Page 209 of Circle of Days

Joia looked south across the plain at the farmers. Something about the way they moved made her think they might be getting ready to advance. If so, she hoped they would not get here before Zad could start the stampede. She wished he would hurry.

He gathered thirty or forty people around him at the north end of the herd, then deployed them so that they formed a rough half circle around the cattle, leaving the southern end open. Some of them had picked up sticks or cut branches to use as whips or prods. The other volunteers could see that something was happening andthey watched with puzzled looks, no doubt wondering what was the point of this exercise.

Joia looked again at the farmers and saw that they were coming, brandishing their weapons.

Then she noticed that the cattle around her were drifting south.

It was beginning.

The smell of the herd became stronger, perhaps a sign that the beasts were anxious.

The cattle continued to move south and began to walk faster. The herders were prodding and smacking them with their sticks, heading them toward the farmers, and at the same time keeping them closely massed, preventing them from spreading out east or west.

Joia said to Dee: “Oh, gods, I hope this works.”

She looked ahead, over the cattle, to the farmers. They had halted their advance and were staring at the herd, apparently puzzled. Any moment now, they would realize their peril. But where would they go? They could not escape to east or west because the herd was too big. If they went backward, the herd would catch them. Some of them might climb a tree but there were not many trees.

The herders began to beat the cattle with their sticks while whooping and yelling, and the beasts panicked and started to run. Their hooves thundered and kicked up dust from the dry summer ground. The farmers ran in all directions. Joia imagined the carnage that was about to happen, and felt sick.

The volunteers around her were not so sensitive. They cheeredand yelled and ran after the herd with their weapons. Joia grasped her pointed bradawl hard and ran with them.

Ahead, the herd met the terrified farmers and ran over them like a wave. Some tried to dodge through the herd; some climbed trees; several stood in a pond and watched the herd divide around them. The cattle pounded on, leaving a bloody litter of dead and mangled bodies on the ground. The volunteers fell on the few survivors, and there was a fierce though one-sided battle.

Joia saw with dismay that many of the smashed bodies lying on the ground were not lifeless. Some struggled to move, bleeding into the grass; others moaned in pain and cried out for water. A calf lay on its side, bleating, crippled and abandoned.

Joia heard someone say: “Bitch.”

She knew that voice, and her heart missed a beat. She looked around and saw the small dark eyes and familiar scowl of Troon. For a moment she was scared, then she saw that he was too badly injured to be a danger to her or anyone. One arm and one leg lay unmoving in positions that showed they were broken, and there was blood on his face.

Joia had no sympathy. He was a cruel and violent man, and everyone on the Great Plain—farmers, herders, and woodlanders—would breathe easier when he was gone.

The farmer army was no more. The farmer community would be hard-hit. Their able-bodied men now lay on the Great Plain. How would they manage? The women would have to run the place.

There was an irony. Joia almost smiled.

Troon moaned and said: “Water. Give me water.”

Joia knelt over him, her knee pinning his one good arm.

He said: “Have mercy.”

That plea maddened her. “Mercy?” she cried. “Han was my brother!” And she thrust her bradawl into his throat, leaning on it so that it penetrated skin and flesh and went deep into his neck.

When she pulled it out, blood fountained from his throat and splashed on her arms. Then it abruptly slowed to a trickle, and Troon stared at the sky with lifeless eyes.

Joia stood up and looked around. The fighting was over. The volunteers stood around waiting for her to tell them what to do next.

The herd had come to a halt not far away, and had resumed cropping the grass.

When the celebrations were over, and the crowd had at last gone home to their beds, Joia and Dee sat on one of the nine stones, looking in the starlight at what they had done. It was the end of the tenth day, and Joia had achieved her target.

She had ordered the stones to be unloaded outside the Monument, at a spot a few paces north of the earth bank, where the cleverhands could work on them before setting them upright inside the Monument.

“You’re a hero,” Dee said to Joia.

It was a warm summer evening, and they were holding hands. Joia said: “People think I’m a hero—and that’s good, because it makes them willing to follow me—but I think you know I’m really just an ordinary person.”

“Not quite ordinary,” Dee said with a smile.