2
rsed without so much as the snap of a twig.
Tagart, or Tugart, or Tergart, was twenty-five years of age, tall and fine in the face, with dark hair and watchful brown eyes that knew the value of patience. His skin -- for it was now the height of summer -- was well tanned, his frame hard-muscled and long-limbed, with an economy of movement that seemed like slowness to those who had never been with him in the woods and tried to keep up.
Chance had endowed him with a keen intelligence which the teachings of his elders had turned into solid skill and a command of the necessary knowledge. Of all the young men in his tribe, it was Tagart who had been regarded as successor to the leader, Tagart who had taken the most desirable bride, Tagart whose small son would in turn one day be chief; and Tagart whom the others were beginning to look upon with more and more respect and affection as each season passed.
But now, in the course of a single night, all that had changed. Everything changed; everything raped and defiled.
Not quite everything. Tagart was still alive. He was still alive, and behind the grief he was still himself.
It was time to begin.
"I come in friendship," he called out, leaving the safety of the trees and starting across the field.
The labourer, a short, stumpy man, did not answer. He stood shielding his eyes against the west, his right hand taking a firmer grasp on the polished ashwood haft of his mattock.
Tagart went on. In the edge of his vision he was making a second survey of the field, making certain that he and the labourer were alone. The farmers' village, which he had studied the previous day, was a cluster of stone and timber buildings inside a wooden palisade, hidden from this field by the rise of the land. It was only a quarter of a mile away, too close, asking for trouble; but then he'd had no choice. He had been forced into the open by the shape of the forest and by the way the fields sloped. Without revealing himself there had been no way