Looters Of Tharn

Chapter 10

The emergency rations in the storage compartments were obviously intended for people with raging appetites, robust digestions, and no taste buds at all. For the moment Blade didn't mind. But he couldn't say that he looked forward to the possibility of having to eat this food for several days or weeks. Obviously, neither did Krimon.

However, Blade's mind was not that much on the food. As they ate, Krimon told of what had happened in Tharn over the past twenty-five years. It was a fascinating and occasionally terrifying tale.

«There were sadly few of Tharn left alive when the smoke of Urcit cleared away,» said the neuter. «But more than half the people lived; as did more of the Maidukes and bearer maidens than one could have hoped for. But the Lordsmen were all dead-by your plan, I think?»

Blade nodded.

«I thought so. There was also a terrible toll among the neuters. Much knowledge died with them. But at least a few of each level and each skill escaped.»

«What about the ceboids?»

«Between the battle and the explosion, all but a handful perished. That handful fled eastward, and we have not seen them since. That was fortunate, as otherwise they would have bred and become so numerous that without the magveils we would have sooner or later faced a terrible war with them.»

Blade suspected that Krimon was leaving out a few gory details of what had happened to the ceboids, but did not raise the point. There had never been much love lost between the neuters and the ceboids they ordered about. Besides, Krimon was probably right. The ceboids had been highly fertile but only marginally intelligent.

Blade hoped that the ceboids had not been exterminated, but had managed to flee and flourish. But he also hoped that they had fled a long way and were flourishing somewhere far from Tharn and the people.

Eventually a count of the survivors was made. There were a great many women of the various classes, more than two thousand in all. Most of them were in or approaching their best child-bearing years.

There was an obvious problem facing Tharn. The people would have to produce as many children as possible in as short a time as possible, particularly male children.

But who was to sow the seed for this desperately needed crop of children?

The neuters could advise, teach, do a thousand and one jobs. The younger ones could fight if necessary. But not the wisest of them could beget a single child. Tharn needed men. The dialogue went like this:

Well, there were the Pethcine survivors, but-

Why «but»? They are men, aren't they?

Yes, but-

Are there any other men left?

Perhaps elsewhere on the plateau, in-

Can you promise that we shall find them before all our women are too old to bear children? If we cannot, then there will be nothing but death for our whole people.

But the Pethcines are barbarians!

They are men.

They are savage warriors. We have just fought a terrible war to keep them out of Tharn. Now you ask that they be let in!

That was the old Tharn. It is gone, and nothing can bring it back. We must consider only what is needed to build a new Tharn. What is most needed now is men. The Pethcines are men.

And so the argument ran, on and on and on. Eventually common sense carried the day. The Pethcines might be as horrible as their worst enemies said they were. Their only assets might be their penises and their sperm. But they did have those, and that brought an end to the discussion.

There turned out to be fewer problems than even the optimists had anticipated. Several hundred stunned Pethcine stragglers had been rounded up after the battle. A good many of them were still alive. Offered the opportunity to stay that way in return for stud services, most of them accepted.

Several hundred more Pethcines were rounded up in raids down into the Gorge. This produced more breeding stock. It also left the surviving Pethcines aware that Tharn still stood, however shakily, and could strike at her enemies.

The grand total of Pethcine males gathered together was close to five hundred. By and large they settled in and settled down peacefully. Their own people were broken and without a future. In Tharn they could become the ancestors of a new, strong, proud people, and have great pleasure doing it. The women of Tharn were far more beautiful than their own. It also helped that the average woman of Tharn was a head taller and every bit as strong as the average Pethcine male. Wife-beaters got short shrift, rapists got even shorter shrift, and those offenders who survived seldom repeated their offenses.

Ensuring the supply of babies was the first problem that had to be solved, but far from the last. Food (other than mani), shelter, domestic animals, weapons-all had to be found or made. Arrangements had to be made for bearing and raising the hoped-for swarms of babies. The list went on and on.

There were hard grim years in Tharn, too many of them. But the new people survived. Occasionally they survived by the skin of their teeth, as when the newly discovered grain crop failed and nearly half the year's babies starved to death because there was no milk for them, either human or animal. But they survived, and that was enough of a miracle for Blade.

«What is a miracle?» asked Krimon.

«Something-something that it seems really couldn't have happened, when you think it over,» said Blade, smiling.

Krimon nodded. «That is a good way of saying it. But the people live, there is no doubt of that.»

«They are all-'the people'-now?»

«Yes. It seemed the best name, when we had all become one and few could even remember what they were before the coming of Mazda.»

«You were wise.»

Much of the mating and child-rearing had been communal at first, to save as much labor as possible for building, farming, herding, fighting, and everything else that had to be done. Over time, some women came to prefer to bear the children of one man rather than another. A man came to prefer seeing his children born to some women more than to others. As the struggle for survival became less desperate, families of one man and three or four women slowly emerged. One woman would care for the half-dozen children while the others worked.

It was not polygamy, for the man was far from supreme. It was not really anything for which there was a handy name. But that was not important. The important thing was that it worked.

There was also Zulekia, Beloved of Mazda, and her son. There was no doubt that the child was Mazda's. Too many people knew of Mazda's coi with his Beloved. From the moment when it was known that she was carrying Blade's child, Zulekia was a woman set apart.

She had the best of care and feeding when her time came.

She alone of all the women was exempted from bearing any more children. She had fulfilled her destiny in bearing the child of Mazda. She was much in demand to honor other women's birthings with her presence, but that was all.

The son was called Rikard, and he was so strong and healthy that he might have survived and flourished even without all the care he had. But it was accepted from the first that when he reached manhood he would be King in Tharn, for who would dare to give orders to the son of Mazda?

It was also obvious that he would have his choice of any and all the women of the people. There was no woman who would turn down a chance to bear a child descended from Mazda and his Beloved.

Rikard's oldest children were just past their second birthday when the Lesser War came upon Tharn.

«More of the Pethcines survived than we thought,» said Krimon. «They fled deeper into the Gorge and bred sons who grew to be warriors filled with a desire for vengeance. They did not hope to conquer us this time. But they did hope to destroy us, and they did not care if they all died in doing so.»

«They must have been terrible enemies.»

«They were. And-though it shames me to remember it-many of us had doubts about those Pethcine men we had taken to be the fathers of the new people. Where would their loyalties lie? We could not help wondering.»

But those who had once been Pethcines were now of the people. They could not turn against their children and the women who were the mothers of those children. They marched out against the attackers. From that moment there was truly one people in Tharn, and the attackers didn't have a chance.

«It was soon clear that we would win, and we did not care to do more than drive the enemy back into the Gorge. But then their raiders struck deep into Tharn, and among our dead was Zulekia, your Beloved.»

Gentle Zulekia, dead in war with the Pethcines. The fate she had once escaped had finally caught up with her. «May she rest in peace,» said Blade, half to himself.

«After that we did not willingly leave a Pethcine alive,» said Krimon. «We drove them from the plateau. We marched down into the Gorge and rooted them out of every cave and valley there, like a farmer rooting out weeds from his grainfields. What we could not kill we brought home. What we could not bring home we burned where it was, or threw it off high cliffs. If there are enough Pethcines left to make a good drinking party, it is not our fault. We have explored through the Gorge and out to a quarter of a year's travel beyond it without finding any of them.»

«I see,» said Blade. It was not a pretty story, but he couldn't see any reason to mourn for the Pethcines. They had tried to destroy the best hope for human civilization in this dimension, and instead they had been destroyed. It was rough but undeniable justice.

«The Lesser War made us truly one people, and Rikard the Son of Mazda became King at the time of the harvest that year. We moved forward swiftly from that time, with good crops, the children growing up and beginning to have children of their own and do much work, and so on. Among the children the men and women began to pair off and raise their families and work their fields. Until two years ago it seemed that the worst was over. But then-came-the Looters.» Krimon's head wobbled on his skinny neck and sank down on his chest.

«What about the Looters?» asked Blade sharply. Krimon was silent. Blade reached over and shook the neuter. His eyes flickered open briefly, then closed again. Then he toppled over on one side with a thud. A moment later Blade heard a rasping snore. Krimon was sound asleep!

Well, it was hard to blame him. It had been a long and eventful day for the neuter, who was no longer young. Blade nodded, fought back an enormous yawn, and realized that the day's events had taken a good deal out of him too. Perhaps sleep was the best thing for both of them. He wished he could set some kind of alarm, but he wasn't sure how to do it. If the Looters came-

The Looters could wait until tomorrow. Blade laid his head down on the floor and was asleep in less than a minute.