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Ho-hak.
    The fellow handed his marsh spear to a companion and turned to the bow. He took
    it confidently. Then the look of confindence vanished. Then his face reddened,
    and then the veins stood out on his forehead, and then he cried out in disgust,
    and then he threw the bow back at Ho-Hak.
    Ho-Hak looked at it and then set it against the instep of his left foot, taking
    the bow in his left hand and the string in his right.
    There was a cry of awe from about the circle as he strung the bow.
    I admired him. He had strength, and much strength, for he had strung the bow
    smoothly, strength it might be from the galleys, but strength, and superb
    strength.
    “Well done,” said I to him.
    Then Ho-Hak took, from among the arrows on the mat, the leather bracer and
    fastened it about his left forearm, that the arm not be lacerated by the string,
    and took the small tab as well, putting the first and second fingers on his
    right hand through, that in drawing the string the flesh might not be cut to the
    bone. The he took, from the unwrapped roll of arrows, now spilled on the
    elather, a flight arrow, and this, to my admiration, he fitted to the bow and
    drew it to the very pile itself.
    He held the arrow up, pointing it into the sky, at an angle of some fifty
    degrees.
    Then there came the clean, swift, singing flash of the bowstring and the flight
    arrow was aloft.
    There were cries from all, of wonder and astonishment, for they would not have
    believed such a thing possible.
    The arrow seemed lost, as though among the clouds, and so far was it that it
    seemed vanished in its falling.
    The group was silent.
    Ho-Hak unstrung the bow. “It is with this,” he said, “that peasants defend their
    holdings.”
    He looked from face to face. The he replaced the bow, putting it with its
    arrows, on the leather spread upon the mat of woven rence that was the surface
    of the island.
    Ho-Hak regarded me. “Are you skilled with this bow?” he asked.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “See that he does not escape,” said Ho-Hak.
    I felt the prongs of two marsh spears in my back. “He will not escape,” said the
    girl, putting her fingers in the ropes that held my throat. I could feel her
    knuckles in the side of my neck. She shoot the ropes. She irritated me. She
    acted as though it were she herself who had taken me.
    “Are you of the peasants?” asked Ho-Hak of me.
    “No,” I said. “I am of the Warriors.”
    “This bow, though,” said one of the men holding my neck ropes, “is of the
    peasants.”
    “I am not of the Peasants,” I said.
    Ho-Hak looked at the man who wore teh headband of pearls of the Vosk sorp.
    “With such a bow,” he said to that man, “we might live free in the marsh, free
    of Port Kar.”
    “It is a weapon of peasants,” said the man with the headband, he who had been
    unable to bend the bow.
    “So?” asked Ho-Hak.
    “I,” said the man, “am of the Growers of Rence. I, for one, am not a Peasant.”
    “Nor am I!” cried the girl.
    The others, too, cried their assent.
    “Besides,” said another man, “we do not have metal for the heads of arrows, nor
    arrowwood, and Ka-la-na does not grow in the marsh. And we do not have cords of
    strength enough to draw such bows.”
    “And we do not have leather,” added another.
    “We could kill tharlarion,” said Ho-Hak, “and obtain leather. And perhaps the
    teeth of the marsh shark might be fashioned in such a way as to tip arrows.”
    “There is no Ka-la-na, no cord, no arrowwood,” said another.
    “We might trade for such things,” said Ho-Hak. “There are peasants who live
    along the edges of the delta, particularly to the east.”
    The man with the headband, he who had not been able to bend the bow, laughed.
    “You, Ho-Hak,” said he, “were not born to rence.”
    “No,” said Ho-Hak. “That is true.”
    “But we were,” said the man. “We are Growers of the Rence.”
    There was a murmur of assent, grunts and shiftings in the group.
    “We are