_Ugh_, I can feel it now!
After that she used to cry, and she always put her arms around me
closer than ever. She died that way, holding my head down to her, and
trying to say something. But I couldn't understand. I was crying. That
was six months ago. Since then I've been training Tara--to kill."
"And why have you trained Tara, little girl?"
David took her hand. It lay warm and unresisting in his, a firm, very
little hand. He could feel a slight shudder pass through her.
"I heard--something," she said. "The Nest is a terrible place. Hauck is
terrible. Brokaw is terrible. And Hauck sent away somewhere up
there"--she pointed northward--"for Brokaw. He said--I belonged to
Brokaw. What did he mean?"
She turned so that she could look straight into David's eyes. She was
hard to answer. If she had been a woman....
She saw the slow, gathering tenseness in David's face as he looked for a
moment away from her bewildering eyes--the hardening muscles of his
jaws; and her own hand tightened as it lay in his.
"What did Hauck mean?" she persisted. "Why do I belong to Brokaw--that
great, red brute?"
The hand he had been holding he took between both his palms in a gentle,
comforting way. His voice was gentle, too, but the hard lines did not
leave his face.
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