Berry picking meant that the octet was doing well, for berries were something of a luxury. In bad times, when hunting was difficult - which was not often - they didn't have the time to pick berries, but as soon as the good times came again off they went berry picking, as if they craved the sweet taste. They ate the berries as they came, of course, but they also used the juice in the sauce for the dried slices of meat. The sauce did not need the juice but it was better with it, so every three or four days when the times were good, they picked berries. It was also good fun.
The small trees on which the berries grew were not far away, well within the range of their whistles. It meant they did not have to clear the camp, whose site had been chosen because approaching enemies were easy to see. The three left behind to prepare the meat were also there to defend the camp and blow their whistles if there was any danger.
Eln-Tika removed her cloak now that the sun was up; she was revealed as being distinctly slighter than the others. With the four other berry pickers, she walked to the waiting blenji carrying her light saddle. She touched the neck of her animal and it crouched onto its arms, allowing Eln-Tika to fasten the saddle to the blenji’s neck. She then mounted, the blenji straightened and, with the others, set off slowly towards the berry trees.
It was the blenjis which made the octet the formidable fighting force it was. These animals could outrun even the truly terrifying speed-dragon. On the ground the chanits were accurate and fast archers, but they were not mobile. They could run, certainly, but not as fast as most of their enemies. But mounted on the neck of a blenji, firmly seated in the skin and wood saddle, the two scabbards of arrows on his back and two more on either side of the saddle, a chanit was an awesome adversary. It was becoming quite rare for them to be attacked, for their enemies were learning to stay away. And when a herd of flathead grazers saw them coming there was panic. For some time now the octet had lived well. They had killed every few days, and they had picked berries between the kills. Eln-Tika was happy but she sometimes wondered how long it would last. Unlike the other members of the octet, she did not always live in the present. She often thought of the past, of her time with the group in which she was born, and when the inevitable parting came and she became the telepath of a new octet. Sometime in the future the octet would stop its wanderings and lay eggs, and later they would split into two octets. But that was well in the future, and as inevitable and as joyous as the sunrise. Her worries concerned the immediate future, but she comforted herself by her self-knowledge: she might be a telepath, but she did not know the future any more than anyone else did. For the moment she decided to be warily happy.
Berry picking was a methodical business, as was everything the octet did. They began by picking the berries at ground level, and when there were no more to pick they mounted their blenjis and picked the berries at that level. When they had exhausted the berries there they would either move to a new site, or, if Wath-Moll decided they had enough, they would ride back to camp. In this case, they rode back to camp.
The berries were blue, large, and juicy. They picked different berries at different times of the year. Later there were red ones, just as good as the blue ones but with a different taste, and after were the yellow ones, but these had a slightly sour flavour, although they were still better than no berries at all.
The berries were collected in big leaves which had the advantage of being plentiful and the disadvantage of falling apart after a few days. The leather saddle-bags lasted for ever, of course, but it would have been unthinkable to use these for carrying berries for the juice would stain and ruin them.
The five returned to camp to find that the other three were stewing the meat from the previous day's kill. The fire was crackling brightly in what was becoming a rather overcast afternoon.
‘Rain before long,’ Stu-Bel commented after a brief glance at the sky.
‘Perhaps we should put up the roof,’ Eln-Tika said. ‘Then we wouldn't have to go to sleep early.’
‘Yes, we'll do that,’ Wath-Moll said. ‘It will allow us to carry on with last night's argument.’
Eln-Tika, Stu-bel, and the others grinned but said nothing.
It didn't take long to put up the roof. Eight poles, twelve cross-beams, and four sheets of skin, the whole structure pegged together, and it was done: a low shelter under which the octet could sit and eat and drink and talk out of the rain. They completed the task by digging a shallow ditch around the structure with their bone spades. This would stop rainwater flooding the floor of the shelter.
The deluge began immediately after cooking was finished. Each member of the octet dived under the roof with his or her bowl of stew and mug of water and complacently watched the rain pouring down. Eln-Tika contemplated the blenjis, each tied to a tree, but each within range of sufficient vegetation for them to eat. They were stolidly standing in the rain, immobile. The water was bouncing off their small heads and long necks and broad backs and long powerful tails, it was raining so hard. Yet they did not seem to mind. They would be left out all night too, and they did not seem to mind that either.
By contrast, the chanits hated the rain. They only hunted in it if they had to. It was silly really, Eln-Tika thought, for the flatheads were still there. They didn't go away just because it was raining. It would make a topic for an evening's discussion, but not tonight. Last night's argument had been wonderful and it was still to finish.
Eln-Tika often wondered why they had to talk the way they did. The talks did not seem to achieve anything useful, and the octet was nothing if not pragmatic. They hunted, they gathered, they bred, yet in the evenings they talked for pure enjoyment. Perhaps this was why they existed, in order to enjoy themselves. Eln-Tika ate her stew, gazed absently at the rain, listened to the conversation of her friends, and wondered why they were what they were, but, as usual, she had no answers. They were intelligent - they had to be in order to survive - they rode another animal whose strength and speed was far greater than their own. They had weapons whose range was far beyond the striking claws of their greatest enemies, and they could kill a flathead almost before the animal knew they were there. They had the intelligence to do all these things, and it allowed them to survive, but it was not enough. They needed to talk, to discuss, to contemplate abstractions, and if they did not they went mad.
Wath-Moll was more practical than intellectual, but his resumé, as always, was succinct.
‘We are discussing the nature of the stars. Risha-Ne believes they are tiny holes in the night curtain through which the light of day is shining. Stu-Bel believes they are glowing insects stuck to the dome of night, while Eln-Tika believes they are suns a long way off. Eln-Tika was about to begin her reasoning when we decided to sleep. Eln-Tika?’
She spoke in her quiet, soft voice, even quieter and softer than the other chanits. The only other sound was the drumming of rain on the roof. The night animals that normally called through the ferns and trees were silent. It was black outside but the light from a small lamp allowed them to see each other.
‘One fact we are all agreed on - the moon is round, and the sun is round. It is very likely that the earth is also round, although we don't have total unanimity on that point. Everything close to us is round. Furthermore, the sun and the moon and the stars move, and we believe this is because the earth is turning, not them. Also, we can see that the moon has a shadow so that sometimes it is night and sometimes it is day. It is reasonable to suppose that the earth also has a shadow and this is the cause of night. Glow-worms stuck to the dome of night is a nonsense,’ she said, glancing at Stu-Bel. ‘Night is simply caused by the sun being blotted out by the earth. Anyway, everything in the sky is round, so why shouldn't the stars be round?’
‘The planets are,’ Wath-Moll commented.
‘That's right,’ Eln-Tika said eagerly. ‘We can see that the evening star is round and that it has a shadow because it is between us and the sun. I explained that one a little while ago.’
‘You did
indeed,’ Ya-To said drily.
‘I think each star is a sun, and around each star planets are moving just like ours do.’
‘They would have to be a long way off to be suns,’ Risha-Ne said meditatively. ‘A very long way off.’
‘Yes, they would,’ Eln-Tika said. ‘Which would mean that everything we can see is enormous.’
There was a short silence.
‘That seems reasonable,’ Wath-Moll said. ‘It makes us very small in comparison, which is probably right.’
Ya-To took up the argument. ‘So where did it all come from? How was it created?’
‘Why should it have been created?’ Wath-Moll retorted. ‘This is the way it is, and always has been. Nothing created it.’
Nobody disagreed, but Risha-Ne took up the defence of her argument. ‘Why can't the stars be holes?’ she asked.
‘Holes in a shadow?’ Eln-Tika queried derisively. ‘Anyway the stars are different colours. If they were holes they'd all be the same.’
‘No they wouldn't,’ Risha-Ne said. ‘Some would be blue because they'd be showing blue sky. Some would be white because they'd be showing clouds, and so on.’
‘If that were the case, Risha-Ne, then the colours of individual stars would change because the clouds would be moving behind them, but they don't. We know that every star has its own colour.’
‘If they were suns, they'd all be yellow,’ Ya-To said.
‘I know. I can't explain that one.’
‘Aha. The argument fails.’
Wath-Moll grinned, as did the others. ‘So we can't explain the stars.’
‘We can't explain it because we don't know enough,’ Eln-Tika said.
‘How do we learn more?’ Vella-Mok asked. She was the quietest of the group, someone whom Wath-Moll had tried to encourage in the discussions.
‘Those in the towns know more,’ Ya-To said.
‘We don't really know that,’ Wath-Moll replied, ‘because none of us has been to a town. Mind you, I expect you're right. All these things we have - bows, arrows, poisons, bowls, knives - we didn't invent them. We made them, but we didn't invent them. Somebody else did, probably somebody in a town.’
‘Perhaps we should visit a town,’ Ya-To suggested.
‘Perhaps. When the rains come, maybe. We shall see.’
Eln-Tika gazed round the shadowed faces of her friends, some confident, some less so, some serious, some amused. Risha-Ne had realised that her argument was as full of holes as her concept of the stars and was laughing at herself. Vella-Mok was laughing with her, which pleased Eln-Tika. Wath-Moll caught her eyes and she realised that Wath-Moll knew what she was thinking. She grinned at him and he grinned back. Eln-Tika was very happy.
It was still raining when the octet retired to their own tents. Ya-To was on lookout so he remained under the roof. He did not have a danger-sense but he knew Eln-Tika slept very lightly and somehow always managed to wake whenever there was danger. But he wanted her opinion before she retired to her tent. He asked her the inevitable question.
‘Is there danger?’
‘No, there is no danger.’
Ya-To was satisfied. Eln-Tika's sense of danger was phenomenal. She had saved them many times by finding the time to prepare. He sat contented under the roof and listened to the rain slackening. Soon it stopped altogether and the stars appeared, brilliant sparks of colour against the black. He smiled at them. The evening's discussion had been a good one. They all felt recharged after an evening like that. He watched the half-moon emerge from behind a cloud and he smiled at that too.
Chapter 2
Hunting flathead grazers was easy. Vast herds lived all around. They were big, slow-moving, dull-witted animals whose only method of attack was a lumbering leap. But they rarely attacked, and if you did not try to corner one, they never attacked. At the first sight of the octet they would run away, but the octet, mounted on its blenjis, was faster. To race after a pre-targeted animal and stop it with arrows was easy. All the chanits were superb riders and excellent archers; they had to be to survive.
Their only problem was the presence of other predators. Slashers were the worst. They were small and fast and mean, and their great slashing hind-claws were awesomely efficient. Eln-Tika could not understand them. She could not understand why, with a super-abundance of flatheads - more than enough for all the hunters - they went out of their way to attack the octet. That the octet was still an octet gave an idea of their failure, but one day the slashers might succeed. Eln-Tika had a sense of distant danger, nothing to worry the octet at the moment, and it had to do with slashers. But for the present they were safe. Eln-Tika rode easily on the left flank of the group contented and ready for the excitement of the hunt.
The flatheads were in view now. The nearer ones looked up at their approach and began to run away. Wath-Moll, who was leading, pointed out the one to attack and they separated to out-flank it. Eln-Tika urged her blenji forward. The beast was flying now and she laughed with the exhilaration. The flatheads were running at full speed but she was faster. She saw Wath-Moll taking aim from his position directly behind the flathead, then the arrow hit the animal’s rump, slowing it slightly. Eln-Tika approached from the side, took aim, and saw the arrow strike the animal's neck. The hunt was almost over. More arrows were fired and the prey was dead.
The next stage was always a moment of danger. Three of them had to dismount to rope the flathead to two of the blenjis so they could drag it back to the camp. It was a time when a herd of thirty or so slashers could try to steal the flathead from three dismounted and five mounted chanits.
Before they dismounted Wath-Moll asked the inevitable question.
‘There is no danger,’ Eln-Tika replied.
Ya-To, Stu-Bel, and Vella-Mok dismounted while Se-Pen and Wath-Moll manoeuvred their blenjis into position. Eln-Tika, Palui-Ka, and Risha-Ne kept watch. When the dead flathead had been tied and roped to the two pulling blenjis the octet returned to the site of the camp.
They thought of it as the site of the camp rather than the camp itself because, on hunting days, they dismantled the tents and took them with them for they were not prepared to leave the camp unguarded. The other alternative, to split the group, was highly dangerous as the camp was out of whistle-range of the hunters.
Within an hour the camp was back as it was. Dismembering the kill took another hour, and roasting the most tender parts of the meat over the fire did not take long at all. The octet was nothing if not efficient.
That evening the discussion was about towns. Should the octet visit one? Should it trade some skins or horns for whatever the town had to offer?
The octet, a group of hunters and nomads, rarely met another octet. They had not done so for over a year now, and perhaps it was time to visit others of their kind. Octets were becoming rarer too as, after visiting a town, they had a habit of staying, liking what they found.
The octet knew little about towns. They knew they were communities of chanits living in permanent homes, but they had no idea how the towns functioned. Wath-Moll was not in favour of a town visit for he feared the octet would be disbanded and he would no longer be leader. Ya-To was in favour. He felt the group needed a change, needed to listen to new ideas, discover what the town had to offer. Eln-Tika was not sure. The octet had worked so well for so long that it seemed a shame to change anything. But Ya-To might be right. They were well-fed, in good health, but their minds were stagnating. The evening discussions were designed to prevent this, but discussions between the same eight chanits meant a certain repetitiveness. She was not sure, and neither were most of the others, and the discussion ended indecisively.
The next hunt broke the rhythm of their calm routine. They had made the kill and three were about to dismount.
‘Danger!’ Eln-Tika shouted.
They looked around but saw nothing.
‘Danger! To the left!’
Moments later three slashers appeared through the bushes and moments after that they were
dead, killed by three arrows from the bows of the octet.
‘Still danger,’ Eln-Tika warned. ‘To the right!’
They were being surrounded, but three more dead slowed the attackers. The chanits could see no more slashers. Wath-Moll looked at Eln-Tika interrogatively.
‘No danger,’ Eln-Tika called. ‘They've gone away.’
‘You'd think they would have learnt by now,’ Wath-Moll commented.
‘Perhaps they will one day,’ Ya-To said seriously.
Eln-Tika stared at him in consternation. Her intuition was suddenly frightening her.
Fifteen days later they moved camp; they moved every thirty days or so. There was no conscious reason for this; but they became uncomfortable if they were stationary for too long. They packed everything away in their saddle-bags and mounted the blenjis. Wath-Moll had decided on a journey to the north, a day's easy riding. They had food, they were healthy, they were ready for anything.
The journey took them through the lightly wooded hills that had been their home for the last few months. In the valleys there were small streams where they and their mounts could drink, while the ferns and trees provided shade when they wanted to rest. Once in a while a small animal, of no interest to the octet, scampered across their path; otherwise they saw nothing.
At the end of the day they set up camp near the base of a low cliff. It was a good site, but it was not quite right. They all felt the same without knowing quite why. For the last few hours the country had become hillier. Lumps of reddish rocks emerged from the ground, sometimes reaching higher than the tallest ferns. It was an interesting terrain, but Eln-Tika felt uneasy about it.
‘Danger, you think?’ Wath-Moll asked, after she had explained her feelings to him.
‘Not exactly. Just a slightly uncomfortable feeling.’
‘Let me know if it gets stronger,’ he said unnecessarily.
They moved on the following morning, leaving the area of hills and red rocks for a more familiar terrain.
‘There should be flatheads here,’ Se-Pen commented.
The First Riders Page 2
