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have done many things in my life that shamed me at the time, and many that shame me yet. But none ever caused me larger and more immediate pain than that revelation of my own cowardice. From then on I knew that I was a coward, worthless and despicable. No act of mine ever hurt me more than that failure to act. Still in my worst nightmares I stand and watch with the rest while my mother is battered half-senseless. I again taste the blood from my bitten Up and feel my nails cut into my palms.
    Finally he stopped and tossed away the stick. “Get up!” he ordered, panting and wiping sweat from his brow. There was a long pause, then she levered herself to her knees and reached for her gown. He put a foot on it. “Go to him like that. Let him see. And tell him that he must leave, or I will kill you.”
    He had to help her to rise. She swayed, then began to move.
    “What is the message?”
    She stopped. “He must go or you will kill me.”
    “And your other children.”
    “And my other children.”
    He nodded. “Hurry back.”
    Naked and bleeding, my mother hobbled away into the grasslands. The monster looked over the rest of us and evidently concluded that he would have no more trouble. Smiling, he ordered Rantarath to her tent so that he might try out another of his prizes.
    ─♦─
    Indarth had gone north. The herd was to the south. Westward lay my father’s death place. I went east, sunward.
    I had never heard of suicide, but had any obvious means presented themselves, I might have reinvented it. How long I wandered I cannot tell—long enough to discard as impossible every means of revenge, long enough to reduce a boy to staggering exhaustion, long enough for gnawing hunger to dull his shame and send him creeping miserably home again.
    That was the fourth landmark and the end of my childhood.
    ─♦─
    The ranchers who live in Friday maintain that bad bloodlines make bad foals. They blame a man’s faults on his breeding.
    The hunters of the forests say that everyone chooses his own paths through life, that he must himself accept the blame for his own mistakes.
    The gentle seafolk raise neither voice nor hand to a child. They claim that we are all molded by our upbringing and that defects of character are due to poor rearing.
    I do not choose between these opinions.
    I pass no judgment. I make no excuses.
    But that was my childhood.

—2—
THE TYRANT
    W HEN I RETURNED TO CAMP, ANUBYL WAS VISIBLE in the distance, having trouble staying on a horse. Probably, like me, he had watched riding being done but had never been allowed to try. I hoped he would fall off and break his neck.
    My mother had been bandaged by the other women. She was lying facedown, covered by a thin blanket. The flaps of her tent were open, and a soothing breeze floated through. To save her having to raise her head, I stretched out flat on the rug at her side, horrified by her pallor.
    She smiled and moved her hand closer. I took it. It was cold.
    “I am glad,” she whispered. “I was frightened you would not come back.”
    “I will kill him!”
    She tried to shake her head. “No, I am glad, too, that you did not try to interfere.”
    “I am a coward!”
    “No.” she said again. “I was wrong. He was within his rights. You were not a coward. You did right.”
    I was almost sobbing. “He is a tyrant!” Of course, I had never seen a tyrant, but I knew the stories. It was the worst thing I could think of to call him. Speaking was obviously difficult for her, but she insisted on trying. In broken phrases she explained things I did not know. Anubyl could have done worse. He might have killed off the babies. He might have slain Indarth out of hand, and perhaps others, like myself or even the older women. He was herdmaster and could do what he liked with any of us. Rantarath and Jalinan were pregnant, and he had ordered them to contrive miscarriages right away, but that was to be expected, for of course he would want the women to start