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Wild Girls

I

Bela ten Belen went on a foray with five companions. There had been no nomads near the City for several years. Harvesters in the Eastern Fields reported seeing smoke of fires beyond the Dayward Hills, and the six young soldiers declared they would go see how many camps there were. They said nothing about attacking the camps. They took with them as guide a Dirt man, Bedh Handa, who had been born a nomad of the Dayward tribes, captured as a child and brought to the City as a slave. Bedh's sister Nata Belenda, famous for her beauty, was the wife of Bela's brother Alo ten Belen. Bedh had guided forays against the nomad tribes before.

The soldiers walked and ran all day following the course of the East River up into the hills. In the evening they came to the crest of the hills and saw on the plains below them, among the watermeadows and winding streams, three circles of the nomads’ skin huts.

“They came to the marshes to gather mudroots,” the guide, Bedh, said. “They're not planning a raid on the Fields of the City. If they were, the three camps would be close together. "

“Who gathers the roots?” ten Belen asked.

“Men and women. Old people and children stay in the camps. "

“When do the people go to the marshes?"

“Early in the morning. "

“We'll go down to that nearest camp tomorrow after the gatherers are gone,” said ten Belen.

“It would be better to go to the camp beyond that one, the one on the river,” Bedh said.

Ten Belen did not answer the Dirt man. He said to his companions, “Those are his people.

They agreed, but none of them had brought shackles. Ten Belen began to tear his cape into strips.

“Why do you want to tie me up, lord?” Bedh asked with his fist to his forehead to show respect. “Have I not guided you to the nomads? Am I not a man of the City? Is not my sister your brother's wife? Is not my nephew your nephew, and a god? Why would I run away from the great wealthy City to those ignorant people who starve in the wilderness, eating mudroots and crawling things?” But the Crown men did not answer the Dirt man. They tied his legs with the lengths of twisted cloth, pulling the knots in the silk so tight they could not be untied but only cut open. Ten Belen appointed three of them to keep watch in turn that night.

Tired from walking and running all day, the young man on watch before dawn fell asleep. Bedh put his legs into the coals of their fire and burned through the silken ropes and stole away.

Waking in the morning and finding the Dirt man gone, Bela ten Belen's face grew heavy with anger, but he said only, “He will have warned that nearest camp. We'll go to the farthest one, off there on the high ground. "

“They'll see us crossing the marshes,” said Dos ten Han.

“Not if we walk in the rivers,” ten Belen said.

When they came down out of the hills onto the flat lands, they walked along streambeds, hidden by the high reeds and willows that grew on the banks. As it was autumn, before the rains, the water was shallow enough that they could make their way along beside it or wade in it. Where the reeds grew thin and low and the stream widened out into the marshes, they crouched down and found what cover they could. No one in the nomad camps saw them pass.