The Chieftan

CHAPTER 5

The peasant descended the narrow stairs, leading down to the main floor of the tavern.

It was late in the afternoon.

“Hold,” said Boon Thap, from behind the counter, to the left, past which one must move to reach the door.

The peasant stopped.

Two others, nearby, looked up. They sat at a stained table to the right of the door, one of several. These were the only others on the main floor of the tavern. They had drinks before them, on the circled tabletop. They had been playing cards, Tanleel. The flat, revolving counterboard, with its pegs, was between them.

Boon Thap, who was the proprietor of this establishment, drew forth from under the counter a shallow, copper dish. He placed it on the counter. In this dish were four or five coins, pennies.

“Pay,” said Boon Thap.

The peasant recalled the dish upstairs. It was in that dish that coins for the pay woman would be placed.

He was from far away, from another world, indeed, but it was within the empire. He knew that much.

“Why?” asked the peasant.

“Pay,” said Boon Thap.

“I have not eaten here. I have not drunk here,” said the peasant, slowly.

Boon Thap gestured toward the stairs with his head. “Was she any good?”

“Yes,” said the peasant.

That was certainly true. She had juiced well. Too, in the beginning, she had shown him things he had not known, things he had not dreamed of in the village. But in the end, after an hour, she had

been merely his, helpless, uncontrollable, begging, crying out, as had been Tessa, or Lia, or Sut. In the end she had been not an instructress, only a mastered slave.

“Did you like her?” asked Boon Thap.

“Yes,” said the peasant.

“Pay,” said Boon Thap.

“I have not eaten here. I have not drunk here,” said the peasant.

“You pay here,” said Boon Thap, pointing to the copper bowl.

The two fellows at the table slid their chairs back and came toward the counter. Then they were standing a little behind the peasant, one on each side.

“You must not make trouble,” said Boon Thap.

“I am not making trouble,” said the peasant.

He did not want to make trouble. He did not know this place, or these people. He was a stranger here. Too, he did not want to disappoint Brother Benjamin. Brother Benjamin, in his recent admonitions, had been very explicit on such points. Brother Benjamin had come down all the way from the festung, down to the road, by the village, to bid him farewell. The peasant had knelt in the road, his head bowed, to receive Brother Benjamin’s blessing, administered in old Telnarian, given with the sign of the device. Brother Benjamin had never really expected him to stay in the village, for some reason, it seemed. In his journey the peasant realized that he had sensed this before, that he had known it, somehow, for years. Others had been there, too, to bid him farewell, others with diverse feelings. Doubtless some would miss him. Others were perhaps relieved that such as he was leaving. He had towered among them. He had not seemed to be like them. Too, he was dangerous. His temper was unpredictable, and violent. And he could break the neck of a garn pig in his bare hands.

“Who am I?” the peasant had asked Brother Benjamin, once again, before he left the village.

“You are ‘Dog,’ “had said Brother Benjamin, “of the festung village of Saint Giadini.”

Then the peasant had left.

The peasant felt his sack taken from his back by one of the men behind him. He did not interfere, or resist. He was a stranger here. He did not wish to disappoint Brother Benjamin. It was put on the counter. His staff was removed from his hand by the other man, and leant against the counter.

“I will tell you what you owe,” said Boon Thap. “How much did you pay upstairs?”

The peasant was silent.

“What did you give her?” asked Boon Thap.

“Nothing,” said the peasant.

“Nothing?” said Boon Thap.

“She would not take anything,” said the peasant.

“Liar!” said Boon Thap.

The peasant noted the resemblance of Boon Thap to a garn pig.

“Do you think she is a contract woman, kept in a brothel, chained by the neck to her bed, with a slotted coin box bolted to the bed?”

“No,” said the peasant. He had heard of such things, and many more, he and the others who had worked their passage to Terrenia, from the sailors, when they were not on watch. The coin was put near the box, which was locked, in order to prove that the customer possessed the means wherewith to pay for his pleasure. Afterwards the coin would be placed in the box or not, according to whether or not the customer had found the services of the contract woman satisfactory. As a record was kept of the customers and the rooms to which they went, it was a simple matter, after undoing the locks on the boxes, after business hours, to count the coins and see if the amount of money in the box was correct, if it matched the number of customers. Sanctions, of course, were imposed on the contract women if the funds were short. Sometimes they were beaten, as though they might have been slaves. In such ways are the women encouraged to please the proprietor’s customers, or clients.

“You are a thief,” said one of the men behind the peasant.

“I am not a thief,” said the peasant.

“If you did not pay her, then you will pay me, double,” said Boon Thap.

“No,” said the peasant.

“She is my employee,” said the proprietor.

“No,” said the peasant. “She pays you rent.”

“I will beat her,” said Boon Thap.

“But she is a free woman,” said the peasant. He was not sure of these matters. Were free women in cities to be beaten? He did know that the fathers in the village would sometimes beat their wives, and their daughters. Certainly Tessa, and Lia and Sut, had been beaten, sometimes for having been seen with him, but this had not stopped them from coming back, from arranging to meet him secretly, behind the hay sheds, in the varda coops. But he had heard that on Terennia women were not to be beaten, whether they deserved it or not. That was perhaps why the women

of Terennia seemed so spoiled. But there seemed no reason to beat the pay woman. She had done nothing to be beaten for. She had been kind, and loving. Too, she was not, as far as the peasant knew, the proprietor’s woman. Too, this was Terennia, and she was free. It was not like she was a slave, who must expect to be punished if she is the least bit disobedient, or has not been in some way fully pleasing.

“We will see what you have here,” said Boon Thap. He jerked loose the fastenings of the sack and turned it over, depositing its contents on the counter.

“He has money!” said one of the men behind the peasant.

“Look, a darin!” said the other.

“Ahh,” said Boon Thap. “Look!” He lifted up the silver bracelet.

“He is a thief,” said the man to the peasant’s right.

“Yes!” said Boon Thap.

“No,” said the peasant.

He gripped the counter.

He must not yield to the rage, not, at least, to that sudden, blinding, scarlet rage. There were rages among rages, of course. There was the scarlet rage, so sudden, so uncontrollable, like the breaking open of the bowl of the sky, as you could see, from the shattering, the lines of splitting and cracking. One could do little about that. One scarcely knew, until afterward, what one had done. You learned that, only later. It was this rage which the villagers had most feared. Then there were the rages you sensed coming, the rages which so sharpened the senses, which transfused one with such power, how eagerly you sensed them, like knowing a cat was about, then waiting tensely for it to spring up, somewhere, from the grass. And you were he who sensed, he who waited, and you were the cat, too, eager to spring up, that for which you waited. And then there were the cold, merciless rages, the most terrible of all, rages which the peasant had not yet learned, the rages as implacable as winter, which taught one patience, a patience colder and more cruel than ice.

“You must fight these things, my son,” Brother Benjamin had told him.

“The bracelet is stolen,” said Boon Thap. “I will keep it.”

“And the darin,” said the man to the peasant’s left.

“We will keep this sack, these things,” said Boon Thap. “Now, get out.”

“They are mine,” said the peasant.

“Get out,” said Boon Thap.

The man to the peasant’s right suddenly seized the peasant’s staff. He lifted it.

“Get out,” said Boon Thap.

The staff suddenly descended, smiting the peasant on the shoulder. It then struck him on the side of the head. The peasant felt blood at the side of his head.

The man with the staff seemed surprised that the peasant was still on his feet.

“You must learn to control your temper,” had said Brother Benjamin.

Again the staff whirled toward the peasant, but the peasant reached up and caught it, in flight. He then wrenched it away from the man.

The man backed away.

“If one strikes you,” had said Brother Benjamin, “give him your staff, that he may strike you again.”

The peasant handed the staff back to the assailant.

The man looked at him, in wonder. Then he laughed, and so, too, did the other, who had backed away, and Boon Thap.

“Go,” said Boon Thap, smiling.

The peasant, his staff and sack left behind, left the tavern. Hot tears burned down his cheeks. He went to the curb, outside the tavern. There he sat down, and put his head down, in his hands. Then he raised his head, and howled in misery, to the sky between the buildings. He then reentered the tavern. Boon Thap and the others were seated at the table, that at which the two men had earlier been playing Tanleel. The counterboard was still on the table. Drinks were before them. The peasant took his staff and drove it through the diaphragm of the man who had struck him. This was done with considerable force. It tore through the body, and the backbone. It punched even into the wall behind the man. The peasant then seized Boon Thap, breaking his neck, as if he had been a garn pig. The other man fled, screaming. His exit was not contested. Then the peasant, after retrieving his staff and gathering together what he could of his belongings, once more left the tavern.