Ammonite

The others were looking at her. “Thenike, how long before the storm?”

“It’s upon us. Any moment.”

“Then we’ll have to hurry. Da

“Yes.”

“And bring back one of the Brioga

Da

“Da

Da

“Give it to me.” Da

“What–”

“Hold out your arm. Your left. Aoife, you hold out your right.” She bound the arms together at the biceps. “Just in case. I’ll take it off when you both get back here in one piece. Now go.”

Da

When they were about halfway there, Thenike put a hand on Marghe’s shoulder, turned her around gently, and held her face between the palms of her hands. “You told a good story.”

I was ready. “I did, didn’t I?”

They smiled at one another, and Marghe wrapped her arms around Thenike and let her breath go in one long, deep rush.

Getting Uaithne’s body onto her mount was hard; the horse sidled and snorted and laid its ears back at the smell of blood and excretia. But they managed eventually.

It was Ojo who came back with Da

Ahead, the Mirrors turned and moved south at the march. Behind, the tribes stirred and started at a walk.

All the time, the wind rose, buffeting them in the saddle, and when Marghe had to give Da

Marghe kept them heading for the cave and the gully. Shelter first. Then they would talk.

In the end, the talking was done at Holme Valley.

When the five leaders had emerged from the cave, they found acres of grassland seared black, still smoking, turning dusk into evening. It was stifling.

Da

After several strained hours in the cave, standing between two hundred women who would find it easier to fight than talk, Marghe was irritated by Da

“They’re not ‘bodies’!” Marghe had never seen Thenike so angry. “They are what’s left of your captain and Aoife’s soestre. They were real. They had friends, mothers, people here who will pause in the middle of their next meal and miss that unique laugh or the sight of a familiar hand resting on a table. Their deaths helped to buy this.” She gestured at the gathered forces, still standing apart suspiciously, but not fighting. Not fighting. “They should be buried out there, where they died. Together. Their grave should be in the place where so many others came close to killing and being killed, on neutral territory so that women can come and visit it and remember why these two women died, and how. Then maybe this… this idiocy won’t ever happen again.”

Together with the massed tribes and a company of Mirrors as escort, Marghe and Thenike, and Aoife, Da

The olla patch had escaped the fire, and Da

“No,” Marghe decided, “we’ll bury them where they died. We’ll put them under the charred grass and the seared soil, and their grave will green when the rest of the plain does.”

The funeral was short; there was no ritual that would have been acceptable to both sides. Instead, Aoife stepped forward and told a story about Uaithne, about how she had broken her first pony when she was ten years old, and Da

After the burial, Aoife sent most of the tribeswomen back north. To gather the scattered herds, she said. Aoife herself and her daughter Marac, representing the Echraidhe, and Ojo for the Brioga

Holle spoke for the women of Singing Pastures, and Cassil for Holme Valley. After much thought, Marghe decided she would act for Da

“You’re a tribe now,” she told Da

“You mean yours.”

Marghe ignored that. “I’m going to secure trata agreements from the tribes and from Holle, if I can, as well as strengthening the arrangement with Cassil.”

“Just as long as we get our seed crop, and some breeding animals.”

“I’ll do much better for you than that,” Marghe promised.

The final trata agreements were reached in the presence of the viajeras Thenike and T’orre Na:

The Echraidhe and Brioga

“Think, Da

Cassil agreed, if volunteers could be found. In return, Da