Waterborn

'He didn't say which new moon, did he?'

Perkar shook his head ruefully and flashed his cousin a brief smile. 'You've got me there. Maybe I should sit down for a bit.'

'Yes. Until you can get your mind back on building your fence.'

'My father's fence,' Perkar corrected him, his voice a bit sharp.

'Oh. Oh. So that's it, eh?'

Perkar chewed his lower lip a moment before reluctantly replying. 'I was seventeen yesterday, Angata. Seventeen. And I'm still working on my father's holding.'

'Your father is a great man.'

'Yes, yes. My father is a great man. Rich in Piraku. Yet what do I have?'

'His good looks.' Angata grinned.

Perkar glared at him. 'I should know better than to talk about this.' He turned his face back toward the forest. An awkward silence grew up between them. Perkar, brows knotted, clenched around his frustration; Angata's broad flat face was set in an exasperated scowl.

'You know the answer,' Angata muttered, breaking the silence first. 'Get yourself a woman. A woman with a good dowry, a father-in-law with a lot of land.'

'Why don't you just say 'marry Bakume's daughter'?' Perkar snapped.

'All right, you stupid fool. Marry Bakume's daughter. The Agasapanyi Valley has some of the best pasture in the world. Bakume offered you two pastures, twenty cows, and a good bull to go along with her. Not that anyone would need all of that to marry Kehuse. You'll find no lovelier bride.'

'I don't like her.'

'Perkar, I heard your father say he would offer you ten cows into the bargain himself, if you would marry her.'

'Oh, he did? So now I have a dowry?'

Angata reached for him, but Perkar pulled away. 'You should forget her, Perkar,' he hissed, and Perkar knew they were no longer speaking of Bakume's daughter.

'Easy for you to say. You've never known her.'

'No,' Angata said, a little heat of his own rising into his tongue. 'No, I've never lain with a goddess. But I've lain with women enough, and they're all pretty much the same, Perkar. I can't imagine that even a goddess would be that different.'

Perkar's lips flattened into a line, and his voice quavered a bit when he whispered, 'I… I wouldn't know.'

Angata had a retort ready, but it dropped from his open mouth as he gaped at Perkar instead. 'Never? Never? Wait, what about last haygathering? Kenu's girl.'

'I couldn't. I just… I couldn't, Angata. I tried.'

Angata touched his brow and muttered a little blessing. His intense eyes had lost their purpose, and they wandered now, embarrassed instead of certain.

'It must be some kind of witching,' he said at last, almost apologetically. 'There must be some way…'

'It isn't a witching,' Perkar said. 'She says the same things you say. Find a Human woman. Have children. Raise cattle. Be a man. But I can't, Angata. I don't know that I will ever be able to.'

Angata shrugged again. The certainty was returning to the ridges of his brow; furrowed, they worked the problem around. Angata loved riddles, Perkar remembered. 'Sex is only the tenth part of marriage,' Angata quoted, from somewhere. 'You can learn, Perkar, over time. Learn to love a Human woman.'

Perkar shook his head sharply, a dismissal. Angata nodded his own head in reply, a confirmation, a sign to move on to other ideas.

'Fine,' Angata said. 'A steer can be rendered by more than one tool.' Then he flinched apologetically at his ill- chosen aphorism. 'I mean, many are the roads to Piraku.'

'Better,' Perkar acknowledged.

'I know more than one lad our age without a holding, or with one too small for his liking…'

'Like yourself,'' Perkar interjected.

'Yes. Reed Valley is nice enough, but I've not enough cattle to fill it. My point is, there are things to be done about it, things such as they sing about in epics.'

'You mean we should put together a war party and go take someplace.'

'Yes. The landless could split up the territory, the cowless could take some of the cows.'

'That would have to be a big holding to make it worthwhile,' Perkar observed. 'Though, of course, some of us would probably die.'

'Maybe. Though I've heard of conquest where no lives were lost.'

Perkar turned to his cousin seriously. 'Who, Angata? Who would you raid? Lokuhuna, whose son we hunted with as children, and who would stand with his father as we cut them down? Teruwana, whose daughter you have tumbled more than once, who gave my father a prize bull as a friendship gift? Konu of the high pastures, whose wife brings the boar to every High Gathering, whose son-in-law Hutuhan plays the harp so sweetly the children cluster about his feet rather than dash around the banquet hall, upsetting dishes and servants? Or perhaps we should take the Kapaka's own lands, the holdings of the High Chief?'

'No, no,' Angata said, pushing away Perkar's objections with the flat palms of his hands. 'You mention all of those close to us, near to our hearts. But there are those, far on the borders of the forest country, near the great seas of grass, with whom we hold little kinship. They spurn invitations to the High Gathering, to haygathering, to all of the festivals. We owe them nothing.'

Perkar snorted. 'They spurn our invitations because they dare not leave their damakutat unguarded for even a moment. They have the Mang at their backs, cousin. My father fought against the Mang once, and we nearly lost everything. And that was to a poorly organized war party. Those who live on the edges are more hardened to war than we here. They would cut us down like wheat. And if they did not, if we somehow triumphed, we would be the ones with our backs to the Mang. You wouldn't, I suppose, because you would be safe with your new cattle back in Reed Valley. But I have no desire to live near the plains.'

'You have no desire for Piraku, then.' Angata sneered. 'For if you do not marry and do not conquer, you will never have any.'

Perkar pursed his lips. 'My grandfather married the daughter of a landless man, and he fought no one, and yet he brought enough land for a thousand cattle under pasture.'

'Your grandfather struck a deal with the forest god to take land from the trees. Such a thing happens only once in ten lifetimes.'

'So it does,' Perkar said carefully. 'Let's get back to work. I promise not to sever any of your limbs.'

'Good.'

'But your head may be another matter, if you don't keep quiet about what I told you.'

 

 

Sunlight was deepening to gold when Perkar heard hooves beating up behind him. He gripped his axe a little more tightly; all of his talk with Angata about war made him nervous. Ironically, Angata had only just walked off across the hills toward his own holding, reckoning that his debt to Sherye was more or less paid. If the approaching horse bore some crazed Mang tribesman, Angata would miss all of the excitement.

The horse turned out to be the red and black stallion that belonged to his brother, Henyi, who rode saddleless astride him.

'Elder Brother!' Henyi shouted, his voice rilled with the same excitement that flushed his face.

'You should use a saddle, Henyi. It hurts the horse to ride it bareback.'

Henyi frowned in annoyance, but he did not take up his brother's complaint. Instead, he continued on with his own news.

'The Kapaka is here. Father wants you to come greet him!'