“I say hello to rats,” he improvised. “Some of my best friends are rats.”
“You fight feud with rats?”
“Never!” Jason answered, offended by the suggestion.
Shanin seemed satisfied and went back to picking his teeth. ‘We go to Temuchin, too,” he said indistinctly around his finger. “I have heard
Temuchin strikes against the mountain weasels so we join him. You ride with us. Sing for me tonight.”
“I hate mountain weasels, too. I’ll sing tonight.”
At a grunted command the three men wheeled and galloped away. That was all there was to it. Jason’s party followed and slowly caught up with the moving column of moropes, swinging in behind them so that their herd of goats did not mix with the others.
“That’s what all the goat leads are for,” Jason said, coughing in the cloud of dust that hung heavy in the air. “As soon as we stop, I want you two to secure all our animals so they can’t get lost in the other herd.”
“Aren’t you planning to help?” Meta asked coldly.
“Much as I would love to, this is a male-oriented, primitive society and that sort of thing just isn’t done. I’ll do my share of the work out of sight in the tent, but not in public.”
It was a short day, which the disguised off-worlders appreciated, because the nomads reached their goal, a desert well, early in the afternoon. Jason, saddle-sore and stiff, slid to the ground and hobbled in small circles to work the circulation back into his numb legs. Meta and Grif were rounding up and tethering the protesting goats, which induced Jason to take a walk around the camp to escape her daggerlike glances. The well interested him: he came to look and stayed to help. Only men and boys were gathered here since there ‘seemed to be a sexual taboo connected with the water. This was understandable, as water was as essential to life as hunting ability in this semiarid desert.
A rock cairn marked the well, which the men removed to disclose a beaten iron cover. This was heavily greased to retard its rusting, though the covering rocks had cut through the grease and streaks of oxidation were beginning to form. When the cover had been lifted aside, one of the men thoroughly greased it again on both sides. The well itself was about a meter in diameter and impressively deep, lined with stones so perfectly cut and set that they locked into place without mortar. They were ancient and much worn about the mouth, grooved by centuries of use. Jason wondered who the original builders had been.
Getting the water out of the well was done in the most primitive way possible, by dropping an iron bucket down the shaft, then pulling it up again with a braided leather rope. Only one man at a time could work at this, straddling the well head and pulling the rope up hand over hand. It was tiring work and the men changed position often, standing about to talk or to bring the filled waterskins back to their camacks. Jason took his turn at the well, then wandered back to see how the work was coming.
All the goats had been tethered, and Meta and Grif had the iron
camach frame erected while they struggled to drag the cover into place. Jason contributed his mite by hauling their lockbox from the pile of gear and sitting on it. Its tattered leather cover disguised the alloy container inside, secured.with a lock that could only be opened by the fingerprint of one of the three of them. He plucked at the two-stringed lute that he had made in frank imitation of the one he had seen the jongleur use, and hummed a song to himself. A passing tribesman stopped and watched the cainach being erected. Jason recognized the man as one of the riders who had intercepted them earlier and decided to take no notice of him. He plinked out a version of a spaceman’s drinking song.
“Good strong woman but stupid. Can’t put up a camach right,” the tribesman said suddenly, pointing with his thumb.
Jason had no idea what he should say, so he settled for a grunt. The man persisted, scratching in his beard while he openly admired Meta.
“I need a strong woman. I’ll give you six goats for this one.”
Jason saw that it was more than her strength that the man admired. Meta, working hard, had taken off her heavy outer furs, and her slim figure was far more attractive than the squat and solid ones of the nomad women. Her hair was neat, her teeth unbroken, her face unmarked or scarred.
“You wouldn’t want her,” Jason said. “She sleeps late, eats too much. Costs too much. I paid twelve goats for her.”
“I’ll give you ten,” the warrior said, walking over and grabbing Meta by the arm and pulling her about so he could look at her.
Jason shuddered. Perhaps the tribeswomen were used to being treated like chattels, but Meta certainly wasn’t. Jason waited for the explosion, but she surprised him by pulling her arm away and turning back to her work.
“Come here,” Jason told the man. He had to break this up before it went too far. “Come have a drink. I have good aehadh.”
It was too late. The warrior shouted in anger at being resisted by a mere woman and, with his bunched fist, struck her over the ear, then reached to pull her about again.
Meta stumbled from the force of the unexpected blow and shook her head. When he pulled at her this time, she did not resist but spun about, bringing up her arm at the same time. The stiffened outer edge of her hand caught him across the larynx, almost fracturing it, rendering him voiceless. She stood, ready now, while the man doubled over, coughing hoarsely and spitting up blood.
Jason tried to spring forward, but it was over before he had taken a single pace.
The warrior’s fighting reflexes were good, but Meta’s were even better. He came out of the crouch, blood streaming down his chin, with a knife in his hand, swinging it up underhand jn a wicked knifefighter’s thrust.
Meta clutched his wrist with both her hands, twisting at the same instant so that the knife went by her. She continued to twist, levering the man’s arm up behind his back, exerting bone-breaking pressure so that the knife dropped from his powerless lingers. She could have left it at this, but, because she was a Pyrran, she did not.
She caught the knife before it touched the ground, straightened and brought it slanting up into the man’s back, below and inside his rib cage, sinking it to the hilt so the blade penetrated his lung and heart, killing him instantly. When she released him, he sank, unmoving, to the ground.
Jason sank back onto the lockbox and, as though by chance, his forefinger touched the keying plate and he felt the click as the bolt unlatched. A number of onlookers had watched the encounter and a hum of astonishment filled the air. One woman waddled over and picked up the man’s arm, which dropped limply when she released it. “Dead!” she said in an astonished voice and looked wonderingly at Meta.
“You two over here!” Jason called out, using their own “tribal” tongue that the crowd would not understand. “Keep your weapons handy and stand close. If this really gets rough, there are gas grenades and your guns in here. But once we use them, we’ll have to wipe out or capture the entire tribe. So let’s save that as a last resort.”
Shanin, with a score of his warriors behind him, pushed through the crowd and looked unbelievingly at the dead man. “Your woman kill this man with his own knife?”
“She did, and it was his own fault. He pushed her around, started trouble, then attacked her. It was just self-defense. Ask anyone here.” There was a mutter of agreement from the crowd.
The chief seemed more astonished than angry. He looked from the corpse to Meta, then swaggered over and took her by the chin, turning her head back and forth while he examined her. Jason could see her knuckles go white but she kept her control.
“What tribe she from?” Shanin asked.
“Prom far away, in the mountains, far north. Tribe called the… Pyrrans. Very tough fighters.”