The last word that came concerning me was a babble of Ettook’s slaughter and my sorcery, and how Seel had matched his power with mine, and bested me, so that I lay tethered and half-dead myself on the hill. Then she knew herself alone indeed.

As once before, it seemed to her the world had gone mad. She must have doubted her grasp of krarl-talk.

Ready to run to find me, she was ready, too, to run away. She had her horse; she could chance the wild, long way westward. Yet, like many a woman, part of her was nailed on her man’s fortunes still. So she hesitated.

Asua was screaming with fright, asking the gods what would become of Tuvek’s household. Moka was trying to comfort her to quiet, knowing clamor would draw trouble quicker than silence. But the babies were squealing, and the dogs, catching fear like sickness, set up their own din.

At midnight the men came. They put Moka and Asua on one side, and there was some altercation about whether my miniature sons and daughters should be slain, seeing the evil was in them from their daddy’s loins. However, the braves quickly lost interest in these precautionary measures, being more interested in the war-spoils I had accumulated. Chests were tipped over and ransacked, beer tapped, dogs dragged snapping away and a couple knifed, horses loosed, mounted, and crazily ridden about like a market. With the magician safely subdued, any of his goods were fair game.

Soon, four of them pushed into my hearth tent, and found Demizdor. The four grinned, and said the things men say at such a moment. One of them was Urm Crook Leg, hobbling on his grudge for me. He unhesitatingly went up to her, for she waited there as if she were frozen. I could have warned him of her tricks, had I been there and his friend. She stabbed Urm in the throat, a clever, swift blow, but she had never killed a man before. She took him by surprise, but herself too. As she stood, letting the weapon go, paralyzed by what she had done, the three others came for her, and she was easy work for them.

Each had her, and would have had her again, for they were lusty that night, but Seel called the warriors to krarl council. Learning of this, they bound her to the tent-pole, and with pegs hammered the rope at her ankles in the earthen floor. They did it with much laughter, for they had enjoyed her company and planned on more of it. Urm they hauled outside and gave a rough woman’s burial, since he was lame and girl-slain into the bargain.

Ettook lay in the painted tent, cold as rotten meat. They were saying that when they made the pyre for him—and killed his dogs and horses to go with him—Demizdor should be strangled, and sent to be the chief’s pleasurer in the Black Place.

That was the first night.