The time was now an hour into the afternoon. Aillas took his fishing spear to the river, and after an hour of the most patient and crafty effort, managed to spear a fine brown trout of three or four pounds. As he cleaned the fish by the water's edge he heard the sounds of approaching horses and instantly took to cover.
Up the road came two mounted men, followed by a wagon drawn by a pair of shaggy farm-horses. A tow-headed peasant boy of fourteen drove the wagon. The riders were of a different, more sinister sort. They wore makeshift vests of chain and leather helmets with neck- and earflaps. Heavy long-swords slanted back from their belts; bows and arrows hung at their saddlebows, along with short-handled battle-axes. The larger of the two was somewhat older than Aillas, dark, burly, with small mean eyes, a coarse beard and a fleshy beak of a nose. The other, older by perhaps fifteen years, rode crouched in the saddle, as lean, sinewy and tough as the leather on which he sat. His face was pale and disturbing; strangely wide cheekbones with round gray eyes and a small thin-lipped mouth gave him an almost ophidian semblance.
Aillas instantly knew the two for outlaws, and he congratulated himself on his foresight in hiding Tatzel up the gully, inasmuch as the riders had taken note of the dead horse, and were somewhat puzzled as to its significance.
Arriving at the hut the horsemen halted and muttered together, then bent to examine tracks in the sand. Warily dismounting, they tied their horses to the wagon and started to approach the hut, then stopped short in surprise.
Aillas went cold and stiff with shock. Tatzel had also heard the approach of the horsemen. She came hobbling around the side of the hut and, facing the two, spoke in a voice of confident authority, though Aillas could not hear her words. She gestured toward the wagon; Aillas assumed that she had given instructions that she wished to be transported to the nearest Ska castle or administrative depot.
The two men looked at each other, grinning in some mutuality of understanding, and even the boy, gaping open-mouthed from the wagon, blinked in perplexity.
Aillas seethed with contradictory emotions: fury at the enormity of Tatzel's folly, then a gust of great sadness for what she must endure, then another surge of anger, of a different sort: no matter how he raged and cursed, he could not now withdraw from her troubles and hope to keep his self-respect. In her arrogance and vanity, Tatzel had endangered not only herself, but Aillas as well.
The two men approached Tatzel and halted close in front of her. They looked her up and down, and exchanged appreciative comments. Tatzel, drawing back, issued a set of desperate new commands.
The thin bent man put questions to Tatzel. She answered in icy tones and again gestured toward the wagon.
"Yes, yes," the men seemed to say. "All in good time. But first things first! Great good fortune has brought the three of us together and we must celebrate our luck in proper style. A pity only that there are not two of you!"
Tatzel stumbled back another pace and looked desperately around the landscape. Aillas thought sardonically: ‘Now she wonders why I do not rush forward to teach the ruffians a lesson.'
The burly bearded man leaned forward and seized Tatzel around the waist. He drew her close, and tried to kiss her. Tatzel twisted her head this way and that, but presently he found her mouth. The lean man tapped him on the shoulder and the two exchanged words, and the younger man sullenly drew back, either by reason of fear or by difference in status.
The older man spoke gently but with effect, and the younger man gave a shrugging acquiescence. Together they prepared for a game, to determine who first would amuse himself with Tatzel. The younger man pushed a stick into the ground, and drew a line in the dirt at a distance of ten feet. Taking coins from their pouches, they stood behind the line and in turn tossed coins toward the stick. The boy, jumping down from the wagon, came to watch with what seemed a more than casual interest.
While their attention was distracted, Aillas ran behind the wagon. In front of the hut there was argument as to a possible breach of the rules, and the boy was called on as an arbiter. He rendered a decision, and the game was played once again to the amended rules, though not without grumbling and the exchange of heated words between the two. Tatzel at the same time made furious expostulations, until she was commanded to silence, whereupon she stood back and watched with mouth drawn into a grimace.
During these events Aillas moved quietly to the horses and availed himself of a bow and a handful of arrows.
The game ended; the victor was the burly black-bearded man who laughed proudly and congratulated Tatzel on her luck. Once again he seized her and, with a leer and a wink toward his comrade, took her into the hut.
The older man gave a dreary shrug, and growled an order to the boy, who ran off to the wagon and brought back a wallowing leather sack of wine. The two went to squat in the sunlight at the side of the hut.
Aillas quietly approached, arrow nocked to the string. He sidled to the doorway and, softly as a shadow, stepped inside. Tatzel lay sprawled naked on the grass bed. The bandit had dropped his breeches and kneeling at the ready groped to insert his monumental genital member. Tatzel saw the still silhouette in the doorway and gasped; the bandit looked over his shoulder. He uttered an inarticulate curse and clambered to his feet, groping for his sword. He opened his mouth, to call out his rage; Aillas loosed the arrow. It hissed across the room, entered the open mouth, to pin the head to a post in the back wall, where the man died in dancing spasms of arms and legs.
Aillas returned outside as quietly as he had entered. Stepping around the corner, he found the older man leaning back with the wine-sack tilted high, while the boy watched in fascinated envy. The boy's eyes, looking past the wine-sack, focused upon Aillas; he gave a strangled falsetto call. The bandit, rolling his pale gray eyes to the side, saw Aillas. He dropped the bag and scrambled to his feet, snatching at his sword. His face somber and grave, Aillas loosed his arrow. The bandit's knees buckled; he clawed briefly at the shaft protruding from his chest, then sagged to the ground.
Aillas went to look for the boy, and discovered him fleeing in great bounds and leaps down the road the way he had come, and a moment later he was gone from sight.
Aillas looked into the hut. Tatzel with eyes pensively downcast, was dressing herself, back turned to the corpse. Aillas, also thoughtful, went to the wagon, which was covered by a tarpaulin of good waxed linen canvas. Below were a variety of provisions, in large quantity, sufficient to feed a dozen men for a month or more.
Aillas chose goods from the wagon: a sack of meal, two flitches of bacon, salt, two round cheeses, a sack of wine, a ham, a goodly bundle of onions, a crock of preserved goose, a rack of salt fish, a bag of raisins and dried apricots. He packed the supplies in the tarpaulin and loaded it upon the best of the draught horses, which now would carry the pack.
Tatzel came to sit in the doorway of the hut, where she demurely combed the short curling locks of her hair. Aillas remembered the crutch he had contrived for her use. After the briefest of hesitations, he went to get it, along with the trout he had speared. The crutch he gave to Tatzel. "This may help you to walk."
Aillas entered the hut, took up the two cloaks, shook them out, and gave a final glance to the corpse. The next person to enter the hut would discover a sight to startle him.