Chapter Six
Ran-Del concentrated on Francesca, striving to read her feelings as clearly as he could. He sensed no deceit, only exasperation and concern.
“Where are we?” Ran-Del demanded. “How did we get here? Why has your father put us out here and tied us together like this?”
Francesca sat up and threw off the blanket. She was dressed very practically in dark trousers and a loose-fitting green shirt. Ran-Del wore his Sansoussy clothes, although they appeared to have been thoroughly cleaned.
Francesca stood up, surveying the landscape as she turned in a circle. Ran-Del looked with her. Low, gently rolling hills made up the vast, open prairie, lush with waving grasses and dotted with clumps of russet-colored bushes. In the far distance, a range of mountains dominated the horizon. The only mountains Ran-Del had ever seen were the Decaturs. These peaks looked gray brown and craggy instead of russet-colored and rounded.
Francesca stopped turning and pointed to a distant, snow-capped peak in the middle of the range. “That looks like Mount Fujiama. We must be on Hayden land, which means we’re a good ways south of the city.”
South of the city might mean closer to the Sansoussy Forest. Ran-Del cleared a space in the dirt with his foot and handed her a twig. “Show me.”
Francesca squatted down and drew a small circle. “That’s Shangri-La.” Below the city, she sketched a large four-sided shape, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, and drew a zigzag line across the middle of it. “This is the Hayden estate, and the wiggly line is the mountains behind us.” She added a dot near one end of the line of mountains. “This mark is where Fujiama is.”
“Where on your map is the forest of the Sansoussy?” Ran-Del asked, crouching down beside her.
She drew a large, amorphous, cloud-like shape just slightly south and a good ways west of the city.
“There,” she said. “I’m not really sure where your people live, but that’s the Sansoussy Forest. It’s prairie and rolling hills up until then.”
Ran-Del studied the marks and then looked up at the sun. “We’re north of your mountain, so we must be about here.” He laid a small pebble in the top half of the squarish shape.
“I think so,” Francesca said. “But Hayden land extends quite a ways. I can’t say for sure.”
“That answers where,” Ran-Del said, sitting back on his heels. “But why would your father have put us here?”
“I’m not positive.” She ducked her head, and Ran-Del sensed embarrassment. “But I have an idea. It’s related to the reason Pop snatched you from the forest in the first place.”
He focused his psy sense for any hint that she was lying. “What is the reason?”
Francesca seemed reluctant to answer directly. “Did Pop tell you about what’s happening to Great Houses like Hayden?”
Ran-Del recalled Baron Hayden’s monologues and nodded. “He said his house was in danger of being swallowed up by a bigger house. He said that I could help him to stop it in some way, but he would never say how.”
Francesca stared straight ahead as if she found the distant mountains fascinating. “Well, the reason we’re vulnerable is because right now the House of Hayden is just me and Pop; there’s no one else. Pop was an only child, and so was I. I have no Hayden cousins, no siblings, and no husband.” She paused and then blurted out, “Pop wants you to change that.”
Ran-Del frowned, still not understanding. “What do you mean? How could I change that?”
Francesca frowned, plainly annoyed at having to explain everything in explicit language. “Pop wants me to get married—to you.”
Ran-Del suspected her first of lying, and then of mocking him. His psy sense told him neither was the case. “Your father is insane. You had never seen me until three days ago, and I had never seen you.”
“He may have a crazy idea in his head, but he’s quite sane.”
Ran-Del got to his feet and looked down at her. “He has day bats nesting in his upper branches. He came into our forest and shot me with a dart, as if he had been hunting his dinner. Are you telling me that he was looking for a husband for you?”
“Yes.” Francesca shaded her eyes from the morning sun as she looked up at him.
Ran-Del snorted with rampant disbelief and looked away to scan the countryside. “No one would do that,” he said, looking back at her. “He cares about you. Why would he find a stranger—a wild man your people called me—to marry his only daughter?”
Francesca still crouched on the ground. She sighed and hugged her knees. “This wasn’t a sudden aberration, this respect for your people. Pop has always thought you lived a cleaner life.” She frowned as if she thought her meaning wasn't clear. “Not cleaner in the sense of hygiene, but more honest—more honorable. When he realized that he’d need to arrange a marriage for me, he got this idea that the thing to do was to find a Sansoussy to marry me.”
“A Sansoussy?” Ran-Del said. “Just any Sansoussy?”
“Not exactly.” Francesca stood up but turned her eyes away as if she were reluctant to meet his gaze directly. “Pop didn’t want anyone too old or too young—or already married. And he wanted a warrior who had some psy sense, because that combination gave me the most protection.”
“So he went into the forest to acquire a Sansoussy?” The more Ran-Del thought about it, the more it fit Stefan Hayden’s words and actions. His anger rose when he realized how thoroughly the Baron had planned to hijack his life. “And I was the first one whose caste bracelet had the right beads, is that it?”
“Pretty much.”
Ran-Del crossed his arms over his chest. “What made him think I’d marry you? He could have kept me locked in his house forever, but he couldn’t have made me marry you.”
Francesca's face turned a deep red, and she radiated mortification. “I was supposed to seduce you. Pop said you’d feel obligated to marry me if I did.”
Ran-Del had to clench his jaw for a second, to control his anger. If it got any worse, he would need the First Discipline. “You knew what your father wanted, and you agreed to it?”
Her face contorted in agitation. “No! I mean, yes, I knew, but I never agreed to it. The day before yesterday I told him flat out that I wouldn’t do anything to try to make you marry me. Then last night Pop offered me a glass of wine, and after that it’s all a blank.”
She spoke truthfully. Ran-Del turned away from her, and felt the tug of the gray cable on his wrist. “What about this? Why are we here now, with this tying us together?”
“I’m not sure.” Annoyance crept into her tone. “But I think Pop put us out here to reverse our situations. Back in the city we were on my territory. Here, you can show off what you know.”
Ran-Del didn’t know which astounded him more, Stefan Hayden’s arrogance or the fact that his daughter understood it so well. “And this?” He held up his left hand to show the band.
“I expect that’s mostly to keep you from running off and leaving me alone. Pop must figure the first thing you’d do is head back to your forest.”
“That is the only thing you’ve said that makes any sense.” Ran-Del looked down at her dirt map. Better to forget about the things that made him angry and concentrate on the things he could control. “We’ll go almost due west as fast as we can. What’s between us and the forest?”
Francesca didn’t even try to argue. She merely shrugged. “I don’t really know. A lot of our land is still wilderness. I don’t think we’ll run into anyone heading due west—not unless Pop is waiting for us.”
Ran-Del set his jaw, determined not to be caught unawares a second time. “Do you think he’d do that?”
“Sure, I do,” Francesca said promptly. “Pop has every intention of getting us both back. It’s a hell of a long walk to the forest, and he has all kinds of toys to help him find us.”
“What kind of toys?”
Francesca hesitated before she answered. Ran-Del wondered if she would tell him the whole truth. “Well, he’s got flyters—vehicles tha
t fly. He could watch for us, or even scan for us from a flyter.”
“What do you mean when you say he can scan for us?” Ran-Del interrupted. He had seen a flying vehicle but had no idea how a machine could scan. Was it like a hound tracking by scent?
Francesca struggled for words. “Scanning means that instruments—machines—in Pop's flyter could find where we are from a long distance away, just from our body heat, and our movements.”
Even with psy sense to tell him she wasn't lying, Ran-Del was skeptical. “How can it tell the difference between us and an animal, say a unicorn or a timber cat?”
Francesca’s certainty came through clearly. “It just can. I don’t understand how it works, but life sign scanners can distinguish between animals and people. And it’s also possible that Pop planted a transponder on us.”
Another new word. They were all so different and so meaningless. “A what?”
“A transponder. A device that emits a signal that Pop’s machines could pick up. It would tell him right where we are.”
Ran-Del glanced around. “What would it look like?”
“It could look like anything. They’re very tiny. Pop could have hidden it inside something else. He could even have implanted a transponder in your body or mine, or in both of us.”
The idea repelled Ran-Del, but the sight of a pile of supplies next to Francesca’s bedding distracted him. On top of the pile a large piece of tarpaulin had been folded into a rough square. When Ran-Del lifted it, he saw his bow, quiver, and dirk.
He gave a glad cry and picked them up eagerly. All seventeen arrows were in the quiver.
Francesca radiated amusement when he counted them. “Did you think Pop would steal one of your arrows?”
Ran-Del refused to be chagrined. “No. But one of them could easily have been lost, and it’s always wise to know what your resources are. How were you planning to feed yourself until your father chooses to come forward to claim you?”
She lifted her chin. “I could manage on my own. When I was a child, I used to hike around Hayden picking salmon berries, and my mother showed me how to dig up carrot bushes and eat the roots.”
Ran-Del allowed himself a tiny smile. She sounded so sure of herself, and yet she knew almost nothing useful. “Salmon berries aren’t in season yet. The soil here looks too dry for carrot bushes, but you might find some by the stream.”
“What stream?” Francesca asked, looking around keenly.
“There’s probably a stream over there,” Ran-Del said, slipping his dirk into its sheath on his belt, “by those silver oak trees. Silver oaks grow only by water.”
Francesca’s expression brightened. “Great! Let’s go over to the stream, then. I’m thirsty.”
Ran-Del decided to make it clear who was in charge. “In a moment. First we assess what we have. Then we figure out the best way to carry it.”
She made a face but said nothing further as he investigated.
The first things he found were two full water bottles, made from some material that Ran-Del didn’t recognize, each with a long loop of cord attached. He handed one to Francesca but urged her to be moderate in slaking her thirst until they knew for sure that the stream had potable water.
Next he found a small hatchet, three lengths of coiled rope, a slim case of toilet articles, including toothbrushes and a razor, and a tiny cylindrical object that Ran-Del couldn’t identify.
“Oh,” Francesca said, taking it from his hand, “it’s to start a fire. You flick it on like this.” She pressed her thumb against a switch on the side of the cylinder, and a flame shot up from the top.
Ran-Del jumped back with alarm but then took the device from her and tried it. Fire shot upward with satisfying reliability. “This will save us a good deal of time.”
He hefted the hatchet. It was well balanced, which could come in handy if he had to use it as a weapon, and looked very new. The blade was sharp but showed no signs of honing. Ran-Del stretched the gray cable out on the ground and lifted the hatchet.
“I don’t think that will work.” Francesca frowned as Ran-Del brought the hatchet down as hard as he could on the cord. “I told you,” she said as Ran-Del inspected the unmarred cable. “That cord is flexitron. Pop wouldn’t have left us the hatchet if it would cut that.”
Ran-Del was almost more annoyed by her comments than by the fact that he couldn’t sever the bond between them. The hatchet blade looked the worse for the encounter. He made no reply but slipped the hatchet into his belt.
“Can we go to the stream now?” Francesca asked. “I’m still thirsty.”
“In a moment,” Ran-Del said again.
Francesca all but tapped her foot while he partially unfolded the tarp, and then picked up the blankets. Twice he moved far enough away from her that the cable between them was pulled taut. The second time, Francesca was yanked toward him as Ran-Del turned suddenly.
“This is very annoying,” she said crossly.
“Stay close to me and don’t get in my way.”
Francesca made a sour face. She made no effort to help Ran-Del while he folded the two blankets, laid everything except the water bottles and his weapons on top of them, rolled up the whole lot inside the tarp, and then used the rope to tie it all into a tidy bundle. Her expression went from sour to shocked when he informed her that he expected her to carry the bundle.
“Why me?” she said, hands on her hips.
“Because I’ll have the bow. I have to be ready to shoot if I see a predator, or any game, and I can’t do that if I have to carry this also.”
Francesca took the heavy bundle reluctantly and looped the rope over her shoulder.
Finally ready, Ran-Del led the way as they trooped the few hundred meters to the clump of silver oaks. The trees did indeed portend the presence of a stream. Francesca dropped the pack on the ground and went toward the bank. She got quite close to the water before her arm was jerked up, and she was brought up short by the end of the cable. Ran-Del stood still, scanning the nearby countryside.
“Come on,” Francesca said impatiently, tugging on the cable. “I want to wash my face and hands.”
Ran-Del maintained a dignified demeanor in spite of her yanking his arm. “Let me look around first.”
Only when he was satisfied that there was no danger did he allow Francesca to kneel by the edge of the stream, wash her face, and drink. Once she had finished, he washed himself as best he could, and then turned to face the sun.
“What are you doing?” Francesca asked.
“None of your business.” Ran-Del closed his eyes. He recited the First Blessing silently, and did the same for his prayer. When he finished, he ignored Francesca and sat down on the grass. She gave a small sigh of exasperation as he let his eyes go out of focus and began to meditate.
When he finished, Francesca was sitting as far away from him as she could get without tugging the silver cable taut. As soon as Ran-Del let out a deep breath, she jumped to her feet.
“At last,” she said in a voice of exasperation. “Do you have to do that every morning?”
“Yes. Let’s get moving.”
Francesca slung the bundle over her shoulder. Ran-Del slipped on the quiver of arrows, picked up his bow, and they started walking. One embarrassing aspect of their linkage soon became apparent when first Francesca and then Ran-Del felt a need to answer a call of nature. The problem resolved itself when they found a large clump of foliage and the other party resolutely turned his or her back in turn.
Francesca commented bitterly on how much thought her father had given to such a situation when he decided how long to make the cable. Ran-Del ignored her complaints.
They started out again.
“Slow down,” Francesca said after the fourth time Ran-Del tugged her along. “I can’t walk that fast.”
Ran-Del frowned in annoyance. “We’re already going too slowly. It’ll take us five or six days to get there, at this rate.”
She grimaced and rubbed her calf
muscles. “Why are you so worried about it? Pop will stop us before we get too close.”
Her calm assurance irked him. “Maybe, but I don’t propose to stand around and wait for him.”
She straightened up. “We don’t have to stand. Can’t we just walk a little slower?”
The pleading note in her voice moved him, no matter how much he wanted to ignore it. “All right. I’ll go slower.”
They walked slowly but steadily for most of the morning. Ran-Del set their course from the sun, using Mount Fujiama as a landmark. The stream meandered generally westward and was often in sight. They stopped once when they came to a clump of carrot bushes growing on the banks of the stream. Ran-Del used his dirk to dig up the shallow roots, and then hacked them loose with the hatchet. They washed the handful of tubers in the stream and made a meal of most of them. Francesca would have eaten them all, but Ran-Del insisted they save a few roots for later.
She looked longingly at the tubers but yielded to his argument that they might not find any other food. They put the bright orange roots into their roll of supplies and went on.
They were coming over a slight rise when Ran-Del spotted a small animal just poking its nose out of its burrow. He held up an arm to stop Francesca and then reached back and slipped an arrow from his quiver. He had nocked the arrow and was lifting the bow to aim when Francesca burst out with an exclamation.
“What is it? Is something wrong?”
The animal ducked back into his hole at the sound of her voice.
Ran-Del cursed succinctly.
“What?” Francesca asked. “What happened? Why did you stop?”
Ran-Del pointed to the burrow. “There was an animal but you scared him back into his hole.”
Francesca looked contrite. “I’m sorry. I didn’t see it.”
“Next time I stop you,” Ran-Del said, “keep quiet until I tell you that you can speak.”
She bristled noticeably. “Who put you in charge?”
“Your father did,” Ran-Del said, returning the arrow to his quiver, “when he put you out here with me.”
Francesca wrinkled her forehead in a disdainful frown. “Well, I can tell you one thing. If Pop thought this little adventure would make me see you in a better light, he was wrong. I liked you better when you were locked up in our house.”
Ran-Del gave vent to his feelings. “I don’t give a damn whether you like me. I just want to get home.”
Francesca looked suddenly guilty. “I really am sorry. Pop snatched you because of me, so in a way it is my fault you’re out here.”
Her admission mollified Ran-Del enough to quench his temper and remind him how disoriented he had felt confined in Stefan Hayden’s house. Francesca was every bit as handicapped here as he had been in Shangri-La. He tried to keep the annoyance out of his voice. “Next time don’t move and don’t speak. I don’t know how many chances I’ll get.”
Francesca clenched her jaw but nodded. Ran-Del retrieved his arrow, and they moved on.
When they came upon a row of a half dozen burrows set into the hillside, Ran-Del halted suddenly and dropped into a crouch. He notched an arrow swiftly while Francesca seemed to hold her breath in apprehension. They waited, silent and unmoving, for several minutes. Finally, a gray nose inched out of a burrow. Ran-Del stayed his hand and in a moment, the animal put his whole head out. The little creature surveyed his surroundings and then popped out of the burrow to stand on his hind legs, sniffing the air. Almost knee high, he had a pudgy body, bright, beady eyes, and tiny but erect ears set high on his furred head.
Ran-Del brought up his bow and released the arrow in one fluid motion. The arrow sang through the air and impaled the animal by the throat. It slumped to the ground, twitching furiously. Ran-Del sprinted forward, dragging Francesca behind him, and snatched up the prey. He dropped the bow and pulled the hatchet from his belt, then hammered the animal across the skull with the blunt end of it.
Francesca clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, it was a paca! Why did you do that?”
Ran-Dell looked down at the now-still animal. “It wasn’t dead. I didn’t want it to suffer anymore than necessary.”
“Oh.” She glanced at his bloody hands and then looked away.
Ran-Del cleaned himself, the hatchet, and the paca with leaves from a nearby sponge-leaf bush. He slipped the paca’s body through a loop on his belt.
“Is that it?” Francesca said. “Aren’t we going to eat it?”
“When we stop for the night, I’ll build a fire and we can cook it.”
Francesca frowned but didn’t argue. It was only mid afternoon, but she looked worn out. Ran-Del pushed them forward, always heading westward. Francesca trudged along, the pull of the cable tugging her forward.
“Don’t you ever get tired?” she asked crossly, when Ran-Del stopped on a small rise to survey the land ahead.
“Tired?” They had moved at a positively sluggish pace. He looked at Francesca more closely and saw the weariness in her eyes, the dejected line of her shoulders. “We’ll stop as soon as I find a place with water nearby.”
Francesca didn’t answer.
Ran-Del slipped the bundle from her shoulder. “I’ll carry it for a while.”
She fell in step just slightly behind him as he moved down the hill.
After a little while, the brook crossed their path again, and meandered into a loop. Ran-Del stopped to consider the possibilities, and Francesca blundered into him.
“Sorry,” she said wearily.
“This will do,” Ran-Del said. “There’s a hollow over there where I can build a fire that won’t be easily visible.”
Francesca followed him as he made his way over to the hollow and set down their pack. He hunted for a wide, flat rock to serve as a work space and a good-sized stick to use as a spit. Once he found them, he set about skinning and gutting the paca. Francesca looked away determinedly while he worked. Ran-Del smiled to himself. City folk must be truly ignorant if they didn’t know where meat came from. Once the hide, offal, and other waste were safely buried and the paca was nothing more than a spitted carcass on the end of the stick, he handed the makeshift spit to Francesca. “Hold this.”
She cringed as she studied the carcass. “Why?”
Ran-Del held in a sharp retort. “So that it won’t get dirty or be carried off by an animal while I build a fire. Unless you’d prefer to build the fire?”
She accepted the burden with obvious reluctance.
He gathered kindling and heavier fuel from the countryside, while Francesca walked beside him holding his kill. She tended to stumble if she didn’t watch where she was going. By the time they had gathered enough wood, dusk had set in.
“It was very foolish of your father to bind us together like this,” Ran-Del said as he laid the midsized sticks in a grid. “It makes it much harder to get anything done because we both have to do everything together.”
“I don’t like it either but if he hadn’t, you’d have left me behind by now,” Francesca said, a hint of a whine in her voice. “You’d have run off like a startled unicorn as soon as you got up this morning.”
Ran-Del considered this statement as honestly as he could while he laid the next layer of firewood. “No, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t keep my oath not to harm you if I left you alone out here with no one to look after you.”
Perversely, Francesca didn’t seem pleased at his concern. She lifted her chin. “I would have been fine. I could have left the mountain behind me and hiked toward Hayden House. I would have been halfway there by now.”
Ran-Del smiled. “You’d be very hungry about now.”
“I am very hungry about now, so I don’t see that it’s any different.”
“But we have dinner,” Ran-Del said. “We just have to cook it.” He tossed the last of the kindling onto the pyre and used the tube that Stefan Hayden had left them to start the blaze. He was soon holding the spit over the fire and listening to the sizzle of the paca’s fat as it hit the
hot stones.
Francesca managed to spread out the tarp while he cooked. “It smells wonderful,” she said as she sat down cross-legged next to him. “I always liked pacas, but I was never so glad to see one alive as I am to see this one dead.”
She opened a water bottle and had a drink, then passed the bottle to Ran-Del. He handed her the spit, and she held it while he drank.
“We can fill both bottles tomorrow, before we start,” Ran-Del said.
Francesca sighed with fatigue. “Do we have to walk so far tomorrow?”
Ran-Del nodded. “We must move as quickly as we can. I don’t know if I can elude your father or not, but I must try.”
Francesca let out another sigh, more prolonged and filled with regret. “I think it’s a futile effort, Ran-Del, but I’ll do my best. It’s the least I can do. You’re in this mess because of me.”
Ran-Del chuckled and shook his head, in a better mood than he had been in for days. He was free again, and just at the moment, Francesca seemed disposed to be reasonable. “I’m in this mess because my great-grandfather wouldn’t let me marry Bettine, so my hair wasn’t cut, and I had a red and a sky-gold bead on my caste bracelet. Your father was very particular about what he wanted. I heard him explaining it to Toth.”
The firelight reflected in Francesca’s eyes as they opened wide in shock. “I didn’t realize you were conscious when they abducted you. Did they hurt you?”
Ran-Del recalled the moment. There had been terror but no real pain. “No, not really. Toth shot me with a tiny dart that stung like a buzzer bug and left me unable to move any muscle in my body. After a while, your father did something so that I was truly unconscious, and then I woke up in your house.”
Francesca tilted her head and gave him an appraising glance. “Who is Bettine?”
Ran-Del looked away, unwilling to discuss anything so personal with her. When Francesca didn’t take the hint and speak of other things, he realized he would have to be direct. “She’s no concern of yours.”
Francesca seemed unaware that this was an allusion to her lack of manners. “If you wanted to marry her, then you must care for her—maybe even love her?”
“I don’t wish to speak of it,” Ran-Del said bluntly. He should have known better than to mention Bettine to an outlander with no manners.
“Why not?” Francesca said in a reasonable tone.
“Because it’s personal,” Ran-Del said in exasperation, “and it’s none of your business.”
“Oh.” Finally, she seemed to understand the proper thing to do. “Do you think the paca is cooked yet?”
It was cooked, and Ran-Del cut the meat into strips with his dirk. They ate with great satisfaction, drank their fill, and prepared to sleep. Francesca expressed dismay when Ran-Del put the fire out by pouring dirt over it.
“Don’t we want to keep it going all night?” she asked, looking up at him in the moonlight that softened her features and made her look very feminine, even with her short hair.
“We don’t have enough wood,” Ran-Del said. “And besides, I don’t think we need a fire. I don’t think there are any predators out here large enough to prey on people, or your father wouldn’t have left us here.”
“But it’s getting cold,” Francesca said.
“You have a blanket,” Ran-Del said firmly.
They lay down side by side on the tarp, each of them wrapped in a blanket. Francesca fell asleep right away. Ran-Del lay there listening to the sounds of the prairie at night—small animals chittering and night bats rustling in the trees. He knew that he was there only because Stefan Hayden had chosen to play a game with him, that he might well be prevented from returning home. Still, he felt better than he had since Toth’s dart had pierced his body. He was back in the open, away from city walls, and he had a fighting chance to get away. Ran-Del fell asleep wondering how Stefan Hayden would attempt his recapture.