Valdemar 11 - [Owl Mage 03] - Owlknight (41 page)

Darian led her into a log house, which by the trappings had belonged to the Shaman. When they entered, and all three of the Shaman's wives descended on them, pressing food rations, venison and a hot herbal drink on her, she was too tired to be surprised, but she was very grateful.

The women left them at the hearth fire where the others had gathered—including the
dyheli,
Karles, and Kel, which
did
surprise Keisha, Kel most of all. “What are you doing here?” she asked, staring at him stupidly.

“The folk of Rrrred Fox arrre not inclined to trrreat a gift brrringerrr as an enemy,” he replied simply, and left it at that.

Judging by the fact that all of the party were eating chunks of well-roasted venison, Kel's gifts had been generous indeed. “What can you tell me?” she asked, knowing by Darian's rigid expression that he had learned far more than he really wanted to know.

Darian's voice was tight with suppressed rage as he answered. “This wasn't just a raid,” he said. “They hit this place at dawn. They took out all the sentries just before they were going to be replaced by the dawn crew, then hit the village itself. When they had taken the village, they started harvesting.”

She was startled alert by the odd word. “Harvesting?” she asked, incredulously.

He nodded, his lips white with anger, a vein in his temple throbbing. “The warriors that survived they crippled—or didn't you notice all the missing index fingers on their bow-hands? They did the same to the older boys, so they couldn't possibly grow up to be warriors. Without an index finger, they can't pull a bow or use a sword.”

“But—harvesting?” she repeated.

“You were Healing them—you know the secret wounds they had in common. The invaders did their best to make certain that
every
woman here would be left pregnant, regardless of her age. The ones that still had husbands were left behind, the ones that had infants were left behind with their babies, and girls too young to breed. The rest were taken, along with the older girls and younger boys, as you saw. They took every scrap of food, and anything that was valuable—but they left the bare essentials, and they left the houses intact.” She actually heard his teeth gritting as he snarled silently. “They intend to come back, Keisha. They intend to come back as soon as these people have started to recover. They'll take girls old enough to breed, and young boys, and strip the place again. And they'll
keep
coming back, as long as there is anything left of Red Fox.”

“These are not our people, Darian,” Steelmind said, in that slow, deliberate way of his. “We have already done more than they would expect from an ally.”

She reached for his hand and clasped it, as he controlled his temper. Kel hung his head wearily; the gryphon was just as angry, but they all knew that Steelmind was only telling the truth.

“We've done more than our share,” Shandi added, her voice flat. “Remember why we're here. It's not to fight a war with people who don't even know we exist. It's to look for danger to Valdemar, and find your parents, Darian. If we take the time to get involved in this, we may never do those things.”

He didn't answer; he didn't have to; Keisha felt his upset even though her shields were up and tight, as a sick feeling in her stomach and a dry lump in her throat.

No one else said anything; there didn't seem to be much that anyone could say. Eventually they all went to their sleeping rolls in silence—but Darian held her very tight for a long, long time, and she cradled him, projecting peace, until he relaxed and finally slept.

But the only reason she slept was because she was too tired not to.

 

She was the first to wake the next day, and after a sketchy meal that she ate only because she needed the energy, went straight to her patients. They were doing better than she had any reason to expect; the women had mustered the tattered remains of their courage and were tending to the wounded men. Each man had his own wife taking care of him, and usually at least one other woman as well. It occurred to Keisha that this might be in self-defense. Wolverine had not taken the wives of any man who lived through the raid, so obviously the best way to keep from getting taken was to become someone's second or third wife.

But whatever their motives, they were working as hard as the “real” wives, which was giving the wounded men some excellent care.

The Shaman's widows had fired the funeral pyre and were chanting and drumming the farewell to the dead—they might not be Wisewomen themselves, but they knew the ceremonies, and no one was going to dispute their right to see that the dead were properly taken care of. All three of them sat on the upwind side, two playing a large drum, the third playing a counterpoint on a smaller drum. Whatever they had built the pyre out of, it had gone up like an oil-soaked torch, and was burning hotly with very little smoke.

Keisha was very glad that the village was upwind of the pyre; as it was, the unmistakable too-sweet scent of burning flesh made her stomach lurch, and she had to fight her breakfast back down.

Slowly the tribe of Red Fox was reclaiming its village and its life. A few children had recovered enough spirit to play a counting game quietly together, and the prepubescent girls were restoring order to the open spaces between the log houses by the simple expedient of throwing anything that was of no use into a rubbish pile and dividing the rest among themselves.

There wasn't a great deal to divide. Although the raiders hadn't taken common clothing and domestic utensils, that was about all that they had left. Finished furs and trade goods in the storehouses were gone, as were “show” blankets, weapons, and every bit of dried meat and fish. The women had been too traumatized to go out gathering, and the stocks of perishable foods hidden away was low. Unless the remaining men could recover enough to hunt soon, they would be starving in a matter of weeks.

As Keisha made her rounds, she noticed Shandi and Karles watching the villagers thoughtfully, as if they were making some kind of assessment. Shandi glanced over at her once, but said nothing, so Keisha left her to her thoughts and continued taking care of the wounded.

She finished around noon, and returned to the Shaman's house. The pyre was nothing but embers now, for which she was very grateful, and the widows had thrown great heaps of green cedar, white sage, and juniper on the coals. The scented smoke had overcome the stench of the pyre.

A line of gutted deer carcasses hung upside down by their rear hooves in the trees just outside the Shaman's house; Kel and some of the others must have been very busy this morning. Ordinarily it wasn't like Kel or the Tayledras to take out an entire herd of deer, but under the circumstances, it was the right thing to do.

Maybe Red Fox won't starve,
she thought with a little more hope.
This looks like enough to keep them going for a while.

Shandi met her at the door as she approached, stopping her with a look. “How long do you think that will last?” she asked, nodding toward the line of carcasses.

Keisha counted the deer, made a quick mental estimate of the number of people left and how much they would need to eat, added a bit more for generosity, and said, “About a fortnight.”

Shandi nodded, and sucked on her lower lip for a moment. “That was what I figured. How long before most of the injured can hunt for themselves? About a fortnight?”

“Pretty much,” she said truthfully, wondering what Shandi was thinking. “I've got them about half Healed; if we left now, it would be about a fortnight before they could do anything strenuous.” There was something going on in her sister's mind—but what?

Darian pushed the blanket over the door aside and joined them, looking sharply at Shandi. “What's on your mind?” he asked abruptly, the same question Keisha had.

“These people used to be in Snow Fox,” Shandi told him. “They split off about three generations ago, but they're still a Snow Fox sept. Neta can put the directions to Snow Fox right into the heads of as many people as we need to. We can leave them with enough food to get them healed up, and they can make it to safety before anyone from Wolverine comes checking on them. There's your solution.”

Keisha heaved a sigh of relief as the tension eased out of Darian. “There's our solution,” he agreed, nodding, the worry lines in his forehead smoothing out. “They won't burden themselves down with possessions, because they don't
have
any to speak of. Snow Fox has to take them in; they're related. There's nothing keeping them here, so I doubt they'll make any objections, but let me check and see what Hywel thinks.”

Keisha went back into the log house while Shandi, Karles, and Darian went over to the butchering area where Hywel was working to turn the deer into strips of jerked meat.

She ate without tasting what she was eating, stayed a moment to rest, then went back to her patients. Now she had helpers—helpers who were dealing with their own pain by giving themselves something to think about besides their own ordeals, and they were very good at obeying her directions. She gave the same instructions so many times she could recite them without thinking about it: “Wash your hands in water that's been boiled and cooled. Pull the dressing off carefully; don't touch the wound with your hands. Sprinkle the mold-powder on the wound, check for the signs of infection. Take a new dressing that's been washed and boiled, rebandage the wound.” One man had the start of an infection; she used the occasion to call all the women together to give them a lesson in what infection looked like and how to deal with it.
If they aren't Wisewomen, they'll certainly have half the training by the time this is over....

By nightfall she was as exhausted as she had been the previous night, but when she returned to the group around the fire in the log house, the mood there was so much more cheerful that she nearly wept with gratitude. She didn't, but she quietly basked in the positive feelings while she ate, listening to the discussions of what to do to prepare Red Fox for the journey. The Shaman's widows joined in the discussion—not with animation, but with a determination that surprised and pleased her. They were ready to leave
now,
and anything they could do to hasten the date of departure would be dealt with.

“Neta already gave Gwynver, Rinan, and Dedren the directions to Snow Fox,” Darian told her in an aside during a pause in the discussion. “They're going to tell the rest of the tribe tomorrow that their husband and the Red Fox spirit came to them in a dream tonight—the Red Fox turned white, and their husband showed them the way to their allies.”

“Nobody will argue with that,” Hywel agreed, looking more like his old self. “And who knows? Tonight it might well happen that way. If
I
were the Red Fox, I would certainly choose to do that for my people.”

“Young man!” called one of the three women—who was certainly no older than Hywel—in an imperious tone. “Tell me again where in the stream to place the fish trap!”

Hywel rolled his eyes, but turned back to her with all the deference due that rare woman who ranked higher than a young warrior, and the conversation resumed. Keisha leaned against Darian and closed her eyes. There was no more tension in the air; even Kel was satisfied with the solution. No longer having to keep her shields reinforced, she relaxed further—then she heard the word
sleep
in a
dyheli
mind-voice and the next thing she knew, Darian was putting her into her sleeping roll.

She murmured her thanks, and unable to even get her eyes open, gave up and fell back into dreamless slumber.

I
f the people of Red Fox themselves had not been so determined to take Shandi's solution and follow through on it, Darian would have had a harder time with his conscience. As it was, it was difficult, very difficult, to persuade himself that the tribe would do as well without his help as with it.

But the survivors greeted the morning's “revelation” by the three co-conspirators with unquestioning belief and even enthusiasm. It didn't hurt that the eldest of the three widows confided to Darian with a look of wonder that she really had dreamed of the Red Fox spirit. Furthermore, she wonderingly said that in her dream the spirit had bestowed its approval of all that they had said and planned, and it had told her to tell the rest of the people to do as these special foreigners—the “Trusted Not-of-the-Tribe” —directed. Whether her own mind manufactured the dream, or it was a true vision didn't really matter at the moment; what did make a difference was the reverence. She almost palpably projected a glow when she told the rest of her tribe of the manufactured vision. Because the spirits had approved of it, it
became
true for her and for her two co-widows. Their belief was contagious; it didn't even require the mental nudging of the
dyheli,
which had been his private, emergency plan.