The Chieftain Read online

  After the crossing of the Lothar, Hunlaki had turned his horse about, it shuddering and shaking the cold water from its fur. Such mounts did not care for water. The east bank was a sea of mud now. There were cries of misery, grunts, the sounds of blows, as the prisoners were herded together. There were children among them, some clinging to mothers. Two men were slain at the edge of the water, one who had lifted his hand to fend a blow. Hunlaki considered one of the women on one of the rafts. She was half-naked. Her hands were tied behind her. Her ankles, too, were tied, a mere thong more than sufficient for the purpose. She looked away, not meeting his eyes. She was slender and well curved. Her skin was very white. Such looked well where they belonged, at the feet of warriors.

  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 tenant
s, under the protection of wealthy landowners. “What is your class?” he asked.

  “I, too, am of the humiliori ,” she said. “Do you think I would be here, as I am, a pay woman, in this small room, with the single, tiny window, on this bed, over a wretched tavern, were I not of the humiliori?”

  “I am of the peasants,” he said.

  She turned back, quickly, to face him.

  “You do not have the body of a peasant,” she said. “It is not deformed for the hoe, the plow.”

  He stood, belting his tunic. “And what sort of body have I?” he asked.

  She slipped from the bed, and came to where he stood, and then she knelt before him, holding to his legs, looking up at him. “Linger,” she said.

  He looked down at her, regarding her.

  “There are masters and there are slaves,” she said. “Each must learn which he is.”

  Oh, he had intended, even before the trouble over Pig, to leave the festung village. Having come of age, and having refused the garb, the habit and hood, he might leave. Too, this was practical, for on the world in which stood the heights of Barrionuevo, and the festung of Sim Giadini, now far away, the villagers had not yet been bound, or the guilds, or the coloni.

  “You speak well,” he said, “You are highly intelligent. Can you read?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You were not always of the humiliori,” he speculated.

  “I was once the daughter of a senator of a local municipality, on another world, one far away,” she said.

  “You were then of the honestori,” he said, impressed.

  “Yes,” she said.”

  “But now you kneel naked,” he said.

  “It is said that women such as I make the best slaves,” she said.

  He supposed that much would depend upon the woman, whatever her class or background, on her capacities for love, her unbridled sexual needs, on her uncontrollable passions, which put her so helplessly at the mercy of masters, on her capacity for loyalty, for diligence, for service, such things. The more intelligent the woman, it was said, the less the need for taming and training. Such, it was said, arrived the most quickly at the deepest understanding of themselves, and were the first to yield themselves up wholly, helplessly, to the fitting raptures of their bondage.

  “Beat me,” she said, “Master.”

  “You are not a slave,” he said. “Do not say such things.”

  It was a saying of slaves. It was not that they wished to be beaten, or seldom was it so. It was rather a way of professing to the master their slavery, that they understood their situation, that they were owned, that they acknowledged his punishment rights over them. The saying is useful, too, in reminding a slave of her bondage. The usual response of the master is the issuance of some innocent command, but the slave knows what might have been done. To be sure, it is a rare slave who does not long, at times, to be reminded of her bondage, that she is truly a slave.

  “Where is your father?” he asked.

  “He is dead,” she said. “He was ruined, the taxes. He died of drink.”

  “And you fled?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And so became of the humiliori ?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  On many worlds, many of the humiliori class had been bound, the soil workers to the soil, to given fields, the members of guilds, and their offspring, to their crafts. Even the captains of ships, of merchant ships, and the bakers, and carpenters, the masons, the armorers, and those of many other crafts and occupations, even the members of actors’ guilds, had been bound. This stabilized the population, holding it in place, that given taxations might be efficiently exacted. Many of the landlords, particularly the less wealthy landlords, those who could not afford the bribes to governors and prefects, and who did not have groups of armed retainers, feared by the tax farmers, at their disposal, and even the senators, of local municipalities, had been made responsible for the collection of taxes, due on their lands, or in their districts. Shortages in the collection were expected to be supplied by these unwilling deputies. Many were ruined. The father of the pay woman, we may surmise, was one. The population, you see, fleeing judicial and economic oppression, as presumably the pay woman had done, had tended to be fluid, too easily slipping away. The binding, to craft and locality, too, of course, made things easier for the tax farmers. These individuals, usually rented in gangs from certain wealthy entrepreneurs, licensed by the governors and prefects, were the usual instruments of tax collection. The tax farmers were to collect the due taxes plus a percentage thereof, as their commission. It was well known, however, that they normally collected far more than the due taxes and the commissions, the gang bosses, and entrepreneurs, pocketing the rest. Also, one might note, in passing, in speaking of taxes, the existence of various forms of munera , taxes paid in service, for example, manual labor on local roads and bridges, supplying free bread to local troops, gratis transport of goods on behalf of governmental commissaries, such things. A common form of munera was that of the peasant, required to donate military service some weeks in the year, expected to work in his lord’s fields and vineyards at various times, such things. The humiliori , it must be understood, however, were free men. They were not slaves. A distinction was drawn between them and slaves. Indeed, on many worlds, slavery, or, at least, open slavery, was illegal. It was not that many of the humiliori were slaves; quite otherwise; it is only that they were bound. It had been too easy before, you see, on thousands of worlds, for, say, an extorted, despairing, overtaxed peasant to load his wagon and abandon his fields, disappearing into the wilderness, there to sow new fields, harvesting there his own crops, and not those of others. But the binding, for most practical purposes, stopped this sort of thing. Its value was obvious. It was instrumental in stabilizing the population, and the occupational groups. The Imperium had presumably not adopted such measures without thought. Indeed, perhaps they were necessary. Certainly the empire, for all its seeming eternality, its solidity, and such, was wracked by fiscal crisis, exacerbated by centuries of civil war. Worlds had been devastated; there had been frequent famines, these often consequent not upon natural causes, such as shifting patterns of precipitation, or soil exhaustion, but upon the literal, forcible disruption of agriculture, reduced or suspended in the dislocations of the wars, and sometimes from climatic changes consequent upon literal alterations in the rotations and axes of worlds, the effects of the impact of weaponry; and there had been plagues, in particular those of the second, the fifth and ninth dynasties; some blamed them for much; some worlds had been isolated, quarantined; others had been disposed of; bounties had been placed on the heads of individuals from such worlds; where found they were exterminated; mines had been exhausted; deficits in trade had drained bullion to the outer worlds; too, there was little doubt but what there must be some truth to the rumors of grievous mismanagement, of speculation, of broadcast corruption in high places; were there not stories of the pleasure worlds of emperors, entire planets devoted to their delight; it did not seem that frugality and nobility, so conspicuously absent on so many minor worlds, in the local halls of government, in the municipal offices, in the courts of the bishops, in the headquarters of the civil and military governors, would be likely to reign in the high palaces of power themselves. The bindings also introduced, in their way, a new social order. In any event, the taxes, those in coin, and those in munera , were now easier to collect. One might also note, in passing, that with the binding, and the shortage of free currency, resulting in part from the taxes, that an economy of barter, and kinds, was becoming more widely spread. Even before the binding, many peasants had lost their lands to taxes, and become coloni , tenants on the lands of others. The landlord, often with his troops, provided protection to the peasants. This was particularly true of the large, powerful landlords, the sort who managed to acquire the lands of others, the sort who throve in such times. This matter of protection was not a negligible consideration. Brigandage was
prevalent in many places, it itself in part doubtless a result of the ruin of many small farmers, and the flight from the land. When the bindings took place the lives of the coloni , the tenants, did not much change. Most remained where they were, though now legally bound, by imperial edict, recorded in the pandects, to the soil, and, in a sense, to the lord, who owned it. In this way, on many worlds there came to be what we may speak of as a manorialized economy, a largely agriculturally based economy, relatively self-sufficient peasant communities clustering about a given holding, a given stronghold, or manor. This thing, on many worlds, became increasingly widely spread with the collapse of the cities, the desertion of urbanized areas, the ruin and decay of thousands of small, once thriving municipalities, the breakdown in order and policing, the general falling into disrepair of roads and waterways, the disruption of commerce and communication, the gradual isolation and ruralization of the vast majority of the population. To be sure, such things take a long time. On some worlds they were more advanced than on others. There was, to be sure, one statistically minor countertrend, minor at least, on the whole, to these rather general developments. That was the tendency for large numbers of the ruined, the destitute, and impoverished, as well as the curious and ambitious, the eager and adventurous, as always, rather than placing themselves under the protection of local lords, bosses, captains, and such, to seek out certain major cities, there to seek their fortunes. It was said that many embarked, in the holds of cattle ships, even for the worlds of Telnaria itself. There was some security in this, of course, provided the journey could be successfully accomplished, for in certain of the larger cities, and in the capitals, and in the worlds of Telnaria, too, one supposes, the state provided a dole of grain, and games. The situation thus, in some respects, was paradoxical. While thousands of towns and smaller cities fell into ruin, and the great majority of thousands of populations became increasingly isolated and ruralized, certain other cities, particularly metropolises, and the seats of governors, prefects, bishops, and such, places already overcrowded, experienced additional, unwelcome influxes of population. These frustrated, seething masses, idle and unproductive, demanding food and amusement, constituted a force to be reckoned with, an expensive, explosive, difficult-to-control, dangerous urban proletariat. Most were citizens and, accordingly, the dole was their right. It was the duty of others, the responsibility of others, those of other places, of other worlds, you see, to feed and care for them, to entertain them, and such. The support of these unproductive megapopulations in certain large urban areas, it was speculated, further drained the resources of the empire. Worlds were set aside to feed and clothe them. Worlds were combed to find oddities, exhibits, animals, performers, and such, to entertain them. This influx to the major cities, incidentally, was considerably slowed by the stabilization edicts, the binding laws, and it is not hard to suppose that that might have been one of the elements of their rationale. But, of course, the cities were already overcrowded, even before the bindings, and their populations were continuing, in one way or another, to increase. On Terennia, incidentally, the world on which we now are, the bindings had not yet taken place, but it was rumored they were imminent. To be sure, in the cities there was not so much to fear from the bindings, particularly if one did not have a trade or craft. Too, one could always have a riot, and kill and steal, and stone the palaces and houses of the rich, and destroy public buildings, and such, and thus doubtless, in time, win for oneself an exemption from strictures more generally applied elsewhere. It might be noted that the peasant could not well be bound here for here he had no land and here he was no tenant. The pay woman might have been bound, perhaps, but then she was, in a sense, in virtue of her loss of status, her new class, her profession, and such, already bound.