Chapter 4: Rumble

Inside Stan's tent the captives perched fearfully on a couple of folding chairs, squirming uncomfortably in their clean new clothes. Although the jeans and work shirts were about the right sizes, they plainly rubbed in unexpected places. Once their hands were untied the prisoners willingly accepted mugs of cold water, but refused to touch any of the food that was offered to them.

Stan tapped his chest with one finger, repeating his name several times, then pointing enquiringly at each of them. The captives only shrank in on themselves, huddling closer together as their wide eyes betrayed fear that edged uncomfortably close to panic. Further efforts at communication only made the man sullenly defiant, the girl tearfully determined to have nothing to do with this tall stranger.

"Something's funny here," Stan rumbled at last. "They aren't responding to me at all, but I'd swear to God that they know what I want from them. I'd also bet my back teeth that they're waiting for us to do something in particular, but I sure don't know what it could be. Mike, you try talking to them and see if you have any better luck."

Mike walked over closer to the captives, taking Stan's place as he backed away. The man sat up straighter, looking up at him hopefully but the girl still shrank away, eyes averted.

"Mike. Mike. My name is Mike." Pointing to himself, Mike repeated his name several times. Then he pointed to the man and raised his eyebrows enquiringly.

"Lom," the captive answered eagerly. "Sa desni Lom," and broke into a stream of incomprehensible words. Mike then tried to talk to the girl, but she only kept her head turned away, pointedly ignoring him.

"Okay, Chad, It's your turn in the barrel," Stan ordered, watching intently. "I think I'm beginning to figure out what's wrong. Try talking to the girl this time, instead of the man."

The girl's delicate features showed that she was almost frozen with fear, and she shuddered visibly at Chad's approach. Ignoring the others, he pulled up a chair and sat facing her, trying to look as friendly as he knew how.

"Chad." He pointed at himself and spoke his name in soft tones, then pointed at her, waiting for her response. "My name is Chad."

"Ahlenya," she whispered, slumping in her chair, her head hanging as her tight muscles relaxed. "Sen desnilte Ahlenya." Tears started to roll down her cheeks, and she broke into stifled sobs. Chad sat with a baffled look on his face for a moment, then reached out and gently took hold of her hand.

She looked up at him forlornly. Before he realized what she was doing, she had dropped to her knees and buried her face in her hands, pressing against his legs as though seeking his protection.

His face reflecting his bewildered embarrassment, he smoothed her tousled golden hair. As her storm of weeping subsided, he pulled out his blue bandanna handkerchief and helped her to dry her tears. Seated in her chair once more and looking more hopeful, Ahlenya responded to his verbal proddings in a low, musical voice, although still ignoring Stan and Mike.

"You sure don't need me here," Stan commented after a few more minutes. "You two keep on working with them. That's gonna be your whole job around here for a while. Teach them as much English as you can while you're at it, but concentrate mostly on learning their language. Here, use this tape recorder. There's a whole pile of blank tapes for it in this drawer. Make sure that you catch everything they say, and don't be afraid to put in plenty of your own comments and opinions as you go along. We can edit the tapes all we want to later, and make us new ones to use along with them. That way we can try to teach the rest of us at least a few words of their language. While you're doing that, I'll have the men fix up a place for them to sleep where they won't be bothered and can't get away."

"Will do. Oh, and you might send us in some more to eat after a while," Chad called after him as Stan turned to leave the tent. "We didn't none of us have any lunch or dinner to speak of. It's almost dark already, and this looks like it might turn out to be hungry work."

Left to themselves, Chad and Mike made surprisingly rapid progress. Lom seemed to have a hard time catching on to what they were trying to do at first, but when he finally understood that Mike was trying to learn his language, he worked on it as hard as he could. He also managed to pick up a few words of English, but had trouble recognizing and pronouncing many of the sounds.

Across the tent, Ahlenya realized what Chad was doing almost immediately and had much less trouble with the sounds. Before long she was correcting the worst of Lom's stumbles, even laughing at their mistakes and making a game of the lessons. By the time one of the men brought their evening meal, she and Chad had even begun to exchange a few simple ideas.

The captives both guessed immediately what knives and forks were for, so that table manners didn't give them any trouble. They did have to be convinced by example that some of the foods were fit for them to eat, though. They had no trouble recognizing the pork in their ham sandwiches, but roast beef and breast of turkey were completely unfamiliar to them as were the vegetables that accompanied the simple meal.

"A lot of this is still guesswork, but we think that Ahlenya and Lom are cousins," Chad reported to Stan a few evenings later. The three of them were sitting around a table in Stan's tent, drinking cans of cold beer. Night had fallen and the two captives had once again been put to bed in one of the new buildings. From outside came the muffled roar of the generator that supplied the camp with electricity.

"They'd been working out in the fields, tending one of their herds of farm animals when the soldiers hit," Mike added. "They hit the dirt so's not to be seen, and that's how come they was so grungey when we grabbed them. They sure knew how to use soap and hot water when we cleaned 'em up for Doc Parkins, and they didn't mind putting on clean clothes, neither. They don't seem to have no strong feelings about being naked, except around strangers. Our guess is that they must of been heading for a neighboring farm or something when we grabbed them."

"That's good work, to get as much out of them as you have this soon. Say, just what kind of animals was it the soldiers were riding? You said something about funny looking pigs that was almost the size of horses?"

"Yeah, at least that big," Chad answered, "and they was pigs all right. Too bad we didn't have a video camera along or we coulda brought you back some great footage. I dunno all that much about animals. They looked a whole lot like some wild pigs I saw pictures of one time, in a book about Mexico. Only difference was that the critters we saw had long necks and longer, skinnier legs than the ones in the pictures. They was plenty big enough for soldiers to ride on, no shit. The farm had herds of smaller pigcritters, too. Four or five different kinds of them. Ahlenya says some of them have long thick hair that they weave their cloth from, kinda like sheep's wool only coarser, and there's others that they keep for milk and cheese, along with heavy ones for hitching to ploughs and pulling wagons. They even have some that they train to track wild animals with, and use them like dogs for when they go out hunting. All of their animals do seem to be descended from pigs, though."

"What kind of a setup was this farm of hers? Did they have any tractors or anything?"

"Huhuh, nothing but people and animals to do the work, far as we could see. Not even a windmill to pump water with. They had to carry it in buckets from the creek." Chad looked doubtful, trying to remember all that he'd been told. "I'm not really sure about what kind of setup they had. I think there's only a few people like Ahlenya's grandpop, his name was Bortai, what have farms out in the woods by themselves. Most of the farming is done right in close around the cities, and the land ain't owned by the people what works them. The people on this farm were Bortai's sons and daughters, their families, and so on. No hired men or slaves, at least not here. Usually when the old man dies or gets too old to run things, the farm goes to his oldest daughter and her husband. If a farm gets too big and rich, soldiers might get sent to break it up and make some of the people move on. She says that wasn't why they got raided this time, though. Their farm wasn't all that big, and it sure as Hell wasn't that rich. I couldn't make out what the reason was. From what I did get, I've gotta hunch it had something to do with religion."

"Where did the soldiers come from?"

"There's one guy what runs the whole show around these parts; as near as I can get it, his title comes out something like 'Landsman'. He's the boss of the nearest city, and owns pretty near everything in this corner of the world. Like a Duke, maybe? Only, there don't seem to be no king or nothing. Oh, and their name for this world is 'Gardhe', or something like that. I think that's how Ahlenya pronounced it. This Landsman's the one we'll most likely have problems with when we start moving in on them."

"Why wouldn't she and Lom talk to us at first?"

"Oh yeah, that." He grinned a bit sheepishly. "Since me and Mike was the ones what caught them, they belong to us. That means they don't have to do what nobody else says. If they'd of talked to you first, or to anyone else but us they'd of been lowrated, the worst kinda slaves."

"Well, son," Stan laughed uproariously. "How does it feel to own a pretty little slavegirl?"

"Aw, it ain't like that at all, not really. More like she's one of my gang, or sumpin'. She'll take my orders within reason, but she has her rights too. She can't be sold, or nuthin' like that unless she wants to be. Lom belongs to Mike the same way, but it ain't as important for a man as it is for a woman."

"What about whoever they belonged to before?"

"The way I get it," Mike was the one who answered this time. "They really didn't belong to nobody, except for being part of the Bortai farm's family. The farm paid some tribute to the nearest Landsman, but they didn't belong to him, neither. When someone is captured in a fight between two gangs, they can insist on being sold or traded back to their family or old owner. That is, if their old owner wants to pay for them. That can happen when soldiers from two Landsmen's cities fight, or when people get themselves captured by outlaws."

"What's this about outlaws?" Stan looked concerned. "You didn't say anything about them, before."