Though irked by his tone, Marika did as she was told. Bhlase followed with a load of his own. He ordered their plunder neatly, set the pups down, gave Kublin and Marika each a mortar and pestle. He settled between them with his legs surrounding a kettle. He drew a knife.
Marika was astonished. The kettle was copper, the knife iron.
Bhlase opened one leather bag and used a ceramic spoon to ladle dried, crushed leaves into Marika's mortar bowl. "Grind that into powder. I'll need ten more like that."
Marika began the dull task. Bhlase turned to Kublin. More, but different, dried, crushed leaves went into his mortar bowl. These gave off a pungent odor immediately. "Ten from you, too, Kublin."
Marika recalled that Bhlase had been accepted by Skiljan because of his knowledge of herbs and such, which exceeded that of Pohsit.
But what were they doing?
Bhlase had brought several items Marika connected only with cooking. A sieve. A cutting board. A grater. The grater he set into the kettle. He cut the wax seal off one of the jars and removed several wrinkled, almost meth-shaped roots. He grated them into the bowl. A bitter scent rose.
"That is good enough, Marika." He took her mortar bowl, dumped it into the sieve, flung the bigger remains into the firepit. They flashed and added a grassy aroma to the thousands of smells haunting the loghouse. "Nine more will do it. How is yours coming, Kublin? Yes. That is fine. Dump it here. Good. Nine more for you."
"Are you not scared, Bhlase?" Marika asked. He seemed unreasonably calm.
"I have been through this before. When I was a pup, nomads besieged our packstead. They are ferocious but not very smart. Kill a few and they will run away till they have eaten their dead."
"That is awful."
"They are awful." Bhlase finished grating roots. He put the grater aside, sieved again, then took up the cutting board. The jar he opened this time contained dead insects the size of the last joint on Marika's smallest finger. He halved each longwise, cut each half crosswise, scraped the results into the kettle. After finishing the insects he opened a jar which at first seemed to contain only a milky fluid. After he poured that into the pot, though, he dumped several dozen fat white grubs onto his cutting board.
"What are we making, Bhlase?" Kublin asked.
"Poison. For the arrowheads and spearheads and javelins."
"Oh!" Marika nearly dropped her pestle.
Bhlase was amused. "It is harmless now. Except for these." He indicated the grubs, which he was dicing with care. "All this will have to simmer together for a long time."
"We have never used poisons," Kublin said.
"I was not here last time nomads came to the Degnan packstead," Bhlase replied. Marika thought she detected a certain arrogance behind his words.
"None of us were," she countered. "That was so long ago Granddam was leader."
"That is true, too." Bhlase broached another jar of grubs. And another after that. Kublin and Marika finished their grinding. Bhlase continued doing grubs till the copper kettle was filled to within three inches of its rim. He took that to a tripod Horvat had prepared, hung it, adjusted it just so over the fire. He beckoned.
"I am going to build the fire just as it must be," he said. "You two keep it exactly the same." He thrust a long wooden spoon into the pot. "And stir it each few minutes. The insects tend to float. The grubs sink. Try not to breathe too much of the steam."
"For how long?" Kublin asked.
"Till it is ready."
Marika and Kublin exchanged pained glances. Pups always got stuck with the boring jobs.
Over by the other firepit, the huntresses and Wise were still trying to get the prisoner to say something useful. He still refused. The loghouse was growing chilly, what with the coming and going of meth from other loghouses.
"Pohsit is enjoying herself," Marika observed, stirring the poison. She kept rehearsing the formula in her mind. She had recognized all the ingredients. None were especially rare. It might become useful knowledge one day.
Kublin looked at Pohsit, gulped, and concentrated on the fire.
II So time fled. Sharpening of tools into weapons. Making of crude javelins, spears, and arrows. Males and older pups drilling with the cruder weapons over and over. The initial frenzy of preparation faded as nothing immediate occurred. The lookouts saw no sign of imminent nomad attack. No sign of nomads at all.
Was the crisis over without actually beginning?
The captive died never having said anything of interest-as Marika had expected. The huntresses dragged him out and hurled him off the stockade to lie in the snow before the gate, mute and mutilated. A warning.
Marika wished she had had a chance to talk with the prisoner. She knew next to nothing about the lands beyond the Zhotak.
The huntresses chafed at their confinement, though their restlessness sprang entirely from their minds. In winter they often went longer without leaving the packstead. There were disputes about whether or not the gate should be opened. Bitter cold continued to devour wood stores.
Skiljan and Gerrien kept the gate sealed.
The weather conspired to support them.
Marika took her turn in the watchtower and saw the nothing she expected to see. Her watch was not long, but it was cold. An ice storm had coated everything with crystal. Footing was treacherous everywhere. Males not otherwise occupied cleared ice and snow and erected platforms behind the stockade so huntresses could hurl missiles from their vantage. A few tried to break stones loose from the pile kept for use in a possible raid, but they had trouble. The ice storm had frozen the pile into a single glob.
Kublin called the alarm during his afternoon watch. The huntresses immediately assumed his imagination had gotten the best of him, he being a flighty pup and male to boot. But a pair of huntresses clambered up the tower, their weight making it creak and sway, as had been done with several earlier false alarms.
Kublin was not a victim of his imagination, though at first he had trouble convincing the huntresses that he was indeed seeing what he saw. His eyes were very sharp. Once he did convince them, they dismissed him. He returned to the loghouse to bask in unaccustomed attention.
"I saw smoke," he announced proudly. "A lot of smoke, far away."
Skiljan questioned him vigorously-"What direction? How far? How high did it rise? What color was it?"-till he became confused and frustrated.
His answers caused a stir.
Marika had less experience of the far countryside than did her elders. It took her longer to understand.
Smoke in that direction, east, at that distance, in that color, could mean only one thing. The packstead of their nearest neighbors, the Laspe, was burning. And packsteads did not burn unless intentionally set ablaze.
The Degnan packstead frothed with argument again. The central question was: to send scouts or not. Skiljan and Gerrien wanted to know exactly what had happened. Many of those who only hours earlier had demanded the gate be opened now wanted it kept closed. Even a large portion of the Wise did not want to risk huntresses if the nomads were that close.
Skiljan settled the question by fiat. She gathered a dozen huntresses of like mind and marched out. She had her companions arm as huntresses seldom did, with an assortment of missile weapons, hatchets and axes, knives, and even a few shields. Shields normally were used only in mock combats fought during the celebrations held at the turning of each season.
Marika crowded into the watchtower with the sentry on duty. She watched her dam's party slip and slide across the ice-encrusted snowfields till they vanished into the woods east of the packstead.
When she returned to her loghouse, they gave her the iron axe her dam had been sharpening, and showed her what to do. Skiljan had taken it from the nomads she had slain. It had not been cared for properly. Many hours would be required to give it a proper edge.