The world from which he had come but months before, and Tangara, on which he had been raised, where lay the festung village of Sim Giadini, at the foot of the heights of Barrionuevo, were poor in such things. This was a rich world, exceedingly rich it seemed to the giant, and it was only a summer world, not Telnaria itself.
And there must be many such cities, and worlds, within the empire.
“Hold,” said the officer of the guard, lifting his hand, near a barrier. A guard station was there.
“Permission must be obtained, for weapons to be carried from this point to the edge of the plaza,” said the giant’s companion.
“Even those of our guard?”
“Yes.”
“At the edge of the plaza?”
“We shall there be met by guards from the palace, to escort us farther.”
A woman was to the right, near the wall of a whitewashed building.
Richly was she garbed, in embroidered leel. Wealthy then must be her station. No prostitute she.
The giant, with a glance, stripped her in his mind, removing the leel, cutting the straps of the undergarments, pulling them away. She was not then different from the other women. He would put them all on the same chain. He did not think that there would be much to choose between them, when each, in turn, ascended the slave block.
Such look well, he thought, carrying vessels, collared, naked, their hair not permitted binding, serving warriors at their feasts.
She spun away, angrily. She did not walk badly, he thought.
In a moment the officer of the guard had cleared the group for its progress.
It again moved down the street.
The giant looked back, and noted that the woman had stopped, and was standing there, angrily, her robes pulled closely about her, and was looking after them.
The most insistent, most insulting fellow, he who seemed the leader of the jeering, petty, pestiferous escort, he concerning whom the giant had conjectured of cords and axes, with others, one pressing closely behind him, competing with him for attention, inserted himself into even greater proximity. He was perhaps emboldened by the guards’ seemingly straightforward attention, renewed now in the march, which ignored, or seemed to ignore, him and his fellows, Not so much as a rifle butt had been raised against him. Perhaps, he was now emboldened, too, by an aegis of citizenship, recently awarded universally on this world as a gift of the emperor, on his visit.
The apartments in this area, closer to the plaza, and to the palace, were even richer and more lavishly appointed than their only somewhat more distant predecessors.
The giant wondered what occurred in such apartments. Muchly were they different from the huts of the forest, many of mud and sticks.
The giant was not overly enamored of material possessions, saving as females slaves counted as such.
He was interested more, though he would not have said so at this time, in the riches of power.
He who rules those with wealth is richer by far, you see, than those he rules.
Yet the giant was not insensitive to the beauty of precious stones, nor that of rare, glittering metals, no more than to that of owned women.
In his way, thus, he was not insensitive to riches.
And he knew that many men, those deprived of them, were far more sensitive to them than he.
And they meant power.
Too, for some reason, it seemed there was some sort of odd prestige connected with them, as though those who possessed them thought themselves somehow superior to those who did not.
The giant did not like that.
“Lout!” cried the fellow, almost intruding himself among the guards.
“Do not mind him,” said the companion of the giant.
The giant, seemingly not noticing, marked the fellow’s position.
It was casually done.
Riches cannot, in themselves, be a sign that one is superior, thought the giant, for it seems obvious that many who possess them are not superior.
“Bumpkin!” cried the man.
Do those of the empire regard themselves as superior to us because it is they, and not us, who possess such things?
“Lout, lout!”
Perhaps, thought the giant, wealth, the rule, riches, such things, should belong to those who are superior, but, if that is the case, then surely they should not belong to men such as these, running along, harrying us with their ridicule, shouting, carrying on like smug, arrogant, invulnerable rats, thinking themselves so safe within the walls of the empire. Perhaps, rather, riches belonged rightfully, if to anyone, to those who were truly superior, to the masters, to those who were strong enough to take them, and keep them, much as it was fit that the first meat at the great feast went to the greatest warrior, the greatest hero, at the long table?
“Lout! Lout!”
Even if riches did not betoken superiority, truly, there might be some point in removing them from those who thought they did, that such might thus be denied the pretext for their pretensions, that they might see themselves as they were, truly, rather like removing clothing from a woman, that she may then understand herself as what she is, among men.
“Lout, peasant!” cried the fellow.
The giant again brushed away flies.
“Lout!”
But it might be pleasant to own such things, and to give them away, thought the giant, with a lavish hand, as rings, fit for the wrist and arm, to cup companions.
Yes, thought the giant, there are reasons to want riches, many reasons.
“What are you thinking about?” asked his companion.
“Nothing,” said the giant.
“You are impressed with the empire,” conjectured his companion.
“Yes,” said the giant.
The giant, you see, had seen much, even in his brief time on this small, mere summer world, much which had impressed him, and variously, the ships of the empire, her weapons, quite redoubtable, muchly to be feared; her riches, almost beyond his dreams; her citizenry, on the whole to be scorned, her women, many not without interest.
A shadow at his right darted toward him. In the instant of movement it had not been the most intrusive, vulgar fellow, but he who had been behind that fellow, at his shoulder, pressing in, competing for attention. It was he, the second man, rushing in, to outdo his compeer, who was suddenly lifted, croaking, eyes bulging, from the ground, his feet kicking wildly, his throat in the grasp of the giant. Instantly the tiny mob fell back. The hands of the suspended fellow pulled weakly at the hand of the giant.
“Do not kill him,” said the giant’s companion.
“Would you have dared to touch me?” asked the giant.
The kicking fellow, as he could, the hand on his throat like a vise, shook his head, negatively.
The giant then took two steps to the side and thrust the helpless prisoner of his grip into the stone of the wall. This was done with great force. He released the unconscious body. Hair was matted to the wall. A smear of blood on the wall, slowly placed there, traced the passage of the fellow to the stones of the street.
“Is he dead?” asked the officer of the guard.
“I did not choose to kill him,” said the giant.
The head of the fellow, clearly, had the giant chosen, given his grip and his power, might have been broken against the wall, as one might have shattered an egg.
The guards looked on, in awe.
Some yards away now stood he who had been the leader of the small mob which had clung to them in the streets.