He regretted afterward that he had protested at all. Maeander was there to hear it and seemed to take pleasure out of his begging. The appointment held, and so began a new period of misery in Rialus’s life.
There was some satisfaction to be taken from the fact that the Numrek ignored Hanish’s proclamations whenever they felt like it. They did not stay in the Mein, or even in Aushenia, as they had agreed to. Instead, they spread down toward the south. Calrach himself set up his court in a seized villa along the Talayan coast. Here, at least, Rialus found the warm weather he so enjoyed. But sun on the skin proved to be scant reward for other miseries of his daily existence.
What activities served to pass the time for the Numrek? What sort of culture did they have and how did they choose to enjoy the bounty their service to Hanish in the war afforded them? Well, they loved roasting themselves in the sun, as if this alone was a pursuit worthy of reasonable beings. On clear days they would lie naked on the sand of the seashore, only moving so as to roll from one side to another, sipping drinks fetched for them by Acacian servants. The young ones were always in among the adults, being coddled one moment and knocked around the next, always afforded a clear vantage to any and all of the carnage.
When not lying about in the sun, they would rise long enough to beat one another with clubs, with curved wooden sticks that often broke bones, with knives they deemed just short enough not to be fatal. They took pride in acquiring scars. Rialus made the mistake of showing his squeamishness around wounds, which meant only that he was daily presented with new gashes and tears, the Numrek watching his face and never failing to be amused by his reaction, no matter how hardened a faзade he tried to present.
He made another mistake regarding the spear-chucking game the Numrek enjoyed. It involved sending a slave dashing forward through an obstacle course as a spearman hurled a selection of javelins at him. Rialus once admitted that he found the spectacle amusing. In answer Calrach made Rialus himself run the course. He had pulled him from his seat and hefted a spear and smiled at him. “The trick,” he said, “is to be lucky.”
Rialus had never run so fast in his life. His heart pounded so hard he imagined others could see it thumping against his chest. Each instant he was in the course, he felt at the edge of death. The spears thudded just behind him each step of the way, marking his progress. He was sure he would either die or spend the rest of his life twisted around some festering impalement. None of the spears struck him, however. And it was not until his heart calmed enough so that he could hear over its bass notes that he realized Calrach and his companions were howling with glee. Calrach had not been trying to hit him. It was a game to them. Everything was, and try as he might Rialus could not find the courage not to make a fool of himself.
“Yes, Neptos, yes!” one of Calrach’s lieutenants said. “Very amusing. You are right!”
They showed no inclination to higher forms of art. No painting or sculpture, no poetry or recorded history. They had no written language. They saw no need for it. In fact, their primitive nature went beyond anything Rialus had observed before. No function of the body embarrassed them. They would eat, belch, fart, defecate, fornicate, or even self-stimulate in clear view of anybody, without regard for sex or age or status. Rialus so amused them by seeking seclusion for his bodily functions that eventually he had to give up on privacy. It made him the butt of jokes; whereas dropping his trousers and piddling in the middle of the courtyard roused not the slightest interest. He sometimes wondered if the Numrek were, in fact, a race of human beings at all. Nine years at his post and he had yet to form a definitive answer to the question.
He had learned the Numrek tongue, however. It was the strangest of languages. Even the simpler words were many-pronged monstrosities. They required contortions of the tongue and inhalations of breath and guttural inflections from low in the throat.
The evening Calrach chose to bestow upon him his first official mission began as any other banquet night. Rialus, at someone’s humorous prompting, no doubt, was situated between two young women, concubines who were attached to no headman in particular. They did not look much different from the males, frankly. They brushed against him often; reached over him to grab morsels of food; prodded him with playful, thick-knuckled fingers.
The worst thing about this placement was that the females actually aroused Rialus. He hated it, was disgusted by it, could not understand it; but truth be known he sat uncomfortably positioned around a rigidity at his groin. The women had a smell to them, a syrupy sort of scent like a fruit overripened and starting to turn. It was not a pleasant smell, but somewhere imbedded in it was an invitation to carnal excess. It was a sort of confused torture to endure the young women’s presence through the evening. Calrach seemed to understand his discomfiture and to relish it. Indeed, the chieftain never tired of observing and commenting on Rialus’s failings.
“Rialus, you still don’t care for our food?” Calrach asked. “How can this be so? I have a dish for you. Try.” As a servant set down a bowl of the concoction, Calrach described it as a stew made of the intestines of their rhinos, fermented in the milk of the females of the species, and stored for months in barrels. It was splashed liberally with alcohol before serving.
He watched Rialus touch a spoonful of the stuff to his lips. Unimpressed, he said, “Perhaps your stomach is too weak for this, like the rest of you.”
The female to his left said, “There’s only one part of him that’s even the slightest bit hard.”
“There is a great deal about my race you still must learn,” Calrach said. “Another year or so, and you’ll be Numrek yourself. And proud of it.” He guffawed at the absurdity of this, and then switched gears. “Rialus, tell me, do you think Hanish Mein honors us? We Numrek, I mean. We chosen ones. Does he insult us?”
Rialus said, “I am not sure what you mean.”
“Does he insult us?”
Calrach had a habit of doing this-repeating the last thing he said as if to demonstrate that all possible answers, meanings, interpretations were contained in the words themselves, if only Rialus would look more carefully.
Rialus asked, “What taste of insult have you felt?”
Calrach shrugged, tossed a hand about, scratched his cheek forcefully enough to tear away a few scraps of peeling skin. “Not a taste, so much. A smell, though. There is a smell I don’t like. My grandfather used to speak of such a smell. It came from the Lothan, before they turned on us and drove us from their world. We used to be their personal army. You know that, don’t you? We were their allies for many generations, but they used us foully in the end. If I have one wish, Rialus, it’s to one day return to the Other Lands and bring the Lothan a new smell. You understand me.”
Rialus hated it when he said that. He did so often, especially on occasions when Rialus did not understand him in the slightest. There was no use pushing it, however. Calrach had an orbital pattern of discourse that one had to adjust to. He would come back to the point later if it was something that mattered to him.
Then the drums sounded, announcing the arrival of the main course. The evening was to feature a dish Rialus had not tried before, an event that always troubled him. The entire table before them suddenly rose, lifted above their seated heads by servants at each corner. It passed over Rialus, casting him in shadow. The young woman to his right grasped him across the bicep and purred something in his ear, an expression of anticipatory pleasure. By the time the first table cleared him the next table was being lowered into place.