"Ho!" cried Mincon to his beast. He shook the reins and cracked the whip. The wagon moved forward, and rolled up onto the stones of the Genesian Road. In a bit we were moving forward. Hurtha and I walked beside the wagon. Boabissia, moving with the motion of the wagon, swaying with its motion, rode on the wagon box. Tula and Feiqa, her hands tied behind her, followed behind. I looked back, and they looked down, not meeting my eyes. Both were lovely. It was fitting, of course, that they followed on their tethers.
Both were domestic animals.
"We will never catch up," said Mincon, grumbling. Then he cracked the whip again.
6 Hurtha's Feast
"Hurtha," said I, "what have you there?"
"Fruits, dried and fresh, candies, nuts, four sorts of meats, choice, all of them, fresh-baked bread, selected pastries," responded he, his arms full, "and some superb paga and delicate ka-la-na."
"Where did you get such things?" I asked.
"They were intended for the mess of the high officers, up the road," he said. "They did not arrive there apparently," I said.
"Have no fear," he said. "I purchased them honestly."
"You bought them surreptitiously from sutlers," I speculated. "To be sure," he said, "the negotiations were conducted behind a wagon. On the other hand, it is surely not up to me to criticize the discretion of such fellows, nor how and where they conduct their business."
"I see," I said. I hoped earnestly that if these dealings were found out that any penalties which might be involved, in particular, such things as torturings and impalements, would be visited upon the sutlers and not on their customers, and particularly not on folks who might be traveling with their customers. To be sure, the rigors sometimes technically contingent upon such discoveries and exposures seldom actually resulted in the enactment of dismal sanctions, maimings, executions, and such, bribes instead, gifts and so on, usually changing hands on such occasions.
"Feast heartily," said Hurtha, unloading, half spilling, his acquisitions near the fire at our campsite.
"You should not have done this," I said to him.
"Nonsense," he said, depreciatingly, smiling, letting me know that lavish gratitude on my part, however justified, was not even necessary.
"This is the food of generals," I said.
"It is excellent," agreed Hurtha.
"It is the food of generals," I said.
"There is plenty left for them," Hurtha assured me.
"You should not of done this," I said.
"It is time that I paid my share of the expenses," he said.
"I see," I said. It was difficult to argue with that.
"These are Ta grapes, I am told," he said, "from the terraces of Cos." "Yes, they are," I said. "Or at least they are Ta grapes,"
"Cos is an island," he said.
"I have heard that," I said. "These various things must have been terribly expensive."
"Yes," said Hurtha. "But money is no object."
"That is fortunate," I said.
"I am an Alar," Hurtha explained. "Have a stuffed mushroom."
I pondered the likely prices of a stuffed mushroom in a black-market transaction in a war-torn district, one turned into a near desert by the predations of organized foragers, in particular, the price of such a mushroom perhaps diverted at great hazard from the tables of Cosian generals.
"Have two," said Hurtha.
My heart suddenly began to beat with great alarm. "This is a great deal of food," I said, "to have been purchased by seventeen copper tarsks, and two tarsk bits." That was, as I recalled, the sum total of monetary wealth which Hurtha had brought with him to the supply train, that or something much in its neighborhood.
"Oh," said Hurtha, "it cost more than that."
"I had thought it might," I said.
"Have a mushroom," said Hurtha. "They are quite good."
"What did all this cost?" I asked.
"I do not recall," said Hurtha. "But half of the change is yours." "How much change do you have?" I asked.
"Fourteen copper tarsks," he said. "You may keep them," I said.
"Very well," he said.
"I am quite hungry, Hurtha," said Boabissia. "May I have some food?" "Would you like to beg?" he asked.
"No," she said.
"Oh, very well," said Hurtha. He then held out to her the plate of mushrooms. It did not seem to me that she needed to take that many. "Ah, Mincon, my friend, my dear fellow," said Hurtha. "Come, join us!"
I supposed he, too, would dive into the mushrooms. Still, one could not begrudge dear Mincon some greed in this matter, for he was a fine driver, and a splendid fellow. We had been with him now four days on the road. To be sure, we had received a late start on each of these days, and each day later than the preceding. It was difficult to get an early start with slaves such as Tula and Feiqa in the blankets. Boabissia, a free woman, must wait for us, of course, while we pleasured ourselves with the slaves. I think she did not much enjoy this. At any rate, she occasionally seemed somewhat impatient. Too, her irritability suggested that her own needs, and rather cruelly, might quite possibly be upon her.
Feiqa and Tula, those lovely properties, hovered in the background. I supposed that they, too, would want to be fed. I dared not speculate at what time we might be leaving in the morning. I hoped we could arouse Mincon and Hurtha at least by noon. There was even paga and ka-la-na. Mincon began to pick mushrooms off the plate and feed them to Tula. Did he not know she was a slave? "Thank you, Master," she said, being fed by hand. Sometimes slaves are not permitted touch food with their own hands. Sometimes, in such a case, they are fed by hand; at other times their food might be thrown to them or put out for them in pans, and such, from which then, not using their hands, on all fours, head down, they must feed, in the manner of she-quadrupeds, or slaves, if it be the master's pleasure.
Another mushroom disappeared. Had Tula not had some bread earlier?
"Have a mushroom," said Hurtha. Mincon even gave a mushroom to Feiqa. I was watching. He was certainly a generous fellow with those mushrooms.
"No, thank you," I said. I wondered if, in the eating of such a mushroom, one became an inadvertent accomplice in some heinous misadventure.
"They are good," Hurtha insisted.
"I am sure they are," I said. I was particularly fond of stuffed mushrooms. There was no problem for the slaves, of course. No one would blame them, any more than one would blame a pet sleen for eating something thrown his way. Mincon and Boabissia might get off, I thought, watching them eat. After all, they did not know where the food came from. Mincon was a trusted driver, and a well-known good fellow. Boabissia was fresh from the wagons, She might be forgiven. Too, she was pretty. Hurtha, of course, might be impaled. I wondered if I counted as being guilty in this business whether I ate a mushroom or not. I knew where they came from, for example. It would be too bad to be impaled, I thought, and not have had a mushroom, at all. "What are they stuffed with?" I asked Hurtha.
"Sausage," he said.
"Tarsk?" I asked.
"Of course," he said.
"My favorite," I said. "I shall have one."
"Alas," said Hurtha. "They are all gone."
"Oh," I said. "Say," I said, "there seems to be a fellow lurking over there, by the wagons."
Hurtha turned about, looking.
It was undoubtedly a supply officer. I supposed it would be wrong to put a knife between his ribs. I did, however for at least a moment, feverishly consider the practicalities that might be involved in doing so.
"Ho!" cried Hurtha, cheerfully, to the fellow.
The fellow, who was a bit portly, shrank back, as though in alarm, near one of the wagons. Perhaps he was not a supply officer. He did not have a dozen guardsmen at his back, for instance.
"Do you know him?" I asked. "Of course," said Hurtha. "He is my benefactor!"