by Claudia King
“And who is he?” Caspian asked.
“Don't you forest folk know anything? High Priest of the Brother he is, these days at least. Before that he led a tribe who forgot how to tend their farms. They ruined their land and started taking from others instead. I had to protect this farmstead with a spear in my hands when I was a boy. Then one day an even fiercer band of warriors came along, all dressed in the yellow of the Dawn King. Radeen-Na's people didn't dare take anyone else's grain after that.” Beron smirked.
“Yet this man is the... High Priest?”
“He leads the warriors of this land. Even a wild wolf's good for snapping up vermin, so they say. Me? I don't see it. My family protected this farmstead for three generations. Never needed the Dawn King's servants fighting off wild men for us before.” The old farmer huffed irritably. “Anyway, not worth wasting breath on those sorts. All I'll say is that you should stick to the river. Don't want yourselves wandering into Radeen-Na's folk looking the way you are. They'd sooner give you a spear than a bowl of stew.”
“Thank you for the warning.”
Beron gave a grunt of affirmation and walked on ahead, leaving them to mull over his words.
Fern was still whispering about the sheer size of Beron's brood. Caspian turned his attention to the house up ahead. It sat near the bank of the river with great square stretches of freshly cut crops on either side, each field spanning all the way to the dry stone barrier at the edge of the farmstead. Parts of the land had overgrown, but the vast majority of it was clear of debris. A few children chased one another through the bare stalks of sun-withered plants, hopping over narrow channels that had been cut into the earth to carry the river's water deep into the fields. The house itself stood about three or four times the height of a man in Caspian's estimation, a similar size in width and much more in length. The way the thatched roofing jutted out at either end almost made it look like a giant canoe perched upon the bank of the river. The lack of trees on the farmstead had led to birds building their nests atop it. Off to one side an earth lodge with a wide open front had women travelling in and out with sacks of vegetables and bundles of wood in their arms. It must have been a storage hole for the farmstead's food, and if the bare fields were anything to go by it would be freshly stocked for the coming winter.
Caspian's chest tightened as he watched the Sun People going about their daily business. It was so similar to life back in the valley. He already missed the peace, the companionship, and the warm refuge of Netya's cave when he lay down his head in the evenings. If only he knew what had happened to her. If only she was there with him now.
Fern's hand touched his shoulder, and he realised he was shaking, his whole body tense. He took a deep breath and pulled his attention back to the present.
“We'll find them soon,” Fern whispered. When Caspian looked at her he saw his own pain reflected in her eyes. She was suffering too, for Netya was her dearest friend, perhaps even someone she would have desired as her own mate. They both loved her, and they would both keep pushing onward until they either discovered what had become of her or died trying.
“You can have one meal and one night on my floor,” Beron's rough voice pushed aside the heartfelt moment. “That's what I offer to travellers. You can have more if you want, but I'll need work for that. Spend a morning clearing some of that brush,” he gestured to one of the overgrown areas, “and you can stay for the noon meal. Spend an afternoon, and you're welcome to another night in my house. If you idle about I'll throw you over the wall myself.”
“That sounds fair,” Caspian said, “but we'll be leaving by sunrise.”
“As you will,” Beron grunted. They were approaching the side of the house now, its shadow slowly spreading across the fields around them. Down in the shade near the base of the southern wall a dozen women of mixed ages were tending fires and stripping vegetables ready to be thrown into cooking pots. Beron departed without a farewell, leaving Caspian and Fern outside the house with the two young men who had been accompanying them.
“There's straw on the floor inside,” one of them said, gesturing with his pole. “Go and make a place by the front if you want, but don't take anyone else's bed. There'll be food at sundown.”
After thanking them graciously Caspian and Fern made their way inside, stepping through a pair of long leather drapes at the end of the house that seemed to be doing little to keep the summer insects from entering. A huge interior, easily big enough to accommodate all of the people they had seen outside, boasted rough log benches and a great table running almost half the length of the entire building. Someone had tried to set flat stones into the earthen floor long ago, but it looked as if they had given up and resorted to layering the rest with wooden boards—many of which were now old and cracked—or simply leaving the ground bare. Drapes closed off the back quarter of the house from view, but the front seemed to be a communal living space dominated by hammocks and cots on either side. Several ladders led up to a partial second floor that had been layered around the edges of the heavy beams overhead, with a large gap in the middle that looked down on the table.
“This is better than any cave,” Fern marvelled.
“Maybe not in winter,” Caspian said, eyeing the thick log walls and the crumbling mud clay that had been used to seal the gaps between them. “But they didn't need to go searching for this. They built their home where the land was fertile and grew their food all around them.”
“Now I know why the Sun People survive so well without wolves. Imagine not having to go out and hunt. Imagine having three dozen children by the time you were old.”
Caspian could not disagree. The seers had grown a few plants back in the valley, but in nowhere near the quantity required to feed the whole pack. There were places where berries and vegetables sprouted with abundance, but they were not often close to the rocky regions required for habitable caves. One of the reasons Khelt's pack had held such high status was because of their stone den in the middle of the plains, where both hunting and foraging could be plentiful. They'd had no need to travel to the mountains in winter like some of the other plains packs, nor shiver in chilly tents where their old and young might easily succumb to the elements. The more he thought about it, the more Caspian appreciated the power the Sun People wielded in being able to build these houses wherever they wished. A place like this might not be as insulated as a cave, but it would be far better than a tent, and probably dryer than both. Beron's house even had a heavy section of wall inside the entranceway that looked like it was meant to slide along a wooden lip to seal up the opening, providing a sturdy barrier against both the weather and any enemies who might attack. Caspian would have liked very much to learn how a house like this was built. He might even have tried his own hand at it one day. It was not the splitting and shaping of the wood that interested him, but the way it all fit together. It seemed like a puzzle where one had to know all the right shapes and angles to make a building that was both sturdy and safe. He wondered whether Beron had built the house himself, and resolved to ask him about it later if the opportunity arose.
Knowing that they would probably sleep long past dawn if they allowed themselves, the pair of them took the chance to lie down and nap on a pile of straw near the front wall. As Caspian's weariness took hold of him he almost found himself changing shape, coaxed by the instinctive feral tug that came as naturally as closing his eyes. Tension gripped his muscles as he forced himself to stop. They had to live as Sun People while they were in this place. Sooner or later their wolves would grow restless and the urge to change shape would intensify until it was maddening to resist, but that was a long way off yet. The more difficult part would be overcoming years of instinctive shape changing whenever they wanted to move swiftly, or taste the scents in the air, or curl up with a warm coat of fur around them.
Their tenuous rest did not last long. As soon as the women started carrying in the pots of stew from outside a steady filter of people began to follow, bringing with the
m a rising hubbub of conversation. From the upper floor of the house a young man began bellowing out his lungs as he called the rest of the farmstead in to eat, and shortly thereafter the long benches on either side of the table were creaking with the weight of men and women. Children clambered up to the second floor where they could swing their legs over the edge and watch the adults down below, sharing scraps of food and laughing at each other's jokes until one of them inevitably dropped something and the reprimanding shout of a parent silenced them for a while. A young boy leaned over the edge and spat on the head of a slightly older youth down below, who responded by picking up a clay bowl and hurling it back with enough force that it shattered loudly against the house's upper wall.
“You break your mother's pottery and I'll have you up by your ankles scaring off the crows, boy!” Beron's voice roared over the hubbub.
“He got me first—”
“You think I care you little swine? Sit down and eat your food, that goes for the lot of you up there too!” The red-faced patriarch glared up at the youngsters, prompting several of them to scuttle away out of sight. Throughout the exchange not a single person seated at the table seemed to have stopped talking, carrying on as if the rowdy exchange was no more distracting than the flies buzzing about their ears.
“Kiren once told me these people worshipped spirits of family,” Fern said, her voice barely audible over the clamour. “I think I see why.”
“Only a spirit of family would welcome this noise,” Caspian replied. Realising that no one was going to offer them food unless they took the initiative themselves, they grabbed a pair of wooden bowls the children had dropped from the upper floor—a far safer choice than pottery, Caspian thought—and pushed their way through the press of bodies to scoop up some broth from one of the cooking pots. There was no room for them on the benches, so they retreated to their corner and sat on the straw to eat.
“If things were different I'd join in with them,” Fern said once they had sated their hunger. “This is just like the gathering.”
Caspian nodded, slightly wary of speaking openly about such things in front of the Sun People, but Fern's words were vague and easily lost in the roar of noise. No one was listening to them anyway.
“They live well. I can't imagine how Beron leads a clan like this.”
Fern gave a strange smile as she watched the families fighting over the last of the stew. “I don't think he does. Not in the same way our people do.”
“How do you mean?”
“Look at them.” The expression on Fern's face was almost whimsical. “These people don't care about their status. If they have any traditions then they don't honour them here. They fight and squabble one moment and then laugh about it the next.”
It was true, Caspian realised. Many of the disputes he saw occurring over the evening meal would have sparked heated challenges between warriors of the Moon People, and several of the comments slung in Beron's direction could be interpreted as no less than direct affronts to his status as alpha. Yet every man woman and child seemed let the slights roll off them like drops of water, as if it was all just part of a great rowdy game. Perhaps, after a hard day's work on the farmstead, it was.
“Do you wish we were more like them?” he asked Fern.
“I bet they have fun fucking,” she said around a piece of vegetable she'd fished from the bottom of her bowl.
For the first time in many days, Caspian laughed.
They napped a little more while the sun went down, though it was difficult with the constant noise surrounding them. Even after the meal had finished several families remained around the table talking and arguing animatedly, and the children were confined to staying indoors while their elders finished the daily tasks of cleaning their pots in the river and bringing in the farming tools.
At long last the atmosphere began to cool. A fire was lit near the opposite end of the table in a large sconce built of dry stone and clay, but the weather was so warm that only a few elders felt the need to sit near it. Beron retired to the back of the house, and several of the women who had been cooking disappeared with their families behind the draped section. Everyone else spread out amongst the cots and hammocks, or else slept on the earthen floor where straw had been piled. Of the perhaps five dozen people occupying the house roughly a quarter seemed to be travellers, and it was mostly these people who stayed awake long after sundown, conversing at the table with friends old and new. Quiet talk, snores from the cots, and the moans of a few lovers set the atmosphere of a house gradually lulling itself into sleep.
There was not as much metal in this place as Caspian had expected, he thought idly. Metal tools were known to be the greatest treasures of the Sun People, yet Beron's clan still used stone for all of their knives and other hand tools. It was predominantly the farming implements, he recalled, that had been tipped with metal. The long poles the workers used for cutting had a wooden crosspiece tied at the end that jutted out to one side like half of an oversized arrowhead. On the inner edges of the crosspiece sharp metal blades were fastened, creating a natural chopping angle that snagged and severed long plants in the V-shaped crook. It was the kind of tool that would have been too clumsy and ineffective with stone blades. Perhaps Beron was more of an alpha than Caspian had first assumed, for the choice to use metal only for the most important tools—those that helped him clear his land and grow his food—spoke of a man who favoured practicality over indulgence or gaudiness. He could have eaten with a metal knife or fashioned his tools into jewellery that attested to his status, but instead all of his riches had been put to work on the farmstead.
With an idle motion Caspian reached for his carrying bundle and opened it up, feeling for the metal blade inside. It must have slipped down beneath the map and the waterskins, hiding away from his fingers.
He sat up with a start. The blade was not hiding, it was gone. Trying not to stir a commotion among the others, he stood up and began sifting through the straw, wondering whether it had simply slipped out while they were napping. Yet even as he looked, he knew it was not possible. He kept the bundle tied tight enough that not even a running wolf could shake its contents loose, and he knew he had not opened it once since entering Beron's house. With a sickening feeling he realised that the ties had already been open when he reached in. Someone had slipped them loose and taken the blade while he napped.
His first thought was to let it go. It was little more than a knife to them, and they could make another one if necessary. Yet the value of the tool had not been in its practical function, but the preciousness of its metal. It was made of the tough bronzen stuff that only Sun People could craft, harder than copper yet not quite as strong as the grey-brown type they called star metal. It was rare and valuable, and if what Liliac had said to Adel was true it was a weapon fit to be wielded by the warriors of the Dawn King himself. If they needed to trade or strike a bargain, that blade was the best offering they could make.
“What are you doing?” Fern murmured sleepily.
“The blade,” he whispered. “Someone's taken it.”
She blinked a few times, less alarmed than Caspian by the news, but she rubbed her eyes and sat up with a curse. “One of those boys was watching us earlier. We kept making faces at each other, then I fell asleep.”
“Which one? Where is he?” If it was just a child then Caspian might be able to get the blade back without causing any trouble. Stern looks and hard words worked better on youngsters than adults.
Fern peered around the house, most of which had now fallen into shadow, then pointed to the fire burning in the stone sconce. “There. The one crouching down by the fire. I bet he's looking at it right now.”
“I see him. Stay here.”
“Don't let it turn into trouble.”
“I won't.”
Picking his way carefully between the sleeping bodies, Caspian made his way around the edge of the house toward the fire. The people curled up on the floor almost tripped him up several times,
but he wanted to avoid drawing the attention of the handful of men who were still awake at the table. Thankfully they ignored him as he slipped past behind the shadowy beams, leaving him free to approach the small figure who was huddled over next to the fire. The flickering flames illuminated the faces of an old man and woman sitting up against each other opposite him, but their snores were deep and rhythmic. Just as Fern had suspected, the boy held a familiar leather sheathe in his hands, and beneath his arm glinted the shine of polished metal.
As gently as he could, Caspian reached out to touch the boy's shoulder.
“I think that blade there belongs to me,” he whispered.
To Caspian's dismay, the boy jumped and dropped the blade. He had clearly known he'd been doing something wrong, and his muscles had been coiled tight as a hunting wolf. A sharp metallic ring fractured the quiet as the blade slipped free of its cover and bounced off the hearthstones. Caspian winced at its loudness.
The boy spun around, wide eyes narrowing into a frown as his initial shock turned defensive. “I was just taking a look!”
“Well, you've had a look,” Caspian replied, keeping his voice soft. He reached to pick up the blade, quick and smooth in his movements so as not to alarm anyone who might be watching. The old man next to them snorted in his sleep, but neither he nor the woman seemed to have been roused by the ringing sound. The same could not be said of the men sitting at the table. As Caspian cast a glance over his shoulder he saw all four of them staring in his direction. The closest one rose to his feet with a frown.
“The cover, too,” Caspian said, holding out his hand for the sheathe. When the boy hesitated he added, “If you ask me tomorrow I'll let you have a proper look at it.”
“You won't tell Beron I took it, will you?”
“Not if you don't.”
Looking relieved, the boy passed the sheathe back to him and scampered away into the shadows.
Satisfied that he'd managed to retrieve the blade without causing a stir, Caspian slipped it back into the sheathe and tucked it beneath his arm. Then a heavy hand clutched his shoulder, spinning him around with insistent force. The man who'd stood up from the table loomed over him, a frown narrowing his dark eyes.