The Lights of Skaro by David Dodge

stream was the same as our own, towards the quadruple minarets of a good-sized town on the road ahead of us.
    “We’re in luck,” I said. “We’ve hit a market day. We may be able to sell the goats and buy a cow or a bunch of pigs.”
    “Not pigs, Jess.” She wrinkled her nose above the yashmak.  ”Goats are bad enough.”
    “We’ll have to take whatever we can get.”
    “I know. But if there’s a choice, could it please be a cow?” I liked the way she said “please.” We were getting along.
    I said, “It will be a cow if we can manage it.”
    We entered the town trailing behind a small flock of sheep which, with their baa’s and their barking flock dog, made so much noise that we weren’t afraid to talk. The town was an old fortification, still encircled by remains of the crumbling stone wall that had guarded it in the days of the Turks. The road went in through a high, pointed arch where heavy double doors had once swung from massive iron supports set in the stone. The doors were gone, although the supports remained. In the shadows of the archway, Security waited for us.
    Cora saw them first. I was busy keeping the goats in line, and did not look beyond the bellwether’s horns until she said in my ear, “ Rokos. In the archway. Two, at least.”
    I saw them then, standing tall and coffin-shaped in the ugly box coats they all wore.
    Those coats were like a uniform. You could always tell a roko by his clothes, as well as by the width of his shoulders and the size of his knuckly fists. They were big, rock-faced, hard-mouthed, deadly men, most of them with the scar-thickened eyebrows and broken noses of street fighters. They were the arms and fists of Security, centurions of the Cause, brutal men to whom violence was a natural expression of will. They were not a genuinely ‘secret’ police, nor intended to be. Their most important functions were to terrorize by their obvious and ominous presence, frighten conspiracy and opposition out of existence before it could take shape, or beat it into submission if it did form. To operate in real secrecy a police force requires intelligence, at the lowest working level as well as at the top. Security had intelligence only at the top. Rokos gained their favored positions because they had bull necks, heavy shoulders, hard fists, and a taste for their jobs. Not brains. They could outrun us, outfight us, or overwhelm us, but they couldn’t out-think us. On that article of belief we had to stake our lives. Nothing else sustained us.
    Cora said, “What are we going to do?” Her voice was thin but steady.
    “Go right through under their noses. They don’t know about the goats yet, or we wouldn’t have got this far.”
    “They’re looking for us. They’re not here just because it’s market day.”
    “I know it. But they don’t know what they’re looking for.”
    The goats were already bunching up behind the herd of sheep that now crowded the archway. We didn’t have much time left to talk. I said, “This is the time for strong nerves, Cora. Trust me once more. Keep your yashmak up and your eyes down, and don’t hesitate! That’s all.”
    She gave me a quick nod that was as good a declaration of faith as a prayer. Maybe she prayed, too. I never knew.
    The bellwether helped us. At the last moment he balked at entering die shadows of the archway. I had to drag him through it, his hooves set and his legs stiff, so that I pulled against his stubborn resistance with my back bent and my head down. I passed one of the rokos so closely that I nearly stepped on his foot.
    They made no movement. As I had reasoned, or guessed, or hoped, they didn’t yet know what they were looking for.
    Cora came along behind the ewes, swinging her stick. When the wether saw sunlight beyond the arch he stopped holding back and charged, the ewes charging after him. We were through, with a clatter of hooves on the stones of a cobbled street. Behind us, a