He half turned and signaled. Most of the men in the canoes kept their rifles ready and pointed; a few dragged boxes of hatchets and knives out and bore them ashore. A moaning chorus came from the figures, and hands reached out eagerly. The man in black uncoiled a whip from his belt and lashed them back.
“Who do you serve?” he asked harshly.
“The Black God! The Black God!” they called.
“Good. See you remember it. Keep this man healthy! Set more of your young to learning the smelting and working of the iron! No one is to hunt or kill or eat such men, for they are valuable! It is more pleasing to the Black God when you eat His enemies than when you prey on each other-”
He let the moaning chorus of obedience go on for a moment while he lashed them with words, then signaled; the young woman was pushed forward. She was naked, a plump swarthy Kaijan girl trying to scream through the gag that covered her mouth. There would be a time for her to scream, but not quite yet.
“And the Black God has brought you food, tender and juicy!” the robed man called, laughing and grabbing her by the back of the neck in one iron-fingered hand. She squealed like a butchered rabbit through the cloth as the eyes of the watchers focused on her.
A moment’s silence, and another cry went up, hot and eager: “Eat! Eat!”
“We shall eat, my children,” he laughed. “But the killing must be as the God desires, eh? Prepare the altar!”
They scurried to obey. When the work was done, the man who commanded their service drew a long curved knife from his girdle; the rippling damascened shape was sharp enough to part a hair, unlike the crude blades of the savages.
“If you want the Black God to favor you, you must kill his enemies-kill them in fight, on the altar, by ambush and stealth. Kill them! Take their lands! Hunt them down!”
“Kill! Kill all Tall Ones! Kill and eat!” A vicious eagerness was in the words, and an ancient hate.
“And on that good day, I shall return to bring you His blessing! Now we shall make sacrifice, and feast.”
He reached down and flicked off the gag, and the sacrifice gave the first of the cries prescribed in the rite, as he swept the blade of the khindjal from throat to pubis in an initial, very shallow cut. The man sighed with pleasure and swept his arms open and up, invoking the Peacock Angel.
“Eat!” the swamp-men screamed. “Eat!”
Technically, they should be chanting the Black God’s name at this point in the ritual. But it was all the same, in the end. For would not Tchernobog eat all the world, in time? He cut again, again…
“Eat! Eat!”
I. The Bear in His Strength
Robre-Robre sunna Jowan, gift-named the Hunter, of the Bear Creek clan of the Cross Plains tribe-grunted as he strode southward past the peeled wands that marked the boundaries of the Dannulsford Fair. There were eleven new heads set on tall stakes in the scrubby pasture outside the stockade, fresh enough with the fall chill that the features could still be seen under the flies. One was of his own people, to judge from the yellow beard and long flaxen hair; that color wasn’t common even among the Seven Tribes and rare as hen’s teeth among outlanders. He thought he recognized Smeyth One-Eye, an outcast from the Panthers who lived a little north and west of here.
Finally caught him lifting the wrong man’s horses, he supposed with idle curiosity. One-Eye had needed shortening for some time, being a bully and a lazy, thieving one at that. Or maybe it was lifting the wrong woman’s skirts.
The other heads were in a clump away from One-Eye’s perch, and their features made him look more closely, past the raven damage-they weren’t as fresh as the outlaw’s. They were darker of skin than his folk, wiry- haired, massively scarred in zigzag ritual patterns that made them even more hideous in death than they had been in life, several with human finger-bones through the septums of their noses. The lips drawn back in the final rictus showed rotting teeth filed to points.
Man-eaters, Robre thought, and spat.
He waved greeting to the guards at the gate-Alligator clansmen, since Dannulsford was the seat of their Jefe. The Bear Creek families had no feud with the Alligators just at the moment, but he would have been safe within the wands in any case. A Fair was peace-holy; even outright foreigners could come here unmolested along the river or trade roads, when no great war was being waged.
Two of the Alligator warriors stood and leaned on their weapons, a spear and a Mehk musket, wearing hide helmets made from the head-skins of their totem and keeping an eye on the thronging traffic. They wouldn’t interfere unless fights broke out or someone blocked the muddy path, in which case they could call for backup from half a dozen others who crouched and threw dice on a deerhide. Those warriors kept their weapons close to hand, of course, and one had an Imperial breech-loading rifle that the Bear Creek man eyed with raw but well-concealed envy. The Alligators were rich from trade with the coastlands, and inclined to be toplofty.
One of the gamblers looked up and smiled, gap-toothed. “Heya, Hunter Robre,” he said in greeting.
“Heya, Jefe’s-man Tomul,” Robre said politely in return, stopping to chat. “A raid?” He jerked his thumb at the stakes with the ten heads. “Wild-men?”
The hunter stood aside from a string of pack mules that was followed by an oxcart heaped with pumpkins; axles squealed like dying pigs, and the shock-headed youth riding the vehicle popped his whip. The three horses that carried Robre’s pelts were well trained and followed him, bending their heads to crop at weeds when their master stopped.
“
“Not Stinking Pehte the Friendless? Pehte sunna Dubal?”
“Him ’n’ none other; made an ax-land claim there ’n’ built a cabin two springs ago, him ’n’ his wife ’n’ younglings. Set to clearing land for corn. Jefe Carul saw the smoke ’n’ called out the neighborhood men in posse. Caught ’em this side of the Black River. Even got a prisoner back alive-a girl.”
Robre’s eyebrows went up. “Surprised they didn’t eat her,” he said.
“They’d just started in to skin her. Ate her kin first. ’S how we caught ’em-stopped for their fun.”
Stinking Pehte must have been an even bigger fool than everyone thought, to settle that far east, Robre thought, but it wouldn’t do to say it aloud. Men had to resent an insult to one of their own clan and totem, even if they agreed with it in their hearts.
“Where’s ol’ Grippem ’n’ Ayzbitah?” the guard asked, looking for the big hounds that usually followed the hunter.
Robre cleared his throat and spat into the mud of the road, turning his head to cover a sudden prickle in his eyes. “Got the dog-sickness, had to put ’em down,” he said.
The guards made sympathetic noises at the hard news. “Good hunting?” Tomul went on, waving toward the rawhide-covered bundles on the Bear Creek man’s pack saddles.
“Passable-just passable,” Robre replied, with mournful untruth. He pushed back his broad-brimmed, low- crowned hat to scratch meditatively at his raven-black hair. “Mostly last winter’s cure, the second-rate stuff I held back in spring. Hope to do better this year.”
“Jefe Carul killed two cows for God-thanks at sunrise,” Tomul said; it was two hours past dawn now. “Probably some of the beef left if you’ve a hunger.”
Robre snorted and shook his head. Sacrificial beef was free to any man of the Seven Tribes, but also likely to be old and tough. Lord o’ Sky didn’t care about the quality of the cattle, just their number, it being the thought that counted. He wasn’t that short of silver.
Tomul went on: “See you around, then; we’ll drink a mug. Mind you don’t break the Fair’s peace-bans while you’re here, or it’s a whuppin’ from the Jefe.”
“I’m no brawler,” Robre said defensively.
“Then give me these back,” Tomul chuckled in answer, pulling down the corner of his mouth with a little finger to show two missing molars.
