Jarnti put his heels into his horse suddenly, and it neighed and bucked. Then it stood still.
The two women stopped too.
‘Did you want to go on ahead?’ asked the girl.
He was sullen.
‘He won’t carry you now,’ she said, and slid off her horse. Jarnti got down from his. ‘Now get on mine.’ He did so. She soothed the bewildered horse he had kicked, and mounted it.
‘Think that you want to go on in front of us,’ said the girl.
He had an ashamed, embarrassed look. He went red.
‘I’m afraid you will have to put up with us,’ said Al·Ith at last.
When they were in sight of the camp, she jumped down from her horse. It at once turned and began cantering back towards the herds. Jarnti got off his. And this one too cantered back. He was standing looking in admiration at the lovely girl on her horse, who was turning around to go.
‘If you ever come to Zone Four,’ he shouted at her, ‘let me know.’
She gave a long look of commiseration at Al·Ith, and remarked, ‘Luckily for me I am not a queen.’ And she sped off across the plain with the two other horses neighing and tossing up their heels on either side of her.
Al·Ith and Jarnti walked towards the camp with the sunrise at their backs.
Long before they reached the camp, the smell of burning meat was strong on the air.
Al·Ith did not say anything, but her face spoke.
‘Do you not kill animals?’ he asked, unwillingly but forced to by his curiosity.
‘Only if it is essential. There are plenty of other foods.’
‘Like those horrible berries of yours,’ he said, trying to be good-humoured.
In the camp they had killed a deer. Jarnti did not eat any of it.
As soon as the meal was over, the horses were saddled, all but Al·Ith’s. She stood watching the beasts adjust their mouths and their teeth uncomfortably as the bit went in.
She vaulted onto her horse, and whispered to it. Jarnti watched her, uneasy.
‘What did you say to it?’ he asked.
‘That I am his friend.’
And again she led the way forward, into the east, back across the plain.
They rode to one side of the herds they had been with in the night, but far enough off to see them as a darkness on the plain.
Jarnti was riding just behind Al·Ith.
Now he was remembering the conversation around the fire last night, the tone of it, the ease of it. He yearned for it — or something in it, for he had never known that quality of easy intimacy. Except, he was saying to himself, with a girl, sometimes, after a good screw.
He said, almost wistfully, to Al·Ith, ‘Can you feel that the animals out there are sad?’ For she was looking continually towards them, and her face was concerned.
‘Can’t you?’ she asked.
He saw she was weeping, steadily, as she rode.
He was furious. He was irritated. He felt altogether excluded from something he had a right to.
Behind them clattered the company of soldiers.
A long way in front was the frontier. Suddenly she leaned down to whisper to the horse and it sped forward. Jarnti and the company broke into speed after her. They were shouting at her. She did not have the shield that would protect her from the — to her — deadly atmosphere of Zone Four. She rode like the wild winds that scoured the plains every night until early dawn, and her long hair swept out behind her, and tears ran steadily down her face.
It was not for miles that Jarnti came up with her — one of the soldiers had thrown the shield to him, and he had caught it, and was now riding almost neck and neck with her.
‘Al·Ith,’ he was shouting, ‘you must have this.’ And held up the shield. It was a long time before she heard him. At last she turned her face towards him, not halting her mad pace in the slightest, and he wilted at the sight of her blanched, agonized face. He held up the shield. She raised her hand to catch it. He hesitated, because it was not a light thing. He remembered how she had thrown the heavy saddle the day before, and he heaved the shield towards her. She caught it with one hand and did not abate her pace at all. They were approaching the frontier. They watched her to see how she would be affected by the sudden change in the density of the air, for they had all been ill to some extent, the day before. She went through the invisible barrier without faltering, though she was pale, and did not seem well. Inside the frontier line were the observation towers, rising up at half-mile distances from each other, bristling with soldiers and armaments. She did not stop. Jarnti and the others fled after her, shouting to the soldiers in the towers not to shoot. She went between the towers without looking at them.
Again they were on the edge of a descent through hills and rocks above a wide plain. When she reached the edge of this escarpment she at last stopped.
They all came to a standstill behind her. She was looking down into a land crowded with forts and encampments.
She jumped down from her horse. Soldiers were running to them from the forts, holding the bridles of fresh horses. The jaded horses of the company were being herded off to recover. But Al·Ith’s did not want to leave her. He shivered and whinnied and wheeled all about Al·Ith, and when the soldiers came to catch him, would not go.
‘Would you like him as a present, Al·Ith?’ asked Jarnti, and she was pleased and smiled a little, which was all she could manage.
Again she removed the saddle from this fresh horse, and the bridle, and tossed them to the amazed soldiers. And she rode forward and down into Zone Four, with Yori trotting beside her and continually putting up his nose to nuzzle her as they went.
And so Al·Ith made the passage into the Zone we had all heard so much of, speculated about, and had never been in.
Not even with the shield could she feel anything like herself. The air was flat, dispiriting. The landscape seemed to confine and oppress. Everywhere you look, in our own realm, a wild vigour is expressed in the contours of uplands, mountains, a variegated ruggedness. The central plateau where so many of our towns are situated is by no means regular, but is ringed by mountains and broken by ravines and deep river channels. With us the eye is enticed into continual movement, and then is drawn back always to the great snowy peaks that are shaped by the winds and the colours of our skies. And the air tingles in the blood, cold and sharp. But here she looked down into a uniform dull flat, cut by canals and tamed streams that were marked by lines of straight pollarded trees, and dotted regularly by the ordered camps of the military way of life. Towns and villages did not seem any larger than these camps. The sky was a greyish blue and there was a dull shine from the lines of water. A wide low hill near the centre of the scene where there seemed to be something like a park or gardens was all the consolation she could find.
Meanwhile, they were still descending the escarpment.
A turn in the road showed an enormous circular building of grey stone, squatting heavily between canals. It seemed recent, for rocks and earth near it were raw, broken. Her dismay that this might be where she was bound for brought her horse to a faltering stop. The company halted behind her, and she looked back to see a furtive triumph on every face. Jarnti was suppressing a smile as a leader does when he wishes to indicate he would like to join with his juniors in a show of emotion. Then as they remained there, with no sound but the horses shifting their hooves for relief, on the stony road, she saw that she had been mistaken: what she feared was not matched by the particular variety of triumph these captors of hers were showing.
‘When may we expect to reach the king?’ she asked, and Jarnti at once interpreted this as a reminder from her of higher authority. He rebuked his company with a strong look and adjusted his own face to obedience.
All this she watched, understood — and it came to her what a barbarous land this was.
They had imagined she had been intimidated by the sight of the rumoured ‘round fortress of the deadly rays’ as one of our songs described it.
She told herself, not for the first time, or the tenth, that she was not likely to adjust herself quickly to these people with their slavish minds, and to make a test of them, moved her horse on and towards the road that led to the building. At once Jarnti was beside her, and his hand was reaching out for her horse’s head. She stopped. ‘I would like to see into one of the famed round fortresses of your Zone,’ she said.
‘Oh, no, no, you must not, it is forbidden,’ said he, still full of importance.
‘But why? Your weapons are not directed against us, surely?’
‘It is dangerous … ’ but at this moment, around the side of the building came some children running, and in scattering for some game, two of them darted into an open doorway.
