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"It is accomplished!" Marian shouted.
"It is accomplished!" the hunters roared, and the drums gave a final flourish and went silent.
The tense hieratic stillness of the moment broke in laughter and cheers. Swindapa hurried forward, snatching up a parcel she'd arranged herself. It held a breechclout and leggings of fine white doeskin, and moccasins; she'd have liked it still better if she could have made them with her own hands, but there hadn't been time and her sisters and aunts had done it for her. She grounded her spear near Marian and began to help her on with the clothes.
"Looks like a goddam diaper," the black woman muttered under her breath… in English, though, glancing down at the breechclout.
"It looks lovely on you," Swindapa said stoutly. The smell of the other's sweat was so familiar, yet still had that trace of sharp musky strangeness that was uniquely hers, alien and exciting. "You did everything perfectly. There's only the Marking, now."
Everyone crouched down on hocks as another man came forward; his mask had boar tusks and wolf fangs and antlers as well, and his helper carried a leather tray with bone needles and little horn cups of pigment. The Fiernan girl squatted on her haunches, confident that Marian would bear the slight pain without flinching. She did, the light of the bonfire ru
Strange, she thought. Very strange, to be here again- and with Marian; it was like two different worlds meeting. And I not myself, not as I was. She shook off the memory; there was enough sadness without raising ghosts from their barrows.
At least it was getting comfortable to squat naturally again; after a year of sitting on chairs, her legs had started going to sleep after a few hours in the old position. With the ceremony over, people sat about the fires and began the feast-Marian's deer had been set to cook, but they didn't have to wait for that. The finest hunters among the Spear Mark had brought in other deer, boar, rabbit, duck, and geese, and a good deal more easily than the candidate, since they were allowed to use the usual bows rather than the spear that ancient custom prescribed for the rite. There were wild fruits, nuts, and roots as well, but no bread or beer; for this ceremony only forest foods could be used. That didn't mean there was no drink, of course. Beakers of honeymead came out, tall bell-shaped clay pots marked with wavy lines. She accepted one and drank a little; it was a fine dry make, seasoned with meadowsweet and powdered hemp seeds.
"How's everyone taking it?" Marian said, as she sipped in her turn.
"Well, I think-most of them," Swindapa said.
Truly. I can feel the goodwill. The Spear Mark were her people's main defense, and they knew better than the Grandmothers how desperate their straits were.
"Good," Marian said. "We can get to work, then."
"Not tonight," Swindapa warned. "That would be… bad ma
Strange, she thought. The Eagle People were always pursuing tomorrow, as if it were a precious quarry and they hungry wolves ru
A man leaned over. "Your friend Marawaynd is a great hunter," he said, gri
Marian raised her brows at the good-natured guffaws, then smiled herself when Swindapa translated. She replied in her slow, accented Fiernan:
"Other way. She"-nudging Swindapa with an elbow- "track, hunt, leap on me like wolf."
Laughter rose into the night, as loud as the cracking of the fires. Men staggered forward with a roast boar and set it down before the chief feasters, and knives flashed in the firelight as they carved. Swindapa watched the sparks rising toward the stars, and felt a bewildering tightness in her throat.
Why should I feel like weeping? she thought, turning her head away from the others. I only wish this could last forever.
That was so strange a thought she ran it over and over in her mind, forgetting the pang in her chest in puzzlement. I too am hunting the future and letting the Now slip past, she thought with a slight chill. It's catching.
Dammit, I'm a sailor, not a diplomat, Alston thought, making her fingers unclench from the rough board table that occupied the center of the HQ hut.
"We've beaten back their raids before," one of the Spear Chosen said.
"When the Sun People come against you, they're going to be coming with every man in their tribes," she replied. "This won't be a war of raids, not after the harvest is in. It'll be a war of-" She switched to English. "Oh, hell, 'dapa, what's the word for battles!"
Swindapa frowned. "I don't… I don't think there is a word, not really," she said at last. "Not if I understand the English properly."
"-of really big fights," Alston went on. "They're going to bring thousands of warriors into your land. You have to match them. Then the armies… the big groups of warrior bands… will fight until one flees. We call that a battle."
The command tent had been replaced by a post-and-board structure; she could see it made the Earth Folk leaders a little uneasy, which was all to the good. All the better to kick them out of their mental ruts. That was why she was holding this meeting at Fort Pentagon. The garrison and the locals they'd hired had done a great deal in the past month. There was a timber-framed rampart all along the edge now, and towers of squared logs at the corners and over the gates. More logs made a rough pavement for the streets, and plank-and-frame barracks had replaced the tents; the little uniflow steam engine that powered Leaton's dart-throwing machine gun could also pump water, grind grain, and saw timber. There was also a log pier, which meant that the ships-even the Eagle-could tie up regardless of the tides and transfer cargo.
"Thousands?" the Fiernan warrior said, scratching at his head. Alston suppressed an impulse to check hers. The locals were a clean enough people, by Bronze Age standards. Those standards weren't anything like twentieth-century America's, and didn't include her horror of resident insect life. He cracked something between finger and thumbnail and continued:
"How can they bring thousands of warriors all together? What would they eat?"
"Your crops," Alston answered. Maltonr, she remembered. Redheaded, the one who'd been with her when they ran head-on into that Zarthani warband. More flexible than most. He'd undone the multitude of small braids he'd worn before and cropped his hair in an American-style short cut.
"That's why they'll come after the harvest," she said. "They'll live off what you've reaped and threshed. And your livestock, to be sure."
The dozen or so Spear Chosen sitting uneasily around the table looked at each other. "But… then we would all starve," he said.
"Exactly. Except the ones the Sun People kept as slaves, of course."
Swindapa winced. Alston restrained an apologetic glance; it was ruthless, but the truth.
Maltonr nodded thoughtfully. "We can't sit behind our walls and wait for them to go away, either," he said.
"Exactly," Alston repeated. Except that that word means something more like ru
"They've got engines to batter down walls," she went on. "They're heavy and slow, but if the Sun People can move in open country, they can bring them up and smash you to sticks. And if you move out of their way and refuse to…" Damn again, no way to say give battle in this language. "… to meet them and have a really, really big fight, they can eat up your settlements one by one."