The villages were a furtive, chronically frightened community. They knew of Vestoia but believed, correctly, that the groping tentacles of empire had not yet found them. Lantis' drive was mainly to the east, where the country was easier and pygmy settlements were numerous; even her war against Pakriaa's people had been a diversion, more a matter of hurt pride than gainful conquest. Between these hidden villages and Vestoia there were meadows, dangerous with omasha, and some swampland; below the two small Vestoian lakes the current of the river Argo was too fierce for the flimsy boats of Lantis. So the villages of the seventh river, under a sly but feeble queen, waited like a rabbit in a hedge. With sharply calculated drama--but smiling this time, Ann said, like a pleased teacher at a blackboard--Ed Spearman overturned another idol and became a god. At the end of two years, when Spearman's goddess had borne him twin sons, there was industry in the villages. There was an army of a thousand spears, bladed with iron from certain small hills in the north between Vestoia and Spearman City. These hills were dangerous with burrows, but workers of a particular kind could be made to go there. The soldiers overcame their distaste for the bow when they had watched the course of arrows properly vaned and tipped with iron or bronze. They did not need to be taught how to hate Vestoia--nevertheless they relished it when Spearman decided that political realities demanded he should tell them an epic tale, the tale of a war he and companion gods had waged against that place. Vengeance, divine or human, was a thing the pygmies had understood from the first biting and scratching of infancy. Ann had been bewildered by that first gust of oratory against Vestoia. Spearman had neglected to prepare her for it during the long two years spent in teaching the pygmies a limited English and the beginnings of industry: it might not have been clear to himself that such a move would be necessary in order to hold his people's enthusiasm and devotion. Ann wondered. "You had thought once of going to Vestoia----" Spearman turned on her with an anger partly cynical humor: "They hurt us, didn't they? Oh, I might have toyed with the idea as a choice of evils before we found our real friends. They killed Doc, didn't they? And Paul and Sears and those milky giant friends of ours." "But you didn't see----" "_What?_"