Then he rose to full stature and he stood over her, his face expressionless as he coiled the bloody whip and held it in a red-stained fist. Without so much as a backward glance at her, he turned on his heel and marched down the slope to the stream, where he cast the pouch far into the middle of the peaceful beaver pond. It hit with a small splash and sank. Because the pond was on the far side of the hill from the others and blocked them from view, none saw what he did.
Then, finished, Habrunt turned and marched off to make his regular rounds.
Up on the top of the hill, Si'Wren lay motionless in the grass, utterly bewildered.
Each time Habrunt had cracked the whip at her she had cringed involuntarily, only to hear as it banged harmlessly above her and spent it's fearsome energy upon the air before falling uselessly across her prostrate and quivering body.
After her first bloodcurdling scream, she had lain silent and only trembled uncontrollably each time at it's evil, snakelike touch, fearing that he had simply missed, and that surely the next delivery, or the next, should not fail to find it's mark. Of a truth, she was covered with the rain of fallen grain stems, cut by the whip as by the sharpest scythe, and her eardrums still rang from the deafening bang of the whip-crack so close to her head, but there was not a single scratch on her.
As soon as Habrunt had gone, Geth himself came scurrying as quickly as his bent frame could carry him up the opposite slope of the hill, with a group of field hands following fearfully behind him.
The fact that Geth the Fieldmaster had not so much as looked back at them with the usual admonishment to return to work only emboldened the other slaves to follow all the faster on his heels, the sooner to see to the poor girl's condition. Most whippings were conducted with punishment in mind, something to return the violator to useful duty. But what they had witnessed from afar was the virtual destruction of a human being, and they expected to find almost a slaughtered corpse, something more akin to the remains of a wild animal attack.
When they finally arrived on Geth's heels at the top of the grassy knoll, they found Si'Wren looking about her with a dazed expression, propped up on one hand in the soft grass with which she was sprinkled, totally unscathed.
"I see blood on her, but—the maid is unharmed!" cried one man in disbelief.
"There's blood in the grass!" cried another.
"It's a miracle!" cried a woman in a quivering voice as she sank to her knees and raised her hands to the sky. "Gods be praised!"
Old Geth surveyed the scene with a sage and skeptical eye, considering all as he shook his tired old head, looking down at the mysteriously unharmed girl. She had suffered so much already. What Slavemaster Habrunt had accomplished was good enough at the fore, but—where would it lead to in the end?
But finally he threw up his hands in the air and bowed low his hoary white-haired old head, as he cried out loudly with the others, "Ahh, what a miracle is done here, for with mine own eyes did I see the cruelly flayed flesh of this poor wretched girl, and her wounds all laid open like gaping mouths and the slitted bellies of so many gutted fish!"
"Aye," cried out a stout middle-aged slave-woman, picking up on the pretense the better to seem a part of the miracle herself, although she could not have cared less if Si'Wren had lived or died. "The red flesh closed up again before my very eyes!"
Si'Wren, watching them all as if they were mad, found no difficulty in holding her peace in the face of such folly. Indeed, although she had always been upright and honest in all her dealings with others as to a fault, she could in all good conscience speak no evil thing this day, for she was sworn not even to speak anything at all for the rest of her life.
"Did you not feel the cruel whip against your flesh?" cried the stout woman to Si'Wren. Si'Wren stared at her wordlessly a moment, then nodded once, abruptly, with an expressionless, emphatic look. It was only the truth, for after every time the whip had banged above her head, it had fallen harmlessly upon her immediately afterwards.
Geth, momentarily unnoticed in all the excitement, studied Si'Wren a moment longer.
"Come!" Geth clapped his hands in stern, proprietary fashion. "Everyone; back to work! Have you all so soon forgotten your duties? To the fields, lest the Master see you so slack, and tempt the gods to work more such miracles on your backsides!"
At this, the foolish gawkers fled from their marveling over Si'Wren and returned anxiously to their work in the fields.
* * *
Slavemaster Habrunt approached his Master Rababull and dropped to one knee as he bowed low, and clapped his right fist across his hairy chest.
"You called, oh Master."
It was in the afternoon, and Master Rababull had heard strange tidings from the slave quarters.
He had sent for his Slavemaster to come to one of the most ominous places, the head of the wide, hand-hewn stone steps leading up the broad entrance of the House proper. It was where Master Rababull frequently met with those in whom he had found reason for some particularly odious displeasure, and the significance of this was not lost on Habrunt, who was at pains to look oblivious.
"Slavemaster," said Master Rababull deliberately, "did I not command you to punish my servant Si'Wren for her reckless abuse of one of Sorpiala's noble slave-cohorts? What is this mad talk I hear about 'miracles'?"
Habrunt kept his head bowed, eyes locked on the stone steps as he replied in a low, and what he hoped would be a genuinely confused tone of voice, "I know not, Master Rababull. I only know that I fulfilled my Master's wish to punish the servant; ten lashes of the whip, which I laid upon her as commanded."
"Interesting," ruminated Master Rababull.
Not looking up, Habrunt found insufficient reason to respond to the informal remark of his Master.
"Look at me!" said Master Rababull, his voice sounding tighter.
Habrunt lifted his head without expression and regarded Master Rababull.
Behind Master Rababull was a blood-encrusted bull whip coiled on the flat top of a waist-high stone pedestal which stood beside the House entrance proper. The blood was the color of rusted steel, and the fearsome braided leather bull whip was never placed on the stone pedestal -nor left there for very long- unless it's owner had found some particular reason and intended to use it in very short order.
Master Rababull regarded his chief underling with a faint sneer and barked, "Swear to me Slavemaster that all you have spoken is truth and that my every command was obeyed to the fullest!"
"I, Habrunt, so swear it!"
Habrunt dared not say more. One must be utterly unshakable, and make no effort to justify one's self upon another's blind graces at such a time. Was he not entrusted with the charge of all the slaves of the House of Rababull? Should he then waste mere empty words with such self-justification as any common thief would not hesitate to do?
Master Rababull said nothing to this, but remained frowning silently for a long time. Suddenly he turned and clapped his hands, cocking his head in an imperious gesture and called, "Bring her in!"
Huge and powerful, Prut promptly emerged from the House, where he had obviously been waiting all of this time just out of sight. His big fist held Si'Wren's thin upper arm in an unshakable grip as he escorted her forward to stand in front of Master Rababull at the top of the front steps.
Others who happened to be going about their duties in the huge courtyard began to stop and stare, but said nothing lest they should suddenly become unwilling victims of Master Rababull's unpredictable wrath and irritation. Danger lurked. Let the slightest offense occur now, and it could mean certain death to the offender regardless of the reason, for here was every sign of a fearsome judgement already in the making.
Si'Wren stood before Master Rababull and Slavemaster Habrunt, eyes downcast as she waited for it all to begin again. The horrible pronouncements, the endless anguish, the shame and torment—this time with the promise of real punishment. In her heart, she was utterly defeated. There was no hope anymore. There was only Master Rababull's relentless, inescapable justice, and this time his word must surely spell her doom.
Master Rababull regarded her, and tossed an open-handed gesture to Prut that he might release Si'Wren's arm.
As one totally insensate to his immediate surroundings, Prut, his empty-looking eyes locked straight ahead, dutifully let go of Si'Wren's arm and remained standing on guard at her side.
Master Rababull walked around her, one slow step at a time, his spotted leopard-skin robes and purple garb trailing graciously behind him as he surveyed her untouched skin critically.
Most of the blood had been cleaned off her by now, and so far as MasterRababull could determine, no whip had touched the girl's skin, ever.Not so much as a single lash.
Completing his examination, he paused and stood looking scornfully and distrustfully at Habrunt, who was still kneeling.
"A miracle—in our very midst!" admired Master Rababull mockingly. He looked at Si'Wren as if the better to marvel, and back at Habrunt. "Praise the gods! Six hundred and seventy-eight years have I walked this earth, and many wonders have I seen, but never, ever, have I seen such a thing as this!"
Master Rababull turned his head toward Si'Wren again, but she was too afraid to meet his scornful look, and he surveyed her contemptuously before returning slitted eyes to Habrunt's bowed figure.
"To which of the gods shall I give thanks?" Master Rababull demanded rhetorically. "After all, seeing that my explicit orders were destined to be put at naught, I must hasten and make obeisance, that I might not displease the deities. What totem might I have offended, had my punishment been carried out? What must I do to show myself blameless before men and gods alike, in the face of this colossal supernatural marvel?"
Master Rababull paused, walking slowly from one end of the upper landing to the other, with a dead-silent Habrunt on the one hand on the steps, and Si'Wren with Prut looming beside her, on the other hand at the entrance to the House. Master Rababull's anger was obvious, but still in check, if only barely. Reaching the far end of the landing, he turned to look back at them both and remained ominously silent, during which interval Sorpiala and two of her maidservants peeked out whispering excitedly to one-another and then ducked their heads back before Master Rababull should deign to properly notice them.
For who knew what he might do at a time like this?
More onlookers had gathered in the courtyard to watch, knowing from past experience, that by now, Master Rababull would enjoy their audience more than their intrusion. It was too much of a spectacle for them to miss. This was real entertainment! Perhaps heads would even roll, as had happened with the still comparatively recent punishment of Nelatha. In fact this was even more fun than to throw stones from the stream banks at a drowning animal or person, another popular pastime.
"Slavemaster, what I find here is a signal act of the gods which I, even I, Master of the House of Rababull, dare not contradict. What would my servants -my friends?!- think of it? In fact, should word be passed around, I must ask myself before I cast doubt on the authenticity of such a marvel, whether the Emperor himself might not be displeased to think of such religious insubordination on my part."
Master Rababull paused again, as if regaining his breath before going on. He pretended to be unaware of the presence of Sorpiala, and as he looked out on the gathering crowd, there was a frown locked on his brow. Their word-of-mouth would hound him to his dying day if he made the wrong decision now.
He turned like a strutting peacock, and stared at Habrunt from the side as he went on, but Habrunt dared neither turn his head nor look up in acknowledgment as Master Rababull waxed eloquent.
"But still, in spite of my generosity and many past mercies upon such acts of stupidity and foolishness as I have witnessed in all of my days, I must ask myself the following question…"
Master Rababull stopped to look out across the courtyard of the great House of Rababull, and fairly glared at the trembling slaves who had gathered to watch.
"Come!" he commanded loudly. Hesitantly, a few shifted forward several steps, but not too close. Master Rababull repeated, "Come, and behold the handiwork of the gods! Come and see the foolishness of the mortals, for what man is there who can put at naught what the very gods have decreed?!"
The crowd watched with lurid interest. Many resented Habrunt his position. Perhaps here was a chance at long last to watch Habrunt be on the receiving end for a change, for clearly Master Rababull was vastly displeased.
Master Rababull turned to stand between Habrunt on the one hand, and Si'Wren on the other. Prut was a nonperson, seemed almost as invisible as the mythical Invisible God Himself, and would remain so until called upon to do whatever Master Rababull commanded of him.
"Look at me!!" Master Rababull shouted at Habrunt suddenly, and automatically Habrunt lifted his head and froze.
Master Rababull's eyes were like coals of fire, locked upon Habrunt's like those of an eagle upon it's four-legged prey.
In an unexpectedly mild tone of voice, Master Rababull went on, almost conversationally, "Slavemaster Habrunt, I must ask of you, my most noble and trusted servant; Which is the greater miracle? The cruel lash of the whip, which cuts through a young girl's flesh like a hot knife through lard, and leaves her very skin unharmed?…"
"Or…" Master Rababull turned to Si'Wren, "the dewy eyes of love, which but lightly touch upon the stony heart of a slave, and leave that worthless organ slashed to RIBBONS?!!!"
Habrunt, still kneeling, did not so much as dare to flinch nor venture the slightest response.
Master Rababull walked jerkily, haltingly, a step at a time, like a dusty, strutting cock bird preparing to fight and make love at one and the same time as he walked thusly down the stairs until he could step across behind Slavemaster Habrunt, and continued in this manner on around, climbing the steps again slowly, with agonizing slowness, to his original starting point where he halted and remained standing in front of a kneeling Habrunt at the top of the wide stone steps again.
Habrunt had not dared to move so much as his eyes during this malignant promenade.
Then without warning Master Rababull suddenly turned in a whirl and snatched up the blood-stained bull whip from the pedestal and gripped it by the pommel as he jerked his arm back and snaked it's slithery braids out behind him.
"I propose a test," declared Master Rababull, "to see this miracle for myself. How much more is it my privilege and my delight as one noble-born to witness the repeat of such a miracle with my own eyes? I desire to know, and I have a right to know; was the miracle bestowed upon my loyal Slavemaster, the girl, or the whip?"
Still Habrunt dared not make a reply to this madman.
Master Rababull jerked his whip arm out behind him, turning his head in the direction of Si'Wren as if about to lash out at her, while watching cleverly out of the corner of his eye to see if Habrunt might betray himself.
Habrunt silently, invisibly clenched his right fist as he held it solidly across his chest, impotent to do the slightest thing to stop the Master, with Prut and any number of omnipresent slaves ready to mindlessly oppose him at a moment's notice, and no sword readily to hand.
Master Rababull froze, and lowered his whip hand, laughing with wicked indulgence.
"Not so, Slavemaster! Witness another miracle, the stayed hand of justice. The high price of her sale is needed to pay for the cost of the broken jade goddess. With her unsullied beauty, Si'Wren shall bring much money in the slave market, when I sell her myself to some wretched, stinking, foul-breathed old man with rotten teeth and many diseases, and gold coins for eyes."
At this, Habrunt stifled his rage but still dared not so much as protest.
"Forsaking that, there remains but one way to appease my nagging curiosity," declared Master Rababull with bitter sarcasm, "and may the gods strike me dead this very day if I have ruled unjustly…"
At long last, Master Rababull suddenly lashed out with his whip and brought it snapping around with expert timing, catching an unprepared Habrunt fully across the side of the head.
Although he did not cry out, Habrunt's head jerked as the whip left a red gash across his head and he fell cowering across the stone steps with his forearms across his face, fearful of being blinded if he should be struck another blow like that one again.
"Aye!" triumphed Master Rababull. "The most memorable sound in the world, is the sound of the lightning bolt to be found at the end—" CRACK!! "—of a whip!!" Master Rababull grunted, gasping from his exertion with the bull whip.
Blood welled from a slash where the whip had struck again, this time across Habrunt's back. The skin gaped in a long thin gash, with the matching white lines on both sides of a thin exposed fat layer just under the skin, and a shallow division into the deeper red of Habrunt's underlying back muscle.
Explosions echoed across the courtyard as the bystanders watched the physical destruction of the former Slavemaster of the House of Rababull.
Master Rababull proceeded to whip Habrunt mercilessly, again and again, and Habrunt tried in vain to bear up under it as he lay shielding his precious eyes with his arms until he finally collapsed into unconsciousness, lying limp and bloody across the stone steps.
Finally, Master Rababull laid off, gasping for air.
"Interesting," he wheezed, wiping at the spittle in the corner of his mouth. "I see nothing miraculous! Prut, take him away and let that old hag L'acoci see to his wounds. When he is well, let him be sold also, beside his intended bride!"
A wild-haired and sweating Master Rababull turned callously on his heel, and as he staggered into the House past a silently weeping Si'Wren, he interrupted his stride and turned to shake the bloody whip in Si'Wren's face.
With every gesture, Master Rababull flecked Habrunt's blood on Si'Wren as he shouted, "He has paid your debt! Verily is he your betrothed, for he has paid also for your dowry with his blood and his rank, and shall partake of your ignominy as well when you are finally sold at the next auction, for he has entered into your own punishment! But even then he shall not have you! I will see to that!"
In a towering rage, Master Rababull hurled the whip down at Si'Wren's feet. It landed with a flat slapping sound and splattered red the paving stones, still loosely coiled like a serpent poised to strike.
Then without looking as he walked off into the House, Master Rababull said, "Take him away!"
Behind Master Rababull, Prut called briskly for several of his men to come and pick up Habrunt.
Si'Wren, unharmed, waited until Master Rababull had finally departed, and hastened to follow the bearers of Habrunt. She avoided the scornful jeers of the other slaves, who were still too fearful to do anything to her. When she arrived at the bungalow where they had taken him, Si'Wren mourned at the sight of Habrunt lying unconscious on his stomach upon the very same blood-stained litter which she had been given for a sleeping rack during her convalescence.
Habrunt's entire body was in ruins, covered in a maze of criss-crossed wounds and caked with blood both dried and oozing. If he did not die first before the night was out, he would still almost certainly be crippled for life from wounds like that, if only by the very number of them. The underlying muscle, and not the skin only, had been slashed innumerable times by the cruel bite of the bull whip.
"Come!" said old L'acoci, her wizened eyes beckoning to Si'Wren urgently. "We have only a little borage tea, such as this one treated you with before. It can work it's own miracles, but in his case, I fear—"
Ominously, she did not finish her sentence.
Si'Wren was determined to do her utmost to try to help old L'acoci, and set immediately to work as she began to gently bathe Habrunt's wounds with the simple herb tea, which was all she had since being banished from the spice tent. She began dipping it up into successive pads of old rag-weave pasted with lard, and layering it onto Habrunt's ravaged skin and flesh before finally wrapping him up in dandelion leaves and covering it over with a bandage of coarse burr lap.
* * *
Later that same day, a messenger came riding his horse at a full gallop through the front gates and sending stray chickens and goats scattering madly for their lives in all directions as he lurched his snorting horse to a stop directly before the front steps of the House.
He flew from his saddle before the foam-flecked charger had fully stopped and pounded up the steps two and three at a time at a dead run.
Rushing past the two startled guards at the entrance, he ran down the central corridor, filling the House with the strident echoes of his high-pitched voice as he shouted repeatedly, "Master Rababull! Master Rababull!"
Master Rababull was still in his private chambers.
The messenger arrived outside his door and shouted through the closed curtains that he had urgent news that dared not wait.
At this most uncouth of all possible intrusions, Master Rababull's personal valet pulled back the heavy drapes with a long-practiced, decorous slowness, and faced him with a disdainful and dangerously menacing look, whereupon the messenger declared again in a loud voice that he had a message of direst urgency for the Master's ears.
Finally, Master Rababull himself stepped forth in an imperious rage, deeply vexed at being thus disturbed on this of all possible days, for he had lost his Slavemaster and his most favored junior female slave all in one fell swoop, and the messenger promptly threw himself face-down on the floor directly at the Master's feet before shouting out his message.
"Sire, our water has been cut off!" announced the messenger. "The fields and indeed the entire House shall thirst for the merest drop ere the day is out if battle is not joined immediately!"
"What is this?!" asked Master Rababull, truly alarmed at such important news. "Speak quickly, slave! Who has done this thing?"
"It is Kadrug, who lives to the north and proclaims himself the anointed of the gods. He hath magnified himself greatly against the House of Rababull, and has sworn to slay by the edge of the sword whoever seeks to drink of the water without paying him tribute of gold and silver!"
"Impossible!"
As Master Rababull regarded him incredulously, the messenger sucked in more air, and went on breathlessly.
"Of a truth, sire! Kadrug has taken two hundred swordsmen, and they have slain the watchmen of the canal, and clogged the sluice gates with boulders, and diverted our water! He declares he will not let it out again until much money has been paid. The crops will all soon be dead and dried, but Kadrug has sworn this day that the House of Rababull shall henceforth have no more water until there is enough dammed up to utterly wash away all ere it is finally released again!"
"My croplands—dry?!" spluttered Master Rababull. "You mean—I have been cheated of my own water?"
Master Rababull turned to Prut, and hesitated. For all of his great size, the stupid oaf wasn't half the man that Habrunt was—or at least, had been. Now, too late, Habrunt was worthless, crippled for life by Master Rababull's own hand, just when he was needed the most, and now it looked like he had a real battle on his hands!
A fight for water rights. No deadlier contest could there possibly be than this. Kadrug promised first no water at all and then a flash flood, unless paid much gold and silver. And of course, it would not end with that. Unless he won this battle, he was as one already destroyed.
"Send for my sons!" commanded Master Rababull. "While they are coming, see that the war god is brought out and a human sacrifice prepared, and slay and burn two of my bullocks! Have the slaves assembled at the temple where I will make obeisance and pray for victory. Issue spears, swords, shields, whetstones, and bows, for today we march on Kadrug at the sluice gates!"
Prut clapped his right fist across his huge hairy chest and declared in a loud and perpetually hoarse voice to the wall behind Master Rababull, "I hear and obey, oh Master!"
Then Prut turned and ran out swiftly on his long hairy legs. As he departed beyond view, there came the sounds of heavy blows and shoutings as Prut knocked down several unfortunates who happened to be blocking his path.
Master Rababull felt his eyes go stark with fear. At a time like this, when he needed his best men, Habrunt was reduced to a beggar's status. If not for the lying schemes of Sorpiala…
But it was too late to look back now. There remained only Prut to help him. Stupid Prut! Everything about Prut was hairy. Master Rababull sometimes imagined that even the insides of Prut's entrails must be hairy.
Master Rababull turned fiercely on his personal valet as if about to attack the quivering coward.
"Fetch me my armor and weapons! Hurry, you fool!" he shouted urgently.
Then, without waiting for a reply, he turned to a frightened-looking, beautiful House slave girl, one of the pampered indoors concubines, and said to her, "Go and tell the kitchen crew to begin preparing full marching rations for every able-bodied male!"
"But—" she stammered helplessly, "but Master, how can I do this, seeing I am but a concubine?"
Pampered from birth, and taken from the same mold as Sorpiala and her kin, the foolish girl could not help but balk.
Wrathfully, Master Rababull took one step forward and backhanded the surprised woman to the floor with a single blow.
"I said move! My men cannot fight on empty stomachs, you wench!"
Sobbing, the woman held her hand to her bruised cheek as she scurried out of his reach and ran weeping to go and relay his orders to the kitchen staff.
Master Rababull nodded to himself in satisfaction.
With a slap mark like that on the face of a beauty like her, there would be no mockery in the kitchen when she arrived to give the orders. Whoever contradicted her would surely be boiled in oil. It had been done once before by Master Rababull, two hundred and eighty years ago, and he knew the cooks still spoke of it on occasion, when the day's work was done and they could at long last magnify themselves upon the young and impressionable with their idle words.
Moments later, Master Rababull could hear Prut's voice, shouting from the top of the stairs. Then a horn was blown repeatedly, with much force and vigor of the blower's lungs, urgently calling all slaves to a general assembly.
Would that women could fight, fumed Master Rababull, that he might double his fighting force! As well to wish that the stone idols should come to life! But he was pragmatic enough to realize that mere temple idols could not so much as move themselves, let alone that they should wield weapons.
When his personal body slave had arrayed him in his bronze and leather body armor, he turned and marched in haste for the temple. The war god did not have to move anyways, a contemptuous Master Rababull deliberately reminded himself. It only had to make his slaves move—to swing their swords and throw away their own precious lives in the face of any possible enemy, the better to save his own precious hide.
He watched as the temple priests prepared the shoulder litter, putting the solid ebony war god and trophy bones on the platform and brushing off the dust.
The temple was a miniature copy of the Emperor's, barely large enough to permit two or three priests to move about and conduct family ceremonials. The Emperor himself would not trouble himself to lend assistance, Master Rababull knew. To the Emperor, any fight amongst his subjects over what he would consider petty water rights was a mere squabble, too far beneath his dignity to so much as notice.
Indeed, Master Rababull reflected sourly, from the Emperor's point of view, a new landlord might be more successful with the harvest and produce greater taxes. Why waste the lives of the Royal Guard, over such? Master Rababull had seen it before, from the sidelines, as it were. That was how little the Emperor cared for his own, although it was seldom proclaimed in so many words.
The temple was built out of stone pillars on a raised mound of flat-topped, hard-beaten earth, a level berm six steps above the surrounding compound courtyard, with heavy carved cedar timbers for a roof. When it got too damp, they threw down coarse-woven grass mats to keep the mud down.
There weren't too many sources of building stones in the Persian Valley. Just an endless vista of fertile croplands to fight over, which was how he had acquired much of his own property, both human and otherwise.
The skulls surrounding the House war god on the litter were from the heads of past possessors and contenders for the land owned by Master Rababull. All of the skulls had their two front teeth knocked out and a hole punched through the center of the forehead.
When all was ready, Master Rababull was adorned with a ceremonial red and black robe and walked out in front of the litter, carrying his sword in his fist.
There were four priests out in front, the two foremost blowing war pipes, which were also used on New Year's ceremonies, and the two hindmost bearing smoking clay incense pots blackened by soot.
Sounding their pipes, the two priests in the lead started blowing hweee and hwaaa fanatically while the whole procession, with the acrid incense smoking putridly, marched from the assembly area behind the temple and worked their way slowly toward the temple proper.
Hweee-hwaaa, hweee-hwaaa, hweaeaea they sounded in unison, blowing continuously in a deafening discordance as they proceeded. The priests and their attendants were all shaven-headed and splattered with wet pitch black coal dust, scarlet red goat's blood, and white ashes from head to toes.
At the temple, a female baby lay squalling on the flat stone alter, while the baby's mother, a slave-woman, was held back by two temple attendants who held her by the wrists but allowed her to scream wildly for her baby.
Her outbursts were the unintentional focal point of the ceremony, signifying by her very real torments and anguished outcries, the ceremonially-expressed feelings and sentiments of the House of Rababull over the foreign danger to it's property holdings and, specifically in this case, it's water rights.
For where there was no water, there could be no life.
The temple drummers were already there, beating on huge drums that sent out a deep rolling beat that put the slaves into a zombie-like state of mind.
A state of mania, for war…
Too late, Master Rababull thought of having the baby thrown, alive, into a cauldron of boiling water. Such a sacrifice would signify his humility, a generous gift of the fruit of his human possessions. The boiling water would signify that it was his water, and his anger bound up in the water, an impressive liturgy to the war god.
No time now. Have to do it the old way.
The entire procession halted, and as the drumbeats rose in tempo to a heightened furor, shaking the very bones of all present as by the impending battle sounds of the hooves of war horses, Master Rababull stepped momentously around to the fore, facing them all front and center in a grand entrance.
At the raising of both of Master Rababull's arms, the drums increased in a furious tempo, and when the arms dropped the sound of the drums abruptly ceased, although one witless soul kept beating a fraction of a second too long before realizing that he had overlooked the cut-off signal.
Master Rababull made the slightest turn of his head to see who it was, and marked the terrified fool for a thorough whipping later.
In the sudden silence, the terrified slave-woman could be heard weeping and begging desperately for the life of her daughter, as Master Rababull stood with his arms raised again like an eagle before the general assemblage.
Before him were all available members of the House of Rababull, men to the fore, women to the rear, children hindmost, and freeborn family members to the right.
The first row, signifying the first-line defense arm, was comprised of his many sons. It would be Master Rababull's long-awaited opportunity to have a few of the more ambitious of his offspring lead the battle charge and see them finished off before they could come home to glory and threaten his personal authority over all his holdings. Immediately after these, in the second row beginning on the right and trailing off to the left, stood male in-laws beholden unto him enough to show up or risk serious loss of status.
He surveyed their ranks, noting whoever was absent and deserving of punishment for it. There were a few. Punishing in-laws was a necessary thing, best done while the sword was still dripping red from the victory of a battle well-fought.
He made a mental note that a small war-party would have to be detailed to go take care of the drop-outs when he had finished off Kadrug's forces.
Old Maskron, one of his fathers-in-law, was there at the fore as usual. Maskron, a fierce, white-maned old scoundrel, always showed up with his dinged old bronze sword polished and gleaming like gold, and he was always asked to come forward to utter the closing prayers, shaking and waving his sword in the air in wild gesticulations of false bravado.
Maskron was too old to fight, and too proud to stay away, so it was exceeding helpful, in saving face for both of them, to permit him this signal honor.
One distant cousin of the son of his sixth wife, whose name was Puffat and whose mother bore an illegitimate connection to the Emperor himself, stood with one armpit held up by a crutch, his broken and splinted right leg having recently been the source of much grief at the hands of the bonesetter.
The leg was beginning to turn green. If sorcery was of no avail, the young man was doomed either to lose the leg, or die in agony of the gain-green.
He was excused from battle, but there would be no time now to send for the Sorcerer and have a ceremonial procedure. Later, though, they would. Then, Puffat's leg could either be exorcized, or amputated and cauterized.
Master Rababull gave a brief announcement detailing Kadrug's activities to cut off their water, and called upon the entire House, all able-bodied males both bond and free, to fight.
A loud outcry rose up at this as everyone present, women and children too, screamed and howled for the death of Kadrug.
Satisfied, Master Rababull turned to the Chief Priest and commanded that the sacrifice should proceed.
Two priests held the squalling infant from both ends on the stone altar before the war god, one at her tiny feet, one at her little hands.
The infant's mother, insane with terror, shrieked her protests as the priest lifted up the ceremonial sword, much abused from previous impacts with the stone surface, and brought it down on the defenseless child's naked body.
The tiny voice was cut off.
"To war!" shouted Master Rababull.
"TO WAAAAR!!" howled the crowd, drowning out the hopeless sobbing of the baby's mother as she fell brokenly to the dirt when she was finally released.
Drowned out, also, were old Maskron's shouted invocations as he stood in front of them waving his flashing bronze sword.
In the back of the crowd, Si'Wren dropped her head in anguish, for had she not also screamed in the past for the death of their enemies when Master Rababull led the war cry for a neighbor's field? Had not little Si'Wren once prayed to that ugly physical thing to which other babies had been sacrificed in the past, and which the others even now still worshiped so blindly? Would that she might dare to speak and tell them what her heart had learned, reflected from it's own inner pool, upon the graces of the Invisible God.
She, who alone might have spoken truth, stood silently amidst the screaming and drum beating as the shouting went on in a frenzy to kill the enemy. Master Rababull brought on renewed cheers as he mounted his stallion, a half-wild white-spotted gray beauty, and rode to the head of the long riotous formation of shouting men and neighing and stamping horses.
Behind him the drums thundered until the very air seemed to pulsate with the blood-lust, and in the midst of this Master Rababull suddenly raised his sword high in the air and held it up for a long moment as he whirled it around and around, and finally pointed it straight ahead of him in a sudden lunging motion.
"Onward—to the battle!" he cried.
"WHOO-RAH! WHOO-RAH!" chorused the marchers, and at this, the great crowd of men formed a disorganized marching column, many abreast, the men's hoarsened voices bellowing their war cries as they chanted in time to the marching drums and war pipes, over four hundred men-at-arms.
As the ragged formation tromped out the front gates and away down the road in the direction of the sluice gates, which were at the northwesternmost limits of Master Rababull's property holdings, their voices and figures dwindled with distance, and the screams of blood lust from the cripples, women, and children left behind gradually died out.
Si'Wren noticed the boy who had been punished earlier for putting another boy's eye out, by having one of his own put out, and suddenly realized with shock that his other eye had also been put out, and his nose broken. The second eye was so infected that the boy was staggering drunkenly in an extreme delirium. His mouth opened and a hoarse, plaintive croak emitted from the depths of a tortured soul.
Shaken to the core of her very soul, Si'Wren began to approach the boy, when his mother came walking from her left toward the boy. Si'Wren naturally held back, thinking how the mother must yearn upon her savagely punished child. But when the mother sought to walk past the boy without paying any attention to him, she happened to clear her throat involuntarily.
The sound was instantly recognized by the boy, who took a step in her direction and reached out to her with another croaking plea.
Instantly the mother, who was barefoot, stepped back and jerked herself clear just before the boy would have touched her. With a loathsome leer, the mother froze just out of reach, totally silent, watching her own son as he continued to stagger in the same direction he had initially chosen, until his own footsteps had carried him away from her.
Without a word, the mother turned on her heel and continued on her way but did not look back either at her bleating son, nor did she notice Si'Wren watching open-mouthed.
Eventually after they had almost all cleared out, all that could be heard was the broken, muffled sobbing of the woman whose daughter had been sacrificed.
Si'Wren watched as a couple of naive young slave-girls walked past the grieving mother and one of them cursed her for her lack of loyalty to the House of Rababull.
"Fool!" cried the girl. "What is your one daughter's life, to the loss of all our water? She has died for the glory of the House of Rababull! It was only a girl anyway! Why do you cry like that?!!"
The girl and her friends walked on, puffed up with their borrowed sense of self-importance, all worked-up into a feverish blood-frenzy at the spectacle of yet another gory victory for the family name.
Si'Wren looked long upon the girls' departing backs, desiring to tell them the truth, to tell them all that it was they who were the fools, and to scold them for their senselessness. Then she noticed that one of them was an especially vengeful member of Sorpiala's inner clique, and fearfully, Si'Wren turned and faced away from them.
What could she have said to them, anyway?
Deeply disturbed by all that she had seen, and still pondering the madness of it, Si'Wren hesitantly approached the sobbing mother. How could she have been so blind as to embrace such evil before, to copy and mimic such horror?
What a curious thing it was, that it took an Invisible God to open the formerly blind eyes of a seeing person such as herself, to the evil that lay right under all their noses, and still none could see this but Si'Wren.
She knelt down beside the sobbing mother, but was immediately rebuffed by her.
"Get away from me, you filthy idol-breaker!" the woman screamed, wildly slapping Si'Wren off. "Get away!"
Shocked and mute, Si'Wren looked on numbly as the sobbing woman raised herself up and, stricken with grief, stumbled in a hysterical staggering traipse across the yard to fall down at the feet of a half-finished idol in the workshop, wailing desperately to it to bring back her daughter, or give her a son to replace the daughter who was lost.
Si'Wren knew that she had not broken the other idol, that dismembered thing of glistening green jade and jeweled eyes. It was Sorpiala who had cleverly broken the idol earlier, and only blamed it on poor Nelatha. But she also knew that it was beside the point who had broken it; idols -she now knew- deserved to be broken.
Anyways, it did not matter so much anymore. She was as guilty in their eyes as if she had. What mattered the most now, was that it was Sorpiala by whose evil machinations brave Habrunt, former Slavemaster, now lay a beaten and broken-spirited man on that blood-stained sleeping rack in the slave quarters.
Si'Wren turned away. She must go to him, and help wise old L'acoci tend to his wounds.
Si'Wren turned away from the sobbing mother whose daughter had been sacrificed. The fact that she could do nothing for the poor woman left her with a twisting feeling in her gut. As she walked away, bitter tears stung her eyes as she began weeping hopelessly.
Si'Wren jerked suddenly as a flying pebble struck her on the cheek. Stunned, she looked up to see a group of dirt-streaked children gathered around. They had approached her so unexpectedly that she had been unaware of their presence.
As they jeered and threw more pebbles and small stones at her she put up her arms in self-defense, although a larger boy managed to cast some larger rocks that bruised her badly when they struck her shoulders and forearms.
When Si'Wren turned and fled, they chased her, calling vile names. They reviled her Invisible God, crying out, "Stone the idol-breaker!" and "Where is he?—I can't find him!", mocking her as an outcast of the people, a scourge upon the land, and an enemy of the gods.
They followed her as she hastened to return to the cypress bungalow of the field-hands. She continued to shield herself from the stones by holding up her arms. At the door flap to the bungalow, she threw herself through the barrier tarp and ducked within, gasping for breath and weeping from her injuries as they danced without the bungalow, chanting evil rhymes against her.
They were too afraid to enter, until the brash older boy stepped inside with a large rock upheld to smite her with. Quick as a flash, L'acoci seized him by the hair and knocked his own rock against his own head with his own hand.
With a surprised scream the boy staggered and fell over backwards, then jumped up and ran bleeding out of the bungalow, at which point the mob of kids broke and ran. The din of their screams, added to the larger boy's outraged squeals of terror all rapidly diminished as they fled, scattered like a flock of magpies.
L'acoci ignored Si'Wren's weeping as she pushed into her hands a crude clay pot of herbal tea, a bowl of paste made from honey mixed with lard and clay and crumbled leaves and flowers, and a coarse, dirty, wadded-up old rag.
"Ah!" she exclaimed wordlessly, and blanched at her imagined 'error'. L'acoci looked long and meaningfully at Si'Wren, but said nothing and turned away finally without comment.
Feeling guilty about the monosyllabic utterance, although she had not truly spoken any word, Si'Wren, trembling in fear, stepped over to kneel carefully beside a stoically suffering Habrunt, her own concerns temporarily overlooked. Head still reeling from the blows, she forgot her bruises as she flinched at the renewed sight of his terrible injuries.
She changed the bandages polluted by the stink of corruption, and soothed on the paste L'acoci had made, before gently applying the layers of fresh tea-soaked replacement gauze over Habrunt's ruined flesh, exercising special care over the most fearsome gashes. Habrunt trembled in agony at this, but when he realized who she was, he somehow managed to hold still for it, although with much difficulty.
As she worked on Habrunt's terrible wounds, Si'Wren thought with great trepidation about possibly having violated her oath of silence again, but could not help wondering if she actually had or not. Of a truth, she had sworn never to actually speak again, but now it occurred to her that perhaps she might at least intonate. The idea was such as to be normally of no great import, but now seemed so great a revelation that she felt a sense of surprise out of all proportion. The simple fact was, she realized, that one did not need mere words to express one's feelings.
Si'Wren reflected upon this at length, and considered that although she might never again know the joy of singing, she could still hum her favorite melodies, and imagine the words in her mind or merely close her eyes and sway gently to the rhythm.
The thought of this seemed like a great consolation to her.
She began humming softly as she worked gently on Habrunt's wounds, filling the silent, deserted bungalow with the quiet, lovely mood of her melody.
Habrunt sighed, and seemed to relax a little. She noticed this, and felt that he was more than a little eased in his sufferings. So she continued humming, ever so softly.
Presently others began to arrive, a few at a time, all of them female slaves or their children.
With L'acoci hovering over the stew, no one dared bother Si'Wren, kneeling so close nearby.
The ravaged figure of brave Habrunt convalescing on the sleeping rack, fallen from favor, gave them equal pause. Until the day he died, Habrunt would never be the kind of man whom others might dare to mock openly or deal so lightly with.
But Si'Wren hummed more softly anyways, and more quietly, that others might not overhear so readily, to avoid giving them sufficient reason to take open notice of it and perhaps voice false objections out of a spirit of trouble-making. Presently, the others began murmuring amongst themselves over the anticipated victory, and Habrunt and his young nursemaid were ignored and forgotten.
Presently, L'acoci dipped up some stew into a clay bowl and gave it toSi'Wren.
"You must feed him as well as yourself," said L'acoci, as she noticedSi'Wren holding the one bowl in puzzlement.
Si'Wren had clearly expected two bowls, one for herself and another for Habrunt. Hesitantly at first, she began alternating a portion for herself and another for Habrunt, using sea shells for scoops. Habrunt could not bear to move his tortured body, not so much as to lift a finger, but Si'Wren was more than willing to make up for this by helping him. Occasionally, she lifted a cup of water to his lips, and resorted to wiping his beard with the dampened hem of her skirt.
But then, noticing his worsening condition, she took up a rag and dipped it in tea and pressed it to his feverish brow to try to ease the torment that visibly shook his trembling, half-naked body with increasing vehemence.
Slowly, as Si'Wren endured the passing of the hours thus, evening fell and twilight was transformed into the blackness of night and the flicker of the cooking fire in it's cobblestone pit in the cypress bungalow of the field slaves. A mist began to rise from the land, covering all with it's creeping white vapors, obscuring everything under a drifting, gauzy white veil of dimly-cast moonglow.
"Si'Wren," whispered L'acoci, leaning close so that others in the bungalow might not overhear, "I would have a word with you."
Si'Wren beheld the old woman, and waited respectfully.
"Si'Wren," repeated L'acoci, her voice as whisper-dry as a pile of dried leaves as she bent close to Si'Wren's head and Si'Wren sensed the parched lips hovering close to her ear, "I have heard the stories of old, told of moon-madness, shared in the bungalows in times past. I saw when you yourself, as a tiny orphan girl new to the House of the Master, were told such horrible stories by the fireside when the slaves hid in fear of the full moon shining in the blackness of night, with tales told about how the moon drives men, and women, and even little children, to madness. And I see you now, watching over your brave Habrunt, as he lies in the delirium of pain and fever and torments upon his cot. Are you wondering if Habrunt might be in danger of the moon-madness?"
Si'Wren considered this momentarily, and then she shook her head, signaling her answer in the negative. Yes, she believed in moon-madness, but never had she questioned the power of Habrunt's might. She did not believe that a mighty and valiant one such as he would or could ever go moon-mad.
"Good," whispered L'acoci. "Hear me, girl, and mark me no fool. There is no such thing as moon-madness. During the full moon, demons stalk the land, seeking to afflict weakened minds, that people might blame the moon, and call those so afflicted moon-mad, and thereby curse God's creation which He hath called good. For this reason, yes, we must beware the coming of the full moon, but not for it's own sake, but for the madness and evil deception worked by unseen demonic powers, seeking to deceive us mere mortals into thinking that it comes from the full moon. But the full moon itself is nothing to worry about. Know this, girl, and know it well. Behind every evil act of man is the still more evil provocation of a horde of demonic and deceiving fallen powers, for the unseen demons ever lurk, and ever shall until the very end of time itself, seeking the souls of every man, woman, and child upon the face of this accursed soil we walk upon, and the demons are very real, and they are organized into an entire fallen kingdom of the damned, an army of intelligent evil spirits, dedicated to the overthrow of the Invisible God Himself."
Si'Wren considered this, as she regarded Habrunt, and nodded that she understood.
Then L'acoci added, still whispering so faintly that it was as if Si'Wren's own inner consciousness had formed the words, "Si'Wren, far from the demons driving Habrunt mad, he drives them mad. They hate him for his righteousness and goodness."
Then L'acoci was turning away, and Si'Wren realized that the conversation was over, and rejoiced that she had learned this new thing about demons. Now, they could no longer deceive her as before. She would never again fear the full moon, but only be on guard, in prayer, against the evil demons.
Sometime around midnight, Habrunt began to grow delirious from the fever, and she fell into a kind of stupor, sitting on a woven mat and leaning against his sleeping rack with her head leaning close to his, while the bare skin of her face and exposed extremities basked in the fireside glow.
Habrunt began to moan in his sleep from his intense sufferings, and Si'Wren began to hum a melody, so low and muted as to be inaudible to all but herself and Habrunt, and after a short time he stopped his pitiable lamentations for a little while.
In an exhausted somnambulance, Si'Wren lapsed into her slumbers as well, until his groanings woke her once more. Then she patted his forehead with the tea-soaked rag, and from her heart and soul arose in her throat soft compassionate intonations, so low that only his ears could hear her as she leaned close, hovering over him with tender eyes and a softened look.
Something seemed to be bothering Habrunt in his sleep as he murmured to himself unintelligibly, but although Si'Wren tried her utmost she could not seem to make it out.
In the delirium of a feverish dream, Habrunt heard a voice calling sweetly in the jungle. It was the voice of some incomprehensible vision, a beauty, a paragon of virtue, a woman like unto no other such as he had ever seen in all of his unfathomable years.
He searched for her, sometimes walking, sometimes running a few steps, expecting any moment to break through the dense foliage of the lush greenery and glimpse the unearthly vision of her eternal spirit, ecstatically alive, wild, and free, as the mysterious woman with a voice like an angel roamed the deep jungle, seemingly heedless of it's wild beasts and other horrors, entirely unharmed, and moreover, unaffected, as if it were her rightful kingdom and the savage beasts her royal subjects.
But every time he managed to brush the vines and fern fronds aside with a burly arm to reveal what was beyond with a sweep of his haunted eyes, he saw only a little brown wren bird, singing from a branch across the little thicket-like clearing.
He turned away, and again he heard her, like the calling of a siren, causing the steaming jungle to throb and tremble invisibly with the incredible sweetness and beauty of that trilling, passionately enthralling voice, piercing his soul like a javelin tipped at the point with the sap of some unknown, virulent love concoction.
Madly, he spun around and charged through the vines, their ropes and boughs whipping at his skin as he ignored the pain, calling desperately and chasing with hastened steps towards her swiftly moving shadow which could barely be glimpsed ahead, highlighted against the glimmerings of sunlight that sparkled like the beams of coruscating, living jewels before his eyes.
There she was! All sparkling bright shimmerings of brilliant golden yellow sunlight flashes. Through the mottled and rippled interplay of light and shadow patterns, he saw her silhouette against the sun, a living vision come to life amidst the dank dark kaleidoscope of jungle, blinding his eyes with her beauty!
He crashed wildly through, stopped to rub his eyes, and looked again, and, disappointed, saw yet again the plain little brown wren bird, there!, on a branch, so small, so insignificant, singing sweetly.
Where! Where was the woman who called to him?!!
He looked around, and staggered off, heartbroken and despairing.
Where was she?
He heard her again, far off, singing, calling like an eternal, winged Holy Angel of the Invisible God, and as he turned to go to her he felt his limbs whipped by the passing branches and weighing like lead, and he slowed helplessly, becoming tired, so deathly tired.
The siren, he thought feverishly, as he staggered and fell headlong, unable to catch himself.
Where was the siren?!!
"Si'Wren," remanded wise old L'acoci in a hushed and quavering crone's voice as dry as dead leaves. "Si'Wren! Come to sleep now. Your brave Slavemaster will live."
As she ceased her crooning, Si'Wren looked up at the withered countenance of old L'acoci by the light of the cooking fire coals with a tired, dreamy stare, and sighed in a heedless shrug. Then she turned her eyes softly back again, looking compassionately down upon her precious Habrunt, who had finally stopped his thrashing, and fallen into a deep slumber again.
Ageless Habrunt as half a man was yet even now all the more to her in his ruin, than any ten ordinary men in their youth and prime could possibly have boasted.
Si'Wren hummed softly to him, as he began his moaning and thrashing again, and she wondered what chaotic dreams passed through his sleeping mind.
So the long night passed.
* * *
The sweat-covered, dirt-streaked slave runner came at a quick jog through the compound front gates and sought first after the whereabouts of Slavemaster Habrunt.
He did not know yet that Habrunt, the former Slavemaster of the House of Rababull, had so recently been deposed and punished. He did not know that Habrunt was slated to be sold for next to nothing, as soon as his wounds were healed. The messenger would speak to no one else at first, and the others were too frightened by the former Slavemaster Habrunt's terrifying fate to even so much as speak of him to the runner.
Not finding Habrunt, the runner ran straight up the front steps into the House, where Old Maskron quickly sprang to his feet and raised his bronze sword in a challenge to yield and declare himself.
The gasping runner took in Old Maskron with a wild-eyed stare, and finally decided he could withhold his dire news no longer.
"Master Rababull is dead!" declared the breathless slave.
"Whaaaat?!" croaked Old Maskron, his eyes going senselessly round and wide.
The clatter of the sword rang loud on the stone steps, as Old Maskron reached out with both hands to seize the runner's tunic by the front to confront him bodily face-to-face and shook him as he howled, "You lie!!!"
"It is no lie!" the runner sobbed in a broken utterance. Then he went on, "Kadrug—giants!—they fell on us from all sides!"
He stopped suddenly, his lungs gasping audibly for air as he stood sniggering like a whipped boy in a torment of anguish, fear, and remorse at what he had seen.
"Master Rababull," he moaned, "and all—of the rest of us…"
He fell silent, staring into emptiness as if at the terrifying aspect of unseen demons.
"Talk!" demanded Old Maskron finally, shaking the other again and infuriated at the runner's balking manner.
"A trap!!" the slave wailed. "They are all—g-gug—dead!!Maskron!—what shall we do for I alone have escaped to tell you?!"
"Do?" croaked his interrogator. Old Maskron shook the weeping runner as he gripped him, staring him down for a long moment while his eyes took on a maddened look.
"Do?! You tell me this, and dare to ask of me, 'What shall we do?!'"
He shook the hapless runner again, a human god damning the dishonored vessel of calamitous news to all the imaginary hells of the soul, and violently cast him backwards as if the man had himself brought this dire fate upon the House of Rababull.
The runner fell backwards and hit the hard, hewn stones of the stairs full stretch against the back of his head, and lay sprawled backwards, head-downwards and facing sightlessly into the heavens on the unforgiving stone steps.
* * *
The fields stood empty. No slaves worked their softly undulating waves of ripening grain.
The water in the irrigation canals was already low and getting lower, the water ways steadily dropping down to unprecedented levels. The silent compound stood with it's great gates closed tight shut and cross-barred through the heavy iron rungs. No confident soldiery patrolled it's upper walkways. They were all dead.
At the top of the front steps of the House proper, no great Master stood confidently facing the world on it's own terms as a favorite of the gods.
Master Rababull was dead.
Prut was dead. Geth the Fieldmaster was dead. All of their able-bodied male slaves were dead, their blood spilled in the fields surrounding the hotly contested sluice gates.
It was not a pretty sight, with the vultures already at work on what the corpse-strippers and ritual mutilators had left.
The compound was filled with quiet groups of motionless women, solemn-faced and terror-stricken. Their children clustered anxiously around them, some quiet, some crying, but none laughing. The few innocent toddlers who occasionally frolicked were quickly spanked into confounded wailing obedience, if not outright silence.
In the long and seemingly vacant cypress bungalow of the field slaves, one sang wordlessly, and almost inaudibly.
Close beside the cooking fire, Si'Wren, forbidden to form words, hummed and sang in sweet soft crooning sounds.
Keeping her voice low, she sat tirelessly beside the sleeping rack where Habrunt lay prostrate, hovering attentively over his tormented form and watching over him with tender devotion.
The others, preoccupied with vastly more important concerns now, could not be bothered to deal with Si'Wren anymore for her imagined blasphemies.
As one made ritually invisible, as well as silent, and an outcast for life, Si'Wren was lost in a world of her own. Clearly, she had eyes for no one but Habrunt. She saw nothing besides this mighty man who, laid low, remained on the rack and languished perpetually before her.
They had done this to him, and behold; they were now dead whereas he,Habrunt, still lived.
* * *
The compound's front gates boomed loudly as someone pounded at the door. In the drifting predawn mists of the interior yard, people cowered and watched from their doorways, peering fearfully across the compound, waiting for Old Maskron to go answer or at least send someone to see who it was.
Old Maskron finally came out to peer through the gray-white veil of dense fog with eyes reddened and pouched from lack of sleep and too many years of heavy drink and overmuch worry, his face a scowling mask.
At the side of Old Maskron, a nervous-looking, handsome young boy of perhaps ten appeared next, dressed in rich robes, his hair polled oddly in a manner which bespoke his noble birth.
Old Maskron clapped the boy on the back.
"Go! See!" Old Maskron growled the terse command.
The boy ran and climbed up the diagonal brace of one of the gates to peer out of a peephole. He was seen talking momentarily, then turned and ran back across the courtyard and up the House front steps.
"They are blood kin of the House of Rababull!" he proclaimed excitedly to Old Maskron.
"What? Impossible!" Old Maskron brandished his bronze sword as he made his arthritic way down the front steps.
With the keyed-up little Master at his side, white-haired Old Maskron wobbled and wheezed his way across the courtyard, his sandals scraping audibly in the dust of the dirt, while fearful eyes watched his slow progress to the gates from their ill-concealment on all quarters.
He arrived at the gates and peered out of the peephole.
Long seconds went past as he stood and talked with whoever was outside. He nodded occasionally several times, pausing to listen now and again, his hand idly fiddling with the sword.
Finally, he nodded approval as he turned and ordered several crippled slaves to open the gates. Limping, they reached for the cross bar. With a mighty heave, the heavy oaken cross bar slid sideways out of the iron rungs and into the receiver off to one side.
Old Maskron stepped back and self-importantly ordered them to open the gates with a show of bluster. With a series of ineffectual lurches, the crippled slaves put their backs into it, and slowly the big gates began to creak open.
Suddenly a spear lanced through the air, flying through the space between the opening gate doors, and struck Old Maskron in the chest, it's iron point erupting in a welt of red from the backside of his spine as he collapsed with a single amazed croak of disbelief, dead before he struck the dirt.
In sheer terror, the boy screamed and turned to run. Halfway across the courtyard, he was struck down by a flight of arrows that zinged through the air and thunked sickeningly into his body and became inextricably embedded in his back, which he arched agonizingly even as he tumbled forward to hit the ground with an awful, nerveless slap and slid a half-step in the dust.
At this, the terrified shriekings and screamings of the women and other children suddenly filled the compound's surrounding buildings.
As the war party entered, their men marched quickly past the boy's crumpled figure. A huge half-breed giant fully seven feet tall thrust him through with a spear point and casually levered the honed steel blade out of the boy's body again as he marched past without even so much as breaking his stride.
They broke into all buildings and searched for any males of noble birth. There were none such, of course, except in the House proper.
These they brought out kicking and screaming, one by one, to the top of the front steps.
They were immediately confronted by a tall, fearsome-looking man who appeared to be the leader of the invaders and summarily thrust through with the sword and their lifeless bodies cast down the stone steps.