Little Mouse still had that defiant look, but suddenly he blinked and sniffled, looking down. “I’m sorry,” he said, to no one in particular. “I know it was careless-”
“Also pretty brave,” Bruni said, clapping a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “In truth you did us a favor, finding those brutes before we wandered past them-or right into them. Your father”-she cast an accusing glance at Garta-“would be proud.”
“Did they see you?” Moreen asked.
“No-I don’t think … I’m sure they didn’t,” Mouse replied, his swagger returning. “I saw them from the cut where the stream flowed out of the hills, but I stayed up on top. I did try to get a little closer to count them and see what they were doing.”
“What did you find out?” asked Bruni.
“There are a dozen of them-big ones. They look like warriors-they have spears and axes. They were cutting up a whale that they had pulled up onto the beach. They just got started. Mostly it still has the skin on. I think it will take them a few days to finish.”
“Good work,” replied the big woman, while Moreen nodded in confirmation.
The chieftain’s daughter was trying to absorb the news, remembering Dinekki’s prophecy-which had warned of tuskers. She turned to look at her people, who were going about the business of preparing the evening meal. Several small fires, kindled from the brush in the nearby marshes, glowed in shallow pits, and the old women were stringing pieces of seal meat onto sticks for roasting. Augmented by a few fish, meat from a big turtle, and some berries, they were preparing the same meal that had sustained the Arktos every day for a month, since the day Moreen had sent the Highlander emissary retreating back to his “king.”
She knew that she would have to kill dozens more seals before she could come close to the amount of meat they could strip from a single whale. Of course, under their own devices, lacking kayaks and many skilled hunters, they had no way of even looking for a whale, much less bringing one to shore. But now, perhaps, Chislev had seen that someone else had taken care of the first part of that job.
“There were tuskers with the ogres that sacked Bayguard.” Bruni pointed out, although the thought that had already occurred to Moreen. “I would like the chance for revenge.”
“I would too,” agreed Tildey, who had come forward to join the trio.
“I can show you where they are!” Little Mouse offered enthusiastically. “We can sneak up really close on the hill, and charge down to take them by surprise!”
“A dozen of them?” The chieftain’s daughter tried to be realistic. “We have barely that many spears among us and not many people who are strong enough to throw one and to fight.” Privately, she doubted the warrior abilities of any of the women, save perhaps Bruni and herself. A full-grown thanoi warrior was a formidable opponent. Surely the safest, the sanest, thing was to pack up their camp and move deeper inland, giving the walrus-men a wide berth.
But Moreen was surprised to realize how badly she desired that whale and how much she hated the thought of barbaric thanoi on this, the Arktos’ shore.
Dinekki, her wobbly legs aided by the support of a slender staff, came up to them. Moreen was acutely conscious of the rest of the tribe, the women and the elders and the children, all watching the group of leaders with interested, concerned eyes. She recounted what Little Mouse had seen when the shaman cut off further words with a sharp gesture.
“Tuskers, eh?” she grunted, with a smack of her toothless gums. “I thought so-could smell that fishy stink from clear over here. So what’re you going to do about ’em?”
She asked the question directly of Moreen, and in that instant the chieftain’s daughter understood: It really
She thought of the winter that was drawing inevitably closer, the lightless, implacable Sturmfrost that would roar out of the south as the sun vanished for the season. Already it was autumn. The nights were as long as the days, the hours of darkness characterized by a penetrating chill. Her dream of Brackenrock had kept her going, driving her people on toward the north, but they remained woefully unprepared for winter. What would happen if they bypassed the tuskers, and the walrus-men, some time later, came upon the Arktos, surprised them as they had the option to do now.
“We don’t have any choice,” she declared curtly. “We’ll attack them. Tonight.”
She lay on the crest of the hill, staring with unblinking intensity at the beach below. Bruni, Tildey, and Little Mouse were beside her, while another score of tribeswomen, burdened with their unfamiliar spears and harpoons, waited farther down the slope in the shelter of a narrow ravine.
Despite the busy presence of the menacing walrus-men, Moreen’s eyes were drawn irresistibly toward the carcass of the whale. It was a medium-sized gray, but it dwarfed the tusked warriors. Not even half skinned, the giant mammal presented a flank of gory blood and fresh, sumptuous meat. The tuskers had apparently spent the day cutting back the skin, and had not yet begun to carve away the actual flesh.
“Bah-they don’t even know how to dry the hide,” Tildey whispered contemptuously. “We’ve got to get down there soon before it starts to rot.”
“I think the tuskers themselves are a more immediate problem,” Moreen said wryly, trying to cover up her nervousness with an air of calm.
She looked out to sea, toward the northwestern horizon. The sun was low, only a handspan above the world’s rim, but during these days of early autumn it would descend at a gradual angle, moving farther west as it finally set. Even after it disappeared from view, a bright twilight would linger for a long time, leaving another three hours before full darkness.
Moreen tried to think. Counting three women from the Goosepond tribe and Little Mouse, there were twenty- four in her battle troop-twice as many humans as tuskers. However, as she watched a monstrous figure stroll around the whale’s head, she was reminded of the strength and fierceness of their foes.
The brutes were each as tall as a huge human and walked upright with long, clawed toes on webbed feet. Their arms were muscular and dangled almost to the knees. The only clothing on their streamlined bodies were strips of whaleskin around the loins. Most hideous of all were their bestial faces. Even from her distant vantage Moreen shuddered as she noted their broad nostrils, sloped foreheads, and beady, shadowed eyes. She could see clearly their vicious tusks, twin prongs of ivory that curled down and forward from the beasts’ upper jaws.
“There are their weapons,” Little Mouse whispered, pointing to a patch of beach ten paces inland from the whale’s body. They could see a bundle of sticks, tipped with stone heads, that were the tusker spears. Next to those were several axes, also headed with stone, mounted on stout handles.
Moreen nodded. Already she had considered and rejected several plans, and now she had seen everything she needed to see. “All right,” she replied softly. “Let’s get back to the ravine.”
“Are we going wait to attack them until it’s darker?” asked Tildey.
“No.” Moreen shook her head, noting the disappointment on her companion’s faces. She explained further. “No. We’re going to start this fight just as soon as we possibly can.”
A half hour later, Dinekki finished dabbing ritual paint on the faces of the warrior women.
“How many arrows do you have?” the chieftain’s daughter asked Tildey.
“A full score,” she replied, “but it will take a lucky shot to kill one of those creatures, at least from the hilltop.”
“You don’t have to kill them, at least not at first,” Moreen explained. “The important thing is that you get their attention.”
“That, I can do,” agreed the archer.
“Now, does everyone have a weapon-a spear or a club?” asked the chieftain’s daughter.
“I don’t,” Little Mouse piped up, “but that’s okay-I’ll just grab a spear from the first dead tusker.”
“You’ll do no such thing!” snapped Garta, who looked decidedly unmotherly with a great, knobbed club clutched in her plump hands. “You’ll do as we discussed and wait back here until we’re finished.”
“How is that fair? I’m the one who found the tuskers!” Mouse protested.
“Who said life had to be fair?” retorted Moreen, thinking that she suddenly sounded very much like her father.
