“But there are always fellows who like that sort of a thing,” Aki said to Jocan, “and the rest of us do our stints at it when our turn comes up. I haven’t worked as Guard for all that long, only a couple of years, so I have had to Long Ride only twice so far. I spent a month at it each time, and it wasn’t so bad—well, partly because that was the first two times I’d seen the ocean and that was interesting. We fished for our food the days we were on the shore, and, I’m telling you, we ate well those days!”
The Day Riders were quite pleased to have visitors at the Headquarters; apparently travellers did not stay the night very often, even though the building had plenty of extra room to accommodate them. After a communal supper in the Headquarters’ Mess, which the travellers helped to prepare and to clean up, the Head of the Day Riders hauled out a keg of beer to general shouts of approval. Everyone spent a pleasant, albeit a short, evening, telling stories and Mikal, Kati, Yarm and Jocan had the wildest ones to relate.
Kati and Mikal, once again, told the story of their escape from Gorsh’s ship. Mikal made a big deal of Kati’s bravery in dragging a drugged stranger along with her; she was annoyed with him until she realized that it was a ploy to evade questions about their time underground. She encouraged Jocan to launch into the tales involving Guzi and Dakra, in River City, on the river and on Sickle Island, before any of the listeners realized that Mikal had done some careful editing to his narrative.
Yarm had interesting stories to tell about his voyages around the globe, too. Listening to him, Kati began to realize how much of his life the Northern Plainsman had spent travelling the world for his Council. He had foregone the usual trappings of life; he had never married or had a family, and although his work for the Central Council had earned him a little cottage in the Capital City of the Northern Plains, he had had very little time to spend in it. Now that he was no longer young, perhaps the lack of a family was starting to bother him, she thought. Perhaps that was why he was keen to have Jocan travel with him to the Northern Plains; since Jocan had no family either, the two of them could be kin for one another. In the very intelligent young man Yarm might well be seeing the son that he had never had.
”I could be wrong about that,” she subvocalized to the granda, “but I don’t think so.”
Her node did not bother to respond.
Soon after, everyone left to make their final pre-bed ablutions and to find their assigned pallets. Everyone was to be up at dawn to scatter to their separate destinations. Kati, as the only woman in the building had been allocated a room for her sole use and she was pleased to be able to close its door behind her and crawl into her blankets. Tomorrow would begin another stage in the journey; she was that much closer to getting off this world and being able to start what she considered to be her most important task. There were children somewhere, waiting for her to bring them out of slavery.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The quartet said good-bye to the Border Guards in the grey light of the dawn and rode their runnerbeasts through the gate while Aki held it open for them. They waved to Aki as he closed the gate again, and climbed the trail as it ascended through the scrubland that the landscape quickly became.
There were wild animals in this scrubland, in numbers large enough for the riders to catch a glimpse of large hares, the occasional fox, numerous smaller mammals that Kati did not recognize, and endless flocks of birds. Compared to this profusion of wildlife, Kati realized that the Grassland had been akin to a giant pasture, devoid of animals other than the ubiquitous Narra. There must have been other, small animals present there, she decided, but had been hidden from the eyes of the passers-by in the lush grass. She recalled seeing birds soaring up in the sky during the previous days’ rides, but nothing like the profusion that appeared to call these scraggly trees home.
“There’s probably enough game here that the Wild Tribes don’t need any domesticated animals for food,” Yarm commented when the four of them stopped their mounts to have a short discussion about how far they should proceed before stopping to eat and drink.
“That, I suppose, would explain why they have made no effort to get into agriculture,” Mikal noted. “Water seems a bit scarce but the land looks fertile enough. With irrigation it could be turned productive.”
“That, and a general lack of ambition among the population, I gathered from the Border Guards’ gossip,” Yarm said. “The Wild Tribes are descended from a pretty small pocket of post-Disaster Survivors. There hasn’t been much infusion of fresh blood—even when they manage to snag an outside woman, she can’t wait to run away if she possibly can—and the fact that they practise polygamy means that not all the males get to reproduce, and that further depletes the gene pool.”
“Sounds sweet.” Kati rolled her eyes. “The underside of what happens when a world loses most of its population.”
She shuddered. She supposed that it was inevitable that things would have evolved badly in at least one part of this world in the aftermath of such a cataclysm. Mostly the descendants of the survivors whom she had seen, had made a remarkable recovery, considering the extent of the devastation that their ancestors had been faced with. They were resilient, and had learned to work together to overcome the problems that they had had to confront. They were busily engaged in creating for themselves a world considerably saner and more egalitarian than the one Kati had left behind her. It only made sense that there would be at least one fly in the ointment. It was just too bad that she and her companions had no option but to pass by that fly on their way to where they were going.
“It didn’t have to happen,” Yarm said. “These people didn’t have to isolate themselves. They could have joined forces with the Narra-herders, or with the people living in the mountain villages. They chose to isolate themselves and to live their lives on the lands which they now think of as their own. If they’re now mouldering in inbreeding, they have no-one to blame but themselves.”
“Aki repeated to me the prophesy about a Chief of the Alif Tribe that the Wild Tribes apparently have,” Jocan said. “A red-haired Chief of the Alif is supposed to change the lives of the Tribes. He supposedly brings them out of their isolation, into the world outside, and does away with a lot of ‘foolish traditions’. That’s probably why the folk insist on the Alif always having a chief with red hair.”
“Another variation on the story that one of the mappers told me,” Yarm mused. “Why they’re weird about red-heads.”
He smiled at Jocan.
“Which is why you aren’t one, at the moment.”
Jocan grinned.
“I do feel safer this way,” he said.
They remounted their beasts and continued riding.
*****
Early in the afternoon they came to the first of the Tribal Villages.
Just before the Village, they were brought to an abrupt halt by a delegation of a half-a-dozen young men on foot, but armed with bows and arrows. The men were dressed in embroidered shirts made of brightly-coloured cloth—not Narra-fibre but a cheaper material--and trousers knit of coarse wool. The travellers knew where the cloth for the shirts had come; their saddlebags held a few bolts of similar material in several bright hues. Jaymo had explained that these rolls ought to buy them passage across the Tribal Lands; they were the item most often requested by the men of the Tribes in payment for passage. The wool for the pants obviously came from the few sheep that had been grazing by the trail a short while back, gnawing on the sparse grasses amid the dry bushes. The embroidery on the shirts most likely was the work of talented women of the Tribe.
The young man who appeared to be the leader of the pack was a broad-shouldered fellow with a fair-skinned but blunt-featured face reflecting more hostility than intelligence. His companions looked like they might be his brothers, or cousins at the very least. The way the leader stared at Kati out of his shallow, pale blue eyes sent shivers down her back, and Mikal, who had been riding behind her, moved his runnerbeast beside hers and grasped her arm
in a secure hold. He glared at the blue-eyed Tribesman, having not the least problem slipping into his role of a jealous husband. His presence beside her, and his arm on her elbow made her feel a bit safer.
“Tribute!” the leader yelled at them. He used the same language that the Grasslanders spoke but his accent was strange. It took a moment for them to understand what his word meant.
Finally, Yarm reached for one of his saddlebags, the one which contained a bright blue roll of cloth. He halted the motion in mid-air, turning to stare at the leader of the pack.
“I was told,” he said, enunciating his speech very carefully, “that the price of passage is given to the Chief of the Tribe. I would like to offer ours directly to the Chief myself, and not pass it along through an underling.”
Half-a-dozen pairs of light blue eyes stared at him. Six bodies blocked the way, and those bodies were armed with bows and arrows. Although none of the bows were cocked to shoot, every one of the young men looked capable of getting an arrow off quickly, from the weapons in their well-muscled arms. Yarm held his ground, saying no more, just waiting, affecting a look of relaxed but alert anticipation.
“Come then,” the leader suddenly barked in his odd accent, and the pack turned around, starting to walk swiftly towards the village, the leader closest to the travellers and glancing back at them now and then, apparently to make sure that they were following.
The quartet urged their runnerbeasts into a slow walk, a pace which kept them behind the six men but close at their heels. Kati dared to breathe but was glad that Mikal was staying near her. At least the pack leaders devouring eyes were off her person for the time being.
The trail passed through the central open space of the village which consisted of a dozen or so huts constructed of poles stuck into the ground and covered with skins of some sort. One of these primitive structures was about twice the size of the others, and in front of it, on a cane chair—the only chair in sight—sat a heavy-set blond but greying man well past his prime. It was towards this man that the pack of young men led the travellers, still mounted on their runnerbeasts.
“Try to get through the villages without dismounting,” Jaymo had instructed them before they had left GrassWater. “You want them to understand that you have no intention of lingering, that all you are doing is travelling through. You don’t want to visit with these people; they can’t be trusted. Spend the nights between villages; it’s safer that way. The quicker you make it through each village the less chance there is of trouble.”
Moments later the four on runnerbeasts and the six on foot had the man on the chair surrounded, except where his chair back was leaning against the hide wall of the large hut. Kati noted that his bright yellow shirt had a lot more embroidery than those of the pack members. A mark of his rank, no doubt.
“They have tribute for passage,” said the pack leader to the seated man. “They want to hand it to the Chief.”
“Well, I’m the Chief. Chief Mered of the Dhho Tribe. These people here around us.” The man in the chair sounded considerably more articulate than the leader of his little pack of hounds, and he could speak in gestures too, as could be seen from the arms which he spread out to indicate “around us”.
“Well then, Chief Mered of the Dhho Tribe.” Yarm reached towards his saddlebag once again, this time completing the gesture and pulling out a carefully folded roll of cloth the colour of a bright summer sky. “This is what we hope to buy our passage with.”
The Chief’s eyes lighted up at the sight of it. The pack members eyed it greedily and then looked at the Chief, a little uncertainly.
“Ooh!” It was a child’s delighted shout and it came from the door of the Chief’s hut. Everyone’s eyes turned that way, to see a tiny child—a girl child, Kati judged—standing by the skin flap that served as a door. The child was so small that it was amazing that she was standing, and clearly walking, considering the way her feet were fidgeting as she stood. She was wearing a shapeless wool tunic and was barefoot, and her blue eyes were riveted to the bundle that Yarm was handing over into Chief Mered’s hands.
The Chief burst into laughter.
“My youngest daughter, Sinia likes your tribute, travellers,” he roared.
Hands from inside the hut grabbed the baby and pulled her back into the darkness. The child squealed and a woman’s voice shushed her; then all was quiet inside the hut.
“Well, travellers, your tribute is accepted. Perhaps Sinia’s mother will sew a dress for her daughter from a scrap of this cloth. You are free to pass through the lands of the Dhho.”
Chief Mered waved the four of them off and they wasted no time in pointing their runnerbeasts in the right direction and urging them to move. Not too fast while they were still in the village since there were people around them, mostly children playing in the dust, but also a couple of women skinning jackrabbits, and another hauling pails of water—from where and to where, Kati had not the least idea. Once they were outside the village they urged their mounts into a run and did not slow down until they reached the spot that Yarm’s map designated as a good spot to camp for the night.
*****
That evening, once the runnerbeasts had been watered from the little spring that had earned the spot its status as a camp site, and a supper had been prepared and eaten, the four of them sat around the campfire with a pot of tea and Yarm’s map spread out on the ground, so that the firelight illuminated it. They were elated to have made it through the first day in the Tribal Lands, and passed the first hurdle of riding through the Dhho village. However, the map showed that they had more challenges to meet, and they discussed the ways to do so most prudently.
“If the distances are accurate as I have marked them here,” Yarm said to begin the conversation, “and so far they have been, we should reach the Chio village at about noon tomorrow. Maybe a little before noon—our runnerbeasts are good animals, Jaymo served us well on that, and every other, matter, it seems.”
“The Chio—what do we know about them?” asked Mikal.
“Almost nothing, other than that they, like the Dhho, are not an important tribe,” Yarm answered. “Most likely a village the size of the Dhho village, and my guess would be that they will be as thrilled by the green cloth as the Dhho were with the blue. Jaymo did say that, since you two had instructed him to not try to go cheap, he spent a little extra on the tribute cloth rolls, so as to insure our safety as far as possible. The experience at the Dhho village tells me that it was a smart move on his part.”
“So we have what? Four rolls of cloth left?” Kati asked.
Yarm nodded.
“The green for the Chio, a red and a gold for the Alif and the purple for the last Tribe on our route, the Bukke. The Alif are the ones I’m worried about. We’re due to reach their village tomorrow evening, and as far as I can tell there are no suitable places to spend the night until we’ve passed their village. I don’t care for it, to be honest. And the camping spot marked on this map is quite close to the village, well within reach of a pack of louts on runnerbeasts.”
“You don’t think the Alif men will be on foot the way the Dhho pack was?” Jocan queried.
Yarm shook his head.
“One of the mappers mentioned that he had seen runnerbeasts in the Alif village. He was travelling the other way, so he and his group spent the night in the camping area before passing the Alif village, with the Alif not aware of their presence in the campground until they had left it. We won’t have that luxury, unfortunately.”
“We couldn’t camp somewhere beside the trail before we get to their village, could we?” Jocan asked. “Then we could ride through their village in the early morning before anyone is really very awake.”
“That is a thought which I did entertain,” Yarm replied. “It would mean camping rough: no fire, only the water that we can carry in our skins from here, cold rations and likely pretty uncomfortable sleep opportunities. It seems not pleasant, but doable. The problem is that it would be hard
to get the timing right. We would want to spend the night far enough from the Alif village that no stray patrol of theirs would happen upon us, but close enough to make it through the village in the morning before things get lively. Basically, before the men are up and about, and looking for trouble. My informants told me that the Alif have a tendency to be morning people; the only time they’re likely to be late risers is when there has been a celebration the night before.”
“So, what you’re saying is that if we do that, and spend an uncomfortable night beside the trail, we nevertheless can’t count on slipping through the village while everyone in it is still either asleep, or else, sleepy and careless,” Mikal said. “And what you haven’t said but I’m reading between your words, is that we likely don’t want to tackle the Alif when they have finished eating their breakfasts, have picked up their weapons, and perhaps feel like kicking someone’s ass or grabbing some man’s woman, or both.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Yarm conceded.
“Well, in that case I vote that we try to get by them in the evening,” Mikal stated. “We’re due there at about suppertime, right? Whatever the tribesmen have been up to in the day will be done—hunting, whatever—and they should be tired from their exertions. Less likely to want to pick a fight with strangers than when they’re feeling fresh in the morning; that would be my guess anyway.”
“Unless all they do all day is lie around,” suggested Jocan.
“Hah! If that’s the case we ought to be able to rake the yard with them!” Mikal snapped. “I’m sure they have to do something during the days, if only to stay in shape!”
“The three of you do have your stunners,” Yarm said slowly. “Although, Heaven knows, I want to avoid using them here. That kind of display of magic will draw more attention to us than is good for us. We do have another day’s ride, and the Bukke village to get through, before we’re out of the Tribal Lands. I don’t fancy having packs of bowmen following us all the way into the mountains.”
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