The girl was not wasting any time and she was not shy. Kati, whose seat position allowed her a good view of the couple, could see that she had somehow managed to undo the young man’s trousers and was massaging him expertly. Well, she likely had a lot of practise at that, considering that her husband apparently needed a lot of that kind of attention. The expression on Jocan’s face nearly sent Kati into gales of laughter. The lad clearly wasn’t sure whether he had found the proverbial rainbow’s end or had fallen into a snake-pit.
“Best if you go into my alcove,” Leni said. “It’s the furthest one so if you make a little noise it won’t bother the rest of us.”
She took hold of Jocan’s arm and physically led the two of them to the farthest corner of the hut, pushed them into the cubicle and dropped down the door flap.
“And I kind of like the notion that my sleeping place sees a little activity. An old widow doesn’t get to sniff the smell of sex in her blankets very often,” she said as she returned to her tea-making.
“Oh, every one of us living here is going to have to come and sniff your blankets if we want to breathe in the smell of sex,” said Ninu. “We’re all into our second virginity.”
Kati was about to dissolve into laughter at this when there came a shout from the hut’s closed door flap.
“Hey!” a woman’s sharp voice called. “Did that little bitch come in there? What’s she up to, anyway, in there?”
“Cinthi!” Marah turned pale. “She can’t come in!”
She stood up and headed for the door.
“We never let her in,” said Ninu. “She’s a pack of trouble, that one.”
“Marah, tell her that Kati and I are performing off-world magic on Lassa to make the Chief’s sperm viable, so she can bear the prophesized babes,” Mikal hissed at Marah as she walked by him.
She grinned at him in delight.
“Yes,” she said in a low voice. “That’ll work. And I’ll send her home to warm Komak’s back.”
She slipped out and Kati flashed a grin at Mikal. His notion had been a stroke of genius, actually, she thought; a lovely piece of quick thinking.
“That Cinthi is always sticking her nose in where it’s not wanted,” Mora said with a shake of her head. “And she gossips. So we always chase her away if she tries to come in here.”
She went to help Leni pour the tea into mugs and to pass the mugs around. The mugs were delicate old china ones and Kati exclaimed over the one Mora handed her.
“These are pre-Disaster,” Yarm said, handling the one he had with respect.
“All we know is that they are very old,” said Ninu. “They have been in The Old Women’s Hut forever, it seems.”
“They may well have been here as long as there has been an Old Women’s Hut in the village,” Yarm agreed. “Somebody saved them, somehow, from being destroyed. They are very valuable. Treasure them.”
“They’re a treasure, all right,” said Leni, sitting down with her cup. “And they would have been broken into tiny pieces long ago if they weren’t here in the Old Women’s Hut. The men would have been drinking tuber-beer out of them and smashing them into one another’s heads.”
“That tuber-beer is pretty potent stuff,” Mikal said with a shake of his head. “I don’t think any of us dared to down more than a sip of it. Yarm and I had to make a show of drinking it, what with the Chief sitting across the table from us, but I managed to keep almost all of it in the mug and I noticed that Yarm was doing the same.”
“I nearly choked on a tiny taste,” groaned Kati.
“And Jocan looked like he didn’t know what had bit him when he took a sip,” laughed Yarm. “his mug was still full at the end, just like the rest of ours.”
“Ah you fellows wouldn’t make the grade in this village,” Leni tsked, but with her eyes merry. “Komak insists on having half the tuber crop for brewing that filthy stuff. And however much the women manage to brew, the men drink it all up.”
“So what’s going to happen when these babes are born with fiery red hair?” Mikal asked, changing the subject. “Will the Chief wonder how that’s possible since his colour isn’t nearly so bright?”
Ninu started to giggle, and Leni and Mora followed suit almost immediately. Within seconds all the old women were laughing, some of them so hard that tears were streaming down their faces. Their visitors watched them, smiling to see such mirth.
Mora was the first to manage to control herself.
“You would be surprised how soon, after the birth of the red-heads, it turns out that Komak had fiery red hair, too, when he was a young man.”
“Ah, so there’s no worry that he might suspect anything to be amiss?” Mikal, too, was grinning broadly.
“No wife of Komak, especially not a wee, young snip like Lassa, could possibly be unfaithful to him,” explained Mora. “There’s no need to worry about the impossible. And the only person who might—and I say might—try to suggest something along those lines would be Cinthi, and if she does, she’ll get whipped and Komak will boot her out of his tent.”
“You see, these red-haired babes are very important to the Tribe,” Ninu said. “There is fear that our blood has thinned, and most of all, that of Chief Komak’s line. When, couple of years ago, the Seer started talking about the red-headed twins that would be born to the Chief, I figured that he was up to something tricky. Didn’t I say that, Leni, two years ago, when he started talking about this vision that he had had?”
“Oh, I remember it well, Ninu. Marah came here and said that she couldn’t figure out what nonsense the Seer was blabbering; if Komak could sire red-haired twins, she would have children and not a womb that had been empty all her life. And you laughed wickedly and said that no doubt the Seer meant for Komak to get a little help in seeding the third wife’s belly.”
“And then the old man—the Seer, that is—hand-picked Lassa for Komak,” Mora continued the tale. “He actually travelled around the Tribal Lands, looking for a likely girl. And him so old and feeble! Then he insisted on Lassa, and Komak had to pay the Chio a handsome bride price for her, because they had intended to wed her to one of their own old men, a close friend of their chief.”
“I think I see why your Seer wanted her,” Mikal said thoughtfully. “She’s a smart girl. And clearly she doesn’t balk at a little deception.”
“Yeah, she is young but not stupid,” agreed Ninu. “She had Cinthi figured out the day she came. And she made friends with Marah right away and didn’t make the mistake many second or third wives do, of thinking that their youth gives them an edge over the first wife. Marah was Komak’s first love and he still thinks a lot of her, and depends on her in ways that he doesn’t even know. If she had borne him children I don’t think he would ever have taken another wife, but he was the one with the problem and she would never do what the Seer told her to do, which was to lie with someone else.”
“It sounds to me like this is the Seer’s last gift to his people,” Kati said thoughtfully. “I think that he will die soon after the children are born. He wanted the business of the next Chief settled before he was finished with life, so he probably was psychically searching for solutions for quite some time. He must have foreseen that we would come, and that red-haired Jocan would be with us. Then he made his plans and we, the visitors, fell into them quite nicely.”
“Well, I don’t mind furthering his schemes,” Mikal commented, “as long as we make it safely across the Tribal Lands and into the mountains. Kati and I can’t afford to die yet for a long time; we have lots of work waiting for us off-world.”
That sent the conversation in a completely different direction, since the old women had not lost their curiosity about the world, or the reality outside their world.
Marah returned during this part of the conversation and eagerly joined it.
By the time Lassa and Jocan emerged from Leni’s alcove, they had spent close to an hour there. Jocan was tying up his trousers a little sheepishly as they emerged, and Las
sa was still—or again—in her skimpy shift, dancing around the youth in her delight. She turned her shining eyes on Kati.
“You’re not the only woman who had a good time tonight,” she said with a wide smile. “If any of you ever see this Rosine person again, give her my thanks.’
Then she leaned over to plant a wet kiss on Jocan’s mouth.
“And thank you, dear heart for the gift I carry inside me,” she said to him. “I promise to treasure the result and always take good care of the children. And now I must fly, go back to where I am supposed to be, bickering with Cinthi in my husband’s tent.”
She danced to the door and let herself out.
Jocan stared after her.
“Man, she was insatiable!” he burst out. “She wanted it again and again! Good grief! I’m done for, for at least all of tomorrow!”
“For all of tomorrow?” asked Yarm, to gales of laughter. “That’s only a day!”
“Oh to be young again!” cried Marah, tearing up with laughter. “Jocan, I think Lassa was making sure that she got enough seed into her for this conception to certainly happen. It’s her one and only chance.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about that, to be honest,” the lad said, accepting a mug of tea from Leni who had fetched it for him. “It’s going to be weird to think that there are babies of mine in this world that I won’t have anything to do with. It kind of makes me a shit like my own father is—he left my mother alone before he even knew I existed.”
“This won’t be anything like that, Jocan,” Yarm said quickly. “These children will have a father and a mother—more than one mother. They will be the Chief’s children, never anything else. They will be well-cared for.”
“A father, two mothers, and a handful of grannies,” said Ninu. “They will be wishing for a little neglect in a few years.”
“Don’t forget all the people in the village,” added Marah. “Yes, they will be longing for some neglect even before they’re adolescents.”
*****
The travellers spent a short night sleeping on the floor of the common room of the Old Women’s Hut. Kati regretfully peeled Mikal’s arms from around her when it was time to get up at dawn; they had slept next to one another, spoon-style. However, they wanted to get an early start, and hoped to be out of the Tribal Lands and getting into the mountains by the end of the day. Their new friends had told them not to worry about any further trouble from the Alif men; they all would be sleeping late after spending much of the previous day drinking tuber-beer. The old women fed them a breakfast and more tea before sending them off, and they discovered that their feelings about the Wild Tribes were very different now than they had been before yesterday.
“Whenever you have to spend time in a Tribal village,” said Leni to them as they parted, “always look for the Old Women’s Hut. That’s where the warmest welcome is.”
“Like so often,” muttered Kati to Mikal as they rode off, “you find out what you need to know when you don’t need it anymore.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A few days later Kati and her companions had left the scrubby Tribal Lands behind and were in the mountains, the runnerbeasts carrying them along a narrow ledge which had once been the road of the pre-Disaster civilization, and yet held a trail, now fit only to be travelled on foot or by the versatile runnerbeasts. The foursome had met very little traffic, only a few groups on foot, journeying between mountain villages. They had stopped to chat with each of these groups as they encountered them, and had picked up sometimes interesting, and at other times, useful information from them. One of the items that they had learned was that the locals seldom ventured to travel south across the Tribal Lands to the grasslands because of the “tribute” the Wild Tribes wanted in return for safe passage. The mountain folk had very little that they could use to pay the price.
“We used to, in earlier days, have items of value that had been saved from olden days,” one man explained to them over nooning tea that Jocan had poured. “But those stashes were depleted years ago. The Wild Tribes have gotten worse, too, or so everyone who is supposed to know, says. So we don’t go in that direction any more. If we need something that we can’t make ourselves, we buy it from the peddlers who get their wares at Salt Rock Town, which is the biggest settlement in the mountains.”
“Salt Rock Town,” said Yarm. “I’ve heard of it. I believe that the Northern Plains get much of their salt from Salt Rock Town.”
“Oh, that would be right,” the informant assented. “The people there trade with the over-the-mountain folk because it’s actually easier to pack up runnerbeasts and haul rock salt there than to come this way and deal with the Wild Tribes, even though the trip is longer and rougher. Besides, I do believe that the grasslanders get a lot of their salt from the ocean; they’re close to it and I have been told that there are a couple of villages on the coast that sort of specialize in getting salt out of the sea water.”
“This continent is a lot wider in the north so much of the plains there are pretty far from the ocean. Salt Rock Town salt would come in very handy for the majority of the Northern Plainsmen, as long as it can be carried there.”
“They’re doing it,” said the local. “And some people are making a living from it, for sure. They bring back trade goods on the return journey and sell them to the local population. And there’s enough rock salt in that mountain that they can keep on doing it for a long time—as long as the North keeps buying.”
“I don’t see the need for salt in the North coming to an end any time soon,” Yarm commented with a smile. “The population is growing, although slowly, and where there are people and domesticated animals, there are plenty of uses for salt.”
Kati sat on the ground and listened, trying to absorb this kind of minutiae of how a World was organized. She realized that she had never known much about that on her own World; all of its components had just meshed and worked together, at least reasonably well, without any need for her to pay attention. However, here on this World, where the inhabitants were still in the process of reorganizing everything, more than four hundred years after a global cataclysm, the web of connections was much more visible. At home salt had come from the grocery store in little boxes, or if it was sea salt, in pound bags, and she never had given it another thought.
Her attention drifted from the conversation that Yarm and the local were having, when she realized that Mikal’s eyes were on her, warm and curious. The two of them needed to talk, privately, but there had been no opportunity for that so far, not since they had emerged from the Tribal Lands. The foursome had been forced to spend their nights in small trail-side campgrounds, often on sloping ground which made sleeping awkward and privacy non-existent. Whoever had decided on the campsite locations had been more concerned that there was drinking water handy, room for the runnerbeasts to gnaw on some sparse grasses and an adequate patch of soft ground nearby in which to dig a latrine, to worry about the users’ privacy. Plus, they had been travelling from dawn to dusk, trying to get to Mikal and Kati’s destination with all possible speed. Travel was noticeably rougher through the present terrain than it had been on the Grassland or even in the Tribal Lands.
Then her interest was piqued again by what the local was saying to Yarm:
“If you make it to the village at Sunlit Peak tonight, and have some extra coin to spend, there’s an Inn there, Cara’s Inn, not a big place but comfortable,” he was saying. “Cara provides meals out of her own kitchen and her husband runs a little Alehouse in a side room; it’s the favourite place for the villagers to gather.”
“Ooh, an Alehouse!” cried Jocan. “We better make it there. The last strong drink we’ve tasted was that horrid tuber-beer the Alif pushed on us and—gawk—I can still taste it. It’ll take real beer to clear out the memory of that swill!”
“Ooh, an Inn!” Kati cried, mimicking Jocan. “A real bed, a sleeping place that isn’t listing in some direction! Yes, let’s get to this Sunlit Peak Village tonig
ht!”
“Well then, I’ll thank you for the tea and get on my way so that you folks can pack up and get moving,” said their informant, shoving his mug into his pack and getting up. “Tell Cara that Andry sent you; she’ll be pleased to know that some of us are passing around the word about her place. Ask anyone you see in the village about it, and they’ll direct you. It’s the only Inn in town.”
*****
Their runnerbeasts were fine animals and, as they made only one quick stop in the afternoon, they reached the Sunlit Peak Village nicely before sundown. Cara’s Inn was not hard to find. The village had only a couple of streets, and only one of these had businesses along it. Kati gazed about her curiously as they rode through the little settlement; this place reminded her of Sickle Island in that all the land that was available for crops was being used to grow such. It was the first mountain village that they had ridden through—the others that had been more or less on their route had all been off the trail and they had not detoured to them since, according to Yarm’s information, they had contained no services for travellers.
The little front yards in the Sunlit Peak Village were vegetable gardens, and around the houses grew fruit trees and berry vines in profusion. Because the houses were on a steep hill and backed onto rock, they had no back yards, but the slopes on either side were also a profusion of plants, mainly bushes and vines that Kati did not recognize. These side yards ran into one another with no fences between the houses, or any kind of visible demarcation in the greenery.
She wondered where the children played, until the street that the group rode along joined the second street at what must have been the central square of the village. Here was a nice-sized patch of flat land which plainly had been designated for human recreation, and all plants except grass and shade trees had been banished. On this clement evening, there were children playing with balls, and others running around, apparently absorbed in a game of tag. Men in bright shirt-sleeves and women in pastel tunics and leggings were standing about, talking to one another.
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