'Get out, before I whip you,' growled the sergeant. 'Fala, get your things and go to the barracks. Neh, leave the silks. You'll not need them there. If you're still here after I've finished my morning meal, I'll whip you.'
'Let her come with me,' said Nekkar.
The whip's snap laid open his cheek.
Fala screamed and stumbled away into the interior. The women who had been watching from within scattered like mice.
Nekkar let the blood drip as he hobbled away, his bad ankle wobbling, while the sergeant shouted angrily at his women and his slaves and his attendants. No whip, no arrow, no spear followed the ostiary to the gate that opened into the courtyard in back, but the cursing, laughing guards refused to let him in to check on the lads imprisoned in the pens.
With such dignity as he could gather, he set off on his usual resting day round, only today he had to tell each compound expecting a rations chit that today there wquld be nothing and that he did not know when the next rations chits would be available. He did not tell them that the sergeant was hoarding all the provisions and handing them out to a few select merchants to sell at inflated prices.
Folk certainly saw his bleeding cheek and marked the whip's slash, but none asked. He was glad of that, because had they asked he would have to tell them the truth: He was whipped because he could not spare a young woman from abuse, a grandfather from' starving, young men from being enslaved to the army or cleansed on the post, rice and nai from being stolen, children from dying in the brickyards.
He walked his round as always. Today, empty-handed.
He returned before the curfew to the temple, and Vassa cleaned the dried blood off the cut but did not ask him how he had come by it. He counted his people, and on this evening every single one came home, all except Kellas. He led the dusk prayers, then sat on his porch as the night bell tolled.
'What humiliations is Fala enduring?' he asked Vassa, who sat cross-legged beside him shaping a basket with her cunning hands. She needed no light to do this work, having woven all her life. If she did not keep her hands busy, she often said, she would go crazy. 'Will Grandfather's spirit pass the gate tonight? What will happen to those sent south?'
'They have come to love cruelty because it feeds them,' she said.
'Must I ask one of mine to go to the barracks and offer herself in place of Fala?'
Her handwork did not cease. 'What makes you think they will honor the bargain? They may just take the other one as well, and then two will suffer.'
'That is a story we tell ourselves. So we can sit here, and eat what we have, and listen to our young ones sleep at peace. Yet if we opened our ears, we would hear nothing but weeping.'
'True, but it doesn't change the truth of what I say,' said Vassa. 'When people see you in the street, they discover their hearts are still strong. Thus they can endure another day.'
Another day. Even another month. For how long before they succumbed to despair and obeyed while telling themselves it was for the best? Yet to voice such thoughts aloud was to start down that terrible path, so he kept silence.
27
Cursed rocks.
Nallo could not imagine a more idiotic training regimen, yet here she was flying sweeps with her new wing hauling a cursed basket of cursed rocks, each rock about the size of her fist. Poor Tumna took most of the strain, although the motion of banking or rising caused the basket to bump so heavily against Nallo's legs she was sure she'd end up mottled with bruises.
As if hauling a gods-rotted basket of rocks to lob at miscreants would do any good.
They flew out in wings of six: from her position she could see Warri and his eagle Dogkiller out on the right flank of the wing. She was next, flying at slightly higher elevation, and inside of her but lower flew Pil with Sweet in the second striker position. First striker, and head of the wing, was Peddonon with Jabi, flying yet lower beyond and in front of Pil. The third striker and left flank were Kanness with Lovely — a worse-tempered raptor than Tumna — and Orya with lazy Candle. The eagles tolerated each other — they had to, or no reeve hall could function — but Peddonon had had to try several different formations with the eighteen reeves left to him at Law Rock in order to send out wings whose eagles wouldn't take territorial swipes at one another. Even so, Tumna was cursed suspicious of Candle, enough that Nallo felt a tug whenever the raptor looked that way.
They had taken off from Law Rock midmorning and pushed south, practicing maneuvers and resting between times on powerful high thermals. That the land should look so peaceful astonished her. With the sun shining above, the river flowed like a spill of light away to their right. The variegated colors of the dry season gave the landscape an intense texture: fields stubbled with
gold stalks not yet turned under; ponds fringed with a wrack of withered weeds and cracked dry soil where the waters had retreated; orchards and woodland seeping green. Dusty irrigation ditches and empty paths and minor roads netted the land, seeming almost to have some deeper pattern when seen from on high.
A whistle caught her ear. Pil was flagging with an orange cloth: Alert! Follow close! She tugged on the jesses, and Tumna, sighting an object on the ground, followed Sweet and Jabi. Nallo grabbed her own orange flag on its stick, thumping a knee against the basket while she was at it. Eihi! Pain throbbed, a lump blossoming beneath the skin.
This new formation was total rubbish, a cursed stupid plan.
Pil flagged with the orange and white stripe that meant: Attack!
The hells!
Tumna dropped, wings outstretched, and they sailed over woodland broken with clearings, unturned fields, and distant villages in the midst of rings of cultivated land. When she saw what Peddonon was aiming for, her heart seemed to rise up into her throat so she could not breathe. A heavily loaded cart pulled by two dray beasts was being coaxed across the ford of a substantial stream, a tributary river that wound toward the River Istri, now out of sight to the west. The dray beasts had decided they would rather wallow in the water, because they were trying to pull off the gravel bar that sliced partway across the ford and on into deeper waters where they could relax. One soldier was whipping the dray master; two others were whipping the animals. Another pointed at the eagles, alerting his fellows. There were too many to attack, twenty at least.
Yet Peddonon cut low, Kanness approaching from behind. Pil climbed, circling back.
Were they really going to try to hit this cadre?
Peddonon swooped over the ford as the dray beasts took advantage of the soldiers' distraction to pull hard for the wallow. The wagon began to slide off the gravel bar.
Peddonon upended his basket. Two arrows flashed upward through the hail of stones. Unlike the rocks, the spent arrows fell harmlessly back to earth.
Splashes, shouts, and the panicked blundering bellows of the dray beasts marked the impact of the first volley. Kanness came right behind, dumping his basket. A stone struck a dray beast
right on the head, and the animal staggered violently, snapping its yokes as it collapsed to its knees. The cart yawed, tipped, teetered; the ox toppled, and the second, still bellowing, thrashed to try to break free and keep its head above as the cart tumbled over and into the deeper water.
Nallo had overshot. She tugged so hard on the jesses that Tumna objected with an outraged chuff, but the raptor had her hunting blood up; she banked sharply, returning for the kill.
The dray master was chest deep in water, trying to free the beasts. One soldier floated facedown in the water as Orya's basket, cut loose, spun earthward in the wake of a spent volley of rocks. Another man fled toward the far shore, his bow arm dangling limply, his weapon lost as he tried to drag his sword free with the other.