“I’ll come with you to comfort your mother, if you don’t mind,” Shay Tal said. “She embarrassed you, I know—but when people speak from the heart it often embarrasses us. I admire your mother as I admired your wise grandparents.”
“Yes, she’s brave. But still people laughed.”
Shay Tal looked scrutinisingly at him. “Still people laughed, yes. But many of those who laughed admire her nevertheless. They are scared. Most people are always scared. Remember that. We must try to change their minds.”
Laintal Ay went along with her, suddenly elated, smiling into her severe face.
Fortune favoured Nahkri and Klils. That night, a furious wind blew from the south, shrieking continuously among the town like the Hour-Whistler itself. Next day, the fish trappers reported a glut of fish in the river. The women went down with baskets and scooped up the gleaming bodies. This unexpected plenty was taken as a sign. Much of the fish was salted, but enough was left over to provide a feast that night, a feast at which barley wine was drunk to celebrate the new rule of Nahkri and Klils.
But Klils had no sense and Nahkri no wisdom. Worse, neither had much feeling for their fellow men. In the hunt, they performed no better than average. They often quarrelled with each other over what was to be done. And because they were aware in a shadowy fashion of these defects, they drank too much, and so quarrelled the more.
Yet luck remained with them. The weather continued to improve, deer were sometimes more plentiful, and no diseases struck. Phagor raids ceased, though the monsters were sighted occasionally a few miles away.
Fruitful monotony attended the lives in Oldorando.
The rule of the brothers did not please everyone. It did not please some of the hunters; it did not please some of the women; and it did not please Laintal Ay.
Among the hunters was a party of young bloods who formed a company together, and resisted Nahkri’s attempts to break them up. Of these, the leader was Aoz Roon Den, now in the full flower of manhood. He was large of frame, with a frank expression on his face, and could run on his two legs as fast as a hog on four. His figure was distinctive; he wore the skin of a black bear, and the fur enabled him to be picked out at a distance.
That bear was one he had wrestled with and killed. In pride at the feat, he carried the animal back from the hills unaided, and threw it down before his admiring friends in the tower where they lived. After a rathel party, he had summoned in Master Datnil Skar to skin the animal.
And there had been a touch of distinction in the way Aoz Roon had arrived in this tower. He was descended from an uncle of Wall Ein’s who had been Lord of the Brassimips. The brassimips were an area and a vegetable vital to the local economy; from the brassimips came the feed for the sows that yielded milk for rathel. But Aoz Roon found his family tyrannical, revolted against it early in life, and established his niche in a distant tower, along with bright sparks of his own age, the mirthful Eline Tal, the lecherous Faralin Ferd, the steady Tanth Ein. They drank to the stupidity of Nahkri and his brother. Their drinking parties were widely regarded as distinguished.
In other ways also, Aoz Roon was distinguished. He was a man noted for courage in a society where courage was common coin. During the tribal dances, he could turn a cartwheel in the air without touching the ground. And he believed strongly in the unity of the tribe.
Nor did the presence of his natural daughter, Oyre, stop women admiring him. He had caught the eye of Loilanun’s friend, Shay Tal, and responded warmly to her unique beauty; but he gave his heart to no one. He saw that one day Nahkri and Klils would meet with trouble and fall before it. Since he understood—or thought he did—what was good for the tribe, he wished himself to rule, and could not allow any woman to rule his heart.