"What would you have us do?"
"Eat," Tambol said. "Fatten yourselves, and then you will be assigned to a unit for training."
Farnee swallowed and then said, "Can we not simply leave you, go farther to the west where we will not offend you?"
Duwan the Elder motioned with his hand and the swordsmen moved closer to the group of runners. "You are with us or against us," he said, borrowing Tambol's words. "Eat."
Farnee was handed leaf organs from an evergreen. He glanced around, in panic. Seeing no other course, he ate. In the days that followed it became a challenge not to get the free runners to eat, but to keep them from stripping all green in the immediate area.
Runner males began training. The surviving wood workers began to replace lost bows and arrows, and, in the absence of metal, experiments were made in accordance with ancient legends of the making of arrowheads from stone.
"It is time for me to go," Tambol told Duwan the Elder, on a day when the first severe storm of winter threatened, when the sky to the northwest was purple-black and Du's rays seemed to be already weakened. "I will try to outpace the winter to the east."
Winter overtook him, however, and he walked through snows and winds and when, at last, he reached a settlement he was weakened, looking very much the part of a wandering priest of Tseeb. He was given shelter in the pongpen and began, that first night, to talk of the Master. Winter had come to Arutan. The conscripts among those who had served in the conqforce were sent back to their homes. All was quiet in the pongpens. Elnice had ordered a few random peelings, with questioning, to determine if word of the abortive slave rebellion in the north had reached the pongs of the capital city and she was pleased to hear no hint of it from the screaming, begging victims. She had ordered a quarantine of the city of Kooh. It was enforced by a large force of her guards. No citizen or pong was allowed to leave Kooh to travel to the south.
As the cold closed in and made her luxurious quarters seem even more cozy, Elnice consulted her wise men with Captain Hata present. The eldest of her advisers was speaking. "It is my opinion, High Mistress, that there is no present danger. The future? That is another matter. It took our ancestors three generations to wipe from the memory of the relatively few native survivors of the conquest the knowledge of the special abilities of these people. Now that knowledge is once more afoot. We know that there are escaped slaves in the west. Your own people say that many escaped death in your last battle in the north. We can be assured that those who escaped will continue to spread the word, and that, High Mistress, is the danger."
"I see no danger," Hata said. "A few pongs were deluded by a rabble-rouser. He is now dead."
"Do you read the priestly writing, Captain Hata?" the old adviser asked. Hata shook his head. "Perhaps you should have read to you the records of those who came to these lands first. It is not widely known that our ancestors narrowly escaped being pushed back to the south, in bloody defeat, by peoples who, until our arrival, knew nothing of weapons or killing. Tell me, did the pongs fight well? Did you not have losses?" Hata made a gesture of dismissal, but Elnice said, "Their losses were greater, but the bones of our dead litter a canyon in the north. And one of them fought better than any warrior I've ever seen."
"So it was in history. Once they learned, they fought savagely. And," he squinted and looked around with a wry smile, "this will ruffle the pride of many, but it should be said. Warrior for warrior, equally armed and equally trained, they were superior, those early people who called themselves Drinkers."
Hata started to protest.
"Captain," the old adviser said, "can you march for one change of the moon without rations? Can you live, in winter, on dry leaves and grass?
Can you expose your skin to the sun and use its light to make energy? They can. Another thing. Have you seen figures showing the total population of pongs in our cities, in our settlements, in the single establishments in the countryside? We have, to sustain our lifestyle, allowed our slaves to outbreed us, to actually outnumber us."
"There is a simple solution for that," Hata said. "Kill them all." The old adviser spread his hands. "Are you willing, captain, to cook your own food, to carry your own wood, to clean your own house? Are you willing to take your turn in the mines, in the fields, in the workshops? Our entire way of life is based on our slaves, captain. To eliminate them would require vast upheaval."
"Well, all is quiet now," Hata said.
"Yes. It is winter," Elnice said. "What of the spring?" She looked at the old adviser. "What are your suggestions, old one?"
"Slow change," he said. "Little by little we must require more of our own people, our idlers. We must make it a requirement that each of our young learn a trade. We must limit the breeding of the pongs, allowing only enough of their young to survive to maintain a solid pool of breeding stock. Slowly, without letting it be known to the general population of pongs, we begin to reduce their numbers. This can be done easily in the cities. A pong, or an entire family, simply disappears. It happens often. Pongs are sold or traded. It will take years, perhaps ten, to make a significant reduction in the pong population without causing panic among them, without disrupting our economy."
"So be it," Elnice said. "Will you assume responsibility for starting this program?"
"I will, High Mistress," the old adviser said. "There is one other thing. You have begun to dismantle the army you put together. That process should be halted. Instead, you should build several forces, not as large as a conqforce, and train them well, have them ready to move instantly to any trouble spot in the land. As soon as the weather permits, the strongest force should be sent west to comb the hills. I would also suggest that you send emissaries to the western land, across the great, inland mountains, to see if there has been trouble there, to warn them if there was not."
"They would laugh at us," Hata said heatedly, "if they knew we had lost warriors to pongs."
The old adviser shrugged. "A small blow to pride, considering what is at stake."
"Let them laugh," Elnice said. "What I want to know is how this Duwan came to be a leader. He was pong. I saw the pores in the bottom of his feet. How did a pong rise above his station and influence thousands?"
"You killed the only possible way of knowing that in the canyon," Hata said.
"He could not have spread the word alone," Elnice said. "I want spies sent into the pens. I want to know who among them carries the messages of sedition." She rose. "Hata, begin to build the armies. You, yourself, will lead the force to the west in the spring. I want a daily count on the number of pongs put to death not only in Arutan but in all other cities. Upon consideration, I think it wise to exterminate the entire pong population of Kooh, and all surrounding settlements. If not all at once, at a rate in multiples to the exterminations in the other areas, for the pongs of Kooh saw an attack force kill masters in their city. That news must not spread."
"It will be done," Hata said, his eyes on Elnice's shapely backside as she swept from the conference room.
So it was that when Tambol came to Kooh, in the dead of winter, he came to terror and death. The days were filled with fear and wailing as entire families were taken from the pens to disappear forever. Not a day passed without several public executions in the square for offenses that, in the past, would have brought nothing more than a mild lashing. Tambol was shocked to find that fully a quarter of the population of one pen had already disappeared, or had been killed quickly—there were so many executions that peeling was too time consuming.