Ettook said hollowly some phrase about how welcome I was, and how worthy of preserved existence. He asked me where our Dagkta warriors were, for surely they had returned to the krarl with me? He was trusting I had boasted and they were lost after all. But his luck was out, for even the few who had perished in the prison pit had not been his men.

I was wondering where the five had gone, and wishing I had kept them by me, but I had no need to be anxious. They had only been waiting, with a sense of theater to equal mine, for just such a prompting as Ettook’s query. Pent-up high spirits and pride in their return had made them wild, for all five were as young as I. They galloped into the watch-square, whooping and calling in a huge surge of stolen horses, scattering the women and the fire, and setting the babies bawling.

The warriors went on riding in circles for a minute or so, islands of the broken fire sparking on their grins, and on their hands full of looted knives, and the coats of their city mounts.

Piecemeal, the noise and confusion shrank back into the sputter and flicker of the checkered light.

I said, loud enough for everyone to hear me, “With these braves and eighteen more I took the city raiders’ camp. We slew them to a man, and kept only one prisoner, the woman here, who is my share of the spoil.”

The five riders hooted and cheered me, keeping me hero; maybe it was lucky.

I turned and went to Demizdor. She might have been blind and deaf for all the heed she seemed to take of anything. I wished I could see her face to know her thought.

“Get down,” I said. “Now you are here, you will walk like the other women. I have shown them you belong to me, so you are safe.”

She dismounted without a word. I said, seeing Chula’s eyes stuck on her still like beetles to a log, “I am giving you to my wives, Golden-hair. They will perhaps put you in the porridge pot and eat you.”

When she stood by me, the crown of her head came just beneath my collarbone. I wanted to pick her up and take her away with me, running through the fire to some secret place. But instead, I told her to walk behind me. She obeyed, like any slave, and the need in me to see her face was like an itch I could not scratch.

So I went to my mother’s tent, leaving the rest of them about the fire, only telling Chula, as I passed, to see to my horses in the pines, and to getting me some food.

I was at least sensible that I should not go rampaging in on Tathra when she thought me a corpse; that much I did right. In fact, I had had an inclination to seek Kotta first, and have her carry the tidings before me, but her tent, when I came on it, was full of wailing and groans, some woman’s sickness she was busy with and would not leave for me. So I must manage everything by myself.