Blooded Ground (Clan of the Ice Mountains Book 2)

by C. S. Bills

  Attu readied both boats at the water’s edge. The waves rolled in huge mounds outside the bay. Here the waves were choppy, in the most sheltered part. They’d need to be careful, even with the mouth of the river just a few spear throws from the beach.

  As he worked, he considered how rough life had become for Rovek. His father injured and with a vile temper, Rovek had not felt welcome in his own shelter for a long time. He’d begun to look to Yural almost as a mother these past moons, Attu realized, and hung around with Attu’s parents and Meavu, not just because he cared for Meavu. They had become his family. And now Yural was sitting in a darkened shelter, keening after Meavu. Seeing her like this was excruciating to Rovek as well, and made doubly painful added to Meavu’s disappearance. He would have asked for Meavu soon.

  I’ve got to stop thinking of Meavu as if she were dead. If Mother believes she is still alive, then she must be.

  Attu scowled. The back of his head was hurting again.

  Rovek skittered down the bank and onto the beach, balancing his paddle in one hand and his fishing tools in another. Stowing his tools, Rovek slid his skin boat out into the water, leaping into it as easily as a bird hopping along a branch. Attu followed, and the two hunters darted toward the opening of the small river, their paddles sliding in and out of the cold water, the ends dripping, their breath visible in the freezing air.

  The strengthening sun of a late winter day was sliding through the cedars as Attu and Rovek returned from fishing. Attu carried his catch to Rika, who was working on sewing some skins as he came into the shelter. He could see she’d been crying, but as he stepped in, she turned away from him and used the edge of her garment to dry her eyes.

  “Good fishing, I see,” she said turning back, a bright smile now pasted on her face.

  They spoke the words of ritual and Rika took the fish, sitting one on her cooking slab to prepare it for dinner.

  Attu warmed himself by the fire. His thoughts drifted and he did not pull them back. Not to think at all had been his goal for the day and besides, he was tired.

  “When it comes time to leave, will you be able to?” Rika’s question stabbed into his numbness.

  “What other choice will we have?”

  Rika didn’t answer. Her face was strained in the light of the fire as she cut up the fish, lifting some into her cooking pouch.

  “I can’t see as we have any other choice,” Attu answered his own question.

  “Father can make it on his own, now,” Rika said.

  “I’ll still ask him to come with us. I have to.”

  “I didn’t say we should leave him here if he wants to come.” Rika grabbed up her stirring stick and jabbed it into the fire. Sparks flew upward.

  “But you don’t want him to.”

  Rika stiffened, then turned toward him, stick still in her hand. “No. I don’t,” she said, and for a moment Attu thought she would jab him with the red tip of the burning stick. But instead she dropped it near the fire and stood facing him, her face pale, her lips trembling. “Do I have to say it out loud to you? Is that what you want?” Rika looked at him, her eyes searching his. “So now there’s no doubt in your mind. I’ve said it. I don’t want my father with us any longer than he has to be. I don’t want him to come north with us. I want him to go east with the tuskies when the weather warms, and I’ll be glad to never see him again.” Rika suddenly sat. Her whole body was shaking.

  “Rika, I didn’t mean for you to-”

  “I know what everyone’s thinking. If my father hadn’t come back injured, we would have left for the north long before the winter storms set in. We would be free of this place by now, and Meavu... and Meavu... it’s all my fault.” Rika covered her face, her sobs sudden as her body shook.

  “Rika, do you think people are blaming you for what’s happened? Don’t be ridiculous. It wasn’t your fault Paven was injured and we had to stay here longer than expected. It’s not your fault Meavu was taken.” Attu reached for Rika, but she pulled away from him.

  “Ever since I came into your life, I’ve brought trouble with me. Banek threatens you because of me, Moolnik kills him and then wants to kill you to steal me, you almost die trying to save us from Moolnik, and now this. How can you say it’s not all my fault?”

  “Oh, Rika,” Attu tried again to reach for her, and this time she let him hold her, but Rika sat stiffly, her hands still covering her face, her hair a tangled mess hiding her from him. “This is so much bigger than just you and me,” he said, his voice gentle. “If we were to blame anyone, it would be Paven, and Moolnik, and Banek, and all the other hunters who think it’s their right to take what they want, with violence if they must, and to drive our Clans to places of danger because they refuse to listen to wise Elders like Elder Nuanu, and like Ashukat. If we’d left when he’d wanted us to, we’d be safe on the grasslands, south and away from whatever is going on here now. If I’d been willing to go hunt the tuskies, instead of being stubborn and wanting to go north instead-”

  “No, Attu,” Rika interrupted him. She brushed the tears from her face. “You want to go north because it is our destiny to do so. I feel it, too. I know you are right. It’s not your fault we’re here now and Meavu is missing. It’s-”

  “Not your fault either.” Attu reassured her.

  “But the spirits, they seem to be attacking each other in the Here and Now, and they seem to no longer look with favor on our Clan, on... me.” Rika looked down, her face hidden once again.

  “You don’t know that,” Attu said. “Just because you are not with child yet doesn’t mean the spirits will not give us a child soon.”

  Rika began crying again.

  “Look, you’re tired. All this work to take care of your father, all of us being so upset about Meavu, I feel like I’m walking around with my spear arm pulled back ready to throw, but there’s no target, no game to pierce. The patience of the hunter and his woman has grown thin for all of us. Let’s pray to our name spirits that we will get through this and do what we need to do.”

  Rika nodded and Attu felt her relax into him a bit.

  “We’ll leave as soon as we can. I promised Suka and Farnook. They are only a few days journey north of us. He said they’d winter there, where the weather is still milder than it is farther north, where he can see us coming through the narrows between the islands and the sheer cliffs, and we can continue north together. He’s counting on us to come as soon as we can.”

  “How much longer do we stay here?”

  “I wish we could go today, but we’ll have to wait for a break in the wind and waves of more than a day or so. The Seer hunter said that might be as long as another two moons.”

  “I dreamed again,” Rika said, her voice unsteady as glanced up at him. “Vanreda, her arms outstretched as if in warning. She seemed to be trying to warn me of something. She kept pointing to something, but as hard as I tried, I couldn’t see it. Everything was dark around her, and she blazed so brightly my eyes could see nothing else. But I heard her again, those same words. I’m to trust what I see, what I know to be true and then trust what I can’t see, but what I still know is true. I am to follow those I love when the time comes.” Rika hunched her shoulders. “It’s all so confusing.”

  “And it’s hard to think about our dreams when all I can think about is Meavu. But I know they’re important.” Attu held his hands closer to the fire, warming them. “Tomorrow, we’ll go see Ashukat at the Rock. This time I’m going to make him listen. We’ll tell him of my dream and yours, hear his thoughts on what they might mean.”

  “Perhaps we are missing something. Maybe the spirit of Vanreda is trying to tell us something about Meavu.”

  I wish I could believe that.

  Attu and Rika ate and then sat shoulder to shoulder in the dim firelight, watching the dying embers.

  I feel you beside me, but still, tonight, we seem far apart, Attu thought, wishing he could talk with Rika about this distance he felt between them, but not knowing
how without making things worse.

  The night had grown warmer, a breeze from the south with a smell of new green filtered in through the holes in the shelters. “The time the Seers call spring must be coming,” Rika said, her breath soft against Attu’s ear. “Earlier today it still felt like the Cold, but now-”

  “We will go, as soon as we can, together,” Attu whispered. “But part of my spirit will never leave this place if we leave without Meavu.”

  “And I don’t know if your mother will ever be the strong woman she once was, without her daughter.”

  Chapter 20

  A Raven hunter stormed into the Clans’ camp the next day. He babbled, gesturing and pointing. Rika came running from Paven’s shelter.

  “What is it?” Attu and the others asked.

  “Something about one of their small children, a boy,” Rika said.

  The hunter reached inside his upper garment and pulled out a long white feather.

  A collective gasp echoed in the clearing.

  The hunter spoke again, gesturing with the feather.

  “Oh no,” Rika said. “Kagit’s son, the child who got burned, has disappeared.”

  Men, women, and children of the Expanse Clans, Seer Clan, and Raven Clan combed the area around the Raven’s camp, searching for the child. Attu searched with his father, anxious not only to find the child, but concerned for Ubantu. He was livid with anger, crashing through the brush and calling for the boy as if he were his own son.

  “We need to move slower, Father, and listen,” Attu reminded his father again. “We won’t be able to find him by racing through the woods.”

  Ubantu stopped. “You’re right, my son. It’s just-”

  “I know.”

  They proceeded silently for a time. Attu could feel the anger raging inside his father. Attu knew his father was furious at his inability to close with this enemy. Attu felt it too, impotent rage against a target of white shadows. First Meavu had been taken, and now Kagit’s own son.

  Is it true then? White Ghost Ravens are fighting White Ghost Eagles? And we’re caught up in the spiritual battle of Between, spilled into the Here and Now?

  A cry came through the forest from the river.

  “He is found! Kagit’s son is found!”

  Attu and Ubantu raced to the edge of the river with the others.

  The boy lay in Kagit’s arms, unconscious. Tears streamed down the Raven’s face, making his tattoos glisten black as he held his son tightly to his chest. As Attu approached, Kagit slipped something into a pouch at his side.

  What was that smell? A pungent odor like the white-rooted plants the women used for seasoning surrounded Kagit and his son. Attu’s eyes stung.

  “He alive, but-” Kagit lifted his child and pointed to some dark marks on the boy’s upper arms. “And wet.”

  “The Eagle spirits tried to drown him?” some of the Raven hunters murmured, then gestured so Ubantu and Attu could understand.

  “Look,” Kagit said, and he pointed to some rocks at the edge of the fast-flowing depths. Scattered among the rocks were several dead ravens, their feathers strewn among many large white feathers. “Ravens fight. Die for Kagit’s son. Save.”

  Kagit looked up, his eyes now clear. “Raven protect Raven people.”

  The Ravens chanted as Kagit carried his son back to camp. An eerie vocalization arose from the Ravens as they walked, a high keen punctuated with sharp sounds, like birds cawing. It filled the air around them. Attu felt every hair on his body stand on end.

  Ubantu turned away, his face ashen.

  “I am done with Father, done!” Rika strode into Ubantu and Yural’s shelter, where Attu was seated, working on sharpening tools with Ubantu. Yural looked up and smiled briefly before turning back to her own work. Ever since the incident with Kagit’s son, Yural had begun her own healing. Somehow, she had come to peace with the disappearance of her daughter. She still believed Meavu was alive, but she no longer mourned her being gone as she had before.

  “There is much more in the spirit world than we can understand,” Yural had confided in Attu one evening not too long after the disappearance and recovery of the small boy. “My name spirit will fight for Meavu, as will yours, and as will all the spirits of our ancestor women in the Between. She might come back to us, yet.”

  Attu hadn’t contradicted his mother. Everyone needed a way to cope. Yural’s hope had always been in the Nuvik spirits of the Between.

  A warm breeze blew in with Rika. The new green had come in the last few days, surprising them all with its suddenness and the days of clear blue skies, so unlike the normal wet. In a few more days, the Seer hunter had said, they could risk heading north.

  Rika plopped onto the furs beside Yural. “What did Paven do now, daughter of mine?” Yural asked. Her voice caught slightly on the word, ‘daughter.’

  Paven should be feeling better with this warmer drier weather, Attu thought, running his hand around his side to his back where the ice bear scar had recently stopped aching after all the cold wet months of winter. But instead, the warming weather had apparently caused Paven to rise to new heights of difficulty.

  “Oh, Yural, I’m sorry,” Rika said. “You don’t need to hear my complaints.”

  Yural touched Rika’s shoulder, brushing away a loose bit of what looked like grass from her garment. “Oh, I think I do need to hear,” she said. “Tell me.”

  Attu glanced at the two women. Attu wondered if his mother would ever recover from the loss of Meavu, if the spirits saw fit not to return her. Yural was a strong woman, however, and life went on. Death and even disappearance was not uncommon among the Nuvik. Hunters went missing and were never found. Sickness came. Starvation came. Yural will survive and move forward.

  Rika explained. “I had gathered the fresh greens down by the river, you know, where the sun shines and the bank faces south. I know Father needs them to continue strengthening his muscles for walking on the grasslands. He wants to leave soon, when we leave. I spent the whole morning gathering, and tossed the greens with some of Father’s favorite fish oil and some of the dried garlic plant the Raven women taught me how to use. I gave it to him and-” Rika stood up again. Now that she wasn’t moving, it was apparent the front of her garment was covered with bits of green, almost hidden among the darker green of her woven front, but glistening with oil.

  “He threw it at you?” Yural asked, her voice rising.

  Tears ran down Rika’s cheeks.

  “Listen to me, Rika,” Yural said. “You are a woman of our Clan now, and you are helping your father out of love for him, not tradition or duty. You could walk away from him at any time, and no one would fault you for it. But, no matter who he is to you, no man, even your own father, must be allowed to treat the provider of the prepared food in this way.”

  “But what do I do?”

  “Move your shelter. Move it to the other side of ours. Today. And from now on, have Rovek bring me the meat. You have helped Paven long enough. From now on, I will cook for him. And I’ll make him act nicely to get it.”

  “No, Yural, you must not be the one to serve Paven,” Ubantu said. “Let him starve. Everyone is tired of his meanness. He is using his injury now, trying to get everyone to wait on him while he refuses to help himself. Leave him alone and you’ll see. The hunter many days away from the shelter cooks for himself. Let him be the lone hunter until he learns to act like the Clan leader he says he still is.”

  “Yural, may I move my things into your shelter?” Rovek asked, as he saw Attu and Rika taking theirs down. Yural had come to help them, and Rovek now stood, looking like an abandoned nuknuk pup. “I can’t stay with Father anymore.” He hung his head, apparently ashamed that his father’s ranting and foul moods had finally become too much for even his own son to bear.

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Yural said. “Come.”

  Attu watched the two carry Rovek’s few things away from Paven’s shelter. Yural’s back was straight, but Attu coul
d tell she was weary. “She is doing it as much for Meavu as she is for Rovek,” he said to Rika as they continued unlacing the hides from the shelter structure. “Should we wrap these and lace bark on the sides, instead, once we set up the shelter again?”

  “I think it’s warm enough now. And that way the hides can be rolled while they’re dry and be ready for travel. And let’s not use the bone and sinew for a frame, but wood, instead.”

  “Good idea. That way we can leave the entire structure behind and have our frames packed and ready to go, also.”

  “And the Ravens won’t see how close we are to leaving.”

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Paven stood at the entrance to his shelter.

  Rika jumped and looked to Attu.

  “Moving,” Attu replied without lifting his eyes from his work. “We’re taking down our winter shelter and putting up a new temporary one, near my parents, where we’ll stay until we’re ready to leave.” He looked at Paven, daring him to argue.

  “But I-”

  “You are recovering well from your injury,” Attu interrupted Paven, “and I’m sure you’re eager to ready yourself for travel with the tuskies.”

  “But my leg-” this time Paven stopped himself. He looked around at the greening grass, the sky, blue today with a bright sun, the people all busy at their tasks. Two had started taking down their winter shelters in imitation of Attu and Rika. Attu watched as Paven straightened his shoulders. His eyes cleared.

  “Time to get ready,” Paven said, in a voice that sounded much like the old Paven, like it was his idea, not Attu’s, that they needed to ready themselves to leave. Paven limped to the other side of his shelter and started unlacing hides from its frame.

  “Yural was right,” Rika said. She let out a deep breath.

  “She usually is,” Attu grinned and continued dismantling their shelter.

  Attu spent the rest of the day building their new shelter frame and speaking to anyone curious about why he was making it of bending branches instead of the regular frame. Soon all the Clan shelters were coming down, and men moved among the nearby trees, cutting suitable limbs while the women rolled the winter’s hides, then cut large squares of bark from the nearby stand of white bark trees for lacing onto the shelter sides.