A Fray of Furies, page 3
part #2 of The Waking Worlds Series
Ponies clopped and snorted, armor clanked and strained. There was the sound of Ordula’s bulk dismounting.
“Share the joke, won’t you?” the big warrior invited, axe haft looming over his shoulder as he approached.
She hadn’t realized she’d been smiling. The sight of such serious warriors – circling a prone and naked youth in earnest – pricked through her exhaustion to a fragile humor.
“No joke,” she attested. “A krin. Clothed in man-flesh.”
He did not lose his ready smile. But then, he never did. Not while taking a crap. Not while taking off someone’s head. The Ancestors seemed to constantly whisper good humor in his ear.
She didn’t like him. No one should be that content all the time.
“Completely unclothed, it looks to me,” he mocked. “Is this what you do when you run off on your own to ‘hunt’?”
She bristled. She might not be a Hunter of krin but she’d been a good provider. And if the forest ever sent a naked man her way, she’d be more inclined to fletch him than… the other thing.
A slight motion announced Ferek, lurking in the axeman’s shadow. He was dark skinned, for a tribesman, appearing darker beneath his constant cowl. He never smiled. His feverish gaze lingered briefly on her twisted ankle, found her stoved-in side and settled on her face. His appraisal skipped her hips and breasts entirely, making her doubly aware of both.
His strange intensity unnerved her, as always.
She raised her chin in challenge.
“I did not ‘run off’,” she objected. “I’m a woodswoman. The forest is my second home.”
“No one at your first home knew you’d gone.”
She flinched. Her second-mother had brought word, calling her father away. If not for that, she’d have been hunting with him and her cousin yesterday. If they assumed that their absence forbade her going, well, that was their mistake.
“My father knew I had gone,” she defended angrily.
“Your father saw your mare had gone,” he agreed.
“Is she not mine to take?”
“Certainly she was yours to return,” Ordula allowed. “What were we to think, when she wandered home alone this morning?”
She hid her relief behind a scowl. She’d worried about Thing.
“I was set upon by citymen,” she announced.
Sharp looks and growls ran through the nearby Hunters.
“I left one on the bank and one in the Black.” She paused for the expected grunts of approval. “Three more fell to the krin.”
“A krin, so far south? With no sightings and no spoor? No word from the northern tribes?” Doubt muttered an uneasy undertone. “How is it you were spared?”
“That,” she said pointedly, “is not a question for me.”
The sifter had been supervising while the krin was chained and slung over a saddle. He now neared, hands hidden in his furs.
“You saw the transformation?” he queried, voice reedy with age but rich with knowledge.
She hesitated, “No. I was the last left alive, with my weapons spent and the Krin upon me, as close to me then as you are now.”
Disbelieving glances were traded among the Hunt.
“I hit my head,” she forged on, “and lost time. When I woke, the krin had disappeared and this one,” she indicated the prone youth, “was there, covered in the blood of the slain.”
Even Ordula held his tongue, awaiting the sifter verdict.
“Bring him,” was all the wise man said.
Ferek finally transferred his gaze from her to the sifter.
Ordula bobbed his head in easy acquiescence, barking orders.
That’s how she found herself sharing a saddle on the way home. The respite had her slumped against the rider’s back. She had not realized how worried she’d been. If not for the sifter, the Hunt may have cut the krin’s throat out of turn. Or worse, brought him to their hearths unshackled.
“Kassika!”
Her cousin’s voice shocked her from her stupor. They’d reached camp without her noticing. Bellem detached himself from the crowd that had gathered among the peaked tents.
“Did you really–” he blinked as he took in her bedraggled state.
“I know,” she forestalled, making an effort to sit up straighter, “I’ll live. What’s been happening here?”
He fell in beside them, shielding her ankle from casual jostling.
“You’ve spotted the pike in the shallows and put the elders in a flap. The council is convening but the chief is off, inspecting the border posts. You are to come straight to the longhouse.” He hesitated, “Maybe Aunt Pollat should have a look at your first?”
“The sifter took care of it,” she lied. The wise man led the krin-laden pony, his austere presence keeping the crowd at bay. Just.
“This is bad, isn’t it?”
She frowned down at his raw-boned face. He was looking at the grim glares of the Hunt. They looked like a raiding party, here to do violence. Not a search party, returned with a lost lamb in tow.
“I think I may have gotten you into trouble,” he whispered.
She followed his gaze. Her second-mother waited regally before the longhouse. Hands folded. A hawk at rest. Preying.
“Sifter,” her second-mother acknowledged. “What have you brought your chief?”
Hearing how ‘your chief’ became ‘me’ in her second-mother’s mouth, she ground her teeth. This was an ambush. If the sifter brought good news, she’d pounce and present it to her husband herself. If not, she’d condemn it to her best advantage.
“It is good you are here, Raylat,” the sifter said in his reedy wheeze. “Is the chief within?”
“I have sent word,” her second-mother admitted, frustration in her stance if not her expression. “My husband returns in haste.”
“That, also, is good,” the sifter rasped evenly. “As to what we’ve brought… Mm. That is not lightly answered. It is a tough question, requiring the full weight of my talents. Please inform the chief: I shall send word as soon as I’ve cracked it.”
The wise man rode off, taking the unconscious krin with him.
Witnessing her second-mother’s pique was a rare pleasure.
“Your daughter has seen battle,” the sifter spoke over his shoulder. “You may ask her personal account while you tend her.”
That hamstrung her smirk.
Fuming, the chief’s wife turned to Kassika. That the sifter had reminded her of her maternal duties, before half the tribe, stung. She’d seek to spread that sting around. She crooked a finger.
“That’s you then, Cussbird,” said the spearman whose saddle she’d shared.
She’d have liked to slap away the hand he offered but was more afraid of falling on her face. So she gritted her teeth and clambered down, half-hanging from him, to stand gasping.
“Want to borrow my spear?”
She glanced up. He cut his eyes meaningfully toward her waiting second-mother.
“It wouldn’t be enough,” she muttered.
Laughing at her back, he wheeled his pony around.
Laying her limp on thickly, she made her way to her second-mother’s side, as slowly as she dared.
“Kassika,” the woman greeted in a flat tone.
“Raylat.”
Anger crinkled that unspoiled brow, “I’ve told you to call me–”
“Second-mother,” she interrupted, deepening the crease. She’d be damned if she’d call the woman ‘mother’. The other was factually accurate. And it irked Raylat, who couldn’t stand being second to anyone.
Her second mother put an arm around her, playing to the scattered crowd. She tensed to pull away.
“I could have you carried,” the woman threatened in her ear.
She would, too. All it would cost was an unseen elbow to her ribs. Scowling, stumbling, she was steered to the chief’s home. It might have felt like a homecoming. Except that her first whiff past the tent flap smacked of Raylat. Other subtle changes emerged from the gloom, leaving her a stranger in her childhood haven.
“Strip,” Raylat commanded. “You stink of offal.”
Dunked in the river, daubed in blood and then inexpertly dried, her leathers were more or less gummed to her hide. Some of the most stubborn bits only peeled after being steeped in hot water. Which, per force, meant she needed to be steeped in hot water. Raylat rarely stooped to physical torture. Then again, she rarely got the chance. The pleasure she took with the ladle was unseemly.
“Enough,” Kassika hissed, scalded. “It’s coming loose.”
Her fleece undershirt basically sloughed off after her jerkin. Even her breast wrap was discolored and rusty. She unlaced her lambskin leggings but had to cut the moccasin from her swollen ankle. Raylat produced a knife, enjoying her unease as the blade hovered near. Her breechclout was the last to be added to the pile.
“I’ll have it all burned,” her second-mother promised.
She barely heard. Her side was one big bruise, her ribs seeping like skinned knuckles. What wasn’t bruised was scraped or grazed.
“Now,” her second-mother commanded, wringing water from a camphor rag as if it had offended her. “Tell me what happened.”
She hated seeing the woman get what she wanted. The last thing had been her father. Or, at least, the chief’s authority. Who knew how she’d twist this news? Much as she hated to admit it, Raylat was much cleverer – or, at least, more cunning – than she.
Then again, the sifter had basically thrust her into the woman’s arms. If he wasn’t worried, perhaps she shouldn’t be either.
She’d taken too long to answer.
“Ow!” she hissed, as the hot rag was applied, none too gently.
Raylat gave her an innocent look, “In your own time...”
“I was pondering where to begin!”
“Let me help: ‘I’m a spiteful brat who sought to punish my father by stealing away and…’” she nodded an invitation.
“Why you venomous old– Aagh!”
“Sit still, girl. Lest you break another rib.”
She glared, breathing through the pain.
“Let’s try that again: ‘I’m a selfish brat…’?”
There was a scratching at the tent flap.
“Who is it?” Raylat demanded, not quitting their challenge.
Instead of an answer, a plump rump pushed its way through the tent flap. Surprised, Kassika snatched her hands over her nakedness. But it was only Aunt Pollat – midwife, mother and herbalist to the tribe at large – toting her basket of medicines.
“The sifter said young Kassi had taken a tumble.”
Raylat did not get a chance to object at the interruption. As Aunt Pollat got a good look, her exclamation drowned out all else.
“Ancestors’ ashes, girl! You look to have wrestled a bulkbear!”
Few people could ride roughshod over Raylat like that.
She smiled, “A brace of citymen, the falls and a krin, Aunt Pollat. But no bulkbears. Not that I didn’t look.”
“My thanks for coming so quickly,” interjected Raylat, as if asking for the midwife had been her doing. She was playing the concerned mother again. But her eyes promised murder.
Pollat waved the thanks away. Oblivious to the undercurrent, her attention was on some horrible unguent she was mixing.
“Citymen at the falls? So close? Are the Hunt after them?”
“No need.” She met Raylat’s eyes. “I left them dead.”
“And what are you talking about krin? Blackwater is the last-line before the lowlands. To be south of the Black means it slipped through seven tribes’ territories, including our own. Seven.”
“That’s what I saw,” she maintained stubbornly.
Pollat’s mixing slowed, “You hit your head?”
“Yes,” she allowed, grudgingly. “After, I saw the krin.”
“Before or after it turned into that boy?” Raylat pounced.
She ground her teeth, glaring. But it would out eventually.
“Before.”
Aunt Pollat walked her home, freshly bathed and bandaged. Her second-mother, surprisingly, had offered her something to wear.
“This fits you?” she’d wondered, smoothing the soft lambskin over her hips. Raylat was a fine-boned woman and spare.
“It did,” the woman had confirmed. “While I carried Correm.”
The little half-brother she tried to pretend she didn’t have. She’d meant to change the moment she could. But something of Aunt Pollat’s had made her head heavy. She’d awoken, in her darkened tent, with Raylat’s scent an unwelcome guest.
She could still smell it, despite her own leathers and the thick quilt keeping her warm. Moon bright overhead, she trailed the sounds of singing. A ring of silent spectators had gathered around the sifter’s tent.
It was lit from within by a cherry glow, flashing actinic blue, glacial green, forge-iron red and sun yellow by turns. Like-colored smoke belched from its neck. But what was remarkable was the music. And the silhouettes.
It was well-known the Blackwater sifter had no apprentice.
And yet, plainly, more than one pair of hands played the drums and the rattle. More than one throat raised that nasal chant. And none of the cavorting dancers, glimpsed in flashes, was the sifter.
She’d danced the Coming Spring, as a toddler, and the Hunted Prey just this year past – but she did not recognize this song, nor did any of the spirit headdresses seem familiar.
“Who’s in there?” she whispered to Bellem, making him jump.
“The sifter,” he nodded. “And the man you brought.”
She tsk-ed irritably, “And who else?”
He turned a blank look on her. Whatever concoction Aunt Pollat had given her must have robbed her scowl of its persuasive power.
Then comprehension struck, “No!”
They were alone in there?
“Yup.”
The thin layer of tent hide suddenly seemed insufficient barrier.
“How?” she breathed, overawed and just a little bit afraid.
“The sifter has a foothold on the Ancestral Bridge,” Bellem shrugged. “People tend to forget that.”
“No one’s going to forget this in a hurry,” she predicted.
Bellem gave her a searching glance, “That might be the point.”
She ignored him. She loved her cousin – had done since they were children. But he was both sweet and soft, two qualities not prized by the People. He was very clever. But not in any way that mattered. He’d talk your ear off about the most inane nonsense:
Why do the People still travel with the seasons?
Otherwise winter would catch them up.
What became of the Old Masters of the histories?
They died, which is what old people did.
And on and on. Right up to the point where she had to tackle him out of the path of a charging boar.
“In some things, the sifter has more of a say than the chief.”
“Uh-huh,” she agreed absently. “And has Father arrived?”
He nodded, “The council is convening at first light.”
They stared at the strange undulations in silence for a while.
“I saw to Thing for you. But you should look in on her.”
She felt a pang of guilt for forgetting her pony. Her father had trained her mount to the Hunt. If not for the mare’s timely return to camp, who knows how long any search may have stalled.
“She came to you?” she realized.
“Nosed right into my tent,” he smiled. “So will you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“Why you named that nag ‘Thing’?”
She smothered her smile under a scowl, “Father says never to name an animal you may be called upon to eat in an emergency.”
“Then you could have just named her ‘Pony’,” he offered.
“Everyone does that,” she disagreed. “How would I know whether I was eating my pony or someone else’s?”
“Wow,” he mused, “I sometimes forget how stupid you are.”
Her fist made a meaty retort, smacking into his shoulder. His pained grunt came suspiciously late. With her injuries, it had probably hurt him less than her. Irritated, she noted he’d finally outstripped her in height.
“That’s for calling me stupid,” she informed him turning toward bed. He did not expect her second fist, landing squarely in his ribs. He doubled up, gasping for breath.
“And that’s for calling Thing a nag,” she informed him. She’d be paying for that sudden movement, when her ribs fully woke. But for now, it was well worth the pain.
“My mistake,” he gasped. “Your mount… is not… a nag.”
Sometimes she deplored his survival sense. One day, he was going to say something clever like that to someone who didn’t know he couldn’t help it. And, if she wasn’t there to (forcibly) explain, they’d bloody both his ears. Badly.
“Dammit, Bellem…” she sighed.
“Enough,” he wheezed, hands raised peaceably. “I’m done in. I’m off to bed. Can I walk you?”
“I slept the day away,” she declined, lowering herself onto a chopping block. “I’m not tired. I’ll stay a while longer.”
Apparently deciding he’d been hit enough for one night, he turned and trudged away, leaving her alone.
A horrific mask swam under the skin of the sifter’s tent, baring baleful eyes, wickedly fangs and curved horns.
“Ancestors, preserve us!” she flinched, settling in to enjoy the show.
She woke, convinced something rank had nested in her mouth. Her gritty eyelids, scraping audibly across her eyeballs, suggested she’d spent too long watching the sifter’s tent last night.
But the morning held its own terrors. Not least of which was taming her hair into a manageable plait. When she ducked under her tent flap, it was to join the last trickle of tribesmen and women headed to the longhouse.
She’d attended many council meetings – most while playing in her father’s shadow. Fewer since. But this would be her first time testifying. She was not used to being nervous. It made her angry. An emotion she was much more familiar with.
If she could face a Krin, she could face her own father.
…and the council of elders and the sifter and (ancestors forefend) her second-mother and the Hunt and the tribe…
