Chetwin's Backroom

Annhilde flees the Fend to save her newborn grandchild from ritual snapping of the neck. Pursued by vengeful Fendmen, she accepts the help of an innocent stranger and in so doing risks not only the child's life but his. Quote from the chapter:

… Thanks to Brocan—tahin Brocan, she’d crossed the Rim, and was … under his protection. … His was a generous offer, but made in ignorance of the enormous stakes. Could she in all conscience, even for the child’s sake, accept it?. . . She tightened her arm about the anuk. Despicable, to deceive him, but did not the child’s need warrant such an act?

Above her head, the siffra wafted in the currents, like clouds. Heavenly veils. When she was small, she believed that if she stared long and hard enough, she would pierce those clouds and see the truth of all things. Sighing, she turned onto her side, her arm over the anuk now. “Laksra,” she murmured, and slept.

“Not far now,” the handler said, in evident relief. “A score of forhar hides says we’re almost on her.” A score of forhar hides? Anka remounted grimly. In that moment he’d have given half his season’s cull to prove the little handler wrong.

They moved off slowly at first, to get her used to the thar’s gait. She shut her eyes and clenched her jaw. How to endure this? And yet it was better than freezing to death back in that icy bolthole. And the farther they got from the Fend, the safer her grandchild would be.

“But if she has crossed the Rim?” Fahn persisted. “Then we follow.” Stugar swung into the saddle. “Follow!” Pahar looked horrified. Stugar laughed shortly. “You swore the oath.” Shrewd and promising to be as wise as Lahr, he also had a small, malicious wit. “We can’t go home without Annhilde and the child.” He spat out his wad and took up his reins. “So let’s catch her fast, before we find ourselves in Kond!”

She slid into her bolthole, had it almost shut—and cried out. In the center of her narrowing line of vision, directly across the pool from where she was, a man stood stock-still under the flying snow, and he was staring straight at her.

They moved off, down towards the pens, where the adahi awaited them, past rows of twitching window covers, all the way up the street. Anka, bringing up the rear, spat over his shoulder and made his lucky sign that they not find the two alive, for if they did, his troubles, far from ending, could well begin afresh.

Anka Ragnar loomed large in his crofthouse doorway, his very bulk a challenge, nay, a threat to the timid woman barring his way. His throat was raw, his breath, short; his hide coat hung wet and heavy on his back. He looked angry at seeing the woman there, more even than usual. He was angry. The anger masked his fear.

This, as mostly always, a quote from the chapter. Shira is falling into one of the Phrynis visions transmitted from Phrynis and shared with her grandfather: When her vision returned, the man was riding, and, she knew it just as clearly as he did himself, he would keep riding for full three days across the plain with the others, his mind part on the receding herds, but increasingly on getting home before . . . Shira, surrendering, lay still, locked in the shock of what lay before him, and in the terrible grip of his desperation. . . .

The Earth personnel are now split: some hiding out on in an Earth sub-polar base, the rest abducted up to Space Tektonics, Inc. (STI), Hengst’s massive orbiting complex near the moon. (Manfred Hengst is the heavy on Earth. He is a mining magnate, unscrupulous, and greedy. He and Pitar Ellisen are rivals to the death. "Hengst" is German for stallion.)