screaming in agony within a few minutes. Out-maneuvered, outflanked, and outfought, those who remained soon enough threw down their weapons, pleading for mercy.
Their answer came in one chilling word, ?Ashwarawu."
The captive men were bound and taken away, out to the dry riverbed, where a select few were untied and forced to dig holes in the sand, so that their bound kin could be buried up to their waists. In turn, Ashwarawu s own warriors dug the holes for the remaining captive men.
Then, with forty-three Behrenese men squirming in the sand, buried to their waists and helplessly bound and blindfolded, Ashwarawu led in the To-gai-ru nomads of Jocyn Tho's tribe, showing to them the many stones left by the dried-up river.
The stoning went on for hours, until the last Behrenese outposter leaned over limply, dead.
Most of Ashwarawu's men left before it was finished, returning to Douan Cal to have their way with the Behrenese women before killing them outright.
The few children of the outposters were killed mercifully, at least, a single blow to the head before being thrown atop a large bonfire.
Jocyn Tho had been avenged.
Her last transgression when leaving Yatol Daek, she learned, was one that offended her profoundly. In leaving the presence of Yatol Daek, To-gai-ru were expected to drop to one knee and bow their heads.
Brynn took great care over the next few weeks to avoid the Yatol, for she doubted that she could bring herself to do that, whatever the result.
The young ranger also took great care to learn well the rituals of life in the settlement. She tried to fit in as well as she could, though, since she would not go anywhere without her sword and the bracer, at least, she al-ways seemed to stand out.
She also made time every day to go and see Runtly. The pony, who had run free all of his life, was not pleased to be indoors in a stall.
"Not much longer," Brynn promised him every time she went to him. ?We will be away to the wide fields again."
The pony seemed to understand, and always calmed down when Brynn came in to see him. The last few days, though, Runtly had continued his ribbing, biting the wood at the front of the stall and tugging it back, even 'hen Brynn was there, a clear sign that he was not happy.
Outwardly, Brynn remained calm, not wanting to distress the pony any ore Inside, though, the woman bit it all in and swirled it about, adding . e situation to the list of crimes of the Behrenese, using it to build her ha-tred even more.
But she refused to allow her simmering anger to boil over. She was learn-ing much there about the Behrenese and about the present state of the proud To-gai-ru. Many were assimilating; to Brynn's distress she heard more than one of her fellow villagers claiming that the new way of life intro-duced by the Behrenese conquerors was preferable to the old ways.
Not all of them felt that way, though. Certainly not old Barachuk and Tsolona, who peppered Brynn for tales of Kayleen Kek every night after they had retired to the old couple's home. Though she didn't have many tales to tell of that long-past time, Brynn always tried to accommodate - id she always tried to draw out recollections of the past from the old cou-ple. And so it happened that these two, Barachuk and Tsolona, became Brynn's informal tutors, schooling her in the way things had been, and in the way she intended for things to be again.
All remained relatively stable during those weeks, with the village prepar-ing for the onslaught of winter. Just north of the Belt-and-Buckle, winter did not hit hard, but the To-gai steppes were of high enough elevation for the winter wind to bite.
One day, the clouds gathering overhead with a threat of the first snow of the season, Brynn was going about her regular duties, bringing water from a nearby river, when she noted a commotion within the village, over by the stables. Sensing immediately that Runtly might be involved, Brynn dropped her two buckets and sprinted over, to find many Behrenese, including a fair number of soldiers and including Yatol Daek and Chezhou-Lei Dee'dahk, bringing out several of the pinto ponies.
Brynn winced when she saw Runtly come out of the barn at the end of a lead, handled by a cursed Behrenese.
She pushed through the gathered folk, to the front of the To-gai-ru line. 'What are they doing?" she asjseti