Raven's Choice (The Replacement Chronicles Book 1)

by Harper Swan

  She made herself smile. “I am fortunate to be at your hearth.” She drew one of the displaced furs up against the chill and looked him in the face, holding his eyes. “The Earth Mother favors you.”

  His brows rose. “And what does that mean?”

  “You have courage and strength. Because of your decision to take the meat, the settlement will sleep deeply tonight, their stomachs full. And the bargain you made with the Longheads showed much wisdom.” She found it easy to say those things because they were true.

  The corners of his mouth turned up slightly—only a hint of sharp eyeteeth. Black eyes glittered in the lamplight, and again his fingers smoothed her hair.

  Emboldened, she continued, “I’ll put the captive’s arm back in place tomorrow. That will help him survive the trip so he can rejoin his people—”

  “People—why do you call them people?” He frowned and pulled his hand away. “You saw them. We were with that wretched beast all afternoon. Surely you understand that he isn’t like us.”

  “It’s just that—”

  He slashed a hand through the air in front of her face, cutting her off. “And they frighten away game, so when we go out on the steppe, we find nothing, and then the band sleeps hungry—not like tonight. The elder was right. I should throw him in the lake. That’s what a truly wise man would do.”

  “Very well, beasts then—animals. It’s just that animals capable of planning a hunt with fire and blood can surely plan revenge.”

  Raven ran a hand under the fur covering and along her ribs. They felt tender, as if mildly bruised. “Your decision to bring him here instead of killing him was a good one. But a one-armed ma—beast won’t survive on the steppe or in the mountains, and his whole tribe might come if he doesn’t show up.”

  He tilted his head to look at the poles supporting the top of the lean-to and seemed to be considering her words.

  “I have reset many out-of-joint shoulders,” she said. In reality, she’d only helped with a few.

  She let the covering slide to her lap, despising herself but not knowing how else to sway him. His eyes strayed down, turning smoky.

  She lowered her voice, making it warm, breathy. “I can do so again. I know how to.”

  His tongue licked his top lip as if savoring honey, and then the covering was completely off her.

  At some point during the night, Raven dreamed she was a real raven, a bird. She sat upon a limb and groomed her glossy plumage. The pinions slid cleanly through her bill with a satisfying swish.

  A rustle of feathers came winging through the air, and a young raven, a fledgling, landed clumsily beside her. It pleaded for food. The fledgling’s beak hung open, flashing the bright-pink interior of its gullet. It made the loud bawling sounds that young—and sometimes not so young—ravens used while begging.

  Moved to action by this display, Raven began working her throat to bring up food, and she put her beak into the fledgling’s open pinkness. But then she realized her throat pouch was empty. There was no feeling of fullness, no rounded swelling—only empty flatness. She pulled her beak away from the young bird and flew away, searching for food.

  Raven awoke early and found herself alone in the lean-to, the camp quiet. She turned over, and a gust of her body’s scent marked with Bear’s muskiness wafted past her face, the odor overpowering the fur smell. At some time during the day, a bath in the lake would be necessary.

  After slipping on her clothes, making her braid, and dabbing ochre on her forehead and chin, she peeked around the lean-to’s flap at the main tent. Her stomach fluttered with the prospect of facing Willow. She didn’t know how her sister would react to the night’s unexpected happenings.

  No one was about, and she couldn’t hide all day, so Raven went out to the smoldering hearth and started grinding herbs with the small mortar and pestle she always carried in her pouch. She ground willow bark for pain and swelling. On reflection, she also ground valerian root for sleep, to be used later in the day. The Longhead should move his arm and shoulder right after the joint was reset, but he would soon need deep, healing sleep. She scooped water from a nearby water vat into a small gourd. Her hand funneled a handful of ground willow bark into the gourd. Using a twig, she stirred the potion.

  Raven was searching the hearth’s embers for a small stone to heat the mixture when she heard Bear’s voice behind her—gruff and terse, nothing like the night before. She straightened and faced him.

  “I want to make something clear,” he was saying. “Neither I nor anyone else will hold you in high regard because, out of pity, I joined you in those pelts. You are likely barren, and nothing will come of it.” His eyes were pointed icicles. “I have a question for you. And I want the truth. Are you a spirit seeker as well as a healer? Many of you are both.”

  “I do my best to heal people. That’s what I do. Isn’t that what Willow told you?”

  Bear looked at her strangely. “I want you to remember this, healer. If you cause any problems, I will cast you out onto the steppe or—” He kicked her pouch lying on the ground. “Or I’ll feed you all your medicines.”

  Raven considered his sullen face, wondering if he somehow knew about Fern. Regardless, he was an overly volatile man. Her fingers shook as she stirred the willow brew. Leaf was right—it was best not to make him mad.

  “As for the Longhead, I’ll put his arm bone back into his shoulder,” Bear said. “It isn’t fitting that you do it.”

  “Fine,” she replied, weary of his crossness. “But I need to give him this brew. It will deaden some of the pain.”

  He paused, frowning and doubtful.

  She hurriedly added, “It will help make him more docile. More like a—a newborn aurochs, like a calf.”

  To her surprise, his mouth twitched into a slanted grin. The idea of the Longhead behaving like a calf must have pleased him. He waved at the gourd. “Finish with your medicine. Let’s get this over with before we end night fast.”

  Leaf was already at the pen when they arrived. Raven wondered how long he’d been staring at the skin-covered form on the ground. The skins were completely still and didn’t move even when Raven cleared her throat. The captive, it seemed, was dead. But when Leaf shouted, he stirred and arose, throwing off the skins. Air rushed out of Raven’s lungs—she’d been holding her breath.

  The night before, they’d encircled him with posts set into the ground and tethered him to them using long, braided leather ropes tied around his neck. The ropes going to the posts had enough slack that he could stand or lie down in the center. To define the pen’s boundaries, the enclosure had been secured with more ropes, wound from post to post around the circle.

  Several sturdy guards stood nearby. Bear told them to unwind the ropes going around the pen but to leave the ones attached to the Longhead’s neck.

  Raven turned to Leaf. “Tell him we’re going to set his arm and that he should drink this.” She showed Leaf the gourd. “But first, I will need to examine him.” Leaf translated, and the Longhead looked over at her. She searched his face to see how he felt about what he’d heard, but his expression gave nothing away.

  When the ropes were gone from around the pen, Raven entered the surrounding posts, fully expecting Bear to stop her. He didn’t, so she put the gourd down carefully on the ground, all the while aware of the Longhead’s eyes following her. To reach him, she went between two of the tethers. She paused a moment and then gently moved her hands around on his shoulder and arm. His skin was hot, feverish.

  “What in the great Mother’s earth are you doing?” Bear shouted, starting toward her.

  “I have to determine whether the bone has come out the front or the back,” she said. “Let’s hope that it’s the front, or relocating it will be difficult.”

  Bear glowered but stepped back out of the circle, and Raven con
tinued her examination. The Longhead stood still while her fingers probed. She took a quick look at his face and experienced that odd swirling of impressions she’d had on first seeing him up close. He looked strange, which was not to say ugly. It just took a few more heartbeats to make sense of the striking eyes gleaming under those heavy, menacing brows and the well-shaped mouth under such a large, protruding nose.

  Luckily, the arm was out of joint in the front, but the whole limb was tight and swollen. Too much time had passed. The bone wouldn’t go back in easily, maybe not at all. She brought the gourd over and mimicked drinking from it before pressing the handle into the hand of his good arm.

  He looked so intently into her face that Raven felt he was trying to see into her mind and hear her thoughts. With eyes still on hers, he raised the gourd and drank. His trust warmed her, and she wanted to smile at him but dared not.

  “Well, which is it?” Bear asked when she emerged from the circle.

  Raven looked at him hesitantly. She doubted he understood that medicines needed time to work. If Bear straightened the arm at that point, her potion would only ease the soreness after the arm was fixed, doing nothing until then. When the more immediate pain sank its fangs into the Longhead, he possibly wouldn’t be mild like a newborn calf but more like a raging bull.

  “It’s out the front,” she said. “We should wait until the potion takes better effect.”

  “There isn’t time. There are other things to be done this morning,” he said. But still he stood there, his fingers pulling and working the bottom of his parka. Seeing how they were all watching him expectantly, he huffed out his chest and moved inside the circle of posts.

  The captive’s brow tightened when Bear stopped in front of him. For a moment, the two bulky forms faced each other as if about to wrestle. Then Bear lifted the bad arm and began to slowly pull. A growl rumbled from the Longhead’s throat. Bear dropped the arm, turned, and tromped out of the circle.

  “Since you boasted you could, you do it, healer,” he hissed, rubbing dampness from his face.

  Raven walked into the pen area again, and something resembling relief crossed the captive’s face. Her stomach roiled like a pool of eels as she began taking the looped rope ends from around the post tops, so the ropes fell without tension from his neck. Although no one told her to stop, Raven sensed the men grasped their spears tighter. They eyed her silently, faces full of interest and something more that made her overly conscious of every move. She took a quick glance at Bear, and he was watching her as closely as the rest.

  Though it would give the men even more to stare at, Raven shed her fur cape in order to free her movements. Clad only in leather tunic and leggings, she felt as vulnerable as she imagined the Longhead must have felt.

  She asked Leaf to tell the captive to stand with his back against a post. Leaf said a few words, and the Longhead complied by going over and facing a post, ropes trailing. Exasperation flashed through her. Either Leaf hadn’t said the correct words, or the Longhead hadn’t understood them.

  Raven wanted him firmly in position before she did anything. Instead of asking Leaf to try again, she decided to take matters into her own hands.

  At first worried that Bear would interfere once more, Raven quickly forgot him in her efforts to situate the captive. She pushed and prodded so that he moved with her in a shuffling dance, the dangling ropes writhing like whip snakes. To the touch, his flesh was more like fire-hardened wood than skin and muscle. Places on his back and chest that had been exposed during the journey were sunburned. But where his lower skins had slipped some from his middle, the skin was shockingly white under her darker hands.

  When he was in place, Raven took his injured arm, which his good arm was cradling possessively, and carefully moved it so that it hung down. She took a big swallow. That had gone well, but things would soon get difficult. It would help if he stopped looking at her. His eyes distracted her. If only he would look away…

  She stood so the arm was centered directly in front of her and grasped his wrist with one hand. With her other hand, she moved the dangling ropes aside and pressed her palm against his bad shoulder, pushing him firmly against the post. The head of the dislocated bone made a lump against her lower palm as if it wanted to come through his skin—she fought an urge to shudder. Next was the hard part, possibly the dangerous part.

  Ever so slowly, pulling from the wrist and rotating the whole arm, Raven raised his arm up and out to the side, away from his body. Nothing happened. The bonehead still poked into her palm. She lowered her thumb and pressed it into the lump.

  Although the morning was cold, Raven felt a flush of heat as she again realized that, although the Longhead’s arm was hugely muscled, it was shorter than those of most men. She wondered if she was indeed doing the right thing for his kind of arm as she desperately slid more fingers onto the lump and pressed harder.

  The Longhead’s face turned a stinging red, and his shoulders heaved with labored breathing. When Raven thought she could not possibly keep pressing any longer, she heard a pop. Although muted, the sound seemed to fill the quiet morning air.

  Instead of screaming, he howled, jerking his face toward the sky, neck tendons straining. The ear-numbing wolf sound wailed into the day, full of pain yet saturated with relief. She dropped his arm and stumbled backward.

  Raven had once been facing a tree just as lightning struck it. His howl did the same thing to her that the lightning had done to the shuddering, leaf-shaking trunk. She quivered from head to toe and felt she might split in half.

  Upon hearing the sound, some of the men had run a short distance. Others were still stabbing their spears about with rabbity jerks as the howl trailed off. A few, including Bear, were laughing weakly—he was bent over, his arms crossing his middle as if trying to hold in the laughter.

  Raven took up her cape as well as the gourd and walked shakily past them all. She found her way back to the hearth. No one was around when she arrived, not even the children. Willow was avoiding her. She felt a desperate thirst and scooped water from the bottom of the almost-empty vat. It felt gritty in her mouth, but she swallowed anyway and then spat out bits of rock, making sounds like a frightened lion cub.

  Maybe the family had gone to haul more water from the lake. Raven followed a trail to the water’s edge while chewing dried meat from her dwindling supply. The hard, slightly salty strips were mildly rancid. Her thirst came raging back, so she knelt on the lakeshore and lowered her head to the water.

  Willow and the children were nowhere to be seen—nor was anyone else, for that matter—so she stripped for a quick, cold dip. Afterward, she lingered near the forest edge and gathered herbs. A gentle breeze blew, whispering soothingly through the new spring leaves. Calmness settled over her, so she was caught off guard when her eyes momentarily overflowed like springs, dripping onto her cheeks.

  When Raven returned to the pen a short while later, the posts had been rewound with ropes, and gawkers surrounded it on all sides. The men were sizing him up, she thought, just as male animals did, seeing which one had the largest antlers or tusks. The women stood in small clusters, taking care not to stand too close to the pen. Perhaps, to them, he was only a curiosity like a white hyena. Raven herself wasn’t clear about how she viewed him. All the stories she’d heard as a girl and then from Reed still filled her head.

  Children ran in and out of the crowd, and several boys jabbed long sticks through the wound ropes. The captive grasped a stick poking him in his ribs and broke it in half, to their whooping delight.

  “Stop your torment,” Raven yelled at them. “The Longhead needs rest before he leaves. If he doesn’t get back soon enough, his brothers may come looking for him and find you instead.” The threat was a variation of what exasperated parents said to their children. I’ll leave you out on the steppe, and the Longheads will get you.

&n
bsp; The grownups and some of the children gave her hostile looks, but most of them left, as if her words or maybe her presence made them uncomfortable. “Unwind the ropes,” she told the guards. “I need to treat him.”

  His grassy eyes focused on her hands while she stirred the water and ground valerian. When she handed him the gourd, he gulped the mixture down, not wincing at the bitter taste, and then noisily sucked out the last drops. She passed him the last of her dried meat. He devoured it, barely pausing to chew.

  Raven realized, from the smell coming from a small dirt mound nearby, that he’d dug a hole with his hands to cover his wastes. With his lack of mobility, the area would soon become fouled. She couldn’t clean this up herself. The jokes made about that would last for many seasons—she would never gain any esteem with the band, and she had a feeling that Bear would be furious if she did such a thing.

  “His enclosure needs to be cleaned,” she said, filling her voice with authority. She turned to one of the guards. “Go fetch a slave—and he needs something more to eat and drink.” The guard pulled a sour face but left to do her bidding.

  A voice beside her said, “That is what they made me. A slave.”

  Raven hadn’t realized that one of the loiterers was Leaf. He stood with his head on his chest, his stance very unlike his usual scout’s alertness.

  “And you are no longer a slave,” she said gently. “It should never have happened to you, but there is no slavery in your blood.”

  His head swiveled, birdlike, and he gave her a long look from the corner of an eye. His lips parted, and she thought he would say something, but he smiled wanly and turned away.

  “What is their word for eat?” she called after him.

  “Aulehleh,” she thought she heard him reply, the beginning sound lilting up slightly more than the rest.