Page 59 of Sword Dance

“No. The sword dance was my clan’s. I learned it in my father’s house before I was gelded. I didn’t use real swords then, just wooden ones. I learned other dances at Gudul, but I always practiced my family’s dance, even when no one wanted me to perform it. Of course in Boukos they love it, and I dance it all the time now.”

“I’m glad,” said Damiskos. “That you got to keep something of your own.”

* * *

Damiskos had been right in thinking that Nione’s slaves would make short work of trenching and fortifying the small area around the beach huts. The women from the vineyards took care of the digging while the rest went into the brush, with a couple of small hatchets from the factory, to cut branches to Damiskos’s specifications, which they brought back to the beach and began planting in the top of the rampart as soon as a section was finished. Some of the older children helped and were quite adept at weaving the branches together to create a denser barrier. The thing began to take shape and look businesslike very quickly. Varazda worked with the diggers, stripped to the waist, with his hair in a single braid, teasing and trading banter with them in the easy way that Damiskos had already seen him do.

Once work was well underway and Damiskos was no longer needed to give orders, he and Aradne went back to the factory site, where they found a handcart and began loading it up with supplies to ferry back to their camp.

“Remind me why we’re not making our base here,” said Aradne, as she hefted a jar of olives into the cart. “Where the food is, and where there’s walls that aren’t half fallen down.”

“Fresh water at the other location, direct access to the sea here could be a liability, we’re less visible from the villa there, and, frankly, the other location’s more comfortable. This place stinks.”

“Hah. Yes, good points.”

Their cart loaded, they did a thorough search of the three buildings, looking for anything that could be used as a tool or a weapon.

“I remember you,” Aradne remarked as they exited the factory. “At first I didn’t, I thought you were another one of these men come to badger the mistress about marrying. But you were her friend from back in the Maidens’ House.”

“That’s right. I remember you too. Was it your idea or Nione’s to have so many women in the household?” He thought he could ask that now; he also thought he knew the answer.

“Bit of both, I suppose,” said Aradne after a moment. “I never really gave it any thought.”

He’d been right. “You were used to it, I guess.”

“I guess. Though now you mention it, I think some of the men feel … odd about it. Being so outnumbered. As if we’re trying to make some kind of empire of women here, and they don’t belong. Wouldn’t be surprised if a few of them have made common cause with those gods-cursed students. Well. Fuck ’em if they have.”

“Just what I was thinking.”

They collected the loaded cart, gathered up a few other items, and trudged back over the sand to the sheltered cove. The fortifications were more than half finished, the ditch fully dug, some of the diggers resting in the sand near the waterline, while the children played in the shallows.

“They’ve made even better progress than I expected,” said Damiskos approvingly. “They’re hard workers.”

“They are,” said Aradne. “And they like the mistress. They have good lives—for slaves. But they’re still slaves.”

“You think she should free them.” It was a radical idea, but there were people doing it, philosophers in the city arguing that everyone should do it.

Aradne gave him a sharp look. “I didn’t say that. Never mind what I think.”

Varazda came strolling out to meet them, his shirt on again but unbuttoned, a little boy in a dirt-smeared tunic following him, chatting cheerfully.

“We’ve finished digging,” Varazda reported.

“So I see,” said Damiskos.

“He was impressed,” Aradne added. “Thinks you’d all make good soldiers.”

Varazda laughed. “What do you think, Chari?” He looked down at the boy, who had wrapped one arm around his leg.

“I don’t think we can be soldiers,” said Chari, wide-eyed and serious. “I’m little, and everybody else is girls.”

Varazda ruffled the boy’s hair. “It doesn’t necessarily signify, Chari. Remember that.”

“So what do we do now?” Aradne asked. “Do we have a plan?”

“I do, actually,” said Varazda. “At least, I have the rudimentary beginning of a plan.”

* * *