"True enough." Rod clipped off the words. "May I congratulate you on a successful flirtation—I mean, diversion. And I'll cut out that kid's liver and lights if I ever bump into him again."
"Truly, husband, 'tis unworthy of thee." Gwen's eyes were large with reproach. "Be mindful that the lad spoke to a Gramarye witch, and, moreover, one who can cast thoughts and feelings. Truly, the lad had no chance."
"In more ways than one," Rod sighed, "and you don't need to mention your powers to explain it. I suppose I don't have any right to be angry with him, do I?"
"Nay, certes," Gwen breathed, swaying close to him. "But we tarry."
"How the hell does she know where to go?" Rod muttered to Yorick. "Okay, so the planet has a moon or two, so we've had light almost all the way, and when the big moon set, she just had us wait twenty minutes till the other one rose. But even with it, I can scarcely see twenty feet in front of me!"
"Well, I can see fine." Yorick grinned. "You Sapiens have just gone soft, that's all. Too many millennia of lighted streets."
"What's she?" Rod grumbled. "A Neanderthalette?"
Yorick shook his head. "Not a good enough build. Kinda scrawny, y' know? And the face is kinda flat and angular. But I think she's a nice kid underneath it all."
Actually, Rod had been thinking that Chornoi was a classical beauty—or would have been, if her face hadn't been constantly pinched with hostility. And her body was anything but "scrawny." However, he could understand why she wouldn't measure up to the Neanderthal ideal of femininity. The comment on her interior self, though, he doubted. "You must be seeing deeper than I am."
Yorick shrugged. "You Saps must be damn near blind."
Rod wondered if he meant that to be interpreted both ways.
"Come on." Yorick stepped up the pace. "We've got some serious catching up to do."
Chornoi strode ahead of them, as briskly as though she hadn't realized she was climbing a thirty-degree slope. Finally she came to a stop, and the men huffed and puffed up beside her, with Gwen silent at Rod's shoulder.
"Here it is." Chornoi waved a hand.
They stood on top of a ridge, oriented roughly east-west. The moonlight showed a plain stretching out for miles about them, unending grassland broken only by the occasional copse and a line of stunted trees that straggled across the prairie, marking a watercourse.
Rod took a deep breath. "Quite a view."
Chornoi nodded. "It's spectacular by sunlight, but I don't think we can wait for that." She pointed. "There's the actual Sun-Greeting Place."
A stone step rose from the ground a few feet in front of them. Thirty feet away, an upright slab bulked large against the night. Chornoi slipped a slender flashlight out of her jacket and aimed it at the boulder. Its beam showed that the top of the standing stone had been flattened from front to back and leveled, then notched, eight deep gouges cut out of the rock. The first, fourth, and eighth were very deep.
"The shamen come up here every morning to greet the sun," Chornoi explained. "They take it in rotation. It's a religious ritual, of course, but it has a very practical purpose, too—every morning, the Shaman of the Day sees how close the sun is coming to one of the big notches. The middle one is the equinox—there're sixteen months here; the two moons revolve eight times a year, and they rule the months in alternation. Figure that the first groove is the winter solstice. The sun starts there, moves down to the middle groove for the vernal equinox, goes on to the eighth groove for the summer solstice, then moves back to the middle groove for the autumnal equinox, and on back to the first one."
"New Year's," Yorick said.
Chornoi nodded. "And it's up to the shaman of the Purple tribe to keep an eye on the sun. When it rises behind the fourth notch, he goes home and tells everybody to start planting. When he sees sunrise through the eighth notch, he tells everybody to celebrate."
"A midsummer night's dream?"
"You could call it that," Chornoi said sourly. "Then the sun starts to swing back, and when it rises behind the fourth notch again, the shaman tells the tribe to get ready for harvest."
"Then back to Midwinter, and the whole thing starts all over again." Yorick knelt by the stone step. "Want to shine that thing down here, Ms.?"
"Why not? But call me 'Chornoi,' all right? We're working together now."
The light gleamed on the rough stone at the base of the slab. Yorick ran a finger across the surface, and stopped at a dark blot.
They all stared, silent for a moment.
Then Yorick's finger went on to trace another drop, and another.
"Blood," Rod said softly.
"I'm not quite equipped to run a chemical analysis," Yorick mused, "but I'd say that was a pretty good bet. Want to scan the area, Ms. Chornoi?"
"Well, that's an improvement, I guess," Chornoi grunted. She moved the circle of light slowly over the area around the stone step. The grass stood about three inches high.
"Nice to find out they keep it mowed," Yorick said, "but that's about all I see."
Rod nodded. "Not the slightest sign of a struggle. Whoever our hatchet man was, he was remarkably neat."
"Damn near inhuman," Yorick agreed.
"Not quite." Chornoi's lips were thin. "Some of my colleagues were extremely efficient. I wasn't too bad, myself."
Yorick looked up. "But the blood on the stone does kind of indicate that the Wolman met the cleaver when he stepped up here to greet the sun."
Rod frowned. "Yeah. So what… Oh!"
"Right." Yorick nodded. "Who steps up to the Sun-Greeting Place to greet the sun?"
"A shaman," Chornoi breathed.
"But none of the shamen are missing," Rod pointed out.
"So what?" Yorick shrugged. "None of the Wolmen are missing. So why shouldn't it be a shaman who's not missing, instead of just an ordinary warrior?"
"More to the point," Chornoi said softly, "why shouldn't it be Hwun? After all, he's the shaman of the Purple tribe, and they're the ones closest to this place."
"No reason at all, except that Hwun is very much alive. Far too much so, for my liking." Rod frowned. "What is this business about Hwun being the chief chief, when he's also the Purple shaman? I've heard of overlapping directorates, but isn't this a little too obvious?"
"No problem there." Chornoi shook her head. "Wolman government is basic democracy, Major—very basic. They just sit around in a circle and discuss who's going to be leader. And when most of them agree—well, that's who the leader is. Every clan does it that way—and, once they've decided on a leader, they tend to stay with him. So when the clans gather for a tribal meeting, it's the clan headmen who sit down to elect the tribal leader."
Yorick nodded. "Which means that one of the tribal chiefs is going to be the national chief."
Chornoi frowned at him. "You had experience with this kind of thing?"
"We were Number One. So they held a tribal meeting like that to fight the soldiers better?"
"You have been around. But it was a national meeting— all the tribes banded together for an all-out war."
"Makes sense." Yorick agreed. "After all, it was probably the first time in their history that they'd had somebody to fight besides each other."
Gwen shivered. "Must men forever be fighting, then?"
"Sure. How else would we get you ladies to notice us, instead of the other guys?" Yorick turned back to Chornoi. "This wouldn't happen to have been the first time they'd ever banded together for anything, would it?"
Chornoi stared at him, then nodded slowly. "Yeah. Up until the convicts came, they'd always been fighting each other, just the way you said."
Yorick nodded. "Nice of you to help out that way."