Aiel law. Since most of Aiel life and activity was regulated by ji’e’toh, the Aiel did not have a great many laws. Most of these had to do with water, murder, theft or harming certain persons. While Aiel law was centered around and based on ji’e’toh, the two were not the same. It was possible to incur toh without breaking the law, though it was seldom possible to break the law without incurring toh. Generally, the more serious the offense under the law, the more serious the toh.
The few universal laws were a prohibition on murder, a prohibition on destroying or fouling water, a prohibition on theft (remembering that the fifth is not theft) and a prohibition on harming a Wise One, a pregnant woman, a child or a blacksmith.
These all-encompassing laws had been agreed to over the years by chiefs and Wise Ones. For a violation of one of these, a clan was expected either to hand over the accused for trial or to try the person and carry out punishment themselves. While there were cases of clans managing to avoid doing either, it was usually considered a matter of honor to do exactly that. It was also often considered a point of honor to give a harsher punishment than would have been handed out if the accused had been found guilty by those of the other clan.
Most Aiel trials consisted of the sept chief acting as judge with twelve men and twelve women, all chosen by lot, as a jury. An appeal could be made to the clan chief, who sat as judge with a jury of twelve Wise Ones. In either case, the jury decided guilt or innocence, and the judge decided the penalty.
In some cases a court of twelve Wise Ones could also sit, without a chief. Such a case was the instance of deciding whether to declare someone da’tsang, a despised one.
It was possible to be acquitted in the trial despite being guilty if one had managed to meet the toh incurred.
An Aiel considered it shaming to the extent of putting himself, or herself, outside humanity to fail to appear for a trial or to meet a sentence.
There was a death penalty and none other for: killing a Wise One, killing a pregnant woman, killing or sexually molesting a child and killing a blacksmith. Unlike any other homicide, there were no excuses for these, not even self-defense.
Murder was defined by circumstances; for example, there were times when stabbing a man in the back was not murder (in battle, say, or on a raid) and times when it was. The penalty for murder was usually death, but there were ways to meet the toh involved, although the killer would have to bring the closest survivors of the murdered person (“close” defined first as a surviving spouse or spouses, then the mother, then the father, etc.) to declare to the court that the accused had met toh. While the accused still set his own toh, this was the only time when, in effect, someone else could say whether one had met it sufficiently, though it was not stated in that way.
There was a death penalty for destroying a source of water. Fouling a source of water was a lesser crime, but not by much. Fouling water ranked with breaking oath or violating an agreed truce.
The Aiel death penalty was starkly simple. One was trussed like an animal for slaughter, the throat was slit and the corpse left for the vultures.
There were also strong penalties for harming a Wise One, a pregnant woman, a child or a blacksmith.
Some laws held only inside one clan, as well. They would certainly be enforced on anyone within clan lands, however.
The Aiel had no prisons nor any tradition of confinement for offenses. With the exception of the penalties for murder, destroying a water source, breaking oath, violating truce or fouling water, penalties were usually corporal punishment of some sort, being flogged or beaten publicly. There could be more than one beating, in more than one site. Someone who fouled a water source, for example, could well have expected to be beaten in every hold of the clan that owned the water source; and, if the fouler belonged to another clan, in every hold of the fouler’s own clan as well.
Destroying water was considered so heinous that clans in blood feud had carried out sentence on someone who committed the crime on water owned by the other clan.
Since one was supposed to have set the worth of one’s own honor, it was believed that one should meet the toh incurred by breaking a law entirely on one’s own. As stated, meeting it to a degree that satisfied the jury resulted in acquittal. Attempting to meet it but failing, say, because there wasn’t enough time before the trial, could have been considered mitigation, in proportion. Failing even to attempt to meet toh would certainly have resulted in a harsher sentence.
The Aiel had a very rigid tradition of prisoner treatment. There were gai’shain, there were hostages exchanged for various reasons, there were captured truce-violators, oathbreakers and water-foulers, and there were wetlanders taken in the Waste. (There was no provision for holding someone for trial or for execution of even a death sentence; you were expected to show up at the proper time and place, and failing to do so placed you on a par with vermin.) These were the only classifications they knew. Hostages were well treated unless there was a violation, and what was done then was determined under ji’e’toh by the violation. Any Aiel taken captive expected to be made gai’shain (except for truce-violators and oathbreakers, who were refused the white, and instead were put into black robes and expected a period of humiliation before being handed back to their own people under as humiliating circumstances as could be arranged). Wetlanders taken in the Waste fell into two classes: Treekillers (Cairhienin) who were taken to the tradeholds along the Cliffs of Dawn or the Great Rift and traded like animals; and other wetlanders who lacked the protection of being Tuatha’an or peddlers or gleemen. These unprotected wetlanders were usually killed out of hand, but sometimes given a chance to find their way back out, often naked and with a single waterskin.
Truce-violators and oathbreakers were allowed no garments but the black robes. They were worked, but generally at useless labor. If they were given useful labor, it was always under humiliating circumstances, such as nakedness. Beatings with a strap or switch were common, and they were directed almost like animals, a word of command, a gesture, a slap with a strap to get them started.
Examples of useless labor: Digging a deep hole, often with an implement as small as a spoon, then filling it in only to dig another and fill it, and so on. Being made to carry a heavy sack of rocks or sand around on one’s back. Being made to run with a container of water; if you spilled any, the rest of the contents would be all the liquid you got that day, and you were forced to run to the point of collapsing. Running between two piles of dirt, scooping up a flat basket full at one place and emptying it at the other; when you had moved all of the dirt from one place to the other, you took it back. Pushing a rock ahead of you across the ground on your knees. Pulling a weighted sled across the ground for hours.
Examples of humiliation: The beating, of course, and the enforced public nudity. Carrying water to or serving gai’shain, as though you were gai’shain to gai’shain. Being made to kneel, to offer things with your wrists turned up, to lower your eyes when speaking to others or behave in other ways the Aiel considered submissive. Various forms of bondage—being caged, confined or bound—were considered very shaming.
Da’tsang (Old Tongue for “despised one,” or “one who is despised”) was the name given to criminals among the Aiel—criminals as opposed to simply being somehow on the wrong side of ji’e’toh, though a persistent violation of ji’e’toh or a refusal to meet an obvious toh might well have resulted in this designation. Generally it was for those who had committed rape, or broken truce or oath, or fouled water, or stolen (as the Aiel saw it, the fifth taken on a raid certainly did not count), or killed or sexually abused a child, a pregnant woman, a Wise One or a blacksmith. (Among the Aiel, ordinary murder was a thing for vengeance by family, sept, clan or society, depending on who did the killing and under what circumstances. The murderer was not da’tsang.)