and did not ooze or swell. The grain bags became empty too fast, but the team traveled much farther in one day than they would have pulling the wagon in two. By days, Vandien sat upon Sigmund’s wide back and wove stories for Ki on his story string. Sometimes she remembered to smile at the amusing parts, and sometimes he told them for the benefit of Sigmund’s flicking ears. At those times, Ki was busy weaving stories for herself. A dozen times she imagined her confrontation with Rhesus. She would deflate that pompous little man, and then he would admit to her who had hired him for his dirty little bit of deception. And Nils. For she was sure it had been Nils. From Nils she would demand her accounting, not only for this attempt on her own life, but also payment for Haftor’s. But there Ki’s thought soon eddied and swirled pointlessly. What could she demand of the old man as fit atonement? Was there anything she could take from him that would assuage that gnawing feeling of injustice within her? Another Ki would have been wolfish for his life. But that Ki would also have burned with a white-hot anger. The Ki that rode in front of Vandien only felt a sense of a task left incomplete. She felt a compulsion to tie up the loose ends, to put a final stamp on this series of injuries and revenges. To be done with it all.
The trail on this side of the mountains was more direct in its route. They came down through wooded country that let them kindle a fire, even though they had nothing to cook over it. Game seemed plentiful on this side, but Ki would allow Vandien no time to pursue it. She pushed on toward her goal relentlessly, counting still the days before her freight would be overdue.
There came a morning when Vandien glimpsed the rising smoke of a chimney far down their day’s path. He gave a whoop that startled both horses. Ki glared at him.
‘An inn, a Human inn! It’s called Three Pheasants. Ah, tonight, Ki, we shall have a fire, and hot food and cold beer, and beds under a roof. And what a tale I shall have to tell Micket, who runs the inn.’
Ki pulled in Sigurd slightly, to sit looking down the slope of the mountain over the tops of the snow-frosted trees. She could make out the clear white of an opening in the trees, a cleared path of ground surrounding the inn. The smoke from the inn’s chimney was a grayish haze against the pale blue sky. She nudged Sigurd on again. ‘We shall reach the inn after noon, but before nightfall,’ she pointed out.
‘With time to order up a hot tub of water and soak before we go to the common room to tell tales and eat fresh meat and drink. And these beasts will have the clean straw and fragrant hay they so richly deserve.’
Ki made a sour face at Vandien’s sybaritic tone. ‘I’m not in the habit of sleeping at inns, and the pass cost me more time than I had reckoned on. I have to keep on my way, Vandien.’
He heaved a sigh of resignation. ‘Well, at least we shall be able to take on some fresh supplies and get a kettle. Must we press on to Diblun so fast, Ki? I tell you, the man will not be glad to see you.’
‘I must.’ Ki accented the pronoun, glanced across at Vandien. ‘And you know, as I do, that our trails part soon. I will be going to Diblun. Your road to Firbanks would be in the opposite direction, if I am not mistaken. I have never been there.’
‘I have no pressing business that commands me to be there by a certain day.’ Vandien forced joviality into his voice. ‘We can settle your business first.’
‘No.’
Vandien looped up his story string, put it into his pocket. Ki tried to see his face, but he turned it from her.
‘You have never rebuked me,’ Ki struggled, picking words. She felt the nails of her fingers digging into her palms. ‘You have never talked of what I owe you, never cast it up to me that your face … that there will be a scar always …’
He did not turn to her. ‘Part of my offer, remember? To never give you anything that I could not give freely.’
‘Damn you!’ Ki hissed. ‘Vandien, cannot you see it? It would be empty between us. I am not ready to take a man. Desire is dead in me. I cannot pretend. I would not.’
‘I don’t recall offering myself to you in that capacity.’ Vandien spoke quietly. ‘The offer was made as a friend. Nothing more.’ He looked straight ahead as he rode. A rush of blood dyed Ki’s cheeks, and she was torn between anger and embarrassment.
‘It was a natural assumption for me to make!’ she blazed at him.
‘Only if it was in your mind before I made my offer,’ Vandien countered loftily.
The truth of his words silenced Ki. Damn the man! Must he always voice the words that brought her the most discomfort? His eyes were still fixed far down the trail. She was glad she did not have to meet his eyes. He raised a pale hand to his mouth to cover a cough. Ki stared fixedly between Sigurd’s ears until the noises of his choking fit could not be ignored. Then she turned stern eyes on him, to find that he was barely able to keep his seat and cover his laughter.
‘Damn you!’ she cried in fury, and swung at him so violently that she found herself sliding down Sigurd’s broad shoulder. Vandien’s hand under her arm, hoisting her back to her seat, was no comfort.
Ki jogged her heels against Sigurd, and he moved out ahead of Sigmund. Her back was arrow-straight as she rode on before Vandien. Her hood covered her still reddened ears.
‘In case you have forgotten,’ he called to her in a totally unrepentant voice, ‘my offer specified that I would never give you anything with any thought of repayment, or debt invoked. And that was what I asked of you in return. That you would never give me anything that you did not want to give.’
‘Until