Then another two hours were spent at the task of stretching fresh sheepskins on the frames, defleshing them and giving them an initial treatment with whey.
Djahn Staiklee returned quite early, well before dark, with his saddle over his shoulder and his other hand and arm filled with his weapons. He moved stiffly, looked to be half-frozen and had concern writ deeply on his weathered face.
After dumping saddle and gear, he stalked over to stand by the firepit, stripped off his mittens and flexed his fingers in the heat beating up from the smoldering dungfire.
Lainuh ignored him, did not even look up from her work. At length, Bettylou levered her swollen body to its feet, took a horn cup from the stack and, after pouring it brimful of herb tea, proffered it to the man.
A concerted hissing gasp of apprehension came from Dahnah and the two widows; all expected a torrent of verbal abuse to spew from Lainuh, but the mistress of the yurt ignored this tableau, too, until Staiklee spoke.
“I thank you, Behtiloo, I thank you kindly.” Then he raised his voice a trifle so that all might hear clearly. “It could get bad, very bad, for us and our beasts. A tremendous pack of wolves is roaming out yonder, fivescore, at the least, probably more. We found a deer yard the devils had visited; there were only scraps of hide, broken antlers and a few well-gnawed hooves left of what had been a sizable number of deer.
“When we reported of it all to the chiefs, they decided that we’ll bring in as many horses as we can fit inside the stockade tonight and we’ll keep watchfires going here and out at the herds, too, all night long.
“Then, tomorrow, as soon as it’s light enough to see, every man, maiden, stripling and matron who’s well and able will hie to the wooded areas and start felling, trimming and dragging or carting back more trees.
The stockade will be enlarged or added on to so that we can protect not only the horses, but the cattle and the sheep, too.
“The herd guards are all exempted, of course, as are the ill, the very young or aged and women close to foaling; therefore, this yurt will furnish one man and four women to the work party, at dawn, tomorrow.”
“One man and one woman!” snapped Lainuh in a voice colder than the icicles festooning the eaves of the yurt. “If you and your stinking, lazy slave slut want to freeze in those damned woods tomorrow, I care not; but I am the mistress of this yurt and, as such, I have a day’s work to do every day here within it and I need the help of my dear daughters-in-law to aid me in performing my many chores. Moreover, I am the eldest sister of a chief and thus the mother of a chief-to-be—unless you, Djahn Staiklee, manage to get Tim, too, killed before his uncle dies … as you got all his brothers and half brothers killed!”
Lainuh’s low voice had risen to a contralto shout that fitted the yurt and must surely, Bettylou figured, be easily audible well beyond the felt-leather—and-wooden walls. Nansee, the widow of Djahnee, went softly, hurriedly, to comfort her babe, who hung in her harness and wrappings from the roof frame and just now was shrieking, Lainuh’s angry shouts having awakened the infant to terror.
Djahn sighed deeply and, ignoring the slanders, said tiredly, “It’s not my choice to make, Lainuh. If you want to argue a case, I suggest that you go over and do so with your brother and the others, although I seriously doubt that such argument will do you a scintilla of good this time, for this work is just too important to every man and woman and child and cat and horse in the camp. They have already refused to excuse nursing mothers, so why do you think they’d excuse a hale, healthy woman who just simply feels herself to be too busy, not to mention too exalted, too highborn, to swing an axe?”
“you superilious, mongrel Tekikuhn!” hissed Lainuh. “You go too far. We all know just what you truly are. What do you think yourself to be? I, at least, am pure Kindred by birth.”
Staiklee threw back his head and laughed. “Pure Kindred, hey? You? Lainuh, it is time, I think, to apprise you of the fact that I knew that yarn of yours to be a wholecloth lie even before I foolishly married you—you, with your airs and laziness and tantrums.
Dik Krooguh’s mother never bore a daughter who chanced to live to maturity, so when one of her husband’s concubines bore a baby girl who proved to be of his likeness and of decent mindspeak aptitude, she raised her as her own daughter. Now, my first Krooguh wife—your half sister, Kahnee—was by your sire on his second wife and was of pure Kindred stock.
“But your dam, Lainuh, was nothing save a Dirtwoman slave, and that is why most of the camp laughs at your pretensions, either behind your back or to your face. Were your half brother not chief and deeply attached to you for various and sundry reasons, you’d have not a friend in this camp. You are more or less tolerated by so many because of the love and respect that all bear for Dik Krooguh, and that is the only reason.
“Now you do as you will, wife. But I much fear me that if you are so unwise as to not heed the summons to work tomorrow for the common weal, not even Chief Dik’s stature in this camp will save you the shunning and overt censure of your peers, your betters and even your inferiors.”
Lainuh leaped to her feet, kicked off her embroidered yurtboots and began quickly to don her heavier outside clothing. “We’ll just hear exactly what my brother has to say about this … this outrage, Djahn Staiklee! Nor do I think that he’ll be one bit happy or amused to hear that you chose to humiliate and degrade his only living sister before her daughters-in-law and your slave. And I’ll not be back under this roof until I hear your full, abject and public apology to me and my dear brother, too!”
Djahn just grinned. “That is a promise, I hope. In that case, wife, you had better take your bed rug and coverings, plus all of your clothes—winter and summer—for horses will sprout horns and oxen will climb trees before you hear me recant what was only truth.
Squatting, her face working. she began to roll her bed for easy carrying, but when she made to include the bearskin, he roughly jerked it from her grasp.
“Give it back, damn you!” she shouted hotly. “It’s mine, mine!”
His reply was cold, “You seem to forget—conveniently misremember, as is your wont—just who killed that bear and then skinned it out, woman, By custom as well as by the law of the Horseclans, I can give this prize to whomever I wish, It is not automatically yours simply because you chose to lay claim to it, as you have claimed or made shift to claim everything of beauty or of value that ever has come into this yurt.”
“But … but …” she stuttered, too angry for a moment to talk properly. “But me it was who cured that skin, me it was who stitched up the tears of fang and claw, the holes made by the arrows, It has been long and hard, it has taken me months of daily work on it. You can’t just rob me of it now!”
He just shrugged, saying. “You cannot be robbed of something you never really owned, Lainuh. And as for the vast amounts of work you claim to have put into the curing and repair of this bearskin, I am certain that our son and his new wife here will thank you in winters yet to come, for I have decided to give it to them.”
Lainuh did not return that night. The four women and Djahn Staiklee ate the stew and the fried bread, then sat for a long while around the dungfire, nibbling on hard cheese and chunks of dried fruit and sipping tea, while Djahn spun tales of hunting and of his youth on the arid southern plains, where more than a few of the bands of nomads still were neither Kindred-born nor even allied with the Horseclans by marriage.
All the while he talked, in the near-darkness Staiklee’s big, capable hands were busy. First, he fitted a new string to his powerful hornbow, then rubbed every inch of that string well with a lump of beeswax. That done, he unstrung the bow and thoroughly dressed it with sheepsfoot jelly before wiping off the excess and returning it to its weatherproof case of wood, felt and oiled leather.