Ny fairly danced along the trail, but when Hanno dropped behind, he would stop and wait for him to catch up, before dancing off again. By the evening of the first day Hanno reckoned they were a third of the way to the pass and when they settled down that night, he was already thankful for the bearskin and the means to make fire. The boy hadn’t spoken all day and he still didn’t that night, so Hanno had come to the conclusion that he was dumb and from the way that he was careful never to show his face – he even moved and turned away to eat his food – possibly disfigured too.
The next afternoon they stepped out of the tree line and followed a winding trail that skirted the upper edge of the forest and ran through a vast area of broken and jumbled rocks. High above, the mountains were tipped with snow, or maybe it was ice. There were no clouds and in the cold blue sky a lone eagle soared before swooping out of sight. They had made good progress thanks to Ny who seemed tireless as he set a pace of travel that kept Hanno moving despite his protests.
It was late in the afternoon and the light was fading when they came to a tree trunk that spanned a wide stream. Hanno was ready to call it a day and wanted to set up camp and cross the next day. But Ny shook his head, pointed to the other side and began to cross the log. He was half way to the other side when he either slipped or stumbled - Hanno wasn’t sure which, it happened so fast – and went cartwheeling into the stream.
The water wasn’t deep but the boy must have struck his head in the fall and now lay still in the water. Quickly, Hanno shrugged off his packs and scrambled down into the water; it was freezing and the unconscious boy was soaked to the skin in the icy water. Lifting the boy he carried him up onto the bank and looked around. It would be dark soon and he need to find shelter, get a fire going and get the boy out of his wet clothes.He spotted a likely spot where a slab of rock leaned at an angle against a boulder, forming a shallow cave big enough for two.
Placing the boy in the cave he check his pulse and satisfied that he was alive, recovered the packs from where he had dropped them and hurried down into the trees for dry wood. A few moments later he returned with an arm full of wood, lit the fire and once it was going began to strip the boy of his wet clothes. That was when he found out that the boy was no boy, but a dark haired, young and beautiful girl, which explained those amazing doe like eyes.
Despite his shock he continued to strip her and then after rummaging around in her wet pack he found a shift that was merely damp and rubbed her vigorously with that. After drying her as best he could he wrapped her in the bearskin he had been given by her father and went off to get more wood. With the girl wrapped in the only dry bearskin – her own was soaked – he need to keep the fire going if he was to survive the night.He collected all the wood could until it was too dark to see, then built up the fire, sat eating some cold meat from his pack and wondered if he could stay awake to feed the fire all night.He didn’t manage it, some time in the middle of the night he fell asleep, the fire died and as his body cooled he began to slip away. In the morning however he found himself, naked, very much alive and wrapped in the bearskin
‘Good morning,’ said the girl who was lying next to him.
‘What’s going on?’ he spluttered, totally bemused.
‘Lie back down and I’ll tell you, it’s still to early to get up.’
He did as ordered and she cuddled in close. ‘When I came too, the fire was out and you were lying on the ground, so I came over lay down beside you and wrapped us both in the bearskin.’
Hanno lift the bearskin and looked down, ‘Was that before or after you took off my clothes?’
‘I didn’t take off your clothes you did when you started to come around, and…’
‘And what?’ asked Hanno, aghast at the thought of having taken advantage of this young girl who had saved his life twice in the space of only a few days?
Ny had the decency to blush, ‘And nothing; you threw off you clothes wrapped your arms and legs around me and fell asleep.’
‘Thank the Gods for that, I thought I might have…’ His words tailed off as Ny ran the tip of her finger first around his nipples and then down his chest towards his belly,
‘You might have what? My Lord?’ She asked coyly as her finger continued its downward path.
Fully aroused now Hanno groaned, turned to meet her lips and still locked lip to lip, rolled her onto her back and as her legs parted slipped inside her. Passions aroused they made love with wild abandon and when they were done they lay beneath the bearskin and whispered those sweet things that lovers do.
It took them just over a week took reached Tyre and each day that passed found them falling deeper and deeper in love. Hanno was truly smitten and couldn’t get enough of Ny and she couldn’t get enough of him. The only small cloud on the horizon as far as Hanno was concerned, was how his father would react to him wanting to marry a merchant’s daughter. Because, he, they, had decided that they wanted to be married.
As it turned out his father was delight by Ny and had no objections to the match.That only left Annan, Ny’s father to ask and Hanno was now worried at his reaction to the match, after all when he had allowed his daughter to act as his guide, he had done so on the condition that Ny did not reveal that she was a girl.
When Annan arrived in the city a week later, Hanno’s fears were realised; her father was furious and believed that Hanno had abused his hospitality and his daughter. He refused to even to speak to Hanno for fear of what he would do to him if he got him alone, he also ordered Ny to stay away from Hanno and being a dutiful daughter she had no choice but to obey.
Hanno was bereft, he had only known Ny for a few weeks, but already he was so deeply in love with her, that he couldn't imagine a life without her. He took to mooning around the palace with a miserable expression on his face and only spoke when spoken too and then only to answer yes or no. Eventually King Ahab, Hanno's father, called for a private meeting with Annan, where he told him Hanno's side of the story and Annan having heard the same tale from his daughter over and over again, relented and gave permission for the marriage to take place.
