Silence did not follow his words. Dasie was still, but whispered words ran like mice along the edges of the room. Hands furtively touched earrings or fabric skirts. No one dared to raise a voice to tell Dasie she was wrong, but that torrent of whispering told her what everyone knew she didn’t want to hear. Trade with the intruders was essential if the People wished to continue trading with those who came from across the sea. Game meats and hides, leather and furs, lovely objects carved from wood would buy them some things, but the traders from beyond the salt water were most eager for the trade goods from the west.
Soldier’s Boy delivered the killing blow. “I am sure that few among us would miss tobacco. And we will find other things to trade with the other folk who come to the Trading Place. When they discover we no longer have tobacco from Gernia, they will not sail away in disappointment; we will find something else they desire.” He spoke in an offhand voice, as if this would be the simplest thing in the world to do.
Dasie’s scowl deepened. One of the feeders had placed a stack of crisply browned cakes at her elbow. She seized one and bit into it as if biting off the head of an enemy. When she had finished chewing and swallowed, she demanded, “What are you suggesting, then? Why bother to attack them if we are not going to drive them away forever?”
I felt the muscles in Soldier’s Boy’s face twitch but he didn’t smile. “We attack them and kill enough of them to let them know that we could have killed them all. And we attack them in an organized way that makes them think that we are like them.”
“Like them?” Dasie was getting offended again.
“Like them enough that they can understand us. Right now, they treat us as we treat rabbits.”
Dasie made a sound in her throat. Yet another simile she didn’t appreciate.
Soldier’s Boy spoke on implacably. “We do not think that we should go to the Great One of the rabbits and ask his permission to hunt his people. We do not say to ourselves, ‘There are the lodges of the rabbit folk. I will stand here and call to them before I walk among them, so they know I come peacefully.’ No. When we want meat, we hunt the rabbits and kill them and eat them. If we wish to walk past the burrow of a rabbit, we do. If we wish to build a lodge where the rabbit burrow is, we do not ask the rabbit’s permission or expect him to take offense if we do so. We do not care if he takes offense. Let him go somewhere else, we think. And we do as we please with the place where he was.”
“But they are just rabbits,” Dasie said.
“Until you see a rabbit with a sword. Until rabbits come in the night to burn down the lodge you have built. Until the Great One of the rabbits stands before you and says, ‘You will respect my people and the territory of my people now.’”
Dasie was still frowning. I suspected that Soldier’s Boy had chosen a poor technique for presenting his idea. “Rabbits do not have Great Ones,” she pointed out ponderously. “They have no magic. They do not follow a leader and take a common action. They cannot make fires, or talk to us and demand our respect.” She spoke scornfully as if pointing this out to a slow child.
Soldier’s Boy let half a dozen heartbeats pass. Then he said, very softly, “And that is exactly what the intruders say of us. That we have no rulers, and our magic is not real. That we have no potent weapons, nor the will to use them. They do not imagine that we will ever demand that they respect our territories, because they do not think that we have territory.”
“Then they are stupid!” Dasie declared with great confidence in her opinion.
Soldier’s Boy gave a small sigh. I think he wished that he could agree with her. Instead, he said, “They are not stupid. They are, in fact, very clever in a way that goes in a different direction from what we think of as clever. While our young men go forth to hunt, to build lodges, to begin their lives, their young men are sent to a place where they spend all their time learning how to make all of the world their territory.”
Dasie narrowed her eyes. Obviously, she didn’t believe him.
“I have been there,” Soldier’s Boy said into the skeptical silence. “I learned there what they teach their warriors. And I learned how it could be turned against them.”
Cold fury welled in me. Would he turn what he had learned at the Academy against us? Two, I thought, could play at this game. I hardened my heart to his treachery and listened to every word he uttered.
“They do not respect a people who do not live in a fixed place. They do not respect a people who follow their own wills instead of living by the commands of a single ruler. They will not treat with us or believe that we claim the territory we claim until we convince them that they have been deceived, that we are, in fact, very much like them.”