Page 115 of The Boy Bride

Vanu tossed him back toward the doorway of his house. Faru reeled and stumbled and sat down hard on the doorstep.

“And?” Vanu signed.

Faru groaned. Vanu was standing over him, so he couldn’t get to his feet. “And the headman of Sakka is his brother-in-law. Ganda said he’d tell him who I was if I couldn’t—if I didn’t convince him that we should be allies again. He has this dreadful daughter he dotes on—I said one of my boys would make her a good husband. He said, ‘Not the one who was chased over Dukha Ridge by a piglet’—”

“It was a full-grown boar!” Barda protested.

“What do you mean, a ‘dreadful daughter’?” Khatu wanted to know.

“Yes, what do you mean?” said Gurti, who had come to stand beside Vanu.

Faru waved a hand impatiently. “Skinny and freckled, chases dogs around the village.”

“She what?”

“She’s ten! You wouldn’t have to marry her for years. It would all have worked perfectly well if you hadn’t got that hunter woman pregnant!”

“Ten?” Barda repeated despairingly. “Not marry for years?”

“But the huntress is pregnant,” said Gurti. “So now what happens?”

“I’m not marrying the ten-year-old!” Barda put in helpfully.

“The ten-year-old won’t have you,” said Lill. “On account of the piglet.”

“I tell you it was a boar! Fully grown! Vicious tusks and everything!”

“What’s going on?” asked Padunu, appearing in the doorway behind Faru.

“Kindly help me up,” said Faru, looking pathetically glad to see an ally.

Padunu hesitated, looking to Vanu for permission—the crowning touch to Faru’s humiliation. Vanu took a step back, gesturing assent.

“Of course, my lord.” The shaman reached down and hauled Faru awkwardly to his feet.

“Fortunately, I was able to salvage the situation,” Faru said, looking around at everyone with an attempt at dignity.

“I’m not abandoning Otoni,” said Khatu, folding his arms over his chest.

“We will give the huntress money and relocate her to another village,” Faru went on. “We can put it about that the father of her child was Barda and not Khatu after all. And Ganda has agreed to go ahead with the betrothal if we accompany him on a raid tonight.”

“I’m not having Barda pretend to be the father of my kid!”

“Yeah, well, I’m not doing it anyway! I don’t want a fake mistress any more than I want a toddler for a wife.”

“You have agreed to go on this raid?” Gurti spoke over her sons’ bickering.

Faru took a step backward and bumped into Padunu. “Khatu and I will go. Tonight.”

“You will not take Khatu.”

“Ma, I’m a grown man—I can take care of myself!”

“You can also listen to your mother,” said Vanu.

Khatu groaned.

“Da could take me,” Barda suggested brightly.