“Make slow, deep breaths,” Keisha told her sister, who was struggling to get enough air. She wasn’t feeling all that well herself, but it was Shandi and Wintersky who had been hit the worst by what their guide assured them was not a sickness, but due to “only the height of the mountain.” This was mountain sickness, the illness of which Keisha had heard such unsettling tales. Safe to say, no one was making light of it.
Shandi leaned on Karles’ shoulder, visibly taking calm from her Companion’s presence. She was dizzy, felt as if she were choking, and nauseated; all symptoms, so their guide said blithely, of what he called “mountain fever.” He insisted that coming down off the mountain would cure them, and since Keisha had not been able to find any signs of disease using her Healing Gifts, she was forced to take his word and the word of all the tales that she had heard for it.
Of all of them, Keisha seemed to have suffered the least. Steelmind, Hywel, and Darian were very short of breath and had killing headaches; Wintersky had both problems and was looking a bit green. Shandi had all of these and shook with cold; they’d bundled her up, but she still shivered, besides being sick and half blind with headache. The nonhumans all showed discomfort in some way, to a varying degree, except for Kelvren, who seemed invulnerable to it all.
Keisha only suffered from the headache, which was bad enough. I suppose I should be happy with that, she thought, and tried to will more air into her lungs.
“We must get over the pass,” their guide insisted. “It will only get worse if we stay here.”
“Worse?” Shandi moaned. “This can get worse? I can’t see how - ”
“It will,” the Gray Wolf warrior said firmly. “Fever-dreams, or unconsciousness. We must get over. It will be better then.”
“All right,” Shandi managed to gasp, and climbed into her saddle. “Let’s go, while I can still ride.”
With her head feeling exactly like someone had tied a wire around it and was tightening it more with every passing breath, Keisha got into her dyheli’s saddle and waited for the rest to mount. How was the guide managing to be so healthy?
I suppose he must be used to being this high, she decided. It hardly seems fair, though. They had been traveling through these mountains for three days now, but it was only today that they had started to feel so sick.
It was a pity they were all so miserable, because the scenery was spectacular; this last of the passes was actually above the clouds, though still below the snow line. It was about as cold in the shade as a late fall day in Errold’s Grove, the full sun was intense and quite hot, and the little white puffs of cloud floating just below them looked like heaps of newly shorn fleeces.
Below and behind them lay one of many valleys, green and tree-filled; farther back, more mountains, growing blue with distance. Ahead of them lay the notch between two mountains marking the pass; mountains that in turn towered so far above the pass that it made Keisha dizzy to think about it.
This, so the guide assured them, was the final obstacle they needed to cross. Below this lay what the guide called “the Great Pass.”
I can’t imagine how Snow Fox got this far, laden with sick people! she thought. They must have been truly desperate to undertake the journey.
But then she remembered the children of Ghost Cat, so ill with Wasting Sickness they could hardly even feed themselves, and she knew that no parent could see that and not try everything to make it better. With the exception of the now-extinct Blood Bear, these people cherished their children no less than the parents of Valdemar.
She held on to the saddle-grip, enduring the jarring of her head with each step her dyheli took. She knew it was worse for everyone else - most of all for Shandi, who was as white as Karles’ coat. Karles himself looked positively pale, even for a white “horse.”
The trail they followed was a slender track threading its way between enormous rocks tumbled from the higher slopes and clumps of brush. At this height, colors had been leached from everything by the intense light of the sun; the bushes and grasses were gray-green, the trunks of the tiny trees gray-brown, the rocks around them pale gray. Here and there were spring flowers - pale blue, pale pink, and white. Only the sky held an intense color, a blue so deep and pure that Keisha longed to be able to dip fabric in it and capture it forever. The only other place she had ever seen a blue that beautiful was when she had looked into Karles’ eyes, just before he had Chosen Shandi.
They plodded upward, and the top never seemed to get any nearer - then suddenly they were there, at the top of the pass, looking down . . .
. . . and down . . . and down ....
Hywel whistled his astonishment; Darian shook his head in disbelief, and Keisha gasped. Even Shandi forgot her misery for a moment and stared.
Havens - it must be a league or more to the bottom! And it goes on forever!
“The Great Pass,” their guide said simply. “And here I must leave you. The track down is plain, see? You no longer need my help.”
He pointed to a much clearer track than the one they had used to climb up here, one that zigzagged down the steep slope (more of a cliff than a slope) from where they now stood.
The Great Pass; that was far from being any kind of a descriptive name for it. Keisha had pictured a mountain pass like any other - perhaps deeper, certainly longer, since it was supposed to go straight through all the way to Raven territory.
What she saw, however, beggared imagination.
It was as if someone had taken a giant knife and carved through the mountains to form a passage. The bottom was as level and flat as a good paved road, and it disappeared in either direction into the mists of distance. Right now the sun was high above them, so the bottom was in full light; she caught a glint of water down there, shining between the branches of trees made so small by distance that she could scarcely make them out.
“Gods of my fathers,” Darian murmured. “Who could possibly have possessed the kind of magic needed to make such a thing?”
Only then did Keisha realize that it was magic, and not nature, that had created this place.
“Huh,” Shandi said, rousing herself out of her misery. “I guess you don’t know your history very well. The northern mage that Herald Vanyel fought, that’s who - and I guess Vanyel must have had even more than he did, since Vanyel stopped him.” She peered off into the south and east, following the gash with her eyes. “It’ll come out just north of the Forest of Sorrows - or it would, if Vanyel hadn’t blocked it. I had no notion this thing still existed.”
Nor had anyone else, except the northern tribes, who clearly knew very well it existed, and provided easy access to the south. Only luck and Vanyel’s Curse had kept them from taking it all the way into Valdemar in the past - and now, save for that final blockage, the north stood open to invasion.
Now it was more imperative than ever to find out what sort of state the rest of the northern tribes were in. They had joined together once to invade Valdemar, and only Vanyel had stopped them. What if they should band together again? They wouldn’t need a great mage this time, only a strong leader and a good strategist - all the work of creating an easy path to the south had been done for them.
She was the first to break out of the trance of fascination that the Great Pass exerted on them, and ask her dyheli to start down the trail before them. Darian quickly shook off his own bemusement and followed her. One by one, the others did the same, as their guide remained on the top of the pass behind them, watching them solemnly as they began their journey downward.
It took them all day to make their way to the bottom, and once there, the great age of the place was self-evident. Far from being the barren cut it must have been for years after it had been made, a hundred thousand different plants and animals had taken advantage of the shelter it provided to move in and flourish. A stream ran right down the middle, fed by the runoff of the mountains above it, and where there is water, there will always be life. Leafed trees and evergreen trees had taken root here, and a variety of plants flourished along the banks of the stream. There was game in plenty, too, which was just as well, since the mountains cut off the sunlight and night would come very quickly here. There wasn’t a lot of time left to set themselves up for the night.
So they didn’t hesitate when they reached the bottom; they made camp immediately. They still had some provisions in the form of dried meat pounded together with dried berries, provided by their hosts of Gray Wolf. That would do for now; in the morning they could hunt.
“How are your heads, all of you?” Keisha asked the others as they quickly gathered deadfall for a fire.
She got variations on “Fine, now,” from all of them, and Shandi in particular looked much more like her old self. Evidently their guide had been right; there was something about going up very high that made people sick -
Unless they’re used to it? That must be it; Keisha didn’t want to contemplate what it would be like to try and become accustomed to the heights. How long would the sickness last?
How long would I be willing to bear it before I gave up? That’s the real question.
Perhaps it would be possible to become accustomed gradually, without the symptoms.
But I don’t care to be the one to find out, she decided, and went back to gathering very dry twigs to serve as kindling.
Steelmind found a real windfall, in that he found a tangle of wood piled up against a rock, dry and ready to burn. But that very find raised the possibility of another danger. Flash floods were always a possibility in the mountains, and they were in a particularly hazardous and vulnerable place. A cloudburst could cause a flood leagues away - a flood that would sweep everything before it all the way down the Pass, and they would have no warning.
“Weather-Watching,” Darian said to Steelmind, as they all came to that realization after a short discussion. “Have you ever done it?”
“Not often, but I can do it,” the older man replied, unsheathing a hand ax, adjusting its weighting slide, then stooping to chop up the battered brush and limbs. Hywel and Wintersky helped him, as Keisha, Shandi, and Darian gathered up the armfuls of wood. Darian limbered up and hacked skillfully at some branches with his heavy brush-knife, while Kelvren helped in his own way by standing on long branches or small trees and snapping through them with his beak, even if they were as thick as a man’s upper arm. It was getting dark fast, and even though the tops of the mountains above them still gleamed golden with sunlight, it was twilight on the floor of the Pass.
“Wintersky and I can watch, too,” Darian said with satisfaction. “Good; there won’t be a night watch when we won’t have a Weather-Watcher too; during the day we can take turns. Kel will know more than any of us during the day; he’ll be up in the weather we’re watching.”
:It is likely that we and Hashi will also be able to hear a flood before it reaches us - well in time for us all to climb to escape,: Neta said diffidently. :So we will have twin defenses.:
But Keisha wondered how well she was going to be able to sleep with the specter of a flood sweeping down out of nowhere hanging over her head every night. “Maybe we’d be better off trying to find caves above the waterline each night?” she suggested, dropping her armload of wood beside the fire and going back for another.
“We would - if we can find any,” Darian replied. He didn’t have to add anything; she’d seen the condition of the walls on the way down herself. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of caves. “If I have to, I can use magic to enlarge a cave or fissure that is already there, depending upon the conditions at the time. I could maybe make us a shelter, before there were any rains, but that would put out an easily readable magical signature. It’s best if we just make a camp as usual, though, because I’d rather not advertise to whatever may be out there.”
They could camp on the trail itself, but that carried its own risks, and how many more trails would they find as they made their way up the Pass?
She resolved not to think any more about it. They would be vigilant, and improvise. There had been too many surprises on this journey already to try to anticipate all the possibilities and plan for them. Meanwhile, she could gather wood and water, and do what she could to make certain that none of them would suffer any long-term effects from their mountain sickness.
Steady marching brought them to the end of the Pass in three days, and they had pressed themselves to do so in that short a time. The terrain, at least, provided nothing to impede them; it must have been an easy trip for that long-ago army that Vanyel defeated.
The tall mountains around them never grew lower, but the valleys between grew broader - and wetter. More of their time was spent crossing valley floors, some of them thickly greened valleys that were filled with plants that were entirely new to Steelmind. Here they did find furtive signs of people, but never saw any. Kuari reported that the tribes he saw were all small, no more than twenty or thirty people altogether, and they kept away from the travelers and their strange beasts and stranger allies.
More streams joined with theirs, and they started to see fish more abundantly. With that, Wintersky began throwing his line in every time they camped, and they enjoyed the results of his labor.
The end of the third day brought them to the end of the Pass; it opened out into one of those broad valleys, heavily forested, green, and wreathed with mist. All that day Keisha had noticed the clouds becoming thicker overhead, and the air growing more humid, although there was no sign that it was about to rain.
“Hurrrr,” Kel said, as he landed beside them. “Thisss isss like the Haighlei Forrressstssss, except that it isss not ssso hot.” He looked about with interest. “The trrreessss arrre asss big, and it isss damp therrre, like thisss.”
Moss and lichen grew thickly underfoot and on the trunks of the trees; and moss hung from the boughs high overhead. All of the trees were varieties of conifer or evergreen, and some were awe inspiring in their size, even to someone who was used to a Vale and the huge trees that grew there. These giants towered above their heads, so high that their tops were lost to sight among the branches of lesser trees.
Those trunks were like great, smooth columns, without any branches for such distances that Keisha couldn’t see how they could possibly be climbed. This was how they differed from the Vale trees, which branched out no more than two or three stories above the ground; these trees went on forever without branching out. It was unlikely that anyone would be using these trees to house an ekele any time soon, unless they built from the ground up!
But the raptors and Kel all loved the new surroundings, and cheerfully went out on scouting forays while the rest moved away from the mouth of the Pass and found a secure site to set up camp.
They all returned at sunset, Kuari last of all, and as they ate fish caught by Wintersky and grilled over the fire, each Hawkbrother related what his bird was telling him.
And in the end, even Kel looked troubled by what they had not seen.
“Wherrre arrre the people?” Kel said finally. “We have flown herrre and therrre - and therrre isss no sssign of people.”
“No sign that anyone has traveled the Pass recently either,” Darian pointed out, frowning. “There were tiny tribes in the other valleys - shouldn’t there be some sign of people here? Could another sickness have come through here and wiped everyone out?”
“If it had - why wouldn’t Snow Fox have brought it with them?” Keisha asked. “They only had Wasting Sickness and a few other things we already knew how to clear up.”
Hywel poked at the fire with a stick. “People do things differently, up here,” he said at last. “It could be that they are off fishing.”
“Fishing?” Wintersky said incredulously. “Fishing? What is that supposed to mean?”
Hywel looked uncomfortable. “I have heard - heard - that on the other side of that mountain there is a great expanse of water so far that you cannot see the other side, and it tastes of salt. This is where the peoples round about here get salt with which to trade. And I have heard that in the spring, there are torrents of fish coming up the streams. People gather at the rivers and catch these fish for as long as they come, and it is said that the fish are so thick in the rivers that one can walk from bank to bank upon their backs and keep dry feet. It is said that they can thus dry and smoke enough of these fish to serve them the rest of the year.”
“That sounds like some sort of fable to me,” Wintersky said skeptically.
Hywel shrugged. “It is only what I have heard. Also, I have tasted of this fish. Traders brought some back with them as provisions. It is good, very rich, and the meat of it is red, not white.”
“Huh.” Wintersky still looked skeptical.
“White Grrryphon liesss bessside sssuch a sssalty waterrr,” Kel observed, tilting his head to the side. “We call it an ‘ocean’ or ‘sssea.’ Could thisss be the sssame sssea?”
“I don’t know why not,” Steelmind replied. “There is no reason why the coastline here could not be much farther to the east than it is where the Haighlei lands lie. It could be a larger lake than we can even imagine. But that doesn’t address the question of where the people are.”
“No, it doesn’t, but we’ve only looked close to the mouth of the Pass,” Darian said. “Now, if I were living up here, and I knew that this place existed and might be used by war parties or even armies, I certainly wouldn’t want to live near it.”
Nods all around the campfire showed that Darian had come up with a reasonable explanation - for now.
But Keisha had the shivery feeling that this was not the real explanation.
After half-a-day’s travel, they had finally come upon signs of people - but the signs weren’t good.
“I don’t like this,” Darian said, staring at the remains of the village. This place had been more like the permanent village that Ghost Cat had built in Valdemar, before it had been deserted.
Deserted? Maybe. Maybe not. However the village had become untenanted, it had been too long ago to tell if the people had left, died, or been taken away. All that was left were the moss-covered remains of the log houses, the carved poles, the other artifacts of life. The roofs had fallen in - but that could have happened in a single season; Darian had seen how the kind of roof the Ghost Cat folks built needed constant attention. As wet as it was here, moss would have started to grow inside immediately. Grass was knee-tall, but there were no possessions, nor the remains of any.
“Hywel?” Darian said, turning to their only expert. Hywel looked just as troubled, and just as puzzled. “I do not know,” he said, looking around at the rumbled houses, the fallen poles. “There are no bodies, and no belongings. Perhaps they - ”
Then he shook his head. “No, I do not think they walked away, and it would be foolish to say so. I do not know what happened here.”
Darian scratched his head. “Do you see any signs of attack?” he asked reluctantly. “What would we be looking for?”
“There would be no signs,” Hywel told him. “If the tribe was under attack, the men would go out to meet the enemy, and the women and children would remain here. And if the men did not come back - ” He paused. “Well, until Blood Bear began taking other tribes’ women, the women and children of the defeated would have been left in peace to rebuild their tribe as best they could.”
“But now - we don’t know.” He considered for a moment. “If they were attacked by Blood Bear, wouldn’t the victors come here and carry everything off? They certainly tried to do that at Errold’s Grove.”
“What if illness killed most of the people here?” Keisha asked. “Would the survivors just pack up and walk away?”
“They might.” Hywel brightened a bit at that. “It is tradition that girls go to other tribes to wed, and warriors take wives from other tribes, so there are alliances created all the time. It could happen that they would pack what they had and go, if there were too few hunters to feed the people, or too few people to make a tribe.”
But this settlement had been huge, larger than the Ghost Cat village was now. Could sickness have wiped out that many people?
The ruins held no answers for them now, it had been too long since - whatever it was - had happened.
“We move on,” he decided. “We’re nearly to Snow Fox territory anyway. We know that they’re all right. Maybe they can tell us what happened here.”
He didn’t have to add that they would have to be wary. They already knew what to do. With Neta taking point, the birds spread out to either side, and Kel watched their backtrail. Hashi ranged out in a fan shape in front, filling in wherever another scout wasn’t. The one advantage they had was the forest itself; it was damp enough that scent lingered, giving Hashi plenty of information. The scant undergrowth and lack of low branches kept a relatively clear line-of-sight for them down on the ground, and a clear flight path for the birds.
But the forest was not continuous; there were huge meadows to cross, with acres and acres of waist-high grasses. They were beautiful, but dangerous; crossing them meant coming out of cover.
They had another one of those meadows ahead of them. This time, though, Darian was fairly certain that they would be safe, for a herd of deer grazed there, and Neta’s probe of their minds showed that they felt perfectly comfortable here, which meant they hadn’t been hunted recently. Darian was tempted to ask Kel to take one down for them, but decided against the idea. It was too early in the day to stop, and they would have to stop in order to take care of that much meat.
So they were the ones who spooked the herd into flight when they came out from under the shadows of the trees.
As the deer disappeared, the party moved warily out into the sunshine. Only now could they see the mountains towering on all sides of them; mountains with snow capping their peaks, rising through the thin clouds. It was Darian’s turn on Weather-Watch, and he sensed that there were storms moving in from the west. There would be rain tonight. Again.
He didn’t know what the natives called this land, but he had a few choice selections. When they’d packed for this trip, he hadn’t counted on facing rain practically every night. They’d been improvising with limited success; rain shelters made from boughs and rain sheets didn’t keep the precipitation out all night long, and by dawn everyone was damp.
He used magic to dry them out, driving the water from clothing and hair. He had no choice, even though this simple act might signal their presence to an enemy; they could not afford to get sick, or pick up something that would rot feet or infect skin. Keisha had to preserve her own strength for things that could not be prevented.
Carefully, with all the birds in the air, they crossed the meadow. Steelmind gathered plants as they walked, stooping over now and again to snatch something that his peculiar Gift told him was useful. Already he had a dozen different herbs that he wanted to try cultivating - someday. For now, he was content to add flavor and variety to their meals.
This time he walked practically bent over, pulling up bulbs that looked exactly like wild onions, brushing them off, and stashing them in the bag at his waist.
Darian knew that Hakan, Steelmind’s buzzard, was keeping a sharp eye out for trouble; Hakan circled highest above the clearing and had the widest view. Hakan’s type was not the same as the scavenger vultures; it was closer by far to the hawk families. Buzzards had fully feathered heads, mild tempers, and sleepy dispositions. They never exerted themselves if they didn’t have to - but that mild and sleepy outward demeanor concealed a determined nature. Hakan would fly through fire to protect Steelmind.
Wintersky’s little sharpshin hawk Kreeak by contrast was a bundle of nerves. Never able to stay still unless he was asleep, Kreeak was making a circuit of the meadow, while Kuari stayed in the trees at the point where they would reenter the forest. Kel was above with Hakan, in position to attack if he was needed.
Neta and Hashi kept their noses in the wind, staying beside the humans. The rest of the dyheli spread out all around them, for they were on foot, deciding that it would be better for the humans to present less of themselves above the grass as targets.
It was Kuari who sounded the warning, before they were a quarter of the way across the vast meadow - but through Kuari’s eyes, Darian saw that the hunting party drawing cautiously towards the meadow wore the emblem of the Snow Fox.
“It’s Snow Fox!” he shouted, and got into the saddle of the nearest dyheli, the rest no more than a fraction of a moment behind him.
Hywel, on Neta, took the lead; although he was riding on an unfamiliar animal, he wore the familiar clothing of another Northerner, and more, he carried with him a token from the Snow Fox women and children and the young warriors still with Ghost Cat. Darian let him race ahead of them; when he came close enough, he dismounted and finished his approach on foot. At that distance, he and the others were no more than dots against the shadow of the trees, but through Kuari’s eyes Darian saw that the meeting was going very well indeed. With that as encouragement, he led the rest on at a brisk lope.
By the time they reached Hywel and the hunting party, Hywel and the strangers were acting like old acquaintances. This was a party of young men his own age, which certainly helped, and the faces that they turned to the approaching riders were friendly and smiling.
But they soon sobered after the introductions were made and the initial excitement of the meeting died down. “We must make a kill and return quickly,” the leader of the hunting party said, with a nervous glance to the east. “We are too near to Wolverine territory. . . .”
They didn’t elaborate, and Darian figured that questions could wait until later. “We will help,” he offered. “We should not come to your home empty handed, after all.”
The Snow Fox hunters were too young to hide their skepticism well, but politely said nothing. But of course the moment that Darian had offered his help, he, Wintersky, and Steelmind had sent off their birds to scout for those deer that they had frightened off earlier.
:Kel!: he called upward. :These are Snow Fox hunters; they need to make some kills and get out of here. When the birds find those deer, can you help out?:
:Hah! Easily!: cane the cheerful reply. :I will dive at them so that they run toward you - it will be your task to see that at least one or two do not get by you!:
Kreeak located the deer at just that moment, and Kel gave them time enough to get back across the meadow and in place before he began his flush. Darian felt his blood begin to heat and his heart speed up as they approached their ambush point.
“I beg your indulgence,” he said carefully. “But there will be a herd of deer running here in a moment - will you make ready?”
Now the hunters exchanged thinly veiled looks of amusement. Of course they were amused. This was their land, and they knew the habits and movements of the animals here; how could strangers presume to predict that a herd of deer would come through a particular place?
Nevertheless, they were polite young men, and they did indulge this ridiculous foreigner. So when, after a short period of waiting, the herd of deer did come charging through the trees as if a terrible enemy was on their heels, they were understandably startled. Only two or three of them actually got shots off, and of those, only one hit.
Darian and the rest, of course, knew exactly when Kel spooked the deer - and knew that Kel had managed another of his infamous double-kills as well. Small wonder that the deer fled!
Darian and Wintersky targeted the same deer that the Snow Fox hunter had hit, and the three of them brought it down. Shandi held her fire, as did Steelmind; Hywel brought down a fourth deer by himself. That was more than enough to make them welcome at the Snow Fox village.
One for Kel, three for us; that’s generous enough. Darian signaled to Wintersky and Steelmind to come with him; they found Kel with his two prizes, terribly proud of himself.
“Hah! Did I not tell you!” he shouted happily, holding his head high, his eyes shining. “I am asss good asss my worrrd!”
“Indeed you are,” Darian laughed. “Would you like us to wrap it up, or will you eat yours here?”
“Sssome of both,” Kel replied. “You will clean and drresss them herrre, yesss? Why wassste good food? I want sssome marrow, too.”
So as Darian and the others gutted and dressed the deer, bundling the meat into the hides, Kel gobbled up the entrails and other parts they would normally have left behind. The dyhelis flared their nostrils in distaste at the scent of blood, but permitted their riders to load the bundles up behind their saddles. Their attitude toward deer hunting was remarkably pragmatic considering that they looked so much like dyheli. They didn’t like it, but they didn’t actually object to it. The general attitude seemed to be, “better them than us.”
While they proceeded with the messy business of butchering, Darian Mindspoke to Neta, the dyheli doe. :Neta, could you ask Hywel to carefully explain Kel to the Snow Fox hunters for me?: he asked, once he had established contact with her.
:Hmm, yes, I think he had better,: was the thoughtful reply. :I shall try to help him.:
When Darian and the others rejoined the rest, Kel came along with them, walking sedately on the ground rather than making one of his spectacular flying entrances. Darian hoped that Hywel and Neta had managed to “explain” Kel adequately.
Then again, knowing the dyheli doe, she would have no compunction whatsoever about invading their hosts’ minds and making certain that they wouldn’t panic when they first sighted the gryphon.
He had some qualms about that. More than a few.
Should I have forbidden her to do any such thing? He could have done that, but that didn’t mean she’d obey him. Dyheli had their own code of behavior, one that set the good of the herd above that of any individual, and that meant she would do whatever she thought was in the interest of her “herd,” in this case, the entire group she was with. She would dispassionately disobey orders, and lie to him about it. Of all the known creatures with Mindspeech, only the dyheli could lie successfully when using it.
There was no way to compromise with his conscience. He could only accept what happened and try to make up for it afterward.
Whether Neta had a hand in it or not, when they came out of the forest and into the sunlight, although the Snow Fox hunters looked a bit nervous to see Kel, they didn’t seem frightened. “This is our friend Kelvren,” Darian said carefully. “He has made two kills of his own, and wishes to present one of them to Snow Foxas thanks for your hospitality.”
Kel glanced longingly at the piles of offal laid to the side, but immediately turned his attention back to the hunters. “I am honorrrred to make thiss gift,” he said, with a graceful bow, and a broad gesture of his taloned forefoot.
“It is we who are honored by your generosity,” the chief hunter said bravely. “And - ah - are your tastes similar to those of the hunting birds? If so, would you care to take your choice of the - remains - before we leave this place?”
Darian was extremely pleased and a bit surprised by this display of tact and thoughtfulness. And it argued powerfully for the notion that Neta had only helped to explain Kel’s appearance, and had not taken charge of the hunters’ minds.
“Yesss!” Kel exclaimed. “And I thank you!”
The hunters tactfully looked the other way as Kel pounced upon the pile of discards with relish; watching a gryphon eat was something that took getting used to. It was all too easy to imagine what else that cruel beak and talons could do.
He made very short work of the meal - which was indeed a full meal even by a gryphon’s standards - and they were shortly on their way.
With the meat that would ordinarily have burdened them loaded on the backs of dyheli, the hunters set off at a lope that made conversation impossible.
Very clearly they wanted to be gone from this place, and quickly, too. Darian longed to ask them why, but knew that he would have to wait.
Whatever the answer was, though, he was fairly sure that it had to do with the Wolverine tribe - and that it would not be good news for them.
Keisha wasn’t the only one who felt the relief in the hunters as they crossed some invisible line into “safe” territory. They slowed their pace to a trot from what had very nearly been a run; they began to talk among themselves and even make occasional comments to their guests. And at last they finally looked back at the laden dyheli with the satisfaction and anticipation such a fine take of venison warranted.
She decided to talk to one of the young men herself, and asked her mount to take her up to the front of the group. She “picked” the first one that looked over at her and smiled, thinking it would be easier to approach someone who showed some friendliness from the beginning rather than trying to coax a reaction out of someone determined to keep a stony visage.
“How much farther do we go to reach your home?” she asked him, thinking that would be an easy way to begin a conversation, and grateful that they had all learned the Snow Fox dialect via dyheli before they left k’Valdemar.
“Not far,” the young man told her; he couldn’t be much older than Hywel, and was possibly younger. “We are within the range of our sentries now,” he added. And that was a curious addition, or so it seemed to Keisha. Why should that matter to her?
Unless he is reassuring me that no one can move upon his village without warning, she thought soberly. Like a war party from this Wolverine tribe, perhaps?
Their journey had brought them right up to the foot of the mountains, and soon it was evident that they were about to enter a kind of side valley, a cleft with steep cliffs on either side and a small, clear stream meandering along the base of the cliff on the left. If the village had not originally been situated with defense in mind, the setting certainly provided as much shelter as if protection had been a major consideration from the beginning.
Defensive cliffs, a water supply - the only thing they would lack if they came under siege would be food, and if they’ve stored enough, they might be all right.
“This is our valley,” the young hunter said proudly. “It has been the home of our tribe from the time of my grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather. The Snow Fox himself led us here, as the Snow Fox told our Shaman to send our sick to Ghost Cat, and then led our sick ones on the journey.”
Ah? They didn’t say anything about that back at the Sanctuary. But then again - they might assume we already knew something of the sort must have happened in order for them to find us at all. It seemed that the tribal spirits of these northerners took a very paternal (or was it maternal?) interest in their titular tribes.
:And the other deities of you humans do not?: came the impudent query from her dyheli.
:Other deities have a great many more people to Oversee, and rarely go so far as to personally lead their followers to help or safety,: she pointed out wryly. :Perhaps it is easier when your worshipers number less than a hundred to intervene directly in their lives.:
“I am called Bendan,” the hunter continued diffidently, looking up at her, but not meeting her eyes directly. “May I know your name, Wisewoman?”
Hywel had found a way to get the tribesmen to grant both Keisha and Shandi better status than “merely female.” Keisha was always introduced as the Wisewoman, and Shandi as something that translated as “woman whose soul is a man.” Apparently there were a few female warriors in the history of the tribes, and they’d had to come up with a category to fit them into. “Man-souled women” who passed the boys’ initiation trials could become hunters and warriors, but they sacrificed the traditional role of “wife and mother” in order to attain that status. They were considered neither male nor female - rather like the Shin’a’in Sword-Sworn, in a way.
At any rate, that was Shandi’s role, and she went along with it, since taking on that persona at least allowed her to sit at the Men’s Fire with the rest of the party, and not suffer a lonely exile to the company of the clan’s women.
It said something for the status of Wisewoman that Bendan gave Keisha his name. A “mere woman” would have had to learn it obliquely, by overhearing it or learning it from one of her friends, for he would never have addressed her directly if she had not had that rank.
“I am called Keisha,” she said. “Has Snow Fox a Wisewoman of their own, or does the Shaman conduct all healing?”
“We have only the Shaman, and he has no healing magic - that is why the Snow Fox sent to us to take our sick into the south,” Bendan said eagerly. “Have you been sent by the Fox to teach our Shaman in the ways of southern healing?”
:Boy’s a quick one, isn’t he?: chuckled the dyheli.
“I have; your people reached us safely, as you know, and I came in answer to your need,” she replied solemnly, taking the question as the gift it was. “That we bear trade goods is as a protection, so that others will not interfere with our passage.”
“It is wise - though I do not think it would avail you with Wolverine,” he replied, then shrugged and changed the subject, trotting along at her stirrup with no sign of effort. “We have some sick still with us; too ill to travel. I hope you will be able to help them.”
“I hope so, too,” she said sincerely.
When they reached the village, it was apparent that this was a permanent enclave, unlike some of the other hunting camps they had visited. Here were the familiar log houses, decorated and carved, roofed with slabs of bark; the characteristic poles stood prominently before each house with totemic animals and spirit representations carved into them. Even more than at Ghost Cat, there were piecework blankets on display, made of felted and dyed fur, and the costumes of the inhabitants were covered with embroideries made with tufts of dyed fur.
It was clear that this was a prosperous tribe; it was also clear that the invisible sentries had already alerted the Chief and Shaman that visitors were being escorted in. Women and children clustered at the entrances to the log houses - craning their necks and straining their eyes for a good look at the strangers, but also ready to bolt inside at a hint that there was something amiss. The Chief and Shaman marched forward to meet them, surrounded by armed warriors older and more experienced than the young hunters.
Hywel bounded from his saddle, and together with Bendan, came forward to speak with the leaders of Snow Fox. He displayed the token that the Snow Fox folk back in Valdemar had given them, and soon the faces of those around him were relaxed, even smiling. The warriors lowered their weapons, and with that sign that all was well, the women and children began to ease closer.
The Shaman headed straight for Keisha once the formalities were over; she dismounted rather than tower over him as he approached. Gray-haired and bearded, he was a handsome old fellow by anyone’s standards, with strong features and lively eyes. Knot-work was layered down the front edges of his mantle, with points of antler serving as closures alternating from side to side. The colors picked for the tufting between the antler tips exactly matched his eyes.
“Wisewoman Keisha, I am Shaman Henkeir Told-True. I am warmed to see your presence. May your spirits bless you for coming to us!” he exclaimed, seizing her hand. “The Chief’s woman and children are ill, as are several more, too ill to send to Ghost Cat with the others, and I have had no success with them. The Snow Fox told me I must wait for a healer out of the south - ”
“Bendan told me,” she replied, clasping the old man’s hand. “Is it the Wasting Sickness? Summer Fever?” Those were both names for the same illness, the disease that struck the channels that carried the commands of the mind to the body, causing weakness and paralysis.
“Nay, it is something else, another new sickness out of the times of evil magic and heartsick skies; something that chokes the breath but does not weaken the muscles. So short of breath are they that we dared not send them over-mountain, for the mountain sickness would have killed them. When they move with any forcefulness at all, they become unable to breathe, but they cannot stay completely still,” he told her, and she felt a little thrill of excitement, though she immediately was ashamed of being excited at someone else’s misfortune. Still - the prospect of seeing something new -
“Let us go to them, and I will see what may be done,” she said instantly. “All else can wait.”
The old man’s eyes lit up. “Hah! You are a true Wisewoman!” he exclaimed, leading her to think that perhaps he had encountered those who had not been as dedicated to their duty. “Come, and I will show you.”
The sick folk had been isolated from the others in a separate log house. Although there were no windows, the roof had actually been propped up here and there to provide fresh air and ventilation. But the patients were bundled up near the fire, all of them weak, feverish, and thin. An effort had been made, using thick slabs of bark set upright in an overlapping-edged ring, to make sure that the smoke from the central fire was at a minimum; nevertheless, there was constant deep coughing coming from nearly everyone around the fire.
The Shaman told the stricken ones who this strange woman was, and in response there were murmurs of relief between rasps and coughing fits. Keisha examined the child nearest to her at the Shaman’s urging, opening her shields and sinking her awareness deep into the body before her.
It didn’t take her long to identify what was wrong - and it was a disease new to her, something that lived in the lungs, scarring them and turning them from a healthy honeycomb to a useless solid mass. But for all its toughness, for all that it was, if unchecked, absolutely deadly, it was no match for the forces she could wake in the body of its host with her power. It thrived because it walled itself off from those forces with scar tissue; she could break that wall down.
She gave the child a good first treatment before she emerged from her Healing trance, to see the Shaman staring at her with intense interest. “Have you the mastery of this magic?” she asked him. “The way of seeing inside the body, and going to war with sickness?”
“Nay, but my student has,” he said instantly. “I could not teach him, and he has been doing the best that he could without any learning, trusting to instinct. I shall go to fetch him, if you would deign to teach him.”
That’s a relief! “Please! That is why I am here. And if you would call upon the spirits as well, while we help the sick ones, it would be well,” she told him.
“It is not good to treat only the body and leave the spirit untouched.”
He grinned broadly and got to his feet, leaving the log house only to return in a few moments with a very young man - perhaps fourteen or fifteen - and a bundle, which proved to be a set of drums, wrapped in a charm-bedecked cape. The boy bobbed his head awkwardly at her, and she smiled in a way she hoped would encourage him.
She could tell already that he had used his Healing powers in much the same way that she had at that age - crudely, because he never had a real teacher. The Shaman at least recognized his power, but he was unable to teach him. Instinct and necessity had given him some direction, but to go any further, he needed proper instruction.
“You’ve done well by yourself,” she told him, as the Shaman donned his cape, and cast cedar on the fire. “You are like a carver who has been making good images with only an ax - I will give you fine knives as well, with which to do your work.”
He brightened at the praise, and nodded enthusiastically at her explanation. “Yes!” the boy all but shouted. “That is exactly how I have been feeling! I know that there is a way to do things, but I cannot make them happen! Oh, Wisewoman, but show me the way, and I will speak your name to the spirits forever!”
“Exactly.” She patted his hand, and placed it on top of hers, for the physical contact would help her make mind-to-mind contact. “Now, prepare yourself, and let me show you what I know. . . .”
Keisha worked with the young student until they were both exhausted; by that time, all of the people suffering from the illness that the Shaman had termed “Hammer Lung” had been given their first treatment. The disease was treacherous and tenacious, and would need many more treatments to be eradicated. The young student had gotten his bearings, and Keisha was certain he would make a fine Healer, in time.
Tomorrow I’ll ask Shandi to give me a hand; maybe Darian, too. We’ll get these people over the worst of their illness before we leave. Something in the back of her mind teased at her. There had to be a way to give this young man more of her own knowledge, but she couldn’t make the thought come clear. Finally she let it go; if she didn’t work so hard at it, it would probably surface by itself. That was how things seemed to work for her. When there was a problem that could be solved with quick thought, it would be at the forefront of her awareness, but if it would take a long time to solve a problem, then it would be mulled over behind her consciousness until finally popping up as a clear solution.
The patients were already feeling and looking better. She’d been able to advise some other things that let them breathe more easily, things that the Shaman could do in addition to his spiritual ministrations.
Although I have to wonder . . . I’ve never been able to work alone for quite so long before. Time seemed to move slowly for me, but it never dragged on. I am tired but not as completely exhausted as I would normally be. Maybe those spirits of his were helping out.
The student stumbled off to his bed, glowing with the satisfaction that only comes with accomplishment. The Shaman packed up his gear and offered to conduct her to the Men’s Fire.
“Please,” she said gratefully. It was very dark outside the log house, and she really wasn’t up to stumbling around looking for the men. “I would appreciate that.”
Henkeir beamed his pleasure, his beard practically bristling with cheer. This had been a good day for him, statuswise; the foreign Wisewoman sent by the tribal totem had deferred to him, requested that he specifically tend to the souls and spiritual needs of the sick ones, and now had asked him to escort her to the Men’s Fire. If he had feared the possibility of losing status because of her appearance, those fears had been totally put to rest. Completely aside from her personality, for those reasons alone he would have liked her.
He led her out of the log house, as the patients settled into what must have been their first restful sleep for many weeks. Soft calls of thanks and well-wishes faded away behind as the pair walked. Even though there hadn’t been a lot of light inside the house, thanks in part to the smoke shielding around the fire pit, it was incredibly dark outside it. The cliffs on either side cut off most of the sky, and the moon was not yet up. Mist wreathed among the trees; the smoky air, cedar-scented and damp, penetrated Keisha’s clothing and made her shiver. She was quite glad that she had accepted his guidance before they had gone more than a few paces, for the Men’s Fire, as was the custom at Ghost Cat, had been sequestered in a remote pocket from the rest of the village. By contrast, the Women’s Fire, which they passed as they walked between two more log houses, was right in the center of the village, with the women and young children clustered about it, laughing, talking, and eating. There was a wonderful smell of roast meat and some sort of bread, of wild herbs and onions. Her stomach growled.
The fire they sought was in a little pocket carved into the cliff when an enormous boulder came crashing down from above some time in the far past. The boulder itself, the size of one of the log houses, shielded the sight of the entrance to the pocket from the rest of the village, and even hid the reflected firelight.
The pocket canyon was as welcoming as a conventional hearth in a Valdemaran home. Firelight warmed the air and the stone walls, and if there was no roof, tonight at least there was no need of one either. The men “welcomed” her to the circle simply by making space for her beside Darian and passing a wooden platter loaded with roasted tubers, onions, and venison to her. She was famished, and with a nod and a word of thanks, set to her meal.
She ate as they did, with her fingers and a small, stubby eating-knife, keeping her head over her platter so that the juices from the meat dripped back down onto her food. The Shaman immediately took command of the conversation, telling the Chief the good news - both that his wife and children were on the way to being cured, and that the Shaman’s young student would soon have the special healing magics of the southerners himself.
The Chief would not rush to thank Keisha here, in front of the rest of the men, but the look of gratitude he threw at her told her he would definitely be approaching her in private. She sensed that before their arrival, the conversation had taken a dark and foreboding tone, and that the Chief had welcomed the change their good news brought.
Meanwhile, the food warmed and filled her - and tasted wonderful, especially after the somewhat meager meals of the past few days. As her hunger eased, she started feeling how tired she really was; tired, not sleepy. She was content to sit beside the fire and listen to the men - and Shandi - talking. She had closed her shields in tight around her, knowing that she would be oversensitive after all her work, and as a consequence felt as if she were wrapped in a cocoon that kept the rest of the world at a comfortable distance. She had her footwear off, and her soles baked deliriously from their proximity to the slow fire, as she lay back and closed her eyes for a while.
The earnest conversation that her entrance had interrupted resumed after the Shaman described with great pride the work of his apprentice. He’s right to be proud; the boy outdid himself, and he’s a fast learner. He’s one I certainly won’t forget.
But already the conversation had gone back to bleaker subjects. “There is no doubt that Wolverine has taken up what Blood Bear left off,” the Chief said, with a glance over his shoulder into the darkness, as if he feared that a spy from Wolverine tribe might be lurking there. “The difference, though, is that they raid, not destroy. Their raiding parties come farther south every moon; they take everything of value, male children less than five, widows and unmated females of breeding age. If a tribe dares to resist, they cripple the warriors after they have won.”
“Ah, but first they come all smiles, and offer alliance - or rather, encourage their servitude to Wolverine - ” the Shaman interjected. “It is only if the tribe fights that they raid.”
Keisha was too tired to feel anything for herself, and too protected behind her walls to feel what the others felt, but the tension and concern beat against her protections and would flood her if she let it.
“Oh, but alliance means to surrender half of the provisions and goods, and all of the unmated females, and all boys down to the toddlers!” the Chief scoffed. “I do not call that generous!”
“They have not found us yet,” the Shaman confided to Keisha. “That is why we are unmolested. Our valley hides us well.”
She nodded; she had not seen the mouth of the valley until they were practically inside it.
“Your sentries are to be given credit, too, I would think,” Wintersky observed. Steelmind nodded, even as he frowned, and Shandi spoke up.
“It isn’t just your location or your sentries, is it?” she asked, and looked directly at the Shaman. “You are - concealing. Yow are hiding the tribe, Honored One, using your powers. Aren’t you?”
“Not I - the Snow Fox hides us, as he himself hides in winter,” the Shaman protested, but he looked pleased. Darian raised his eyebrow at Shandi and smiled at the Shaman in a conspiratorial fashion. The Shaman gave Darian the same smile - Mage to Mage, exchanging the compliment of recognizing each other’s handiwork.
“I do what little I can,” the Shaman said modestly. “But too much done to hide our people would reveal, rather than conceal them. Wolverine has a Shaman, too, whose power is of the Eclipse, and he will see the use of power should I overstep myself.”
“That’s why the hunting parties are on their own.” Darian made it a statement. He sighed. “I can’t think of any way of concealing them that wouldn’t betray them just as readily; you are perfectly right to be cautious.”
“Our skill will conceal us,” the chief hunter spoke up, with all the arrogant certainty of someone who has never met with failure - yet. “We can outwit any Wolverine scout.”
This time it was the Chief who exchanged a raised eyebrow with Darian. For all Darian’s apparent relative youth, it was clear that the Chief of Snow Fox realized he had a great deal of experience, and Keisha hid her own smile of pride.
“Why is it that you have no Wisewoman of your own?” Shandi asked, knowing now, after seeing so many other tribes, that when the Shaman was not a healer, his work was generally supplemented by a Wisewoman.
“She went to the ancestors before she could find a successor,” the Shaman told her, sighing heavily. “That was many years ago. My pupil has the healing touch, and there is another boy who I will train in my own work when he comes to his manhood trial, but it is not fit that I seek out a girl-child to become a Wisewoman. In other times, the Wisewoman of one of our allies would have found and trained such a girl, but we have had little contact with our friends since Wolverine began raiding. We have not had the great Midsummer Gathering for two years.”
Even as tired as she was, Keisha knew that was a very bad sign; even at the height of the mage-storms, the Midsummer Gatherings had taken place. They were the only time that all the tribes came together under a truce banner; a time for trading, finding mates in other tribes, exchanging information, making alliances. If they had not been held for two years, none of these things were happening, and the peaceful tribes were becoming more and more isolated from each other.
He looked hopefully at Keisha, who grimaced. “We have another task,” she said reluctantly. “It has been put upon us by both the Ghost Cat and the Raven spirits that we seek the Raven tribe.” She did not say why, but no one would ask if she did not volunteer the information. It would be assumed that it was private business between her people and the spirits.
The Shaman’s face fell; he had probably been hoping that she had been sent for the benefit of Snow Fox alone, and would remain until both his apprentice and a new Wisewoman had been chosen and trained. Keisha felt badly for him, and added, “I will do all I can to leave you with all that Snow Fox needs.”
Not that I have any idea how to do that, she added to herself. Healing isn’t like a language that can be dumped entire into someone’s head by a dyheli -
Or - was it? Could Neta extract everything that Keisha knew about Healing and deposit it in the minds of the young apprentice and anyone else who needed to have it? And if she could - would it be more dangerous to do that than leave them on their own? Having so much information dumped into his mind at once might drive the poor apprentice mad . . . unless there was a way to keep it out of his conscious mind until he needed it. I don’t know. There has to be some terrible price hidden in it somewhere. Inventive or not, it seems too easy somehow. In this world, we sometimes get lucky, but we never get things easy.
The best creature to ask would be Neta herself - arid that would have to wait for morning. Now she was sleepy, and a warm fire and full stomach were contributing to that; for the moment, it didn’t matter how much anxiety the rest of them felt, it couldn’t penetrate to keep her awake. She wasn’t the only one - there were plenty of hunters and warriors blinking their heavy eyes trying to stay awake. It wasn’t long before the Shaman excused himself, and the Chief offered to send his guests to his own log house for rest. Darian accepted for all of them, and Keisha was glad; beyond the fire the mist was getting heavy, and there would probably be rain before morning. At least tonight they’d sleep dry. And she was too sleepy now to care about anything else.
Morning brought the unfamiliar sounds of children chattering like a tree full of birds near at hand, and Keisha woke all at once, with no intermediate drowsing between dream and wakefulness. She remembered at once where she was, partly because of the rush of unfamiliar smells, and stretched happily beneath her bright (and borrowed) blankets. There was rain pounding on the roof above her head, and from the sound of it, the storm was good for the rest of the day. If they’d been outside, they’d have started the day soaked again.
Would rain keep raiding parties stuck in one place? Now that she wasn’t so tired, she remembered the conversation last night, and it wasn’t just the chill and damp draft sneaking under her chin that made her shiver suddenly. Wolverine tribe - they sounded too much like the tribe that had almost destroyed Errold’s Grove.
Not good news. And we’ll have to get past them to get to Raven. That was worse news; would they have to skulk across the countryside from bit of cover to bit of cover? These raiding parties - how many were there?
I wonder if Dorian wants to use magic to hide us? The existence of another enemy mage made that potentially as dangerous as going unhidden. How did these people rank mages, anyway - and how strong was he, how skilled? Journeyman? Master? Worst of all - Adept? Would they be unfortunate enough to encounter some sort of mage they had never even thought of, whose powers would be a total surprise? She felt anxiety starting to get hold of her, and fought it off. There was no point in getting worried about something that was in the future - something she couldn’t affect, for that matter. It was not that she disliked planning or even speculating, but there was such a thing as pointless worry in a case like this. This wasn’t her problem - or at least, it wasn’t her problem unless and until Darian asked her opinion. For now, her problem was to work with the Shaman - and she really ought to find out what his name was! No, wait. Hank. Henk. Henkeir. Henkeir Told-
True.
That prompted the recollection of her thoughts the night before, about enlisting the help of the dyheli in transferring Healing knowledge directly to the young apprentice, and possibly, (if she could find one) a potential Wisewoman.
Language was at least as complicated as Healing; the problem with transferring it all at once was that Healing involved the use of power, a power very like mage-energy - and it involved using techniques that could leave the Healer’s mind perilously open.
But what else did I think of last night - ah, I remember now. Would it be possible to transfer the knowledge in such a way that it only becomes available when the person needs it -
But no, that wouldn’t work, because they might need it before they were ready to handle it.
Perhaps - it becomes available when the person masters something - keyed to that -
No one had ever tried anything like this before, not that she knew of. But just because no one has ever done it before, that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. . . .
Once again, though, she knew only that she didn’t know enough. She would have to ask the dyheli Neta as she had thought last night, at the very least. Perhaps the Shaman might know something out of his own traditions that would help.
It would be so nice just to go back to sleep and forget this for a little longer, she thought wistfully. It had been so long since she’d had the luxury of sleeping until she felt completely rested -
But now that she was awake, her restless mind wouldn’t let her go back to sleep again. Too much to do. She shoved the thought of drowsing away resolutely, and pushed the blankets aside. Like the log-houses of Ghost Cat, the loghouse of the Chief of Snow Fox had little cubicles around the walls used for storage and sleeping in a modicum of privacy. Presumably because Snow Fox was a very prosperous tribe, the barrier between the cubicle and the rest of the house was not a simple curtain, but was one of the beautiful piecework felt blankets.
It cut off the light from the central hearth fire much better than a cloth curtain would have; it was as dark as a cave in their cozy nest.
She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the platform bed she shared with Darian, and he stirred. “Getting up?” he asked; he didn’t sound sleepy, and she wondered if he had been awake and thinking as long as she had.
“I’ve got so much I need to do - ” she began “Anything I can help with?” He sat up, too. “I knew you were really concentrating on something, and I wondered what about. You seemed tense.”
“I don’t - ” she began, then stopped as a thought interrupted her. Hadn’t she been thinking that the power she used in Healing was like magic? And hadn’t he added his power to hers in the past? Maybe he had an answer, or part of the answer she was looking for. Quickly, she explained what she had been thinking of doing. “Do you know of a way to keep that knowledge locked up until the person is ready for it?” she asked.
He pondered her question, giving it full attention; she couldn’t see his face clearly, but she sensed he was concentrating, trying to remember something. “I think it can be done,” he said finally. “You’d have to be awfully good, though. I - don’t think I could do something like that. Maybe an Adept could.”
She grimaced; disappointed, but not surprised. “I’ll see if their Shaman knows of something that would work. You never know.”
“I might as well get up, too,” he said, levering himself up out of bed beside her, his long hair strung across his face in tangles. “There’s a lot to get done. I think that we’d better stay here until the sick are healed, so we can have Snow Fox’s full support when it’s time to move on. It can only help.” He sounded as wistful as she was, though. “Sometimes I wonder if the only time we’ll ever get to be lazy is if we get sick ourselves.”
“Don’t even think that,” she chided, and reached for her clothing, handing him his. “We can’t afford to be sick.”
They both got dressed and Keisha pushed aside the partition blanket, stepping out into the central room. The Shaman’s wife hurried to greet them, handing them bowls of porridge made with crushed nuts and sweetened with honey. It was very good, and a nice change from the breakfasts of cold meat they’d been having.
They were the first ones awake from their group, although some stirring and muttering indicated that the rest weren’t too far behind them in getting up. Keisha finished her breakfast quickly and got her rain cloak, heading out to find the Shaman and begin the morning’s treatments.
The Shaman was waiting for her at the house holding all the sick, and before she and his apprentice began work, he made a point of offering her a second breakfast, this time of a kind of bread or cake made of the same crushed nut mixture. She was not at all averse to having more to eat, knowing that she would need all the energy she could get.
As they ate, the Shaman introduced his apprentice as Lother. Henkeir’s wife made all the meals for the sick isolated here in this house, and had sent extra for Keisha, her husband, and his pupil.
“Your wife is extremely accommodating,” Keisha said dryly, thinking how much work a woman of the tribes did just to keep her own family fed, clothed, and cared for - never mind adding on the care of a dozen sick people.
“My wife tells me just how accommodating she is on a regular basis,” he replied, just as dryly. “But I agree with her, even when she is not nearby to hear it.”
Keisha covered her mouth with one hand, stifling her giggles; young Lother laughed outrignt, and Henkeir grinned behind his beard.
“I think that this may be the case with all worthy spouses,” Henkeir told them. “Perhaps they fear that if they are too silent, we will come to take them for granted.” He put aside his cup of hot herb drink and stood up. “Are you ready for the morning’s work?”
“More than ready,” she told him, and the three of them approached the first patient of the day together.
After rest - and a noon meal that she ate so fast she didn’t even taste it - Keisha went out in search of the dyheli. She was altogether gratified to learn from the Shaman that the dyheli and Karles had been housed in the communal storage house, rather than forced to spend the rainy night and day out in the weather.
The children, who shed the water like so many ducklings and evidently considered this to be balmy weather, were making a great game of going out and tearing up armloads of grass to feed to the four-legged guests. She spotted a group of them running into the storage house, shrieking with laughter, so laden with long, wet bundles of grass that they looked like so many little walking haystacks. She followed them, and soon discovered why the sport of feeding the dyheli was so popular.
The dyheli were earning their dinner by taking turns telling stories.
Of course, when a dyheli “told” a story, it appeared in the “listener’s” head, complete with pictures, sounds, and smells. The children were absolutely enraptured. This was better entertainment than anything they’d ever encountered before.
It was not yet Neta’s turn to tell a story, so Keisha was able to take her aside and quiz her on the possibility of transferring knowledge rather than language.
Neta considered the question, then diffidently asked Keisha for free access to her mind. Keisha sat down on a pile of furs and obliged - sitting, in case this turned out to cause the kind of reaction that a language transfer did, and she passed out cold.
She didn’t drop over, although Neta’s explorations left her with the oddest feeling, as if her mind was a box whose contents were being meticulously turned over and examined, one bit at a time. It felt strangely like the mountain sickness, crossed with being intoxicated on very bad wine, and then being flattened thoroughly with a rolling pin but not minding it at .all.
:I think the transfer can be done,: Neta finally said, when she’d withdrawn her mind from Keisha’s. :The problem would be that Healing involves development and exercise of mental powers - rather like training muscles for strength. If a young one tried to use the knowledge before he had the strength, it could harm him. Worse than another Healer could fix.:
Keisha ground her teeth in frustration. Not that she hadn’t already been afraid that would be the case, but it was disappointing in the extreme.
:Let me think of this, and consult with Karles,: Neta added, responding to her frustration with a sympathy that surprised her. :There may be something that we can do.: The dyheli doe looked across the room at the Companion, who responded by joining them immediately.
Karles regarded Keisha with an unreadable deep-blue gaze, then turned his attention toward Neta. While the children in the corner giggled and exclaimed over the story one of the young bucks was “telling” them, Keisha watched the silent colloquy going on between the Companion and the doe, and wondered what they were talking about. Finally Neta turned back toward Keisha. :If we think of knowledge as something to be held, then what you need is a container from which a little can be taken at a time, yes?:
“More like a smart container that knows how much to dole out, but yes, something like that,” she replied, intrigued by the analogy.
:Karles suggests that we ask the Snow Fox to be that container.:
Shaman Henkeir was at first surprised speechless, then briefly appalled - then intrigued by Keisha and Neta’s suggestion. “It has . . . merit,” he said cautiously. “If this could be done, it would mean that we need never fear the loss of a Wisewoman, for the Snow Fox would always hold this wisdom in its keeping. The old stories hold that the People give knowledge to the gods. That is why we do not become like stagnant water, for we can create and give that knowledge to benefit the totem. The Snow Fox might be pleased by this, yes.”
Keisha did not ask why the Snow Fox didn’t already have that knowledge to dispense. The tribal totems didn’t seem to be so much “gods” as benevolent overseers and benefactors. They certainly weren’t all-seeing and all-knowing, or they would have been able to protect their own tribes from the depredations of others. It was said, even in Valdemar, that gods received power and support from their followers, and they in turn helped those followers prosper. She wondered if there was a kind of spiritual warfare going on among the totemic “animals,” with the stronger paving the way for the conquest of the weaker as the totemic spirits defeated each other.
It was actually a rather frightening thought.
If that were the case, it was no wonder that the tribes spent so much time in strengthening their totems with prayer and worship!
“How would we find out if the Snow Fox was willing to be the vessel for this knowledge?” she asked aloud, and the Shaman’s eyes widened as he looked over her shoulder.
She felt a cool breath on the back of her neck, and turned to find herself staring into a pair of amused, milky-blue catlike eyes. She flinched backward, which elicited a look of frank amusement from the manifestation.
The eyes were set in a head with a sharply pointed muzzle and a pair of blunt, pointed ears. The head was attached to a body the size of a small pony, but it was a resemblance in scale only. The furred body was a misty white, and translucent - just as the shadowy spirit of the Ghost Cat had been. Tiny sparkles of white light, like twinkling stars, fell away from the apparition in all directions, as slow as falling dust motes in sunlight.
Time seemed to slow for Keisha, and there was only one thing that she could think. I - guess we have our answer!
Another day, another deity.
On the whole, even after hearing from Keisha about the bizarre manifestation of the Snow Fox itself and its subsequent absorption of her Healing knowledge, Darian regretted leaving this latest tribe - but there was no choice. Something strong and true and part of him drove him on; if he gave up now, how could he remain himself?
They left Snow Fox better provisioned than they had arrived. Dried meat, nut-meal, and dried berries made their saddlebags bulge, and in the packs of trade goods, gold nuggets replaced packets of dye. Keisha now wore two token necklaces instead of one; in addition to the owl, she wore a string of tiny carved foxes of mother-of-pearl. The Snow Fox Shaman had given her that just before they left. Keisha tried to think little of what she had done, but inside, Darian figured Keisha knew she had just given an entire tribe of people an edge against the cruelties of the wild world. The customs of the tribes made effusive thanks from a male to a female unlikely; given everything she’d done to heal their sick, he figured she more than deserved that necklace, and it was one of the few ways that the Shaman could show his gratitude. In fact, by rights she should have been bedecked by a dozen such necklaces by now, one for every tribe she’d helped, and for every Wisewoman and Shaman she’d tutored in the Valdemaran use of the Healing Gift.
I think that Keisha is blissfully unaware of what a huge impact she is having upon an entire culture, by what she gives so selflessly. The tribes may worship or thank the holy dyheli now, but it is Keisha and the others in green they talk about plenty among each other, I’ll wager.
They had good instructions on how to reach Raven tribe - and the origin of the vests had been confirmed. One more stretch of mountains lay between them and their goal - one more stretch, that just happened to be claimed by Wolverine.
Every time he thought about Wolverine, an odd chill touched him for just a moment.
“This is as far as I can take you,” their guide said at about noon on the second day after they had left Snow Fox. He looked out over the valley that stretched out before them with some regret. “You wish to aim for that pass, between those two peaks,” he said, pointing. “On the other side is the Bitter Water, and the Raven tribe.”
And between us and them is trouble. He didn’t give any sign that he was worried, though; he just thanked the hunter with as much sincerity as he could show, and watched as the man trotted off into the shelter of the forest that Snow Fox called its territory, melting into the undergrowth almost like a Tayledras might.
He looked back over his own group; Keisha was worried, but he could hardly blame her for that. Hywel was as confident as any young and untried warrior. He happily bore the arrogance of ignorance. Steelmind was as calm as one of the mountain peaks, Wintersky impatient to be gone, and Shandi unreadable. The nonhumans displayed a similar mix of emotional stances.
“It’s probably going to take us twice as long to cross this stretch as it’s taken before,” he said, mostly to Keisha and Shandi. “If you thought we were being careful before, you were wrong. We’re truly going into enemy territory now, and we’ll be moving accordingly.”
Shandi nodded alertly. “Kel overhead, the birds out in front, the dyheli, Karles, and Hashi behind them, then us, following on foot. Right?”
“Absolutely right.” He felt rather gratified that she had caught on so quickly, but then, she was a Herald, and Heralds got some military training. The only difference between this group and a group of the Guard or local militia was that their scouts had wings, paws, and hooves. He dismounted, and the rest did the same, taking time to tighten every baggage-strap and harness-fastener so that the hooved ones wouldn’t be hindered by loose baggage. Then every stirrup was tied up, so that they didn’t dangle free either. If they had to run for it, having the stirrups out of the way would make mounting and riding harder, but not impossible, especially not since their mounts were dyheli and a Companion.
He gave the mental signal to Kuari that the owl had been waiting for, then called Kel.
:All right, Silver Gryphon - we’re moving out! Take high point.:
:I am ready,: came the reply from somewhere aloft. :The way is clear to the next stretch of trees. Dodge to your left to make use of the runoff ravine and follow it to the light-gray stack of boulders.:
The dyheli and Karles spread out, trotting down through the waist-high meadow grass, heading for the trees. Hashi was with them, but invisible in the grass. He could have left a “wake” in the grass, but he didn’t - and wouldn’t. The kyree were masters of moving invisibly.
Now it was the humans’ turn, and despite having been given the word that there were no enemies in the immediate vicinity, they moved cautiously across the open stretch, hunched down near the tops of the grasses. Those who had bows had arrows loosely nocked to the strings. Wintersky and Darian, as the two most experienced in this sort of movement, took point; Hywel took right flank, Shandi the left, and Steelmind the rear, putting Keisha in the relatively protected middle. Darian wondered briefly if that rankled with her, then centered all of his attention on scanning the territory ahead.
It was hard to remain on the alert when from all the signs there was no need to be. Tiny birds flitted through the stalks of the grass, or skimmed ahead of them, chasing the insects they scared up. Occasionally they kicked up a rabbit. Other than that, the meadow drowsed in the warm late-spring sun, with some puffy clouds around to the west beginning to develop darker bottoms that might promise (more) rain.
Darian figured that as long as he remained in a posture of readiness, the others would take their cue from him - especially Hywel, who might well need “reminding.”
The greatest danger was that because the meadow was at least a league wide, enemies might appear before they had crossed it. The dyheli, and kyree, Kel and Karles ought to be able to spot them in time to take cover in the grass, but that would leave them horribly vulnerable.
But they made it into the shelter of the forest again without mishap, and Darian relaxed a little. But only a little. There was one advantage here; the giant trees were interspersed with “normal” trees, and that gave them an escape route and a hiding place - into the boughs of those trees.
They had gone about another league into that forest, relying on Kel and the birds to guide them towards the mountain pass that was their goal, when Hashi sounded a warning of his own.
:I scent a party of humans - many smelling of fear, the rest of fighting.They come from the northeast and are coming straight for you!:
Darian had been planning escape routes all along as they moved through the forest. “Steelmind - you and Shandi up that tree!” he shouted, pointing to a cedar. He turned and pointed to another. “Wintersky and Hywel, up there!”
He grabbed Keisha’s hand and ran for a third tree, a black pine. All three had the advantage of very thick foliage as well as branches near enough to the ground to be hooked by the climbing stick, a hooked half-weapon and half-tool device, that all three Tayledras carried.
He pulled his own climbing stick from the sheath on his back as he ran, slung his bow over his shoulder and shoved the arrow he’d had ready back into the quiver. In a practiced move, he aimed the hook of his climbing stick at an overhead branch as he ran, and used his momentum to carry him up the trunk. He went hand-over-hand up the stick as he scrambled over the bark of the trunk, and once lodged securely on the branch he had hooked, pulled the climbing stick loose, and extended it to Keisha. She grabbed it, and he pulled her up beside him, then repeated the process with the next branch. Once they were high enough that the branches were closer together, Keisha could climb up by herself without his aid; at that point, he stowed his climbing stick and worked his way up the trunk until they were both well-hidden from below. :Kuari, I need you,: he called.
:I come!: the owl replied immediately. As he waited for Kuari, he made contact with each of the outliers, making sure that the dyheli stayed well out of the way, the kyree hid himself, and Kel stayed high overhead.
Kuari came in to land just as he heard the most distant sounds of forest disturbance, the scolding of corvids. :Go perch where you can see the enemy,: Darian told the owl. :Then let me use your eyes.:
Kuari hooted softly, and ghosted down out of the tree, choosing a branch a little lower with nothing else between it and the ground. He perched there and set his feet well onto the branch, then relaxed - and Darian saw what he was seeing.
No doubt Wintersky and Steelmind were doing the same with their birds.
A bit higher on the trunk than he was, Keisha tied herself into place as a precaution against becoming unbalanced. Darian was so comfortable in trees now that he didn’t need such helps; he could fall asleep in the fork of a tree without losing his balance - and had, in the past. He still preferred to live in an ekele firmly planted on the ground, but that was just a preference.
The scolding of crows came nearer, and through the owl’s eyes, Darian got his first sight of the warriors of Wolverine.
There were more than twenty, perhaps as many as thirty of them; they were more heavily armed and armored than any Northerners that Darian had seen since his last encounter with the fighters of Blood Bear. Most had breastplates of boiled leather, and arm-guards and greaves of hammered bronze. All had bronze helmets and iron swords; they also carried javelins or short spears with iron points, and long daggers. A few were also armed with bows.
But they were not alone.
They had taken prisoners: many prisoners. The captives had been divided into three groups - young women, young boys, and girls. The prisoners within each group were strung out in single-file, and the women and girls (though not the boys) were tied together at the waist by a rope that led from one to the next. In addition, the older women were also tied at the wrists. The boys, all under the age of five, were allowed freedom of movement.
There must have been a hundred prisoners, and by the decorations on their costumes, they were of some fox tribe. Were they allied with Snow Fox - or even related to them?
Their captors were, without a doubt, of Wolverine. They bore the insignia of their tribe on everything - but they also bore the sign of the eclipse. The sight of that symbol, even though it was through Kuari’s eyes, made his blood run cold, and a sour taste came up the back of his throat. The last time he had seen that symbol, it had been terrifyingly close, on a pendant around the neck of the Blood Bear Shaman -
But this time there was no sign of the weird half-human creatures that Blood Bear had counted among its warriors. These were “no more than” humans.
Very well-armed, very large and muscular humans, who seriously outnumbered Darian’s group. And much as he longed to drop down out of the tree, slashing at them with his climbing stick, he knew better. He wouldn’t stand a chance, and from the cowed and beaten look of the women, they wouldn’t even be able to muster the spirit to use his attack as a distraction to make a break for freedom. But it was hard to hide in safety and do nothing, when he watched one of the warriors trip one of the women with his spear butt and laugh to see her stumble - then when he saw the fear in the eyes of girl-captives barely into puberty. They knew what their fate would be as soon as they arrived at the Wolverine village.
Darian had to repeat to himself that there was nothing he or his friends could do, but his hands clenched so tightly on the tree trunk that the bark bit into his palm and his fingernails were white. He felt another’s anger as well, and realized that Kel, circling high above, was also looking through Kuari’s eyes, and was just as enraged as he was. Gryphons had always had an inherent hatred for slavery as a matter of principle, and this was making the gryphon’s hackles rise, and quickly.
:Kel!: he called immediately. -Don’t attack! This is an order, Silver Gryphon! Stay aloft!:
He felt Kel’s wordless protest, and from the way that Keisha turned pale and clutched the trunk, so did she. It was the anger-surge of a great predator, immensely larger and more powerful than Kuari, a predator that needed to kill. Kel clamped it down after that first surge, but it left both Darian and Keisha shaking with reaction in the aftermath of the experience.
Poor Keisha; she’s never “seen” hint this way. I have; I know him for what he is. He is a killer with civilization. Kel was the sweetest and most genial creature alive, until his killing instincts were aroused. At that point, there was no creature Darian knew of that was more murderous and less stoppable.
They clung to the tree, silent, each alone with his thoughts, as Wolverine paraded their captives past them and on to their own village. Darian tried to concentrate on memorizing everything he could about the warriors - and that was when he noticed something odd. The Wolverine raiders were treating the women and girls with casual brutality, but the little boys, who were allowed to run free, were being indulged - even petted and spoiled. Any time that a boy made any kind of overture toward a Wolverine fighter, it was immediately reciprocated with a smile, a pat, a treat. And already a few of the boys were trotting at the heels of some of the men, looking up at them fearlessly.
Of course - they took these boys to make them into future Wolverine fighters. And the campaign to win their loyalty began the moment they left their own village.
Brutal they may be, but they are not stupid. Those boys would respond to the petting and spoiling just like any child of that age. In six months, they would be strutting around and imitating the warriors’ contempt for the women, even their own mothers. In a year, they would belong to Wolverine.
He wondered what the others were thinking, if they had seen what he had, and knew what it meant. This was a harvest - of breeders and future warriors. The women were no more nor less than walking wombs, valued only for what they could produce.
Whether the Wolverine fighters treated the women of their own tribe any better remained to be seen, but Darian had an idea that they might. Putting their own women higher in the social scheme “gave them an extra set of guardians for their captives. Making the captive women the slaves to their own women virtually ensured that every Wolverine woman would regard the slaves as property, rather than as a fellow.
The only reason we defeated Blood Bear was that they underestimated us. The only reason that Blood Bear is no more is that they made stupid mistakes.
All the evidence pointed to one thing - Wolverine was of the same ilk as Blood Bear had been, but they had paid attention to all the things that Blood Bear had done wrong.
And that made them all the more dangerous.
Kel was doing everything but frothing at the mouth with rage. He paced, he snapped his beak, he mantled his wings, he bristled his crest. “Jussst one!” he hissed, tearing up the sod with his fore-talons. “Let me have jussst one, Darrrrian!”
Kel had been like this since he landed. He wanted to launch an attack on the raiding party, right now - no planning, no waiting, no thinking about it. He could not bear what he had seen, and wanted to fix it. After all, he was Kelvren, the brave, fierce Silver Gryphon - he should be able to fix all of these things, by shredding those responsible for them!
Keisha had all of her shields up, and still felt the heat of his anger blazing against them. She just hoped that time and Darian’s soothing would calm him down. Right now no one was arguing with him; they were just letting him vent his emotions, agreeing, when confronted, that it was a horrible situation and should not be allowed to continue.
Hywel was as angry as Kel, but was handling it better; he was white around the eyes and mouth, but hadn’t said or done much. “Why aren’t you frothing at the mouth?” Keisha asked him quietly.
“Because it would not do good,” he replied, with a maturity she had not expected. She might have forgotten that he was a native of these parts, but he hadn’t, and he was well aware of the harsh reality of life here in the north. “Darian is right; we are too few to do anything. But - ”
He didn’t complete the thought; he looked back along the trampled underbrush where the party of captives had passed, and anger flitted over his face. Perhaps he was well aware of the harsh realities of life up here, but that didn’t mean he was inured to them. Or this is beyond what even he is used to.
Shandi had one hand on Karles’ shoulder, and Keisha guessed that she was sharing her thoughts with her Companion. Wintersky and Steelmind were impassive, and Keisha could not guess what was going on behind their masks. These aren’t our people, she reminded herself. I am sure that they care, but we can’t help the captives.
But she had an idea, and it might take Kel’s mind off his anger - or at least give him an acceptable outlet for it. “Shouldn’t we - ” she began.
Kel stopped tearing the helpless grass, and all eyes turned toward her. She swallowed, looking up into Kel’s golden glare.
“Shouldn’t we go back that way?” She pointed in the direction from which Wolverine had come. After all, the trail was clear enough. “There may be people where they came from that need help. There may be survivors,”
They stared at her in silence for a moment. Then Kel leaped into the air without another word, powering purposefully upward but remaining below the canopy of the mammoth trees so that he could follow the trail.
There seemed nothing else more appropriate to do, so without further discussion, the rest of the party mounted up and followed in his wake.
Keisha heaved a sigh of relief, which no one but her dyheli noticed. :A bit difficult for you, are they, Healer?: he asked dryly. :Not the easiest lot to deal with.:
She snorted; he knew as well as she the kinds of strain all those angry people were putting on her shields. Not that she wasn’t angry, but perhaps because she was a Healer, she’d learned to be pragmatic. You couldn’t save every patient - although you tried; you couldn’t solve every problem - though you did your best. She knew from the moment that she saw all the armed fighters that there was nothing they could do for the prisoners, much as she and everyone else would like to.
Turning their attention to something they could do something about had been the one thing she could do about the situation. She was just glad that her attempt at redirection had worked for Kel; he needed an outlet, a constructive outlet, before he flew off and did something foolish.
Now she steeled herself for what they would find at the end of the trail of trampled vegetation. Whatever it was, she knew that it would surely put a different set of stresses on them all.
It was dusk when they reached the village that they would later learn belonged to the Red Fox tribe, a group that long ago had split from Snow Fox. Kel had gotten there long before, had given them a grim summary of what they would find when they got there, then flew off on a mission of his own - and an important one, second only to the Healing Keisha would be doing when she arrived.
Kel went hunting, for there was nothing left to eat in the village, and at the moment, no one capable of hunting or gathering. Absolutely nothing edible of any kind had been left - the village had been scoured right down to the spices. Even leather, curing hides and scraped skins had been taken.
They did not need to follow the trail to find the village; the wailing of women led them there. But there was no heavy scent of smoke, for the raiders had not troubled themselves with burning any of the log houses. It was not their intention to leave the survivors without shelter, because it was not their intention that all of the survivors should die.
It had been candlemarks since the raiders hit this place; long enough for the women to gather their dead and lay them out for mourning on a single rough pyre, long enough for the wounded to receive the rough tending that was all a tribe without a Shaman could give them. The Shaman - much younger than the Shaman of Snow Fox - had been laid out with the rest of the dead by his wives, who were the source of the wailing. The rest of the women were too numb for anything but silent mourning - and at a single glance, Keisha knew they had their own internalized wounds to deal with. No one had touched the Shaman’s three wives, possibly for fear of a curse, but by the condition of the other women, clothing torn, faces bruised, and the vacant look of someone who has endured too much, they had not shared this protection.
Forewarned by Kel, Keisha was armored against their pain, emotional and physical, as the group rode into the village. Hywel preceded them afoot, calling to the survivors that help was coming; by the time the rest rode in, it was too dark for the northerners to see what they were riding, which probably spared them the fear that would have come when they saw the unfamiliar mounts. They had already endured too much, and even a little more fear might well push them over the edge of sanity.
Keisha left the organization of the survivors to the others, and went straight to work on the most seriously wounded, concentrating only on pure Healing with her Gift. Shandi and Karles supported her, lending her new strength and energy when hers faltered - then, when they were exhausted, Darian took their place. It was very, very late when she finished with the last woman; the moon was high overhead, though obscured by thick clouds, and all she wanted to do was eat and sleep - not necessarily in that order. She blessed the darkness that hid the ravaged village; with no fires outside tonight, and all of the inhabitants drugged into a semblance of sleep in their own homes, there was finally a measure of peace in this shattered place.
Darian led her into a log house, which by the trappings had belonged to the Shaman. When they entered, and all three of the Shaman’s wives descended on them, pressing food rations, venison and a hot herbal drink on her, she was too tired to be surprised, but she was very grateful.
The women left them at the hearth fire where the others had gathered - including the dyheli, Karles, and Kel, which did surprise Keisha, Kel most of all. “What are you doing here?” she asked, staring at him stupidly.
“The folk of Rrrred Fox arrre not inclined to trrreat a gift brrringerrr as an enemy,” he replied simply, and left it at that.
Judging by the fact that all of the party were eating chunks of well-roasted venison, Kel’s gifts had been generous indeed. “What can you tell me?” she asked, knowing by Darian’s rigid expression that he had learned far more than he really wanted to know.
Darian’s voice was tight with suppressed rage as he answered. “This wasn’t just a raid,” he said. “They hit this place at dawn. They took out all the sentries just before they were going to be replaced by the dawn crew, then hit the village itself. When they had taken the village, they started harvesting.”
She was startled alert by the odd word. “Harvesting?” she asked, incredulously.
He nodded, his lips white with anger, a vein in his temple throbbing. “The warriors that survived they crippled - or didn’t you notice all the missing index fingers on their bow-hands? They did the same to the older boys, so they couldn’t possibly grow up to be warriors. Without an index finger, they can’t pull a bow or use a sword.”
“But - harvesting?” she repeated.
“You were Healing them - you know the secret wounds they had in common. The invaders did their best to make certain that every woman here would be left pregnant, regardless of her age. The ones that still had husbands were left behind, the ones that had infants were left behind with their babies, and girls too young to breed. The rest were taken, along with the older girls and younger boys, as you saw. They took every scrap of food, and anything that was valuable - but they left the bare essentials, and they left the houses intact.” She actually heard his teeth gritting as he snarled silently. “They intend to come back, Keisha. They intend to come back as soon as these people have started to recover. They’ll take girls old enough to breed, and young boys, and strip the place again. And they’ll keep coming back, as long as there is anything left of Red Fox.”
“These are not our people, Darian,” Steelmind said, in that slow, deliberate way of his. “We have already done more than they would expect from an ally.”
She reached for his hand and clasped it, as he controlled his temper. Kel hung his head wearily; the gryphon was just as angry, but they all knew that Steelmind was only telling the truth.
“We’ve done more than our share,” Shandi added, her voice flat. “Remember why we’re here. It’s not to fight a war with people who don’t even know we exist. It’s to look for danger to Valdemar, and find your parents, Darian. If we take the time to get involved in this, we may never do those things.”
He didn’t answer; he didn’t have to; Keisha felt his upset even though her shields were up and tight, as a sick feeling in her stomach and a dry lump in her throat.
No one else said anything; there didn’t seem to be much that anyone could say. Eventually they all went to their sleeping rolls in silence - but Darian held her very tight for a long, long time, and she cradled him, projecting peace, until he relaxed and finally slept.
But the only reason she slept was because she was too tired not to.
She was the first to wake the next day, and after a sketchy meal that she ate only because she needed the energy, went straight to her patients. They were doing better than she had any reason to expect; the women had mustered the tattered remains of their courage and were tending to the wounded men. Each man had his own wife taking care of him, and usually at least one other woman as well. It occurred to Keisha that this might be in self-defense. Wolverine had not taken the wives of any man who lived through the raid, so obviously the best way to keep from getting taken was to become someone’s second or third wife.
But whatever their motives, they were working as hard as the “real” wives, which was giving the wounded men some excellent care.
The Shaman’s widows had fired the funeral pyre and were chanting and drumming the farewell to the dead - they might not be Wisewomen themselves, but they knew the ceremonies, and no one was going to dispute their right to see that the dead were properly taken care of. All three of them sat on the upwind side, two playing a large drum, the third playing a counterpoint on a smaller drum. Whatever they had built the pyre out of, it had gone up like an oil-soaked torch, and was burning hotly with very little smoke.
Keisha was very glad that the village was upwind of the pyre; as it was, the unmistakable too-sweet scent of burning flesh made her stomach lurch, and she had to fight her breakfast back down.
Slowly the tribe of Red Fox was reclaiming its village and its life. A few children had recovered enough spirit to play a counting game quietly together, and the prepubescent girls were restoring order to the open spaces between the log houses by the simple expedient of throwing anything that was of no use into a rubbish pile and dividing the rest among themselves.
There wasn’t a great deal to divide. Although the raiders hadn’t taken common clothing and domestic utensils, that was about all that they had left. Finished furs and trade goods in the storehouses were gone, as were “show” blankets, weapons, and every bit of dried meat and fish. The women had been too traumatized to go out gathering, and the stocks of perishable foods hidden away was low. Unless the remaining men could recover enough to hunt soon, they would be starving in a matter of weeks.
As Keisha made her rounds, she noticed Shandi and Karles watching the villagers thoughtfully, as if they were making some kind of assessment. Shandi glanced over at her once, but said nothing, so Keisha left her to her thoughts and continued taking care of the wounded.
She finished around noon, and returned to the Shaman’s house. The pyre was nothing but embers now, for which she was very grateful, and the widows had thrown great heaps of green cedar, wiiite sage, and juniper on the coals. The scented smoke had overcome the stench of the pyre.
A line of gutted deer carcasses hung upside down by their rear hooves in the trees just outside the Shaman’s house; Kel and some of the others must have been very busy this morning. Ordinarily it wasn’t like Kel or the Tayledras to take out an entire herd of deer, but under the circumstances, it was the right thing to do.
Maybe Red Fox won’t starve, she thought with a little more hope. This looks like enough to keep them going for a while.
Shandi met her at the door as she approached, stopping her with a look. “How long do you think that will last?” she asked, nodding toward the line of carcasses.
Keisha counted the deer, made a quick mental estimate of the number of people left and how much they would need to eat, added a bit more for generosity, and said, “About a fortnight.”
Shandi nodded, and sucked on her lower lip for a moment. “That was what I figured. How long before most of the injured can hunt for themselves? About a fortnight?”
“Pretty much,” she said truthfully, wondering what Shandi was thinking. “I’ve got them about half Healed; if we left now, it would be about a fortnight before they could do anything strenuous.” There was something going on in her sister’s mind - but what?
Darian pushed the blanket over the door aside and joined them, looking sharply at Shandi. “What’s on your mind?” he asked abruptly, the same question Keisha had.
“These people used to be in Snow Fox,” Shandi told him. “They split off about three generations ago, but they’re still a Snow Fox sept. Neta can put the directions to Snow Fox right into the heads of as many people as we need to. We can leave them with enough food to get them healed up, and they can make it to safety before anyone from Wolverine comes checking on them. There’s your solution.”
Keisha heaved a sigh of relief as the tension eased out of Darian. “There’s our solution,” he agreed, nodding, the worry lines in his forehead smoothing out. “They won’t burden themselves down with possessions, because they don’t have any to speak of. Snow Fox has to take them in; they’re related. There’s nothing keeping them here, so I doubt they’ll make any objections, but let me check and see what Hywel thinks.”
Keisha went back into the log house while Shandi, Karles, and Darian went over to the butchering area where Hywel was working to turn the deer into strips of jerked meat.
She ate without tasting what she was eating, stayed a moment to rest, then went back to her patients. Now she had helpers - helpers who were dealing with their own pain by giving themselves something to think about besides their own ordeals, and they were very good at obeying her directions. She gave the same instructions so many times she could recite them without thinking about it: “Wash your hands in water that’s been boiled and cooled. Pull the dressing off carefully; don’t touch the wound with your hands. Sprinkle the mold-powder on the wound, check for the signs of infection. Take a new dressing that’s been washed and boiled, rebandage the wound.” One man had the start of an infection; she used the occasion to call all the women together to give them a lesson in what infection looked like and how to deal with it. If they aren’t Wisewomen, they’ll certainly have half the training by the time this is over. . . .
By nightfall she was as exhausted as she had been the previous night, but when she returned to the group around the fire in the log house, the mood there was so much more cheerful that she nearly wept with gratitude. She didn’t, but she quietly basked in the positive feelings while she ate, listening to the discussions of what to do to prepare Red Fox for the journey. The Shaman’s widows joined in the discussion - not with animation, but with a determination that surprised and pleased her. They were ready to leave now, and anything they could do to hasten the date of departure would be dealt with.
“Neta already gave Gwynver, Rinan, and Dedren the directions to Snow Fox,” Darian told her in an aside during a pause in the discussion. “They’re going to tell the rest of the tribe tomorrow that their husband and the Red Fox spirit came to them in a dream tonight - the Red Fox turned white, and their husband showed them the way to their allies.”
“Nobody will argue with that,” Hywel agreed, looking more like his old self. “And who knows? Tonight it might well happen that way. If I were the Red Fox, I would certainly choose to do that for my people.”
“Young man!” called one of the three women - who was certainly no older than Hywel - in an imperious tone. “Tell me again where in the stream to place the fish trap!”
Hywel rolled his eyes, but turned back to her with all the deference due that rare woman who ranked higher than a young warrior, and the conversation resumed. Keisha leaned against Darian and closed her eyes. There was no more tension in the air; even Kel was satisfied with the solution. No longer having to keep her shields reinforced, she relaxed further - then she heard the word sleep in a dyheli mind-voice and the next thing she knew, Darian was putting her into her sleeping roll.
She murmured her thanks, and unable to even get her eyes open, gave up and fell back into dreamless slumber.