“Insect repellent,” she muttered absently, thinking about the black flies and nocturnal mosquitoes that Hywel had described. “I’d better come up with an insect repellent we can wear. There’s a camphor balm I can mix up.”
“Exactly. It’s not as if we aren’t clever enough to improvise, or as if we haven’t done this before. You’re the only one of us who’s never camped this way.” He turned her around and gave her a winning smile; a little reluctantly, she responded.
“I’ll try not to be a burden on the rest of you,” she told him, looking up into his eyes. “That’s the part I’m really afraid of - that after a week you’l wish I’d never come along, and after two, you’d wish you’d never met me.”
There it was, out in the open. The confession hac slipped out before she could stop herself. She pushec away from him, as he considered her words.
“You might say the same thing about me,” he finally answered. “When it’s cold and raining, and we haven’t had any luck hunting, or when we’re trying to sleep knowing that there’s something prowling around at the foot of our tree, just waiting for a ropt to snap or a limb to break. Or when I order you around - you might wish me on the other side of the world.”
“I might,” she agreed. She’d meant it to sound teasing; it came out as a bit waspish.
“So we’re even.” He didn’t pay any attention to her sharp tone; he just grinned and shrugged. “We’ll deal with it when it happens. In the meantime, we’ve other things to think about. What is going on witli Steelmind?”
That’s certainly changing the subject! “Why are you asking me? I don’t have any more clues than you do,” she replied, making no effort to conceal her own confusion. “I suppose it might have something to do with Shandi, but you know that he’s far too steady to be doing this on a whim, or halfheartedly. Does it matter why he’s coming?”
“Actually - no.” He looked down into her eyes. “As long as I know why you are.”
Once again, words came from her mouth that she hadn’t intended to say. “For you,” she whispered. “Just - for you.”
It seemed to be the right thing to say.
Keisha fingered the talisman at her throat and stared at the mountains before her in disbelief, drawing comfort from the little clay owl figure on her necklace. Since Owl Knight Darian’s induction into the clan, the Elder Women had been making the talismans along with their dyheli figurines. Each of them in the traveling group had one of the clan’s talismans - given to them by Shaman Celin before they left, strung on sliding thongs in the Northern fashion. Hywel’s featured cat claws, understandably enough; both Keisha and Darian had little handmade owl figurines and semiprecious stone beads on theirs. Hers featured the color green in its beads as a reminder of her status as a Healer. Shandi’s had an odd sort of charm - a Tayledras-made chiming ball, enameled with a white horse. Steelmind’s was a silver hawk on a crystal arrowhead shape. Wintersky’s was a pair of hawk talons in stone, with a stone knot between them.
These talisman necklaces were meant to identify them to other northerners as friends to at least one of the tribes. Celin and Vordon had advised them not to wear their Ghost Cat costumes, at least not at first; the relationships among the tribes were complicated, and it was better to be thought of as traders and healers first, and allies of a particular clan second.
They were now altogether out of familiar territory; for the past several days they had been taking a barely discernible track through hills that had been plenty tall enough for Keisha, but today they had come up over a particularly lofty range to see the real mountains.
Keisha could only sit slackly in her saddle and stare. Between the top of the hill where they were and the beginning of the mountain range was a wide river valley, a meandering river running through it that they would have to ford.
“Is there snow on the tops of those?” she asked Hywel incredulously, pointing to the white-dusted peaks looming against the blue sky.
“Probably,” he replied, shrugging his indifference. “It doesn’t matter; we won’t be going up that high.” The young tribesman was in his element now. So far as he was concerned, this trip was the height of pure pleasure. Not that he disliked living on the border of Valdemar, but here he was, ranging and hunting rather than staying in one place and herding, and doing it all by dyheli instead of his own two feet. This was a much superior form of travel, and Hywel very much enjoyed the experience.
Keisha had mixed feelings; she was finding more pleasure in this form of travel than she had expected, but that was leavened by the fact that she seemed so much clumsier at rough-camping than anyone else. Steelmind, Darian, and Wintersky were already part of a functioning “team.” They had worked and traveled together for four years before Keisha had ever met them. That left Keisha, Shandi, and Hywel to fit themselves into the pattern somehow.
Hywel had insinuated himself into the working trio within a day; his role was clear cut, after all. He was the guide. Between everything that he had absorbed from his elders and the Snow Fox folk, and his own memories, he had a fair idea of where he was going. Between Hywel and the sole dyheli doe that had come as Tyrsell’s representative - who served as their scout - they had clear courses marked out for them every day.
Shandi had learned the essentials of camping all through her two years at the Collegium, by going out with Anda on a regular basis with little more than a bow and arrows, a fire-starter, and a few essentials in a saddlebag. Within three days, Shandi also had fit herself into the regular rhythm of things.
It was Keisha who had remained out of step for the longest, much to her chagrin. It took her a couple of days to get the hang of putting up her hammock so that it didn’t fold her in half, nor slip down on one side or the other. She’d never cooked over an open fire before, so she watched, feeling useless, as Shandi and Steelmind made meals. About the only things she could do competently were to fetch wood and water.
At least I’m good at fetching wood and water - and Steelmind can cook.
The others were already starting down into the river valley below; Keisha’s dyheli took it upon himself to follow. She stared at the mountains with the same fascination that she usually reserved for poisonous snakes. Beautiful, yes, but -
How far are we going to have to climb into those peaks? She’d heard all sorts of horrible stories about mountains - trails that ran out, leaving you on a tiny ledge too small to stand on properly, avalanches that swept down in white roaring walls of death, storms that came up out of nowhere, air too thin to breathe, and the dreaded “mountain sickness.” The latter wasn’t an illness as such; it was caused by the thin air; the symptoms ranged from simple shortness of breath to vomiting and delirium. . . .
And the only way to cure it is to get off the mountain, which could be a bit hard to do if you’re vomiting and delirious.