Beyond the stream, Pakriaa followed a path a short way and pressed into undergrowth. Spearman grumbled, "Good path for once, and we have to—"
"Path's probably booby-trapped. She expects us to know that."
"Hell...." It was difficult passage, stooping on a trail meant for little folk; it ended at a ditch six feet wide and five deep. The ditch made a right angle, both lines stretching away straightly as far as the eye could go; the inner side of the ditch was heaped with dry sticks and bundles of grass. Pakriaa trilled orders to an old black-skirted woman with a whip, in charge of a gang of four women and three men, all totally naked. They were struggling to shove a movable bridge into place across the ditch—two logs bearing a mat of vines and bark. It was grunting work for them, and when the end of the bridge was in reach, Pakriaa's escort made no motion to help. Spearman started to; Paul interfered. "We'd lose face. Those are slaves. Women tied together at the ankles—one of the men a eunuch. Look at the brands on their cheeks. Nan, you're the dominant sex—try to look more like the president of a women's club."
Her finely modeled face had dignity enough, he thought, if she could keep the worry out of it.... The old woman in the black skirt bowed arrogantly to Pakriaa; the slaves cringed, with the hating stare of the trapped. All were scarred and young except for the eunuch, who was wrinkled and flabby. One female had a recent chest wound; the effort at the bridge had made it bleed, but she ignored it. Paul saw Spearman's face settle into lines of poker blankness and thought: Good. And if, to patience and courage, he could add (I hear you, Doc) charity and self-knowledge—Oh, be quiet, critic, be quiet....
Trees had been felled—some time ago, for the stumps were rotted—and the spacing was such that the tops of the trees left standing provided a gap twenty feet wide, the entire length of the village. There would be two other such gaps, visible from the sky as parallel lines, admitting full midday sunlight but shutting out the omasha. "Nan—let's try to learn something about that big settlement in the south—the other parallel lines."
It was surprisingly easy to convey the question to Pakriaa with the help of signs, but her response when she understood it was a shrill snarl and shaking of her spear, a repetition of a name, "Vestoia," which seemed to be the place, and of another name, "Lantis," a name that caught in her throat and made her spit. Paul said, "We make faces at the south too, and do it fast." It seemed to appease the princess: she even smiled.
The area bordering the ditch had been left wild, a barrier of vines, brush, untended trees. Inside were orderly rows of plants, some broad-leaved, resembling beets, some bushy; another type was rangy with cosmos-shaped blooms of startling emerald green. Near the row of trees was a path which Pakriaa followed; under the trees stood grass-thatched structures. Paul counted thirty, well separated, before the princess left the path, and no sound came from them. The trees were mostly of the same species, thin-trunked towers with dark serrated leaves, blazing with scarlet blossoms like the one Pakriaa wore. They were the source of an odor like frangipani which filled the village, heady and sweet but clean. It was no primitive agriculture in this part-sunny corridor: rich darkness of earth was drawn up about the plants; there was not a weed in sight. And there was no trace of the strangling purple vines.
Pakriaa's male attendants had slipped away; her spearwomen accompanied her through an opening into the next corridor, where her people were waiting for her, the soldier women in three formal ranks. There were about fifty in each rank, and here again were dyed skirts of every color but the regal blue that was Abro Pakriaa's. Small faces maintained the flat indifference of the unliving copper they resembled.
Pakriaa's intricate oratory flowed over them. More than two thirds of the stiff soldiers were gashed with recent wounds, ranging from scratches to lost hands or breasts or eyes. Some had deep body wounds so ugly it was amazing that they could stand upright, but there seemed to be no evidence of infection and there was no wavering in the lines while Pakriaa declaimed. Her right hand soared with spread fingers. The lifeboat? The name Torothee occurred; when it was repeated the women swayed with unchanging faces, murmuring it in unison like a breath of wind. Pakriaa faced her guests. Tears were not unknown to her; laughter might be. She clenched and relaxed her hands, the fourteen fingers rising and falling until Paul lost count of the motions—more than twenty. She pointed to the soldiers, repeating the display more slowly and only ten times; then one hand rose alone with the thumb curled under. Paul muttered, "I think she's saying only 146 are left after the war, from—maybe three hundred."
Pakriaa laid her spear at Ann's feet. Paul advised: "Give her your knife, same way." Pakriaa took it and placed it across the spear and stood back, motioning to Ann to do the same. When the three had withdrawn, Pakriaa still made impatient gestures. Paul whispered, "Ed, you and I are trifling males. We stand further back."