Courtship Rite

42

LIKE THE CLASSIC Nairn thrust of kolgame, they came out of the mountains through the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves to challenge the suzerainty of the Stgal. Teenae was astonished at the difference of style between one-husband and three-husband. Gaet was no Joesai hiding under covert masks and concealed action. He was Gaet maran-Kaiel in formal clanwear making use of conditions created by the Mnankrei before the Mnankrei were in a position to exploit them.

Even in the wilderness Gaet insisted on the life of wealth that Joesai discarded willingly. He ate with his wife in elegance off an inlaid table with stubby legs that was loaded with the best mead, flowers, and steaming food. They slept in a tent near a pot of coals to warm them. He was never too tired to court her, or to lift up the spirits of the lean hags they met with a little flattery that filled the heart if not the belly.

Teenae recalled a road long ago when she had been a sullen waif off the auction block and he had been wooing her with luxuries that had both tempted and frightened her. With Gaet along, this road did not seem as stark as the road she remembered trodding with Joesai on her first trip to Sorrow. Then their only luxury had been a palanquin.

They found that the foothill wheat crops were being devastated by the underjaw. The people were lean and in a hoarding, frugal mood. Food prices were high. As yet there was no starvation, but cases of profane poisoning were on the increase. The Stgal were calling up the Low on the List for their Contribution and meat was more available than usual. Events had created a perfect mood for Kaiel penetration — the desperate moment before hope metamorphosed into resignation. The Stgal offered the Discipline of the Famine, a martyrdom ingrained in the Getan soul because it had saved them so many times before, but the Kaiel offered food. Gaet came in all his riches to tempt them.

When Gaet negotiated he fed his guests. The welcome tent was a large one, erected wherever they moved, now sitting in a field of the foothills among the wildflowers. It was not a busy morning. Two curious farmers representing a local Nolar tribe had passed through the flaps and been given bean sauce on bread with a bowl of soup. Only after their plates were clean were they led to a young Kaiel clansman who squatted on a mat with them in the open air, exploring their goals.

Where had the Stgal failed the Nolar? How were the roads? Did an adequate supply of medicines reach the hills from the Stgal chemical cloisters? Did the Stgal pay well for the women they bought? How many of the Nolar clan members did they think they would lose to the underjaw famine by starvation? by Contribution?

The Nolar men clutched their robes about them and complained that the Stgal did not give back as much meat to the countryside as they took from it. The Kaiel youth nodded and made note. This gripe he had not heard before, though Stgal distribution irregularities were a constant complaint, so much so that Gaet had set up a special committee to overhaul goods distribution to the newly recruited.

Gaet was designing his support staffs along the Hoemei model. All of his administrative groups had to predict the effect of their efforts, and if their predictions failed to come true, the group was dissolved, inducing Gaet’s followers, like this young man interviewing the Nolar, to make reliable promises. It was too soon for change to be noticed yet, but they all knew that Gaet would long remember the good predictors and would not fail to give latrine duty to his incompetent seers.

On this morning Gaet had dispatched the five fingermen of his Left Hand Council, with their groups, on a recruiting foray into the territory of a small hill temple that seemed undermanned. He was preparing for a major move downslope into well-defended Stgal territory. He sat on a carved wooden stool in his own tent in conference with his Right Hand Council and a local Ivieth chief who had come in from Sorrow under cover of night.

Oelita’s general contract with the Kaiel was explained carefully to the giant by the pale light of a bioluminous globe hanging from the tent poles. Teenae fed the glowing bacteria of the globe and listened, learning.

Gaet was meeting representatives of each coastal clan and setting up committees, loyal to the underclans, to monitor the contract, to spot violations and inevitable flaws. First he had been concentrating on wooing the farmers near his lines of supply but was now swinging his attention to the Ivieth who were the most mobile clan of Geta and the people most accustomed to shifting loyalties. Ivieth from Kaiel-hontokae were to be brought in and Ivieth from Sorrow, first those who were Low on the List, were to be sent back along the newly refurbished road.

As a matter of tactics, Gaet was not signing up people faster than he could build the apparatus to serve them. Consequently Kaiel protection remained scarce and in demand, thus allowing him to negotiate conditions easier for the Kaiel to meet.

The Stgal were showing no real unity of command in their response. Later that day, rifle over her shoulder, Teenae brought in a delegation of four young Stgal to meet with Gaet. Obliquely they tried to bribe him. Without showing any expression, Gaet replied by offering a counter-bribe. He left the priests wondering whether he was serious or whether he was just roasting their legs.

In the evening, on the tent cushions, Teenae told Gaet of another Stgal group — she already had a network of spies in Sorrow — who argued in their councils for delaying actions that would suffice until the arrival of Mnankrei wheat and barley. Nevertheless, whatever internal dissent existed among the Stgal, they had agreed internally to postpone the Culling — which meant that they were feeding people from their reserves and thus alleviating present miseries by decreasing future options. They were gambling that the Mnankrei would come to their rescue.

Gaet laughed. He was enjoying this real-life kolgame. Teenae let him laugh but she busied herself cleaning her rifle, sitting by the brazier, deep in thought.