"Your niece—how did she look, naked?"
Eruka shouldered him good-naturedly. "My niece is more a woman than the waif in your dream city of stone towers and white streets. Much more. I can scarce reach my arms around her waist."
Perkar grinned, but the dream image came back to him: a black-haired slip of a girl with huge eyes and skin as dusky as a Mang's. Certainly he had never seen her.
"Sst." Eruka motioned silence. "There is a deer!"
Perkar bobbed his head a bit, trying to see what Eruka saw. Indeed, there it was, a buck with spreading antlers.
Eruka motioned to their left and began padding that way, drawing an arrow from the ornate quiver at his side. Perkar nodded and drew his own shaft, fitted it to the sinew cord on his own bow.
Sapling, I
Bending in the hardest wind
Came along a Human man
His name was Raka
Sapling, said he
I know what you might be…
He whispered the little song the bow maker taught him under his breath; surely it would make his arrow fly more true.
The buck snapped up its head and began to run. Gasping, Perkar pulled back on the string, let the arrow fly. The shaft cut air and a few leaves—the buck was no longer to be seen.
A few moments later Eruka rejoined him, scowling. "I thought you had hunted before."
"I have," Perkar answered defensively. "But on horseback, with hounds running the beasts. With a spear, not a bow. And I've hunted mostly boar, not deer."
"Me, too," Eruka said, grinning sheepishly. "I thought it would be no harder on foot."
Perkar snorted. "We were lucky to even see that animal, I think. I doubt we will see another."
"If only I was a great heroic singer, like Iru Antu." Eruka sighed. "The kind of singer who can change the songs of things, make spirits obey his will. I could simply summon us a deer, have it stand still while we slew it."
"The other night you boasted of just such an ability," Perkar reminded him.
Eruka grinned back at that. "Woti talks for me, sometimes. I can do a few songs like that—a very few. But you have to know the ins and outs of the original song before you can change it, and I know none about deer."
"Rabbits? Elk?"
"None of those," Eruka allowed.
Perkar nodded glumly. "We go back empty-handed, then."
"So we do," Eruka agreed.
* * *
They were not the only ones empty-handed; Apad had had no success, either. Ngangata and Atti, however, had a fine buck hung up by its rear legs, skinning it. Atti was already offering blood to the local forest god and to the Lord of Deer, as well.
"Well shot," Eruka told Atti.
Atti shrugged. "Ngangata killed him; I was just there to drag him back."
"Just the same," Perkar said, "I'm glad somebody brought fresh meat back. Another day of bread…"
"How much more of this, anyway?" Apad asked, gesturing at the forest around them. "It's been six days since we left the last damakuta behind."
"And tomorrow it shall be seven," Atti replied. "And the day after, eight. This is no jaunt up to your summer pasture, Apad."
"I know that," Apad said testily. "I just want to know how much longer."
Atti glanced at Ngangata. The half Alwa turned steady eyes on Apad. "Another eight or nine days, depending upon the weather," he said.
"How long before we enter the territory of your kin?" Apad inquired, unable to resist a faint sneer on the word "kin."
"The Alwat don't count me as kin any more than you do," Ngangata retorted. "And we've been in their territory for five days now."
"Five days? Where are they?"
Ngangata shrugged. "If any are around here, they are avoiding us. The only signs I've seen have been many days old."
"Signs? What signs?"
"Footprints. Tools, a few shelters."
Apad frowned. "I've seen none of that."
Ngangata shrugged noncommittally, emphasizing his relative lack of neck. "I suppose you haven't."
"What does that mean?" snapped Apad.
"I just repeated what you said," Ngangata rejoined softly.
Apad scowled. He stalked over to the bloody deer carcass, examined it with his fists resting on his hips. "You probably talk to them while we are asleep, don't you? Did they kill this deer for you?"
Ngangata stopped skinning, looked down at his own feet for a moment. Then he walked over to his bundle of things, picked up his bowstave, and strung it.
"What will you do with that?" Apad asked. "That isn't a man's weapon." Perkar saw that his friend was trying to affect an easy, haughty attitude; but he also saw that his muscles were tight, corded—Apad was tense, worried, ready to reach for his sword or dash aside. He was afraid of the halfling. And why not? A warrior would not shoot another over an insult—challenge him to combat perhaps, but not simply murder him. But who could tell what this kinless creature might do?
"It isn't a warrior's weapon," Ngangata agreed. "I am not a warrior." With that, he snapped a black-feathered shaft onto his string; for him, the motion seemed as easy as stretching at daybreak. The bow bent and sang; the little man's body somehow bent, too, bow and arm and back together. Perkar wasn't sure exactly how it was so graceful—and certainly he could not do it himself.
Down came the arrow, a bird impaled upon it.
"If you are worried about where the deer came from," Ngangata told Apad, "there is your meat."
The Kapaka, sitting at some distance from the rest of the group, chose that moment to come and join them. He clapped Apad on the shoulder.
"Best we have a fire to roast this on, eh, Apad?" he said.
Apad stood a bit longer—to give the impression of reluctance, Perkar thought—and then left to gather wood. After a moment, Perkar followed to join him.
We all fear Ngangata, he mused. We don't like him because we are afraid of him, afraid of what he might do. He remembered a favorite saying of his father's:
There is little real hatred in the world
Only Fear prancing in a man's clothes
The next day they left the rich lowlands behind, began ascending the hills. Ngangata led them through winding valleys, thick with laurel and hickory and, finally, higher up, white birch. The ways became steeper and steeper, but Perkar remained amazed that they made any progress at all, without trails and in such rugged country. The land pleased him, despite its wildness; he imagined how it would look in pasture, how well suited the ridge there on the right would be for a damakuta and its outbuildings. Oh, it would be far and far from his father's lands, but it would be his. It would be far from her, too, and that thought hung about him, a clinging mist of melancholy. He considered, once again, that perhaps it would be better, after all, to marry Bakume's daughter, if only so he could remain close to the goddess.
But no, he knew better than that. He could not have her. The best he could do was to give her a gift, a gift that she would remember in a thousand years, when he himself was the ash of a memory. His heart tightened on the thought of that gift, squeezing out other dreams, damakutat and pasture. Around him, the land lost its promise and luster, became merely trees and bushes.
His reverie was interrupted when the party halted. Knowing that he had missed something, Perkar glanced around him, searching for the cause of their delay. Nightfall was still some time away, and he saw no stream where they could water the horses.
"Who built this?" the Kapaka wondered, and it was then that the forest around Perkar came back into focus, reasserting its presence in his mind, if not his heart.