Waterborn

'Rabbits? Elk?'

'None of those,' Eruka allowed.

Perkar nodded glumly. 'We go back empty-handed, then.'

'So we do,' Eruka agreed.

* * *

They were not the only ones empty-handed; Apad had had no success, either. Ngangata and Atti, however, had a fine buck hung up by its rear legs, skinning it. Atti was already offering blood to the local forest god and to the Lord of Deer, as well.

'Well shot,' Eruka told Atti.

Atti shrugged. 'Ngangata killed him; I was just there to drag him back.'

'Just the same,' Perkar said, 'I'm glad somebody brought fresh meat back. Another day of bread…'

'How much more of this, anyway?' Apad asked, gesturing at the forest around them. 'It's been six days since we left the last damakuta behind.'

'And tomorrow it shall be seven,' Atti replied. 'And the day after, eight. This is no jaunt up to your summer pasture, Apad.'

'I know that,' Apad said testily. 'I just want to know how much longer.'

Atti glanced at Ngangata. The half Alwa turned steady eyes on Apad. 'Another eight or nine days, depending upon the weather,' he said.

'How long before we enter the territory of your kin?' Apad inquired, unable to resist a faint sneer on the word 'kin.'

'The Alwat don't count me as kin any more than you do,' Ngangata retorted. 'And we've been in their territory for five days now.'

'Five days? Where are they?'

Ngangata shrugged. 'If any are around here, they are avoiding us. The only signs I've seen have been many days old.'

'Signs? What signs?'

'Footprints. Tools, a few shelters.'

Apad frowned. 'I've seen none of that.'

Ngangata shrugged noncommittally, emphasizing his relative lack of neck. 'I suppose you haven't.'

'What does that mean?' snapped Apad.

'I just repeated what you said,' Ngangata rejoined softly.

Apad scowled. He stalked over to the bloody deer carcass, examined it with his fists resting on his hips. 'You probably talk to them while we are asleep, don't you? Did they kill this deer for you?'

Ngangata stopped skinning, looked down at his own feet for a moment. Then he walked over to his bundle of things, picked up his bowstave, and strung it.

'What will you do with that?' Apad asked. 'That isn't a man's weapon.' Perkar saw that his friend was trying to affect an easy, haughty attitude; but he also saw that his muscles were tight, corded—Apad was tense, worried, ready to reach for his sword or dash aside. He was afraid of the halfling. And why not? A warrior would not shoot another over an insult—challenge him to combat perhaps, but not simply murder him. But who could tell what this kinless creature might do?

'It isn't a warrior's weapon,' Ngangata agreed. 'I am not a warrior.' With that, he snapped a black-feathered shaft onto his string; for him, the motion seemed as easy as stretching at daybreak. The bow bent and sang; the little man's body somehow bent, too, bow and arm and back together. Perkar wasn't sure exactly how it was so graceful—and certainly he could not do it himself.

Down came the arrow, a bird impaled upon it.

'If you are worried about where the deer came from,' Ngangata told Apad, 'there is your meat.'

The Kapaka, sitting at some distance from the rest of the group, chose that moment to come and join them. He clapped Apad on the shoulder.

'Best we have a fire to roast this on, eh, Apad?' he said.

Apad stood a bit longer—to give the impression of reluctance, Perkar thought—and then left to gather wood. After a moment, Perkar followed to join him.

We all fear Ngangata, he mused. We don't like him because we are afraid of him, afraid of what he might do. He remembered a favorite saying of his father's:

There is little real hatred in the world

Only Fear prancing in a man's clothes

 

 

The next day they left the rich lowlands behind, began ascending the hills. Ngangata led them through winding valleys, thick with laurel and hickory and, finally, higher up, white birch. The ways became steeper and steeper, but Perkar remained amazed that they made any progress at all, without trails and in such rugged country. The land pleased him, despite its wildness; he imagined how it would look in pasture, how well suited the ridge there on the right would be for a damakuta and its outbuildings. Oh, it would be far and far from his father's lands, but it would be his. It would be far from her, too, and that thought hung about him, a clinging mist of melancholy. He considered, once again, that perhaps it would be better, after all, to marry Bakume's daughter, if only so he could remain close to the goddess.

But no, he knew better than that. He could not have her. The best he could do was to give her a gift, a gift that she would remember in a thousand years, when he himself was the ash of a memory. His heart tightened on the thought of that gift, squeezing out other dreams, damakutat and pasture. Around him, the land lost its promise and luster, became merely trees and bushes.

His reverie was interrupted when the party halted. Knowing that he had missed something, Perkar glanced around him, searching for the cause of their delay. Nightfall was still some time away, and he saw no stream where they could water the horses.

'Who built this?' the Kapaka wondered, and it was then that the forest around Perkar came back into focus, reasserting its presence in his mind, if not his heart.

Near them stood the ruins of a damakuta. Perkar had ridden straight past the remaining timbers of its stockade, mistaking them for dead trees. The building itself had not been lived in for many years; the cedar shingles were nearly all gone, leaving the skeleton of the roof to bleach and wither in the sun and rain. The walls were collapsed, too, here and there, but whoever had built it had laid a firm foundation, for the frame still stood. The beams were entire trees, stripped of bark.

Inside, ferns and moss ran riot. The six dismounted and walked carefully through the ruin, searching for any sign of its inhabitants. Eruka began a little song to frighten off ghosts.

'What happened to them, do you think?' Apad asked of no one in particular, running his palm up the shaft of a support pillar.

'This wasn't their place, that's what happened,' Ngangata answered. 'They took from the Forest Lord without asking.'

'How do you know that?' Eruka asked, interrupting his own song.

Ngangata shot the young man a clearly puzzled look. 'Have you seen other damakutat? The Forest Lord has never granted Human Beings land this far into the forest. This is Alwat territory. The land is for them.'

'To what end?' Apad growled. 'I see no pasture, no fields, no fine houses. To what end do the Alwat use this land?'

Ngangata shook his head as if at a child. 'That is no concern of ours. The Forest Lord does what he will with his land, gives it to whom he wishes.'

Perkar frowned. 'My great-grandfather bargained with a local god—not the Forest Lord. Perhaps these people did the same.'

'Then where are they?' Atti asked, sweeping his hands around.

'They might have built elsewhere,' Perkar suggested.

Atti shrugged. 'Might. Might and a stone is just a stone.'