A heel knocked Om's shell, bouncing him off the wall. On the rebound a crutch caught the edge of his carapace and whirled him away into the crowd, spinning like a coin. He bounced up against the bedroll of an old woman who, like many others, reckoned that the efficacy of her petition was increased by the amount of time she spent in the square.
The God blinked muzzily. This was nearly as bad as eagles. It was nearly as bad as the cellar . . . no, perhaps nothing was as bad as the cellar . . .
He caught a few words before another passing foot kicked him away.
“The drought has been on our village for three years . . . a little rain, oh Lord?”
Rotating on the top of his shell, vaguely wondering if the right answer might stop people kicking him, the Great God muttered, “No problem.”
Another foot bounced him, unseen by any of the pious, between the forest of legs. The world was a blur.
He caught an ancient voice, steeped in hopelessness, saying, “Lord, Lord, why must my son be taken to join your Divine Legion? Who now will tend the farm? Could you not take some other boy?”
“Don't worry about it,” squeaked Om.
A sandal caught him under his tail and flicked him several yards across the square. No one was looking down. It was generally believed that staring fixedly at the golden horns on the temple roof while uttering the prayer gave it added potency. Where the presence of the tortoise was dimly registered as a bang on the ankle, it was disposed of by an automatic prod with the other foot .
“. . . my wife, who is sick with the . . .”
“Right!”
Kick
“. . , make clean the well in our village, which is foul with . . .”
“You got it!”
Kick
“. . . every year the locusts come, and . . .”
“I promise, only . . . !”
Kick
“. . . lost upon the seas these five months . . .”
“. . . stop kicking me!”
The tortoise landed, right side up, in a brief, clear space.
Visible . . .
So much of animal life is the recognition of pattern, the shapes of hunter and hunted. To the casual eye the forest is, well, just forest; to the eye of the dove it is so much unimportant fuzzy green background to the hawk which you did not notice on the branch of a tree. To the tiny dot of the hunting buzzard in the heights, the whole panorama of the world is just a fog compared to the scurrying prey in the grass.
From his perch on the Horns themselves, the eagle leapt into the sky.
Fortunately, the same awareness of shapes that made the tortoise so prominent in a square full of scurrying humans made the tortoise's one eye swivel upwards in dread anticipation.
Eagles are single-minded creatures. Once the idea of lunch is fixed in their mind, it tends to remain there until satisfied.
There were two Divine Legionaries outside Vorbis's quarters. They looked sideways at Brutha as he knocked timorously at the door, as if looking for a reason to assault him.
A small gray priest opened the door and ushered Brutha into a small, barely furnished room. He pointed meaningfully at a stool.
Brutha sat down. The priest vanished behind a curtain. Brutha took one glance around the room and-
Blackness engulfed him. Before he could move, and Brutha's reflexes were not well coordinated at the best of times, a voice by his ear said, “Now, brother, do not panic. I order you not to panic.”