Snell ame up behind his quarry, delighted by his own skill at stealth, at stalking the creature who sat in the high grasses all unknowing, proving that Harllo wasn’t fit for the real world, the world where everything was a threat and needed taking cure of lest it take care of you. It was the right kind of lesson for Snell to deliver, out here in the wilds.
He held in one hand a sack filled with the silver councils Aunt Stonny had brought two linings of burlap and the neck well knotted so he could grip it tight. The sound the coins made when they struck the side of Harllo’s head was most satisfying, sending a shock of thrill through Snell. And the way that hateful head snapped to one side, the small body pitching to the ground, well, that was a sight he would cherish.
He kicked at the unconscious form for a while, but without the grunts and whimpers it wasn’t as much fun, so he left off. Then, collecting the hefty sack of dung, he set out for home. His mother would be pleased at the haul, and she’d plant a kiss on his forehead and he could bask for a time, and when someone won-dered where Harllo had got to, why, he’d tell them he’d seen him down at the docks, talking with some sailor. When the boy didn’t come home tonight, Myrla might send for Gruntle to go down and check the waterfront, where he’d find out that two ships had sailed that day, or three, and was there a new cabin boy on one of them? Maybe so, maybe not, who paid attention to such things?
Dismay, then, and worries, and mourning, but none of that would last long. Snell would become the precious one, the one still with them, the one they needed to take care of, protect and coddle. The way it used to be, the way it was supposed to be.
Smiling under the bright morning sun, with long egged birds pecking mud on the flats out on the lake to his left, Snell ambled his way back home. A good day, a day of feeling so alive, so free. He had righted the world, the whole world.
The shepherd who found the small boy in the grasses of the summit overlooking the road into Maiten and then Two-Ox Gate was an old man with arthritic knees who knew his usefulness was coming to an end, and very soon indeed he would find himself out of work, the way the herdmaster watched him hobbling and leaning too much on his staff. Examining the boy, he was surprised to find him still alive, and this brought thoughts of what he might do with such an urchin in his care.