Anderson, Poul - Novel 18
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When at last Donya spied a smoke-wisp on her left, she headed for it. ‘They may have news we’ve not heard,” she explained. “Still more have we need to tell them what we know. As many as can be should gather at this summer’s Landmeet!”
That’s distinct from a Kithmeet, which happens near solstice in each particular territory, Josserek recalled. The Landmeet is two months afterward, for everybody in the Northlands who cares to come. Shark! Will they take so long to start getting organized? Sidir could be in Roong by then.
He had learned the futility of argument. “Where are we?” he asked.
“Whose grounds, do you mean? The Ferannian.” Donya clicked tongue and thumped heels. Her pony broke into a trot. Josserek’s followed, and the two remounts they led.
They came on the camp unobserved, since a ridge lay between. From the top, Josserek saw a dozen circular, cone-roofed pavilions by a stream. Evidently the owners were a Fellowship: an informal association of families who kept winter quarters close together and most of whose members hunted in company. (Some, especially younger ones, adventured elsewhere in any given season.) This day being Warm and sunny, full of turf odors, children and oldsters were cooking a mutual supper outdoors: a giant prairie deer roasted in chunks amidst cauldrons suspended over coals. Nearby stood several of the light, high-sprung wagons which carried loads across the plains and floated them across waters. Hobbled draft horses grazed beyond. Riding horses, hounds, hawks were off on the chase. When his gaze swept over billowy greenness toward the eastern horizon, Josserek saw a part of that. Hunters had stampeded a moonhom herd—surge of russet bodies, earthquake of hoofs—and galloped hairbreadth along the edges, wielding bow and lance.
“Can they eat that much before it spoils?” he wondered aloud. Again and again he had encountered a quasi-religious care for the land and all the life thereon.
“They’ll dry and smoke most, then carters will take it to their houses; also hides, bones, sinews, entrails, for every part has a use,” Donya said.
“You told me, though, you hunt in winter too.”
“Just a bit, and close to the garths. Stored food keeps us—through a blizzard, or while we go visiting afar, or when we practice arts and idleness. Surely you didn’t think we spend snowtime like coyotes?” Donya’s laugh teased him as she turned downhill.
Josserek was surprised to see the campers go for weapons when they spied the newcomers. Travelers had often remarked on Rogavikian trustfulness. Donya must have noticed their behavior too, for she spread empty hands, and halted at the edge of the site. By then, the folk had put down their arms. A white-haired granny, still erect and supple in the kilt that was her sole garment, took the lead. “Welcome, wayfarers,” she declaimed. “We are from Ravens’ Rest, and I hight Deraby.”
Donya introduced herself and her companion. “Why were you wary of us?” she asked. “Have the Imperials so soon reached Ferannian?”
“No,” Deraby said, “though passers-by have told us how they ravage. We feared you might be Outrunners; we found signs of their work a few days ago. In spite of your being well-clad and having a man beside you— Eyach, dismount, take refreshment. Avelo, look to our guests’ horses, will you?”
“Outrunners,” Donya mumbled. She slacked her brief scowl. At Josserek’s questioning glance: “I’ll explain later, if you wish. Another hazard. Belike no worse than the wild dogs or wilder river we’ve already met.”
The children boiled around the foreigner and insisted on giving him a tour. He learned that the tents were thin-scraped leather, erected on light wooden frames with steel couplings. At the center of each was a hearthpit, a sheet aluminum funnel hung above for a smokehood. Window flaps and entrance were protected by mosquito netting. He noticed a fair abundance of goods, including equipment for sports, games, music, even books. Branded on the walls were symbols he could not read but found pleasing. Wagons were downright gaudy, trimmed in brass and gold.
Among persons present were a couple of mothers who took a turn this day tending and suckling everybody’s infants. Their own were two or three years old, long since on solid food but still cuddling up for a draught from a breast every now and then. Lactation reduced fertility, Josserek knew. Likewise did low body weight; and most Rogaviki were lean. Nomadic savages normally had ways, besides acceptance of high infant mortality, to keep fecundity down. There were practical reasons: such as the fact that a woman could not very well carry about more than one baby at a time, while toddlers slowed her nearly as much.
Damnation, though, that doesn’t apply here, Josserek thought. By all accounts, including Donya’s when I asked, the Northfolk have good medicine and sanitation; few of their young die. They have horses and wheels for transport. They have what amounts to equality of the sexes; men share in child care, and in a polyandrous household, men will always be around. Motherhood flat-out isn’t a handicap, not enough or long enough to matter. So the population growth pattern should be more like the pattern of agricultural peoples. Instead, it’s the lowest I’ve ever heard of—zero, except when heavy losses are being made up.
That implies regulating mechanisms, religion, law, custom, social pressure, institutions. Except the Rogaviki don’t appear to have any such things!
Well, of course their marriage style. A powerful force. What was Donya’s estimate when I asked her? Three out of five females never reproduce. How can that have lasted, for centuries or millennia? It’s clean against human nature.
By chance, he soon got a partial reply. The earliest who returned to camp were a young and thoroughly pregnant girl, accompanied by a mature woman. Both caught his attention. The first showed marks of tears, though she had won back some calm. That wasn’t typical ... he believed. The second was still more striking. She was perhaps in her late thirties, a tall blonde who must often go nude as she did now, since her skin was everywhere a deep brown against which her hair stood nearly white. She was apparently unwed, for he noticed none of the silvery birth-scars which traced along Donya’s thighs. But her walk was deliberate, her countenance grave, in a way he had never before seen hereabouts. Her right arm circled the girl’s waist—comfortingly, not erotically— while her left hand swung a staff topped by a sunburst carved in walrus ivory from the Mother Ocean.
“Who are they?” Josserek murmured.
“A Forthguide, plain to see, and a member of the Fellowship whom she’s been helping,” Donya answered.
“What do you mean?”
“Later.”
“The woman gave her name as Krona of Starrok. Far had she wandered, then, from the southern kith wherein she was bom. Bidding the youngster a gentle goodbye, she soon fell into talk with the mistress of Owlhaunt. Josserek didn’t hear what they said, for hunters were coming back too and eager to meet him.
Some stayed out to guard the kills from scavengers, until morning when butchering could commence. Their fires twinkled through dusk. “Pity you must be off again tomorrow,” said a graybeard called Tamaveo. “They’d love to hear you tell of your farings.”
“We’ve time for little more than warnings,” the Killimaraichan responded. Though he didn’t think it would do much good, he shared Donya’s desire to start the tale of the invasion and its uniqueness spreading across the whole Northland.
“We know.” Knuckles whited around a haft. “The de- vourers are back. A new generation of us must die to get rid of them.”
“No,” Josserek denied. “This is not like any onslaught ever before.”
Tamaveo’s wife caught her breath and gripped his arm. She was no older than the girl whom Krona had been counseling. In answer to a muffled question, Donya had said, “Aye, it’s an easy guess what happened in that family. Its lady died. For the children’s sake, her husbands chose to stay together. Doubtless they’d rather have taken a mature mate, but all such in the neighborhood or at the Kithmeet felt they had men enough already, and yon slip was the sole female who’d give them a yes.”
“How?” the wife whispered.
Josserek nodded slightly. “These are not plowmen or herders moving in for you to massacre,” he said, “nor slow fighters afoot and clumsy dragoons, for you to catch unawares, and cut their supply lines in the dry, lean, dusty country above the Khadrahad. The fist and the fangs of this army are the Barommian riders, as swift and hardy as yours, as well able to live off the land, and better equipped, better—” he cold find no word for “disciplined” and must substitute—“prepared to work in teams, than I fear you imagine. The Rahfdian infantry will establish stongholds. Out of these the Barommian horse will hunt you down.”
Donya had said that the idea of being themselves attacked would not shake them.
“Tell us more,” Deraby requested. Her tone was level—though briefly, through the dying firelight, he saw her reach forth and touch the cheek of a granddaughter.
He spoke, and they listened, until long after the late moon had risen. Questions were many and, for the most part, intelligent. But they turned wholly on tactics. How could a daggerman get past a Barommian lance and corselet? Might enemy squadrons be lured into the quicksands common along shallow rivers? What about men in the grass with hamstringing knives? ... Josserek heard no slightest concept of strategy, or of the possibility of defeat.
In the end, as folk yawned and sought their tents, Tamaveo invited the Killimaraichan to his. Donya and
Krona had gone off into the dark by themselves. Josserek noticed how this man, as senior husband, took leadership in this particular family. His impression was that a wife usually did. However, “leadership” must be a wrong term, in a society where nothing compelled the individual except the individual’s own self. “Initiative?” Regardless, Tamaveo’s cohabitants were pleased, while members of other households expressed good-natured disappointment.
Within the shelter, by the light of a thin bronze candelabrum, he said, as impulsively as Josserek had heard a Rogaviki speak under normal conditions: “Man from the Glimmerwater, you do us much kindness. May I give you a token in turn?” From a chest he took a cloak, heavy Southland silk embroidered and trimmed in Northland style.
“Why ... yes, you are good, you gladden me,” Josserek answered, the nearest he could come to thanks in the native tongue for something not absolutely extraordinary. He was sincere; the garment was gorgeous. “Uh, what is this white fur? I’ve never seen a pelt quite like it?”
“Wold cat,” Tamaveo said.
“Hm?” Josserek had glimpsed the small wild felines, obviously related to the house pets of Killimaraich. But they were drab-hued for camouflage. “Is it—” Damn, he didn’t know how to say “albino.”
“Winter phase, of course.” Tamaveo’s manner suggested pride. Probably the beasts were hard to catch then, hence valuable.
For some reason, Josserek lay long in his bedroll thinking about that. He had met cats around the world.
Scientists theorized this was because civilization before the Ice had kept them; certain uniformities in certain fragments suggested it had been global. But he knew of none whose color changed with the seasons, as did the ermine’s or an arctic hare’s.
Then the wold cat was a new genus. What did “new” mean? In numberless thousands of years, in weathers that shifted decade by decade as the glaciers growled down from the poles, natural selection might well become a whiplash. Genetic drift too, maybe, among populations cut off from their kin.... He recalled an island where everybody had six fingers. Or ebon skin, snow hair, and brass eyes on Mulwen Roa of Iki.... Well, I’m no hereditarian savant. I’ve just read a little, mainly after I went on whale patrol and started wondering how such marvels ever came to be.... Eventually he slept. In his dreams, elephants trumpeted. They were not like those he had seen in tropical Owang or Eflis. They were hairy, and bore immense arches of tusk, and walked a tundra which the Ice cliffs bounded.
—Donya came during the night. At dawn, while a hubhub went through the grayness, she drew Josserek aside and said, “The Forthguide, Krona, is finished here. She’s bound next for Dunheath Station. That’s on our way—if we’d seed our message widely—so I proposed she join us. Will you agree?”
“I, I suppose so,” he hesitated. “What does she do?” “You do not know? She seeks wisdom. For that, she stays out of any family or Fellowship, travels freely about, repays hospitality by teaching or by helping people like that girl you saw with her yesterday. It’s a noble calling, for such as have strength for it.”
Well, Josserek thought, this might make things a little awkward between Donya and me while it lasts. On the other hand, I am interested. And what use if I said no? “How was she helping?” he asked. “I mean, you two had a long conversation. I’m sure she told you, or you could tell for yourself, what went on. Maybe I should know, lest my tongue blunder.”
“Oh, a common matter.” The response was indifferent, if not altogether uncompassionate. “The girl has good prospects of marrying. Two of her fathers are in trade, and can dower her well.” Since paternity became guesswork after a woman had taken her second husband, the Rogaviki ordinarily made no distinction among the possibilities. “But playing about as lassies do, she had the misfortune that a dart struck home.” Josserek already knew how custom availed itself of the sterility frequent among adolescents. Besides fun and games, many first marriages happened quite soon after puberty. Under parental guidance, a young couple could grow together for a few years before babies started arriving.
“This is a—” He must use Arvannethan. “A disgrace?”
Donya nodded. “If the unwed bore children as wives do, we’d be crowded out of our lives, right?”
“Can she be forced to refrain?”
“No, certainly not. She is human.” What notion of subservience that the Rogaviki had came entirely from domestic animals and from what they knew about foreign realms. “But who would take her in, help her in any way, let alone marry her? She’d have to become an Outrunner, or a full-time whore, or something ghastly like that.”
“What can she do, then?”
“The usual. It’s only that she is still childlike and— sentimental. Well, Krona has spent these past several days heartening her.”
“For what?”
“Why, to expose the brat when it’s born. What else?” Donya smiled. “And give out the customary story, that she believes it was a mule, from a chance union with a Southron, therefore nothing anybody would want to keep. Everyone will agree.” She turned away. “Hoy, we’ve work, you and I, haven’t we?”
Josserek stood still. Noise and movement, waxing light and waning cold, seemed far off.
Why do I care? he thought. Did I imagine these people have no hypocrisies? And the gods know, whether abortion or infanticide, baby murder is common enough the world around.
What of it? I must be more of a piece with Killimaraichan civilization than I was aware, if my guts tell me that here too the unborn and the newborn deserve rights, which they’ve done no crime to forfeit.
The Northfolk feel otherwise. Why am I troubled? What should I expect ... from a race quite strange to me?
Let me continue among them awhile, regardless. If they will fight the Empire to the end, maybe I can help show them how to bring down a maximum number of its men before they must surrender, the last starvelings of them who have not died like unwanted babies of their own.
CHAPTER 13
On their second day as a triad, the Outrunners found them.
&n
bsp; Donya saw the band first. She had taken a horse off on a practice which eventually carried them over a hill, beyond view of her companions. This she had done with both her animals since leaving Bullgore, putting them through paces, maneuvers, stunts that would have earned fame in a showtroupe among the Seafolk. ‘The need may come,” she explained to Josserek. By the present time, they were like limbs of her.
He hadn’t tried for that, nor had she urged he do so. His horsemanship was merely competent. Krona rode her own beasts in total unity, but denied any necessity for repeated drills; she had raised them from colthood. Thus she and the man jogged side by side and talked. Despite his view of her morals, he came to like her. Curious about his world, she asked him more than she answered. However, she was less reticent than most Rogaviki. That did not stem from either egotism or insecurity. He soon decided he had rarely met a person so balanced. Just as she traveled unarmed save for knives, hatchet, and light crossbow, hunting tools only, she felt no threat to her inwardness. In leisure fashion, she described for him what she was.
“Oftenest, unwed women stay on in their Fellowships,” she began. “Extra hands are always useful. Still more valued are extra minds.”
(He had wondered about the stability of such households. Might a husband not grow tired of sharing his woman, and easily be lured elsewhere? Donya had said no. A wife should have the vigor to keep several men happy; that was one basis on which a girl, counseled by her parents, decided whether or not she really desired to become a wife. Sexual outlets were available for the unplighted: commonly female but not uncommonly male, boys or passing travelers or occasionally a husband. The sole rule was that no children result. Extramarital flings were unimportant in themselves, if the marriage was strong. And it normally was. In theory, a spouse could leave anytime. In practice, a wedding created a “bond of honor,” and whoever broke that without mutual consent risked losing the respect of friends.