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Such a loss, as trivial as it might seem, would considerably reduce their
value.
To one side dogs fought over a body.
Hunlaki was himself well aware that things were not as usual with him.
He had for two nights chewed on the fermented curds, and in the morning had
had to tie himself in the saddle.
He had, several times, at night, when the column had stopped, and the fires
were lit, made use of captive women, chained under certain of the wagons, put
aside for the purpose. To be sure, as a rider, he could have his picks marked,
a disk with his mark on it, tied about her neck, under the rope, reserved for
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him in the evening. The foot would make do with what was provided for them,
not that some excellent women were not picked out for them. Sometimes Hunlaki
used the women under the wagons as Herul women, but often, because they were
women of an enemy, he put them in the pig position, even some very attractive
women whom he had picked out earlier,
whom he had put his disk on, reserving them for the evening, that they might
understand that they belonged to the Heruls, and what was in store for them,
the long days of tending flocks and, in the evenings, the contenting of
masters in the furs. To be sure, some of these women might be sold in
Venitzia, some to the soldiers there, others to be put on the ships, to be
sent far away, to distant markets. The soldiers at Venitzia had flame spears,
which could burn a rider from a thousand yards. The Heruls did not attempt to
penetrate the strange fences about the towns. They had seen animals lying dead
across the wires.
Hunlaki recalled the riders he had fought against in the spring and early
summer. That had been war. The folk they had just raided, those in the
vicinity of the Lothar, mostly west of it, near the forests, were said to be
related to them. Hunlaki supposed it was possible. But the two peoples seemed
very different.
Hunlaki looked up.
The birds were about.
They had been about, too, on the plains of war, far to the east, even beyond
the heights of
Barrionuevo, and then in the north, on the plains of Barrionuevo, when those
of the tents of the
Heruls had met the riders, those related to the folk near the Lothar, in the
spring, in the early summer.
Too, here and there, the birds were on the ground, sometimes almost at the
edges of the column, feeding.
Hunlaki did not care for the birds.
Hunlaki turned his mount suddenly to the right, uttered an angry cry, kicked
back into the flanks of the beast, and charged at a heap of birds, clambering
about food. They squawked, and fluttered wildly to the left and right, and
Hunlaki, angrily, wheeled his mount back, to the left, to rejoin the column.
When he looked back he saw that one or two of the bolder birds had already
returned to their feeding.
Hunlaki, like most warriors, hated the birds, the patient ones.
The dogs had been at it first.
The column was now in the vicinity of the heights of Barrionuevo.
Hunlaki saw a woman to his right, several yards from the column. It would have
to be a woman of the people near the Lothar, for no Herul women were with the
raiders. One would take the women, the children, in the wagons, when one made
the long journeys. But one would not take them on raids. Sometimes one had had
to fight, on the long journeys, even before they had found the sweet,
grass-fresh plains of Barrionuevo. One tried to keep between the enemy and the
wagons. Before battles, and at night, one put the wagons together, forming
closures, sometimes rings of defense, the cattle, the animals, the women, the
wealth, inside. No, of course, it was not a
Herul woman. Hunlaki moved his horse toward her, circling her rather, that he
might have her
between himself and the column. In a moment or two, the horse moving slowly,
he saw that she had, indeed, wrapped several times about her neck, a rope. She
had been gathering hineen, presumably for the cooking pots of the wagon
driver, that behind which she would normally be marched prisoner. Hineen is
somewhat rare but there were patches of it in this area. It is a pretty plant,
coming in several colors. It is a spore bearer and blossoms, or, perhaps
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