Law of the Wolf Tower: The Claidi Journals Book 1, Tanith Lee [pocket ebook reader .TXT] 📗

Inside my raised head I thought, Yes, and I spent my days as a slave.

I looked down.

Argul said, ‘You can have a horse instead of a mule. Starting to ride will be uncomfortable at your age, but it’ll be worth it. Want to try?’

Seeing me slipping and rolling off the mule wasn’t fun enough. Off a horse might really be a laugh.

‘No, thank you.’

‘Tronking hell,’ said Argul.

He turned his back and strode away. His hair swung like a wave. The cloak swung, and gold discs chimed on it. Musical.

I wish I’d said yes. And what did he mean, my Age, as if I was thirty or something.

A long time has gone by since I wrote that. A lot’s been happening. In all kinds of ways.

Something needs to be said about the bandits and the Hulta.

It’s awkward.

The House depended on life being carved in stone, and the rules of life were iron. You couldn’t make changes. You couldn’t change your mind about anything important.

But I think life isn’t about that. It’s about changing. If you grow, you change, don’t you. A kid becomes an adult. A puppy becomes a dog. You can’t stay still and you can’t stay always thinking one thing only, especially when you see it wasn’t right. It was a mistake.

But you know all this. I bet you do.

It’s just – I didn’t. Or did I?

First of all, I have to describe a morning, still in the floury desert, and me coming along to the fire, and there’s Blurn, stuffing himself with the nut porridge the bandits often have. And Mehmed, the knife-thrower, yells, ‘Kill it, Blurn!’ And another man, Ro, shouts, ‘Make sure it’s dead!’

And Claidi stands there, seeing for the first, that what she heard through a window wasn’t something horrible, but just a joke.

They were joking about Blurn’s method of eating. And then Blurn turned and made other appalling comments on Mehmed and Ro’s methods of eating (which, admittedly, are worse).

So, you don’t always learn the hard way. You can learn a silly, funny way.

Which, too, is another lesson.

I’m getting tangled up.

For example. Since leaving A’s wagon, I’ve slept each night in the open on a pillow with a blanket, supplied me by the woman who’d come by with the food.

She must have seen I was nervous.

She said, ‘There aren’t many insects here.’ Then, noting I was still unnerved, ‘No lions. But if they come around, the look-out will know.’ Then, seeing me still worried, she added, ‘If you don’t want a man friend, no one will disturb you.’ ‘Oh, yes,’ I said. She looked me up and down and said, ‘Where you come from must have been a bad place. People don’t creep up on people here. We’re not leopards. If you like someone, tell him. If not, you can be private.’

Did I believe her? No.

I was panicky and couldn’t sleep.

I had a man friend. I had Nemian.

Correction. I hadn’t got a man friend. Or a friend?

In the House, people had fallen for each other. (Never me.) But you had to be so careful. (My parents, for instance. Exiled for being in love and having a child.)

One heard such stories about the Waste. And bandits—

They’re all right. No one intrudes.

Probably they just don’t notice me. I’m so bad-tempered, boring, jealous, tacky.

I saw Nemian one evening, one twilight, talking to the bandit girl. They were gazing into each other’s eyes. I felt a sort of pain, sharp and cold-hot. I slunk off.

Next day, a horse arrived. Blurn brought it.

Can’t help this. I like Blurn. It isn’t just that he rescued me, he’s just – I just like him. And he’s with Argul a lot. So … I don’t know. Somehow it helps. (Blurn, by the way, has a girlfriend. She’s terrific. Anyway I don’t mean I like Blurn that way.)

The horse. Let me tell you about the horse. It was blue-black – like the sky that night. And it had thinking black eyes. It stood there, thoughtful and beautiful, its silk tail swishing faintly, and Blurn said, ‘He says, for you.’

‘Who says?’ As if I didn’t know.

‘Him. Argul. This is a female horse, a mare. She’s bred down from—’ couldn’t follow – ‘something of something-something line. She can run like the wind, but she’s gentle as honey.’

Naturally I was about to refuse, but the horse, the mare, made a soft noise down her nose. I went up to her and stroked her face.

‘Not scared, are you,’ approved Blurn.

‘She’s wonderful.’

‘Hey, Claidi,’ said Blurn. He gave me his huge white smile. I felt happy. I’d done something right. At last.

And the horse – she’s called Sirree – is a dream.

She’s so patient with me. You can tell she knows I’m learning, finding out. But when I feed her or talk to her, she listens. Absolute agony, though. I might as well be thirty. The bandit woman – she also has a name, Teil – explained that it will be awful for a while. Your body has to get used to getting into, and holding, this position. It isn’t too bad during the day. But when I totter off, and in the morning – Ow! Ow! Ow!

Don’t care.

That mule gave me a look. Blurn said mules always do. They have Mule Ideas. But horses understand people, as dogs and wolves do, and often cats and birds.

Then we came across some travellers in the desert.

In a valley, about five, low-slung carts, and some thing under lots of sacks, being pulled by dogs.

When Argul’s outriders spotted this, and we (me) heard and rode along the line of wagons to see, I thought, Oh, now A’s bandits will tear down and rob and murder everyone.

However, the bandits just went down and helped put a wheel back on one of the carts.

The dog teams were in fine tail-wagging condition. The bandits laughed and mucked about among the other travellers. Sounds of this jollity drifted up the valley.

They came to supper.

Speech was a problem. Hardly anyone spoke their language. Argul