Nevertheless, that was where they were going, and she had volunteered to go.
The river valley was pleasant enough at least, and they couldn’t get farther than the very foot of the first mountain before nightfall. “Hywel, aren’t there any northern tribes around here?” she called to the front of the group. “This place looks deserted.”
“Oh, yes. This is part of Gray Wolf territory,” he said cheerfully. “They are usually farther upriver this time of year; I do not know if we will see them. They do not herd at all; they hunt and plant some.”
They had encountered two tribes thus far; Black Bear (not to be confused with Blood Bear) and Magpie. The latter, allied with Ghost Cat in the past, had welcomed them with great enthusiasm for the dyes that Keisha had brought with them. The northerners, like the southern Shin’a’in, had apparently never seen a color they didn’t love, and combined colors in ways that made Keisha’s eyes water.
Black Bear, however, had been wary and careful; the travelers saw only their warriors, and never had been invited to the camp. Keisha had asked about their Shaman and Healing Woman, and had been greeted with blank stares and no information. Still, Black Bear had not been actively hostile - or else they hadn’t wanted to take on a formidable enigma like Kel - and had let them pass.
Kel was up above now. Hashi and the dyheli doe Neta were somewhere ahead, acting as advance scouts. Neta was years past the age of breeding, but was just as agile as a doe half her age. More to the point, she was wary, clever, and experienced. The young stags were half afraid of her, since she had acted as a disciplinarian to each of them at some point in his life. Keisha was very glad to have her with them.
As her mount Malcam began picking his way down the hillside, Keisha scanned the valley below. There were no thin streams of smoke from possible campfires, nothing moving through the small clearings among the trees, nor along the banks of the river.
The air was so clear that everything stood out in sharp detail, and the scents were more like those of early spring than of early summer.
“We’ll camp early, on this side of the river,” Hywel called back over his shoulder, then urged his mount on ahead to pick out a good campsite.
Good! Steelmind and I can look for edible plants while a couple of the others hunt. Now that she’d gotten the hang of things, she’d be able to help with setting up camp, too.
In next to no time, they were under the trees again, and the branches cut off all sight of those intimidating mountains looming over them. The dyheli continued to pick their way down the slope in single file, with Steelmind taking rearguard just behind Keisha. There was no discernible track, but the rocky slope didn’t support much underbrush, so the way was clear between the trees.
It was a lot farther to the river than it had looked from the top of the hill; they were still making their way toward the river long past the time Keisha would have figured that they would have already been in camp.
They heard the water long before they saw it; a deep rumble that alarmed Keisha, though she saw no signs of worry in any of the others. When they finally came out into the sunlight, just on the riverbank, she saw why.
To her right, on the downstream side, a smooth and silky expanse of broad water passed into a much narrower and rockier channel. Instead of rolling placidly along, the river leaped over boulders the size of a house and roared along a series of descending cascades.
Yet to her left, there could have been nothing more peaceful. The channel was three times the size of the one to the right; the water was placid and relatively slow-moving. It should be no great problem to ford or even swim it.
Darian and his mount had already turned to the left; Shandi and Karles followed. There was no sign of Hywel, who must have gone ahead to a campsite upriver.
He had, and it took several more furlongs of moving westward before they caught up with him. Hashi, Kel, and Neta were with him, acting as perimeter guards while he made some of the initial preparations for the camp. The rapids were no more than a far-off rumble, not disturbing, but the noise might cloak the sounds of anyone or anything approaching.
Keisha dismounted, pulled off her dyheli’s saddle, and set to work. Her job was to make a fire pit while Darian and Hywel went in one direction to hunt, Kel took to the air to find prey for himself, Steelmind to the woods to find edible plants, and Wintersky took fishing tackle to the river. That left Keisha to take care of fire and water duties, and Shandi to get out all their camping gear and decide how she was going to prepare camp for this night’s terrain.
By the time the hunters, fisher, and gatherer had returned with their bounty (or lack of it), Shandi and Keisha had the camp set up and the fire ready.
By sundown, everyone had been fed except for the dyheli, who would graze on-and-off all night. Tonight they had eaten better than usual, since Wintersky had successfully hooked and netted a nice lot of fish. The ones that hadn’t been eaten yet were smoking over the fire, along with strips of meat from the small rabbitlike animals that Hywel and Darian had killed. That would give them tomorrow’s breakfast and lunch - that, and whatever else Steelmind gathered in the morning.
Tonight, with one side guarded for them by the river, Shandi had strung the hammocks at ground level and downwind of the fire where the smoke would drive away blackflies and other biting insects. Keisha brought in a last armload of wood before darkness closed in completely, and she and Darian set themselves up for the first watch of the night.
Hywel and Wintersky took the second, and Shandi and Steelmind the third. The arrangement suited everyone well except Wintersky’s bird, and that hardly mattered, since the handsome falcon was ideally suited for daylight scouting.
While everyone else went straight to their hammocks, Keisha carefully turned the strips of meat and fish fillets to make sure they cured evenly, and Darian made the first of his many rounds of the periphery with Kuari. When he returned, Keisha made a space for him on the pile of leaves she was sitting on - leaves that would eventually end up on the fire to make more smoke.
“Is there a ford, or are we going to have to swim tomorrow?” she asked, as he put his arm around her and held her close. It might not have been a very romantic question, but he didn’t seem to mind that.
“There’s a ford - Ghost Cat used it coming here,” he told her. “Hywel doesn’t think the water is much higher than it was then. It is bound to be some higher, since they came through in summer, not spring, and there’s still snowmelt coming down off the mountains.”
“I know about the snowmelt,” she replied, with a wry smile. “I gave up on the idea of a bath the moment I dipped out the first bucket of water. It feels cold enough to have been solid ice a candlemark before I dipped it out!”
“That’s why we’re crossing in the morning - it’ll give us the full sun to dry out in once we’re across.” Darian looked toward the water, and Keisha knew he had planned every moment of the crossing and just beyond. “Then we spend a full day hunting and fishing.”
“Oh?” She craned her neck around to look him in the face. “Why?”