"Not fair? Did you say, Not fair?"
"I just meant—"
"I give you work. I tell you the rules. At the end of the week, I pay you. That's fair. If you want Not fair I can show you that, too."
He signed to his associates. One of them held the unfortunate worker from behind while the other struck him hard in the belly, and then again in the face. The worker fell groaning to the ground. The associates then took turns kicking him, vicious swinging kicks that made him scream. The other workers watched, but they kept on working. In a little while the kicking stopped, and the man lay curled up on the ground, weeping and dribbling blood.
"That's Not fair," said the gangmaster. "Just so you know, for next time. Now get out."
After that, Soren Similin decided he could keep going after all. But he also decided that one day of being a happy worker was the most he could manage. He looked at Blaze. Blaze was watching the departing worker limping slowly away down the track. In Blaze's dull eyes he saw a hurt, puzzled look.
"I can guess how you feel," he said.
"Can you?" said Blaze. "How do I feel?"
"It makes you angry. It makes you burn with anger. That's why your name is Blaze of Justice."
"You're right. It does make me angry."
"Of course it does. You're the kind of man who can't stand by and see injustice done. You're the kind of man who wants to do something about it."
"You're right. That's the kind of man I am."
Really, thought Similin, it was almost too easy. Like training a puppy. Blaze's mind was an empty sheet of paper on which he could write what he chose. Soon now he would start to write: There is no greater injustice than a false god. But he knew he must not be in a hurry. He must form his instrument well, before putting it to work.
"You know what I think?" announced Blaze, unprompted.
"What do you think?"
"I think the workers here aren't happy at all."
23. Tribute Traders
WHERE THE TRACK JOINED THE HIGH ROAD NORTH TO Radiance, the Wildman called a stop.
"Best to wait for the next convoy," he said. "There'll be tribute traders watching the road."
"What are tribute traders?" asked Seeker.
"People stealers."
Morning Star flinched, remembering Barban.
"Do they use nets?"
"That's them." The Wildman spat in disgust. "Nets and blankets. Tangling and smothering. That's not man's work."
"Nets and blankets!"
"They want you alive. A dead tribute's no use. Can't sacrifice you if you're already dead."
"Sacrifice!"
"That's what they do in Radiance. Throw people off a high rock. Every day. To make the sun rise again."
"But that's just stupid."
The Wildman shrugged.
"Gods make people stupid."
Seeker frowned and said, "All gods aren't the same."
"Even so," said Morning Star, not wanting an argument about gods, "let's not get caught by the tribute traders."
"So we wait for a convoy."
It wasn't very long before the next large group of travellers came up the road. The group had formed some miles to the south and consisted of thirty or so travellers and five bullock carts. The bullocks went no faster than a man, and on the rise they slowed to a crawl. The three companions joined them, and so fell into the steady pattern of the convoy. They walked in the cool of the morning, rested in the middle of the day, and then walked on into the dusk.
Twice each day they stopped for food. Small roadside markets had grown up at just those points along the road where a traveller might begin to feel the need of a rest. Here, in the shade of spreading canopies, stalls sold pancakes and mugs of sweet tea, the poor man's lunch, for two or three pence.
This led to a difficulty. Seeker and Morning Star were willing to pay, but had no money. The Wildman had money, but was not willing to pay.
"I never pay," he declared with pride. "What I want, I take."
Thrusting out his sharp-pointed spike, he said to the man behind the pancake stall,
"Start your frying, brava!"
"Put that away!" exclaimed Morning Star. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I'm hungry I want food."
"So pay for it."
"Why?"
"Because stealing's wrong."
The Wildman shrugged and put away his spike.
"I have to pay for you, too?"
"If you want to."
The Wildman found he didn't want to eat his pancake alone, so he paid for their lunch, too. They ate in silence, too hungry to think of anything else. But as the convoy set off once more, the Wildman returned to their disagreement with a new vigor.
"I don't see what's wrong with taking what I want."
"It belongs to someone else," said Seeker.
"So let him try to stop me."
"What if he's weaker than you and can't stop you?"
"Then too bad for him."
"If you were a Noma, you'd want the weak to have as much as the strong."
The Wildman laughed at that idea.
"How can the weak have as much as the strong? The strong would take whatever the weak have. Then you'd be back where we are now."
"Unless the strong chose not to."
"No one chooses to be weak," said the Wildman, feeling like a grown man explaining the way of the world to children. "You're strong, or you die."
"So why do the Nomana go round helping people who are weak?"
"Don't ask me. Maybe it makes them feel big."
"No," said Seeker. "They do it because they believe we're all joined up with each other. Other people's unhappiness makes them unhappy. Other people's happiness makes them happy."
"What, everybody?"
"Yes," said Seeker. "Everybody in the whole world."
The Wildman shook his head at that, but he said no more.
When darkness fell, exhausted by long hours on the road, the band of travellers called a stop for the night. They built and lit a bonfire to provide light, and the various subgroups picked out sleeping places and trod down the tall dry grasses to make their beds. Before settling down to sleep, both Seeker and Morning Star sat still for a while with their eyes closed. Their lips moved in silent prayer. The Wildman saw this with surprise.
"You praying?"
They didn't answer him until they were done. Then Seeker said,
"Yes. I was praying."
"But there's no one to see."
"What do you mean?"
"You don't have to put on an act here. There's no hoodies watching."
"It's not an act."
"Not an act?" He looked from one to the other. "You pray to your god even when no one's watching?"
"Yes," said Seeker.
"Yes," said Morning Star.
"But gods are for dummies!"
"Not the real god. Not the All and Only."
"Whoa!" The Wildman waved his hands before him as if to brush away such foolishness. "I knew you wanted to be hoodies. But I didn't know you believed! Not really believed!
"If you want to join the Nomana, you'll have to believe, too."
"Can't I be the hoodie without the god?"
"I don't think so."
"Then I'll just have to pretend."
"That's stupid," said Morning Star. "Why join the Nomana if you don't believe what they believe?"
"I want the power," said the Wildman stubbornly. "And I want the peace."
A little later, as the three of them lay themselves down on the trampled grass and looked up at the night sky, now speckled with stars, the Wildman said, not very graciously,
"So tell me about your dummy god."
"What do you want to know?"
"I don't know. Anything. Why you believe."
Morning Star said simply, "I believe because my mother and father believed and taught me to believe."
"Same for me," said Seeker. "My life wouldn't make sense without the All and Onl
y."
"Why not?" said the Wildman. "My life makes sense."
"I can't see how. It seems to me your life is just taking as much as you can for yourself and then having to fight to keep it."
"So what's your life?"
"I feel like my life hasn't begun yet," said Seeker. "But I can tell you what I want it to be. I want to be one of the Noble Warriors. Sometimes I have such a strong feeling, that the world is hurting so much, and all the hurting happens in the darkness. I feel that if I can make there be light, instead of darkness, I can end the hurting of the world. Or make it less. And I want that light, too. I want to come closer to it, so close that it dazzles me and floods me, so close that I'm not even me any more. That's when I'll hold the Lost Child in my arms, and the Wise Father will hold me in his arms, and keep me safe forever. That's when I'll live in the Garden."
He fell silent. The Wildman didn't understand him at all, but he was awed by the intensity of Seeker's feelings. This was not the kind of god-worship he had met before.
"Whoa!" he said. "Dazzle me and flood me! That would be something!"
Morning Star too was moved by what she heard. She lay on her back looking up at the stars, and knew she felt the same. But she was afraid. She had not forgotten what had happened when she had come close to that dazzling silver screen. She was afraid of that explosion of colors. She was afraid of the madness.
"There's mysteries in the Nom," she said. "Who knows what happens when you go into the mysteries?"
"Into the mysteries," said Seeker. "And through the mysteries. And out to the other side, where there's clear light."
She turned her head so that she could see him, lying on the grass nearby There, all round him, faint as before but easier to see in the darkness, was that flicker of gold, those dancing particles of shining dust. As she watched him, she felt a flow of tender protective love towards him, as if he were infinitely precious and infinitely vulnerable.
I must look after you, Seeker. You're the best of us.
Such a strange thought. As soon as it had come, she smiled to herself, thinking, Ridiculous! Who am I to protect him? And yet—and yet—she felt older than Seeker, far older. Perhaps it was all those long lonely days she had passed in the hill country.
"That was good, Seeker," she said softly.
"I don't get it," said the Wildman.
"Nobody gets it," said Morning Star. "It gets you."
They lay there, the three of them in the warm night, each unable to sleep, though for different reasons.
Morning Star thought of her father, who would be so alone without her, and of little Lamb, who still needed to be found a home.
Seeker thought of the sunlit land where everything would one day be clear. He understood that this land was not some far-off place, but was the same world that lay all round him; only now it was as if the land were veiled. It was as if he stood before an open window, where a white curtain billowed and swelled in the breeze. The curtain glowed with bright sunlight and was beautiful in its way, but all its beauty came from the wind and the sun beyond. He longed to tear away the bright fabric and see forever.
As for the Wildman, he was feeling that the ground on which he walked was cracking and the simple certainties by which he had lived so far were no longer enough, and this excited him.
"Dazzle me and flood me!" he murmured to himself. "Those hoodies! They're the real wild men."
Then the weariness of the day overtook them, and one by one, even as they thought their busy minds would never be still, they dropped into sleep.
The next day they headed on north, up the long road that wound now between fields of tall maize. They were in plantation country, and here and there they saw gangs of field workers picking the ripe cobs, sweating in the hot sun. In the early afternoon of the second day they passed a track that ran away to the west, through cornfields. They had no reason to pay it any attention, and soon it was behind them. Had they turned off the road and down that track, they would have come to two tall gateposts that marked the entrance to a rich family plantation, gateposts capped with stone carvings in the form of crouching bears.
As they walked, they talked a little about the one subject that linked them all, which was the Nomana. Morning Star had been puzzling over Seeker's brother, Blaze, who had been cast out. She remembered watching him as he had crossed the square, all on his own, to leave the Congregation. Something was nagging at her memory.
"When Blaze was cleansed, they took away his powers?"
"And everything else, too."
"Like what?"
"Like his past. Like his feelings. Like who he is."
"So it wouldn't hurt him. I mean, if it took away his feelings, there'd be no pain."
"There's worse things than no pain," said Seeker.
Morning Star said no more. But there was something here that didn't fit, if only she could track it down.
The road crested the gentle rise they had been climbing, and now descended, just as gently, between more fields of standing corn, to the broad river a mile or so ahead. Absorbed by their talking, the three had moved away from the main convoy, which had stayed close to the slower bullock carts, toiling up the hill. Now, as they began the easier downward slope, they moved out of sight of the other travellers altogether.
Morning Star pointed this out.
"Maybe we should wait for the others."
"We can wait by the river," said the Wildman. "We can have a swim."
The prospect of a dip in cool water was too much to resist. They strode on down the road, making ever-faster progress. By the time they reached the riverbank, the convoy was a mile or so back down the road.
There was a ferry crossing here, but the ferry was moored on the far bank. There was no sign of the ferryman.
"Lazy dog!" said the Wildman. "He'll be sleeping in the shade of the willow trees."
A copse of willows grew on the far bank, trailing their long branches over the water. The river lay brown and gleaming in the afternoon sun, a broad expanse of water that seemed not to be moving at all.
"We should watch out," said Morning Star, remembering the river crossing she had come to with Barban.
"I'll wake him up," said the Wildman.
He threw down his bag and his blade and his spike, and running to the river's edge, made a swift arching dive into the water. By the time he surfaced, he was mid-river. With a few more strokes he was at the far bank and pulling himself out, dripping, onto the ferry.
He shouted out for the ferryman, but there was no answer. He loosed the mooring ropes and, taking hold of the heavy tiller beam, gestured downstream to indicate to the others where he was heading. So he pushed off into deep water.
"Let's hope he knows what he's doing," said Seeker.
The ferry seemed far too big to be handled by one person. But the Wildman had seen the ferryman work the big raft across the river many times. He plied the tiller with skill, and the ferry began to cross the broad river. The golden-haired bandit, refreshed by his plunge into the water, stood tall, gleaming, and handsome in the sun. He saw that his companions were impressed, and he was pleased.
"Heya, bravas!" he called to them. "Do you lo-o-ove me?"
As he spoke, out from under the willows shot a long thin canoe, holding two men. Morning Star knew at once that she had seen them before. The canoe moved fast, driven by paddles that struck with practiced force. It reached the big clumsy raft as it was passing the mid-river point, and the two men jumped onto the ferry, leaving the canoe to ride free alongside. Each man carried a net in one hand and a club in the other.
"Tribute traders!" cried Morning Star.
Seeker picked up the Wildman's blade where he had thrown it down. Morning Star picked up his spike.
The Wildman was alone on the raft and unarmed. He could jump into the river, but the canoe would move faster than he could swim, and he had no wish to be netted in the water. He let go of the tiller and prepared to fight.
The tribute traders w
ere in no hurry. They wanted him alive and unharmed. They advanced carefully towards the Wildman, backing him into one corner. The raft drifted downstream on the current, the empty canoe by its side. Seeker and Morning Star, running along the riverbank, shouted at him to jump, to swim. In answer, the Wildman flexed his powerful hands and taunted his attackers.
"Heya, chickens! Come and get me! Let me rip your throats out!"
He was dancing from foot to foot, charging himself up with rage for the fight. But the tribute traders had no intention of fighting him. They unfurled their nets.
Seeker padded along the riverbank, the Wildman's long curving blade in his hand, watching the gap close between raft and shore. He could feel his heart thumping and knew he was terrified and knew he had to do something to help.
"I'm going to jump!" he said, to make it so that he had no choice. "I'm going to jump!"
Morning Star ran alongside him, holding the Wildman's spike, also calculating how soon the raft would be in reach. Her thoughts had become as sharp and pointed as the spike. It was quite clear to her that she would attack. The only question was how.
The tribute trader nearest to the Wildman now made his move, sweeping the air with his weighted net, curling it over his prey. The Wildman reached up with his right hand and, seizing the net, jerked it hard, throwing the tribute trader onto his knees. But even as he did so, the second man cast his net, and it fell over him, its multitude of tiny weights clattering on the deck. The net tightened with great rapidity, causing the mesh to close all round the Wildman, and for the first time in his life he found he could not move.
"Aieee!" he screamed.
Seeker jumped. He landed on the raft, fell, righted himself, and was at the Wildman's side with his blade. The tribute trader who had caught the Wildman lunged at him with his club, but as he did so, Morning Star landed on the raft, too, more gracefully than Seeker, and drove at him from behind with the spike. Taken by surprise, he sprang back and fell overboard.
Seeker began slicing at the net that held the Wildman. Morning Star turned on the other tribute trader, who was now moving in, his net gathered once more in his hand.
"Only a girl," said the tribute trader, making a swing at Morning Star with his club. She lunged with her spike. The spike struck the swinging club and drove deep into the wood. The trader pulled, and ripped the spike out of her hands. At the same time, with his other hand, he cast his net, and Morning Star was caught.
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