The Chieftan

attempted to conceal their natural gait. But she had not seemed as concerned to conceal it. There had been a murmur of female protest from the stands, but she had thrown her head back and continued to the throne gate. She was of the honestore class. It was supposed by him that she had mixed feelings toward her sexuality. He wondered if there were worlds in which women did not have such feelings, worlds on which they accepted their sexuality and rejoiced in it. He had heard that there were worlds on which some women were slaves. They were dressed for the pleasure of men. Their gait, and their

garmentures, left them, and others, in no doubt as to their womanhood.

The trumpets blared again, and he saw side gates open, and the dwarfs, better than a score of them, some with high, flat measuring boards, taller than themselves, others with hooks and baskets, rushing out. There was music then, and cheering. Following the dwarfs, from under the stands, came several large, bulky, rather soft fellows, naked, save for an apron. Each carried a barang, thick, wide, single-bladed, some three feet in length, with a handle about a foot in length, so that it might be gripped with both hands. It would probably weigh about twelve pounds.

The peasant moved a little inside the ropes. They were tight. The wiry strands dug deeply into his arms. He could feel them now. His sensibility had much returned, long before it might have been expected to have done so. He supposed that he might have remained kneeling, if only for Brother Benjamin, or as a matter of honor, or, say, of disdain for those of the town. But he did not care to be bound. Did they not trust him to remain there quietly, waiting for his koos to take flight, innocent, and unharmed? After all, they could not hurt a koos. That was part of the teaching. But perhaps he had no koos. What if he did not have a koos! What then? What if he were himself, and not a koos, really, which he had never seen, nor had anyone else, as far as he knew? Perhaps they were right not to trust him. But what could he do, run about, now, bound, while the dwarfs pursued him, with their hooks, to pull him down, while the crowd laughed, while the large, soft creatures waited the signal to rush up, wielding the weighty barangs? He moved inside the ropes. They were heavy, they were tight. The guards, and the officer of the court, it seemed, had decided to take no chances with him. Such ropes would contain a garn pig, even if it were agitated, doubtless even a sacrificial bull, snowy white, with gilded horns, hung with beads, the sort still said to be slain by honestore officiants on the Telnarian worlds.

The attendants had now entered through the dead gate, with their rakes. They stood about the edges of the arena.

There were several spectacles slated for the afternoon. The current portion of the entertainments was intended to be little more than preliminary. Indeed, there were still some empty seats in the stands, though the arena was a small one, suitable for a small provincial town. Not everyone came on time. Some did not mind missing the first events.

Some of the men kneeling about him, unbound, began to pray aloud, usually to Floon and Karch, but sometimes to the intercessors, as well. He detected no prayers to Saint Giadini, but that was doubtless because Giadini had been an emanationist, a schizmatic. Who would dare to pray to such a one, at such a time?

Various events were scheduled for the balance of the afternoon, songs and dances, footraces and competitions, beast fights, hunter-and-beast fights, gladiatorial combats, acrobats, rope dancers, brief dramas, mythological enactments, and such, and the program was calculated to last until twilight. The arena was lit only by the sun. Had something been scheduled for the evening, it would have been localized in a relatively small area, and illuminated by torches. On this world, certain forms of energy were now quite scarce, and tended to be reserved for the use of the empire, and its licensees. On the other hand, there was the light of the local star, or sun, and the winds, and the tides, such things, and certain reliable, renewable resources, precious things, such as wood and grass. Worlds made what adjustments they could, and, beyond the sky, reassuring them, in all its solidity and eternal strength, lay the empire.

He pressed against the ropes.

They could hold a garn pig, a sacrificial bull.

He saw the mayor rise up, before her chair.

She, like the judge beside her, was dressed in the concealing, sacklike, mannish garb affected by so many of the women he had seen in the town. Such garmenture was quite dissimilar to the white corton clingabout of the judge’s daughter. To be sure, the judge’s daughter was not the only woman so clad in the stands. Too, he could see some colored garments, here and there, in particular, yellow and red. Some of the women even wore necklaces, or bracelets. The female prisoner who had been used in the testing of him, when it had been determined that he was not a “true man,” had been put in a necklace, and then, forced to stand straight before him, her shoulders back, weeping, had had her garments pulled down about her hips. The optical device had clearly registered his response. The evidence had been incontrovertible.

The mayor lifted her hands to the crowd.

There was another blare of trumpets.

Many of the men about him began to sing a hymn to Floon.

He did not sing the hymn, as he was not of the adherents of Floon.

Behind her chair and to the left, as he was facing it, was a small altar. Doubtless a tiny fire had been kindled there. The mayor took a packet from an attendant and shook the contents of this packet onto the flame, which spurted up, and then a long wreath of yellow smoke rose upward toward the sky. He smelled incense. It was an old custom, a Telnarian custom, much like the libations, an offering to the old gods, though few, he thought, now believed in them.

The strains of the hymn to Floon, though they seemed small, and weak, were clearly audible in the arena.

He watched the smoke drift away.

The mayor now stood again before her chair.

She lifted up, in her right hand, a scarf, or handkerchief. “Let the games begin,” she called, using a formula whose origins were lost in antiquity.

She released the scarf, or handkerchief, the cloth she held, that used for the signal, and it fluttered to her feet.

There was then another blast on the trumpets, but their sound, renewed, was almost drowned in the anticipatory cry of the crowd.

It leaned forward, eagerly.

The large, soft men then whipped their aprons away from their loins and turned before the crowd, their arms uplifted, the barangs brandished. The crowd applauded. They were “true men,” as understood on this world. When they turned about, again, to those on the sand, he, the peasant, could scarcely believe his eyes, though his vision was extraordinarily keen. He blinked. He shook his head. Could it be some trick of the glare, from the white sand? No, there was no mistake. It was as his senses had told him, and his mind, for an instant, had refused to believe. Then he turned his head to the side, sick, he who had lived with blood and butchery in the village, and threw up in the sand. They had been improved, smoothed. Doubtless many had requested this smoothing, that, emasculated, in this way most effectively devirilized, the mental techniques not always sufficient, they might prove more pleasing, more acceptable, to the women of this world. Many had doubtless requested this improvement, not only as a route to moral excellence, but perhaps, too, in their own best interests, economic and political.

“You need not have been here,” the officer of the court, the daughter of the judge, had told him, rather angrily, he had thought, but moments before, on the sand. Surely it had been true. The judge had made that clear to him. She had been prepared to be merciful. Too, there were quotas of soil workers to be obtained, somehow, given the flight from the land in the vicinity of the town, largely a consequence of the newly imposed imperial taxations on provincial worlds. Binding, too, was imminent, as the judge, the mayor and other officials knew. But he was dangerous. He was masculine. He was the sort of man women feared. He might have been simply executed. Certainly the guards had him within their power. There were the stun sticks, and other weapons, more dangerous, which could burn through bodies like a gas torch through paper. On the other hand, the judge was subject herself to various pressures, in particular, from the township, it, itself, reacting to imperial prescriptions. Soil workers were needed desperately. Too, the binding was imminent. Accordingly, she was inclined to be merciful, sparing him. Let him be remanded to one of the town farms, that as his sentence, and before the sentence had expired the binding