Communication with the rescued slaves proved to be awkward. They were roughly 80% female, leading to little question as to what most of them had been captured for. Of the 20% of them who were male, most were young boys with only a scant few adult men in what seemed like higher quality clothing than the rest. Levin could imagine they were probably captured for some kind of ransom.
The one thing that they all shared in common was that, while alive, few of them would be fortunate enough to return to the same life they had left. And, it was quite likely, they had all lost people in the process of being captured.
Right now, Bisid, the grandson of the matriarch and leader of this war party, was acting as the representative for the Hidan side. He was talking to a man named Dailit from the rescued slave side. Dailit seemed to be from the ‘captured for ransom’ portion of the group. However, Rolwen had quickly pointed out that this guy was not a proper representative of the group.
Once Rolwen had pointed it out, Levin could also see quite clearly how the rest, especially the women, looked at this guy. The guy kept complaining about how these ‘barbarians’ treated him personally, and you could tell by watching the guy’s body language that the only reason he hadn’t been tossing that ‘barbarian’ term around in reference to the Hidan as well was because he was just smart enough to realize that wouldn’t end well for him.
Bisid could sense this as well. The Hidan were matriarchal in their society, so he had already caught on to the fact the women were not looking at this guy positively. But, they were also taught that normal human society was patriarchal, and it looked like he was a bit confused as to what he should be doing with this Dailit guy.
[Considering what these women have been through, it is going to be a woman who is the real strength of this group.] Rolwen said, using Elven so that the Hidan children gathered around could understand as well.
[Alright!] He shouted out louder for all the older Hidan kids to hear. [Hey, everybody! Do you want to help Bisid find the real leader of this group? Master Eirlathion taught us how to find human leaders, it’s not always a man. I think it definitely has to be a woman this time. She is probably as old as one of your mothers or grand-mothers. Someone who helped protect the other women when the bandits attacked them. Do you think you can find her?]
[Really?] One of the kids asked. [Are you sure? I heard the outsiders always make men the leaders. That’s why our uncles have to represent us to the outsiders, because they’re too stupid to treat the matriarchs with the respect they deserve.]
[He just said it was master Eirlathion who said it, stupid! He would be old enough, so he should know!]
That whole deal about Eirlathion being the one to say it was a lie. Levin knew very well that he had never said such a thing. But, he had to admit. Rolwen knew what he was doing by saying that. It was definitely a lot more convincing.
[Well,] Rolwen said, [I’m definitely sure it is a woman for this group. Even if that guy over there thinks he’s the leader, he can only lead if the rest of the group respects him. Asaren taught us how to tell whether or not someone respects someone else. If you look at the women here, none of them respect that man. And, there’s more women here than men. I don’t think any of the women here respect the men here. So, maybe that guy’s the leader of the men, but he’s not the leader of the entire group.]
[We’ll find the women’s leader!] Another kid said, quite enthusiastically.
There was a loud cheer of agreement, and then a bunch of Hidan 10 to 13 year olds started running through the crowd of tired looking women.
Rolwen sighed.
“Yeah, that’s probably not the best thing to release on a bunch of victimized women. Probably better than having some of the adults question them, and they know how to be respectful, but… well, anyway, it’s still probably better than the alternatives.”
{Hey! Back off you brats!} A woman from the group suddenly shouted.
{Ahh! Sorry aunt. We are trying to find who is the matriarch.}
{What are you talking about?!} The woman demanded of the intimidated yet somewhat defiant looking kid.
“I think we just found a likely candidate.” Rolwen said. “If that’s not her, then the real leader will be stepping in to resolve the situation in a moment.”
“How do you know all this?” Levin asked.
“Eh, you just learn how groups of women work when you watch from the outside for long enough.”
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As the two were talking to each other, another woman came over to the one who was yelling earlier and placed a hand on her shoulder. {Hey hey, it’s alright Mira.} She said to the woman.
{Now, what are you talking about finding a matriarch for?} The woman turned to the boy. By this point, all the kids had stopped and were watching this exchange. At that moment, Levin understood. He might have missed it if he was alone here, but when he saw all the kids stop he just couldn’t avoid it. These children of the Hidan tribe, who had been raised to recognize and respect female authority, had all just recognized the key qualities of leadership in this woman who had just appeared on scene.
The kids weren’t the only ones either. Out the corner of his eye, Levin also noticed Bisid had stopped paying attention to that Dailit guy. He was still sort of engaging with the guy, but he had half an eye over on the exchange between the children and this woman.
{Umm… well…} The boy was looking around, a little afraid now. {I… I mean, well. We could all tell that all of you just consider that guy over there an idiot. And, well… Rolwen said he’d learned that in situations like this, it should mean one of the women here should be the real person to represent the group.}
{What?! What nonsense are you spouting, you insufferable brat!} Mr. Dailit suddenly started storming up behind the kid. However, before he could even cross half the distance, Bisid reached out and caught the guy by the shoulder.
{Hahaha! You will have to forgive the children} Bisid said. {They are taught to respect two things. Strength and the authority of women. To them, you are a man, and you are weaker than their uncles. So, none of them respect you.}
“Well, how about that?” Rolwen said. “Just like dominos falling over. You just gotta know what buttons to push.”
He had an insufferably smug expression on his face as he looked over the events that had just played out in front of them.
“Going by the pace of things, we might not even need to intervene further with this at all. This might be one of those situations where you just gotta know when it’s time to let go. I mean, it’s a ninja’s job to stay in the shadows and all, right?”
“Seriously?” Levin turned and gave Rolwen a hard glair.
“Seriously what?” Rolwen asked.
“You started this all off by rallying the kids into action. What part of that is ‘staying in the shadows?’”
Rolwen just gave a dismissive shrug with a “meh” sound, and acted as though the entire thing was bothersome.
***
Just as Rolwen had predicted, things mostly moved smoothly from there. The bandits’ former captives started rallying together a lot better when Gwendir, the matron-like protector of all the victimized women in the group, became a recognized point of contact for the Hidan group to talk to.
Officially they still let it look like that Dailit idiot was somehow in charge. But, after that incident where one of the kids had called him out as an idiot and showed obvious deference to Gwendir, it had become pretty much set in stone that this woman was the unofficial representative and the one who the Hidan really took seriously. Rich boy Dailit, meanwhile, was just like some uppity child they were humoring by pretending to listen to.
Even the few other adult men in the rescued group didn’t really seem to respect the guy and looked like they just wanted him to shut up. They seemed to resent the fact that their rescuers were deferring to a woman, but they did seem to somewhat prefer it to this guy.
That, or maybe they were just trying not to rock the boat with the outright war party surrounding them that were able to sic an entire pack of all manner of vicious animals on anything that dared oppose them. The only question is whether they saw Mrs. Gwendir as more of a sacrificial lamb taking an unpleasant task, but they would resent for it anyway just to be spiteful, or if they saw her as taking a position rightfully theirs but they were just putting up with it to humor the Hidan.
Either way, there was no further trouble and they managed to make their way back to camp within the day. Once there, they were intercepted by Rimir with surprising news.
Asaren was in the middle of some kind of cleansing ritual for the lives she had taken today, and she was refusing contact with anyone who had not also taken a life until the ritual was over. Even then, anyone who approached her could only do so if they also planned to participate in the ritual.
She had, apparently, even pushed Rimir aside. He was asking for volunteers from among the war party to join her.
Surprisingly, after Rimir volunteered to guide the outsiders into the camp, all the adults and a rather large number of the children in the group were willing and eager to participate in Asa’s ritual. Guess that’s the value the Hidan place on the words of the fey.
Levin and Rolwen stood there, somewhat confused at the recent developments, when Rimir approached them. They both looked up at him as he silently stood beside them and watched the war-rhino riding party leaders guiding off a large group of young teens who had gone out to spill blood today. It occurred to Levin that this very well might represent every single one of them who had killed someone, and this made it all bizarrely surreal to think that such young kids who were around the same age he was in his previous life were out regularly killing bandits.
Rimir cleared his throat. [The young lady had something for the two of you as well.] He said. [The outsiders will be sent to the nearest city as soon as an escort can be arranged. She wants the two of you to travel with them. Says you can move more feely among the humans from outside the tribe than she can. She would like to know what you can find out about the city. She said to consider this the next practice mission in the training, so you should pick a cause you are going to be scouting for and try to find out everything you can related to that cause.]
[Heh, is that right?] Rolwen said with a smile and a shake of his head. [Will the escort party be accommodating this mission?]
[She instructed me not to do you any special favors. If you want them to grant you anything, you will have to negotiate for it.] Rimir said.
Levin let out a groan. It took him a little while for his brain to catch up with everything he was being told, but after he figured out what was going on there was only one thing that came to his mind. “Man! How can Asa take something that’s supposed to be cool like a ninja mission and make it sound like homework!” He complained.