Finally, after many days, with precious little in hand, but nothing to hold them, the Rengarth Barbarians marched from the wastelands on a bright day in late summer. No one looked back.
By degrees they rounded Anchor Mountain, avoided Scourge and Lachery, and struck west along the Narrow Sea. Pilot whales spouted and leaped high in the water as if encouraging them. Gulls wheeled over their head, and terns flitted after, but finding no food, banked away.
Once, high up in the sky, they spotted a floating city like a man-of-war jellyfish on the clouds. Knucklebones guessed it was Sanctuary. The next morning it drifted south. Sunbright recalled there were pockets in the north so drained of magic that the enclaves could not overpass them, lest they fall. Such was the greed and waste of the Neth.
It took sixteen days to reach the Watercourse, the eastern boundary of the Rengarth's ancestral lands. The tribe camped for nine days to rest and fish, though they caught few. To mark the entrance to their homeland, Sunbright recalled the Victory Dance, which the tribe hadn't danced in years, and stomped the steps clumsily until Forestvictory put him right. The whole tribe rejoiced the night long, laughing for sheer joy even at mistakes.
Packing up, the barbarians marched northwest, never far from the dappled shore of the Narrow Sea, and with every mile, their feet grew lighter, for they walked familiar soil.
By day the tribe sprawled over a mile of grasslands, some four hundred thirty people and a handful of noisy dogs. Their woven baskets of cooking goods and blankets and tools were small, dragged by rawhide shoulder straps on travois, long sticks that striped the grass behind. The poplar poles acted as ridge poles for tents every evening. Rengarth Barbarians usually traveled with much bigger travois hauled by half-wild reindeer, but now they had none. In town they had captured brutish, garbage-eating dogs that they were beating into submission, or eating the untractable ones. Still, even in near-poverty, most of the tribe was glad to be moving again-doing something, anything, instead of rotting.
'So many people!' Knucklebones said once.
'More than I guessed,' Sunbright agreed. He leaned into the straps of their travois. His mother marched on one side, his lover on the other. 'But once we decided to go, they came from hill and dale. And from town, thank Lady Luck.'
'Thank Sunbright,' Monkberry put in. 'Some would still be lost if you hadn't come and set us on the right path. They'd be rooted in town and on farms, cut off from their rightful heritage.'
Sunbright smiled, and said, 'I just hope we find a rightful home. This is a great mass of people to cross half a world on the dream of a half-baked shaman.'
The women were silent, thinking of the burden Sunbright carried on his mind. Knucklebones said, 'By the time we strike Sanguine Mountain, folks won't remember why they came, and they'll be too busy to fuss.'
'There's always time for fussing,' the shaman moaned, but he brushed any gloom aside and simply trudged on. Like everyone else, he was glad to be moving.
Still, he saw the division in the tribe, and hoped it could heal. Scanning the prairie, he saw that most of the barbarians were blond, but many brown and red heads dotted the plain. That was all right, for the tribe always needed new blood. Fighters wore the traditional warrior's roach and horsetail, non-fighters wore their hair tied back or else loose to their shoulders. All wore hide shirts and tall boots.
Except Magichunger's friends. Fifty or more, designated as guards by the new war chief, continued to wear long hair and beards and town-made shirts and breeches of cloth. The new apparel went against barbarian tradition, but Magichunger's crowd sported it proudly, for it set them apart. There wasn't much Sunbright could do about someone's clothing, so, for now, he ignored the division.
Their biggest problem was food. Twentyscore hardworking people could eat a farm valley to the soil. Here on the prairie grew only some roots and insects, minnows in streams, and the rare bird's nest. Everything big and edible outran them. Hunters armed with longbows and daubed with yellow mud crept far ahead of the tribe. When they could, they downed wily pronghorn antelope, skinny mule deer, and shaggy wild horses. The meat was tough and stringy, with hardly any fat so vitally needed, though the barbarians ate everything except the ears and hooves. Still, meat was scarce, and everyone hungered all the time.
Five days into the ancient lands, luck brought a rampaging mammoth driven insane by brain worms. Hunters and fighters surrounded and hacked at the thing with spears and swords. At the cost of three broken limbs and one death, they downed the beast and feasted for three days on blood, flesh, and organs. The children made a hidey- hole of the skull, and crawled in and out of eye slots giggling. By night, guards drove off skulking wolves and saber- toothed tigers that cried eerily like lost children.
Knucklebones was intrigued by the interconnected life of the tribe, so different from the complex and diverse life in the city. Once she asked, 'What are the clans you speak of?'
'The clans?' Sunbright replied, still dragging the travois, the pole ends hissing in the grass. 'Children are assigned to clans on their second birthday. They're picked randomly so the families are mixed up, so no family is pitted against another in a feud. It gives the children something to cling to as they grow, another circle besides parents and brothers and sisters. We have, let's see, eight clans: Raven, Elk, Griffon, White Bear, Beluga, Snow Tiger, Thunderbeast, and Gray Wolf. You draw wisdom and strength from your totem animal. In dire straits, I've been visited by ravens with advice.'
'What's a beluga?'
'A big fish with a pointed snout.'
'What's a thunderbeast?'
'A, uh, big lizard that… belches thunder,' Sunbright improvised. 'I don't really know.'
'What can it teach you?'
Sunbright turned his head as he surged along. 'Why so many questions?'
'I just want to know,' Knucklebones said, gazing across the rolling sea of grass. 'How does one become a member of the tribe?'
'Marry a member. Be born to it. Ask to join. Or just come in and stay. Some wander in and never leave. After a time, we accept them. Or you can be captured.'
'Wife-stealing must make you unpopular with neighbors.'
'What else can we do? We're a small tribe, and most related by blood. You can't marry a cousin, it's taboo. The elders would disallow it. So, if you need a wife, or husband, the best way is to hunt a stranger.'
'Hunt?'
'Kidnap.'
'How do you do it?'
'Oh… lie in wait by the side of a road or visit a town or marketplace, pick out someone you fancy, follow them home, stuff them in a hide sack, and carry them off. They're homesick for a while, but get over it eventually. Am I right, mother?'
'You're right, son.' Monkberry smiled. 'I went for a night swim and took off my shift. Your father must have seen something he liked, because he was waiting when I came out. I broke his nose the first night, but grew to like him, for he was kind. After my first child, I was allowed to visit my parents. Sevenhaunt gave them four wild horses. Considering how I plagued my parents with naughtiness, they thought it a bargain. 'Those horses aren't half as wild as that girl,' said my father. 'Good luck keeping a bridle on her.' ' She laughed merrily.
Knucklebones drank in the lore. 'Do newcomers get clan animals? Totems?' she asked.
'Their partners',' said Sunbright. 'Or they can pick another. Which will you choose? The night owl? The sewer rat? How about the porcupine, because you're so bristly sometimes?'
Knucklebones hoisted her nose in the air and said, 'Your totem beast must be the crocodile, with that big mouth. How are people married?'
Sunbright hitched the straps on his shoulder, squinted at the sun and their backtrail, tasted the wind for rain, all while Knucklebone stewed for an answer. Finally he teased, 'Mother can tell you.'
Knucklebones tsked. 'Never mind. I don't care to know,' she lied, nose high, then she veered off to inspect an imaginary gully.
Monkberry teased, 'I don't think you could stuff her in a hide sack. Though she'd make a fine catch.'
'Watch where you step, Mother. You might fall down a hole.'
Monkberry laughed.
The tribe walked on, singing and calling, breaking camp by dawn, snatching a quick breakfast, then packing
