Shared by the Barbarians by Emily Tilton Page B

lead her down the rest of their road in silence.
     
    * * *
     
    To his surprise, and rather to his annoyance, Pag found that he had the same sort of hot-faced feeling as he and his brothers led Jalinda towards the center of the village. Forty ‘huts’—as the Trestrimar called them, though really the structures of synth-wood and synth-steel looked more like small houses and had all the basic facilities of any Vionian dwelling—stood in a radiating starburst pattern around the circular green. The Trestrimar had lived in this spot for all the two hundred years since the ten founders had come to Mara. From one ring of five huts the village had grown in the first fifty years to its present size. After that birthrates and genetic diversity had both been closely regulated by the council of ten that met every year on Marafall and the council of three that ruled the Trestrimar, and each tribe of Mara had stayed at a population no smaller than four hundred and no greater than six hundred.
    Pag watched Jalinda take in the layout, the size, the simplicity. None of that made him anxious, as he saw them anew through her eyes, even after having been away from Mara himself for five years and having seen many of what the Vionians at least considered the greatest sights in the galaxy.
    He felt anxious because he recognized the sounds coming from the platform at the center of the village green as those of the public punishment of a disobedient wife. He looked at Hed, who wore a faint smile on his face showing that he too had recognized the noises. Pag knew his middle brother too well to think that he would want to spare Jalinda this early demonstration of what she must expect should she show her new husbands any lack of respect.
    They had gone twenty paces when the jump-jet’s rotors roared into life for takeoff, at least drowning out the screams of the punished wife—or perhaps wives, because Pag thought he could hear two distinct female voices crying out just before the pilot started his engines. Kar, too, had recognized the sounds from the green, and now he yelled into Pag’s ear, over the nearly deafening noise, “Pag, why don’t we take Jalinda to our hut. It will be much too chaotic on the green.”
    He looked into Pag’s eyes to make it clear what he meant: Let’s spare our girl this fright, at least.
    Pag glanced at Jalinda, still naked, as the law of the Trestrimar prescribed for women in the lush climate of Mara, still in her training belt, and now instinctively holding her right arm over her breasts and her left before her cunt. Had she heard the screams? She must have. On her face she wore an expression of great anxiety, though Pag of course couldn’t tell which of the many things she had to worry about—or all of them—had caused her to suck in her lips between her teeth and wrinkle up her nose.
    The jump-jet took off, the sound of its rotors fading into the distance. Hed had clearly intuited exactly what had passed between Kar and Pag. He said, “She must see. So that it is not her up there.” With his hard-set chin he gestured toward the green.
    “What?” Jalinda asked. A cry of pain came from the platform. “What is it?” She looked from Hed, to Pag, to Kar.
    “A wife…” Two women’s voices screamed together then.
    “Two wives, at least,” Hed said with some satisfaction, as it appeared to Pag. Hed enjoyed seeing justice done.
    “Wives are being punished on the green,” Pag finished. “We will take you to our hut.”
    Jalinda’s eyes went wide. “Please,” she whispered. “I… I think I should see.” She looked at Hed. “It will be worse if I don’t.”
    Hed growled, “Pag is eldest. You obey him, or I will spank you myself. And keep your hands at your sides. You are forbidden to cover yourself.”
    “No,” Pag said reluctantly. “Jalinda must understand that she does have a voice in our home. If she wishes to see what is happening, and how wives receive public discipline in our