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Show Hoqqam had grown to be a great help to his father; Benji, and had learned by the way to be an electronics Tech of sorts. Enough to get them bundles of credits out of the Commendium CountingHouses-for they had indeed made their way over the Tartars, time and again, the young Hoqqam quelling his father's fears of the heights, having that much of the Seljuk in him. And he'd inherited the Seljuk muscles, tiny though he was withal, and had amazing strength for his size. Benji had expected the girl to be equally strong and cunning, but she hadn't been cunning at all, and had no apparent strength, though she'd been fed one meal a day full faithful for the whole time she'd been with them. Moreover, she'd been something naive, trusting to the point of.... " . . . s t u p i d i t y ! " spat Hoqqam, "Flay her, I will, to the very bone!" For they had just been assailed by a band of Northern outlaws who had fed the half-starved child-ten TwelveMonths old that autumn-and she had been so grateful for a supper before bed that she'd led them to her relatives, lurking in a cave with a sack of contraband gold. For that she'd been well beaten-one of hundreds upon hundreds administered to her throughout her sojourn with her two villainous relatives-with her father; Benji, giving her the worst of it. But her screams stirred the brigands, who were not yet out of the vicinity, and they came back and beat, in turn, her father. In fact, the Brigands had killed the little Benji, alas. And Hoqqam never forgave his sister. For the next four TwelveMonths, Hoqqam wandered as a minstrel through the Northern Kingdom, the stringy = miserable girl trailing along behind him. Then he decided to try the HighTartars once more and go as far as 112 |