Nelatha and Si'Wren, still keeping up a pretense of labor as they watched unseen within the veil of their tent, exchanged dire, fearful looks.
Prut was a powerful man, and whenever he was called in to help take charge of a situation, it usually meant grief to whoever Prut was put after. Prut could lift two times his own weight over his own head, maybe even more, and although not a giant, he was certainly big enough by ordinary standards.
A stone-faced Prut listened to Habrunt's instructions, and then turned and tromped over to a large group of boys who had gathered to help unload the caravan, and as soon as he had relayed Habrunt's instructions, the boys all fanned out searching in all possible hiding places and out-of-the-way corners.
Habrunt, meanwhile, had gone off to the fields, perhaps to go looking for himself. Whatever it was, it was no small matter. He soon came back carrying the agonized, writhing figure of a small boy in his arms, followed by a small crowd of openly angry women and other children.
One-half of the boy's face was covered with blood, emanating from one of his squinting eyes.
This time the interruption did not go unnoticed, and while the distracted workmen finished unloading the caravan, with many a turn of the head, the team of boys that Prut had organized had worked their way through the courtyard and outlying structures as they called anxiously to and fro to one-another, and rapidly expanded the territory of their searches. Others ran out both the front and rear gates and could be heard out in the fields, shouting to one another as they went about poking and beating at the bushes with long sticks.
Finally the hue and cry went up from a number of them, and a concerted chase ensued. Presently, they returned through the rear gates with two of the biggest boys half-walking and half-dragging a lone struggling boy, holding the unwilling youngster firmly by the upper arms and hair to keep him from getting away again.
Habrunt came over and stood listening to them all arguing, and finally raised his finger and pointed at Prut with a terse word to stand guard while he turned and marched with an ominously slow, deliberate reluctance across the courtyard towards Master Rababull. A sense of dread fell upon the entire assembly, and gradually all fell silent, watching as Habrunt resolutely approached Master Rababull.
Up until now, Rababull had been deliberately ignoring the whole fiasco. But when Habrunt finally stepped up to him and bowed low, he turned to listen, still grandly smiling, and after a few barely whispered words from the bowed face of Habrunt, Master Rababull quickly turned, and his smile froze into an expressionless, unreadable, and somehow all-the-more terrifying mask.
Master Rababull was, after all, many hundreds of years old, the better part of a thousand, in fact, and no man's fool. He knew men, and he knew how to deal in kind for kind, and had survived the most evil schemes that men could throw at him by managing to anticipate them sufficiently in advance whilst devising even more evil ones in return.