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Show five others pried the boy's-jaws loose from her hand. Nursing a swelling thumb, the Seljuk regarded the glowering boy from a distance, then grinned slowly and widely. "Aye, a fine one he i s . . . a f t e r thou tamest him, my girl!" And she gave the proud young warrior standing beside her a playful shove. This warrior was a strapping girl, the biggest of the entire Kingdom, and the product of a fertility raid on the Northern Kingdom knights. Her father had been so big, it had taken five of the enormous Seljuk warriors to subdue him, and a SevenDay to finally get all five of them impregnated. For they used their little consorts, not for breeding, but for pleasure and for keeping the house and the flocks-a fact undiscovered by Dr'Anya in her researches. "Have no fear, your Greatness," the young woman said, smiling grimly. "I will indeed tame him." But she hadn't tamed him at all, and though she'd managed from many fertility raids to give birth to many fine, big girls, her only boy turned out not to resemble his strapping sisters at all but rather to be the spit and image of the little Benji-and by the GreatMother, she had been so careful! Then she had another girl, late in her middle years, and full furious she was withal. "Kill the wight!" she screamed to her lieutenants. "Find ye him and kill him!" But the little Benji, as soon as he'd heard of his mistress' delivery of a runtish girl, had run off with the tiny adolescent boy-his son, Hoqqam-and a sackful of jewels and YellowBison ivories. "Aaaaiiiieeee!" the woman screamed. "I'm undone, the Seljuk will have me exiled! For to give birth to a runtish girl were an unbridled humiliation to one destined for the throne!" Indeed, the Favorite of the 109 |
