rotting straw.
In these tumbledown hovels, which were scattered along a shallow valley about
fifty miles from the sea, there lived thirty-seven men, nineteen women and four
children. Only one of the villagers, a man, was older than thirty-five. The
grubbing lives of the people of Ozhbarchik were brutish and short.
One of the children of the village, a young boy had the rheumy-eyed, vacant
stare and slobbering, sagging mouth of a congenital idiot. His right hand had no
thumb, and on his left hand were crammed eleven shrunken, residual digits.
Beneath the torn cloth and stinking furs he had two separate and distinct sets
of genitalia. One set was male.
One was not.
The group of men surrounding him weren’t familiar. A few of them were large men
and rode horses, but most of them were small and were astride squat, shaggy
ponies. All of them wore layers of fur over their bodies and heavy fur hats
halfway over their slanted eyes. Most had rifles slung across their shoulders.
Behind them was a train of a dozen pack horses carrying bigger guns and food.
The boy smiled and nodded. Strangers were rare in Ozhbarchik. Strangers meant
happiness; he knew that. Sometimes there was music and dancing; he liked that,
liked to caper with his ponderous steps, his head swinging low, his hands pawing
the air like a mutie polar bear. When he danced like that, his mother and father
laughed.
It was good.
The man leading the party of riders was tall, close to six feet. His eyes were
almond shaped, with golden irises. His mouth was thick lipped and kindly. Around
his forehead he wore a band of beaten silver with a large ruby at its center.
His name was Uchitel, and he was nicknamed the Teacher because he was almost the
only one in the band who was literate. But that wasn’t what made him the leader.
“Boy,” he called.
“Yes, master,” replied the boy, as he’d been taught, bowing, low.
“This is Ozhbarchik?”
“Yes, master.”
“There is food here?”
“Yes, master.”
Uchitel nodded. “It is good to see such politeness in one so young. Surely the
fathers here teach their children well.” The lad grinned, shuffling his booted
feet in the powdery snow. “They will welcome strangers and will give us food and
wine, will they not?”
“Give, master?” The boy was puzzled. They didn’t “give” anything to anyone. They
sold or traded or bartered. There was little enough for them.
“Yes, boy. Give us all food? Do you not understand that?”
Despite his idiocy, the lad knew when something was wrong. The smile disappeared
from his face as he backed slowly away. “We do not give food, master. No food to
give. Poor.”
Uchitel turned in his saddle, nodding sagely to the group’s incendiary expert,
Pyeka, the Baker—the baker of men.
“This spark of sunlight says that his people are poor, Pyeka.”
“It is sad to be poor, Uchitel.”
“It is truly sad to be poor.” To the retreating boy, he said, “Are all poor in
your village?”
The stranger’s face hadn’t changed. There was no anger in the voice, no scowl to
the wide mouth. The strange yellow eyes remained fathomless, inscrutable. But
something was different. The young boy was so terrified that his bowels loosened
and he fouled himself.
“He doesn’t answer you, Uchitel,” called Bochka, the Barrel, a fat man on an
equally fat horse.
“No. He must be taught a lesson in manners, after, all. But what of these poor?
Can we help them seek a road from their poverty?”
The man was making a joke. The boy saw that, because many of the men were
laughing. But he hadn’t heard him say anything funny. He felt dimly that he
ought to go and warn his father and mother about these strangers. But his feet
seemed frozen to the ground.
It was the lean figure of Zmeya, the Snake, who answered. “There is one sure
cure for the poor, Uchitel.”
He reached inside his furs and drew out an oiled pistol—a 9 mm Makarov PM,
manufactured in the hundreds of thousands in many state factories before the
long winter began. It was a compact, handy automatic with a double-action