The shaman stared at the western horizon, calculating, then said, "I'm not sure. The distance is almost double that from the Horn at the Channel Mountains to Oxbow Lake along the tundra. We've been out, uh, thirty-two days. Perhaps another twenty? Why ask, mother?"
"Oh," she puffed, "walking the world over is fine for young folks, but my poor feet are worn to the knee. It'll be good to find a rock to sit on."
Sunbright laughed, "You'll have rocks, mother, if I have to trudge to Northreach to fetch one."
"If we had horses," Knucklebones cooed, "we could build a bigger travois and you could ride."
Monkberry shook her head, and stated, "Barbarians walk. It's always been that way. I'm good for a few more leagues yet."
Shouldering the harness, now piled with thirty pounds of raw horse meat and hide, Sunbright leaned far forward to get started. "Come on, then. The sooner we walk, the sooner we arrive. I need to find my mother a rock."
The band passed deeper into the prairie, which now began to rise steadily, several feet in every mile. They saw no more ancient animals, mammoths or saber-tooths, and twice passed stands of poplar trees. Several times the tribe skirted ridges too steep to scale with leather soles. The mountains and forest were not far off.
With the good news came bad. Orc raids came more frequently. A woman gathering water was shot in the back by a crude arrow. The Rengarth beat the brush but never found the killer. One night three southmen, half-starved, bearing swords and scraps of armor, were caught rifling the food and were immediately cut down. Hunters found game clumsily butchered, so they paired up for protection. Once, at dawn, a pack of thirty or more orcs howled a battle challenge, hoping to stampede the tribe. When near two hundred fighters screamed back, the orcs melted into gullies. Two hunters were bushwhacked later, with only their heads recovered.
"I've never heard of orcs on the prairie, and suddenly they're thick as fleas," Sunbright mused. "Iceborn and Tulipgrace only recall it once, ages ago, when drought burned the highlands. What's got them on the prod?"
"The One King?" asked Knucklebones. "You saw the red hand on that big war party."
"The king's dead, and not coming back. I saw him blasted by dragon fire. Flagstones under his feet melted. Still…" Guessing got them nowhere, and they had to continue at any cost.
Then one afternoon a hunter pelted through the grass. From her empty hands, they concluded she'd routed an enemy. Magichunger hollered, "To arms! To arms!"
But this news was good. Panting, Firstfortune pointed wildly northwest, and gasped, "I-I've seen it! F-From a ridge top! Sanguine Mountain! Red as blood down a black cleft! Two days' walk. We're almost there-"
Cheering drowned out the rest. Sunbright grabbed Knucklebones and his creaky mother, and spun them both till they gasped. The tribe pushed on till dusk, threw up a hasty camp, then convened to discuss plans. Sunbright had little to say, instead listened to notions both fantastic and practical, glad his people had new ideas to share.
The next afternoon, the peak of Sanguine Mountain topped the grass. Two days later, they saw the whole mountain, and others beyond it, gray and solemn marching to the sky, while a counterpane of green shot with orange and gold and red cloaked their stony feet.
In the last mile, someone hollered and streaked forward. A child ran after, soon outstripped by two more youngsters. "A tree! First to touch a tree!" A flock of runners broke and ran headlong. The stragglers behind cheered the race.
The forest spilled from the hillside in long ragged arms of color to trickle amidst the yellow grass. Having reached the trees, someone shouted anew, and a race back to the tribe began. This time the runners carried leaves they'd snatched as proof of their triumph. Sharing their treasures, they were grabbed and kissed and jostled. Songs went up, and prayers of thanks.
Far at the rear of the wandering train, Sunbright stopped dragging their travois. Monkberry caught his wrist on one side, and Knucklebones the other. The small thief said, "You did it, Sunbright! You've brought them to safety! You pushed and pleaded and nagged, but they've arrived!"
"All the tribe," Monkberry added. "Every one."
Sunbright was quiet, for this place carried memories. It had been here, to the southern slopes of the Barren Mountains, that he'd first retreated when driven from the tribe years back. The mountains had proved bitter and barren, but the forest had sustained him.
"I hope it's safe," he sighed. "I hope this new soil receives my uprooted people…"
The hillside swarmed with barbarians busy as beavers, each with a hundred tasks to do and each happy, for this new land promised great things.
While hunters slipped into the forest, men cut saplings with bronze and iron swords, dug holes to receive them, bent and lashed them with spruce roots, then moved on while women and children layered leafy branches to finish the wigwams. Days ago, Forestvictory had declared her task as trail chief ended with the trail, so Goodbell was appointed camp chief. Now the young woman, with twins slung on her back and a third swelling her belly, directed the laying out of wigwams and slit trenches for latrines, the packing with sticks and mud for a small dam to widen an errant stream, the digging of fire pits, and other tasks.
The tribe had chosen a wide vale with only a slight slope embraced on two sides by highlands of trees. Sanguine Mountain reared above the forest to the north like an orange-black beacon built by gods. The forest itself was edged by green-black spruces whose petticoats brushed the ground. Rising behind were bursts of yellow, orange, and red; tall, vase-shaped elms, round sugar maples, and thin, graceful birches. Sheltered on three sides, sloping to prairie, their camp looked like a harbor town verging on a yellow sea, and it was as busy as any seaport.
Sunbright left Monkberry and Knucklebones to house construction, and busied himself laying out a council ring. Sharpening a stick, he scraped away moss and grass and levered up rocks. He rolled them in a ring, careful that each touched its neighbors, then scraped off dirt for a seat. He whistled as he worked, happy, for they'd finished one odious chore, crossing the plains, and embarked on a new and promising one. Even the air was sweeter, rich with loam and pine and sparkling water, unlike the grainy dust smell of the prairie.
As he fiddled with stones, a tall barbarian named Wreathhonor approached, asked, "Goodbell asks how deep shall we dig the trenches? How long will we stay here?"
Sunbright scraped an imaginary crack. He'd dreaded and avoided this question for weeks, and had no answer now. Or rather, had an answer no one would like. "I think we'll be here a while. All winter, perhaps."
"All winter?" Wreathhonor scratched his head, and went away muttering, "Deep trenches."
It wasn't long before others came calling. Goodbell herself, with Wreathhonor trailing, and Magichunger and Mightylaugh, and even hobbling old Tulipgrace. Goodbell asked, "What's this about we're wintering over? I thought this was a temporary camp. Won't we return to the tundra after the first snowfall? We'll need to build dog sleds for seal season…"
Weary in mind, Sunbright plumped on a rock. Gently, he offered, "The tundra can't support us over the winter. The land is sick…" He listed the bad signs, hoping they'd understand.
They didn't. Goodbell frowned. "But if we don't cross the tundra…" she said. "Do you mean to stay through winter and into spring? What of the salmon run-"