“We’ll have the boats to show him.”
“Even Aoz Roon doesn’t eat boats.” Laughter greeted the remark.
They climbed into the boats and juggled with the oars. The dead men were left behind. They managed to row themselves slowly back to Oldorando, the rain beating continually in their faces.
Aoz Roon’s reception of his subjects was morose. He glared at Laintal Ay and the other hunters with a silence they found more daunting than words, since he offered them nothing to refute. At last, he turned from them and stood staring out of his open window at the rain.
“We can go hungry. We have gone hungry before. But we have other troubles. Faralin Ferd’s party have returned from foraging in the north. They sighted a party of fuggies in the distance, riding kaidaws and heading this way. They say it looks like a war party.”
The hunters looked at each other.
“How many fuggies?” one asked.
Aoz Roon shrugged his shoulders.
“Were they coming from Dorzin Lake?” Laintal Ay asked.
Aoz Roon merely shrugged his shoulders again, as if he found the question irrelevant.
He swung round on his audience, fixing them with his heavy gaze. “What do you think is the best strategy in the circumstances?”
When there was no reply, he answered his own question. “We’re not cowards. We go out and attack them before they arrive here and try to burn Oldorando down, or whatever is in their thick harneys to do.”
“They won’t attack in this weather,” an older hunter said. “The fuggies hate water. Only extreme madness can drive them into water. It ruins their coats.”
“The times are extreme,” Aoz Roon said, striding restlessly about. “The world will drown under this rain. When’s the eddring snow coming back?”
He dismissed them, and paddled through the mud to see Shay Tal. Vry and her other close friend, Amin Lim, were sitting with her, copying out a design. He sent them packing.
He and Shay Tal looked warily at each other, she at his wet face and his air of having more to say that he could express, he at the wrinkles under her eyes, the first white hairs glinting in her dark locks.
“When will this rain stop?”
“The weather’s getting worse again. I want to plant rye and oats.”
“You’re suppose to be so wise, you and your women—you tell me what will happen.”
“I don’t know. Winter’s setting in. Perhaps it will get colder.”
“Snow? How I’d love the damned snow back, and the rain gone.” He made an angry gesture, raising his fists, then dropping them again.
“If it gets colder, the rain will turn into snow.”
“Wutra’s scumble, what a female answer! Have you no certainty for me, Shay Tal? No certainty in this damned uncertain world?”
“No more than you have for me.”
He turned on his heel, to pause at her door. “If your women don’t work, they won’t eat. We can’t have people idle—you understand that.”
He left her without a word more. She followed him to the door and stood there, frowning. She was vexed that he had not given her a chance to say no to him again; it would have renewed her sense of purpose. But his mind, she realised, had not really been on her at all, but on more important questions.
She hunched her rough garments about her and went to sit on her bed. When Vry returned, she was still in that attitude, but jumped up guiltily at the sight of her young friend.
“We must always be positive,” she said. “If I were a sorceress, I would bring back the snows, for Aoz Roon’s sake.”
“You are a sorceress,” Vry said loyally.
News of the approaching phagors travelled fast. Those who remembered the last raid on the town spoke of nothing else. They talked of it at night as they tumbled, rathel-rich, into their beds; they talked of it at dawn, grinding grain by goose light.
“We can contribute more than talk,” Shay Tal told them. “You have brave hearts, women, as well as quick tongues. We’ll show Aoz Roon what we can do. I want you to listen to my idea.”