The air became bright within itself. There were still cold stars in the cold sky. We were in the hills. All the trees were coniferous and the rocks were enamelled with lichens like those on the rocks I studied so often below the tower. The shadows were brooding black and spicy. There were all our numberless, rough, savage sounds to help wake the waking forest, up here—the Hai, Hai of men to animals, barks of birds glad or irritated to be on the march again, squeals of wheels, whip-cracks, hundreds of grunted conversations, beat of boots and sandals, etc., etc. We were moving fast—There was hardly a road, but the climb was easy, the rocks mainly huge and flat. We had hardly any baggage-train compared to former days. It was also rather astonishing how comparatively many men we had lost during the months of continuous brawling and rioting in the Capital.

I suppose I shall always think of the Northern army as “we”. I’ve been part of them so often, and so many intense months at a time, through so many dangers, and I understand them so well. Nevertheless they are my hereditary enemies, and the enemies of that beautiful ultimate privacy, Atlan.

We passed waterfalls and could occasionally hear birdsong between all the rest of the row.

Half-way through the morning we were handed more meat, and soup. Zerd left me for a while and rode about seeing to an awful lot of things and visiting every part of the line. I seized the opportunity to scribble in this, though it came out rather jolted.

I was feeling very alive. Now it was warmer, but I realized for the first time that I was wearing nothing under the fur rug and my cloak but a little shift. Yet within the fur my thighs against each other were warm and smooth and reminded each other of their life.

Mid-evening we camped without tents. Neither are there any 395

winegirls, jugglers, dancers or musicians. Only Isad had killed a rodent that day, spearing it from his saddle, and he made a ghirza from half of a hard, hairy gourd with a long arm an. strings of rodent-gut which he’d dried in a few hours.

Zerd, I (still rug-wrapped like a convalescent) and the commanders sat round a fragrant fire—the fuel was dried dung the men had been gathering—and Isad sang to his rather flat-toned ghirza, love songs which are the rage at the Court we’ve just left

The sickle of his smile Cut me to my middle—

Made my heart lurch a mile—

Explain me now that riddle.

Zerd watched me, I knew that he wanted the ceaseless love lyrics with their hypnotic tunes to beat their way past what he thinks my unnatural frigidity—and as a matter of fact, when I looked at his dark face his white fierce smile in it did seem the shape of a sickle …