“Kotta says the child is from one sowing,” declared Finnuk. “She is fertile, a good field, my daughter.”

“Perhaps it will turn out a girl,” I said. “If she’s a breeder of girls, I don’t want her.” But I was coming around to it. The flash of her eyes had stirred me up a little, as the downcast lids had not. “Take her back in your tent,” I said. “If it’s mine, she’ll bear before the month is run. If she’s made me a son, I’ll have her.” I nearly laughed at the look in her eyes then. I could foresee wild times if we wed. “I’m surprised she’s willing,” I remarked. “She lost a tooth in my shoulder on the previous occasion.”

About sixteen days before the month was done, she dropped her child, and it was indeed a boy. No doubting the father either, for its tuft of hair was black.

A priest of another Dagkta krarl joined us, for Seel would not since there was bad blood openly between us. I imagine he meant to shame me, but he failed. After the fighting ends, the summer truce holds the tribes together again, and there were plenty of other holy men to choose from over the hill. It needs only a few words spoken inside a ring of fire to make a woman a warrior’s property.

In my tent, she put things to rights, got out a silver cup I had on a raid, and brought me beer in it for the bride-drink, like a dutiful wife. She had left the child with her mother for our marriage couching. I was fifteen then and Chula two years older, but I stood taller than she, and men would take me for nineteen or more if they did not know my birth-night. When I drew off her shireen, I saw she was pretty and well acquainted with a mirror. Her father had been soft with her, no doubt. She had brought the emerald as part of her dowry, and gold bells were clipped on the ends of her hair, chinking. She kept her glance on the floor very meekly. She had not really looked at me beyond that one memorable look in Ettook’s tent.

“Well,” I said, “what is it to be this time?”

“I am your first wife,” she said, “and I have borne you a son.”

“Perhaps you will not be my only wife to do that,” I said.

“Perhaps,” she said, “but I was your first woman, and that can never be altered.”

Then she stared at me, hard and bright, and wrapped herself around me tight as grass. I was surprised at her insistence.

Afterward she did not want to let me go. It was a busy night.

Later, I heard she had been boasting of me, the way the women did. She was arrogant, too, of the child, who was a fine, healthy, bawling, kicking brat. I felt no vast interest in him myself, despite my warrior’s ranting in the painted tent. Ettook’s un-love had not taught me a particular worth in sons. In any case, I got the boy as a weed will grow.