01 Taxilas Children

TAXILA'S CHILDREN
"Don't be petulant! You didn't have much success with Jabez last time. And you can't place
too much value on your balls if you want a repeat session! Very well, you will come with us.
You will do as you are told and consider yourself a prisoner under escort. We'll recover your
box and anything else you value - with the exception of the woman Hara."
The Scarn returned and removed the debris from the meal. Steve took a closer look at him.
A surly, brutish character, he felt again, the unrest he had experienced in the forest. There was
an undefinable feeling of kinship. He was aware that Danyk was receiving his thoughts load
an clear.
"The Scarn DOES disturb you - If it makes you feel better, you disturb me. I know you
have to be of their stock, there is no other explanation, but I can see that all knowledge of the
Scarn has been suppressed and so has knowledge of the Lynxe. You have a strange muddle of
cultures and visions of the stars I cannot comprehend. Very well, we will play the Adept's
game for a while. Your education will now begin. What shall I tell you about the Scarn? They
do the menial tasks around the estates and provide a good source of labour when required.
Sometimes we run short of labourers and then we go off and round up some more from the
forests. They're really quite easy to catch if you know their ways."
"Sounds like a cattle roundup."
"Another of your fantasies, I suppose. They're not cattle - whatever they might be - they're
a subspecies. They're tree-swingers, who've come along the road to intelligence a little way!"
He sounded as if he was trying to educate a moron. Steve flushed a little and more so,
when his tormentor continued:
"Surely, you don't relate yourself to them, O Great One! You, descended from a treeswinger?
- Is that why you wear that great mass of hair on your face? Some atavistic
connection to your Scarn ancestry, perhaps?"
Steve glared out of the window, fighting to keep his thoughts under control. Retribution
could wait, although he would have liked to plant a fist and flatten the feline squashed nose a
little further. Hara was all that mattered at that time - and the Bole - strictly in that order of
priority.
"I will leave you with your thoughts - but rest assured, when we are ready, I will return to
collect you."
Leaving someone with their thoughts would never be quite the same again. Steve didn't
answer and didn't turn when Danyk left the room. He continued to glare through the open
window and then, as his anger subsided, to take in the view. The land fell away in a gentle
slope from the paved area around the house. This room led out on to a balcony, Steve moved
to the parapet for a better view.
It was the usual scene of rural life, cultivated fields and wooded areas. The river described
a great loop, enclosing a tongue of meadow. He fretted for a hour, conscious that Hara
could be having a bad time. It was all very well to assume that Jabez would be careful about
his dealings with the Thane, to the extent that he would keep his promise to treat her with
dignity. If that didn't matter to him, he could make her life hell. He wouldn't have to ill-treat
her himself, all he would have to do would be to stir up the community against her. Steve
wanted her, he had been too long without a woman to have one snatched away by the politics
of a backward race with barbaric practices.
Another reason was the recovery of the Bole, it was tangible evidence to shake the
cocksure attitude of his hosts that he was some sort of racial aberration. Even the so-called
Adepts could not produce some thing with the capabilities of the Bole. It would be intensely
satisfying, when his worthy electronic companion produced a variety of tricks to jolt Danyk
into correct ways of thinking. It might create a degree of respect.
Danyk appeared quietly behind him.
"It's time to go."
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