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pulled me out.
    I was dropped onto the ground like so much baggage.   I counted three dimly seen figures around me.   The closest, who had pulled me from my hiding spot, was staring down at me with his head cocked at an angle.
    â€œWhat is this?” he said in a strangely inflected voice.   The accent was rough, northern, I thought.
    One of the others kicked at me and said, “Yes, what?”
    â€œIs it wine?” the third said, and the other two laughed.   “Perhaps we should drink it?”
    The three figures stiffened as a fourth appeared, throwing two of them aside.
    â€œWhat do you find?”
    The figure who had pulled me from the cask pointed to me but said nothing.
    â€œThis, O mighty!”
    â€œWhat are you?” the one who had been called ‘mighty’ said to me.
    Slowly, I got up.
    When he saw my swollen belly, the Mighty’s demeanor changed in an instant.
    â€œShe is with kith!” he roared at the others.   “And you treat her like this, you maggots?”   He swatted at the nearest of the three, catching him on the head with a great blow.
    â€œWe didn’t know–!” a second said as a similar blow struck him, sending him to the ground.
    â€œI apologize for my fools,” the Mighty said to me.   And then he bowed.
    â€œYou are of the Yern clan,” I ventured, tentatively.
    He stood straight and proud.   “Yes!”
    â€œNomads from the north?”
    â€œWe take no council from other clans, and give none ourselves.   We are vagabonds, and proud to be so!”
    â€œYou were never represented at Assembly...”
    Again his demeanor changed.   He looked at the opening in the cask, strode over to it and poked his head inside.
    He came back and stared me in the face, first with one eye, then the other.   His breath smelled of fish and Xarr’s wine.
    I suddenly thought of Xarr.
    â€œWhat happened to the driver of the cart?” I asked.
    The Mighty’s companions laughed.   One of them made a slitting motion across his throat.
    A chill went through me, until the Mighty said, “He was nothing.   A F’rar, and a scrawny one at that.   He mewled for his mother.   So we sent him to her.”   He paused and grinned at his companions.   “Assuming his mother’s dead, of course!”
    They laughed, as much out of fear for their leader as at what he said.
    â€œF’rar...” I said.
    The Mighty stood tall again.   “Yes!   There was a great battle near the crater called Galle.   We watched it from the far rim.   And when it was over we came down and helped ourselves.
    â€œScavengers,” I said, mostly to myself.
    â€œVultures!” he roared.   “Who drop down upon their prey like death itself?” The other three stepped back.   For a moment he drew his hand back but then regained his composure as his eyes focused once more on my belly.
    â€œA man who strikes a woman with kith should die, and quickly,” he said.   “But you try my patience.   Tell me who you are.   Or have you spent your whole life inside a wine cask?”
    The others laughed weakly at the joke.
    I considered telling him my real name, though I doubted it would mean anything to him.   These were nomads, who had never been yoked to any Martian law, monarchy or republic.   When we were children our parents used to scare us with them.   They were vapors in the night, which appeared, plundered, and disappeared in a breath of wind.
    â€œI am an important person,” I said simply.
    â€œI gathered as much.   Either that or a wine steward gone to extraordinary lengths to guard his wares.   And where there is import there is money no doubt.”
    â€œI would be handsomely ransomed.”
    He nodded.   “I have no doubt of that, too.   And you shall be ransomed, and handsomely, at the falling of the year.”
    That was