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"But yet," this Opodartho argued, "it must have been a world of plenty, of richness beyond imagining, if a tenth of the things we hear about it are true. Why, the peoples of the time could afford to rear animals for meat and more – for mere companionship!"

"Nonsense," I said forthrightly. "Why would they do that? Breeding children for food is much easier and cheaper than rearing animals. Can you imagine having to provide different foodstuffs, housing and so on for animals? Nonsense."

"You say that," Opodartho said angrily, "only because of your ignorance. Who said they ate children? Can’t you understand that they may not have eaten children at all?" What further stupidities the vile creature was about to utter were cut off when my Lord raised a hand. "Silence," he thundered. "How can you imagine a human society that did not eat children? It’s inconceivable. How could they ever feed and clothe all the children they bred if they didn’t eat them?"

I giggled at Opodartho’s discomfiture. "Maybe," I suggested sweetly, "she thinks that they didn’t breed children at all. Or maybe she thinks they only had three or four each...or even one or two. Can you imagine that?"

Opodartho glared at me spitefully, but my Lord was amused at my comment, and that was all that counted.

Later in the afternoon, for the first time since we left that (derogatory word deleted) village, my Lord made love to us both. Because of Opodartho’s unfortunate seniority, he took her first, and I was left giggling at her clumsy moaning and thrusting, for all the world as though she was a young girl at her first time. And when I twined myself around my Lord and made love to him with all the skills I had at my command, the skills I knew would reduce him to helpless pleasure, the ridiculous wanton looked at me as if she would have loved to squeeze my throat between her thick, graceless hands. The sight stimulated me to redouble my efforts, and I began using all the sexual skills I had learned at...

(A fairly long passage has been deleted here as being both utterly obscene and without the slightest significance to the narrative.)

That night, when I was still awake and lying sore from the vigour of the lovemaking, my Lord came to me and shook me. "Come quickly," he whispered. "Something is coming."

I stood beside him on the tower’s parapet and watched. Not far away from us, the bushes were moving and rustling, as though a big and clumsy body were dragging itself through them, and coming closer.

"I owe you an apology," my Lord murmured, proving what a tremendous man he was. Can anyone imagine any other man apologising to a mere woman? "I should have believed you the other night."

"What is it?" I whispered back. "A dire lion?"

"No, it’s too big and slow for one of those creatures. I thought at first it might be a pursuit party from the village, but of course it’s too big for them either, and they would rush us instead of coming like that."

"Do you think we should go down and get close to it and see what it is?"

"No," my Lord said. "We shall go down from this tower, but we shall proceed in the opposite direction, and put as much distance between this thing, whatever it be, and ourselves before the sun comes up and sinks down once more." And, after we roused Opodartho (with some difficulty), that is what we did.

Three days later...

(A passage is missing here.)

...then, after we had searched the deserted village but found nothing except more devastation, we moved on beyond, into the scrubby wasteland I have already described. Opodartho was in the lead, when suddenly she stopped and pointed. I saw it at exactly the same moment, a pair of dark eyes glittering at us from beneath a stunted bush. Without breaking stride, my Lord hurled his javelin at the bush, and when we ran to it, sure enough, we found a girl, pinned to the ground with the spear through her shoulder.

"Who did all this?" my Lord demanded, pointing back at the village. "Who destroyed your hamlet?"

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