The Chieftain Read online

  Some remnants of two of the tribes of the forest had been brought to this world, and the boy was of one of these. The Heruls had, only months ago, in the spring, and early summer, met the other of the two tribes in lengthy, and terrible, battle, in a series of engagements which had taken more than five weeks. That had been war. For that other tribe, you see, had had horses, and had changed their way of life to resemble that of the Heruls, changing to riders, to herdsmen. It was inevitable that they should clash, and they had, first, far to the east, even beyond the heights of Barrionuevo, where the plains of Barrionuevo began, and then later in the north, on those plains themselves. Hunlaki admired the riders, though the Heruls, in their vaster numbers, with their better mounts, bred for centuries for the chase and war, their superb skills, of horsemanship and war, honed by centuries of revered tradition, their swiftness, their forced marches, their encirclements, had defeated them. The king of that tribe had been slain in battle. His queen, heavy with child, with certain others, had eluded capture. It was not known where she had gone. No drinking cup had been made from the skull of the defeated king. Rather he had been burned on a pyre, worthy of a Herul chieftain. Hunlaki, and others, on horseback, had lifted their lances in salute as the smoke had wafted upward in the then summer sky.

  “To the right forearm,” said Mujiin, kicking his heels back into the flank of his mount.

  In a moment Hunlaki heard the boy’s sharp cry of pain.

  There is some controversy concerning the name of the tribes of the forest, several of which had been placed on various worlds, two on this very world. ‘Vandals’ may be the original name. That is not known for certain. It is conjectured by some that, considering the current connotations of the name, they may have received it only later, in the writings of their enemies. It may, however, be the original name. In the beginning, it may have been simply a name, perhaps associated with ‘Vanland,’ which is “forest land.” But, as I said, it is not really known. Another derivation is from ‘Vanganz,’ a word for a ritualized form of vengeance. We know them in history, of course, as Vandals, and I shall so refer to them, trusting that the reader will not allow himself to be misled by any inessential accretions which might now adhere to the name. Their like, you see, may not be unique to our own reality. Too, I do not presume to judge, leaving that for those who feel entitled to do so. My office, in this matter, as I have indicated, is a simple one, merely to tell what happened.

  “The left forearm!” called Mujiin back to Hunlaki.

  There was another cry of pain from the boy. Mujiin was skilled, almost as much as Hunlaki. Hunlaki wondered if Mujiin was showing off. Then Hunlaki surveyed the snowy plains about them. It would not do, of course, if the lad were a sacrifice, to distract the guard, while pursuit slipped past them, or might even be prepared to fall upon them. Later Mujiin would learn to be thoughtful about such matters, but Mujiin was young. He was easily distracted by blood, and the sport.

  There was another cry of pain from the lad.

  Hunlaki unslung his own lance.

  It was not that he wanted to participate in the sport. It was only that the lad seemed too much weakened by the thrusts he had received. Surely he had not lost so much blood.

  The boy cried again. This time he was struck in the left upper arm. That was the fourth strike. One begins on the right, assuming the target to be right-handed. To be sure, one can be mistaken about such things.

  Hunlaki moved his mount a little closer, crossing the narrow track of the column, where the ground had been cut, like a wound in the grass.

  Mujiin then struck the shoulders, the right, then the left.

  The right thigh, and then the left, would be next. In that way the target can still stand, either for the final blow to the throat or the heart. It would be to the heart, as Hunlaki had had his say in that. Sometimes, if one wants to bring the target to its knees, the seventh and eighth blows are to the back of the leg, behind the knee. As Mujiin had called “ten” the ninth blow would be to the right side of the chest, just enough to draw blood, not enough to throw the target from its feet, then the tenth would be the driving of the lance tip through the ribs, to the heart. The blade of the Herul lance is smooth to the shaft, to facilitate its withdrawal. Else it would be too easy to lose it in combat. If Mujiin had called a “nine,” the last blow would simply be to the heart. Or, if he had called “nine” and “the neck,” the ninth blow would be to the back of the neck, attempting to sever the vertebrae there.

  The boy reeled back, again. That had been the ninth thrust, that to the right side of the chest, little more intended than to turn and bleed the target.

  Mujiin wheeled his mount.

  The lad wavered. Surely he would fall. Surely Mujiin must hurry!

  “Beware!” cried Hunlaki.

  The boy suddenly, raising his staff, as the lance sped toward him, struck it to the side and slipped to the side of the horse, and then thrust up with the staff, brutally into the ribs of the horse, which howled with pain, and the lad then struck the mount twice more, with terrible jabs, and it squealed, moving suddenly, awkwardly, trying to avoid the stick, the pain, to the side, and it lost its footing, and Mujiin, his foot caught in the stirrup, went down with the horse, his leg pinned under it, and looked up to see the boy, wild-eyed, bleeding, over him, raising the staff, but the blow did not fall for Hunlaki rode him down, his lance piercing the boy’s back, under the left shoulder blade.

  Mujiin, cursing, rose to this feet, his horse having scrambled up.

  Hunlaki drew his lance from the boy’s back.

  Mujiin was furious. He kicked the inert form of the boy.

  His horse stood some yards off, its eyes wide with pain.

  It shook the snow from its fur.

  “Are you all right?” asked Hunlaki.

  “Dog! Dog!” cried Mujiin, kicking the boy.

  Hunlaki fetched Mujiin’s mount.

  Mujiin checked the girth strap on the horse. Then he ascended to the saddle.

  Hunlaki surveyed the prairie about them. It was still. Then he looked again at the form of the boy.

  “He was brave,” said Hunlaki, “to follow us.”

  “He is a dog!” said Mujiin.

  “But he is a brave dog,” said Hunlaki.

  “Yes,” said Mujiin, “he was a brave dog.”

  “They are all brave dogs,” said Hunlaki.

  “Yes,” said Mujiin, “they are all brave dogs.”

  “Worthy enemies,” said Hunlaki.

  “Yes,” said Mujiin.

  Then, looking behind them from time to time, they returned to the track of the column. In a few moments they saw their contact riders approaching.

  …CHAPTER 5…

  The peasant descended the narrow stairs, leading down to the main floor of the tavern.

  It was late in the afternoon.

  “Hold,” said Boon Thap, from behind the counter, to the left, past which one must move to reach the door.

  The peasant stopped.

  Two others, nearby, looked up. They sat at a stained table to the right of the door, one of several. These were the only others on the main floor of the tavern. They had drinks before them, on the circled tabletop. They had been playing cards, Tanleel. The flat, revolving counterboard, with its pegs, was between them.

  Boon Thap, who was the proprietor of this establishment, drew forth from under the counter a shallow, copper dish. He placed it on the counter. In this dish were four or five coins, pennies.

  “Pay,” said Boon Thap.

  The peasant recalled the dish upstairs. It was in that dish that coins for the pay woman would be placed.

  He was from far away, from another world, indeed, but it was within the empire. He knew that much.

  “Why?” asked the peasant.

  “Pay,” said Boon Thap.

  “I have not eaten here. I have not drunk here,” said the peasant, slowly.

  Boon Thap gestured toward the stairs with his head. “Was she any good?”<
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  “Yes,” said the peasant.

  That was certainly true. She had juiced well. Too, in the beginning, she had shown him things he had not known, things he had not dreamed of in the village. But in the end, after an hour, she had been merely his, helpless, uncontrollable, begging, crying out, as had been Tessa, or Lia, or Sut. In the end she had been not an instructress, only a mastered slave.

  “Did you like her?” asked Boon Thap.

  “Yes,” said the peasant.

  “Pay,” said Boon Thap.

  “I have not eaten here. I have not drunk here,” said the peasant.

  “You pay here,” said Boon Thap, pointing to the copper bowl.

  The two fellows at the table slid their chairs back and came toward the counter. Then they were standing a little behind the peasant, one on each side.

  “You must not make trouble,” said Boon Thap.

  “I am not making trouble,” said the peasant.

  He did not want to make trouble. He did not know this place, or these people. He was a stranger here. Too, he did not want to disappoint Brother Benjamin. Brother Benjamin, in his recent admonitions, had been very explicit on such points. Brother Benjamin had come down all the way from the festung , down to the road, by the village, to bid him farewell. The peasant had knelt in the road, his head bowed, to receive Brother Benjamin’s blessing, administered in old Telnarian, given with the sign of the device. Brother Benjamin had never really expected him to stay in the village, for some reason, it seemed. In his journey the peasant realized that he had sensed this before, that he had known it, somehow, for years. Others had been there, too, to bid him farewell, others with diverse feelings. Doubtless some would miss him. Others were perhaps relieved that such as he was leaving. He had towered among them. He had not seemed to be like them. Too, he was dangerous. His temper was unpredictable, and violent. And he could break the neck of a garn pig in his bare hands.

  “Who am I?” the peasant had asked Brother Benjamin, once again, before he left the village.

  “You are ‘Dog,’ ” had said Brother Benjamin, “of the festung village of Saint Giadini.”

  Then the peasant had left.

  The peasant felt his sack taken from his back by one of the men behind him. He did not interfere, or resist. He was a stranger here. He did not wish to disappoint Brother Benjamin. It was put on the counter. His staff was removed from his hand by the other man, and leant against the counter.

  “I will tell you what you owe,” said Boon Thap. “How much did you pay upstairs?”

  The peasant was silent.

  “What did you give her?” asked Boon Thap.

  “Nothing,” said the peasant.

  “Nothing?” said Boon Thap.

  “She would not take anything,” said the peasant.

  “Liar!” said Boon Thap.

  The peasant noted the resemblance of Boon Thap to a garn pig.

  “Do you think she is a contract woman, kept in a brothel, chained by the neck to her bed, with a slotted coin box bolted to the bed?”

  “No,” said the peasant. He had heard of such things, and many more, he and the others who had worked their passage to Terrenia, from the sailors, when they were not on watch. The coin was put near the box, which was locked, in order to prove that the customer possessed the means wherewith to pay for his pleasure. Afterwards the coin would be placed in the box or not, according to whether or not the customer had found the services of the contract woman satisfactory. As a record was kept of the customers and the rooms to which they went, it was a simple matter, after undoing the locks on the boxes, after business hours, to count the coins and see if the amount of money in the box was correct, if it matched the number of customers. Sanctions, of course, were imposed on the contract women if the funds were short. Sometimes they were beaten, as though they might have been slaves. In such ways are the women encouraged to please the proprietor’s customers, or clients.

  “You are a thief,” said one of the men behind the peasant.

  “I am not a thief,” said the peasant.

  “If you did not pay her, then you will pay me, double,” said Boon Thap.

  “No,” said the peasant.

  “She is my employee,” said the proprietor.

  “No,” said the peasant. “She pays you rent.”

  “I will beat her,” said Boon Thap.

  “But she is a free woman,” said the peasant. He was not sure of these matters. Were free women in cities to be beaten? He did know that the fathers in the village would sometimes beat their wives, and their daughters. Certainly Tessa, and Lia and Sut, had been beaten, sometimes for having been seen with him, but this had not stopped them from coming back, from arranging to meet him secretly, behind the hay sheds, in the varda coops. But he had heard that on Terennia women were not to be beaten, whether they deserved it or not. That was perhaps why the women 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 assailan
t.

  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.