The wine was quickly located, and Conabar savored his moment of victory as he thrust skyward the golden goblet of sparkling red wine, the very scent of which, penetrating and ethereal, made his head giddy with newfound power and glory.
Sloshing it's contents in a reckless gesture, Conabar waved his sword in the air and shouted, "Rababull be dead! Long live Conabar House!!"
"WHOO-RAH! WHOO-RAH!" shouted his men, crowding around on all sides as they routed the wine bearer for his plunder and brandished their weapons, toasting Conabar in a crash of armor.
The raucous cheering and noise-making grew to a deafening din in the compound.
* * *
Somewhere past the bungalow of the field slaves, beyond the back gate that let out into the fields behind the compound of the once and mighty House of Rababull who was no more, and yet beyond, out in the tall saw grasses and swaying bulrushes beside a peacefully meandering little stream, Si'Wren crouched low beside a collapsed Habrunt as she listened fearfully. In the distance, the madmen howled their anger and frustration at not finding her, and their mounting desperation at what Conabar would do to them for their failure to deliver one called Si'Wren into the hand of their master was driving them to extremes. They had already run old L'acoci through with a sword, for refusing to tell which way Si'Wren had gone.
Bent over in agony and unable to defend her now, the savagery of his punishments making him the very image of evil and degradation, a crippled Habrunt had counseled Si'Wren to flee, and against his protests found himself dragged along rather than be abandoned to the invaders. He had known what to do, but it was she who had actually accomplished their escape so narrowly in time.
Beside him, a heavily gasping Si'Wren felt deep fear. The way that the men who came searching had looked for Si'Wren, describing her so accurately, and the way her fellow slaves had named her so freely as she listened in the bushes nearby, had chilled her blood.
While the searchers ran off to look elsewhere, she had helped a crippled Habrunt to escape, fearful of being spotted at any moment. It was a relief to rest now, as she and Habrunt cowered together in the bulrushes by the stream.
Then, Habrunt said under his breath, as much an agonized groan as any recognizably human utterance, "The Emperor's Law is broken. If judgements are to be determined, we must go to the Emperor!"