“Is it true, then, that Ghost Cat has found the cure for the Wasting Sickness?” he asked sharply - and anxiously.
Hywel started to answer, thought better of it, and looked to Darian. Darian motioned to Keisha to come up to the front of the group, and replaced Hywel himself.
“Warrior of Gray Wolf, I am Dar’ian k’Valdemar adopted of Ghost Cat, and it is among my people that Ghost Cat found their answer to the Wasting Sickness,” he said. “What is it that you would know?”
The eyes of the Northerners widened to hear him claim kinship with Ghost Cat, and to see Hywel nod to confirm his claim.
“You have a cure?” the warrior asked sharply, showing no sign of surprise that Darian knew his tongue.
Darian nodded to Keisha, who answered the warrior with no sign of fear.
Star-Eyed, I’m proud of her! She acts as if she did this all the time!
“We have a cure only for the early stage of the sickness,” she said gravely. “Once the fever has fled the body, little more can be done - but we have the means of that cure with us, and will share it gladly.”
The warrior sighed; a mixture of relief and disappointment. “And are you, then, a Wisewoman?” he asked Keisha, with the aloof interest most Northerners gave to the female Healers - it was beneath their dignity to give females any notice outside of the home, but at the same time, the status of Wisewoman was nearly equivalent to that of Shaman.
“I am,” she acknowledged. “And the holy dyheli have decreed that I am to impart what cures we have to your Shaman and Wisewoman, if they are able to master those cures.”
The warrior nodded, then turned back to Darian, relieved that he no longer had to pay direct attention to Keisha. “I am Chulka, the chief hunter of Gray Wolf,” he told Darian. “You will be very welcome among our people, with such gifts to impart.”
The rest of the journey was made in silence, as the warriors of Gray Wolf spread out into the forest around them, leaving only one walking beside Hywel as his guide. The two young men - for the one that had been left was, if not Hywel’s age, certainly very near to it - spoke with animation to each other. Darian didn’t bother to try and listen, since it seemed to be mostly a mixture of boasts and hunting stories.
Darian knew that they were near the Gray Wolf camp when the warriors began appearing again, most carrying game, to close in around the strangers as a precaution against overreaction by their own folk. By the time they reached the encampment, there were curious children running alongside them, and women peering at them from the shelter of their bark-covered houses.
This was a temporary camp, not the kind of permanent village that Ghost Cat had established in Valdemar. Gray Wolf did very little in the way of husbandry, and as a consequence moved as they depleted the resources around their camp. In winter, they moved to a place where there were many caves that they used for storage and for living space during the cold months.
What they had here were movable shelters, made of flexible willow branches and covered with slabs of bark and pine boughs, intended to keep out rain, give a certain amount of privacy, and not much more than that. There were cook fires in front of each of these homes, with pots half-buried in the ashes, much like at Ghost Cat. The one striking difference between Gray Wolf and Ghost Cat was the presence of enormous dogs everywhere - huge, easy-tempered dogs who paid no attention whatsoever to the newcomers, even Hashi, who was about their size. Darian made a mental note to ask about the dogs later.
As was the case at Ghost Cat, the homes of the most important people in the encampment were nearest the center, so the Chief, the Shaman, and the Wisewoman had plenty of time to assemble to greet the visitors.
Their guide stepped back so that the chief hunter could make his introduction; Hywel introduced everyone, including the dyheli and kyree.
And Kel, of course.
Kel came to the fore of the group and bowed to the three leaders of the tribe. “Have no fearrr of me,” he said, with a serious and sober inflection in his voice. “And do not fearrr forrr the game herrre-aboutsss. I ssshall hunt upon the oppossssite sssside of the rrrriverrrr.”
“That is good to hear,” the Chief replied, just as seriously. “But it is best of all to hear that our allies of Ghost Cat have prospered in their new home. So, friends of our friends, before there is any talk of trade - will you share salt with us?”
A bowl of salt was duly brought forward, and everyone tasted it ceremoniously, even Hashi and the dyheli. That ceremony was all it took to break down the last barriers; the Wisewoman and the Shaman immediately took Keisha aside to interrogate her; Shandi went with them, and Darian, Hywel, Steelmind, and Wintersky found themselves seated at the Men’s Fire, taking turns describing the journey they had taken and the condition of the land they had traveled through.
“Truly - the rumors we have heard are not rumors at all, then, but truth,” the Chief said with unvarnished satisfaction. “Blood Bear is no more - having brought the Wasting Sickness upon us, they have finally sickened of it themselves. Had there been even a single war party, you would not have traveled past Magpie unmolested.”
The warrior with the wolf-mask headpiece spat. “All the better, say I,” he growled.
The others nodded.
“What rumors did you hear?” Darian asked, grimly curious to hear the details of the downfall of his oldest enemies, the people who had nearly destroyed Errold’s Grove and who had succeeded in killing his first teacher.
“After their war band failed to return, they set to breeding sons on the orders of their new Shaman,” said the Chief, his expression grim. “Girl-babies they exposed, that their women waste no time upon them. They sent out parties to capture more women to breed more sons. Then the Wasting Sickness at last struck them, and their new Shaman had not the cure for it.”
“I heard that at the last, they had taken to sacrificing any who were stricken,” offered the chief hunter. “The warriors took to eating the flesh of those warriors who had fallen, to take on their extra strength after their death. And that the women began to run back to their own people.”
“And so - they are no more.” There was no doubt as to the satisfaction in the Chief’s voice, a satisfaction that Darian shared completely.
But he did not permit himself to indulge in it; an old Shin’a’in saying was that it was one thing to take pleasure in the defeat of an enemy, but gloating over it for very long made you no better than he.
“So,” he said, allowing himself a single smile. “Let us talk of more pleasant things. Permit me, Chief, to show you the colors that we have brought. . . .”
And let me never have to think of Blood Bear again.
“Make slow, deep breaths,” Keisha told her sister, who was struggling to get enough air. She wasn’t feeling all that well herself, but it was Shandi and Wintersky who had been hit the worst by what their guide assured them was not a sickness, but due to “only the height of the mountain.” This was mountain sickness, the illness of which Keisha had heard such unsettling tales. Safe to say, no one was making light of it.