Richard Adams - Maia

But she was wrong. Zen-Kurel, a strip from his cloak bound round his wounded neck, looked up, bailer in hand.

"Maia, what's the matter?"

His voice was full of plainly sincere concern.

"I'm all right," she said.

"Are you cold?"

"No; not really. Just don't feel quite myself, that's all; bit feverish. It'll pass off. Has your neck stopped bleeding?"

"It must have. That was hours ago."

"Take that off, then, and give me Anda-Nokomis's flask there. I'll clean it up."

"Your hand's trembling," he said after a few moments.

"It's the steering," she answered. "You know, the going on and on." Even as she spoke she realized that they had yawed off course yet again, and put the helm over just as Bayub-Otal called a warning from the bow.

"Why not let me take over for a bit?"

"If it was Lake Serrelind or the Barb I would, but this is too dangerous. You've got to know what you're doing and be able to act quick."

"But we must be sensible, Maia. You've been steering now for hours, and even you can't go on for ever. You'll collapse or faint, and then we'll all be finished. You'd better teach me: come on."

"But the bailing-"

"I know: but once I've got the idea you can catch up with it, and then keep an eye on me while you bail."

He sat down in the stern, took the tiller from her and grasped it as he had seen her do.

"You've got to keep thinking ahead, Zenka. Only the rate we're going, it all happens so quick: I'd best keep one hand on the helm myself for a bit, so's you can feel what I do. There's only so much I can tell you, see: the rest you've got to learn for yourself.Oh, Cran, look out!"

Talking, they had both failed to notice that they were approaching yet another tributary. As they came with the confluence the bow slewed and the boat listed, the current lashing down the length of the starboard beam. Maia, thrown on top of Zen-Kurel, involuntarily flung her arms round his neck.

They had both lost hold of the helm. She grabbed it, pushed herself upright by pressing with her other hand against his shoulder and turned the bow downstream again. Zen-Kurel picked himself up.

"I must learn to do better than that. I only hope it isn't going to be too expensive. Come on, give it back to me and I'll try again."

They sat side by side, swaying and pressing against each other with the unpredictable and often violent motion of the boat. Maia, tired out and feeling increasingly feverish, grew impatient and once or twice flared up with an exasperation of which she felt ashamed even as she spoke. Yet he accepted every reproof without retort. At length, satisfied that he had acquired a passable proficiency, she felt able, though rather hesitantly, to leave him and set about catching up with the bailing.

The continual danger and need for concentration and action gave them no chance to talk of anything else, yet nonetheless she could feel in his manner a new warmth and friendly solicitude. Since that terrible evening at Clys-tis's farm, when she had heard him curse her and demand her death, he had found himself compelled, in spite of everything, to respect her. She knew that much-had known it ever since Purn. But now, for the first time, he was speaking to her not merely as though he respected her but as though he liked her too. He wanted to help her and to lessen her anxiety and distress. Yet she wasn't just one of his soldiers any more, to be looked after as a responsibility. Whether or not he was aware of it, he was showing that he regarded her as an equal and a friend.

These thoughts, however, passed only very vaguely and indistinctly through her mind, for as the afternoon-it must surely be afternoon now-wore on and the rain continued to beat down until it was difficult to remember what things had been like before it began, before being wet through from head to foot had become the natural condition of life, she began to feel more and more despondent. As everyone knows, a continuous, unrelenting pain-toothache or earache-is hard to endure. So with this peril and instability. It was as though a carpenter's plane were gradually and steadily shaving away her courage and self-control. Always coming nearer was the inevitable moment when she would no longer be able to endure, would break down and become worse than useless. "O Lespa," she

prayed, "let me drown before that happens! Then at least they'll remember me kindly."

By degrees there came stealing upon her that heightened yet distracted sensitivity which often accompanies the early stage of a feverish illness. While her touch and hearing seemed to have become more acute-so that, for example, the bailer in her hand felt grainy and rain-smooth with a palpability more intense than she had hitherto been aware of-her perception of their surroundings and her relationship to them had also changed, growing blurred and indistinct. It appeared now almost dream-like, this watery wasteland, not subject to normal laws of hature and causation. She would not have been altogether surprised to see it break up and crumble in the rain, start revolving like a wheel or simply vanish before her eyes.

She had not been expecting the trees. Although when she first saw them approaching she did not suppose she was imagining them, yet at the same time they did not seem entirely real. As a matter of fact, in her situation and her slightly delirious condition this was a perfectly reasonable-or at any rate understandable-reaction, for the trees-acres of them-seemed growing up through two lakes of brown water extending one on each side of the river. As they drew nearer, she could see this water actually winding among them, through and over the undergrowth, curling round the thicker trunks like streamers of fog round the towers of the Barons' Palace. She'd no sense of danger, though-not yet. It was like an illusion, a kind of cosmic dance of the trees and water; like the Thlela's dance of the Telthearna which had so much delighted her at the Rains banquet.

She caught his arm, pointing, "Look, Zenka, look! The trees-the trees are dancing!"

He stared at them and seemed to be turning it over in his mind, as though she had said something requiring serious consideration. It was she, not he, who first grasped that she had spoken foolishly. With a sense half of pride and half of shame, she understood that he had become so much accustomed to her talking sense-or at any rate not talking nonsense-that he had been wondering what she might have meant by her metaphor.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Silly fancy. Afraid I'm feeling a bit light-headed. Only the trees-they just don't look real, somehow."

"They're real enough," he answered. "I only hope we can get through them, that's all. Well, in one way it's all to the good, I suppose."

"What is?"

"The forest."

"Forest?" Muzzily, she was trying to remember what a forest was. "Is it the Blue Forest?"

"No: that's up north of Keril. This can only be what they call the Border Forest, between Katria and Belishba. We got quite near the other side of it once, about three years ago, when I was first with the king. At the time he was thinking of attacking Belishba, but nothing came of that."

"Are we in Katria, then, once we're in the forest?"

" 'Fraid not. Katria's not far to the north of the forest, though."

"Then why did you-" She screwed up her eyes, blinking in the rain. Whatever had she been going to say? "Why did you-oh, yes: why did you say it was good, then?"

"Well, we've come so fast-faster than ever I thought we would. It can't be all that much further to Katria now. We must make quite certain we're across the border, though, before we take the boat in to shore."

"How can we?"

"I don't know. But most Belishbans hate Katrians, naturally, and the frontier's guarded even in the rains-or it always used to be."