by Bev Allen
There was a huge open air feast that night. The Bear people and the Forest Cat danced long into the night and the great bonfires blazed, sending sparks flying into the velvet blackness of the sky.
It was a magnificent sight; around the leaping flames the women wove complex and graceful circle dances and the gold rings on their fingers catching the light and glowing.
After them came the passion of the warriors as they re-enacted their stories of valour and war, honour and the hunt. Spear points flashed and axe heads gleamed and all the time there was the steady beating of drums, the trilling of pipes and the singing of a hundred voices.
It was a fantastic spectacle and Lucien watched all of it, his mouth open in wonder and delight.
Jon would never have deprived him of seeing his first tribal celebration, no matter how badly he had behaved, but he made sure he watched the whole thing standing up.
Chapter 12
Lucien was subdued the next morning and inclined to sulk, but Jon ignored him and behaved as if nothing had happened.
Although he would never have admitted it, Jon’s punishment had shocked Lucien. His father’s reaction to misbehaviour had always been either sneering contempt or totally indifference; he had never made any attempt to correct his son or to show him another, better way to go on.
His mother would wring her hands in despair, weep and then spend hours trying to get him to explain his motives for doing whatever it was he had done to make her wring her hands and weep. Of the two, he preferred his father’s approach.
Jon was not indifferent, nor did he wring his hands in despair. Lucien’s motives for his action were only of interest because it gave him a good idea of what needed correction and he was going to correct anything he thought needed it. It was the method he had chosen that had shaken Lucien to his boots.
It had always been the ultimate sanction, but it was not one he had been bothered about because he never believed Jon would really do it and even if he did, so what, it might hurt a bit, but that was all.
What he had not anticipated was the humiliation, and he was having trouble dealing with it. In his heart of heart’s he thought he had deserved everything he got, but his wounded pride came up with a whole load of reasons why he had been ill used and, as a result, he had no desire to be on friendly terms with his mentor just yet.
Jon ignored this as well.
“Once you’re dressed you can go and see Feilda and get her to give you some breakfast,” Jon told him.
“Feilda?” Lucien asked warily.
“Iesgood wife,” Jon replied. “You can mend your fences with Vlic at the same time.”
“I’m not too hungry,” Lucien lied. “I think I’ll skip breakfast.”
“Do as you’re told,” Jon said.
“But …”
“Now!”
Reluctantly Lucien went. On the way he was sure everyone was looking at him indignantly or laughing at him. By the time he got to the cabin he was scowling and tight lipped. He might well have been rude to his hostess, but he had a fair idea what Jon’s reaction would be if he was and the lady herself did not invite disrespect.
She was definitely laughing at him, but not in an unkind way.
“Here,” she said. “Sit down and eat … if you can.”
Around the table were a couple of youngsters spooning some sort of mush into their mouths and a toddler secured to a chair was also trying to find her mouth with a spoon- the bits she missed she scooped up with her fingers and stuffed in with a great deal of relish.
Across from them Vlic sat watching him. They eyed each other warily, but neither spoke.
The two youngsters, a boy and a girl, wriggled with gleeful anticipation, they could feel the tension in the air and eagerly awaited what they hoped would be a gloriously dramatic encounter. They howled with disappointment when their mother sent them out as soon as they had finished their breakfast.
She whisked the baby up and took her away to be scrubbed, but before she left she said, “Talk! Both of you … and no hitting.”
The silence went on for some time.
“You doing much today?” Vlic finally growled.
“Dunno,” Lucien replied. “Depends on what Jon says.”
There was another long pause.
“I thought I might go and see the shield maker,” Vlic said.
“I’ve never seen how you make a shield.”
“Wanna come?”
“Might as well.”
Peace was thus restored without any embarrassment or humiliation on either side.
They exhausted the patience of the shield maker long before he had exhausted their interest. He was a busy man with the talk of war on every lip and instructing a couple of over-excited boys in the mysteries of boiled leather and bent wood frames was not on his agenda.
Finally sent away, they wandered around looking for something else to do and would probably have fallen into mischief, but the sudden throb of drums brought both of them back to the meeting house at the trot.
Uninvited, they slipped in behind the men, keeping their heads down and hoping not to be noticed.
The women Elders were gathered in their semi-circle and Iesgood, Jon and Dwerek stood before them, the warriors and other women standing behind and around.
“Harabin dheillwer,” Bweriit began. “Have you consulted with Iesgood liedwer and Dwerek liedwer?”
“I have, ma’am,” Jon replied. “First we must return to the place where Clieviis was slain and see if any clues remain.”
She nodded and glanced about at her fellows, who silently agreed.
“What is your plan after this?”
“Whoever did this will have left traces of their passing. Some of us will look overland through the forest and the rest will go up the river by canoe to see if they went that way.”
Bweriit nodded approval.
“There are many tributaries higher up where the river divides,” Jon continued. “If we find no trace before, we will meet there and send a party along each spur until we do find them.”
“We will hunt them as we hunt the bison before the rut,” Iesgood said with relish and there was a roar of agreement from the warriors present.
“This is good,” Bweriit announced. “You men see to your weapons and you women look to supplies and choose which amongst you will go with them.”
“Women are going with us?” Lucien whispered to Vlic.
“Of course they are,” Vlic hissed back. “The old biddies will want a true account of the hunt and they won’t believe any of us. Plus we’d all get a heck of an ear bashing if we tried to stop the girls having fun as well.”
Lucien glanced over to the group of young women who had eagerly stepped forward; by and large they were all a bit older than him, but still a few years away from their true marriages. Slim and graceful, their skin still undamaged by the climate, they were a very attractive group of girls.
Lucien could see any number of good reasons for having them along. Who knew what dangers might lurk out there to scare a girl into the arms of a convenient man. A number of potential ‘dangers’ rose up in his mind and put a smile on his face, but Vlic jabbed him in the ribs.
“Forget it!” he advised morosely. “They aren’t going to waste their time on either of us.” He waved his hands under Lucien’s nose. “They aren’t interested in anyone with bare fingers.”
Lucien sighed and resigned himself to just looking, until a more urgent thought came to him.
“Hey!” he hissed. “I’ll be going, won’t I?”
“Dunno,” Vlic replied. “I’m hoping Dad will take me, but he might be mean.”
They both slipped away as the talk got technical and involved boring things like water canteens and dried fish and jerky. All very necessary, but dull.
Lucien went back to the Men’s House and began stripping down his rifle and cleaning it properly. He was still engaged on this task when Jon arrived.
“Shall I do yours?” he asked cas
ually.
Jon’s lips twitched. “You might as well. You can run my knife over the whet stone as well.”
“Okay.”
“I need to choose a short axe,” Jon continued. “I prefer them for close work. Better than a war club, in my opinion.”
“Really,” Lucien said, trying to keep any excitement from his voice. “Should I pick one for myself as well?”
“Why would you need to?” Jon asked.
This was too much and Lucien threw down his cleaning rag. “You’re not going to leave me here, are you?” he cried. “I’ll behave, I promise I will. I’ll do exactly as you tell me.”
“You’d better!” Jon said. “Make sure you put an edge on my axe, but chose a war club for yourself, an axe takes a bit of practice; a club is a more forgiving weapon.”
There was something about having a war club hanging from his belt, knocking softly against his thigh that made Lucien feel several inches taller as he strode off to find Vlic.
He found him packing spare bow strings into his pouch and checking over his arrows; his travelling pack stood ready and waiting for him.
The boys clapped each other on the back and whooped about for a bit until Vlic’s sister came in to mock them.
The war band did not leave for another two days and Jon kept Lucien’s excitement levels down by a combination of finding and chopping fire wood for several women, enough to see them through several winters in Lucien’s opinion, and lots and lots of memorising the TLG rule book.
It was almost an anti-climax when they finally pushed the canoes out into the open water and began the hard paddle up stream against the current.
For the first hour or so Lucien was aware of a sense of disappointment, but he chanced a glance back and saw the river behind him was full of boats. In every one, the paddles rose and fell in a steady rhythm, slicing through the rippling water and powering the flotilla forwards.
He turned away with a wide grin on his face.
At the end of the day he was exhausted, unused to the pace and the physical demands of hours of paddling. He wanted to take his turn at guard duty and after a brief argument Jon agreed he could do so, but ‘forgot’ to wake him when the time came and he slept through until morning.
He was inclined to be indignant at first, but he saw Iesgood and several other men who had brought their younger sons with them had done the same thing. He began to wonder if the regard he had for Jon might be reciprocated and it gave him a good feeling.
Another two days of paddling brought them to a great bend in the river and here the party to continue by foot disembarked. Lucien stood with Jon, a dozen or so warriors and some of the girls to wave as Iesgood, with Vlic at his side, led the fleet around the bulge of the land and on, upstream and out of sight. They were to carry on to where the river met a change in the rock and divided itself into many parts, some great, some small.
When the very last canoe vanished, Jon turned his back on the river and led his party inland.
Lucien was used to seeing the land cleared of trees for farming and habitation, but this was the first time he had seen a natural meadow. A knee-high sea of green spread before him, dotted with small, pale flowers bravely holding their faces up above the grass to the sun. The tree line, far in the distance, was a dark green fringe to this undulating ground.
“Most of the land is like this away to the east,” Jon told him. “It presents a whole new set of survival problems.”
Lucien gazed out over the vast openness, rich with herbage.
“Horses,” he said softly.
Jon laughed. “Quicker to walk yourself than trail along behind some great plough nag,” he said. “And the pencil-legged things folks ride for pleasure wouldn’t last a week out here. A pack of wolves would take one look and think it was their birthday.”
“Not those,” Lucien replied. “But if you mixed the two together, got size and strength from one and the running shape of the other …”
Jon gave him a considering look.
“Tuck that thought away somewhere you won’t lose it,” he said. “You’re beginning to think like a TLO.”
It was not easy walking over the grass, it was even longer and deeper than it looked and what seemed to be nothing more than flat undulating land was undermined and riddled with burrows and holes. Small rodents appeared and stood on top of mounds of spoil from their burrowing and regarded the alien invaders suspiciously, before chattering a warning and disappearing down one of the many holes.
Overhead huge birds of prey hung on the thermals, cruising the warrens for the unwary ones.
They walked all day, but never seemed to get closer to the tree line.
“Do we know Clieviis and his family came this way?” Lucien asked that night as they sat around a fire built from dried grass and bison chips. It didn’t smell anywhere near as bad as Lucien thought it would.
“That’s what his other daughters said,” Jon replied. “And this is where they found what was left of him and his wife.”
“What was left?” Lucien queried.
“Nature’s clean-up crews had been at work,” Jon replied grimly. “But it was still possible to see how they’d died.”
“Oh!” Lucien said. “I don’t think I want to know any more.”
By noon the next day they arrived at a low hump of brown earth. It was still a little bare, but already the grass was reclaiming it and some colonising herbs had established themselves.
Several of the warriors went to the mound and began to dig small holes. Lucien watched as they buried something in each one.
“What are they doing?” he asked Jon in a whisper.
“They’re burying pieces of calm shell painted with the eye of a forest cat,” Jon replied. “To guide the dead home through the dark.”
Once Lucien might have scoffed, but no longer.
One of the girls stepped forward and ordered all the men to turn their backs.
“Why are we doing this?” Lucien asked once they had all done as they were told.
“Women’s magic,” Jon replied. “I’ve no idea what they’re doing and they wouldn’t tell me even if I was rude enough to ask.”
Whatever ritual the girls had to perform for Clieviis and his wife did not take long and was done in silence. Much as he would have loved to take a quick look, Lucien had learnt enough about The People to respect their beliefs and he resisted the temptation.
They were all a little subdued as they fanned out to begin looking for evidence of who had so cruelly killed two of their own and taken a child captive.
Everyone spiralled out from the mound in ever-increasing circles. It was dull, hot work. Every single piece of grass looked exactly like every other bit of grass, finding the faint marks where it had been disturbed in the not so recent past was hard and boring.
As the day drew on and the mound behind them became indistinguishable from the land around it, Lucien began to wonder if they would ever find a trace of the killers.
He was hot and tired and thirsty and inclined to think they were on a fool’s errand when ahead of him Jon suddenly raised his hand and pointed to something. Following his line Lucien saw a small herd of deer.
They were obviously downwind of them, because they took no notice of the strangers in their world. And even when one did lift its head and looked in their direction, they seemed unconcerned and Lucien realised they did not perceive two legged creatures as predators.
Jon took his rifle from his shoulder and sighted on a yearling hanging on the edge of the group. The explosion of sound made Lucien jump, despite the fact he knew it was coming. The near silence of this land had become normal for him.
“Fresh meat!” Jon yelled to Lucien, who ran to the kill as fast as he could.
The deer startled by the noise had first darted away, but once they saw no sign of four legged hunters, they returned to cropping the grass.
Jon was a good shot and the deer was not even twitching when Lucien reached it. His mouth was wat
ering as he thought of all the immediate treats to come. These days the prospect of fresh deer offal made his stomach rumble rather than rebel.
He and Jon got down to the bloody business of gutting the animal. They saved the heart, kidneys and liver, kicking the rest of the pluck to one side for scavengers.
Flies were already black on the spilt blood and they dragged the carcass clear of it to skin and joint the meat.
As they did so, Lucien caught a glimpse of something in the grass; he immediately dropped his share of the deer’s weight making Jon swear.
Not even hearing the pungent scold, he bent and parted the grass and picked up what had caught his eye. Silently he handed it to Jon.
“An arrow,” Jon said, frowning over it. “With a copper arrowhead!”
A few of the warriors were coming towards them attracted by the gun shot; one took the find from Jon and compared it to one of his own iron tipped arrows.
“Mm,” he said gravely, considering. “There’s very little free copper around here.”
“I know,” Jon replied.
“And none of the river tribes use copper for weapons,” the warrior said.
“That I also know,” Jon replied. “Which means this was made by people I’ve never encountered. And one’s you’ve never encountered either, my friend.”
The man frowned and studied the construction of the arrow carefully; something about it seemed to puzzle him.
“I’m not so sure,” he replied, a note of concern in his voice. “And I can’t quite put my finger on why.”
The two of them regarded the arrow again, Lucien craning his neck to see if he could fathom out what was bothering them.
“If this was left by whoever killed Clieviis, they were strangers,” the warrior concluded. “Why would strangers come here and kill a bridal party?”
“I’ve no idea,” Jon replied. “And I’ve no idea why Clieviis would come out here to meet strangers.”
The man gave a snort of derision.
“He was my sixth wife’s second cousin,” he said. “And I should perhaps not speak ill of him so near the place of his departure, but he was a fool, blinded by the status of his wife and daughters. There was nothing he wouldn’t have done to raise it higher, even to the point of making them beyond the price any family could pay.”