They walked on in silence, then Dan said: "You must have known."
"Known what?"
"He knew you were sleeping with Tassin."
"Pau did?"
"Of course he did!"
"But he didn't mind . . . " he began.
Dan gave a derogatory grunt.
"I know he didn't," Chaldez insisted.
"Of course Pau minded!" Dan snapped back. "Do you think he's without feelings?"
Chaldez was hurt. "He should have said something. He obviously said something to you."
"He didn't," said Dan. "He didn't need to. We all knew you and Tassin were screwing. By the gods, Chaldez, you didn't exactly make a secret of it!"
Chaldez glanced uneasily at Habre and Eonni, but they were some way behind and were perhaps out of ear-shot. He said nothing more.
The next few days were horrible. Chaldez, racked with guilt, retreated into his own misery. Pau, he kept thinking, was the last person he wanted to hurt; the thought that he had known what was going on between him and Tassin, and had minded, was appalling. There had been an affinity between him and Chaldez from their very first meeting; a sympathy and an understanding that was expressed not in words but in the music they made; in fact they had spoken very little. There had been no need to. It was as though words were superfluous. As for Tassin, Chaldez had actually congratulated himself on not allowing her to come between them; it pleased him to know that their purely physical relationship was disconnected from the spiritual one he enjoyed with Pau. It had not occurred to him that either might end, especially in the way they had done. And he felt wretched.
The fact that his life was now in danger hardly penetrated his discomfort, but it was never far from the minds of Dan and Habre. Eonni alone made a show of being unconcerned about anything, but her laughter and high spirits were inappropriate and grated on the others.
The great forest had by now almost completely petered out, only surviving as scraggy copses along the river's edge and in depressions where rushy pools warmed in the midday sun. Elsewhere patches of tall, silvery grass mingle with impenetrable clumps of a low thorny shrub, decked out in large papery, pale mauve flowers. Away to the horizon in every direction lay wide vistas beneath a bright, hot sun; and a million crickets filled the air with their interminable serenades. Between midnight and sunrise thunderstorms crashed through the silence of the night, cracking the dark with lightning, but by noon the next day all trace of their rain had gone.
The countryside is unpopulated, and the rest houses few.
"I'm glad we're alone out here," said Eonni brightly, "or we'd never get a bed at night. Have you heard the thunderstorms?"
For all the response she got she might have been addressing the shrubs.
When Chaldez did at last speak what he said astonished the others. They had stopped for an early meal, eaten in silence, and were getting ready to move on when he suddenly asked if he could carry the things that ladened the horse. "I need to do it," he said simply. "Allow me please."
Dan and Habre looked at one another; they both realised that to argue was futile. In silence they watched as he undid the straps that secured the bundles and packages to the horse, and silently they helped rearrange them and strap them on to his shoulders. Eonni took the zaratha.
Their weight was more than he had expected, but he was not displeased. He wanted to suffer. And suffer he did. After a while his knees were buckling and his shoulders and neck and back were bursting with pain. The sun was hot and he was bathed in sweat.
Dan said: "That's enough Chaldez." Chaldez directed a baleful look at him. "Leave me." he said, "I'll go on 'til I drop."
Progress was tortuously slow; the others had plenty of time to look around as he trudged painfully along behind them. Suddenly Eonni screamed. Some distance ahead, and completely blocking their way, were a dozen or so horsemen.
Chaldez, his head swimming, was the last to see them, but when he did he let out a kind of roar. "Get this lot off me!" he shouted, and they turned to see him struggling out of the harness that had been contrived to help him carry his burden. He dumped it on the ground, seized the horse, swung himself across its back, drew his sword and charged like a mad man at the men on horseback, shouting as he went.
They would, he hoped, cut him to pieces, but they began to back away, and some turned their horses.
From where they stood, Habre and the others saw Chaldez gallop among them, and in the next instance a figure slumped sideways and fell to the ground. What they could not see, but the other riders saw only too well, was that Chaldez had practically decapitated him with a single sweep of his sword. They scattered, Chaldez pursuing them like a fiend, demanding that they stay and fight. A couple of horsemen who came within range of his sword as it sliced the air suffered brutal wounds, and their cries of fear and pain only increased their companions' alarm. Chaldez chased them off, and then he returned to Dan and the others.
Dan helped him off the horse and embraced him. Then Habre hugged him, and finally Eonni fell on his neck and smothered him with kisses. Chaldez was unclear as to exactly what he had done, but the laughter of the others forced him to smile. Dan kept saying: "I don't believe it! This is the person who can barely stay on a horse when it's walking and he didn't even have a saddle! I don't believe it!"
His crazy assault broke the spell of fear that they had been under, and Chaldez no longer felt compelled to punish himself.