Duwan nodded. "You speak with wisdom, Tambol."
"No, please," Jai wailed.
"I will take the garments of one of these," Tambol said, waving a hand toward the two pongs who still crouched near the fallen tall brother, awed and fearful. "Female, if there are no pong garments for you, use a pong tunic from the other male there."
"Master," Jai wailed.
"One day you will have fine garments," Duwan said, taking the fur mantle from Jai's shoulder.
Jai resigned herself. "Master, if you are to be Devourer, your hair must be trimmed."
"This is so," Tambol said.
"How will this be done?" Duwan asked.
"I have some experience," Jai said. She disappeared into the hut once more, came back with cutting instruments, seated Duwan on the stump of a tall brother and, for the first time in his life, Duwan felt his hair being severed. There was no pain, but he felt oddly light when it was finished and Jai held up a mirror for him to see a face that looked odd and strange without its mantle of fronds.
"Now you are a proper master," Tambol said. "All that is needed is this." He handed Duwan the dead enemy's lash. "It is, when not in use, worn coiled over the left shoulder."
Duwan grimaced with distaste, but allowed Tambol to position the lash.
"Master, we are ready," Jai said. She had dressed herself in an all-covering, robelike garment she'd found inside the hut. Tambol had taken the smock of one of the pong males and had, on Duwan's orders, sent the two pongs traveling toward the west, to join the free runners.
"There is one thing more," Duwan said. He strode to the fallen Devourer, hoisted the body effortlessly and threw it into the hut. "That," he said, pointing toward the tiny, pathetic forearm that was being attacked by ground-crawling insects. Without hesitation, Tambol picked up the arm. "Toss it inside, too," Duwan ordered. Duwan forced himself to enter the stench of the hut once more. He took down a lamp, poured its oil over the heaped covers on the bed, drew a burning branch from the fireplace, threw it into the pooled oil, and stood there muttering a prayer for the dead young one as the flames leaped high and began to fill the hut with smoke.
He stood in the yard for a long time as the flames ate their way upward and burst through the roof and then, as if in one giant explosion, began to consume the hut. Without looking back, without a word, he started toward the east.
As the days passed, settlements became more frequent. Usually Duwan avoided them, but, to test his pose as a Devourer, he choose to pass through one two-hut settlement where he saw only four Enemy males. There was one problem. He did not speak the language of the Devourers.
"That doesn't matter," Jai told him. "They will think nothing of your speaking your own language, although some of your words do sound odd. You must tell them you are from a far place. Actually, the masters mostly speak as we speak even when they are speaking among themselves."
"You speak the Enemy's tongue, do you not?"
"I do," she said.
"Listen, then. If something is said in the Enemy's tongue that is threatening, warn me."
As they walked into the settlement clearing, Jai felt new importance, and she walked, perhaps, with just a bit too much pride for a pong, but the enemy males driving slaves in the gathering of the grass nuts took no notice of her, past a glance. Their eyes were on the tall, impressive figure of Duwan.
"Greetings," Duwan said. "I have traveled far."
"Welcome," one of them said. "Cool yourself at our well. And be our guest at the evening meal."
"You are kind," Duwan said. "I will accept your offer to cool myself at the well, but I beg understanding for we have far to go and must continue our travels to cover as much distance as possible before darkness."
"You come from the west?" another of the enemy asked.
"From the southwest," Duwan said, for both Tambol and Jai had told him that it was said that to the southwest were unknown lands leading to a great, waterless desert.
"The unknown lands?" one of the enemy asked. "We would hear of these lands," another said.
"There are mountains, and there the great farls roam," Duwan said.
"And then the land where the sun bakes the earth into a dryness and there grow only sparse, dry things." He'd never seen a desert, so he was picturing in his mind the approaches to the land of fires.
"Odd and terrible," said a Devourer, shaking his head. "Stay, friend, and tell us more as we celebrate the sacrifice. Our females are even now preparing it."
At that moment Duwan heard a cry of terror and pain from one of the huts and his hand shot to his sword hilt. Tambol, seeing this reaction, came forward.
"Forgive me, masters, may the female and myself have water?" Duwan forced his rage to die, to be swallowed.
Another life had been taken, but he told himself that he, alone, could not stop the customs of the Enemy. He reminded himself of his mission.
"I beg understanding," he said, bowing, and backing away. He saw Tambol and Jai drawing water. "Drink your fill quickly," he yelled, "or feel the bite of my lash."
Now they began passing through small villages. Duwan was discovering that the Enemy was, indeed, many in number. And he was becoming more confident. He found that if he pressed on, moving with purpose, his head high and his gaze forward, he and his companions were not bothered as they made their way past more elaborate dwellings, through the dusty streets of the villages.
And everywhere he saw the misery of the Drinkers, the pongs, the enslaved ones. Each village had its slave pen and there the pongs huddled when not working, barely sheltered from the elements with crude coverings, eating greedily of the meager ration of food allowed them by the masters. And in one village he saw the raw, obscenely naked body of a pong, peeled and hung on a post by lashed ropes that cut into the exposed, tender, bleeding flesh. He had to fight to hide his shock and disgust.
"You," he said imperiously to Tambol, "ask some pong what this one did."
Tambol talked with a cringing local pong and came to report. "He was caught stealing food, master."
"Thus should he be served," Duwan said, for two Enemy males were within hearing. "Remember this example, pong, lest it be your carcass that hangs there."
Away from the village, on the open road that led toward the city of Arutan, capital of the Devourer king, Farko, Duwan walked with his head high, his eyes closed to the brightness of Du, and prayed for guidance, for strength, for the ability to continue to control his desire to draw his weapons and slay the Enemy. For in his anger and anguish Duwan longed to make the dusty streets and roads run with blood until, at last, he, himself, overcome by numbers, lay there at peace, no longer tormented by the pain that came to him because of the waste of Drinker life. From a distance, the city of Arutan exploded into view like some unnatural growth on a plain of high, green grass. Roads radiated toward the city from all directions, and they were well traveled. Outward bound groups of pongs, laden with bales, packets, baskets, labored under the lashes of the Devourers. Groups traveling toward the city carried the produce of the forests and the fields.
The city was gray. Around it a wall, built of the stones of that region, rose in dark threat. Behind the wall the gray, grim buildings reached into the sky like some supreme insult to Du, not of the earth, not for the earth, but ripped from the earth, dug from the earth to leave gaping holes, stones as gray as the inside of the caves of the free runners.
Outside the walls peddlers hawked their wares. Food, drink, garments. It had been a long and thirsty walk across the plain surrounding the city.
"How does one obtain something to drink?" Duwan asked Tambol.
"Would my Master like the wine of Arutan, or some fruit juice?" Tambol asked.