"Hmmm." Giernas pulled his face into a pondering frown and stroked his chin in thought. "Now that you mention it… no."
Sue kicked a strategically aimed splash of ice-cold water before she turned and walked back toward their clothes. Giernas yelped, swore, and waded ashore laughing, scooping up his rifle and belt from the edge of the brook. They tied on fresh breechclouts; then they pulled on their hip-high leggings, tied them to the waistband portion of their breechclouts, shrugged into the buckskin hunting shirts, a little cold and clammy from resting on dew-wet bushes, belted on their gear, loaded their horses with the meat, and set off upstream. Giernas carried his rifle now; the bow was back on the saddle, with the quiver. He used it to hunt, saving the precious cartridges and powder, but they weren't hunting now. What he was worried about now was things trying to hunt them; the red-oozing bundles of elk meat were perfect bear bait.
"Perks, guard," Giernas said, as they set out, rifles in the crooks of their left arms and leading-reins in their right.
The wolf-dog was pleasantly full and plainly regarded it as time to do the sensible thing and curl up in the sun to doze, but he didn't need telling twice. A heavy sigh, and the gray shape slipped into the underbrush, moving ahead and to the flanks. The younger pair of dogs followed their sire obediently; Giernas was the alpha of their pack, but Perks ran a close second.
Seen that often enough, Giernas thought-a punishing nip on the nose, or a brief wrestle that ended with an uppity youngster on his or her back, throat caught in a warning grip. With Perks around we've got discipline, by God.
The camp was half an hour's brisk walk away, in a meadow much like the one they'd found the elk in. They hadn't bothered to set up a tent last night, no need when they had good fires and sleeping bags lined with wolverine fur. He scrambled up a rise a half mile away and pulled out his binoculars. The others had the equipment packed and on the horses, all but one of the fires extinguished and buried, their rubbish likewise. Dogs milled around, woofing in excitement at the preparations for a journey into new country.
"Everyone looks ready, except for…"
"Eddie. Bet he's waiting up for us?" Sue said.
"Do bears shit in the woods?" Giernas said, looping the reins up over Kicker's saddle.
In his opinion horses were idiots every one, even by grazing-beast standards, but if you kept at them long enough they could learn. The horse rolled an eye at him, then kept moving stolidly up their own back-trail. The others, as was the nature of the tribe, followed the leader.
The humans split up, moving soundlessly into the shadows of the trees, flitting from one trunk to the next. Nothing… but after a moment Giernas caught a familiar sight; Perks frozen still as a statue, with his nose pointing to a big sugar pine. He moved behind the one at his back and poked the muzzle of his rifle around it.
"Peek, I see you," he called out. Playing ambush kept you on your toes. So far he was one five-gallon barrel of beer up on points, and when they got back to Nantucket he intended to collect. "Hi, Eddie. You're dead."
"It's a draw!" a man's voice said from behind the tree, aggrieved.
"No it isn't," Sue replied… from behind him.
Eddie Vergeraxsson stepped around the pine, shaking his head and glaring at Perks. "Not fair, when you two've got a werewolf working for you," he said.
Not entirely in jest-the slender hazel-eyed man with the queue of brown hair was a Zarthani chief's son from Alba, brought over to Nantucket as a hostage/pupil after the Alban War. He'd been a citizen of the Republic for years, but that didn't mean he thought entirely like an Islander born. He'd spent his teens in the Republic, and decided he liked being a ranger more than being heir to the rahax of a Sun People tribe in what a later age would have called Kent.
"Hi, Sue," he went on. "Hey, couple of elk, eka? I'll get it on the packhorses."
Nor entirely a bad thing that he still thinks a little like a charioteer down deep, Giernas thought. Eddie had a bad case of what some of the older generation on Nantucket called the Spanish Toothache, particularly during his frequent quarrels with Jaditwara, but there wouldn't be any trouble over Sue. As far as he's concerned, I'm his chieftain and she's my woman and that's it.
Another woman ran over to him as they walked into the clearing and threw herself into his arms. He grinned, clasped her to him with his left arm, and swung her around until she squealed with glee and her blue-black braids flung out like banners. Spring Indigo was a full foot shorter than his six-one, her skin a bronze-brown-amber color, with a roundly pretty snub-nosed slant-eyed face. She was halfway to stocky… but I have absolutely no complaints about that figure, nosireee. Plenty to grab in all the right places, with the suppleness natural to a nomad in her seventeenth year. Smart, too. She'd learned English fast, and was picking up her letters quickly.
"Husband!" she said.
Her mouth lingered on his, tasting of acorn bread and berries. Her people didn't do lip-kissing, but she'd decided it was a good idea, during their long trek from the tall-grass prairies near where Independence, Missouri, would never be. She went on:
"You are the rising stars in the sky of my night! I am the moon to your sun! You are the greatest hunter in the world!"
"I must be; caught you, didn't I?" he said, laughing down at her face. Some of the things she said sounded a bit funny in English, but he'd learned to translate the sense of the words. "I love you too, honey. How's Jared?"
"Fed, changed, and sleeping," she said. "I think he may be starting to cut another tooth, poor thing." She turned to Sue: "Sister!"
That was a direct translation of what a second wife called the first, among the Cloud Shadow People fifteen hundred miles to the east, accompanied by an enthusiastic embrace and kiss-most grown men in Spring Indigo's tribe had more than one wife, because so many young men died early, hunting or in raids. Some things just worked out for the best, if you had luck. He seemed to have the keuthes where women were concerned, thank God.
Absolutely no way I was going to leave Indigo back there, with my kid. The expedition had rescued her people in the middle of a last, lost battle with enemies out to destroy them, and one of the Islanders had been injured badly enough that they decided to winter there. The Cloud Shadow tribe had a lot of amiable characteristics, one of which was that they really did believe in gratitude. The outsiders had spent the fall and winter and early spring with them, teaching much and learning a great deal, too; two of the Islanders had settled down with them for good-keeping a third of the horse-herd, among other things. Sometimes he wondered what would come of that, and of the other things Henry Morris and Dekkomonsu would show them.
They're good people, Indigo's folk, he thought; he'd considered staying himself. There were worse lives than being a hunter of the Cloud Shadow tribe. They were critically short of adult males, after their losing war, and they would have been overjoyed to make him their leader.
Yeah, I considered it for about fifteen minutes, until I finished listing all the reasons not to do it. First, no beer, ever again, he thought. Or hot showers, and the thought of never reading another book… Wilderness travel was great, if you could take some time out now and then. But it's damned good luck Indigo and Sue hit it off so well. A small party in the wilderness had to stick together. When they got back to the Island… well, they'd see. The arrangement was unconventional, true, but his people were pretty good at minding their own damn business, most of them.