Piers Anthony - Sos the Rope

"Thank you," she said, looking down. "It had to be done."

There was silence again. The fire was sinking, and all he could see were the highlights of her face and the rounded upper contours of her breasts, all lovely. It was time to lie down together, but still they held back.

"Sometimes we camped out, when I was with my family," she said. "That's how I knew to pitch the tent on a rise, in case it rained." So she had been aware of the necessity for drainage. "We used to sing songs around the fire, my brothers and I, trying to see how late we could stay awake."

"So did we," he said reminiscently. "But I can only remember one song now."

"Sing it for me."

"I can't," he protested, embarrassed. "My notes are all off-key."

"So are mine. What's the song?"

"'Greensleeves.'"

"I don't know it. Sing it."

"I can't sing lying on my side."

"Sit up, then. There's room."

He floundered into an upright posture, facing her across the length of the tent, Sol's still form stretched out diagonally between them. He was glad, now, that it was dark.

"It isn't suitable," he said.

"A folk song?" Her tone made the notion ridiculous.

He took a breath and tried, having run out of objections:

Alas, my love, you do me wrong

To cast me out discourteously

When I have loved you so long

Delighting in your company.

"Why that's beautiful!" she exclaimed. "A love ballad."

"I don't remember the other verses. Just the refrain."

"Go ahead."

Greensleeves was my delight

Greensleeves was all my joy

Greensleeves was my heart of gold

And who but my lady Greensleeves?

"Does a man really love a woman like that?" she inquired meditatively. "I mean, just thinking about her and being delighted in her company?"

"Sometimes. It depends on the man. And the woman, I suppose."

"It must be nice," she said sadly. "Nobody ever loaned me his bracelet, just for company. That kind, I mean. Except-"

He saw her eyes move to Sol, or thought he did, and spoke to cut off the awkward thought. "What do you look for ma man?"

"Leadership, mostly. My father was second-ranked in the tribe, but never the master, and it wasn't much of a tribe. He finally got wounded too bad and retired to the crazies, and I was so ashamed I struck out on my own. I want a name everyone will admire. More than anything else, I want that."

"You may have it already. He is a remarkable warrior, and he wants an empire." He refrained again from reminding her what that name could not provide.

"Yes." She did not sound happy.

"What is your song?"

"'Red River Valley.' I think there was such a place, before the Blast."

"There was. In Texas, I believe."

Without further urging she began singing. Her voice, untrained, was better than his.

Come and sit by my side if you love me

Do not hasten to bid me adieu

But remember the Red River Valley

And the girl who has loved you so true.

"How did you get to be a scholar?" she asked him then, as though retreating from the intimacy of the song.

"The crazies run a school in the east," he explained. "I was always ,curious about things. I kept asking questions nobody could answer, like what was the cause of the Blast, and finally my folks turned me over to the crazies for service, provided they educated me. So I carried their slops and cleaned their equipment, and they taught me to read and figure."

"It must have been awful."

"It was wonderful. I had a strong back, so the work didn't bother me, and when they saw that I really wanted to learn they put me in school full time. The old books they contained incredible things. There was a whole history of the world, before the Blast, going back thousands of years. There used to be nations, and empires, much bigger than any of the tribes today, and so many people thee wasn't enough food to feed them. They were even building ships to go into space, to the other planets we see in the sky.

"Oh," she said, uninterested. "Mythology."

He gave it up as a bad job. Almost nobody, apart fron the crazies, cared about the old times. To the average person the world began with the Blast, and that was as far a curiosity extended. Two groups existed upon the globe: the warriors and the crazies, and nothing else that mattered The former were nomad families and tribes, travelling from cabin to cabin and camp to camp, achieving individual status and rearing children. The latter were thinker and builders who were said to draw their numbers from retired or unsuccessful warriors; they employed great pre Blast machines to assemble cabins and clear paths through the forests. They distributed the weapons and clothing and other supplies, but did not produce them, they claimed; no one knew where such things came from, or worried par ticularly about it. People cared only for the immediacies so long as the system functioned, no one worried about it Those who involved themselves with studies of the past and similarly useless pursuits were crazy. Hence the "crazies" men and women very like the nomads, if the truth were known, and not at all demented.

Sos had come to respect them sincerely. The past lay with the crazies-and, he suspected, the future, too. They alone led a productive existence. The present situation was bound to be temporary. Civilization always displaced anarchy, in time, as the histories had clearly shown.

"Why aren't you a-" she cut herself off. The last light from the fire had gone and only her voice betrayed hei location. He realized that his sitting posture cut off eves more of the, heat from her, though she had not compIained.

"A crazy?" He had often wondered about that matter himself. Yet the nomad life had its rough appeal and tender moments. It was good to train the body, too, and to trust in warrior honor. The books contained marvels-but so did the present world. He wanted both. "I suppose I find it natural to fight with a man when I choose, and to love a woman the same way. To do what I want, when I want, and be beholden to no one else, only to the power of my right arm in the circle."

But that wasn't true any more. He had been deprived of his rights in the circle, and the woman he would have clasped had given herself to another man. His own foolishness had led him to frustration.

"We'd better sleep," he said gruffly, lying down again.

She waited for him to get settled, then crawled upon him without a word. She placed herself face down upon the backs of the two men. Sos felt her head with its soft hair. nestling upon his right shoulder, ticklish tresses brushing down between his arm and body suggestively, though he knew this aspect of her repose was accidental. Women were not always aware of the sexual properties of long hair. Her warm left breast flattened against his back, and her smooth fleshy thigh fell inside his knee. Her belly expanded 'as she breathed, pressing rhythmically against his buttock.

In the dark he clenched his fist.

CHAPTER FIVE

"Next time, advisor, if you tell me to smash my own hand to pulp with the club, I will do it gladly," Sol said, acknowledging his error about the moth sting. His features were pale, but he had recovered. They had dressed him in new trunks from the pack before he woke, and let him guess what he might about the loss of the other clothing. He did not inquire.

Sola had found small green fruit on a wild apple tree, and they made a distasteful meal of it. Sos explained about their flight from the shrews, skimping on certain details, while the woman nodded.

"So we can't use the valley," Sol said, dismissing the rest of it.

"On the contrary-it is a fine training ground."

Sola squinted at' him. "With the shrews?"

Sos turned seriously to Sol. "Give me twenty good men and a month to work, and I'll have it secure the year around."