‘No, it’s true. The krol wants to burn away part of the forest and get the women to help him plant the seeds. He has the women stuffed away on one of those ships of his, crammed in toe to toe like herrings pickled in a trader’s barrel.’
‘What, all of them?’ Jarel slumped back against the cave, the sunlight playing on his face, but there was a hollowness about his laugh, a hint of desperation. He still longed for the simple world, where the woyaks were little more than a rival clan and the attack on the camp a mere raid, nothing more than a scuffle and soon forgotten.
Even now he could barely conceive of the great ships. Because of his leg Jarel hadn’t gone with the others to scout, let alone join them on the raid. He’d heard some talk about the ships, but in his mind they were nothing more than the traders’ canoes, a bit larger perhaps, but that was all. How could all the women be stuffed into them? Even the largest rafts could only hold a few and they’d only have to clamber over the roughly hewn guardrails to escape.
The hunters always exaggerated. Surely the fool girl didn’t know what she was talking about. How could men build boats large enough to hold all the women they’d taken? Such things didn’t exist. He shifted his weight, and a short jab of pain stung below his knee.
‘Iwa is right,’ Yaroslav said. He was weary, tired of the conversation and eager for sleep as he looked to his daughter and wished that the krol had never come. She still thought of him as nothing more than some kind of a hunt master. Larger and more powerful, of course, but she hadn’t the experience to realise that this was something different.
Always he had wanted to protect her. At first the clan had wanted to rid themselves of the child – one who’d killed its mother in childbirth was never welcomed and could attract all sorts of evil Leszy and other creatures. If it hadn’t been for him, she’d have been left for the wolves and the winter frost.
It’d taken days of careful pleading before the clan would keep her… the promises he’d made, the oaths he’d sworn. They lived always so close to death, these hunters. The winter snows and the endless hunt worked constantly to harden them. Who else could have crafted a life out here? They had to move as one, work together in tiny units where each knew their place, their lives always balanced on the knife edge where one single mistake could spell their doom. Here there was little room for those who did not fit in, no time for argument or those who did not know their place.
Yet he’d found a softer side to these people. There were the dances round the campfires, the songs and the feasts. He’d found a freedom he’d never known amongst the cities of the Poles and learned so much in their scrabble for existence. Now it could so easily be swept away.
‘Matka Ziemia will not give bread to these woyaks,’ Jarel was saying. ‘Do you think they can just pluck bread from her body?’
‘But they will try,’ Iwa said, ‘and they’ll burn the trees to do it.’
‘And the Leszy will let them?’
‘Where were the spirits when the camp attacked?’ she echoed the words of the women. Of course she didn’t believe that the krol would be able to coax food from Matka Ziemia. But that only made him more dangerous. ‘Would you leave the women in the hands of a madman?’
‘Soon the Poles will realise that they cannot get Matka Ziemia to give them food, no matter how they try, and then they’ll leave. The women can run away when the Poles are drunk. Leave the woyaks to their victory and their feasting; they’ll be gone soon enough.’
‘These Poles are farmers and farmers stick to the land,’ Yaroslav said slowly. ‘You’ve never been to the countries of the Poles, or lived in their cities, you don’t understand their ways.’
‘And these Poles don’t understand the ways of the forest,’ Jarel replied hotly, as he levered himself up and went to stand at the cave mouth. ‘This is what I understand.’ He pointed to the trees and the river beyond. ‘What do we want with crops and seeds here? Surely the Leszy will never allow that.’
‘Give the woyaks a chance and they will push the clans out into the mountains,’ Yaroslav said, but Jarel wasn’t listening. He stood at the cave mouth, refusing to turn.
‘They will be gone, the woyaks will melt away like the spring thaw and we can go back to the summer camp. You’ll see, there’ll be fish and spit-roast boar. I’ll make the first kill myself.’
‘There will be no fish up in the mountains,’ Yaroslav said.
‘But how can we live up there all year round?’ Iwa asked. ‘We’d never survive, and even if we did we’d end up as hermits.’ She paused and looked into her father’s face as the shadows danced darkly across his features. She knew what he was thinking: Jarel had the same thought, they all did. A clan was not a clan without a hearth for all to sit round and the totem of its god laid out before the flames. Without those, the men would drift off to join other clans or live solitary lives among the mountains.
‘Does nobody want to fight?’ Yaroslav asked, but Jarel shook his head.
‘What can we do against the woyaks and their battle craft?’
‘So the clan is no more,’ Iwa said in disbelief. ‘We have to fight.’
‘It’s not the first time a clan has disappeared.’ Yaroslav hugged her to him. Lately he’d tried to be distant, more aloof so that she’d be left to make her own way. Even now the clan barely tolerated her.
