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A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume I

Page 47

by Sharon Lee


  The planet of his birth, he thought, suddenly bitter; which he had wished with all his heart to escape—and found his wish well-granted.

  Carefully, not wanting to awaken the girl-child asleep on his shoulder, he drew a breath, and looked about him.

  It was not the largest tent he had seen among the Sanilithe, nor the tidiest, though it might, considering the numerous patches in the skin walls, make some claim to the shabbiest.

  Scattered around, in no order he could discern, were baskets, pots, robes, and rugs. Poles lined the walls, and from them hung familiar clusters of dried herbs and medicinal plants.

  Gineah had divided her tent into sections—a place which was erifu and off-limits to ham-fisted sons of the tent, a place to store foodstuffs and water, a place for that same ham-fisted son to keep his weapons, his skins, and his bedroll. The center was common area, where meals were made and where grandmother and son might dawdle over their warmed beer, talking far into the night.

  Well, and Gineah’s tent was as distant from him as his mother’s house, now that he was married.

  He sighed and brought his gaze back to the child’s sleeping face. The stripes of paint adorning her cheeks were smeared and faded. The Sanilithe did decorate their faces—certain signs were erifu, others were, as far as he understood, nothing more than exuberance. It seemed to him that he had seen stripes like these before—white, yellow, red, in alternation—and suddenly, he remembered.

  Mourning stripes. Someone of this tent had died—recently. The stripes were worn only for three days after the deceased had been commended to the fire.

  Outside, a woman’s voice rose in the welcome-morning song. The girl asleep on his arm stirred, and opened her eyes, face tensing. He smiled, deliberately.

  “Good morning, Arika,” he said softly.

  Her face relaxed, though she did not go so far as to smile. “Good morning, Slade,” she returned, seriously, and looked upward to the patch of sullen sky visible through the smoke hole.

  “We must rise,” she said abruptly, snaking out of their tumbled bed and rolling to her feet. “There is much to do.”

  Naked, she hesitated, staring about the disordered tent, then darted to one side, where she found a tunic. She pulled it over her head; emerging, she frowned at Slade, still slugabed.

  “Rise!” she snapped, and reached for the pair of leather leggings hanging over a cracked storage pot.

  Sighing, he rose, found his kilt on the dirt floor by the edge of the fire, picked it up, shook it out, and wrapped it around his loins, feeling even more foolish, now that there was no kindly drug diluting his perceptions. Quickly, he knotted the leather, wishing for shirt and leggings.

  “Slade.”

  He turned. Arika held her hands up, showing him the blade in her right, and the comb, in her left. “I will cut your hair, now, and we will go to the smith. Then we will go to the tent of Grandmother Gineah and bring away those things she allows to be yours.” She smiled, very slightly. “The sooner we do these things, the sooner we may eat.”

  Eat. His stomach, reminded of its fast, set up a complaint, and he moved sprightly indeed and sat on the floor at her feet.

  “Be still now,” she said, and plied the comb, surprisingly gentle; and then the knife, in long, practiced sweeps.

  Slade closed his eyes as the weight of his hair fell away, leaving the back of his neck chill.

  “Done.”

  He lifted his hands to his head, feeling strands barely two fingers long. Gods alone knew what he looked like, but at least he was rid of the braid, which had a penchant for becoming entangled in twigs, and flirting with fires . . .

  “Come.” Arika was already unlacing the flap. “The smith.”

  Indeed, the smith. He rolled to his feet and followed his wife out into the new day.

  Some while later, earlobe stinging and stomach rumbling, he stood two paces behind his wife, before Gineah’s tent.

  A shadow moved and the grandmother stepped out, plump and grizzled, her arms encircled with the many bracelets of her station.

  Before him, Arika spread her arms wide in the traditional greeting to one of the Wise.

  “Grandmother,” she murmured, respectfully.

  “Daughter,” Gineah replied, and moved her eyes, pinning Slade with a bright blue glance. “Hunter.”

  He bowed, which the Sanilithe did not do. “Grandmother.”

  She stepped forward, her eyes on Arika. “You could have come to me.”

  Arika bit her lip, and shook her hair back in what Slade was beginning to understand as a nervous gesture. “I swore to Keneple that the tent would endure,” she said, her voice not quite steady.

  “And a tent must have a hunter.” Gineah sighed. “Child . . .” She stopped.

  “Please,” she said, after a moment, “allow your hunter to enter my tent and collect those things which have been made ready for him.”

  “Yes . . .” Arika whispered. She straightened shoulders that had begun to sag and looked to him, chin up.

  “Slade, you may find what Grandmother Gineah has left for you and bring it forth.”

  “Yes,” he said in his turn and slipped into the tent that had been his home for two full turns of season.

  Inside, all was neat and familiar; it smelled of herbs, and leather; smoke and the scent of Gineah herself. Tears rose to his eyes. Blinking them away, he turned toward the corner which had been his.

  There were several bundles there, as well as his spear, his knives, and the unfinished length of braided hide he had been working on as he sat at the fire with Gineah in the evenings.

  He knelt and examined the bindings of each pack, in no hurry, wanting to give Gineah as much time as possible to share what wisdom she might with his girl-wife. It came to him that it was Keneple who had died, and who Arika mourned. The name meant nothing to him, but that was not unusual. Well as he knew the names of those with whom his tent traveled in the seasons of gathering, little did he know the names, or the faces, of those who traveled other routes.

  Kneeling on the mat among his bundles, his Choosing became real to him: he was now tied to a tent that would follow a different route, come the Light Season, and which held allegiances and debts that he did not understand. The ones he would hunt beside would not be the same men he had come to know—who had come to know and accept him, with all his incomprehensible difficulties—as a brother.

  He gasped. This time, the tears escaped to moisten his cheeks. To be taken from everything and everyone he knew—and, yet, what did it matter? He was the alien here, shipwrecked and dead to all he had been. To lose one tent, one old woman, half-a-dozen savage brothers—what was that, against the magnitude of his other losses?

  Crouched beside the small pile of his belongings, he wept, then wiped his face with his forearm and forced himself to his feet.

  He draped the bundles about himself as Verad had taught him to do, slipped his knives, carefully, into the waist of his kilt and hefted the spear.

  Outside, Gineah embraced Arika, and stepped aside. “Take care of my son, who is now your hunter, Daughter.”

  “Grandmother, I will.” Arika swallowed, and Slade saw that her cheeks were also damp. “You are welcome in my tent, always.”

  Gineah smiled upon them, and raised her hands in blessing above their heads. Then, wordless, she re-entered her tent.

  Arika licked her lips, nodded to Slade. He followed her across the camp, to their shabby and disordered home.

  Kneeling on the dirt floor next to the fire pit, Slade unrolled his bundles. The first held his hunting leathers and boots, as well as a vest sewn of kwevit hides with the fur attached. He dressed quickly, rolling the kilt and putting it with the vest, then turned his attention to the rest, chewing on a strip of dried meat Arika had given him.

  She was at the back of the tent; he could hear her moving things, possibly attempting to impose order upon the clutter, a project of which he heartily approved.

  Opening the next bu
ndle, he found the furs and skins of his own bed, and several sealed medicine pots. He smiled, profoundly warmed, for Gineah took care with her potions, which were genuinely soothing of bruises, cuts and strained muscles.

  Another bundle gave up his second pair of leggings, three sitting mats, and pots containing dried legumes, jerked meat, and raisins. Too, there was the bag ritually made from the skin of the very first kwevit he’d taken and meant to carry what Verad called “the hunter’s touch,” which was the only property besides his weapons and his clothes that a hunter could be said to own. The knot was undisturbed, and inside, among the scent-masking potions, feathers, and special stones that he had been given by his brother of the hunt, was his paltry supply of Liaden nutrients. Slade smiled again, and thanked Gineah in his heart.

  “Where do those things come from?” Arika’s voice was shrill. He spun on his knees and looked up, seeing her face twisted with anger, her eyes blazing green fire.

  “Gineah gave them,” he said, keeping his voice gentle.

  She was not soothed. “Return them! I am the mother of this tent—and this tent is not in need!”

  Very slowly, hands loose at his sides, Slade rose. Deliberately, he looked about him, at the clutter, at the tatters, at the soot. He looked back to her angry face.

  “The tent must eat,” he said.

  “The tent will eat,” she snapped. “The hunter will see to it.”

  “Yes.” He moved a hand, showing her the bounty Gineah had sent. “These were given by the grandmother, to the hunter. I have seen that the tent will eat.”

  She glared, lips parting, then turned and stomped away.

  Sighing, Slade looked about him for an uncluttered corner to call his own.

  They worked in silence, he on his side, she on hers. It was not so large a tent that they were unaware of each other, and had they been in charity, Slade thought ruefully, they might have made a merry time of it. And, really, it was wrong that they continued thus in anger. Unless he did something very stupid on a hunt, they would be partners for—some time. They needed each other’s goodwill and willing cooperation—the tent could not function, else.

  Sighing, he straightened from tidying away his sleeping roll, and turned.

  Across the tent, Arika stood with a pot cradled in her arms, her head bent, hair obscuring her face.

  Biting back a curse, Slade crossed to her side, and put a careful hand on her arm.

  She gasped, and started, eyes flying to his face, her lashes damp, the remains of the mourning paint running in long, smeary lines down her cheeks.

  “Peace,” he said, as gently as he knew how. “Gineah meant well. We should not be at odds because of her kindness.”

  She swallowed, and shook her hair back from her wet cheeks. “I—Tales of Grandmother Gineah’s good works are told around story fires wherever the Sanilithe gather. I will be proud to tell my own story, that the grandmother so valued her son she gave his wife-tent a Dark Season’s worth of provisions, as a measure of her regard.”

  “A good story,” he said, softly. “And nothing to weep for.”

  Arika snuffled, and raised a hand to scrub at her cheeks.

  “I weep because—” Another gulp, and a wave around at the general chaos. “It was not like this. It was orderly and, and erifu and—and the babe was born dead, and Keneple caught the milk fever, and the grandmothers did what there was to do . . .” The tears were flowing again, and she hugged the pot tight to her chest.

  “So, she died,” she whispered. “It was past time to leave for Dark Camp . . . They helped me with the pyre before they left. I packed the tent in haste and, and—“ She bent her head, hair falling forward to shroud her face. “Erifu has been broken, and I don’t know how . . .”

  He slipped an arm around her waist, as she cuddled her pot and wept, offering the comfort of his warmth.

  Gently, he asked, “Keneple was your mother?”

  Arika sniffled. “My elder sister. Elae—her hunter—fell from a rock ledge at Far Gathering and broke his neck. We—” Her grief overtook her, then, and there were no more words for a time.

  Slade stroked her hair, murmuring nonsense phrases, as he had heard Gineah murmur to soothe a sick child.

  Gods, he thought, the tragedy unrolling before his mind’s eye. Every one of the tent dead, save herself, within the space of one summer walkabout? Mother, hunter, and hopeful babe—gone, leaving one grieving girl-child, who had promised her dying sister that she would not allow the tent to lapse . . .

  “Arika,” he murmured. “Gineah taught me. We can together put things right. Our tent will be erifu and the envy of every hunter!”

  She looked at him sidewise through her hair. “The grandmother taught you how to order a tent? But that is—”

  “Who says no to a grandmother when she requires a thing?” he asked, smoothly.

  That argument had weight. Arika straightened. “We do as the grandmother says.”

  “We do,” he said, and smiled at her. “Let us begin in the Windward corner.”

  Slade shivered in the light wind and held his end of the braided leather rope loosely by the knot. The other end was tied to the most robust of the shrub-like trees in the thicket with a knot Verad would have frowned upon had he seen it, for it looked to be more erifu than the knots men might use. All around, the rocks, bushes and moss glittered silver in the starlight—ice, and treacherous footing for even a skilled hunter.

  As had become his habit since his mating, Slade hunted alone. He regretted the loss of Verad’s companionship, but the elder hunter had grown even more disapproving of Slade’s methods. Hunting alone, he had perfected those methods. It was seldom, now, that their tent was without fresh meat.

  Today, Slade thought, might be one of those rare days when he returned empty-handed. If the binkayli failed to swarm, if his throw went awry, if the leather parted, if the branch gave way—if, if, if . . .

  One-handed, Slade reached to his belt and worked the knot on the hunter’s touch. Though he hunted solitary, he was often enough among other hunters at the end of the day, when casual groups might form to discuss the weather, the hunting, the lie of the land for tomorrow’s hunt. Thus, he had added several odd quartz bits, the tail fur of an ontradube, and the sharply broken stub of the same creature’s small antler to his collection of magical items, as further camouflage.

  Finding the vial of vitamins by touch among the lot was a chore, but he succeeded, and squeezed the drops into his mouth. He grimaced at the taste, and at the state of the container, and dropped it back into the bag.

  Checking his hold on the leather, his nose hair bristled. Cold, cold, cold.

  From his left came a rolling rumble, as of dozens of hooves hitting the frozen ground. Slade tensed, then forced himself to relax, pushing all thought of failure—all thought—from his mind, just as the binkayli burst out of the silvered thicket, barely six paces from his crouching place, running hard across the open land.

  He threw, the lasso arced into the spangled air, spun and fell about the neck of a well-grown binkayli stallion.

  Oblivious, the stallion raced on. The rope stretched, the noose tightened. The branch held, held—and broke in a clatter of scattered ice.

  Slade swore and leapt. His boots skidded on the icy surface, he twisted, clawing for balance, and fell badly, left leg bent beneath him, head cracking against the ground.

  Half-dazed, he saw the rope and the branch speed across the icy ground in the wake of the stallion. The pounding of hooves vibrated through his head, and finally faded away.

  It was late when he limped back into camp, leaning heavily on his spear. He staggered to his own tent, standing silver and serene ’neath the changeless winter sky, pushed the flap back, ducked inside—and froze.

  The air was pungent with some unfamiliar odor, and thick with smoke. Arika sat, cross-legged and naked, before the fire, eyes closed, holding a hunter’s gutting knife between her palms. Two women he did not know knelt, fully clothed,
facing her.

  Slade moved as quietly as he was able, meaning to retire to the corner where he kept his hunter’s gear, to warm himself, and rest his injured leg.

  One of the strangers looked over her shoulder and leapt up, her eyes wide and angry. She grabbed his arm, none-too-gently, and shoved him toward the flap.

  “You are not allowed here!” she hissed. “Go! Do not return until you are summoned!” Another shove, and a third, which sent him stumbling out into the cold, ice-rimed camp.

  Slade stood for a moment, gathering his wits; shivering, aching, and angry. Then, leaning hard on his spear, he limped away, toward Gineah’s tent.

  “Rest, tomorrow and tomorrow,” Gineah said, rising from her inspection of the injured leg. “The muscles are angry, and you—you are a very fortunate hunter, young Slade. You might have broken that leg, and then you would have been a dead hunter, alone in the freezing darkness, without a brother of the hunt nearby to aid you.”

  He smiled up at her. “I was fortunate, I know. I will be more careful, Gineah.”

  She snorted and motioned him to sit up, as she crossed to the cook fire and the pot hanging there. “At least your head is hard,” she said—and then, “You should not hunt alone.”

  “I must,” he said. “My methods frighten Verad, and the others are more timid still.”

  Gineah ladled soup into bowls and brought them back to the hearth fire, handing one to Slade.

  “Eat.” She ordered. “And while you eat, tell me what your wife was about, to allow a stranger to send you from her tent.”

  So he ate, and told her of his strange homecoming, with Arika entranced or uncaring, the smoke, the knife, and the woman who had banished him.

  “So.” Gineah looked at him straightly across the fire. “Your wife, young Slade, is a Finder.”

  He blinked, trying to read her face, and, as usual, failing.

  “What is a Finder, grandmother?”

  “A woman of great erifu, who may cast her thought out to find that which is lost. The best Finders improve their tents many times over. Your wife is young, she has some years before she reaches the fullness of her gift. But she is already known as a Finder of great talent. The tent will improve quickly, I think, and you will no longer live on the edges of the Dark Camp.”

 

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