by James Axler
Martha sprawled face first into the dust. Coughing, spitting out the dirt that filled her mouth like the bitterness of her humiliation, Martha scrambled to her feet, scuttling around as she did so that Krysty could not attack her from the rear. She was almost surprised to find that Krysty had not closed on her, and was instead standing some distance from her, balanced on the balls of her feet, her face intent with concentration, waiting for her opponent’s next move.
Krysty knew—could almost see it in the woman’s eyes—that Martha was beginning to regret the attack. But she could not stop now. The humiliation of backing down in front of the women she had bossed would be too great. She had to follow this through to the bitter end.
She was lucky. Where she would have had no compunction in chilling Krysty given half the chance, or at least inflicting some serious damage upon her, the redhead had no such intent. Chilling or maiming a member of the tribe—even in self-defense—would put both her and Ryan in an untenable position.
For a few moments the two women circled each other, each mirroring the movements of the other. The crowd around them pulled back slightly, partly to give them more space in which to engage, and partly to avoid being pulled into the combat by default.
Krysty liked that: it said to her that the malice and intent was draining from the crowd. It was just down to whether Martha wished to continue. Krysty knew that the woman’s pride would dictate that she couldn’t back down, but how much effort would go into the next attack? It all depended on whether her heart would be in it or not.
For Krysty had little doubt now that she could take the woman out. In this tribe, the woman’s place was to stay in the ville, to prepare for the comforts of the men. They were trained in the domestic ways of tribal life, but the skills of combat were foreign to them.
Martha showed that by making another sudden but clumsy lunge. She had been relying on her anger and hostility to give her impetus. With that replaced by doubt, she was slow and obvious.
Krysty could not resist a small smile flickering across her mouth like a twitch as Martha came toward her, arm outstretched. Stepping to one side, Krysty was able to parry the arm, put out a foot to trip her opponent, and follow her down to the ground, knee in the small of her back to stay her, knife arm trapped in an armlock. Blood stopped, nerves trapped, the knife fell from her lifeless fingers.
“Now you listen, because I’ll say this only once,” Krysty hissed, “I won’t think I know everything about your ways if you’ll stop wanting to stick a blade through me. I didn’t ask to be here any more than you asked for me. Let’s leave it at that, or else next time you get to ask the spirits about me in person. Okay?”
She let the woman’s arm go, and Martha let her shoulder and face fall into the dirt, sobbing at the pain. Krysty stood, stepped back and turned to the others.
“That goes for all of you. Do we have an understanding?”
Faces refused to look at either her or the woman on the ground; eyes would not meet hers. These told her all she needed to know.
“Good. Let’s get back to work before someone notices and asks stupe questions. That’ll do none of us any good.”
The women returned to the hunt chill. Martha picked herself up and looked at Krysty. It was partly hurt and fear, but there was something else there: not respect, but an understanding that Krysty had spared her.
Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
As he sat studying a distant thunderstorm, J.B. thought that settling into the ways of the tribe had been odd, yet much easier than he would have thought possible. They had a rigid structure to their way of life. It seemed to him that this was partly because it had always been this way, and partly because they had opted to keep it this way rather than change and evolve. It was as though the tribe had been frozen—just as Mildred once had—waiting for the moment when they would be thawed out to fulfill its destiny. Then things would change. But not until then. It was as though staying the same reminded them of this.
But things weren’t that simple. When Mildred had emerged into a world of which she had no knowledge, she had changed her way of reacting to the world to survive. J.B. wasn’t sure that these people could do that.
In the past few days he had been shown the way they hunted for food, how they farmed the land to feed themselves by augmenting their own diet, and also growing feed for the livestock they kept. He had seen them as they made the weapons that aided their hunt, aided their defense, and would presumably fuel any kind of attack that they may be compelled to make.
It was, in some ways, an idyll; a model of how to live. Nothing was wasted. Everything was put to some use. Waste products from ammo and wags were unknown to them. The kind of crap that accumulated in any ville from trade goods was unknown to them, as they did not enter into any kind of barter or trade with outlanders.
It was a good way to live; J.B. could see that. The trouble was, he could also see that it was only a good way if everyone else lived that way. He supposed that was their aim, and what the prophecy was about. But J.B. had traveled too far, seen too much to trust to any kind of fate that would look kindly upon him. Fate was neutral at best, hostile at worst. To assume anything else was to beg for trouble.
There were a lot of coldhearts out there. They had blasters, ammo, grens, explosives of all varieties. There was little an arrow, a knife or an ax could do against that. While the Otoe stayed aloof, that was fine. But if they thought their destiny would lead them to engage against outlanders who were armed in this way…
J.B. let the thought drift away, not wanting to consider his position. He wanted to talk to Mildred about this, but even that was proving difficult because of the ways of the tribe. As a woman, Mildred was a new tribe member whose way of life was radically different from J.B.’s. She was set to the more domestic tasks of life. Her place was to serve and support the men as they engaged in their endeavors. It was not a question of inferiority; rather, J.B. thought, it was about everyone having his or her place, and that being defined by sex. And there was no stepping outside that.
He grinned to himself. That was probably driving Mildred nuts.
He didn’t hear Little Tree come up behind him. The man who had spoken to him during their journey to the ville had become his contact. While the others seemed to be wary of the newcomers, perhaps in awe of their status as carriers of the prophecy, Little Tree had not. J.B. had picked up from some of his comments that the warrior was a man who felt apart from his fellows. Although very much a part of the tribe, there was a restless intelligence and curiosity to him that made the others wary of him, as he was apt to question. This same facility made him feel separate, as he experienced the isolation of those who do not idly follow.
So it was no surprise that it formed a bridge between the Armorer and the rest of the tribe.
“Pretty impressive sight. But not funny, as far as I can see. Unless it’s the laughter of relief that we are not on the end of nature’s little joke,” he said softly.
J.B. turned toward Little Tree. The two men were standing on a raised hillock that stood at the end of an enclosure. Cattle with enormously misshapen heads grazed behind them, uncaring of their presence.
“Wasn’t that making me smile.” The Armorer shrugged. Not wishing to reveal his train of thought, he indicated the distant storm. “Looks hard. Real hard.”
Little Tree nodded. “Most of the time, we get sun, maybe some rain, and the rivers that run beneath give us water through the wells. Wakan Tanka provides. But sometimes it’s like Ictinike takes over, and it’s time to put up with his idea of a joke. Then the clouds gather and bang heads before crying with pain. When they do this, the rains come so hard that the ground cannot open fast enough to drink it in. So the rivers become seas, and everything in its path becomes as fodder for the floods.”
“How long since that happened here?”
Little Tree shrugged. “Ten, twelve moons back. Before that, maybe twice as long. When it did, many cattle lost. Most of
the crop went west. All the wigwams. Most of the earth lodges.”
“How many buy the farm?”
Little Tree shrugged again. “Three…no, four.”
J.B.’s face must have showed his astonishment. “With flooding as bad as you’ve just said?”
It was Little Tree’s turn to smile. “Ah, there are things about which you are yet ignorant. It’s no accident that we have made our home in this area. Come, leave the wonder of Ictinike and come with me. I get the feeling someone like you is going to like this. A lot.”
With which air of mystery, he turned and walked away. J.B. gave the distant storm one last glance, and then he, too, turned away.
MILDRED WAS FINDING adjustment hard. There had been times in the recent past when she and Krysty had been forced to adopt subservient roles when they landed in villes whose views on a woman’s place were decided and inflexible. She could remember a time when they had been forced to bide their time working for a mad bitch who traded in textiles. She had felt then—and saw little reason to revise that opinion now—that she would rather face down a mob of stickies or crazies single-handed than pick up needle and thread. She wasn’t exactly doing that now, but she wasn’t far off. And back then, she’d had Krysty with her. Now she was alone, and it made more of a difference than she would have thought.
She was looking for anything to distract her. So when one of the women with whom she was making clothing from hide said something that offered her a way out, it was more than welcomed. It was simple enough: a comment that Mildred shared her name with a tribal elder.
“What, there’s a guy called Mildred?” she said, trying to keep the sardonic edge from her voice. She needn’t have worried: the humor was lost.
“No,” her companion said, straight-faced. “Milled Red lives in an earth lodge near the great shelter.”
Mildred did not answer immediately. There was a lot to consider. She realized the earth lodges were used as sacred places by the Otoe. Perhaps it had not always been thus, but over time they had become thus. She knew it was unusual for anyone to be living in one. And the fact that it was a woman. Tribal elders were rarely, she gathered, female. To be as such, this woman had to have earned in some way immense respect.
Last, and something that had set her wondering in a different direction, there was the “great shelter.” What, why and where? These were key questions that could be of great significance.
For more than one reason, then, Mildred wanted to meet this person.
“I’d like to meet her,” she said simply. “Would now be possible?”
The women engaged in sewing looked at one another. Mildred could see that usually their task would be stuck to until the bitter end. There would be no stopping for reasons that could not be explained as for the common good. Yet, at the same time, it was true to say that Mildred—along with J.B.—was way outside the norm. How could they deny the messengers of the spirits?
The woman who had raised the subject looked nervous, but still said, “Yes, let us go now.”
She rose to her feet and held out her hand to Mildred. She was a little over five foot, and slender. Mildred was not a large woman, but she was taller by a few inches, and had the muscle tone of a warrior. She dwarfed the woman as she stood over her, which was somewhat ironic, as the woman had been introduced to her as Running Steer. She didn’t look like she had the power in her for such a name.
Pushing that thought to one side, Mildred allowed the woman to lead her from the wigwam and out into the sunlight.
Once again, Mildred surveyed the land on which the tribe had made their ville. She had time to ponder on this as they made their way slowly to the fringe of the enclosures. The tribe had chosen to build and make their homes some distance from the nearest range of mountain and hills. Down here, the land was undulating in a series of waves, with the odd hillock to give vantage onto the flatlands of the plain that lay beyond. It was fertile, and obviously farmed well. Yet she could see the storm clouds in the distance. If those clouds ever came this way, then she could see why they would need what the woman had called “the great shelter.”
They moved toward the center lodge. The roof was so low that it would be impossible for anyone—even someone as small as Running Steer—to stand upright, unless the floor of the lodge was sunk into the earth. The woman turned to her as they reached the entrance to the earth lodge. “Very few people get to meet Milled Red now. She is old, infinitely so, and sleeps much of the time. But she has much knowledge to impart, for those who understand.”
Mildred’s heart sank. The woman sounded like she was a dementia sufferer who roused from her slumbers only to pontificate like Doc on a bad day. She could see how such obtuseness could be taken for mysterious wisdom, but had no wish to buy into it.
So it was with some surprise that she followed Running Steer into the earth lodge, which she had expected to be dark and depressing, only to find that it was strongly lit by several tallow lamps, the walls covered with colorful tapestries that depicted scenes of Otoe life, and strange mythical creatures falling beneath the arrows of two figures.
In the center of the lodge, on a bed of skins and furs, reclined a woman whose age Mildred would not have liked to guess, even with her medical knowledge. She was small, wizened and crippled with arthritis. There was no flesh on her bones, and her skin was stretched like a mask against her skull. Her eyes were closed as they entered, a younger woman beside her quietly sewing.
As they reached her, and before Running Steer could speak, the old woman’s eyes snapped open. Mildred almost gasped out loud. Contrary to the clouded and unfocused gaze she had been expecting, these eyes were hazel, piercing and bright. They held within them the intimations of a great intelligence and humor that had not been decayed with the aging and betrayal of her body.
“So you’ve brought her to see me, young Steer,” she croaked. It was a deep, cracked voice, age making her vocal cords rasp. Mildred could only guess at what the woman had sounded like when younger, though the humor was still in her intonation.
Running Steer nodded. “She is the one with the name like yourself, O wise one.”
The old woman gestured impatiently. “Yes, yes, I’ve gathered that. I might be old, but I’m not as a child in my mind, even though I need looking after like one.” She turned her attention to Mildred, and the younger woman could feel her older woman appraise her carefully. She nodded slowly. “A woman. A black woman. Not a white-eye, but not what the slow-witted medicine man would have expected.”
“Is that a problem?” Mildred asked.
“Not for me. Messengers come in all forms. Maybe for him. I hear your fellow traveler is a white-eye. Male, but not of us. Nor of you. That may be giving him more problems.”
“How so?”
The crone chuckled. It was so low and harsh in her throat that it sounded like someone gargling gravel. “The ones to lead us to the lands and prizes promised by the Great Spirit are supposed to be of us. If we have followed the ways of the father, then why does he not conform to that and send us two warriors? Why does he send us a white-eye, and a woman who is black? I say why not? It tests our belief and faith in the father. But there are those who cannot see that. They believe that the letter of the law is all that counts.”
Mildred was taken aback. The last sentence the old woman uttered was a phrase that she had not heard for so long. Since before she had been frozen. Since before skydark.
The sense of what the old woman had spoken before this had entered her consciousness but had not been assimilated. She was too shocked by the implications that sprung to mind from Milled Red’s utterance.
The old woman could see this, and smiled gently.
“The spirits work in mysterious ways. So did the white-eye before skydark came down. You are perfect for the role of messenger, as you are not from this world. I can see that. You are from the time when people lived in great cities of chrome and glass. Of stone. Of the fossil fuels that were pulled from the earth with
nothing put back. Our ways are alien to you, but so are the ways of the white-eye in this new world.”
Mildred looked at the woman with a sense of awe. “Just how old are you?” she breathed.
The old woman wagged a bony finger. “Not as old as you think, my fellow name holder. Unlike you, I do not come from the time before the nukecaust. I have lived more moons than I can count, but the skies were still black and winds still howled when I was born into this world. No, my dear girl—I have the right to call you that—when I was born the white-eye had already triggered the end of one cycle and the beginning of another. But there were those still living who had witnessed the world before, and had tried to withdraw from it, not wishing to be part of the destruction. Sad that the white-eye tech would not pay heed to such wishes.
“I have lived through the coming into the open once more of the Otoe. Seen the feeble grasp we had on the hostile world become stronger. The Earth Mother has allowed us to rebuild as we respect her. And now there are those who say that the time has come for us to show the world that ours is the right way. Those who would say that your deliverance to us is a signal for this to begin.”
The old woman paused, as though waiting for Mildred to ask the question that she knew had come into her mind.
Mildred felt as though the key to survival for herself and J.B. hinged on what she now felt compelled to ask.
IT WAS A REDOUBT. There was no doubt about that, and J.B. was puzzled. Here, the Otoe had everything they could need to forge a new world, yet they chose to ignore it.
Little Tree had taken him to it with little compunction. A sunken entrance was hidden on the far side of the enclosures in which the cattle quietly grazed. The Otoe had not bothered to disguise it as perhaps it once had been; rather, they left the entrance openly uncovered, for easy access.