The shaman smiled. She relaxed somewhat.
"That is right. But that doesn't mean that you can see what I'm thinking. A very shrewd person could guess that I felt that way. I'll ask you some more questions.
"For instance, one of the things that makes me think you might be from the Lord is that thing which cut the men and the grewigg in half. With it he could have killed the whole tribe. Why, then, did he throw it away after killing only a few?"
"Because the Lord told him to do so. He was to use the deadly gift of the Lord only to show you that he did not come from this world. But the Lord did not want him to slay an entire tribe. How then could we lead you out of this place to sembart?"
"That is well spoken. You may indeed be what you say. Or you might just be a very clever woman. Tell me, how will you lead us to sembart!"
Anana said, "I didn't say I will. I said I might. What happens depends upon you and the rest of your tribe. First, you have to cut our bonds and then treat us as vicars of the Lord. However, I will say this. I will guide you to the dwelling palace of the Lord. When we get to it, we'll enter it and then go through a pass to sembart."
The shaman raised thick woolly eyebrows. "You know where the Lord's dwelling is?"
She nodded. "It's far away. During the journey, you will be tested."
The chief said, "We saw the dwelling of the Lord once countless light periods ago. We were frightened when we saw it moving along a plain. It was huge and had many... um... things like great sticks ... rising from it. It shone with many lights from many stones. We watched it for a while, then fled, afraid the Lord would be offended and deal harshly with us."
Shakann said, "What is the purpose of the thing that makes music?"
"That will get us into the dwelling of the Lord. By the way, we call his dwelling a palace."
"Bahdahss?"
"That's good enough. But the ... Horn ... belongs to me. You have no right to it. The Lord won't like your taking it."
"Here!" the chief said, thrusting it at her.
"You wronged me when you raped me. I do not know whether the Lord will forgive you for that or not."
The chief spread his hands out in astonishment. "But, I did no wrong! It is the custom for the chief to mount all female captives. All chiefs do it."
Anana had counted on avenging herself some day. She hadn't known if she'd be satisfied with castrating him or also blinding him. However, if it was the custom... he really hadn't thought he was doing anything evil. And if she'd been more objective about it, she would have known that, too.
After all, aside from making her nauseated, he hadn't hurt her. She'd suffered no psychic damage, and there wasn't any venereal disease. Nor could he make her pregnant.
"Very well," she said. "I won't hold that against you."
The chiefs expression said, "Why should you?" but he made no comment.
The shaman said, "What about the two men? Are they your husbands? I ask that because some tribes, when they have a shortage of women, allow the women to have more than one husband."
"No! They are under my command."
She might as well get the upper hand on the two while she had the chance. Urthona would rave, but he wouldn't try to usurp her leadership. He wouldn't want to discredit her, since her story had saved his life.
She held out her hands, and the chief used a flint knife to sever the thongs. She rose and ordered the chiefs mother to be brought to her. Thikka approached haughtily, then turned pale under the dirt when her son explained the situation to her.
"I won't hurt you," Anana said. "I just want my jeans and boots back."
Thikka didn't know what jeans or boots meant, so Anana used sign language. When they were off, Anana ordered her to take the jeans to the channel and wash them. Then she said, "No. I'll do it. You probably wouldn't know how."
She was afraid the woman might find the knife.
The chief called the entire tribe in and explained who their captives, ex-captives, really were. There were a lot of oh's and ah's, or the Wendow equivalents, and then the women who'd beaten her fell on their knees and begged forgiveness. Anana magnanimously blessed them.
Urthona's and McKay's bonds were cut. Anana told them how she had gained their freedom. However, as it turned out, they were not as free as they wished. Though the chief gave each a moosoid, he delegated men to be their bodyguards. Anana suspected that the shaman was responsible for this.
"We can try to escape any time there's an opportunity," she told her uncle. "But we'll be safer if we're with them while we're looking for your palace. Once we find it, if we find it, we can outwit them. However, I hope the search doesn't take too long. They might wonder why the emissaries of the Lord are having such a hard time locating it."
She smiled. "Oh, yes. "You're my subordinates, so please act as if you are. I don't think that shaman is fully convinced about my story."
Urthona looked outraged. McKay said, "It looks like a good deal to me, Miss Anana. No more beatings, we can ride instead.of walking, eat plenty, and three women already said they'd like to have babies by me. One thing about them, they ain't got no color prejudice. That's about all I can say for them, though."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ANOTHER DAY AND night passed. The thunder and lightning showed no signs of diminishing. Anana, watching the inferno from the pass, could not imagine how anything, plants or animals, escaped the fury. The chief told her that only about one sixteenth of the trees were laid low and new trees grew very quickly. Many small beasts, hiding now, in burrows and caves, would emerge when the storms were over.
By then the plains were thick with life and the mountains were zebra-striped with lines of just-arriving migrators. The predators, the baboons, wild dogs, moas, and big cats, were killing as they pleased. But the plain was getting so crowded that there was no room to stampede away from the hunters. Sometimes, the frightened antelopes and elephants ran toward the killers and trampled them.
The valley was a babel of animal and bird cries, screams, trumpetings, buglings, croakings, bellowings, mooings, roarings.
At this place the waterway banks were about ten feet above the surface. The ground sloped upwards from this point towards the sea-land pass where the banks reached their maximum height above the surface of the water, almost a hundred feet. The chief gave orders to abandon the moosoids and swim across the channel if a stampede headed their way. The children and women jumped into the water and swam to the opposite bank and struggled up its slope. The men stayed behind to control the nervous grewigg. These were bellowing, rolling their eyes, drawing their lips back to show their big teeth, and dancing around. The riders were busy trying to quiet them, but it was evident that if the storm didn't stop very spon, the plains animals would bolt and with them the moosoids. As it was, the riders were not far behind the beasts in nervousness. Though they knew that the lightning wouldn't reach out between the mountains and strike them, the "fact" that the Lord was working overtime in his rage made them uneasy.
Anana had crossed the channel with the women and children. She hadn't liked leaving her gregg behind. But it was better to be here if a stampede did occur. The only animals on this side were those able to get up the steep banks: baboons, goats, small antelopes, foxes. There were a million birds on this side, however, and more were flying in. The squawking and screaming made it difficult to hear anyone more than five feet away even if you shouted.
Urthona and McKay were on their beasts, since it was expected that all men would handle them. Urthona looked worried. Not because of the imminent danger but because she had the Horn. He fully expected her to run away then. There was no one who could stop her on this side of the channel. It would be impossible for anyone on the other side to run parallel along the channel with the hope of eventually cutting her off. He, or they, could never get through the herds jammed all the way from the channel to the base of the mountains.