Blooded Ground (Clan of the Ice Mountains Book 2)

by C. S. Bills

  “Why do the Ravens believe the ocean water contains evil spirits, but fresh water doesn’t? That makes no sense to me.” Attu took a step nearer to the girl, but Farnook ducked her head as Kagit whistled to her from the edge of the clearing, where he was standing with Ubantu. Farnook raced to answer his call.

  Attu stepped back into the longhouse, shaken. Rika and the old healer were deep in a discussion over how best to make a poultice of the now ground white bark. They shooed him back out to wait on the fallen log again.

  “And Kagit said he was glad Rika had grabbed up the child.” Ubantu spoke as they walked back to their own camp near the end of the day.

  “Because the child is his son,” Attu said.

  Rika looked up in surprise, which quickly changed to the pain mirrored in Attu’s own gaze.

  “That explains much,” Ubantu said. He grew thoughtful. “But I didn’t like what Kagit showed me.”

  “What, Father?” Attu asked, glad to talk of something else.

  “In the woods beside the clearing, Kagit has three master carvers working to carve faces on a tree they have cut. Kagit said the tree will stand in front of his longhouse. The faces of many animals, with a raven at the top, will be carved on it, Kagit said. Wings will be added, carved separately and fixed into the tree like they fix the planks of wood on the cedar houses. There were two men standing beside the carvers, and no one spoke while I was there. But as we left, I heard chanting, and there was smoke coming from small fires all around the tree and the carvers. The smoke smelled sweet, like burning fruit, but stronger. I felt I should know the smell, but I did not. And the smell and the chanting made me feel wrong. Very wrong.”

  “I must see this thing, this carved tree,” Attu said.

  “We must go back together,” Ubantu agreed. “I want you to see it. I want to know if you feel like I do, that this carved tree is an evil thing.”

  They walked into the clearing just as Suka came running through the opening to the pass, his sides heaving, his breath coming in great gasps.

  “Oh, thank the spirits you’re back,” he cried, sliding to a halt on the pebble beach in front of them. “Paven is injured, gored by a tuskie. He’s in the Seer Clan’s old camp. Kinak and Rovek and some others brought him back.”

  “Father?” Rika tightened the straps of her healer’s pack. “And Rovek? With Kinak? Father’s hurt?”

  They all sprinted into the pass, Suka huffing at the rear.

  Chapter 11

  Paven lay on a sledge, which had been pulled up to a hastily made fire. Rika cried out when she saw her father and rushed to his side.

  “He has lost much blood,” Kinak said. “The Seer healer cleaned his wound and wrapped his leg. But that was almost four days ago...”

  Rika gave orders to the crowd now surrounding her father. Hunters gently lifted Paven, who was delirious, his eyes rolling in his head as sweat drenched his face. He cried out as he was lifted, and Rika recoiled as if someone had thrust a knife into her.

  As heartless and rough as her father has always been toward her, still she cares for him.

  Attu moved forward. The hunters didn’t need any more help carrying their Clan leader to his shelter, but Rika would need him to hold her father steady while she cleaned his wound. He was thrashing on the furs they’d laid him on.

  Rovek was speaking to one of Attu’s hunters, but when he saw Attu, Rovek came to his side. “Bruna died trying to save Paven. You and Suka saved his life, and still a tusked animal killed him. It’s as if the Between of Death was cheated the first time and couldn’t be thwarted the second.” Rovek looked weary, and his face was tear-stained.

  Attu grabbed a water skin and turned to Rovek, pausing for just a moment. “I pray your father doesn’t die also.” They slipped into the shelter after the other men. Ashukat stepped in a few moments later.

  “I didn’t see you before. You came back with the others. Why?” Attu asked.

  “Later,” Ashukat said and helped as Attu, Ubantu, Rovek, and Kinak all held Paven down.

  “The Seer healer cleaned his leg of the gravel, dirt, and dead grass driven into the wound along with the tusk, but I’m afraid that now, after traveling back to the coast, the wound has still gotten evil fever spirits in it.” Ashukat looked grim. “The flesh around the wound’s wrappings is dark and hot to the touch.”

  “I gave him something to put him in the Between of sleep so I could clean his wound again, and it should be working by now. But look at him.” Rika gestured toward her father.

  Paven thrashed on the furs, and it was all the others could do to stop him from hurting himself further with the violence of his movement.

  “I have to get this wound unwrapped.” Rika sounded desperate.

  Ashukat pulled out a pouch. “Use this also, child,” he said, “just a pinch.” Rika put the dose of powder into some hot water, dissolving it and blowing on it to cool it enough to give to Paven.

  Ubantu and Rovek held Paven’s head still while Attu worked to open the man’s mouth. Rika got her father to swallow a few mouthfuls of the drink, and his thrashing ceased almost immediately. He relaxed back against the furs and lay still, breathing deeply.

  Rika looked at Ashukat, fear in her eyes.

  “He will be fine,” Ashukat assured her. “The potion won’t take him too far into the Between.”

  Rika nodded and bent to unwrap the wound. She appeared calm, but Attu could tell she was panicking as she began removing the wrappings from Paven’s leg and the extent of the injury was revealed.

  Rovek gasped as she pulled aside the last wrapping. “The others wouldn’t let me see Father after he was hurt,” he admitted. Rovek sank to the floor beside his father and buried his face in his hands. Meavu moved to stand beside him, her hand resting on his shoulder. He leaned in to her as she turned her face away from the grisly sight before them all.

  There was no skin around Paven’s wound to stitch together. When the tuskie had pulled its tusk out of Paven’s leg, it had ripped out part of his thigh muscle, which now dangled, bloodless and rotting. Rika cut the dead flesh off, silent tears streaming down her face. As she finished, her hands began shaking so violently she dropped the knife. Attu gently drew her out of the shelter.

  “Rest a moment,” Attu said.

  Attu was prepared for her protest, but instead, Rika collapsed into his arms, sobs wracking her body in great spasms. She cried hard for a while, and when she stopped, Rika still clung to him.

  “I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

  “I’m grateful to my name spirit that we did not go with the Seers,” Rika said, her voice catching as she tried to calm herself. “You would have tried to save my father and gotten killed instead of Bruna.” This thought made Rika start crying again.

  “Bruna was a good hunter and a good man.”

  Rika pulled back and looked at Attu, her eyes shiny with tears in the moonlight. “I know, and his family mourns him this night. But still, I’m grateful it wasn’t you,” she added. She stepped out of his embrace and into Rovek’s, who had come out of the shelter to check on his sister. The two held on to each other briefly before heading back together into the shelter where their father lay.

  Meavu had followed Rovek and now stood, looking at Attu, her eyes stark with pain.

  “This is very bad,” Attu said. “But Rovek has Rika, and he has all of us. Be strong for him, my sister. That’s what he’ll need.”

  “I will,” Meavu promised, and her chin lifted in determination as she turned and re-entered the shelter.

  “My father will live,” Rika said two days later to the small group of hunters who’d accompanied Paven back to the Expanse Clans. “The spirits of fever have left him.”

  “Will he be able to travel soon?” one of Paven’s hunters asked. “We need to head back to our families as soon as possible.”

  “Paven will walk again, I believe,” Rika answered him. “But it will take many moons. He won’t be able to follow the herds until
next spring when they come again.”

  The hunters popped their lips. They turned away, obviously disappointed by this news.

  “They’ll leave in the next day or two,” Ashukat said to Attu and Ubantu at the fire that evening. “Even now the hunters are anxious to return to their families. But I will remain here.”

  Tingiyok joined them. Attu noticed he seemed happy to see his old friend again. Ashukat slid over, making room for Tingiyok at his side.

  “You’re not returning with the others to your people?” Ubantu asked. Deep concern made the lines on his forehead deepen.

  “I am ashamed to admit it, but the hunters had to drag me on the sledge with Paven for most of the way back,” Ashukat said. He jangled his staff and stared into the fire, his eyes filled with sadness. “I made the excuse of using my spiritual Gifts to See Paven back safely to you, but the truth is this place is my home. And as much as I now feel strange here, like there are forces at work in this place that I do not understand and should fear, something within me called me back. I believe I need to be here at least until you leave. Somehow, I’m to help you. Here, there is something I’ll be called to do. On the grasslands, I’ve become a burden to my own people.”

  Tingiyok shook his head as if in disagreement, but said nothing.

  “After you do what you have to do to help us, then what will you do?” Attu studied the Elder. How will the spirits use you to help us?

  “Who knows? I am an old man. And it will take many moons for Paven to be well enough to travel, if he recovers and if he can walk again. I may be gone Between by then.”

  Ubantu shook his head at Ashukat’s words, as if denying the man’s age.

  Ashukat and Tingiyok exchanged glances but said nothing.

  Are they mind speaking in a way I can’t hear?

  Attu stared at the fire.

  Kinak walked up and sat beside Attu. “The Seer hunters made it plain they didn’t want the burden of Paven and said we had to bring him back. He was already beginning to annoy the others, and this was their excuse to be rid of him. They knew you’d take care of him.” Kinak nodded toward Attu and Ubantu.

  “We will,” Attu said. “But what about you, Kinak?”

  “I’m returning with the others. They leave next sun.” Kinak pulled his hide cloak around himself, even though the night wasn’t that cool. “I must get back to Suanu and my family.”

  “Suka knows?”

  “Yes. We have said goodbye, again. Suka has gone in his skin boat, away for a few days to hunt the seal. He told me to let you know.” Kinak cleared his throat. “It was harder this time than last to leave him, but Suka is determined to go north with you. He’s willing to wait.”

  “And only the spirits know how long that will be, now.” Attu stood and walked away, into the darkness. The Seer hunters and Kinak left the next day.

  Attu was working on fastening the last skin on his second boat a few days later. It was larger than the first, built to travel with two people or one person and supplies. He had the sinews ready to tie when his vision blurred and before him he saw, not his skin boat, but Paven, throwing himself among the skins he was laying on, yelling out. His normal vision returned, but his mind reeled.

  Rika. Attu realized. Rika needs me.

  Attu raced toward the shelter where Paven lay.

  “I can’t get his fever down no matter what I try. The fever spirits are claiming him again, Attu. I don’t know what to do.” Rika was trying to hold down the restless Paven as he tangled himself in the furs.

  Attu grabbed Paven’s arms, shocked at how hot the man was.

  “Hold him, and I’ll give him some more sleeping potion.”

  A few minutes later, Paven had stopped struggling, but his face was still fiery red, his lips blistered with the fever spirits.

  “I don’t understand,” Rika said. “He was doing so well. And now this. Look at his wound.”

  Rika pulled back the bandage to reveal a mass of weeping yellow pus where just the day before, it had been healing.

  “What can I do to help?” Attu asked.

  “Go to the Raven Clan and see if their healer will come. Maybe she’ll know something else to do. She showed me a few things when we treated the burned child...” Rika’s words trailed off. Attu could see she was exhausted and losing hope.

  “Do you think she’ll come?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t think of anything else to do. Make her come, Attu. Convince her. Please!”

  Attu raced out of the cave and down the path toward the water.

  “Suka, come with me to the Raven Clan. We need their healer for Paven.”

  Suka grabbed up his pack.

  The Raven healer had been willing to come. Attu had only had to ask. Kagit had appeared, and he seemed to think it was an excellent idea, which seemed odd, but Attu was in too much of a hurry to question his sudden change of mind toward them all. Perhaps the Raven leader had become friendly with them again because his healer had made him understand that, after all, Rika had helped the burned boy by placing him in the water. But still, the healer had been delayed in coming to Rika and Paven. Farnook had been allowed to accompany them only after much arguing with the woman who seemed to be in charge of her.

  “You should have heard the yelling,” Attu whispered to Ubantu as the two of them stood outside the shelter where the women were examining Paven. “It was like watching Elder Nuanu face off with Moolnik all over again. But in the end, the healer got her way, and they let Farnook come without her guards. Farnook says the healer’s name is Limoot, and she is Kagit’s mother. That is why she gets her way.”

  “I suspected that might be so. There is a strong resemblance between them.”

  “And something is not right about how the Ravens treat Farnook. If she were merely someone their Clan rescued after her people were killed, why the guards? And if she’s merely a slave to them, why all the secrecy?”

  “You said she has the Gifts,” Ubantu said. “Do you think the Ravens somehow know she’s special?”

  “I don’t know. But for some reason they keep a very close eye on her.”

  The shelter flapped open and Rika stepped out.

  “A small piece of tusk was embedded in Father’s wound, in his leg bone,” Rika said. “I didn’t realize it was there; it looked like part of his own bone when I was re-cleaning the wound. The Raven Clan’s healer said it had worked its way out the last few days, poisoning all the tissue around it as it came. She searched the wound and found it. She was able to pull it out.”

  “How did she know this?” Ubantu asked.

  “She said sometimes when the men are carving the great canoes or making the totem poles, the great carving you saw in the woods, they slip with their tools, and pieces of wood can pierce them, wounding them. Sometimes not all the slivers are found right away, and then the wound festers, like Father’s did. She said with the sliver of tusk out, Father should heal. The spirits of fever will have nothing to cling to anymore and will have to leave.”

  Attu glanced back at the shelter.

  “The Raven healer is resting. She is an old woman, and walking here tired her.”

  “And Farnook?”

  “She’s with the healer.”

  Ubantu walked into the shelter and motioned for Farnook to come out. At first she shook her head, but when she realized the healer was fast asleep, she got up slowly from the woman’s side, so as not to disturb her, and came out to stand beside them, her head bowed.

  “Do you need something to eat or drink?” Ubantu asked.

  Farnook looked up, surprise on her dirt-streaked face. She shook her head and swallowed.

  They all knew that swallow, caused from a rush of saliva that cannot be held back when you are starving and someone mentions food.

  Rika moved to her own shelter, set up now near Paven’s, and returned with a full bowl of fish stew and a flask of water.

  “The stew is cold, but it’s good.”

  Farnook took t
he bowl from Rika and sat, turning away to eat like one who was afraid her food would be taken from her.

  Ubantu, Rika, and Attu exchanged looks.

  Rika moved back into the shelter, and Ubantu followed her to check on Paven.

  Attu moved to sit beside Farnook. She flinched away from him.

  Farnook? Attu mind spoke to her.

  “Don’t do that,” Farnook said, her voice trembling. “My people could mind speak, and now they’re all dead. Do you want me to die too?”

  Mind speech is a good thing, not something to be afraid of-

  “No,” Farnook said. She faced Attu now, and she looked fierce, her eyes sharp and her brows furrowed over pursed lips. “Mind speech and dreaming are both dangerous. I dream. I hear things. Things I don’t want to hear. I see things. Things I don’t want to see. Things I’ve seen and don’t ever want to see again. Not ever. The dreaming I can’t stop. But mind speaking I can control. Don’t speak into my head again.” She turned her back on him, shoulders hunched. The two sat in silence as Farnook ate.

  Suka came around the corner of the shelter. His eyes lit up when he saw Farnook, and he walked to sit on her other side. Attu noticed she didn’t flinch or move away from Suka.

  Suka turned slowly to face Attu, and he motioned for Farnook to do the same. She did, although somewhat reluctantly, and Attu noticed her bowl was empty.

  “Would you like more?” he asked.

  Farnook shook her head again and seemed to sink into herself, trying to make herself look smaller.

  Suka regarded Attu, and with a slight shake of his head, Attu realized he wished him to keep quiet. Then Suka spoke. “We were surprised that among the Raven Clan there is one such as you, like us.”

  “I am not like you,” Farnook spoke, her voice barely a whisper. “I am not my own. The Ravens keep me as a slave.”

  “Our people do not believe one person can own another, like a spear or a shelter.”

  “Raven owns everyone and everything,” the girl said, her voice flat.

  “What do you mean?” Suka asked.

  “Kagit is the embodiment of the Raven Ganhada, the Raven spirit. He was chosen by the spirit to lead the Raven Clan. Raven’s world is all His, all He can see from the great heights He can fly, and so all people belong to Him. All the fish, all the trees, all the fruit and other good things. He controls them all. Kagit, the man, controls them all.” Farnook looked defeated as she finished what sounded like a well-rehearsed speech.