Iwa continued to dance, her feet stumbling over the cold ground. Jarel looked up from the fire, a look of almost total incomprehension crossing his face, and then he realised. She danced on, whilst he sat back and clapped in time to her movements.
It wasn’t the hardest of dances, nor the trickiest of songs, but she was too caught up in her longing and slipped on a piece of wet moss which, despite the fire, had been covered with a thin layer of frost. For a moment it looked as if she might regain her footing, her mind still half seeing the figures of the women as they swept round the fire, but it was too late and, caught in mid song, she was sent tumbling to the ground. It was still hard, despite the sun, the chill of winter clinging just below the surface.
Red-faced she struggled up. Jarel’s laughter didn’t help ease her embarrassment as she clambered up, her backside stinging and her gown wet with mud. But his thoughts too had drifted back to the camp and the chatter of the men as they prepared their bows. Though none of the men were allowed to join in with the dance of the morning dew, they liked to watch, many of the younger hunters marking out their favourite by the sway of her hips or the litheness of her tread. And even the older hunters would gather and watch or else cheer the women on from the sidelines. Many of them said they could tell how the hunt would go from the way that the women danced.
Let’s hope that’s not true, because he’s not going to catch very much after my fall. Even before that it hadn’t been the most accomplished display. But he too had been taken back to the old ways and was grateful for those few moments when they seemed not far away.
Still smiling, he hunkered low over the flames, but there was a hard edge to his gaze, his movements stiff as if the chill had crept into his marrow. ‘We could give the heads as an offering for the Leszy,’ he nodded to the fish. Iwa tried her best to laugh, but she felt it too, that unspoken dread that passed between them. Careful to avoid her gaze, Jarel took up a twig and began to play half-heartedly with the fire. He wanted to know more about the woyaks and the women trapped in their ship, but he was too tired and too afraid at what he might hear.
‘Perhaps the Leszy would be good enough to give us a healthy fire in return,’ she added uncertainly. It wasn’t any sort of a joke but Jarel smiled all the same.
Soon the air was filled with the smoky scent of cooked carp. ‘Save some water for later,’ Jarel said as he took back the skins. ‘It’s best to stay away from the river as much as possible. They might make enough noise to wake Zaltys from his sleep in the forest, but the river’s another matter, especially with those boats of theirs. They could be up near the rapids before we’d have much of a chance to pick them off.’
‘We’d need more than a few arrows.’
‘We could manage it if they were caught midstream.’
Finishing a handful of the fish, Iwa didn’t bother to answer. Obviously he was still thinking about the small canoes and dugouts of the traders. And, if she hadn’t seen the ships for herself, she probably wouldn’t have believed in them either. Even now she could hardly imagine they were built by men. Or did the frost giants make them for the Krol? She shivered.
‘How’s the leg?’ she said, trying to shake the thought of the giants.
‘You’re not going to start with that poultice rubbish again.’
‘No, but I could make a splint. And that,’ she nodded to his bandage, ‘will need changing soon.’ She looked round for a stray piece of wood, or a scrap of cloth. She desperately wanted to be useful, even if she didn’t really know what she was doing. Maybe I shouldn’t try to help, I’d only make things worse.
‘I get around fine enough,’ Jarel said, ‘and I’m luckier than some. I’d spare more thought for Yaroslav…’ His voice trailed off uncertainly.
‘My father?’ Even through the dance the thought had been clawing at the back of her head. She’d wanted to broach the subject earlier, but had seen that Jarel had not been in the mood to talk and wanted to settle him first. ‘Is he alive?’ she said softly, a little shocked that, after all her planning, he had brought up the subject himself. ‘He has to be, please?’ Suddenly her fears welled up in a multitude of questions that flowed so quickly that she hardly had time for breath.
Jarel paused and nodded slowly as he waited for the deluge to subside. ‘He made it out of the camp all right.’
‘So you know where he is? Once we get to him then everything will be all right – you’ll see!’ She was almost manic with joy; for the first time since the woyaks attacked she felt a touch of hope. Yaroslav was the wisest person ever. If only she could get to him then everything would be fine. He’d find a way to get rid of the woyaks, something better than Katchka and her stupid mushrooms.
‘It’s not that easy,’ Jarel said, as he took one of the fish, the crucifix balanced clumsily in his hand.
‘You’ll have to take me to my father,’ she said through a mouthful of carp. ‘Maybe we should save some for him.’
‘He had food enough when last I saw him.’
‘But he could probably do with some more.’ Yaroslav’s inability to hunt had been the source of many a joke.
Yaroslav was not born of the clan but was one of the outsiders who’d been allowed to settle
