"Very well. Good-by, Anketam. I hope to see you again before the next
harvest." And with that, he turned and walked through the gate, toward
the woman who was standing anxiously on the porch of his home.
* * * * *
Anketam turned away and started towards his own village. Most of the
others had already begun the trek back. But Jacovik, Blejjo, and Basom
were waiting for him. They fell into step beside him.
After a while, Jacovik broke the silence. "Well, Ank, it looks like
you've got a big job on your hands."
"That's for sure," said Anketam. He knew that Jacovik envied him the
job; he knew that Jacovik had only missed the appointment by a narrow
margin.
"Jac," he said, "have you got a man on your crew that you can trust to
take over your job?"
"Madders could do it, I think," Jacovik said cautiously. "Why?"
"This is too big a job for one man," said Anketam quietly. "I'll need
help. I want you to help me, Jac."
There was a long silence while the men walked six paces. Then Jacovik
said: "I'll do whatever I can, Ank. Whatever I can." There was honest
warmth in his voice.
Again there was a silence.
"Blejjo," Anketam said after a time, "do you mind coming out of
retirement for a while?"
"Not if you need me, Ank," said the old man.
"It won't be hard work," Anketam said. "I just want you to take care of
the village when I'm not there. Settle arguments, assign the village
work, give out punishment if necessary--things like that. As far as the
village is concerned, you'll be supervisor."
"What about the field work, Ank?" Blejjo asked. "I'm too old to handle
that. Come spring, and--"
"I said, as far as the village is concerned," Anketam said. "I've got
another man in mind for the field work."
And no one was more surprised than Basom when Anketam said: "Basom, do
you think you could handle the crew in the field?"
Basom couldn't even find his tongue for several more paces. When he
discovered at last that it was still in his mouth, where he'd left it,
he said: "I ... I'll try, Ank. I sure will try, if you want me to. But
... well ... I mean, why pick _me_?"
Old Blejjo chuckled knowingly. Jacovik, who hardly knew the boy, just
looked puzzled.
"Why not you?" Anketam countered.
"Well ... you've always said I was lazy. And I am, I guess."
"Sure you are," said Anketam. "So am I. Always have been. But a smart
lazy man can figure out things that a hard worker might overlook. He can
find the easy, fast way to get a job done properly. And he doesn't
overwork his men because he knows that when he's tired, the others are,
too. You want to try it, Basom?"
"I'll try," said Basom earnestly. "I'll try real hard." Then, after a
moment's hesitation. "Just one thing, Anketam--"
"What's that?"
"Kevenoe. I don't want him coming around me. Not at all. If he ever said
one word to me, I'd probably break his neck right there."
Anketam nodded. The Chief had given Zillia to Kevenoe only two months
before, and the only one who liked the situation was Kevenoe himself.
"I'll deal with Kevenoe, Basom," Anketam said. "Don't you worry about
that."
"All right, then," Basom said. "I'll do my best, Anketam."
"You'd better," said Anketam. "If you don't, I'll just have to give the
job to someone else. You hear?"
"I hear," said Basom.
V
The war dragged on. In the spring of the following year, over a hundred
thousand Invader troops landed on the seacoast a hundred miles from
Chromdin and began a march on the capital. But somebody had forgotten to
tell the Invader general that it rained in that area in the spring and
that the mud was like glue. The Invader army bogged down, and,
floundering their way toward Chromdin, they found themselves opposed by
an army of nearly a hundred thousand Xedii troops under General Jojon,
and the invasion came to a standstill at that point.
Farther to the west, another group of forty thousand Invader troops came
down from the Frozen Country, and a Xedii general named Oljek trounced
them with a mere seventeen thousand men.
All in all, the Invaders were getting nowhere, but they seemed
determined to keep on plugging.
The news only filtered slowly into the areas which were situated well
away from the front. A thousand miles to the west of Chief Samas'
barony, the Invaders began cutting deeply into Xedii territory, but they
were nowhere near the capital, so no one was really worried.
Anketam worked hard at keeping the barony going during the absence of
The Chief. Instead of _cataca_, he and Jacovik planted food crops,
doing on a larger scale just what they had always done in the selected
sections around the villages. They had always grown their own food, and
now they were doing it on a grand scale.
No news came from off-planet, except for unreliable rumors. What the
rest of the galaxy was doing about the war on Xedii, no one knew.
Young Basom proved to be a reasonably competent supervisor. He was
nowhere near as good as Anketam or Jacovik, but there were worse supers
in the barony.
Anketam found that the biggest worry was not in the handling of the
farmers, but in obtaining manufactured goods. The staff physician
complained to Kevenoe that drugs were getting scarce. Shoes and clothing
were almost impossible to obtain. Rumor had it that arms and ammunition
were running short in the Xedii armies. For two centuries, Xedii had
depended on other planets to provide manufactured goods for her, and now
those supplies were cut off, except for a miserably slow trickle that
came in via the daring space officers who managed to evade the orbital
forts that the Invaders had set up around the planet.
Even so, Anketam's faith in the power of Xedii remained constant. The
invading armies were still being held off from Chromdin, weren't they?
The capital would not fall, of that he was sure.
What Anketam did not and could not know was the fact that the Invaders
were growing tired of pussy-footing around. Instead of fighting Xedii on
Xedii's terms, the Invaders decided to fight it on their own.
Everyone on Chief Samas' barony and the others around it expected
trouble to come from the north, from the Frozen Country, if and when it
came. They didn't look to the west, where the real trouble was brewing.
Anketam was shocked when he heard the news that the Invaders had reached
Tana L'At, having cut down through the center of the continent, dividing
the inhabited part of Xedii into two almost equal parts. They knocked
out Tana L'At with a heavy shelling of paralysis gas, evacuated the
inhabitants, and dusted the city with radioactive powder to make it
uninhabitable for several years.
Then they began to march eastward.