The Pool of Fire (The Tripods) Read Online Free Page B

grinning like an idiot.

Two

The Hunt

    We headed southeast, away from the winter that had closed in over the land. There was a stiff climb, encumbered by drifts of snow, through the mountain pass that took us to the country of the Italians, but after that the going was easier. We traveled across a rich plain, and came to a sea that beat, dark and tideless, against rocky shores and little fishing harbors. So southward, with hills and distant mountains on our left hand, until it was time to break through the heights to the west again.
    As peddlers, we were welcomed almost everywhere, not only for the things we brought with us but as new faces in small communities where people, whether liking or disliking them, knew their neighbors all too well. Our wares, to start with, were bolts of cloth, and carvings and small wooden clocks from the Black Forest:our men had captured a couple of barges, trafficking along the great river, and made off with their cargoes. We sold these as we went, and bought other things to sell at a further stage of our journey. Trade was good; for the most part, these were rich farming lands, the women and children anxious for novelties. The surplus, apart from what we needed to buy food, accumulated in gold and silver coins. And in most places we were given board and lodging. In return for the hospitality we were shown, we stole their boys from them.
    This was a thing that I could never properly resolve in my mind. To Fritz, it was simple and obvious: we had our duty, and must do it. Even apart from that, we were helping to save these people from the destruction which the Masters planned. I accepted the logic, and envied him his single-mindedness, but it still troubled me. Part of the difficulty, I think, was that it fell to me more than to him to make friends with them. Fritz, as I now knew well enough, was amiable at heart, but taciturn and withdrawn in company. His command of languages was better than my own, but I did more of the talking, and a lot more of the laughing. I quickly got on good terms with each new community we visited, and moved on, in many cases, with real regret.
    Because, as I had learned during my stay in the Château de la Tour Rouge, the fact that a man or a woman wore a Cap, and thought of the Tripods as great metal demigods, did not prevent him or her from being, in all other respects, a likeable, even lovable, human being. It was my job to beguile them into accepting us and bartering with us. I did it well, I think,but would have been happier if I could have remained more detached from the purpose behind my blandishments. It was not easy to make friends with them, to recognize their many kindnesses to us, and at the same time to pursue our objective: which was, as they would have seen it, to seek their trust only to betray it. I was often ashamed of what we did.
    For our concern was with the young, the boys who would be Capped in the next year or so. We gained their interest in the first case by bribery, giving them small presents of knives, whistles, leather belts, things like that. They flocked around us, and we talked to them, artfully making remarks and putting queries designed to discover which of them had begun to question the right of the Tripods to rule mankind, and to what extent. We rapidly grew skilled at this, developing a good eye for the rebellious, or potentially rebellious.
    And there were far more of these than one would have guessed. At the beginning I had been surprised to find that Henry, whom I had known and fought with since we were both able to walk, was as eager as I to break loose from the chafing confinement of life as we knew it—as apprehensive as I was of what our elders told us was the wonderful bliss of being Capped. I had not known, because one did not talk about these things. To voice doubts was unthinkable, but that did not mean that doubts did not exist. It became clear to us that doubts of some kind were in the minds of almost all those who