They moved away from the dense brush by the banks, walking quickly. To the south, a funnel of dark smoke hung on the horizon, but it was much too far away to be the village. It was early in the season for brushfires, too. It looked bad, yet whatever it was, the scouts would warn the tribe if it came close.
They had to run the last mile to get back before night fell. Joti's mom was gone from the grounds around the Ridik tents, but Odobo was still at work in the dirt, scratching symbols with his stick, stepping back to consider their arrangement, then scuffing them with his foot. Like most, Joti didn't know how to read, and the markings Odobo were making didn't look like anything he'd ever seen.
"What are you doing?" he said, frogs momentarily forgotten.
"Thinking about the hunt. And if we can do better the next time." Odobo's eyes moved to Joti's empty hands. "But I'm not the only one who hunts. What'd you catch today? A herd of air?"
Joti turned out his pockets, handing over his two frogs, which had become limp and bedraggled over the journey back. Drez' hadn't fared any better.
Odobo hefted them, squinting. He sniffed one, then held it to his ear and shook it. "Uggot wants you to be hunters and warriors, not storks. Try again tomorrow."
Joti muttered a word he'd heard one of the older boys say and tossed the frogs aside.
His dad stuck his hands on his hips. "You can't throw away good frogs. Roast them up. They'll make your skin healthy and green."
Joti and Drez wandered over to the family fire, where they cleaned the frogs and spitted them on trimmed sticks. The smell was like fish that hadn't quite learned to be fish. The meat was stringy and tasted like brined birds.
While they moved onto their second frogs, Joti's mom returned. She spoke with Odobo for a minute, then crossed to the fire and stood above Joti.
"I heard you caught those yourself."
Joti held up a meaty leg, grease running down his forearm. "Want one?"
She smiled thinly and made a cutting motion with her hand. "I've feasted already. Too much food makes your blood go thick in your veins. Was this what you went out to catch?"
"The partridges were too fast. And the smallbears climbed too high."
"A tribe needs more than hunters and soldiers. It needs shepherds. Weavers. Plantsmen. If frogs are all you can catch, quit wasting time in the wild and do something to make your family proud."
She turned on her heel and walked away, battle-axe slung across her shoulders. Joti's frog leg felt as appetizing as a day-old knob of gristle. He lobbed it into the fire.
Drez' voice was too low for anyone but him to hear. "Does she think we're disgracing your family?"
Was his father playing a joke on them? Indulging him the way Joti played along with the dumb games his younger cousins liked? Feeling ill, he crawled into his tent and slept.
When the rising sun broke over the hills, Joti's legs were stiff from the long day before. He made himself get up anyway. He hurried through his chores sweeping tents and carrying buckets of scraps out to the wozzits.
Drez showed up as he finished his work. She had a fresh red spitebird feather tucked above her right ear and looked as chipper as the bird it had come from. "On your feet, lazy. The smallbears are still laughing at us about yesterday."
He started down the trail to the north. "We can't hunt smallbears. If we try to follow them up into the branches, they'll knock us out of the trees, and the only thing we'll be able to hunt for is where our heads rolled off to."
"We have to try. I'm not bringing back another frog."
"Then the frogs will be happy to know that neither of us wants them. Come on, I have a better idea."
He struck out from the village. A light haze hung over the fields, softening the sunlight. A half mile along the trail, where their smell wouldn't reach the settlement, chunks of dragon skin hung on wooden racks, the black scales sucking in the light. The air was sharp with the tang of lye.
Past the tanners, Joti cut away from the stream and toward a wedge of green hills gashed with red ravines. Game trails wove through the grass. He followed one for a mile, then headed for the base of a twenty-foot cliff of red stone, where he entered a gap so narrow it hadn't been visible until they were right on top of it.
On the other side of the gap, the ravine was no more than thirty feet across, its bottom littered with rocks and silt and grass, its sides nearly sheer. Joti pointed to the cliff at the back of the canyon. There, a scraggly gray ball of wool cropped at the grass, its horns curling back from its head. The adult male hill sheep wasn't any bigger than Drez.
Joti swept his finger from the back of the canyon to the front. "One of us chases a sheep down into the ravine. It'll have nowhere to go but the gap here—where one of us jumps out and takes it down."
Drez grinned, fangs jutting. "If we catch a hill sheep with our bare hands, they'll have to let us in. How do you know about this place?"
"It came to me in a vision." He watched as her eyes widened. "A vision of how this morning, when I was carrying buckets out to the wozzit pens, I asked Agrak if he'd seen any canyons like this one."
"Well, I'm bigger. You chase, and I'll catch."
The words stung. But he couldn't let his pride be chief of his mind. Not if he was going to become a warrior. As Drez hid herself in the brush near the ravine's mouth, Joti made his way to the back, where the incline was shallow enough to climb. The sheep watched him with dull gray eyes. He circled behind it, then waved his arms and shouted. The sheep tossed its head and trotted down into the ravine.
Joti stuck close behind it, yelling at it like a shepherd whenever it made a move toward either wall. As it neared the entrance, Drez rolled out from hiding and planted her feet, knees bent.
The sheep dropped its horns and bowled into her chest. She flew back with a pained grunt. The animal backed up, hooves clattering on the rocks as it prepared to ram her again. Joti flung himself on its back and pounded his fists against its head, but it was like striking solid rock.
His fists, it turned out, were much softer than rock. He didn't so much as faze the ram before it flung him off and dashed away into the plains beyond.
They collected themselves, rubbing their bruises and dents. Joti eased himself down on a rock. "I hit it as hard as I could. But its skull hit back even harder."
Drez grimaced, massaging her sternum. "If it has a skull made out of stone, then I say it is cheating. If we use rocks, it's only fair."
"No rocks. We just have to hit it where it isn't so strong."
"Its balls?"
"Its legs. My mom always says that if it bends, it breaks. You slow it down again, and I'll attack its legs from behind."
She nodded and repositioned herself in the brush at the front of the ravine. Joti climbed up to the low cliff at the back of the canyon. There were a few sheep scattered around the bluff, but without a way to force them in a specific direction, it took him some time to goad one down into the corral of the ravine.
He loped behind it, watching its legs, thinking through how he could spear himself into the side of its knee. The sheep slowed as it neared the gap. Drez tumbled from cover, bellowing a Krannish war cry. The ram danced back two steps. Joti picked up speed and launched himself at its hindquarters.
A hoof streaked toward his face.
He was warm and tingly. He had a great view of the sky, which seemed to be because he was on his back. He tried to get up, but his arms had about as much strength as a wet tunic, and when he moved, a jolt of pain fired across his brow.
He flopped back down. "It kicked me."
"Wrong." Drez leaned over him and touched the knot on his forehead. "It kicked the hell out of you."
It was a while before he could sit up. When he did, his stomach did a somersault and his head felt as though the ram's hoof was still lodged inside his brain. Wary of Drez' disdain, he tried to walk it off, but found it difficult to walk when the world kept tilting beneath him.
"Enough," Drez said after his latest failed ef
fort. "We're going home."
"But we haven't caught anything. Except a lot of scrapes and dents."
"After that, it'd be bad luck to stay. Besides, my dad says when a hurt man tries to hunt, he opens himself to become prey. I'll help you walk. No one has to know."
He hesitated, then took her arm. On the way to the ravine, the game trail had felt as sturdy as a cobbled road, but in his state it felt as treacherous as a cliffside pass. Drez led him straight to the tree-lined stream. As they walked through the shade, a twig snapped behind them. Joti stopped and craned his neck, stomach plummeting with the fear that he was about to be seen by roaming kids from the village, but the woods were empty.
Outside the settlement, Joti let go of Drez' arm. They walked together to his family tent. His parents were out patrolling the southern reaches. Drez stayed with him. By the time his parents got back that evening, he was feeling more or less okay.
After eating, his dad called them over to his fire. "What did you bring back today? More pocket frogs?"
As Joti had waited for his parents to get back, he'd come up with a dozen lies about the day. Anything to avoid making Odobo think twice about allowing them to test themselves in the wild. But seeing his dad's expectant expression, becoming a hunter and a warrior no longer felt so important. Not if it meant deceiving the only person in the village who would have allowed Joti to try in the first place.
He took a deep breath and explained how they'd tried to tackle the ram only for it to kick him in the head so hard he'd been knocked out.
"We came back after that," he finished. "I didn't want to get hurt worse. Besides, we were having bad luck. Even if we'd caught a sheep, its meat would have been cursed."
Odobo looked around the dark yard, then leaned forward, keeping his voice low. "Want to know a secret? Most hunts come back with less meat than they left home with. Some don't catch anything at all."
"Then how did you and the others catch a dragon?"
"Simple. We made Frolo dress up like a shapely lady dragon."
"Dad!"
"We caught it the same way all hunters catch anything: we waited, and then we got lucky." His father smirked, a light sparkling in his eyes. "Don't you know that all you have to do to kill a dragon is make it sneeze?"
Joti frowned, uncertain why that was funny.
"But hunting parties can't catch nothing," Drez blurted. "Even when they don't bring anything back, the warriors always talk about the terrible creatures they slew and ate during the hunt itself."
"Good stories earn you as much respect as good deeds. And if a story is good enough, every time it's told, it gets a little better. Don't worry about today. Wait until you're ready and then try again."
Joti smiled. A lean figure emerged from beside the tent and strode toward them with easy, powerful steps.
Hako's eyes glittered as she turned on her husband. "You're going to send them back out there? Why? So they can be hurt again?"
Odobo drew himself up. "Anyone can fail. We fail on more hunts than not. Does that mean we're not warriors?"
"That is exactly what's wrong! We are warriors. They aren't." She turned to stare down at Joti. "You couldn't down the ram. The way you talk, you never will."
Joti clenched his fists to keep his hands from shaking. "How are we supposed to kill a ram when we don't even get to use spears?"
"Do wolves carry spears? Do the grass cats carry bows in their paws?"
She waited for an answer. Joti glared back at her. "No."
"A grass cat isn't much bigger than a raccoon. How does it bring down a hill sheep?"
Joti thought, then shook his head. Drez said, "They bite out the throat."
Hako smiled, chin thrust forward. "Only if they have a very stupid ram. Most have to bite here." She grabbed the back of Joti's neck, claws gouging his skin. "They're too small to snap the ram's neck. So what do they do? They make themselves heavy." She dropped her weight. Joti staggered forward. Hako followed his movement, pressing down on his shoulders and back. "No matter how hard the ram bucks and kicks, the cat hangs on. And when the ram is too tired to keep fighting, the grass cat makes its kill."
She released Joti's neck and crouched to put her eyes level with his. "You want to become like us? First, be like the grass cat—and never let go."
~
It was three days before he felt well enough to take another try at the ravine. That morning, he saw to his chores, then returned to the tent and kneeled before the Ridik shrine: a blackwood statue of a huge orc with three legs and four arms, each of which held a different weapon.
"Help me bring home proof I can do this," Joti whispered. "Help me bring home proof I belong."
The idol of Opag snarled down at him in silence. Joti placed the dragonscale he'd plucked from the road in the hollow beneath the statue, then backed out of the tent and found Drez.
They struck out along the stream, heading for the ravine. He didn't know if his fangs would be strong enough to hold tight to the ram's neck. But Drez would be there, too. They would both hold it down, and taste the blood that makes Uggot's wine, and they would bring the ram home and his mother would smile.
He was still imagining the pride he'd see on her face as Magak stepped out from the trees, staff in hand, and grinned.
5
The first week of the journey took them over well maintained roads in the prosperous lands by the capital, and they rode comfortably, ate well, and spent their nights in inns. At the end of the first week, they turned off the main road and started heading towards the hills. The land around them was poorer and they were forced to spend several nights in a row sleeping in the fields.
By a week and a half, they were far enough out from the capital that Wit presented a serious conundrum for a traveling trader in a ramshackle town amongst the scrub forest. On the one hand, literates were infrequent enough that Wit represented a rare chance to sell some of the few books he was carrying. On the other hand, the trader was only semi-literate himself and worried that a wizard might see through the puffery and exaggeration that he had been counting on to sell them.
In the end, his greed and optimism won out. "These are great books by powerful wizards, holding the secrets of the world, creation, and riches. This one here, was written by Parsaydes, and it tells all the secrets of the mind itself! And this one, by Marshal of the First Council, tells of all the secrets of the herbs and plants in the land."
To guard against precisely this situation, wizards signed their books with intricate glyphs that were assigned by the council once they had passed Junior Wizard status. The glyphs were three characters long, and were recorded, along with a few words about the wizard they corresponded to, in a brief pamphlet that was given to all wizards and Adepts and updated about every five years. Books were always signed with glyphs of twelve or more characters—one of the Order's most closely guarded secrets was that only the third, seventh, and eleventh characters mattered.
"This herbal," said Wit, "is not by Marshal of the First Council. It's by Balthazar the Lesser."
"A thousand pardons, wise one…perhaps if my books do not please you, you might be interested in some elixirs…."
"I'm not sure what good it would be if it was by Marshal of the First…he was one of the most powerful Binders the Order has ever had, but I don't know that he knew a thing about herbs. Balthazar the Lesser, on the other hand, is widely regarded as one of the finer scholars of plants and herbs. How much do you want for it?"
"Two pieces of gold?"
"I'll give you five."
The land around them grew wilder as they entered what had been, in the young days of the Alliance, the frontier between the lands of humans, orcs, and dwarves. They rode past old battlefields and ruined fortifications.
Wit awoke in the middle of one night, horribly nauseous, and stumbled desperately around his room in the inn, until he found a basin to throw up in. He spent the rest of the night shivering and vomiting, before he collapsed on the floor. He awoke in
the late morning to a middle-aged woman looking at him.
Around her neck hung the green stone pendant of a god of healing. "How are you?"
"Weak, but…better for the most part, I think. What was wrong with me?"
She shook her head. "It could be a passing affliction. Or perhaps you ate some bad food, or drank from a cursed stream. You would not have happened to eat any Oln berries?"
"I don't know what they are."
"They are small dark berries. They resemble the Dinat berries of the southern regions, which I am told are very tasty, but they produce brief but intense periods of vomiting and fever in most who eat them."
"Well, that's what happened to me—but I haven't been eating any berries at all."
"Have you any appetite?"
Wit considered. "Not much."
"Could you take a tea of healing herbs?"
"Most certainly."
Wit was drinking his tea when two agitated men entered the room. "I am sorry that you are feeling poorly, sir," said one, "but you would help us greatly by hearing a Controversy."
"Happily, it will be a relief to be of use to someone while I am like this. If you will give me a few moments to dress, I can hear it in the main room of the inn."
"Actually, the Controversy concerns some crops and livestock some five miles to the east, and one of the contestants is there. I am afraid that you must go there to hear it." Seeing the look of discomfort on Wit's face, the man quickly added "I will be happy to give you a ride back in my cart—I came over from my homestead when your dwarf told me that there was a wizard in the area."
"Ah, well that was…helpful of him. Give me a moment to dress and I will be at your service."
The Controversy initially involved whether or not one farmer's wozzits were eating another farmer's beets, and everything from the value of the beets to the ownership of the wozzits was somehow in dispute. The farmers had neighboring holdings and a lengthy history. Soon, they were discussing disputed boundary stones, fishing rights to a certain pond, and a load of allegedly rotted grain that one of them had bought from the other sixteen years ago.
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