“I must go,” said the peasant.
The warm, moist lips of the pay woman pressed against his thigh. It was a kiss, such as might have been that of a slave to her master.
The peasant stepped back from her.
“Return to the bed,” he told her.
She obeyed, and knelt there, her knees half lost in the bed covers, watching him.
“You do not seem like the other women of this world,” he said.
“How so?” she said.
“They seem vain, cold, sluggish, petulant, inert,” he said. He found them not of much interest. He did not know who could.
“They are equals,” she said.
He did not contest this. He did not even, really, understand it. What did it mean to be equal, really? He thought them superior in some ways to men. Certainly they were more beautiful.
“Legally,” she explained, “by law.”
“How can law make what is so exquisitely different the same?” he asked.
“It cannot,” she said.
“You are not like the other women here,” he said.
“No,” she said. “I am not like them.”
“I wonder if they are really women.”
“They are women,” she said. “It is only that they are sleeping.”
“‘Sleeping’?” he asked.
“It is only that they have not yet met their master,” she said.
He regarded her, not speaking.
“Every slave needs her master,” she said. “She is incomplete without him.”
The peasant, not understanding these things, drew shut his cloak, and picked up his sack, that with the long straps, by means of which he could carry it on his back. When he had taken ship at Venitzia, it had carried several loaves of bread. Only part of a loaf was now left.
“You are not from this world,” said the pay woman.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“From the way you handled me,” she said.
“I have a coin,” he said. “Are you certain that you will not accept it?”
“Keep it,” she said.
His staff was by the door.
“If you are questioned,” she said, “tell Boon Thap that you have paid.”
“But I have not,” he said.
“Tell him so, anyway,” she said.
“I do not lie,” he said.
“He will have gone by now, anyway,” she said. “I am sure of it.”
In time, of course, the peasant would have left the vicinity of the village, one of those within the tithing fields of the festung of Sim Giadini. He was strong, and ambitious, and curious, and wondered about the world, and worlds, beyond his village, and the ships that came and went each month at Venitzia, accomplishing their periodic rendezvous with what, to him, seemed no more than a star moving in the sky. It was said to be a vessel, a vessel which could fly like a bird between worlds. Often Brother Benjamin had pointed it out to him. Brother Benjamin, it seemed, had never really expected him to stay. In any event, the peasant would not have taken the hood, and habit. That had never interested him. Too, his decision to leave the village had been hastened by the trouble over Pig. Gathron had struck him with a post. The post had then been broken in two over Gathron’s back. It had taken Gathron no more than two minutes to die. He had died squirming, gasping, eyes bulging, staring, at the peasant’s feet. The peasant had watched this intently, for he had never seen a man die before. But he had seen animals die, of course, and had killed many of them, and then butchered them. So, too, had other young men of the village. He, and the others were familiar with blood, and killing. It was part of their way of life. They thought little of it. Perhaps it is well to make that clear. It may then be easier to understand part of what follows if that is not forgotten. We are not speaking of present times. We are speaking of other times, and other places. He had watched Gathron. It was not much different, Gathron’s dying, from that of the garn pigs, some seven or eight hundred pounds in weight, whose head he and he alone of all the men of the village could snap to the side with his bare hands. The blow was delivered with the flat of the hand, the animal’s neck held in place by the left arm. Still, this was, perhaps, one of the most dangerous, and fearful, things about the peasant, his temper. It would come, in time, to be feared by armies.