Interest welled up in the depths of the black eyes.
“There is a way from here,” he muttered. “Nor does it pass through—Them. I can show it to you.”
I had not been blind to the flash of malice, of cunning, that had shot across the wrinkled face.
“Where does that way lead?” I asked. “There were those who sought us; men clad in armor with javelins and arrows. Does your way lead to them, Yuruk?”
For a time he hesitated, the lashless lids half closed.
“Yes,” he said sullenly. “The way leads to them; to their place. But will it not be safer for you there—among your kind?”
“I don't know that it will,” I answered promptly. “Those who are unlike us smote those who are like us and drove them back when they would have taken and slain us. Why is it not better to remain with them than to go to our kind who would destroy us?”
“They would not,” he said “If you gave them—her.” He thrust a long thumb backward toward sleeping Ruth. “Cherkis would forgive much for her. And why should you not? She is only a woman.”
He spat—in a way that made me want to kill him.
“Besides,” he ended, “have you no arts to amuse him?”