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The deer bent its head again. The crossbow came up to her shoulder with studied slowness. Snuggle your cheek into the stock. Curl finger on the trigger, stroking it. Altogether too much like making out, she gibed in some recess of her mind. Now. Bring the foresight down until it settled in the notch at the back. Distance… about thirty yards. Raise the angle a little, then. The crossbow bolt didn't go anything like as fast a bullet. Exhale. Squeeze.
Whu
The deer leaped convulsively. Alston cursed and leaped up herself; the worst possible result, a wounded deer careering off. Swindapa drew her knife and bounced forward, eeling through the spiny growth. Alston followed more slowly, sharp thorns snagging at her jeans and denim jacket, wondering at the young woman's skill. She'd said that she was an indifferent hunter, that being mainly men's business among her people. Blood spattered the trail, drops and then thick gobbets of it, smelling of copper, salt, and iron. The deer was lying on its side a hundred steps farther in under a dwarf pine, with the crossbow bolt sunk past the fletching behind its shoulder. Its hind legs kicked a final time as she came up; the graceful shape laid itself limp. Swindapa trimmed a branch and dipped it in the blood. She stood and flicked it north, south, east, west, murmuring in her own language as she did so. Then she crouched by the deer and began breaking it, butchering with easy skill.
"Bad that we can't hang it up," she said, red to the elbows.
Her English still held a strange lilt and roll, but it was fully fluent.
"Easier that way… unHUojx, look, the liver." The girl sliced off a bit and popped it in her mouth, chewing with relish. "Best part. Want to start a fire and grill it?"
"N
Vegetables were more precious than gold-those Brand had planted back in the spring were watched like ailing firstborn children, or perhaps the ailing firstborn children of hungry ca
They occupied themselves in companionable silence for a moment. "I've been meaning to ask you," she said. "What's that mark?"
Swindapa was wearing a shirt, unbuttoned partway down in the warm weather with the tails tied off under her bosom. Just between the upper curve of her breasts was a small tattoo, shaped like an arrowhead.
"That?" she said, peering down. "That's the…" She considered for a moment, her lips shaping words. "The Spear Mark. When I was fifteen… years, I think, we count by thirteens of the moon… I took the Spear Mark, nearly three years ago when I was young. I stalked a deer close enough to kill it with my spear, and came back with the antlers on my head and the hide wrapped around me, and jumped the fire trench, and they put the Spear Mark on my chest."
"Everyone does that?" Alston said.
"Oh, no. Some-many boys every year, and some-few girls sometimes. My-the one I did the Moon Spring Rites with, you'd say, my boyfriend?"
" 'Lover' might be more appropriate, I think."
"My lover was a big-no, a great-hunter, didn't study the stars even though he was part of the Egurnecio family. A warrior, too, a… Spear Chosen, someone who leads warriors. I wanted to be with him." She looked bleak for a moment, then sighed and shook it off. "The Sun People hurt him, smashed his leg, he couldn't run or hunt or fight anymore. He got angry all the time, got sick with too much mead, then he died."
And I know the rest, Alston thought.
They'd finished gralloching the deer; they left the entrails for the ants and birds, packed heart, liver, tongue, and kidneys back in the stomach hollow, and removed the head. Then they ran a pole between the bound legs, brushed the blood off their hands and arms with sand as best they could, and lifted it with an end of the carrying pole on each shoulder.
"Do some more sword work tonight?" Swindapa wheedled.
"If you don't mind the others," Alston replied. She'd started classes for some of her cadets and a few islanders who showed promise. In our copious spare time.
They came out onto the road and dumped the deer carcass into the wire baggage holder at the rear of the two-seater tricycle; it was a fairly robust thing, one of many worked up since the Event by Leaton. Alston looked at the sky; not long to di
"No problem, more fun with lots of people," Swindapa said. She went on, "Good hunt today," giving Alston a quick hug before jumping onto her seat.
I wish she wouldn't do that, the captain thought. Evidently Swindapa's people embraced and touched at the slightest provocation, and she was gradually starting to do that again as her memories healed over a little. She has no idea how… difficult that makes things.
Well, life was difficult. They began pedaling in unison, enjoying the cooling effect of the breeze.
"We'll stop at Smith's," Swindapa said happily.
Smith was an enterprising soul who'd put the hot-water shortage to work and opened an Oriental-style scrub-and-soak bathhouse; much more economical of fuel than trying to heat water and pour it into a tub in a single house, now that the electrical and gas heaters were useless. The Council had approved, since it was just the sort of thing that was needed to jump-start the island away from the emergency-collective setup that necessity had forced on them. Unfortunately, Smith didn't run to individual tubs yet, just one big one for men and another for women.
Oh, well. Life is difficult.
"No, I'll sponge down at home," she replied. And avoid all temptation. My own virtue sickens me at times.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
July-August, Year 1 A.E.
"I say the last thing we need is foreign entanglements!" Sam Macy said.
There was a rumble of agreement from here and there in the Town Meeting. Cofflin sighed inwardly. He could understand Sam's position only too well; the problem was that while that sentiment felt right, the balance of facts was against it. Macy was a nice guy to sit down and have a beer with, he did his job well-hell, he'd turned out to be a genius at logging, sawmilling, anything to do with wood- and he kept his people over at Providence Base happy with their boss. The problem was that when Macy got onto politics, he had certain fixed opinions that couldn't be shifted with plastique and bulldozers.
"We're just getting things going right," Macy went on, flushing as eyes turned to him all across the big room. The microphones were long gone, and his voice came out in an untrained foghorn roar. "We've got plenty to eat, it looks like the harvest will be good-" he knocked on wood- "and we've got plenty to keep us warm this winter-"
"Good job, Sam!" someone said. Macy stuttered and then went on:
"-and we're learning how to do lots of stuff. We all saw the pictures and video Captain Alston brought back. I'm not saying we shouldn't have sent the Eagle over to Britain, but those aren't the sort of people we want to get involved with. Why should we risk the lives of good American boys and girls for those dirty savages? It's worse than Bosnia."