Noman by William Nicholson Read Free Book Online Page A

contain his fury. "It must be me."
    "Where does it say that the older man is always the better? I know of no such law."
    "Then," said Alva, his eyes flashing, "perhaps we had better decide this the Orlan way."
    "I'm ready," said Sabin.
    "You mean to fight each other?" asked Caressa.
    Alva stared angrily round the watching Orlans.
    "I'll fight any man who stands in my way!" he said.
    "If it's the best fighter you want," said Caressa, "why not open the contest to all comers?" She too turned to the Orlan captains. "One of these may win."
    "Let them try," growled Alva.
    "We can't have everyone fighting everyone," exclaimed Sabin.
    "How has this decision been made before?" said Caressa. "What's the Orlan way?"

    "The Great Jahan always names his successor before he dies. That way the Orlan nation remains united."
    Caressa pulled out the silver-handled whip and held it up before them.
    "Then hear me now," she said. "Amroth Jahan did name his successor. He named a woman and a stranger. You can fight each other and go on fighting until the biggest brute among you is left standing on the corpses of your own people. Or you can say, better a woman if she has true claim. Better a stranger if she unites the Orlan nation."
    A silence followed this speech. Alva looked round and saw that his brother and his fellow Orlans were looking at one another, each waiting for the first to give a lead.
    "What!" he cried, his voice charged with contempt. "You'd grovel to a girl?" He drew his sword. "Not I!"
    Caressa held up the silver-handled whip. She took two steps forward to stand before Alva, whip outreached. Alva stared, and then he smiled, believing that she offered him his rightful inheritance in fear of his rage. He sheathed his sword and raised his right hand to take the whip. As he did so, Caressa's left hand flashed and her blade sliced down and across in a long shallow cut, leaving a stripe of blood across Alva's chest.
    He cried out in pain and bent over, clutching at his wound.
    "I am the Jahan of Jahans!" Caressa cried. "I will be obeyed!"
    Sabin was the first to kneel. Then one by one the others followed. Alva, wounded more in pride than in body, saw their homage, and spat out at Sabin.

    "You shame our father!"
    "I honor his last wish," said Sabin.
    "You always were a weakling!"
    With that, Alva turned and stalked proudly away.
    "Rise, my friends," said Caressa. "The Orlan nation is on the march again."
    Sabin rose.
    "We have no army any more," he said. "What are we now but bands of robbers on horseback?"
    "Robbers on horseback who once were warriors," said Caressa. "Let the Jahan of Jahans ride out to the sound of trumpets and drums, and they'll know they're Orlans again!"
    They all felt it then, as they heard her fierce and passionate words: somehow, inexplicably, this stranger, this woman, was a true leader. More extraordinary still, she was their leader.
    "I didn't ask to be the Jahan," she said. "But give me brave hearts and fast horses, and I'll give you the world!"

5 There Has to Be More
    T HE TOLL-KEEPER WAS SITTING ON A CHAIR RAISED HIGH above the road. He wore a broad-brimmed straw hat to shade his eyes from the sun. Beneath him stood the heavy timber barrier he had erected, with its single narrow gate; and on the other side of the barrier, visible through the cracks between the timbers, prowled his pack of attack dogs. The toll he charged was entirely for his own benefit and, strictly speaking, was a form of banditry; but he had been controlling this remote hill pass for so long now that he had come to think of himself as officially appointed and of the money as his fairly earned wage.

    He saw the young traveller making his way up the road to the pass and noted that he was moving fast, but he thought nothing of it. Then, when he was closer, he began to pay him more attention. There were other travellers on the road, carrying packs on their backs or driving laden bullocks before them—the usual trickle of traders willing to