of Terennia seemed so spoiled. But there seemed no reason to beat the pay woman. She had done nothing to be beaten for. She had been kind, and loving. Too, she was not, as far as the peasant knew, the proprietor’s woman. Too, this was Terennia, and she was free. It was not like she was a slave, who must expect to be punished if she is the least bit disobedient, or has not been in some way fully pleasing.
“We will see what you have here,” said Boon Thap. He jerked loose the fastenings of the sack and turned it over, depositing its contents on the counter.
“He has money!” said one of the men behind the peasant.
“Look, a darin!” said the other.
“Ahh,” said Boon Thap. “Look!” He lifted up the silver bracelet.
“He is a thief,” said the man to the peasant’s right.
“Yes!” said Boon Thap.
“No,” said the peasant.
He gripped the counter.
He must not yield to the rage, not, at least, to that sudden, blinding, scarlet rage. There were rages among rages, of course. There was the scarlet rage, so sudden, so uncontrollable, like the breaking open of the bowl of the sky, as you could see, from the shattering, the lines of splitting and cracking. One could do little about that. One scarcely knew, until afterward, what one had done. You learned that, only later. It was this rage which the villagers had most feared. Then there were the rages you sensed coming, the rages which so sharpened the senses, which transfused one with such power, how eagerly you sensed them, like knowing a cat was about, then waiting tensely for it to spring up, somewhere, from the grass. And you were he who sensed, he who waited, and you were the cat, too, eager to spring up, that for which you waited. And then there were the cold, merciless rages, the most terrible of all, rages which the peasant had not yet learned, the rages as implacable as winter, which taught one patience, a patience colder and more cruel than ice.
“You must fight these things, my son,” Brother Benjamin had told him.
“The bracelet is stolen,” said Boon Thap. “I will keep it.”
“And the darin,” said the man to the peasant’s left.
“We will keep this sack, these things,” said Boon Thap. “Now, get out.”
“They are mine,” said the peasant.
“Get out,” said Boon Thap.
The man to the peasant’s right suddenly seized the peasant’s staff. He lifted it.
“Get out,” said Boon Thap.
The staff suddenly descended, smiting the peasant on the shoulder. It then struck him on the side of the head. The peasant felt blood at the side of his head.
The man with the staff seemed surprised that the peasant was still on his feet.
“You must learn to control your temper,” had said Brother Benjamin.
Again the staff whirled toward the peasant, but the peasant reached up and caught it, in flight. He then wrenched it away from the man.
The man backed away.
“If one strikes you,” had said Brother Benjamin, “give him your staff, that he may strike you again.”
The peasant handed the staff back to the assailant.
The man looked at him, in wonder. Then he laughed, and so, too, did the other, who had backed away, and Boon Thap.
“Go,” said Boon Thap, smiling.
The peasant, his staff and sack left behind, left the tavern. Hot tears burned down his cheeks. He went to the curb, outside the tavern. There he sat down, and put his head down, in his hands. Then he raised his head, and howled in misery, to the sky between the buildings. He then reentered the tavern. Boon Thap and the others were seated at the table, that at which the two men had earlier been playing Tanleel. The counterboard was still on the table. Drinks were before them. The peasant took his staff and drove it through the diaphragm of the man who had struck him. This was done with considerable force. It tore through the body, and the backbone. It punched even into the wall behind the man. The peasant then seized Boon Thap, breaking his neck, as if he had been a garn pig. The other man fled, screaming. His exit was not contested. Then the peasant, after retrieving his staff and gathering together what he could of his belongings, once more left the tavern.
CHAPTER 6
And so the wagons rolled and creaked, and the men cursed, and there was the sound of chains, and, sometimes, the weeping, the lamentations, of the captive women, tied by the neck to the back of wagons.
Two days after the encounter with the youth on the snowy plains Hunlaki and Mujiin had returned to the column, their duties completed pending further assignments. Hunlaki did
volunteer for further service at that time, but his request, quite sensibly, was declined. It was understood that he had been, for most practical purposes, in the saddle for days. Accordingly he was doing little now but riding with the column.
Mujiin had not found Hunlaki much in the way of good company of late. He had, accordingly, for the last few days, left him much alone. Hunlaki seemed too often lost in his own thoughts. Indeed, he had been acting a bit strangely ever since the re-crossing of the Lothar. But Mujiin, who was very fond of Hunlaki, was patient. Heruls tend to be a patient folk. Hunlaki would doubtless come back to himself, as he always had before, after some of the simpler, more routine actions. Mujiin had no fear, incidentally, that Hunlaki would tell others about his embarrassment, that little contretemps, with the boy on the prairie, how he had been tricked, as though he might have been on his first raid, of how he might have been injured, or worse, if Hunlaki had not ridden to his succor. Mujiin did not fear this, for Hunlaki was not only of the tents of the Heruls, but one with whom he rode. Indeed, some years later, Mujiin would tell the story himself, as a joke on himself, and as a warning to young riders, about how Hunlaki had saved him, when he was new to the ways of war.
They had been on the march for several days.
Hunlaki, in this time, rode usually on the right side of the column. Sometimes he patrolled it, riding its length, back and forth.
The wagons, and the foot, moved slowly, and the prisoners, far too slowly for the taste of Hunlaki.
Hunlaki looked up.
The birds still followed, and their patience, as the days wore on, was less and less often disappointed. Many were now so swollen with food that they could not fly. Sometimes the dogs caught them. Bones littered the track of the column. Many of the more attractive women had been given rags to wrap about their feet, that they might not, in the cold and snow, lose their toes. Such a loss, as trivial as it might seem, would considerably reduce their value.
To one side dogs fought over a body.
Hunlaki was himself well aware that things were not as usual with him.
He had for two nights chewed on the fermented curds, and in the morning had had to tie himself in the saddle.
He had, several times, at night, when the column had stopped, and the fires were lit, made use of captive women, chained under certain of the wagons, put aside for the purpose. To be sure, as a rider, he could have his picks marked, a disk with his mark on it, tied about her neck, under the rope, reserved for him in the evening. The foot would make do with what was provided for them, not that some excellent women were not picked out for them. Sometimes Hunlaki used the women under the wagons as Herul women, but often, because they were women of an enemy, he put them in the pig position, even some very attractive women whom he had picked out earlier,