"He is either of Port Kar," she said, shifting the gants on her shoulder, "or he was intending to be of Port Kar, for what other reason would one go to Port Kar."
For a long time Ho-Hak said nothing. He had a broad head, with a heave, calm face.
I heard the squealing of a domestic tarsk running nearby, its feet scuttling in the woven rence of the island, as on a mat. A child was crying out, chasing it. I heard some domestic marsh gants making their piping call. The wandered freely on the island, leaving it to feed, then returning later. Wild marsh gants, captured, even as young as gantlings, cannot be domesticated; on the other had, eggs, at the hatching point, gathered from floating gant nests, are sometimes brought to the island; the hatchlings, interestingly, if not permitted to see an adult gant for the first week of their life, then adopt the rence island as their home, and show no fear of human beings; they will come and go in the wild as they please, feeding and flying, but will always, and frequently, return to the rence island, their hatching place; if the rence island, however, should be destroyed, they revert entirely to the wild; in the domesticated state, it will invariably permit themselves to be picked up and handled.
There were several reasonably important looking individuals gathered about, and, as it turned out, these were headmen from various other rence islands in the vicinity. A given rence island usually holds about fifty or sixty persons. The men from several of these islands had cooperated in my pursuit and capture. Normally, as I may have mentioned, these communities are isolated from one another, but it was now near the Autumnal Equinox, and the month of Se'Kara was shortly to begin. For rence growers, the first of Se'Kara, the date of the Autumnal Equinox, is a time of festival. By that time most of the year's rence will have been cut, and great stocks of rence paper, gathered in rolls like cord wood and covered with woven rence mats, will have been prepared.
Between Se'Kara and the winter solstice, which occurs on the first of Se'Var, the rence will be sold or bartered, sometimes by taking it to the edge of the delta, sometimes by being contacted by rence merchants, who enter the delta in narrow barges, rowed by slaves, in order to have first pick of the product. The first of Se'Var is also a date of festival, it might be mentioned, but this time the festival is limited to individual, isolated rence islands. With the year's rence sold, the communities do not care to lie too closely to one another; the primary reason is that, in doing so, they would present too inviting a target for the "tax collectors" of Port Kar. Indeed, I surmised, there was risk enough, and great risk, coming together even in Se'Kara. The unsold stores of rence paper on the islands at this time would, in themselves, be a treasure, though, to be sure, a bulky one.
But I felt there was something strange going on, for there must have been five or six headmen on the island with Ho-Hak at this time. It is seldom, even in Se'Kara, that so many rence islands would gather for festival. Usually it would be two or three. At such times there is drinking of rence beer, steeped, boiled and fremented from crushed seeds and the whitish pith of the plant; singing; games; contests and courtship, for the young people of the rence islands too seldom meet those of the other communities. Why should there be so many rence islands in the same vicinity, even though it was near the first of Se'Kara? Surely the capture of one traveler in the delta did not warrant this attention, and, of course, the islands must have been gathered together even before I had entered the area.
"He is a spy," said one of the other men present, who stood beside Ho-Hak. This man was tall, and strong looking. He carried a marsh spear. On his forehead there was tied a headband formed of the pearls of the Vosk sorp.
I wondered what in particular there might be to spy about on a rence island. Ho-Hak still did not speak, but sat on the shell of the Vosk sorp, looking down at the weapons, mine, before him.
I squirmed a bit in the marsh vine that contained me.
"Do not move, Slave," snapped the girl, who stooo beside me.
Immediately the two loops of marsh vine knotted about my neck tightened, each taunt, pulling against the other.
The girl's hands were in my hair and she yanked my head back.
"He is of Port Kar," she said, her hands in my hair, "or intended to be of Port Kar!" She glared at Ho-Hak, as though demanding that he speak.
But Ho-Hak did not speak, nor did he seem particularly to notice the girl. Angrily she removed her hands from my hair, thrusting my head to one side. Ho-Hak seemed intent on regarding the leather-wrapped bow of supple Ka-la-na wood.
The women of rence growers, when in their own marshes, do no veil themselves, as is common among Gorean women, particularly of the cities. Moreover, they are quite capable of cutting rence, preparing it, hunting for their own food and, on the whole, of existing, if they wish it, by themselves. There are few tasks of the rence communities which they cannot perform as well as men. Their intelligence, and the work of their hands, is needed by the small communities. Accordingly they suffer little inhibitiion in the matters of speaking out and expressing themselves.
Ho-Hak reached down and unwrapped the leather from the yellow bow of supple Ka-la-na. The roll of sheaf and flight arrows spilled out to the woven mat that was the surface of the rence island.
There were gasps from two or three of the men present. I gathered they had seen small straight bows, but that this was the first long bow they had seen. Ho-Hak stood up. The bow was taller than several of the men present. He handed the bow to the blondish girl, she with blue eyes, who had been instrumental in my capture.
"String it," said he to her.
Angrily she threw the marsh gants from her shoulder and took the bow. She seized the bow in her left had and braced the bottom of it against the instep of her left foot, taking the hemp cord whipped in silk, the string, in her right hand. she struggled.
At last, angrily, she thrust the bow back into the hands of Ho-Hak. Ho-Hak looked dow at me, the large ears inclining toward me lightly. "This is the peasant bow, is it not?" he asked. "Called the great bow, the long bow?" "It is," I said.
"Long ago," said he, "in a village once, on the lower slopes of the Thentis range, about a campfire, I heard sing of this bow."
I said nothing.
He handed the bow to the fellow with the headband of pearls of the Vosk sorp bound about his forehead. "String it," said Ho-hak.
The fellow handed his marsh spear to a companion and turned to the bow. He took it confidently. Then the look of confindence vanished. Then his face reddened, and then the veins stood out on his forehead, and then he cried out in disgust, and then he threw the bow back at Ho-Hak.
Ho-Hak looked at it and then set it against the instep of his left foot, taking the bow in his left hand and the string in his right.
There was a cry of awe from about the circle as he strung the bow.
I admired him. He had strength, and much strength, for he had strung the bow smoothly, strength it might be from the galleys, but strength, and superb strength.
"Well done," said I to him.
Then Ho-Hak took, from among the arrows on the mat, the leather bracer and fastened it about his left forearm, that the arm not be lacerated by the string, and took the small tab as well, putting the first and second fingers on his right hand through, that in drawing the string the flesh might not be cut to the bone. The he took, from the unwrapped roll of arrows, now spilled on the elather, a flight arrow, and this, to my admiration, he fitted to the bow and drew it to the very pile itself.
He held the arrow up, pointing it into the sky, at an angle of some fifty degrees.
Then there came the clean, swift, singing flash of the bowstring and the flight arrow was aloft.