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The camp was half an hour's brisk walk away, in a meadow much like the one they'd found the elk in. They hadn't bothered to set up a tent last night, no need when they had good fires and sleeping bags lined with wolverine fur. He scrambled up a rise a half mile away and pulled out his binoculars. The others had the equipment packed and on the horses, all but one of the fires extinguished and buried, their rubbish likewise. Dogs milled around, woofing in excitement at the preparations for a journey into new country.
"Everyone looks ready, except for…"
"Eddie. Bet he's waiting up for us?" Sue said.
"Do bears shit in the woods?" Giernas said, looping the reins up over Kicker's saddle.
In his opinion horses were idiots every one, even by grazing-beast standards, but if you kept at them long enough they could learn. The horse rolled an eye at him, then kept moving stolidly up their own back-trail. The others, as was the nature of the tribe, followed the leader.
The humans split up, moving soundlessly into the shadows of the trees, flitting from one trunk to the next. Nothing… but after a moment Giernas caught a familiar sight; Perks frozen still as a statue, with his nose pointing to a big sugar pine. He moved behind the one at his back and poked the muzzle of his rifle around it.
"Peek, I see you," he called out. Playing ambush kept you on your toes. So far he was one five-gallon barrel of beer up on points, and when they got back to Nantucket he intended to collect. "Hi, Eddie. You're dead."
"It's a draw!" a man's voice said from behind the tree, aggrieved.
"No it isn't," Sue replied… from behind him.
Eddie Vergeraxsson stepped around the pine, shaking his head and glaring at Perks. "Not fair, when you two've got a werewolf working for you," he said.
Not entirely in jest-the slender hazel-eyed man with the queue of brown hair was a Zarthani chief's son from Alba, brought over to Nantucket as a hostage/pupil after the Alban War. He'd been a citizen of the Republic for years, but that didn't mean he thought entirely like an Islander born. He'd spent his teens in the Republic, and decided he liked being a ranger more than being heir to the rahax of a Sun People tribe in what a later age would have called Kent.
"Hi, Sue," he went on. "Hey, couple of elk, eka? I'll get it on the packhorses."
Nor entirely a bad thing that he still thinks a little like a charioteer down deep, Giernas thought. Eddie had a bad case of what some of the older generation on Nantucket called the Spanish Toothache, particularly during his frequent quarrels with Jaditwara, but there wouldn't be any trouble over Sue. As far as he's concerned, I'm his chieftain and she's my woman and that's it.
Another woman ran over to him as they walked into the clearing and threw herself into his arms. He gri
"Husband!" she said.
Her mouth lingered on his, tasting of acorn bread and berries. Her people didn't do lip-kissing, but she'd decided it was a good idea, during their long trek from the tall-grass prairies near where Independence, Missouri, would never be. She went on:
"You are the rising stars in the sky of my night! I am the moon to your sun! You are the greatest hunter in the world!"
"I must be; caught you, didn't I?" he said, laughing down at her face. Some of the things she said sounded a bit fu
"Fed, changed, and sleeping," she said. "I think he may be starting to cut another tooth, poor thing." She turned to Sue: "Sister!"
That was a direct translation of what a second wife called the first, among the Cloud Shadow People fifteen hundred miles to the east, accompanied by an enthusiastic embrace and kiss-most grown men in Spring Indigo's tribe had more than one wife, because so many young men died early, hunting or in raids. Some things just worked out for the best, if you had luck. He seemed to have the keuthes where women were concerned, thank God.
Absolutely no way I was going to leave Indigo back there, with my kid. The expedition had rescued her people in the middle of a last, lost battle with enemies out to destroy them, and one of the Islanders had been injured badly enough that they decided to winter there. The Cloud Shadow tribe had a lot of amiable characteristics, one of which was that they really did believe in gratitude. The outsiders had spent the fall and winter and early spring with them, teaching much and learning a great deal, too; two of the Islanders had settled down with them for good-keeping a third of the horse-herd, among other things. Sometimes he wondered what would come of that, and of the other things Henry Morris and Dekkomonsu would show them.
They're good people, Indigo's folk, he thought; he'd considered staying himself. There were worse lives than being a hunter of the Cloud Shadow tribe. They were critically short of adult males, after their losing war, and they would have been overjoyed to make him their leader.
Yeah, I considered it for about fifteen minutes, until I finished listing all the reasons not to do it. First, no beer, ever again, he thought. Or hot showers, and the thought of never reading another book… Wilderness travel was great, if you could take some time out now and then. But it's damned good luck Indigo and Sue hit it off so well. A small party in the wilderness had to stick together. When they got back to the Island… well, they'd see. The arrangement was unconventional, true, but his people were pretty good at minding their own damn business, most of them.
Spring Indigo broke away and shoveled dirt over the last fire, then brought him and Sue their belated breakfast, cakes of fresh acorn bread and mountain trout grilled over the fire on a framework of green sticks, with a slab of bark for a plate. He squatted on his hams and ate, considering the day to come. Chuckling a little as his son Jared woke on his rabbitskin blanket-his diaper was more of the same, stuffed with soft moss- pulled himself erect, tottered two experimental steps, fell on his belly, and made a four-legged beeline for Perks.
"Perks!" It came out sounding more like Pewks; the boy was still having trouble with "r."
"Perks!"
It was amazing what the great scarred mankiller thug of a dog would put up with, including yanks on his fur and tail and small chubby fingers poked in his ears. With no more than a look of pained resignation, or sometimes pi
"Come on, kwas'yain-daz, strong little warrior," Spring Indigo said, scooping the toddler up. Young Jared screwed up his year-old face and reached back toward the dog. "Ai-a, this child thinks he is a puppy, that Perks is his uncle! When his time comes to be a man, he will dream wolf-dreams and travel the Other Country on four legs. His spirit animal will be the Wolf."
"He could do worse," Giernas said.
"Dada! Dada! Fly!"
The infant scowl changed to a smile, accompanied by babbling sounds that were almost words, in three languages, and he reached for his father instead of the dog. Mixed in were real words, also in three languages, of which his father spoke only one; they'd made a campfire game of keeping track of how many. The latest tally had thirty-two in English learned from the rangers, four in Sue's occasional Cantonese, and twenty-one in Cloud Shadow dialect. Giernas took the child, snorting when small fingers grabbed at his nose and beard, and whirled him around to cries of fly! fly! He fluttered his lips against the bare pale-amber skin of the boy's stomach and then handed him back, wiggling and squealing. Spring Indigo efficiently transferred him to a sling across her back, and he yawned and went to sleep with a sudden limp finality, his cheek pressed against the back of her neck, utterly relaxed in the warm comfort of contact with his mother's back.