“That’s all right,” Tofi said. “Everyone else is dead.” He was still —grieving, and the grief broke through for a moment in a tremor of his chin. “I’ll do it, I say. Then my father will shut up.”

“Five of us, then,” Marak said.

“Seven,” Tofi said. “The slaves are my father’s. Now they’re mine. I won’t ride off and leave them. They owe me. They owe me their wretched lives. They’ll damned well pay their debt, wherever we end up.”

Chapter Eleven

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The Ila neither ages nor suffers illness: from her all life flows, and life and health is her gift to those who keep her law.

—The Book of Priests

Tofi argued with the slaves. He cajoled, he raised a quirt, he threatened.

“Pack up,” Tofi said. “You’re fools here. You haven’t a trade, you don’t have relatives.” That availed nothing. “I’ll free you when we get to Oburan,” Tofi said. “You’ll be freedmen when you come back.”

There was no movement.

“Damn you, I’ll pay you wages when you’re free!”

The slaves looked at one another, then began to get up, one and the other. “Move!” Tofi said, and they moved, and went to work.

They took all the beshti, all Tofi’s goods. The beasts complained about being roused out for service, but not beyond the ordinary. They were well rested and well watered, and had eaten all they wished for the several days of their sojourn here. Gorging to their bellies’ contentment and moving on was the sum of what they did all their lives, and now the packs were lighter, the gear distributed out over those beasts that had no riders, by the simple change of running two deep-irons through saddle rings and lashing them down. The loads they made were so light that for a besha’s strength, it was as if they carried no weight at all.

The mad turned out to stare at the process. Some of them, understanding where they were going, even professed a thought of going with them.

But after all was said and settled, to a man, they chose the rich tables and the promise of safety. Only as the seven of them rode away, their former companions lined the cool edge of the tent, waving, calling out well-wishes to them. One, Maol, one of Tofi’s two women ran out to offer them fresh fruit for their journey and to shed tears at the parting. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for our lives.”

But the rest simply stood back to watch them go, as much as if to say that of all the mad, they counted their former guides the most afflicted.

Beyond the tents the beasts stretched out fully into that natural walk that could eat up so much ground a day. The slaves rode hindmost, loaded with food, which they ate with abandon, no one forbidding it. They had more than enough water to reach Pori, they had food enough for their whole journey: they had all Tofi’s wealth of tents.