11 #3
“Oh, no, I don’t say this out of bitterness,” he said. “Though you’re one to talk, you with your men who have used you and never cared about you. You’re the one who’s been hurt.”
“I am not like other women, and if I could be that way, men would want me differently.”
“I doubt it,” he said.
She glared at him.
“I’m only saying, which of us is a man, warrioress, you or me?”
“You are hardly like normal men, my lord, so I don’t think you can speak for your sex!”
“I know how men think of women, and it’s always the same way. Which is why I pay them, because then everyone knows the score.”
“What is the way?”
“It’s that women are to be won, to be conquered, to be acquired, to be had, to be enjoyed, and then eventually, once there has been a great deal of that, a man tires of a woman.
Sometimes, he is stuck with her afterwards because he has made promises or gotten her with child or bought her a country estate or married her or what-have-you, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t tired of her and that he doesn’t wish to go pursue someone else. ”
She made a noise in the back of her throat. “No, that is not true.”
“You said something about your being an oddity?” he said.
“It isn’t really like that. I mean, it is, you’re not wrong, but it’s more that all women are unique and exciting experiences and a man wants to have as many of them as possible.
Now, to the point earlier, about choice, when it’s a woman a man wants, it may take him a very long time to tire of her, hence the nine months or a year of love, but eventually, he does. ”
She was a bit struck by some of this. She chewed thoughtfully on her bottom lip. “You think so? That men treat all women this way? Even wives? Even wives they choose?”
“Yes,” he said. “I have seen it. And I know myself, what it is like when I fall into some kind of fixation with a new whore. There is nothing like it. I am obsessed. I would do anything to please her. I think of little else but her. It’s all very much like love, yet it is easier.”
“No, it isn’t like love, because those women are just pretending with you.”
“Well, maybe all women are pretending,” he muttered.
“They are not! Let us go to the point that I am a woman and you are not, so perhaps I know better than you about this.”
He glanced at her, tilted his head, considering, nodded, and went back to looking at the back of his horse’s head.
She continued. “But why are there couples who seem so happy? Some men must not tire of women. For instance, when I was with the orc army, there was an ashreg—”
“A what?”
“A high-ranking commander in the army. It means hawk. All of our ranks are animal names.”
“All right,” he said.
“Anyway, he traveled with his wife, and she came with him everywhere, and they had their own tent, and she would cook for him each night, and he would go to her and talk to her of everything, and she would give him advice, and he would take it, and he would go so far as to tell others that his wife could not abide this or that, and so he was changing his policy because of it. Some of the men would deride him because of it, but she was shrewd, the ashreg’s wife.
Most of her advice was sound. And he was utterly devoted to her.
Once, he went out of his way, riding off late into the night to hunt for her because she said she had a hankering for rabbit, and he made sure to bring one back for her, no matter the cost, no matter how late.
He did that because he had tired of her? ”
Iahir was quiet.
“Well?” she said.
“I think it is as I have said before, that they had settled into something else, some kind of friendship or co-existence—”
“I tell you, he would have moved heaven and earth for that woman,” she said.
“And that’s what you want?” he said. “You want someone to devote himself to you? That’s why you don’t want to go to bed with me? Because I’m not devoted enough?”
“I…” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think I want that sort of relationship, truly. I don’t even know.”
“So, then what do you want?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t need to know what it is to know that you couldn’t provide it.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Anyway, I don’t suppose I can have that,” she said. “I don’t suppose I can ever be that sort of woman, because she, you know, she was devoted back, and I don’t know if I’m that way.”
“Well, I’m definitely not that way,” he said softly.
“I know that,” she said. “I well know that.”
“But I could be… I do really like you, warrioress. It’s not like anything I’ve really felt, I have to say.”
“Oh, you are despicable,” she said. “You would say anything. You would do anything. You would lie to me if you thought it could get you what you wanted. You are the worst man I know!”
“I’m not lying,” he said.
“We are going to part ways in probably two hours,” she said. “Accept the fact that you and I are never going to have any carnal knowledge of the other, my lord.” Then she urged her horse to speed up, and this time, he did not speed up with her but followed behind her instead, for some time.