Cheeky saw Blade standing in the shadow of a hut, watching the fighters ride past. Blade's face showed that he was not happy. Cheeky wished he could enter the Master's mind and find out more about his unhappiness. However, Moyla did not like spirit speech between Cheeky and Blade. When he tried to talk to the Master, she would be angry for days at a time.
If he could only learn how to reach his master to find out what he was thinking without either his Master or Moyla knowing! But he did not think he could do that without his Master's help in the first place. This was not good. Also, if his Master was angry with him about Moyla, would the Blade help him at all? The Master did not think like a female, but he seemed to think that he and Cheeky were as littermates to one another.
Perhaps if Cheeky brought to the Master some of what he wanted to know, he would forgive? Perhaps. What did the Master want most to learn?
Of course! The thing the Mistress Wise One called «the Idol.» What was it? The Wise One herself had gone to it, taking Moyla with her. So Moyla should certainly know.
(«I tell you about where I go, Moyla. Always I tell you. Now you tell me about when you went with the Mistress to the Idol.»)
Moyla said and thought nothing. Instead she stroked Cheeky's crest in a way that always made him feel good and said she felt good, too. Then she cracked a nut and popped the meat into his mouth. He gave her paw an affectionate nip.
(«The truth, Moyla. You say I do what you do not want me to do. I say, you do the same. I want to talk. Where did you go?»)
(«You do not like me if you ask that sort of question. If you do not like me, I do not like you.»)
Cheeky glared at Moyla. She looked really angry, and all he could read in her mind was the anger. But there was something else there. She wasn't angry just because she thought he didn't like her as much as before. She was angry because she'd been told not to answer this question. If she'd been told this, then she must know the answer.
Again, Cheeky wished he could talk with the Blade about this. The Master was much wiser about asking questions, for it was his whole life. But the Master might not talk to Cheeky until Cheeky found the answer himself!
Cheeky was so angry he wanted to pull the feathers out of his head. He did not, because that would tell Moyla that he was angry, without her even reading his thoughts. Then she would tell the Mistress Wise One, and Cheeky knew the Wise One could spirit-speak to him whenever she wanted to even if he did not want to hear her.
That might be bad for the Master Blade.
So Cheeky decided he would do as well as he could with what Moyla told him without knowing she was telling him. That might be quite a lot, since most of the time she trusted him. Then, when he had learned everything he was going to learn, he would go to the Master Blade. The Master Blade was kind; he would understand why Cheeky had made his mistake and forgive him for it.
Then they would talk again as they had before. They might even talk about what had come into Cheeky's mind, so that his thoughts seemed clearer and faster. There were old tales that at one time all the Feather People had been the way Cheeky was now. But the tales were so old that no one had ever met anyone who knew one of these Feather People with strong thoughts. Cheeky himself had never believed the tales, until suddenly his thoughts were also strong.
Surely the Master Blade would know more about this. If he did not, some other one of the Master People might know. The Master People always thought strong thoughts. They also lived much longer than the Feather People. Blade might have been alive in the time when the Feather People's thoughts were strong!
Cheeky stopped himself before he got so excited that Moyla would hear and then tell the Mistress Wise One about Cheeky's strong thoughts. That would be bad for him and for the Master Blade.
Chapter 10
Blade awoke with a swelling uproar from outside the hut in his ears, his head comfortably pillowed between a young woman's breasts, and one arm thrown around an older woman's shoulders.
He sat up and listened. He heard the trumpeting calls of the lizard-horses, the roaring and howling of the Great Hunters, war cries, cheers, and harsh laughter. He also heard an ugly undertone of screams of fear and pain. Once he heard a dreadful sobbing wail. There was despair in that wail-more despair than Blade thought any human being should ever have to feel.
«I think we have a victory,» said the older woman.
«Victory?» said Blade. He wasn't entirely awake and alert yet. It had been a long but entirely pleasant night.
«Over the Uchendi. The warriors have returned with those to be cleansed,» said the younger woman. «They are rejoicing. Let us do the same.» She ran her hand down Blade's chest to his groin.
Gently he plucked her hand away. The noise outside was arousing his curiosity more than anything else. After a moment the young woman sighed. «Well, as long as the Wise One keeps you among us, it is not so bad. We will have other times together.»
Blade grinned. «I thank you. But in time the Uchendi must have their share of my attention, or I am no warrior. Now let me get out and see those I shall fight.»
Blade stepped out of the hut into a chilly gray morning and an uproar that was still getting louder. He headed for the nearest screams, rounded the corner of a hut, and saw his first Uchendi.
She was a girl who couldn't have been more than twelve, and she was being gang-raped on the stony ground by eight or ten Rutari men. Blood was running down her thighs, and one eye was already swollen shut. Somehow-she still had the strength to scream.
Blade backed away hastily, before someone saw him and invited him to join in. He kept retreating until he was out of sight. He couldn't get away from hearing the girl's screams, until they died away to feeble moans and then into silence. Blade hoped this meant the girl was dead.
Two of the warriors tramped past, spears over their shoulders and satisfied grins on their faces. One of them saw Blade. «You too late for the little one? We would not have left you out.»
Blade shook his head. He wanted to shake the warrior like a terrier shaking a rat. «A girl that age-for my people she is not lawful.»
«Don't your people fight wars?» said the other warrior. «If you do, how can you make the victory complete if you spare women and children?»
«We have few women,» said Blade, thinking fast. «If we slew the women of other tribes, the first time we lost a war would be the end of us. The enemy would take all of our women and the tribe would die away. Haven't the Rutari ever lost a battle to the Uchendi?»
The warriors seemed to find the idea funny. They were still laughing as they went off-no doubt in search of an eight-year old boy to bugger, Blade thought sourly.
He didn't see any eight-year-old boys among the Uchendi prisoners, but he did see a girl about six being thrown to the Great Hunters. Fortunately she was dead. With wounds like hers, she had to be dead.
He also saw a good many Uchendi of all ages and both sexes being treated as their captors pleased. Most of what pleased their captors ran in directions that Blade suspected would have made the Marquis de Sade himself run screaming into the streets. The twelve year old girl was far from the worst. By the time he'd seen enough, Blade was very glad he hadn't eaten any breakfast.
The only Uchendi prisoners spared horrible deaths were six warriors who'd been captured more or less unwounded. They were being saved for a formal cleansing by the Great Hunters, and were under the Wise One's protection. That didn't keep them from being forced to watch their fellow tribesmen die horribly.