Var the Stick by Piers Anthony Page B

hand he represented the empire; on the other he had his oath to Sola to uphold. He shrugged.
        "It's foggy," she said wistfully. "Nobody can see us."
        Meaning that they should not fight without witnesses? Well, it would do for an excuse. The mist showed no sign of dissipating, and no sound rose from its depths. The world was a whiteness, as was their contest.
        "Why don't we go down and get some food?" she asked. "And come back before they see us."
        The simplicity and directness of her mind were astonishing! Yet why not? He was glad to have a pretext to postpone hostilities, since he could not see his way clear either to winning or losing.
        "Truce until the fog lifts?" he asked.
        "Truce until the fog lifts. That time I understood you very well."
        And Var was pleased.
        They descended on Var's side of the mountain, after retrieving the stick harnesses. The third and fourth sticks themselves had bounced and rolled and been lost entirely, but the harnesses had stayed where they fell. Soli had feared that the underworld had ways to spot anyone who traversed her own slope of Mt. Muse. "Television pickups can't tell where they're hidden."
        "You mean sets are just sitting around outside?" Var knew what television was; he had seen the strange silent pictures on the boxes in hostels.
        "Sets outside," she repeated, Interpreting. "No, silly. Pickups little boxes like eyes, set into stones and things, operated by remote controL"
        Var let the subject drop. He had never seen a stone with an eye in it, but there had been stranger things in the badlands.
        The fog was even thicker at the base. They held hands and sneaked up to the Master's camp. Then Var hesitated. "They'll know me," he whispered.
        "Oh." She was taken aback. "Could I go in, then?"
        "You don't know the layout."
        "I'm hungry!" she wailed.
        "Sh.." He jerked her back out of auditory range. A warrior sentry could come on them at any time.
        "Tell me the layout," she whispered desperately. "I'll go in and steal some food for us."
        "Stealing isn't honest!"
        "It's all right in war. From an enemy camp."
        "But that's my camp!"
        "Oh." She thought a moment. "I could still go. And ask for some. They don't know me."
        "Without any clothes?"
        "But I'm hungry!"
        Var was getting disgusted, and didn't answer. His own hunger became intense.
        She began to cry.
        "Here," Var said, feeling painfully guilty. "The hostel has clothes."
        They ran to the hostel, one mile. Before Var could protest, Soli handed him her harness and stick and walked inside. She emerged a few minutes later wearing a junior smock and a hair ribbon and new sandals, looking clean and fresh.
        "You're lucky no one was there!" Var said, exasperated. "Someone was there. Somebody's wife, waiting to meet her warrior. I guess they're keeping the women out of your main camp. She jumped a mile when I walked in. I told her I was lost, and she helped me."
        So neatly accomplished! He would never have thought of that, or had the nerve to do it. Was she bold, or naive?
        "Here," she said. She handed him a bundle of clothing. Dressed, they reappraised the main camp. It occurred to Var that there should have been food at the hostel, but then he remembered that the nomads cleaned it out regularly. It took a lot of food to feed an armed camp, and the hostel food was superior to the empire mess. Otherwise they might have solved their problem readily. Their food problem.
        "I'll have to go to the main tent," she said. Var agreed, hunger making him urgent, now that their nakedness had been abated. "I'll pretend I'm somebody's daughter, and that I'm bringing food out to my family."
        Var was fearful of this audacity, but could offer nothing better. "Be careful," he said.
        He lurked in the forest