"No need for me to say more," Ronald's voice echoed in the quiet forest, "You've come here because on that small river beach lie your daughters! Wives! Mothers!"
Standing before Ronald were hundreds, perhaps thousands of fathers, husbands, and sons filled with rage, old ones in their forties or fifties, young ones but fifteen or sixteen.
Among them, only a small fraction had knives, spears, bows, and arrows; most clutched clubs with the bark not yet scraped off.
But without exception, each man gripped his weapon tightly, so tightly his knuckles turned white.
"The Herd tribes are like clumsy thieves," Monk Saul had once asserted, "setting out full of confidence and insatiable greed. But once they actually seize some valuable goods, they become terrified and skittish, ready to flee at the slightest rustle in the grass. When Terdon people are on their return journey, that is when they are at their most vulnerable."
