The Uplanders were free of any priestly requirements at all—but that meant they had none of the benefits. They could not ask anyone about the future, could rely only on their own limited senses to see and understand their surroundings. Here on the plain, Sword’s sword was just a lifeless piece of metal, while back in Barokan he could feel its cold hunger, its fierce power; he could tell from the slightest touch whether it needed sharpening or polishing, whether anything was interfering with its pure swordness.
Didn’t it bother the Wizard Lord, leaving that awareness of the spirit world behind whenever he came up the Summer Palace?
Didn’t it bother the Uplanders, to come back up here after spending the winters in the living realm of Barokan?
“That should do,” Fist said, breaking into Sword’s thoughts. He raised one arm and waved.
Sword turned and looked. Dancer and Whistler had rounded one corner of the flock, but were still well west of the flock’s center. “Shouldn’t they go all the way around?” he asked.
“No,” Fist said, barely hiding his contempt at the question. “We don’t want to frighten the entire flock; we just want four. If we scare them all, they may relocate, and then we’d have to relocate, and moving camp is far more work than I want to do without a better reason than that!”
“Oh,” Sword said. He looked, and saw Dancer waving an acknowledgment of Fist’s signal. He and Whistler stretched the rope out—Sword could not see the details from where he stood, since there were several ara and a few hundred feet of distance in between, but Dancer and Whistler moved with the ease of long practice and obviously knew what they were doing.
“You’ve never seen this, right?” Fist asked, watching the rope-men.
“That’s right.”
“Well, the important thing is to make a lot of noise and motion, so the birds don’t know what’s happening, except that it’s scary. I’ll be waving my spear around. . . .” He glanced at Sword.
“I could wave my sword,” Sword said.
“That would be good,” Fist said. “It’s shiny and unfamiliar. But don’t try to hit anything with it—at least, not until we have them tangled in the rope.”
Sword nodded. “I understand,” he said. He reached up and unsheathed his blade.
“Good. Then let’s go!” And with that he let out a wordless bellow and began running full-tilt toward the grazing ara, waving his spear above his head.
Caught off guard, Sword took a second to follow, brandishing his own weapon and yelling.
[ 6 ]
At first the ara ignored the two screaming attackers, but then, as the men came nearer, several heads bobbed up and turned to see what was happening. Then, suddenly, several birds were running, and Sword saw that Dancer and Fist had not exaggerated—they moved with unbelievable speed. They rose up on their toes and sprinted away, their talons tearing up the turf and spraying dirt, dung, and feathers behind them.
“Keep them moving!” Fist called.
Sword did not waste breath replying, but ran harder, waving his sword and shouting.
He realized immediately that he could not possibly catch up with the fleeing ara; a man simply couldn’t run that fast. Nothing Sword had ever seen before could run that fast. The best he could do was to stay close enough to keep them moving until they hit the rope. He tried to force himself to pick up his pace.
And he promptly slipped on a patch of feathers. One foot went out from under him, and he stumbled and fell. He landed rolling, as the Old Swordsman had taught him years ago, and came up quickly, but Fist and the fleeing birds were already far ahead of him.
He started toward them, breaking into a trot; he thought another flat-out run might just end in another fall, perhaps a worse one, because now that he had a moment to look, he could see that the ground ahead was largely covered in a gray carpet of feathers and guano. This was not the dried, hard stuff that the Uplanders burned in their campfires, but fresh, foul, and slippery.
Fist didn’t seem bothered by it. Neither were the ara. Sword watched as they charged onward, untroubled by the soft, slippery mess underfoot.
And then Dancer and Whistler popped up, pulling the rope taut between them, and the first few birds slammed into it, almost yanking it from their grip. Fist raised his spear and stopped shouting, and Sword forced himself into a run again, despite the treacherous footing.
Dancer and Whistler were moving forward, pulling the rope around the ara, letting out enough slack for the birds to entangle themselves as they flapped their wings wildly and tried to brush this obstacle aside. There were at least half a dozen birds, rather than the four the hunters had said they wanted, and Sword found himself running headlong into a fluttering, flapping tangle of screaming birds and shouting men.
Fist’s spear thrust out, and blood was added to the chaos of feathers, talons, and rope; one of the ara went down, and Fist moved in to finish it off. Meanwhile Dancer was living up to his name, dancing nimbly around another bird, looping rope around its legs and neck and immobilizing it while he readied his own spear. Whistler was standing still now, hanging on to his end of the rope, anchoring it for the others.
And then one of the ara freed itself and doubled back, turning north rather than trying to force its way south past the rope, and suddenly Sword found himself face-to-face with a charging bird as big as himself.
He swung his sword, but he had misjudged the bird’s speed; he had intended to lop its head right off, but instead the blade struck an upraised wing and caught on the bone. The bird shrieked, a ghastly, ear-piercing sound like nothing Sword had ever heard before today, and for an instant he found himself looking directly into a pair of black, white-ringed eyes; then the bird pulled free and turned away.
For that instant, meeting those dark eyes, Sword felt a sudden shock; for the first time since leaving Barokan he felt the presence of ler. He knew he was seeing into the bird’s own primitive soul—and it was like no spirit he had ever felt before. It was powerful, dark, and completely alien. Sword shuddered.
Then the contact was broken, and the bird was wheeling away, turning south again.
Sword was no hunter, but he knew better than to let wounded prey get away. He lunged after it, sword thrusting, and this time the blade slid under the injured wing, between layers of sleek black feathers, and into the creature’s body.
But apparently not into the heart he had been aiming for; the bird screamed again, pulled itself off the blade, and took a few unsteady steps.
“Fist!” Sword called.
The Uplander turned and took in the situation, then sprinted toward Sword’s wounded opponent. The white spear flashed in the sun as Fist brought it around and plunged it into the bird’s chest.
This time the ara went down, and Fist gave it another blow to ensure that it stayed down.
And that, Sword saw, was the fourth dead bird—Fist had already taken two others down, while Dancer accounted for one. Whistler and Dancer had released the rope, and the remaining ara were scattering.
Some, Sword realized, were already looping back around to rejoin the main flock, which had ignored the entire affair.
“What happened to you?” Dancer asked, marching up to where Sword and Fist stood. “Where were you?”
“I slipped,” Sword said. “And then that one charged at me.” He pointed at the bird Fist had just finished off.
“Slipped?” Dancer looked down at the muck of feathers, blood, and excrement that covered the ground, as if noticing it for the first time. “On that?”
“On that,” Sword said, mildly annoyed at the man’s tone of dis-belief. He, too, looked at the ground.
This certainly explained why Uplanders didn’t consider ara feathers to be valuable; there were thousands, perhaps millions, of them strewn across the plain here. Most seemed to be the short, soft down, rather than the long outer feathers, but still, they were ara feathers. Sword knew that a handful of these would be enough to pay for half a month’s meals in Mad Oak, or any of a hu
ndred other towns in Barokan.
Here they weren’t even worth picking up.
And there were the dead birds. That looked like hundreds of pounds of meat and bone; no wonder the others had wanted a fourth man to help carry. Sword bent over the one he had fought, approaching it cautiously—he knew it was dead, Fist clearly understood what he was doing and had plenty of experience, but still, some part of him didn’t entirely accept that conclusion. The thing’s eyes . . .
Those eyes were still open, but now they were empty and dead; the spirit he had seen there had vanished.
“It got a look at you, did it?” Dancer said.
Sword looked up, startled. “Yes,” he said.
“That’s one reason we don’t talk to ler,” Dancer said. “Would you want to talk to something like that?”
“But . . .” Sword looked back down. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. I’ve looked animals in the eye often enough, and they were never like that. And I’ve talked to other spirits, in dreams and with magic, and I never saw anything like that.”
Dancer shrugged. “Whatever ler we have here—they’re nothing. Except ara. Some of the old men think they must come from another world entirely, to be what they are. Or maybe it’s their breeding ground in the south that makes them what they are.”
“There are stories about them,” Whistler said.
“Children’s tales,” Dancer said dismissively. “Moral lessons dressed up with magic and adventure.”
Whistler gave his companion a look that Sword would not want directed his way, but Dancer didn’t seem to notice.
“What I care about is that they’re good eating,” Fist called, heaving a dead bird up onto his shoulder, staggering slightly under its weight. He looked almost ludicrous carrying it; the dead ara was as big as he was, and Fist was not a small man.
Whistler had hefted one of the others onto his back; now Dancer pointed at the one Sword knelt over and said, “That one’s yours,” and turned to get the last of the four for himself.
Sword nodded, and reached down.
It took a moment for Sword to find a decent grip, and by the time he did, blood from the wounded wing had smeared down his sleeve; it smelled surprisingly foul for so fresh a bleed. Sword heaved.
The bird was lighter than it looked, and the muck underfoot was slick; Sword almost went over backward as the bird came up, but managed to catch himself with the corpse against his chest. Blood from the other wounds was oozing onto his tunic as Sword righted himself and hoisted the carcass onto his shoulder.
Sword realized his clothes were going to be absolutely disgusting by the time they got back to camp—and he had no others. He really needed to finish making new ones. And a spear would be good to have—the sword didn’t seem to have the reach necessary to deal with ara effectively, and the birds were strong enough, he thought they might eventually break the blade, which was irreplaceable in the Uplands.
Besides, he had noticed that the spears were obviously more than just tools to the Uplanders. Every young man carried one, whether hunting or not. Sword’s lack of one, as much as his black clothing, marked him as a foreigner.
Rope, too, would be good to have. The hunters’ rope was hemp, though, from the look of it, and Sword had seen no sign that hemp grew anywhere up here; that must have come from Barokan.
And a pack to carry his things. Really, he needed to assemble an entire set of proper supplies if he intended to survive up here after the Uplanders had descended the cliffs. He would presumably find some of what he needed in the Summer Palace, but it would be wiser not to rely on that.
“Here,” Dancer said, handing him the bundle of spears and rope. The spearheads had been wiped clean and shone silver in the sun; the bone shafts gleamed white. Sword wondered who had found time to clean them and reassemble the bundle—whoever it was had apparently done so while Sword was still trying to maneuver the ara carcass onto his shoulder.
He accepted the bundle with one hand, almost losing the carcass in the process, but quickly managed to readjust and steady his burden.
“You’ve certainly made a mess,” Dancer said, pointing a thumb at Sword’s tunic. “It doesn’t show much on the black fabric, but that’s going to be stiff and stinking soon.”
“I know,” Sword said with a grimace. Then he turned and started trudging toward camp; Fist was already a few steps ahead, and Whistler just behind.
Sword glanced back at the flock of ara. A few of them were watching without any sign of interest as the mortal remains of their erstwhile companions were carried off to be butchered. The rest were going about their business, pecking at what little plant life they hadn’t trampled, grooming themselves, or wandering aimlessly. There was not the slightest hint of that fierce spirit Sword had seen in the eyes of his attacker.
“Strange creatures,” he said.
“They’re ara,” Dancer said, glancing back.
That seemed to sum it all up, really—they were ara, and unlike anything else. Sword did not bother to ask any more questions.
The walk back to camp was uneventful, if tiring—Sword estimated that the bird he was carrying weighed a little over a hundred pounds. It was bigger than a man, though much of that was legs and neck, and looked as if it should weigh more, but Sword knew its bones were hollow, and that formidable beak was porous under the hard surface.
Sword followed along as his companions led the way to the clan’s butchers, who would reduce the birds to meat, bone, and hide. There he lowered his burden, and asked, “Which leg is mine?”
The others turned to stare at him.
“What does it matter, which one?” Fist asked. “You’ll get your share of the meat, along with everyone else.”
“Because I want the bones,” Sword said. “I intend to use them immediately. I think it’s time I had a spear, and a few other tools. And clothes. I ruined my only tunic carrying this thing back here . . .”
He stopped without finishing the sentence as he realized that he was forgetting his place as an unwelcome guest. He was in no position to make demands.
For a minute he stood silently as the butcher and the three hunters stared at him; then Whistler said, “That’s sensible.”
“A spear won’t clean your shirt,” Dancer remarked.
“But it will mark me as a man among men, and not a trained animal.” Sword had learned that much about his hosts; they did not consider Barokanese “Lowlanders” to be entirely human. So long as he wore Hostman garb, he would be seen as an outsider and inferior. Even dressed as an Uplander, if he had no spear, he would be a child or a woman, not a man.
And if he was a man among men, he could bargain with the old women as an equal, rather than simply accepting their orders and the prices they set. That made a spear an important, even an urgent, necessity.
“We’ll need to ask the Patriarch,” Fist said. “No one said anything about giving you a spear.”
“I will, of course, abide by the Patriarch’s wishes.”
Fortunately, the Patriarch had no objections. “If he wishes to outfit himself properly, so much the better,” was the response Whistler reported.
The meat he had brought back bought him three days’ respite from earning his keep scraping hides and hauling water; the bone provided the material for a spearshaft. He had to work in the tent he shared, with Bent Ear mumbling unpleasantly in the background much of the time, since he could not bring himself to wear the blood-soaked tunic and he was not welcome elsewhere in the camp bare-chested, but he was able to complete his pants and vest that first day.
That stained Host People tunic spent the entire day and the following night soaking in a pot of water mixed with salt and urine, a solution that Gnaw Gnaw assured him was the best way to remove ara blood from fabric.
The second day Bent Ear took an interest in his project and taught him, by gestures and demonstration, the proper method of cleaning and shaping ara bone and using bird-sinew to bind the bones into a solid shaft. It turne
d out to be more difficult than Sword had hoped—but then, worthwhile new skills often did.
The tunic was now soaking in clean water; Gnaw Gnaw’s formula had indeed removed the worst of the bloodstains, and this second soaking was mostly to remove the stench of urine.
He was unable to complete a full-length spearshaft in a single day—for one thing, Bent Ear insisted that he not try, though Sword was unsure why, and Bent Ear subsided into surly silence when Sword asked for an explanation. Sword left it at that initially, but when Whistler eventually wandered in, Sword asked what the problem was.
Whistler took a glance and said, “You don’t have a spearhead.”
“I know that,” Sword said.
“You need to build the top of the shaft around the spearhead. You can’t just stick it in later and expect it to hold.”
“Oh.” Sword felt like a complete idiot for not realizing that himself. “Where do I get a spearhead?”
“We trade for them down in Winterhome. White Eye keeps the reserve supply.”
Sword therefore spent the third day of his reprieve from Stepmother and her company working for White Eye, an old man who had lost the sight in his left eye to a growth he called a cataract. Sword wore his tunic, now much the worse for wear; the long soaking had gotten out most of the blood, but had also faded the dye, and done a good deal of damage to the layer of ara feathers he had painstakingly sewn into the lining to prevent the Wizard Lord’s magic from locating him. The garment smelled very odd indeed, and was still damp in places, but Sword had nothing else to wear under his vest, and the vest itself was not considered sufficient for decency.
However, he also wore his new ara-leather pants, and was pleased to find them sturdy and comfortable.
White Eye was a widower, and Sword found himself dealing with a backlog of neglected housework—sweeping out the old man’s tent, cleaning his clothes and bedding, and polishing the first traces of rust from the half-dozen steel spearheads that he had stashed away in a small wooden chest.
The Summer Palace Page 8
