“Once they did,” answered Bhuto. “That was long ago.”
“Why did they stop?”
“It was seen that peoples died—not here a man and here a woman—but peoples.”
“How did they die?”
“They were not born. So it was seen that women must not be killed and killed. So the women and men held a great council, and after that there were war-men, but not war-women.”
“But Bin-Bin killed the giantess—”
“Yes. Every people had a giantess who would not stay at home. The one Bin-Bin killed was a war-head. She was tall as a tree and she could run like a deer and see at night like an owl, and when she shouted the wood shook! But Bin-Bin killed her. Now women all stay with the houses and the flocks and herds. If other-people come here and make fight, they will fight. But they do not make war-bands. Men do that. Men have bows and arrows and shields and spears.”
The girl fell silent, sitting with her chin upon her knees. Bhuto began to chant the second half of the ballad.
A great distance away, as these people counted distance, behind the curtain of hills, at the foot of the mountain peak, the cloud-roofed day and evening had gone after another fashion. It had gone with struggle, fury, jubilation, terror, death, and subjection.
The war-band from the valley numbered a hundred men. The group upon which they fell in the hour before dawn fought back, men and women. But it was taken by surprise and bewildered, and many could not reach their weapons, and many were pierced with spears almost before they rose from sleep. The hundred wrought havoc, slew and bound. When the east showed purple, resistance lay dead, or glared, with tied hands, from a space into which, naked, it had been driven like a beast. The old men, the old women, the young children, were put to death. Many strong men and women lay slain. Resistance, raging, biting at its bonds, came to be the resistance of not more than the hundred could handle as captives. They set the huts afire, but not before there was gathered from them spoil and booty. This group had possessed flocks and herds. Flocks and herds were taken for riches for the group in the valley. The valley men had never before had so complete a victory. This was different from mere raids against herds or herdsmen, or chance contests upon plain or hill, away from the houses, away from the heaped goods!