05 Icefalcons Quest d-5

by Barbara Hambly

  Any of the Talking Stars People would have camped some distance from the knoll, where they could see in all directions, even had they had a Wise One in their company.

  There was never a guarantee that some other war band wouldn't include a shaman more Wise than one's own.

  "I can help you," said Tir, as Hethya lifted him down from the donkey. "I promise I won't run away." He spoke matter-of-factly, but with a friendliness in his voice that told the Icefalcon that this woman must have used him kindly over the past day and a half.

  Indeed, the woman's face was not cruel, and by the way she patted Tir on the shoulder, and the closeness between them as they stood, it was clear that she was used to children and liked them.

  She glanced now over at Bektis, who was ordering the warriors about placing the blankets. It was the closest the Icefalcon had been to them-less than a hundred feet-and he studied the weapon of crystal and gold on the sorcerer's hand with wary interest.

  A device of similar workmanship around Bektis' neck, a high collar fitted up close under the ears, was visible only briefly when the wizard pushed down the furred hood of his coat and tried to untangle his beard.

  "I think best not, sweeting," Hethya said in a voice so low the Icefalcon had to guess at some of the words. "But thank you; 'tis kind of you thinking of it." She ruffled his hair again. "Sit you down there under the tree a bit. We'll be having supper soon, and I'll untie you to eat. Are you tired?"

  Tir shook his head, though he looked beaten with weariness. He followed her, his hands still bound behind his back-the Icefalcon could see where his wrists were bandaged under the thongs-while she unshipped a little nest of cook pots.

  "Does Oale Niu just tell you things?" he asked her as she worked. "Or do you see things, or smell them sometimes, and... and remember? Or think you remember but you don't know what it is?"

  "Like what, honey? Here, you, Akula," she called out, and all three of the guards turned their heads.

  "One of you go fetch me water from the spring would you?"

  The men stared at her, scorn in their faces, for in the Alketch men do not take orders from women.

  Bektis snapped, "Do as she says," and all started off in search of the boiled-leather pail that had hung, filled neatly with potatoes, on the second donkey's pack saddle. Watching their aimless movements, it occurred to the Icefalcon that none of them were very bright.

  "Like this." Tir nodded toward the rolling wonderment of green beyond the scrim of birches. They had left the great slunch beds behind them, and for the most part the land was as it had been since the world's dawn: long grass bright with spring, widely dispersed clumps of rabbitbrush, the dark lines of treetops marking stream cuts sometimes sixty feet below the level of the surrounding plain.

  "It smells like something... One of those other people was here once." "Those other people" was how the boy thought about his ancestors, those memories of ancient days.

  "Only it was in the winter, I think," went on Tir softly. "Everything was brown. Did Oale Niu come here?"

  "She did that." Hethya settled back on her hunkers, and her voice changed again, slowed and deepened, as she said, "I was here. Twelve of us rode down from the flanks of Anthir mountain. The mages ringed our camp with a circle of flames to keep the Dark Ones at bay."

  Tir frowned. Even from this distance, the Icefalcon saw in the set of his shoulders, the stance of his compact body, the memory of distant things. "He was here with his daddy," he said, so softly the Icefalcon almost could not make out the words. "His daddy knew the way. The road was that way, north toward the mountains, by those little hills."

  Two of the warriors came back with water; Bektis gave them very exact instructions about mounting guard on the camp, things that to the Icefalcon seemed obvious.

  The Icefalcon slipped back among the trees, carefully picking hard and sheltered ground, and crawled snakewise on his belly through the grass to the bison wallow that he knew from other days lay just south of the road. Bandits-or more likely the Empty Lakes People, whose spirit wands he had seen twice in these lands-would be along in the morning.

  And they were.

  The Empty Lakes People didn't attack until nearly noon, but the Icefalcon was aware of them when they came up the coulee to the northwest as a redstart and a raven flew out of the trees. They waited there for a time, for the party in the grove to pack up and move on.

  When Bektis and his group didn't pack up, but rather collected more firewood and water, like people who planned to remain where they were for the day, the Empty Lakes People-being the Empty Lakes People-decided that the thing to do was attack rather than make a closer observation of the grove, in which case they'd have seen that there was a Wise One in the party and thought again about the idea. Or maybe not. These were the Empty Lakes People, after all.

  In any case they attacked, with predictable results. The Icefalcon heard a cry from the wooded hill, and Hethya's scream. The woman always seemed to be screaming.

  A man broke cover on the eastern side of the hill and ran across the road with his deer-hide jacket in flames. He fell in the long grass. Another warrior rode full-tilt out of the grove on a dun-colored mare that reared in sudden terror at something it saw but the Icefalcon didn't.

  Illusion. There were amulets against such spookery on the mare's bridle but clearly Bektis' powers were greater than the amulets' maker, and since the Dark Ones' systematic destruction of mages, many of the talismans had outlived their effectiveness years ago.

  One of the black warriors pelted from the trees and grappled briefly with the warrior, dragging her down from her horse. She cried out in terror and pain, and struck at something-again illusory-in which moment the black man plunged his sword into the woman's chest.

  She fell, coughing blood. A war-dog, probably hers, raced from the trees, coat blazing, crying and yipping in pain.

  In the grove other shapes were running around or struggling in the trampled underbrush of wild grape and snakeweed. More barking, war-dogs terrified and confused by enchantment. Fire flashed, or perhaps only the illusion of fire.

  Tir, very sensibly, climbed a tree. The Icefalcon saw the boy's bright blue jacket sleeves among the limbs of the cottonwood under which Bektis had built last night's fire. He was glad that someone-probably the woman Hethya-had untied Tit's hands, and hoped none of the Empty Lakes People remained in the coulee, which was just within bowshot of the hill. The boy probably knew that running away from Bektis would be a waste of time.

  Bide your time, son of Eldor. Watch for your chance.

  The coyote who waits can eat the flesh of the saber-tooth who plunges ahead into a fight.

  The attack was over before the shadows had shortened the last inch or so to noon.

  Leaning up on his elbows, the Icefalcon watched the three black warriors load the bodies of the slain onto the horses that remained in the grove and carry them out to the coulee to dump them. Then they returned to Bektis' camp, tethered the captured horses, and set about gathering water and making lunch.

  Thank you, thought the Icefalcon. Now stay put so I can eat, too.

  He crawled through the grass-noting automatically that rains had been scanty here and so the herds would not be plentiful later in the year-to the edge of the coulee, which at that point was some twenty feet deep. Even a few years before, the stream at the bottom had been wider and stronger than it was now.

  Barely a trickle flowed over gray and white rocks, and the sedge and cattail along its verge were thin and weak, though on the whole the bottomland that lay for thirty or forty feet on either side of the water was lusher than the prairie above. Cottonwood and lodgepole pine made light cover from bank to waterside; lungwort, fleabane, and marigolds gemmed the grass.

  The half-dozen bodies lay jumbled below in a clump of chokecherry. Their dogs had been thrown down with them, the heavy-headed, heavy-shouldered fighting brutes of the Empty Lakes People.

  The Icefalcon took a very cautious look around, then slith
ered down the bank some hundred feet from the place, which he circled twice before coming close. Carrion birds were already gathered. He wondered if Bektis would notice when they flew upward.

  They settled again on the limbs of the cottonwood just above the bodies, below the line of the prairie's edge.

  There had been six in the scouting party. Five lay here, fairskinned like all the peoples of the Real World, bronzed from the sun, their hair-flaxen or primrose or the gay hue of marigolds-braided and dabbled with darkening blood.

  Four had perished of stab wounds, and one bore the same lightning burns that had marked Rudy's face.

  The sixth would be the man who ran out of the grove with his shirt burning, to fall in the long grass.

  The Icefalcon waited, listening, for some little time more, then moved in and made from them a selection of trousers, tunic, jacket, gloves, and cap wrought of wolf- or deer-hide, whose colors blended with the hues of the prairie.

  He changed clothes quickly and buried his black garments in a muskrat hole in the bank, piling brush to conceal where he'd driven the earth in. His weapons and harness he kept; his boots as well, for none of them had feet of his size, and boots would outlast moccasins on a long hunt.

  He collected also all the food they carried, scout rations of pemmican, jerked venison and duck flesh, pine nuts, and bison and raccoon fat sweetened with maple sugar. He hung the buckskin pouches and tubes from his belt and shoulders, working fast, with one eye on the birds overhead.

  When they flew up, he retreated, picking again the stoniest line of departure, which would show no mark of his boots.

  Rather to his surprise he knew the man who slipped down the bank from above and stole up on the bodies, taking far fewer precautions about it than the Icefalcon considered necessary, but what could one expect from the Empty Lakes People?

  It was Loses His Way.

  Loses His Way was a warchief and one of the most renowned warriors of the Empty Lakes People. He had given the Icefalcon the scar that decorated the hollow of his left flank in a horse raid during the Summer of the Two White Mammoths. He'd been a minor chief then, and the Icefalcon had encountered him twice more, once in a battle over summer hunting and once at a Moot.

  If the Icefalcon hadn't left the Talking Stars People, they'd probably have fought again at another Moot.

  He was a big man, some ten years older than the Icefalcon, with massive shoulders and tawny mustaches braided down past his chin; the finger bones of a dozen foes were plaited into his hair.

  He moved painfully now, and the Icefalcon saw the red blister of burned flesh through the black hole that had been the back of his tunic.

  When he saw the bodies had been disturbed, he looked around quickly, short-sword coming to his hand.

  Conscious of the possibility of sound carrying, the Icefalcon whistled twice in the voice of the tanager, a bird native to the oakwoods along the Ten Muddy Rivers, where the Empty Lakes People had originally dwelled, though it was never seen in the high plains.

  Loses His Way turned his head and the Icefalcon stepped from cover, crossed swiftly to the pile of bodies at the foot of the cottonwood tree. "I am an enemy to the people who did this," he said, as soon as he was close enough that their voices would not be heard. "I am alone."

  Loses His Way raised his head, grief and shock darkening gentianblue eyes. "Icefalcon." He spoke the name as it was spoken among the Empty Lakes People, K'shnia. He was like a man stunned by a blow, barely taking in the presence of one who was his enemy and the enemy of his people.

  "The air was full of creatures that tore at us," he said, and turned back to the dead. "When we rode away, the horses threw us and ran back. Our dogs attacked us and savaged one another."

  He touched the torn-out throat of a big gray dog, as if stroking the hair of a beloved child. "There was a Wise One, a shaman, among them."

  "The shaman is called Bektis," said the Icefalcon, framing the words carefully, haltingly, in the tongue of the Empty Lakes People, which he had not had call to speak for years. "An evil man, who has carried away the son of one who was good to me."

  Loses His Way seemed scarcely to hear. His thick scarred stubby fingers passed across noses, lips, brows. "Tethtagyn," he said, framing the name in the tongue of the Empty Lakes People; Wolfbone it meant. "Shilhren... Giarathis..." Under long, curling red brows his eyes filled with grief.

  "Twin Daughter," he whispered, and touched the face of a warrior whose hair was as red-gold as his.

  "Twin Daughter."

  Gently lifting the thick ropes of her hair-three braids, as was the fashion of his people-Loses His Way took from around the young woman's neck a square spirit-pouch, decorated with porcupine quills and patterns in ocher and black.

  Worn under the clothing and out of sight, spirit-pouches were almost the only article decorated by any of the peoples of the Real World. With his knife he cut off some of Twin Daughter's hair and put it into the pouch. Then he sliced the palm of her left hand, and with his thumb daubed the congealing blood in the open center of the pouch's worked design.

  This he did for all the others in turn, saying their names as he did so: Wolfbone, Blue Jay, Shouts In Anger, Raspberry Thicket Girl.

  The Empty Lakes People, the Icefalcon remembered, did not revere their Ancestors, but rather the ki of various rocks and trees in the country of the Ten Muddy Rivers. It was to them that these spiritpouches must be dedicated and returned.

  The Icefalcon privately regarded such customs as unnecessary and a little dangerous. Dead was dead, and any member of the Talking Stars People would have been able to find his or her way home without the assistance of a spirit-pouch. But he saw, in the big warrior's face, the need to do these things for his own peace of mind.

  One of the things that the Stars had told the Ancestors of his people was that every people had their custom, and though all other people were wrong, it was not polite and frequently not safe to say so. At least Loses His Way didn't feel it necessary to take fingers the way the Twisted Hills People did.

  "You took all the food?" he asked then, and the Icefalcon nodded. "Then let's go away. I thought you departed from the Real World for good," he added, as he and the Icefalcon followed the cliff wall northwest, seeking an inconspicuous place to regain the prairie above.

  "I departed," said the Icefalcon. "Though I fail to see how my comings and goings are the affair of the Empty Lakes People."

  "Blue Child is now the warchief of the Talking Stars People," said Loses His Way. "Even before the coming of the Eaters in the Night this was reason enough for concern among those of us who hunt the same mammoth and pasture our horses in the same ravines. Now that the mammoth move south, and white filth grows in the ravines of the homelands-now that the ice in the North rolls south to cover valleys that once belonged to the Empty Lakes People-it is a matter for concern that she rules your people instead of you."

  The cliff was lower toward the northwest, and the Icefalcon recalled how squirreltail grass grew thicker in that direction, amid stands of juniper brush that masked the cliff's rim from the direction of Bison Hill.

  Under cover of these junipers the two men scrambled up and glided through the thickets to higher ground.

  At the cliff's top a dark shaggy shape rustled up to them out of the grass, a yellow-eyed war-dog, burned like Loses His Way over his shoulders and back, like Loses His Way mourning his losses and his pain in silence.

  He licked the warchief's hand and wriggled with grateful joy to have his ears rubbed-sniffed the Icefalcon suspiciously but followed in silence. The Icefalcon raised up on his knees to put his head above the clusters of leaves but saw no sign of travelers as far as he could look west along the road.

  They were evidently staying put for the day.

  "For one thing, the Empty Lakes People never owned a thumbbreadth of the land in the North," he pointed out. "The starlight wrote our names on forest and stone from the Haunted Mountain across to the Night River Country, and ours it r
emains, Ice or no Ice, forever. Will these take you and your brother here back to your people?"

  He nodded to the dog and held out to Loses His Way two tubes of pemmican and one of the several sacks of pine nuts. "I hunt this Wise One and his warriors, and in the North I am told the white filth grows thick. There is no hunting in it. I need all I can carry."

  The brilliant eyes narrowed. "You hunt this Wise One? I thought you had returned to find Gsi Kethko."

  "Gsi Kethko?'' The name had two meanings. In the tongue of the Salt People it signified the hallucinogenic pods of the wild morning-glory, but in the more melodic (and altogether more perfect) language of the Talking Stars People it meant the Antlered Spider, one of the fifteen Dream Things that sometimes carried messages from the Watchers Behind the Stars.

  "The Wise One," Loses His Way amplified.

  "He was a member of Plum's family," remembered the Icefalcon, not sure why the warchief thought he should be interested. "A little man so high who dressed his hair with elm twigs. He stayed with us when we camped on the Night River just before the Summer Moot, the year that I departed. I don't think he was a very good Wise One. We nearly starved to death waiting for him to charm antelope, and his information about the salt grass along the Cruel River left a great deal to be desired. Why would I seek out the Antlered Spider?"

  "I thought he might have spoken to someone else concerning the spells he laid on the dreamvine that your old chief Noon took, at the Summer Moot in the Year of the White Foxes, the year that you left."

  Loses His Way turned the end of one of his mustache braids around his finger, but his eyes did not leave the Icefalcon's face in the piebald shadows of the thicket. The Icefalcon felt a coldness inside him, as if he already knew what else his enemy was going to say.

  "The draft is prepared on the night the chief takes it," the Icefalcon said, his soft, husky voice suddenly flat. "He himself gathers the dreamvine before he goes up to the mountain. There can be no spells laid on it since no one else touches the pods."