Then Hunlaki looked away from her, back across the river, where were the remains of one of the villages. The fallen timbers, those of sheds and cabins, charred, blackened from the flames, were now partly covered with snow. The remains of the village seemed very still, and very cold. They reminded Hunlaki of a woods in winter, where trees have fallen, of the edge of the great forest, where the Heruls had stopped. Snow, too, had drifted about the remains. Snow was falling even now, settling on the far bank, disappearing in the river.
Hunlaki again considered the female. Her ankles had been unthonged. She had been conducted from the raft, the aft portion of which was still in the water. She was conducted up the bank. She fell once, her naked flank muddied. She was kicked. She cried out in pain. She was on her knees, in the mud. She seemed bewildered. Perhaps she was trying to understand what had become of her. She was dragged to her feet and conducted to the back of a wagon. A rope was now being put on her neck. She looked back at Hunlaki. The rope was tied to the back of a wagon. Her feet were ankle deep in the mud. Hunlaki looked away from her.
A large floe of ice, from upriver, moved slowly past, turning in the current. Some yards away, half in the water, caught in the frozen, matted rushes, was the body of a man, that of the prisoner who had dared to fend a blow. The trunk of a tree was turning, too, in the water. A rider circled it, thrusting about, under it, with his spear. Hunlaki heard a cry of pain nearby, a woman’s cry, but he did not think it was the girl. It was another female. She had presumably felt the knout. It is useful in the control of horses and dogs, and women. Hunlaki wondered how many of the women could survive the march, the weeks of the return to the tents. His thoughts strayed to other women, women of which he had barely heard, the soft women of the civilized worlds. He did not think such would fare well on the march. What were they good for, he wondered. He thought of them hurrying about, barefoot, bangled, on the deep, soft rugs in the tents, in their silks, warming the golden vessels with their bodies. Yes, they, too, in their collars, or locked wristlets, or anklets, with their delicate flesh, imprinted with the slave mark, had their uses.
Hunlaki was saddened, in a way, on the bank, as he looked across the river. The fighting was ended. It was over now. Hunlaki, you see, lived for the fighting, in which one became so alive, the terrible game, that with the highest of all stakes, and for the spoils of the fighting. There are such creatures, such beasts, if you like, such as Hunlaki, and also such races, and the Heruls, you see, were among them.
But Hunlaki was not now pleased. It is one thing to meet the shock lancers in battle. It is another to ride down farmers, and burn villages.
The earlier parts of the column had begun the march an hour ago. He could now hear, behind him, the beginnings of movement, that of the rearward portions of the column, the sound of arms, of chains, of wagons. It takes a long time for a column to move, particularly when it is large, when there is no cadence, when it is encumbered with baggage, and prisoners.
Hunlaki, and the riders with him, waited at the river for better than an hour.
There were dark clouds in the sky. There would be more snow. He listened to the sound of the river. He watched the ice, pale in the dark water. His horse growled and clawed at the earth. Breath from its nostrils hung about its snout like moist, cold smoke. Hunlaki noted an occasional branch, dark and leafless, flowing slowly past, an occasional piece of debris. He noted that the body which had been caught in the frozen, matted rushes, that of the prisoner who had dared to fend a blow, had been loosened, and washed free. He saw it, half-submerged, moving downstream with the ice.
Hunlaki then heard the sounds of horses, the rhythm of the heavy paws striking in the cold turf, audible in the winter air. He turned about. He could see, from the left and right, the approaching riders, like small dark clouds, the breath of the mounts trailing behind them. The side riders had now returned. The east bank of the Lothar was now clear, for better than five miles on either side of the crossing point of the column.
Hunlaki then, with the newcomers, turned about, and began to follow the column.
Hunlaki was not now pleased.
He did not joke with Mujiin, who, riding beside him, later left him to his own thoughts.
Hunlaki, you see, was not at all sure that his weapons had been worthily bloodied.
One need not be a warrior of the tents of the Heruls to have done what he had done.
CHAPTER 3
“Women wish to belong to men,” she had said, leaning on one elbow, in the tangled covers. “You held me, as a master.”
“You did not make me pay,” he said.
“I had thought I would,” she mused, “but in your arms I found myself a slave. Slaves cannot charge. They own nothing. They have nothing. It is they who are nothing, it is they who are owned.”
“I do not understand,” he had said.
“You are not a woman,” she said.
“All are the same,” he said, for he had heard this from the brothers.
“No,” she said, “we are different.”
“That is heresy, is it not?” he asked.
She turned white, and was silent.
After a time, she turned to the wall, and said, “I hate you.”
“Why?” he asked, puzzled. She had seemed to be pleased but moments before, weeping, crying out for more, begging, subdued, ravished.
“Because you do not put a collar on me, and make me walk behind you,” she said.
“I do not understand,” he said.
“But this is not such a world,” she said.
He did not respond.
“Too,” she said, “you do not know who you are.”
He looked up from his boots.
“That is why you hate me?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Who am I?” he asked.
“A man,” she said.
He shrugged.
“It was so from the first joining of the gametes,” she said.
“What are gametes?” he asked.
“You are not educated, are you?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“Can you read?” she asked.
“No,” he said.
“From the beginning,” she said, “you were a man, or a male, from the beginning. It was so in the chromosomes.”
“And you, in such things, whatever they may be, were female, or woman?”
“Yes,” she said, “from the beginning, totally that, not other than that, never to be other than that.”
“Interesting,” he said, for he, though not educated, had an inquisitive mind, a lively mind. That there should be two forms of being, and in his own species, was surely worthy of note. This was not, of course, the first female he had held in his arms. There had been others, Tessa, and Lia, and Sut, or Pig, who had put themselves in his way, who had surprised him in the fields, at troughs, in the hay sheds, who had lain on the wooden floors of the varda coops, their smocks thrown off, the slatted shadows of the lath bars falling across their vital, waiting, beautifully curved bodies, an interesting symmetry. His favorite had been Pig. But there had been trouble.
“What is your class?” she asked.
“I am of the humiliori,” he said, “but I am not a serf, nor a colonus.” The coloni were tenants, under the protection of wealthy landowners. “What is your class?” he asked.