The Sinners of Erspia

He stared at her. “You know there is only one place. We belong to Ahriman now. We must join his horde."

“Oh, but my family, and everything! I can't leave them!"

“You have to leave them,” Hugger said gruffly. “They'll throw you out anyway, once they know."

She started weeping openly then, not the hysterical crying of a few minutes previously, which was so bound up with pleasure and excitement, but a soft, quiet grieving.

“You did this to me,” she sobbed.

“Yes, so I did.” Hugger's eyes glittered with a perverted joy. “Now we can really enjoy ourselves ... do anything we want.” He started kneading her shoulders again, but then broke off abruptly.

“It will be a long journey. Get yourself a cloak. And one of your father's mantles for me."

“No! Please, we must think of something else."

As she would not stir, he went himself into the next room and poked about in a cupboard until he found what he wanted. He came back and draped the cloak about her. “Come on, I want to be well away from here before morning."

“You go,” she sniffed. “I'm staying."

“I wouldn't leave you to face them all, Histrina. Besides—I want you with me."

He yanked her towards the door. She hesitated.

“Shouldn't we leave a letter?"

“No. They'd come after us. There's only one way to do it, and that's just to go and never think of them again!"

“Oh, my mother! My father!"

Still weeping, she allowed him to lead her outside, where he took up his lance.

“Be quiet!” he hissed. “Do you want the whole village to hear you?"

Histrina became compliant. They stole past the huddled houses of the village, from the chinks of whose shutters vagrant light gleamed. Beyond were the fields. These were eventually crossed, bringing the two fugitives to the thin soil and scrubland that covered most of Erspia.

She was not sure which feelings they were that made her obey him—fear of what would happen if she stayed, a lickerish anticipation of the delights she would experience by going with him, or simply abject acceptance that she was Ahriman's. All these feelings jostled within her as she left her lifetime home and set off across the narrow landscape.

The stars shone bright, casting a thin glow that made it possible to make out what was around them. The temperature had dropped but the air was not too chill; Histrina had never known it to get really cold since she had been born.

They said little during the journey. This was the first time she had wandered so far afield and there was, to be sure, a fascination in seeing parts of the world she had never set eyes on before. Not that Erspia seemed to change much as one moved across it. She was surprised, for instance, to find that the star patterns remained the same despite the distance that she and Hugger travelled. Surely things should look different if one saw them from a different angle? But all the stars did was move across the sky unchanging, just as they did at home.

For some hours they walked over the coarse grass and through soft, clinging bushes, and the night-time experience was so new to her that after a while she scarcely thought of what she was leaving behind. At about midnight Hugger called a halt for rest. They sank down on the turf. Histrina's feet ached.

“I wish we had brought something to eat and drink,” she said.

Hugger grunted. Then he moved closer to her, until she fancied she could smell his masculine sweat. He put a hand on her thigh. “We'll feed on love,” he said.

“Please, I'm tired,” she said. “Besides, it isn't love. It's ... Something else."

He leaned across and gave her a full, lingering kiss.

And it started all over again. The kissing, the fondling. Then a frenzied undressing until they were both naked under the starlight. Then their bodies, sliding, pressing and oscillating, all enveloped in a most delicious aroma of venery. Their scents mingled with that of the heathery turf and with the faint night breeze. She sighed, she moaned, she uttered insane little chuckles in her throat, and during the next hour and a half they found so many ways of gratifying themselves that it was as if they had been reborn into a new world.

Afterwards, when their bodies would respond no more, they lay on their backs and stared at the stars.

“So,” Hugger said dryly, “how do you like being evil?"

“Evil?” She tasted the word, as though savouring it. “Oh, Ormazd help me, but I love it!"

“Hmph. Ormazd. Ahriman. Let me tell you something, Histrina. I don't believe in either of them any more.

It's all imagination. Something the priests thought up."

“But you must believe in them. Where else do our thoughts come from?"

“What makes you think they come from anywhere?"

“They must. They just seem to appear in our minds."