by Myers, Karen
It was a tacit acknowledgment of some of his concerns, he understood.
“It’s fresher, now,” she said. *Ilzay’s expertise helps me read it better.*
“I have something for you,” he said, and pointed to the first horse in his string. “There, on the left of his packs.”
She walked up to look and broke into laughter at the sight of his new broom, all the strain between them tossed aside. “For me? When did you make it?”
“Something to do while we ride after you.” He decided not to tell her how cold his hands had gotten. He’d make the next ones inside his kazr, where it was warm.
“We thought, when you needed to land and confirm the track, that you might find it handy.”
“I will,” she said, still smiling.
She brushed the snow off of her own horse, lifted the piece of canvas that had kept her saddle dry, and shook it off. Then she folded it and stuffed it into a saddlebag.
Once mounted, she turned to the others and described the next few miles for them.
While she spoke, Najud noted the same eagerness in her face as the other bikrajab showed, particularly the two older ones. He himself had never been on an official pursuit like this, any more than Munraz had, but their urgency to find this qahulajti and kill or control her matched what he’d heard about pursuits of this kind.
They really are hounds on a trail, aren’t they—tenacious on the hunt.
He wondered why he felt differently. He agreed with their mission, but his heart was in the finding of the captives, not the killing of their captor. When he’d been pulled into the Voice’s captive bikrajab, in Neshilik, he was more focused on their survival than on the destruction of that qahulaj, partly because they were too weak to hope for that.
Penrys is more like these bikrajab now than I am, intent on the hunt. This is her second chained qahulaj, and she a lion hound who seeks only lion. It’s like my tulqiqa, my journeyman travels working on my nayith, my masterwork. She’s driven to this, to pursuing these chained bikrajab. And there must be more of them.
She can no more settle into the quiet life I’ve been offering her than I could have.
The realization struck him like a blow. I’m going to have to make my own decision—to begin the rest of my life here, now that I am a master, a jarghal, and let her go, or to help her.
He thought of children, with an ache in his heart. No bikraj wanted to marry the mind-deaf, if he had a choice, but there weren’t many bikrajti. Either you lived alone, watching your relatives raise nephews and nieces, or made what life you could with what partner you could find.
The elation of winning Penrys, not just a bikrajti but someone who captured his thoughts, his body, his soul—that was an unexpected gift.
But what about children?
It’s only been a couple of months, not enough time to prove anything. But what if she’s right about being too much of a “monster”?
He’d heard her, in darker moments, speculate that pregnancy might just be another thing to “heal” for her body.
The wings and the chain—those aren’t really her. But what about the rest of it? The furry ears?
Despite himself, he smiled, recalling how sensitive those ears were to touch.
He remembered how competently she’d held the toddler that Tak Tuzap had found, after her family died—how upset she was when she dwelt on the possibility that she might have left a family behind, three years ago, before she was chained and abandoned with no memory.
She must want children as much as I do.
Maybe she’s right, that no one can give them to her.
But me, I could marry someone else. Like she tells me to do. She’s worried I could be giving them up deliberately, staying with her.
She was still describing the route ahead to the others, but she glanced at him with a raised eyebrow as if puzzling over where his thoughts were.
What of the force that put her in Ellech, three years ago? Could it take her away again?
This was no safe woman, and a life with her wouldn’t be a safe life. But, by the sun and the moon, how could he possibly let her go?
And how was he going to convince her he wouldn’t leave, that he didn’t want to ever leave?
Whatever the cost.
CHAPTER 27
The snow was light, but it was enough to turn the ground white and to obscure the trail they were following—not entirely, but enough that Penrys had to land frequently to check that she hadn’t lost it, as the wind blew the snow into uneven drifts.
Najud’s broom was handy for that, though rather worn after two days of use.
The worst of it now was the frequent landings. The hardest part of flying was lifting her weight off the ground, heavier now for all the layers she had on, and this constant landing to check for the track was wearing her out.
She didn’t bother Najud about it, since it couldn’t be helped.
Now she looked up at the low, dull sky, the clouds heavy with snow. Up aloft, where she’d been moments ago, she’d felt the beginning of gusty winds that threatened worse than just snow.
*I think we should stop early today. Don’t like the looks of this weather at all. We called these sorts of clouds kemellangar in Ellech, featherbeds, for the snow they dump and the place you want to be while it lasts. It’s a decent spot—there’s a stream, partly frozen over but flowing underneath, and it’s still on the sheltered side of the gap, about halfway up. Some trees to help break the wind, and it looks like some grass under the snow for the horses.*
Najud’s response was prompt. *How far? We need enough time to beat the weather and get the camp set up.*
She estimated the distance. *Three miles, maybe. An hour. Add another hour for the camp.*
She glanced up again and considered. Even if it started snowing soon, it would take a while to begin accumulating.
*I think you have enough time. I’ll stay here and prepare the ground.*
She sent him an image of sweeping the snow from a circle of grass for the camp with his worn broom.
His chuckle came back in his mind-voice. *I’ll make you more brooms, if you wear this one out. Anything to keep you busy.*
She looked around for tasks to do while it was still daylight. I should go aloft one more time and check the lay of the land. Our horses could be here for a couple of days. And what does that track look like, once it crosses the gap? Better find out now, while I can still sort of see it.
The kazrab were erected in record time, closer to each other than usual, and Penrys approved the strong ropes that were pegged to the ground, in expectation of a storm. So far the snow had held off, but the sky was much gloomier than a little while ago and threatened to start burying them at any moment.
Ilzay and Jirkat weren’t in camp yet—they’d handed off their pack strings and peeled off a couple of miles back to see if they could pick up any fresh meat.
Other preparations were different today, Penrys noticed. Usually only the personal packs were brought in out of the weather at night, and the others were tied down under canvas to keep them dry, but this time each kazr was crowded along the walls inside with as many packs as it could hold. The remainder were piled at the base of the largest tree, a solitary pine on the perimeter of the camp, marking the edge of the track, and several layers of strong canvas were tied down over them, pegged to the ground like the kazrab.
Penrys had helped settle the horses down within reach of the stream a couple of hundred yards away, in a meadow sheltered on two sides. When Winnajhubr made a small pile of heavy rocks at streamside, he explained to her how it was handy to have something near at hand to use to break the ice and keep the water accessible to the horses.
“Will they stay?” she asked him.
“Once the deep snow falls,” Winnajhubr said, “it costs them more effort to roam than to stay with the each other. As long as we keep giving them some of the grain for encouragement, they’ll scrape through the snow and make the best of it.”
When Penrys returned to the kazr, she discovered all the fuel and food inside, ready to hand. Leaning up against the doorframe were two shovels, assembled from wooden poles bound onto cattle shoulder-blades. She laughed out loud to see two more brooms there, too, just as Najud had threatened.
When he walked in and caught her, he grinned. “For the roof of the kazr,” he said, “To brush off the snow.”
“Ah. Of course,” she said. “Think it’ll be that bad?”
“Maybe not, but best to be ready.” He set down the two canvas buckets of water he was carrying.
“Won’t we have snow to melt?” she said.
“Well, and we may be here for days, if I’m any judge, and the solstice celebrations are tomorrow—we’ll want to be clean, and water already warm in the kazr is better than snow.”
She saw the wisdom of that. “What’s the solstice ceremony like?”
“We all of us miss the heart of the magham, the festival camp, where all the clans of the tribe gather for two weeks to sing, and drink, and dance. No one lives there the rest of the year, not like in the zudiqazd. We send our young men and women to put it in order when they return from the taridiqa, there at the center of the circle of the winter camps. Those who were betrothed a year ago bring their marriage gifts and seal the bond, and the tayujdajti brokers new marriages for the following year.”
He leaned toward her. “We say, if you can remember everything that happens at the magham, you didn’t have enough to drink.”
“So,” he said, drawing himself upright, “if we can’t travel tomorrow, we’ll do what we can to honor the solstice anyway.”
“We are four Zannib clans and a stray,” Penrys commented. “Think we can come up with a suitable compromise?”
He grinned. “Not a compromise, a combination. We’ll do everything.”
The snow-muffled sound of cantering horses brought everyone outside to welcome Ilzay and Jirkat. Their shaggy horses scattered the snow on the ground and puffed plumes into the air, looking for a moment like something out of an illustration Penrys had once seen in the Collegium in Ellech—barbarian horsemen from Zannib back from the hunt.
The horses’ flanks were bloodstained in places. Across the back of Ilzay’s was one of the steppe antelope that Penrys had seen from a distance, and Jirkat had three of the stubby marmots that popped up curiously when they rode through the right terrain.
“Well done!” Najud said as he surveyed their success. “Something to celebrate the solstice with.”
He checked the sky to estimate when the snow would start. “We’ve got enough time to butcher them, and we’ll roast some of it for supper tonight. Winnajhubr, take care of their mounts.”
Ilzay and Jirkat dropped off their horses and helped strip them of their tack before turning them over to Winnajhubr to clean up and shelter with the rest of the herd.
Najud trampled out a station for the butchering under a tree with a convenient branch. The antelope had been bled out on the spot when killed, but otherwise left intact, so they ran a rope through the tendons of the hind feet to hoist it up so that any residual blood could drain out through the slashed throat.
The two hunters stripped off most of their clothing and bared their arms in the freezing air to skin the hanging carcase, lowering the hide onto the snowy ground directly underneath, fur side down, to use as a place to lay the meat. Then they gutted it carefully, setting the heart and liver on the hide and reluctantly packing the rest of the innards into the snow at the edge of the woods and scooping more snow on top.
Najud explained to Penrys. “Not enough time to clean the rest of it, and no way to boil that much all at once. We’re not starving—we’ll leave the gut for the animals that can use it, but we may be here for days, so we’ll freeze it now to keep it from attracting predators.”
After that, the antelope was divided into a joint for the celebration tomorrow, skewers with small, fatty pieces for their meal tonight, and the production of thin slices for drying under the roofs of the kazrab, where the air would circulate freely. The work occupied everyone else in the camp, except for Jiqlaraz who avoided most of the mess by offering to get the fire started. Najud and Penrys, bloody to the elbow and shivering in the cold, exchanged looks with his nephew Munraz and laughed out loud with him at the adroit maneuver.
Khizuwi, as filthy as the rest of them, contented himself with a comment. “Perhaps he’ll cook it for us, too, while we get cleaned up.”
Ilzay muttered darkly, “After we’re done cooking tonight, let’s ask him to dig the fire pit for tomorrow underneath it, to take advantage of the thawed ground.”
“Won’t the snow keep us from cooking outdoors tomorrow?” Penrys asked him.
“No, bikrajti, we just need hot rocks and a pit in the ground. It has to be covered anyway, so the snow won’t matter.”
As they neared the end of the antelope meat. Jirkat took care of the three marmots. He cut off the head of each and then, before Penrys’s horrified eyes, he thrust his arm down the neck and pulled out the organs, adding them to the antelope’s gut pile. After that he broke the ribs from the outside with a rock, and reached in to remove them, too.
She questioned Najud discretely. *What’s he going to do with them?*
*We’ll fill them with hot rocks, sew them back up, and add them to our fire pit to roast with the antelope tomorrow. The fire will burn the hair off the hide.*
He laughed at her expression. *They’re very good, that way.*
Ilzay scrubbed his hands in the snow, then ducked into his kazr and returned with several goatskins. He divided the thinly sliced meat strips into three even piles, each on its own goatskin. The skewers for this evening’s meal were placed on another skin.
Najud provided silent commentary for Penrys. *The joint and the heart will be wrapped up in the cold air tonight outside to finish cooling, then brought into a kazr so they don’t freeze. Tomorrow, the joint will roast in the fire pit for hours, with the marmots, and someone will cook the heart in a pan inside a kazr, for everyone to share.*
The liver was sliced now, threaded on its own skewers, and just in time, the clouds having thickened appreciably since they’d started, though evening was still more than an hour away.
Ilzay presented one goatskin of meat strips to Najud, and another to Khizuwi. “Do you have everything you need for this?” he asked them both.
Penrys looked to Najud for guidance. He nodded confidently and took the skin. “Come along, I’ll show you what’s next,” he told her,
“Do we get cleaned up now?” she asked, hopefully.
“Not quite yet.”
CHAPTER 28
In a surprisingly short time, they were done inside the kazr.
Najud had washed his hands superficially in the snow, and then dug through his packs until he turned out a pouch filled with double-ended hooks.
He rigged cords across the rafters in the two back quarters of their kazr, near to the walls where they would be most out of the way, and showed Penrys how to pierce a meat strip with one end of the hook, and then drop the other end of the hook over the rope. The air was dry enough with the heat from the stove that the strips were already past the dripping stage.
“Try not to let them touch anything else, even each other,” he said.
“How long does it take?” she asked. “And what happens when you move?”
“The whole autumn slaughter’s done this way, back in the zudiqazd. Takes at least a week, until it’s completely dry, but then they don’t move while it’s happening. We’ll just wrap and rehang it all if the snow doesn’t pin us down that long.”
Penrys’s arms were sore from so much reaching over her head, and still filthy. Najud smiled down at her and kissed the tip of her nose, coun
ting on her dirty hands to keep him safe from revenge.
“This is nothing,” he said, waving his hand at the meat strips which were already starting to acquire a sheen as the surface dried. “Shabz is our biggest source of meat for the spring and summer. A family needs a cow or two and several sheep to get them through the winter, and more to supplement their supply until the next autumn. It’ll last a year or more, and they make a year’s worth of it now.”
Penrys contemplated ten times as much meat, or more, hanging from her rafters and shuddered. Najud laughed at her expression.
“It shrinks in a hurry. They say you should be able to fit the shabz from a cow into the cow’s stomach, when it’s done.”
“Surely not,” she said, picturing that in dismay.
“No, no—we store it in something that lets the air in, to keep it dry. It’s just a saying.”
He hung the last piece and picked up the goatskin to wash it. “It’s a comfort to see one’s food secure inside the kazr at the start of winter. Of course, this would only last us a week or two, but still…”
“Outside now,” he said briskly, looking at his hands, “and let’s clean off the worst of this. The water’s been keeping warm near the fire, but snow’s the thing to scour with.”
Their firelight reflected off the low clouds as though it were keeping them at bay, but no one had attention for anything but the sizzling meat they pulled off of their skewers, trying not to singe their fingers in the process.
The antelope bits were crisp on the outside, and greasy, and delicious. Penrys watched as the men smiled and rubbed the fat on their hands and face, and tried not to let her face betray her thoughts. Khizuwi caught her anyway and walked over to her with a chuckle.
“The grease is very good for the exposed skin,” he said. “Keeps it from cracking in the cold, dry air.”
She nodded, with reservation. “But doesn’t it smell?”
He held his hand up to her nose. It glistened with fat. Obediently, she sniffed at it. Other than the faint odor of the cooking smoke, she couldn’t detect anything other than the scent of human.