Page 55 of Circle of Days

Those days were over.

Ani sat with Zad, Biddy, and their daughter, Dini, on the ground outside their house.

Biddy said plaintively: “They come creeping so silently! If something goes wrong, they run and we can’t catch them.

Otherwise we never see them at all, but the next day someone says: ‘Where’s the bullock with the white patch over one eye?

’ and we realize we’ve been robbed again. ”

Ani said: “I went to the remnant of the West Wood. Only old people and children were there. A woman called Naro told me the rest of the tribe were away hunting.”

“She always says that,” Zad said. “But we never see them.”

“Where could Bez be living?”

“No one knows.”

If they could not be found, they could not be massacred, which was a relief to Ani.

But they could not hide forever. At some point their secret would be revealed, and then there would be a bloodbath.

“Let me ask you something,” she said. “Is there a way to stop the thefts without killing everyone in the tribe?”

“I think there is,” said Zad.

Ani said eagerly: “How?”

Biddy answered. “Double the guard.”

They had obviously worked this out between them, and Ani was encouraged.

Zad said: “Where there are two herders now, there should be four. And they must patrol all night, walking around the herd continuously, without sleeping.”

Biddy added: “And every woman and man should carry a bow and arrows.”

Zad said: “And if four is not enough, we must have six, or eight.”

This could work, Ani thought. It obviously involved killing woodlanders, but not all of them. It was a grimly cold calculation. But it was what she was looking for, a way to restrain Scagga and prevent a massacre.

She said: “How many people would you need altogether?”

“There are six families in this village. That makes twelve herders. And there are two more villages here in the west of the plain. I can’t count that high.”

“Nor can I,” said Ani. “But you need three new villages each with twelve herders.”

“And soon,” said Zad. “We’re losing a cow almost every night, remember.”

“Soon,” Ani repeated.

“This is how it works,” Ani said to the elders when she got back to Riverbend. “Bez and most of the tribe have gone into hiding, no one knows where. They might have persuaded another tribe to share their territory—”

“Unlikely, in a famine,” said Keff.

“I agree. But in that case they must have left the Great Plain altogether. They may have crossed the South River and found a hideout somewhere between the river and the Great Sea; they could have climbed the Scarp and disappeared into unknown regions north of here; but most likely they’re in the Northwest Hills, a region they’re familiar with. ”

“So that’s where we look for them,” said Scagga.

“Wait a minute, Scagga,” said his sister. “Listen.”

Ani resumed: “They come back to the plain at night. They approach a herd silently. They rope a cow and lead it away. Often the herders don’t know it has happened until daylight, when they notice that a cow is missing.

I assume the woodlanders lead the cow to their hideout and butcher it there.

Later, probably traveling at night, they take some meat and hides to the remnant of West Wood to give to the old people and children living there. Then they disappear again before dawn.”

“We’ll find them,” said Scagga. “It may take a while, but we’ll find them, and then…”

Ani said: “The herders in the west have come up with another proposal, a way to stop the thefts without sending an army to search unknown territory outside the Great Plain.”

Keff said: “That would be very good indeed.”

“Zad believes he could protect the cows if he had double the number of herders. Where now two people watch over a herd, he wants four. We would need to create three new villages in the western plain, each with twelve people. And all armed with bows and arrows.”

“We have plenty of bows and arrows,” said Scagga. He had created a stockpile and was impatient to put the weapons to use.

Ani ignored that. “If we’re agreed on this, we need to do it as soon as possible, before we lose many more cattle.”

Keff said: “We can send the new people tomorrow.”

Ani said: “That would be good.”

For some days Bez had been surreptitiously preventing Lali from going on a cattle raid.

In fact he had wanted her to stay in West Wood, where she would have been safer, but she was a woman now, and having a romance with a nice boy called Forn, and Bez could not pretend she was a child.

However, he kept suggesting other couples to go cow stealing, and had pretended not to hear her when she volunteered; but she saw through him and demanded to be sent.

At last he had to give in. Lali went with Forn to steal a cow.

That night he lay awake beside Gida, worrying.

Lali returned in the dawn light. She had no cow and no partner, and she was bleeding.

The wound was an arrow cut on her shoulder. A little more to the center and it might have been her throat.

Gida pressed healing leaves on the wound, and Bez bound the leaves with vines. Then they and others questioned Lali about what had happened.

“There were two herders, and another one, and another one,” she said, using the woodlander words for numbers. “And every one had a bow. They walked around the herd constantly, with their dogs, hardly stopping to rest, and never sleeping!”

Bez said: “So you couldn’t reach the cattle?”

“Well, we felt we had to. So in the end we slithered on our stomachs across the ground, and we reached the herd without being seen. I got a rope around a cow’s neck, that wasn’t difficult.”

Gida said: “But then you had to escape across open ground—with the cow.”

“We tried to. I made the cow gallop, and Forn ran alongside, but the beast didn’t want to run, and it slowed down.

So the herders got close enough to shoot.

And they hit Forn, and he fell.” She began to cry.

“He must have turned around to look, because the arrow was in the front of his thigh, and he was bleeding so much. And I knew he was going to die, and I would, too, if I stayed, so I ran, leaving him behind. And one arrow hit me but it wasn’t bad and I could run faster than the herders. ”

Bez kissed her. “You’re a brave girl,” he said. He was close to tears himself.

Gida said: “I wonder if they have done this, doubled the watch, for all parts of the herd.”

Bez said: “If they haven’t yet, they will soon. It’s their new strategy to stop us stealing.”

Gida nodded. “It’s clever. We have to find a way around it.”

“Yes,” said Bez. “Or rob someone else.”