Zell bathed her face with a bit of rag dipped into the mug of warm soapy water, drew the rag along her arms, and washed her feet, then xe took the bladder of maphik balm xe’d rescued from Oldmal Yancik’s body and began kneading the greasy cream into Wintshikan’s arms and shoulders, then her legs. As xe worked, xe stopped now and then to sign comforting words to xe’s fembond.
Anger at herself and the body that wouldn’t obey her fading as the heat from the balm sank into her muscles, Wintshikan managed a twisty smile. “Worn-out old mapha fit for the stewpot and not much else.”
Zell’s lefthand fingers fluttered in an anya-giggle. +Oh, we need our Mama-mapha for more than eating. Now, see if you can bend thoSe knees. And I’ll go behind and shove.+
On their second day in hohekil, the Remnant of the Shishim Ixis walked north along their Round Path, foraging as they moved. The pickings were small, though it was high summer; it was as if the land itself had grown weary from the war and was turning hohekiL
Adding to that, they’d already passed this way, and there’d not been enough time for the land to renew itself.
It was a quiet day, wind whispering through the treetops though the air down on the trail was still and hot. Somewhere in the distance she heard a boyal’s coughing bark. Songbirds twittered and shrieked at intruders, a celekesh sent an exquisite trail of notes to the sun, a hudahuda’s harsh cry following it like a clown after a bride dancer. Around her, mayomayos and sasemayos rustled through the underbrush. The red dust puffed up round her feet, its hot acrid bite filling her nostrils.
Wintshikan hadn’t walked so much in years, not since she’d gotten stiff and unwieldy and her knees started going on her. She’d ridden the ixis wagon, sitting beside Oldmal Yancik who took care of the team of maphiks that pulled it. She wasn’t a young fern; Her malbond Ahhuhl was only two years older and he was fifty when he took the spear and a little later laid down his life in one of the early battles against the Impix. And there were the ten years she’d gotten through since. It was hard, so hard to move this old body. The first day of this trek she’d had fear and anger driving her. And stubbornness. Today the only thing left was stubbornness.
Luca and Wann scouted the country ahead of them, watching for Pixa as well as Impix phelas. With the ixis bonded in hohekil all fighters were their enemies and dangerous.
As the hard, weary miles slipped behind them, Luca was suddenly strong and happy, shouldering her new responsibilities with a zest and joy that set Wintshikan to flaying herself with the knowledge that she’d been remiss for a long time, coasting on the comfortable pillow of custom, not searching for and healing the sores within the ixis. The war had made everything so difficult that custom was the one place where she could relax, the one support that was always there.
I am not clean in God’s Sight, she thought. I’ve let my ixa-daughters stray from the Path. It’s good that we’re going to Linojin. A Holy Place will turn thoughts back to the Right Way.
She thought about Luca’s continued absence from all Praise, the shutters that dropped before her eyes when any of the others spoke of God or the Prophet. It was as if the femlit were trying to be polite enough not to rail against
God in the hearing of the others, though she no longer walked the Path. I don’t know what to do. If I say anything, it will just drive her farther away. I wish we were in Linojin now, the Speakers of the Prophet will know what do, they have to know. How can I bear it if her soul is lost to the Pixa, never reborn among us? It’ll just drift about until it fades to nothing. And it will be my sloth that did it.
Zell worked balm into Wintshikan’s limbs again when they made camp that night, wrinkled her nose at the smell, and took her blankets upwind.
Lying along for the first time in years, breathing in the vapors rising from her shoulders and arms, Wintshilcan stared up at the moon riding in the arms of a tree killed by lightning sometime last year; she thought about the children of her bond. They were long gone from her, one way or another. Her son Hanar joined a Pixa phela and was killed in a raid two years ago. Her daughter Kulenka married out-ixis into a-clan from the far north, her new Round centered on the Meeting Ground Isilo. It was an ache to see her go, but she was Heka’s daughter and couldn’t stay with the ixis she was born to. Her two anyas, little brown Mali and golden Mishi, they had bonded into equally distant clans, and she and Zell hadn’t seen them for over five years. She didn’t even know if Kulenka, Mali, and Mishi were still alive.
On the other side of the banked fire Xaca made whimpering sounds in her sleep. She was dreaming again. Wintshikan grimaced. To help Xaca purge the night evils, she listened to those dreams as they walked. Evil indeed. Torments. Hidan didn’t dream, but xe stayed close enough to Nyen to touch her again and again, as if xe saw Impix in every shadow, ready to jump out and eat xe.
Hidan and Nyen. A bond, maybe? It would be something good from this terror, she thought. Xaca… her anyabond is bones now I have to think up something she can do to take her mind off her fears… she’s worrying the children… nightmares… food, not enough for anyone, hm… wonder if it would help if I put Xaca in charge of the foraging. She’d have to mind something besides her own fears…
In the middle of worrying over that problem, she finally fell asleep.
On the ninth day of the walk, near sundown when the shadows were long on the trail, Luca burst round a bend and stopped in the middle of the Path. “Husssshhh.” She waved her hands to stop the questions and went on in a low, intense voice. “Don’t want them hearing you. Impix, downslope, some fifteen minutes away.”
Hidan started trembling. Wintshikan gripped xe’s arm, glanced rapidly around.
“Xaca, take Hidan and the children, and find cover. Kanilli, you and-your cousins go with them. Uphill. Impix’re less likely to climb if they feel like looking around. Nyen, get a handful of bracken and brush away our tracks, but don’t spend more than a minute or two at it. Good work, Luca. Get back to Wann, and the two of you go to ground.”
Zell trembled as xe listened to the Impix strolling along the Round below them as much at ease as if they were in their own home streets.
Wintshikan tapped xe’s arm, signed, +Not much woodcraft to this lot, they made more noise than a rogue skazz in must.+
Zell wobbled xe’s hand in silent laughter.
Words drifted up to them, phrases, casual laughter, broken bits that like the inlay of different colored woods on the ixis wagon’s sides told a story. An ugly story. Another chapter of that tale the two phelas before them had begun.
Disregard and death. The currents of war shaping phela to phela, Pixa to Impix until they were mirror images staring at each other.
Open-eyed and silent, Wintshikan wept for her own folly and that of her people.
3. Yseyl’s homecoming
Yseyl flew the disruptor out to the Fence-out beyond the Prophet’s Finger, that stony barren headland where no one bothered to come, not even smugglers.
In the end, Cerex had been more generous than he contracted, giving her a stunner and the skip along with a medkit and several packs of emergency rations when he dropped her off in her home mountains.
“The Lady watch over you, and if you survive this, give me a call.” He handed her a small gray square. “My drop box on Helvetia. Get to a Splitcom and shove the flake in the code slot. Leave a message, and I’ll come fetch you.”
He touched her cheek, his fingertips silky and delicate, then turned away and busied himself with the sensor board, doing things she suspected were essentially unnecessary. They’d gotten to know each other rather well on those long insplit journeys when there was nothing else to do. Different species, oddly alike despite that.
We’re sports born to be pinched off and thrown away, she thought. Nobody loves us. We should go eat worms.