“Nonsense. Why did you send that... whatever it was ... to pester me?”
Again An-Shai was astounded. He was a subtle man, not
used to direct frontal attack. Nor was he an accomplished liar, for no one had dared to question his actions for a very long time. But he was skilled at keeping his countenance; by no flicker of expression did he reveal that Adelinda’s shrewd guess had struck home. He stared at her coldly. “You’re very brave, to question your bishop in this manner, and dare the wrath of the Quadrate God.”
“The wrath of the Quadrate God doesn’t bother me, but I’m beginning to be a little concerned about the wrath of the Bishop An-Shai. That was quite a production; I hope the smell has cleared out of my room. I notice you don’t bother to deny that you sent it.” She crossed the room to his desk, let the point of her sword fall onto its top with a little ting. An-Shai looked at the sword. She made no threat, but the possibility of the weapon was implicit. “It seems to me, Your Grace, that we have an agreement, made through your agent Li-Mun, of benefit to us both. We agreed to provide horses and instruction in their care and use; you paid us an agreed-upon sum for the horses and salaries for the time we remain here. Is this the way you understood the business?” An-Shai’regarded the woman coldly. Behind that facade his thoughts were racing. The tiny metallic note the sword had made when it hit his desk had shattered a great many preconceptions in the Bishop’s mind. In all of Godsland, there was no one, man or woman, brave or rash enough to even consider bearing a weapon into a bishop’s presence uninvited. There was not one who would conceive the idea of implying that rights would be maintained with violence. Quite suddenly, his perception of the woman standing before him altered radically. He might have been looking at a heretofore unknown species—a dangerously unpredictable species. The techniques that worked so well with ordinary human beings, he saw clearly, would not affect this fascinating tawny-maned creature before him at all. He must think, must plan. Already the pause was lengthening uncomfortably. An-Shai seated himself at his desk with grave dignity.
“Let us sit and be comfortable.” He waited while Adelinda reluctantly removed her sword from his desk and seated herself in the chair at the end of the desk before he continued, “Yes, that’s exactly how I understood the bargain to stand.”
“Then why, ever since we started off, have I had a feeling that Li-Mun and now you have something quite different in mind? You’re not my bishop, Your Grace, and your gods are of no consequence to me. Your superstitions don’t frighten me. But your malice does. If the original bargain isn’t satisfactory to you, if you want something different from me and my people, then let’s discuss it. If we can come to an agreement, fine, and if not, we’ll leave with our own horses. But sending your peculiar, er, servants to frighten people in the night is no way to do business.”
An-Shai regarded her steadily. For the first time he was seeing her, not as an aberrant member of the inconsequential class of woman, but as a dangerous adversary in her own right, and measuring and assessing her with that in mind. “Perhaps I do wish something different from you than was included in the original bargain. I am concerned for you and your people. You make light of my religion and of the protection of the Quadrate God, but that’s only because you don’t realize that He can protect you from some very real perils. Whatever bad dreams you had tonight couldn’t harm you, but there are many evil beings abroad in the land that could. I only wish to bring you to the realization that the Quadrate God would gladly take you under His protection, caring for you as He cares for all His children. I hope that you understand that being under the protection of the Quadrate God means, of course, that you are also under the protection and care of the God’s Shepherd on earth, his bishop; that is to say, myself.”
“Your concern for our welfare is touching, Your Grace, but I can’t help feeling that there must be a price for all this solicitous care, and a pretty steep one, at that.”
“Why, no,” An-Shai said, leaning forward, intense in his will to convince her. “There is no price. The Quadrate God asks nothing of His people except that they submit themselves to His will. Can a parent care for a disobedient child? If the sheep don’t obey the shepherd, are they not likely to dash themselves over some cliff or wander into inhospitable wastes where they may perish in misery? The Quadrate God and His representatives on earth only ask that you accept His guidance.”
Adelinda heard the meaning behind the fine words. “You mean,” she said levelly, “that all we have to do is turn over to you all our freedom and that in exchange, you will be willing to defend us from these dangers you keep talking about! Well, we’re neither children nor sheep. We’re quite capable of defending ourselves and we give up our freedom to no, one, man or god.” She sprang from her chair and paced restlessly across the room. “No, Your Grace, the additional bargain is not acceptable. Our freedom is too heavy a price to pay for anything.”
“Even for life?” An-Shai said, softly, rising to his feet. He caught her free hand, turned her to face him. “I cannot have you teaching these heretical doctrines to the people of the Vale. They are not capable of defending themselves, nor would they know what to do with this freedom of which you speak, unless it would be to wander off, taking no thought for the needs of the morrow, until they perished like sheep.” He paused for breath. Perhaps for the first time in his life, An-Shai w,as speaking straight from the heart, and the blazing sincerity with which he spoke nearly sent Adelinda reeling, except that the crushing grip on her left hand prevented it. “You scoff at the dangers I’ve warned you of, but they are very real, and if you persist in this proud defiance of everything right and orderly, I’ll have you and your people destroyed as I would a pack of mad dogs.”
“I see,” said Adelinda quietly. “I think I understand your concerns. I hope you understand that we can and will not surrender our free will to you or anyone. But I think we can fairly promise not to teach our ways to your people. Otherwise, I can’t see anything before us but open war.”
“It is not enough. By behaving as you do, fearlessly and without the proper respect, you are an evil example to the simple folk of the Vale that they may be tempted to follow.” “Then can we agree to treat you publicly as you wish to be treated, if you will agree to leave our consciences alone?” It was still not enough. An-Shai, though he hardly realized it himself, would never be satisfied with anything but the complete subjugation of this woman to his will. He
didn’t know there was a strong sexual motivation behind this unconquerable urge to domination, for he was considerably more innocent in such matters than the virgin Orvet. But he realized that now was not the time to provoke the final confrontation. “I believe it will serve. You must stay by me so that I can teach you how to behave. Your people must begin teaching the fanners how to manage the horses, because time is growing short.” He thought to himself with some satisfaction that by keeping her with him, he would soon learn how to overcome her.
Adelinda was doubtful, but she realized very well that there were only six of them among thousands. If this man before her, whose power in this place as absolute, decided to destroy them, he could do it, though the cost might be more than he reckoned on. She, too, dissembled her real intentions. “It seems to me that it might be a workable solution,” she said, thinking to herself that she would stay with him about as long as it took to saddle Red Hawk. She had no intention of letting her folk be dispersed among the villages.
An-Shai, pleased with the apparent success of his scheme, smiled at her, something he almost never did. He was unaware that besides triumph, he felt admiration for this worthy opponent, but Adelinda, more experienced and far more sensitive, recognized it, and pulled her hand away from him. He was not a man, she felt, who did things by halves, and his admiration was more dangerous than his hatred.
Chapter 5
“No, no! Don’t drop the reins! Hold on, he won’t hurt you. Here, let me show you.” Sweating, Len grabbed the lines leading to the giant ge
lding’s bit and gently guided him back into the furrows. The gelding had shied at an unexpected shout from one of the farmers, and had been further upset by his frightened driver’s panicky abandonment of control. He heaved a great sigh when he felt a steady hand on the lines and calmed down. He was basically a docile creature, as all the greathorses were, and asked only to be told what to do in a manner that was comprehensible to his limited intellect.
“Here, take the reins,” Len said to the trembling farmer, who had never in all his life seen anything nearly as big as the greathorse, “and start him up. Keep a gentle pressure on the bit so he’ll know you’re there—don’t yank, you’ll hurt his mouth—and pull on the right rein to turn him right.” Len wiped the sweat off his forehead with his sleeve and reflected that it would be a lot less work to do the plowing himself. As it happened, he liked plowing and had done a lot of it back home. The long days alone in the fields with just a team for company gave him plenty of time to think—a seasoned team knew how to turn a field as well or better than most of their drivers and needed only a minimum of attention. And at the end of the day there were the long, smooth furrows of newly turned earth to look back over, and a pleasant sense of accomplishment.
A sense of accomplishment was all too rare for a young man of the farmer folk, Len reflected sourly, especially one who had dreams and ambitions beyond his station. If, like the rest of his contemporaries, he had been willing to marry early, rent a farm that could barely feed his family, and scrabble all his life for bare subsistence, he could have been content with the few pleasures that went with such a life. But all he could see in following that path was a soul-crushing trap of poverty and ignorance.
The farmer was gaining a little confidence as he found that the huge animal would obey his signals. Len dropped back a little to let him see that he was in command.
Orvet fell quietly into step with him. “How’s your boy doing?”
“Pretty well. The horses must look pretty big to him; he’s scared to death of them.”
“I think donkeys must be the largest animals they’ve seen before. He’s doing all right. Come and sit in the shade; you look as if you could use a break and I’ve got a bottle of wine cooling in the spring.”
“Sounds good! It isn’t as hot here as it is at home, but somehow it takes more out of you—you sweat more.” Len wondered briefly at Orvet’s friendliness; back home he had kept to himself. But as cool drink was a tempting prospect and he followed the little man eagerly.
Fishing the bottle out of the icy water, Orvet poured them each a cup. Len drained his in one thirsty draft, the coolness making his teeth ache and spreading deliciously from his stomach. He made a wry face. “This stuff sure is sour. I guess they don’t make beer here.”
“I haven’t seen any. Hand over your cup.” Orvet refilled it and handed it back; Len sipped more cautiously. There was already a little alcoholic buzz behind his eyes. The wine was stronger than the beer brewed back home.
Orvet sat down on a grassy spot in the shade of one of the feathery-leafed trees. Len dropped into the soft turf and stretched out on his back, sighing.
They rested for a while in companionable silence, sipping the cold, sour wine. Presently, Orvet said, as one who is just making conversation, “You don’t seem happy here, Len. Is there something back home you’re missing—or someone?” If it wei£ not for the wine, Len probably would have
sneered at Qrvet’s question, but he was feeling uncommonly friendly toward the man. “I don’t have a girl, if that’s what you mean. Tobin does, and I expect he’ll get married as soon as we get back. But I can’t see tying myself to a woman and a farm and a bunch of children I can’t give any future to.” “What do you want to do when we get home, then?” Orvet asked idly.
“What I want to do and what I will do are two different things. I want to finish school and go on to a university in one of the river cities. What I will do... well, keep on working for the horse folk, I guess, if I can get a job, and when I get too old to work, I guess I’ll starve, like old Tom that was found dead in his bed last winter and weighed no more than ninety pounds when he died.”
Orvet glanced at him, disturbed by the bitterness in the young man’s voice. “Surely continuing your education isn’t an unreasonable goal.”
“Not for horse folks, but it’s pretty unreasonable for the farmer folk. I had five years of schooling and I’ve been out of school for ten years now. It would be hard to find a school that would take me for the other five years.”
“Why did you quit?”
“Five years is all that’s offered in our schools. The horse folks’ kids get ten, and a chance to get into the universities.” “Couldn’t you have gone to one of their schools? I’ve heard them say that they take worthy farmer children.”
“The local school wouldn’t have me. There was no money for boarding in Black Mountain Town. There were seven children in the family, and my dad’s farm is no better than most. The schools in Black Mountain Town wouldn’t have had me, either; my grades weren’t any better than average except in arithmetic.” The truth of the matter was that Len had a very original way of looking at things, and his teachers, themselves graduates of the same substandard schools they taught, had been sure that any answer they didn’t understand was certain to be wrong.
“What would you like to have done, if you had been able to go on to a university?”
“Study history.” For a brief moment, the sullen expression that Len had worn for years slipped away, animating his face with enthusiasm, making him not merely good-looking, but blindingly handsome. “There’s nothing more interesting than knowing what people really did, and how they thought and acted. I don’t mean the pretty little stories they teach you about the Founders of the City and the heroes of the First Civilization—no real person acts like the stories say they did. I mean what they really were like. Do you know where you can look to find the truth about people?”
“No, where?”
“Not in the history books! You have to read the account books. You can look in the things people wrote about them who lived in their own time, but you have to remember that all those writers see things in their own way, with their own biases. Take Lord Quarmot, for example. He’s the most horrible villain in all history, right?”
“So I was taught,” said Orvet, filling Len’s cup again. “Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t. The terrible burdens of taxation he laid on his own people were not for his personal profit; if you read between the lines you can see that he used the money to defend his domain and to help the forest folk, who were starving. But they were counted scarcely human by the plains folk, and they saw a great injustice in Quarmot’s taking the money they wanted for luxuries to buy food for savages. The only accounts we have of Quarmot’s life come from those same nobles of the plains, who hated his guts. The forest folk might have told a different tale, but they were illiterate at the time.”
“I don’t think taxation was the only thing Quarmot did that was considered to be evil. He’s said to have debauched every virgin in his domain, poisoned his enemies, betrayed his friends for his own profit, sold his folk into slavery—I don’t remember all of it.”
“So the stories say. But they were written down by his enemies, the men that murdered him. They were justifying what they did. I’m sure he wasn’t a model citizen. Possibly he did have an eye for a young girl. But every virgin in his domain? Come on, when would he have had time, considering all the other things he’s supposed to have done? The thing is, we’ll never know for sure if all we do is read accounts written by his enemies. What we need to do is look into his account books and study them day by day. If we find in there things like ‘debit, ten silver pennies, for cyanide for the soup’ and ‘received, one thousand gold pennies for slaves sold to the Republics,’ then we’d know for sure.”
“It sounds to me as if you’ve got some very worthwhile and original ideas. Have you talked about them with any of the mountain folk?”
/> Sullenness settled back over Len’s face. “No, why should I? Even if they understood, they wouldn’t care.”
“You don’t know that. The universities aren’t as hard to get into as you think, not if you have a little support and backing. Adelinda isn’t a stupid woman. Talk to her sometimes as you’ve talked to me.”
Len’s lips twisted bitterly. “Her.” The single word was spoken like a foul expletive, laden with scom and hatred. And he would say no more. Orvet, sensing that Len had retreated into his usual sullen reserve, pressed his questions no farther.
They were talking back to their respective students when the commotion broke out. They were up the Vale some distance from Bishopstown near the village of Two Falls. Adelinda, having adamantly resisted any suggestion that the outlanders be distributed one to a village, had sent them word to deliver five of the greathorses there and to begin their lessons, though they hadn’t seen her. The rest of the folk from the Kingdom were giving lessons in nearby fields. Karel had stayed mounted on his old gray gelding; when the screaming and the clangor of arms broke out, he wheeled the horse into the grove where the rest of mounts were tied and loosed them as their riders came dashing up. Vaulting into their saddles as they had been taught and snatching up their lances, they formed a line abreast and charged down into the village.
Karel’s orders were terse. They swept through the turmoil in the village square, splitting it into a dozen eddies of action. Reining in, they wheeled their horses as one, facing back the way they had come. Even Ina’s lance point was steady and level as they awaited the order to charge again.
Karel surveyed the plaza. A dozen or so rough-looking men had been searching through the village, seizing the nubile girls. Their screaming captives were herded into a hysterical huddle of other girls, shackled and guarded by more of the strangers. A couple of sprawled bodies bore witness that the villagers had at least tried to defend their daughters. The raiders, though of the same race as the villagers, were obviously of a different type than those gentle and peaceful farmers and weavers. They were dressed in dark, well-worn clothes with leather tabards and caps, armed with curved swords and clubs. At the moment, they were standing thunderstruck. The mounted attack by strange-looking outlanders had taken them completely by surprise. Their slave-raiding activities had always been clandestinely encouraged by the Church, although they themselves didn’t realize how important a role they played in the initiates’ manipulation of population. They had never been met with any more than the most perfunctory of opposition.
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