Children of the Morning by W.L. George

Author:W.L. George [W.L. George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII

THE WOMEN’S WAR

Since in the main, the people of Dzon inhabited the northern beaches, the foothills had become neutral ground, and the camp of the Tsarl lay some three miles away from the water's edge. So, after he had run about the trees, doubling as a fox, Bloo put his ear to the ground, and, locating footfalls, went up the hills, where after a while he found Leo and Arold, who had deposited their burden. During the struggle, most of the decoration of shell and bark which Omarion wore about her neck had been torn away; now she lay before them, white in the light of the moon, her red locks tumbled about her eyes, and in those eyes a look of fear. She was so frightened that she dared not raise her hands to the gag of bark.

"Touch not that bark." Leo admonished her,"and strive not to cry out to your friends, or I shall make you izeneer.”

Bloo tore the strip of bark away from the girl's lips: "Fool." he said to Leo. "Let her cry out. What woman's voice can reach so many paces? Cry, Ovmarion," he said, "cry if you will; none shall hear you."

The girl was too frightened to weep, so Bloo considered her, smiling to himself because he had been successful in his attack, because he had done well, because he had deserved well of the Tsarl whom he feared and loved. Also he considered Ovmarion, so young and white, more delicate, more refined than the women of the hills, who lived in the open about their fires, like beasts. "Weep," he said, as he put out a hand to caress the red curls. "You go to the master, yes, but when he is weary of you, still shall you be loved."

She shrank away as if she understood him, for she feared this small man, almost as sinister as Arry the Cruel, though in fact he attracted her a little, because there lived in his eyes what did not reign in those of Arry: a bright, a hard intelligence.

"Come now," he said to Leo and to Arold. "Hurry back, men, hurry back, fools and dull wits. Do you wait for Haakon and morning?"

Obediently, the two heavy men raised Ovmarion and, holding her each by one arm, led her away into the forest, while Bloo, his hands knotted behind him, followed, his head in the air. So at last they came to the glade and the grove of the banyans, where the eternal fire burned, where now many slept, where alone, squatting before the fire, watched by two men with grounded spears, waited the Tsar. In the light of the fire which played upon his ruddy hair, upon the vast whiteness of his torso, fringed with moss entwined upon bark, his hair studded with the feathers of the paloma, silent and engrossed, it was a barbaric sovereign before whom at last appeared the three soldiers of the Tsarl, pushing before them their prisoner. When he

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