Page 121 of Circle of Days

She lost patience. “Well, do something about it, then, instead of standing there shouting at me.”

He turned to Shen. “Round up people with weapons and send them to the north end of the Break, where the cattle are. I’ll meet them there.”

Shen ran off.

Troon called after him: “And bring fire!”

Troon headed across the fields. Pia was weary but she wanted to know what would happen next. She took a different route, hugging the edge of East Wood, where she could quickly take refuge in the trees.

She walked slowly, and she was overtaken by several youngfarmers with hammers and bows, presumably sent by Shen. Among them was Mo, now reluctantly Deg’s woman, carrying a blazing torch.

Under Troon’s direction, the farmers started to build fires. But the wood had to be collected, so the work went slowly. Also, the Break was a wide space: Pia thought the thirsty cattle would just run between the fires. They needed many more blazes, much closer together, to deter the herd—which was now edging south, she saw, forcing Zad and the herders to retreat.

Troon seemed to come to the same conclusion. He shouted orders, and the farmers started to pick up stones from the field and throw them at the cattle. The beasts hardly reacted to hits to their backs and sides, but when their heads or legs were struck they lowed angrily.

Pia retreated to the trees, covering the back of Olin’s head with her hand to protect him.

She saw Zad turn around and walk toward the farmers, holding his hands out in front of him in a gesture of forbidding. “Stop!” he shouted.

Some of the herders picked up stones and threw them back at the farmers.

This was turning nasty.

A farmer called Narod, who had been one of Stam’s Young Dogs, grabbed a stone as Zad walked directly toward him. “Don’t anger them,” Zad said. “You’ll cause a stampede!”

Narod ignored him and threw the stone. It hit a bull on the face, near the eye. The beast roared.

Zad punched Narod in the face, and Narod fell down.

Pia yelled: “Don’t start fighting!”

No one was listening.

The farmers converged on Zad, yelling. He was attacked from all sides. He swung his herder stick widely, knocking one man down, driving them back. Then an arrow stuck in his upper arm. Beside Pia, Dini cried out: “Dadda!”

But the herders had seen it, too, and they raced to Zad’s rescue. In no time a full-scale brawl developed, the farmers using hammers and arrows, the herders deploying herding sticks. Troon waded in, but instead of trying to stop the fighting he started attacking herders.

The sounds coming from the herd grew louder and more urgent. The farmers paid no attention, but the herders noticed. Suddenly all the herders ran from the fight, heading for the woods to the east or west of the Break. The farmers looked bewildered as their opponents turned from fighters into runaways.

The herd moved.

Pia cried: “No, oh no!”

The farmers at last saw the cattle moving and they, too, ran.

The cattle were slow at first. Zad and Biddy reached the wood where Pia stood with Olin and Dini. Then the pace picked up, and in moments the cattle were galloping, in a fog of dust, with a noise like the end of the world.

Pia was aghast to see both Mo and Pilic disappear beneath the pounding hooves. The dust was so thick, and the scene so chaotic, that she could not see what happened after they fell, but she knew they could not possibly survive.

She backed into the trees, clutching Olin fearfully. The fugitiveherders and farmers did the same, their fight forgotten. The cattle came frighteningly near, trampling the vegetation at the edge of the wood, crushing everything, but Pia got behind two big tree trunks, which the beasts avoided. All the same she was terrified. The cattle seemed mad. Their lowing now sounded more like hooting. Pia stepped farther back so that Olin would not breathe the dust.

Then the herd passed. The thunder moved south, and the dust settled. The children around Pia were crying, but they were safe.

Zad spoke to a younger herder who was strong-looking and long-legged. Pia guessed he was a quickrunner and she was right. Zad asked him to run to Riverbend and tell the elders what had happened. “You could be there before dark today, couldn’t you?” The boy agreed. “Then the elders might be here by tomorrow evening.” The boy ran off, heading east.

Everyone else began to move south, following the cattle. Pia followed slowly, walking over the field. She looked with dismay at the destruction of the ripening stems of wheat, trampled and torn up by hooves. It was heartbreaking. She thought of the people who farmed these fields, and all the days they had spent carrying water from the river. Their efforts had gone to waste in a few short moments. What would they eat?

She was horrified to discover the corpse of Mo, badly trampled. Her body was completely crushed, barely recognizable as human, but strangely her face was untouched, and Pia could even see her freckles. Somehow this was worse than all the rest of the carnage, and Pia was suddenly too weak to stand. She sat down, feeling ill, staring helplessly at Mo’s freckled face. Mo had seen only eighteenmidsummers; she had been savagely mistreated by Troon; and now her life was over.