Kill the Dead(47)

Before he knew it, he had begun to walk toward her, not even really wanting to, but impelled.

The dog dropped its histrionics to a guttural growling, and the woman who was Silky retreated to the wheel, and put her hand out ready to loosen the rope that kept the dog tied.

When Dro came on, she shouted at him.

“Who are you? How dare you sneak up on me? Don’t you know my man’ll soon be here and see to you?”

Obviously a bluff. The dray horse was gone, and the man with it. That meant a longish journey at best.

“I don’t mean you any harm,” Dro called.

He breathed more easily since she had shouted, for her voice was not like Silky’s voice, even allowing for the intervening years.

Yet her face—the closer he got, the more it seemed to him that Silky was here. Between one step and the next, he had the terrifying meditation that maybe a ghost could not only cheat death, solidify, appear to all the senses to be mortal flesh, but, into the bargain—the ultimate cheat—could appear to mature, to age. Why not? If a ghost could survive, blotting out the nature of its death, swindling itself eventually into crediting its own “true” life, then surely it must be capable of supposing itself into growing up and growing old, along with the rest of living humanity.

But he had destroyed Silky’s link. Released her—murdered her—

The woman was beautiful. Richly beautiful. There was a heavy abundance to her, despite her lean and fragile build, that found its utmost expression in the welter of honey hair. Her skin, summer-tanned, was honey too, the small lines like cracks over gold leaf. On her hand was a brass ring. There really was a man somewhere, then. But not here.

Dro slipped off the hood of his cloak. Walking slowly, his lameness was minimised, and he was graceful. He kept his hands loose, free of the mantle, showing that he himself had no weapon ready or considered.

The woman stared hard in his face, then suddenly relaxed. She took her hand off the dog’s rope and looked down at it.

“Hush,” she said. “It’s all right.”

“Thank you,” said Dro, “for taking me on trust.”

“Only a fool would judge you a robber,” she said boldly. “As for rape, would you ever have to?” She coloured at her own words, but met his eyes as she said it. “Where are you making for?”

“Over the mountain.”

She said, “My man’s gone that way. Gone to do business with another man. Buy something, or steal it, the bastard. He won’t be back till tomorrow. If he comes back then. If he isn’t lying blind drunk in some inn somewhere with some woman somewhere. If he isn’t too drunk to have a woman. I’m sorry.”

The dog had stopped growling and lay down with its sad muzzle on its thin paws. The woman walked away to the fire and used a long skewer to pick a meaty bone out of a pot which sizzled there. The dog rose, salivating pathetically as the woman waved the bone to cool it. Presently she placed the bone on the ground before the dog, and as it began to gnaw its meal, she caressed it with a painful tenderness.

“Poor thing,” she said to Dro, speaking of the dog as if about a child. “My man beats him, starves him. He’d do better on his own in the woods. He’d turn into a wolf and be happy. I tell him, the dog, I promise him, one night I’ll let him go, untie him and send him off. Then I’ll get the beating. But I will, one night. Won’t I, dog?” She glanced at Dro, who had stood there motionless all this while, watching her. “You’ll think I’m daft, I expect.”

“No.”

“You will. But you’re welcome to share the stew with me. I can’t feed the dog and not offer something to you.”

“You could.”

“I’d rather you didn’t go,” she said. “He just left me here, but I’d rather there was a man by. We came up from the south, do you see. This country’s new to me.” She straightened and looked at him. Her throat was delicate as if carved, the skin stretched taut, yet silken. Through it he could see her heart thudding.

“I’d like to stay, if you want me to,” he said.

She smiled, and said, “Yes, but that’s not an invitation, mind.” By which he knew it was.

He wondered stupidly if he in turn reminded her of some other, or if she were merely a slut, or simply lonely. Women were constantly attracted to him, and to the half-truth about celibacy and psychic power, and whether a ghost-killer would or not. Or did she not guess his calling.