of wire. ‘What were all these for?’ said Yellow Bull. ‘Not all his own, surely!’ ‘No,’ said Tarrik, ‘but we shall find locks for them,’ and he took them and put them into the pockets in his own belt. Then he stirred up the hearth fire and began throwing in the clothes. ‘The brooches—take care!’ said Yellow Bull, trying to pull them out of the stuff; but Tarrik threw them in with the rest. ‘You can rake them out tomorrow,’ he said, ‘they’ll be dead too, then.’ The next morning Tarrik got up and rode off, very early, while Yellow Bull was still dreaming about his road. The other horse stayed on the island; it was not really a very good one.
Tarrik rode straight north and then a little inland, keeping clear of the town. Sometimes there were crops, but more often pasture, or just rough land with scrub that was no use to anyone. Where the ground rose, there were sometimes a few trees, but all the forest lay right inland, four days’ riding from Marob; wherever there was a river, there would be swamp at each side of it, and he had to go carefully, marking the trackways and fords. As he got further north and east, the land was better, the soil sweeter and dryer. For nearly half a day he rode through the blue flax fields, seeing how well up the plants were, strong stemmed and clean. Sometimes there were tall patches of hemp, and later on that day he came to food crops, rye, barley, and some wheat. All the fields were guarded by children, in case anyone’s beasts strayed. Here, again, everything was looking strong and healthy in the sun; the blades were broad and deep coloured, the ears were big already. As he passed, Tarrik thought of himself as Corn King and was proud of what he and earth and sun had done among them; then he thought of the Spring Queen and the dance they had acted together in the middle of the ring on Plowing Eve; if that was to come real, he felt, so much the better for the corn. He rode slowly, so that all the lands he passed should get something from him, and slept securely at noon in beanfields and did not count the days that went by as he went north towards Harn Der’s land.
Sometimes there were orchards, fenced in with turf banks; the apples of Marob were in those days the sweetest in the world. In one or two places there were figs and pomegranates, very carefully grown and sheltered from the north. But these were only near farms or camping places, and Tarrik was keeping clear of these, except at night when he took supper and the best bed from the nearest place he saw, once as it happened a small and very dirty farm where he was half eaten by lice, and once the great tent of a landowner come out from Marob for the summer, one of his own counsellors, who had skins of good southern wine with him, and oil for washing, and clean linen. It was later on the same day that he came to Harn Der’s lands, which lay on the two sides of a very flat valley, with a stream going down from pool to pool in the middle and a wood of limes and oaks half-way up one slope. Here Tarrik slept the night, with the food and wine he had taken from the last place, under a lime tree, his saddle for a pillow. Leaning back against it, he could see through the tree trunks to the far slope, and the lights of Harn Der’s camp: the fires like big yellow stars, and at night the great peaked tents glowing faintly and queerly from the lights inside them. He did not sleep very much, partly because of the violent sweetness of the lime flowers, shedding layer on layer of scent about him, partly because he started dreaming of the bubbles in the mud and Epigethes wriggling formlessly like a white slug underneath, but mostly because, after this, to keep himself from seeing it again, he had begun to make pictures of Erif Der over there on the far side: of chasing her and catching her and handling her and playing with her all over, till by morning there was nothing for it but to ride and get her, herself. He cantered down and through a deep pool, splashing himself all over, but not much cooler by the end of it. They were only just stirring in Harn Der’s camp, it was still so early.
In the half dark of the women’s tent, Erif Der turned over sleepily. It was days since she had thought of Tarrik, but this morning, as soon as she woke, she found he had come into her head. She did not want him there; she sat up and peered about. At the far end of the tent she could see someone moving, her old nurse probably, reknotting the plaits of her sticky grey hair. But Wheat-ear, next her, was still asleep, charmingly curled up with her fists tucked under her chin. Erif Der blinked across at her small sister and called in a whisper; but Wheat-ear did not stir, so it must be little after dawn yet. Somewhere, right above her head in the great hollow dome of the tent, there were some big flies buzzing about, knocking against the sides; she could not see them. Someone slipped out past the curtain, and for a moment there was a breath of cool morning air. Erif Der pulled the blanket over her head and tried to go to sleep again.
The children had always loved this summer life, riding out, or driving in the big carts, singing and shouting, all in clean, light clothes to match the flowering plain. They had left winter behind; the house that had been getting dirtier and stuffier day after day for eight months, would stand open and be smoked out and scrubbed and painted with bright colours to welcome them again in autumn. They could eat the last of the old stored fruit and honey, be done with salt meat and the hard winter cheeses. Soon the sweet grass would be waving wide ahead of them, there would be fresh things to do and smell and eat and look at; suddenly they felt twice as alive.
For the first week or two they were always just mad, running about and rolling and playing, riding the colts and splashing in and out of the stream. Then they would settle down to summer. The women would find the best pool for their half-year’s washing, and a smooth slope for drying and bleaching; the men would be hunting, rounding up the young cattle and horses and branding them; Harn Der would ride gravely all about his fields and have long talks with his farm-people; and the two little ones, Gold-fish and Wheat-ear, made themselves a house of branches and took all their food there, and got more and more difficult to chase back to the tents at night.
Berris Der found that he was apt not to think about making anything for weeks at a time; he flew his hawks and hunted, and raced with the others on half-broken horses, for miles across the plain. Then suddenly, something would come into his head and he would begin drawing frantically, convinced that this was the best he had ever done. He had been like that the day before; now he was still asleep, among a litter of charcoal sticks and odd bits of linen with drawings all over them. He had seen two grass-cocks in their spring plumage, sparring with one another out on the plain; now he was making them into a pattern, with the sweep of their raised neck-feathers to balance the flare-up of their tails and spurs. Bronze, he thought of it; but that must be cast. He had been wondering what Epigethes would make of it—never mind, it was good! When he was back in Marob, he would go on with his lessons; he could, for that matter, ride back easily any time, stay a few days, and work with the Greek. It seemed less attractive now, but still, he could not drop it all till autumn. Epigethes might not be able to stay. Mentally, he cursed Tarrik for that. Here, at least, things would be better when his father’s plan came off: art would come into its own in Marob, and he would be the one to see to it. So he went to sleep, and dreamed of his cocks fighting, and the odd noise their bronze beaks made, clicking together.
By and bye, when the sun was up and only the shadows very dewy still, Erif Der, who had been half asleep, threw off her blanket and ran out, barefoot, in her linen shift. The servants were all busy, making the fires up again, cooking, bringing in the milk-pails. She sat down in the sun, outside the women’s tent, and began combing her hair; she liked doing this, for it was a comb she had magicked so carefully that it never pulled. When her hair was quite smooth she began plaiting it again, flicking it in and out of her clever fingers, admiring herself. She thought she ought to go on with the weaving of her wedding dress, but decided not to, there was no hurry on a day like this. She stretched herself, dropping the plait, breathing in huge mouthfuls of the sunny air, half thinking of getting Berris to come hunting with her; she loved hunting, much better than making wedding dresses. She began to wish the Red Riders would come again, just a few, so that she could shoot them.
Then she heard two or three sharp voices, and looking up to find what was the matter, what they were all pointing at, she saw Tarrik riding through the camp on a very beautiful, very nervous horse, that shied, terrified, at the fires and great tents. Tarrik himself was looking very big. She got to her feet, and found that for some reason her heart was thumping violently and painfully; she put both hands over her breast to quiet it. There was a little buzzing in her head and finger-tips. Tarrik came up close to her; she was
