Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 (57 page)

Novices

T
he hunting party was welcomed back to camp without the expected elk, but nonetheless with sleds full of already preserved meats, wood cut and ready for the fires, arrows with violet fletching that the tribe would re-dye in dark greens and browns.

The Knights’ camp had been well supplied, and Adria and the others had buried even more than they brought.

“Safe for when it may be needed,”
Preinon had explained, showing her the natural markers they used to guide them to the burial point, signs only a Runner would think to look for.

They visited the Shema Ihaloa Táya camp first, where Adria’s doubts concerning her actions faded, the faces of the Knights she had slain lost in a sea of Aesidhe children who clung to her legs and thanked her for what she had brought to them.

They cannot know or care how these were brought,
Adria thought, smiling for them despite her guilt.
They only know that they are cold and hungry.

It was not until she was among the Runners that evening that Adria had to reconcile her actions. They gathered around the fire after the evening meal, and Shísha asked Adria to tell the story of the hunt. She might have refused, had it not been Shísha who had asked, and were it not for the sudden respectful silence which fell over the gathering.

She looked to Watelomoksho, who nodded, and even motioned for her to stand.

And so Adria rose, her legs shaking and her voice halting, her understanding of the language still imperfect.

“
My hunt ends in sorrow,”
she began. As she spoke, she did her best to speak openly and honestly, but she soon realized there was much she could not express. Sometimes she did not know the words, and sometimes she knew there were no words.

Time slowed as I fought…
Adria wanted to say.
But… time for the Aesidhe is a strange thing.

“Zho aloloa,” Adria explained.
I ran. But, no… it also means,
I run
and even
I will run.
There is no difference in their past, their present, their future. No wonder it feels as if the ancestors are always among us…

But when she got to the Knights themselves, she found a little better expression.

“Zho kóne okshopi,” she explained. “P’o koziya miléte. Koziya pugalo atemichepi.”
I do fight the man, and he bleeds. He does breathe his spirit from his body.

It didn’t all sound quite right to her, but the Runners followed her story with empathy, nodding their encouragement and understanding, offering a few words here and there. And as she struggled with the ending, when tears came easier than words or motions, many hung their heads to share in her sorrow.

When she spoke of the prayer for the slain she had learned, many murmured its words. Then all that could be heard was the sounds of wind and fire, night birds and insects. The perhaps two dozen gathered Runners merely sat, in silence, for quite some time.

Finally, Watelomoksho cleared his throat and spoke, in his most gentle, yet most assured voice.

“Lozheskisiyama, you have given to us your story and we are grateful. For any good story you should be given a gift. For this story, you will be given the gift that we all are given upon our first lone hunt.”

He rose and approached her, placed his hands upon her shoulders.

“
You are known as Lozheskisiyama, once Likshochuhalene. You were brought to us with a favorable omen, and you have proved yourself worthy of it this day, though it brings you sorrow. It is a sorrow we all share, those who have taken a life and freed the spirit from the body with violence. We understand this together. Among your Brother and Sister Hunters, you will now be called Pukshonisla, Follows the White Wolf.
”

“It is true,” the Runners murmured.

And that was all — a ceremonial of sorts, though with much less ritual and symbolism than the one which had brought her into womanhood. Adria only nodded in recognition, and Chasebatu began a song of mourning, as he might have any other evening when blood had spilled, Aesidhe or Other.

Most of the Runners remained in camp near the Shema Ihaloa Táya through the winter, and Adria’s tent remained among theirs and beside Preinon.

Soon after awakening each day, one or more of the Runners would wave her over to help prepare the morning meal, to ask her to gather firewood, or to show her how to mend tent hide or carve the body of a drum or dye and fletch an arrow.

It seemed a different task, a different companion, nearly every day. Catching eels with Ektito, cooking them with Kseku. Grinding dried roots with Wanawi, healing with Shísha. Knife sparring with Ménezo and Ihala. Climbing trees with Mateko to look for signs of smoke.

“
Were you born among the 
Shema Ihaloa Táya?” She asked, to keep herself from dizzying at the height, much further from the ground than a Hunter’s blind.

Mateko shook his head. “
I did not grow up this far south.
”

“You were born in the North, like me?”
 she smiled.

He was squinting into the distance, rubbing the fingers of one hand together to keep them warm.
“I was with the 
S’amnaya Shnaloto Ãshayuwela 
north of the 
Yakseanitáo Holobeya for much of my life.
”

His tone was flat, but this was not so unusual, so she continued.
“How did you make it this far south?”

“I walked, just as you did.”
He turned away to look in the direction of the mountains he had mentioned, the Steps of Amos for Aeman Heiland.

She could not tell if he was being reticent or facetious, so she tested.
“I was told you had flown, in the shape of a swan. Is it not true?”

“It would be unwise.”
He did not turn his head, but from the sound of his voice she knew that he was smiling.
“It is true that swans are beautiful, but terrible bullies. Do you think I would choose such a shape?”

“Well, their necks are long. You would have made it a little sooner than if you were a duck, or even a goose.”

He shrugged, changed his footing to allow him to warm his other hand. Adria had a bit better perch, and was able to keep her own hands inside her furs.

“Forgive me the question,”
she asked, after a few minutes of watching the empty horizon.
“But was this tribe destroyed?”

“Ãshayuwela?” He shook his head.
“No, they moved before the Others came and were taken into other tribes. The Runners helped in this, and that is when I decided to be one of them.”

Adria nodded.
“How did you become one?”

“
You are full of questions today,
Púksha.”

“‘Púksha?’” she smiled.
“You forgot some of my name.”

He shrugged, grinning.
“Unlike you, my tongue is tired today.
Pukshonisla
is such a long word.”

Adria showed him her tongue in response. Judging from his response, Adria realized it was not considered a childish gesture among the Aesidhe, and they both grew silent with embarrassment.

Adria still favored her time with Mateko, with Preinon, with Shísha, and worked alongside them whenever possible. As she helped Shísha clean up her camp one evening, returning her herbs and containers to their proper places, Adria asked the question she had thought upon first meeting the blind Holy Woman, but never asked allowed. “
Do you dream,
Lichushegi?”

The woman thought for a moment as she went about her arranging, even pointing for Adria to move a clay jar to its proper place. “
I dream much as you do, I think.
”

“
I just wondered if you
...” Adria hesitated. “See
things
.”

“Yes
,” Shísha nodded. “
I was not born with blindness.
”

Adria was surprised she did not know this already. She switched to Aeman in haste to apologize. “I am sorry. I must have assumed it was so.”

“When I was a child, there were sicknesses which the Aeman brought to our People. It became so bad that those of us who were made sick were sent to separate camps to die.”

“That is terrible,” Adria said. She had never heard this story before.

“My family was sent to one of these camps. We were all ill, but did not all died. I survived, but the sickness made me blind.”

They had finished their tasks, and now Shísha seemed to be remembering. Her eyes danced about, as if dreaming while awake.

Tain
á
be
, Adria thought. 
The spirit wandering, the body at rest.

But Shísha spoke no more of the memory just then, and soon Adria excused herself to help prepare the evening meal.

Imani birthed a winter baby. Her husband sent a nephew to the Runners’ camp soon after her labor pains began, and Shísha and Adria returned to aid in the birth. Many of the women of the tribe gathered in the birth lodge to sing and cry out comfort, while the men of the family also sang and made prayers around the main fire of the camp.

Imani was dressed in a long robe, and knelt upon a pile of soft furs at the center of the lodge, her arms wrapped around a large pole to help her stay upright.

It was a long, sleepless night, but the energy of the tribe was inexhaustible. The elder women led them in song after song of joy, and whenever Imani cried out from the pain, some of the women cried with her, and even at the ultimate moment, her face showed an admixture of pain and joy that Adria had never seen before, and this in itself left her in awe.

When the baby girl’s cord was cut, an elder woman of the tribe kept a length of it, which she later presented to Imani, dried and coiled within a carved wood charm in the shape of a turtle.

“
What did she name her?
” Adria asked Shísha as they returned to the Runners’ camp long after dawn the next day.

“Imani
will ask an elder of the tribe to name her in time
,” Shísha said. “
The mother never names her child. She is not the best to know her spirit.
”

Near the end of the snow season, Preinon again called upon his fledgling army, and began to drill them again, in expectation of the first thaw and the advancement of the Knights of Darkfire in the marching season.

Adria saw first hand how the mood of the Runners’ camp changed, as Preinon spent his days in a distant glade with room for a hundred Hunters to maneuver into different shapes. Some among the Runners even went with him once or twice, when they were not busied by other tasks, but none fully joined their ranks for any length.

Adria now felt torn between her loyalty to her uncle and her affinity for the Runners, and she divided her time accordingly for awhile, in an attempt to find some balance.

Unlike the Runners, fighting in rows with blade and spear and bow held some appeal for her. She was already somewhat adept at the styles Preinon taught, having grown up within the citadel and trained a little with Hafgrim, and then alone, and finally when allowed by Brother Rodham. Mostly, she simply enjoyed being treated as one of them.

Preinon showed no deference or slight towards her, and there was a comfort in knowing, as she drew her bow or set her spear, that there was a whole line of comrades doing just the same. When she released, when she braced to meet the charge of still only imagined horsemen, she was not alone.

And this same assurance grew among the others, Adria could see, though not as surely or as swiftly as it did among Aeman Knights, who lived a life of order even beyond the battlefield.

The Aesidhe are accustomed to freedom
, Adria realized. It is more difficult for them to move and act in imitation.

Still, Adria felt that she learned more from the Runners’ way of life than from Preinon’s adopted Aeman tactics. They hunted often, both for themselves and for the Shema Ihaloa Táya, and sparred with one another frequently in moments where no critical tasks need be completed, much like the young boys of the citadel in Windberth had.

Adria often found herself the recipient of challenges, and though she knew her opponent was holding back the greater part of their ability, slowly she felt her own skill with blade and spear and fist and foot grow.

Such contests were always informal, without expressed rules, though for some time, each time she fought, their blades remained sheathed, their spear-tips wrapped in hide. Still, she usually remained bruised and battered for days, both in body and in ego.

As her martial training advanced, she was challenged not only to fight Runners, but also to try and avoid them as if they were an enemy, or to seek them out. All her skills came into play for such challenges, those she had gained hunting and fighting and following Mateko.

Adria found herself scrambling up pine trees, trying to keep the snow from falling from their branches. She looked for signs of passage and for places to stage an ambush. She sometimes remained out long enough to need food, fire, and even shelter. She rested without sleeping, tainábe, letting her mind and body still, but remaining alert to any motion or sound which might betray a Runner.

When she prepared to fight, hours from camp, she knew she might need to return with sore or even broken limbs. Sometimes, she felt a blade at her throat, when her alertness failed her utterly. Often, her hunter found her more at ready, but then her fighting skills were no match, and she was obliged to surrender, but with honor.

Rarely, Adria found her prey first and gained the upper hand. Once, she was able to return unwounded, her battered quarry limping behind her, and felt a first true sense of victory among the Runners.

“
Oh, you must have fallen from a tree,
” Mateko teased the loser, Kseku, as he welcomed them back into camp.

“
It is true,
” Adria answered for him, smiling. “
I was going to catch him, but he just looked so heavy...
”

Several around them laughed at her good humor, and Adria was congratulated more than once.

About this time, she was asked to go on a few short scouting patrols, and she welcomed the opportunity. They usually went in pairs, which made Adria a little uncomfortable, for her confidence was not yet great.

What if she is wounded?
 she wondered as she walked a few paces behind Ihanila. 
I cannot carry her, and might not even know how to return for help.

When she went out with Shísha, Adria was mostly obliged to stay quiet, which was just as well, since watching the Holy Woman’s movements was as fascinating as a conversation to Adria.

No one would claim that Shísha was the swiftest among the Runners. Nonetheless, she made her way with surprising ease, and over time Adria developed some idea of the ways in which Shísha sensed the world around her.

Her sense of balance was perfect, so that she knew how the ground was likely to slope in any direction. Any leaf she touched seemed to describe the entire plant or tree. When the wind blew, the animation of the sounds and the scents it carried painted a picture.

And where other Runners used the sounds of animals to communicate with one another, Shísha used them to communicate with everything. When other senses failed, Shísha made the sounds of squirrels or of woodpeckers, and the faint echoes which returned told her the locations of obstacles around her.

Alone, Adria tried some of these, with only limited success. Still, she could imagine how, when perfected, they might combine to show a world not so different from the one she knew.

“Do you see colors?
” Adria asked, once they had built their camp together that night.

Shísha seemed to think about this for awhile, and finally she resigned with a shrug. “
I am not certain,
” she admitted. “
I know the smell of green — of grass and leaf and frog. I know the feel of the yellow sun and its blue sky, and the gray of rain. I taste the red of berries and the greyblack of smoke. It is hard to say what I see and do not, even with the memory of eyes
.”

Adria nodded thoughtfully. “
Did the Runners rescue you from the camp... the camp of sickness?
”

Shísha shook her head, frowning. “
It was before the Runners,
” she said. “
It was Sisters who rescued me.
”

Adria shook her head, thinking she had misheard the word as Aeman. “
You have sisters? Were they not in the camp?
”

“No, Pukshonisla,” Shísha answered in Aeman. “It was women of the Sisterhood who rescued me.”

Adria’s head was still shaking, even more confused.

“This was when they were newly arrived,” Shísha explained. “Before your father’s wars, before your birth, before the War of Scars.”

“I thought that my father brought Taber and the Sisterhood to Heiland after the war.”

Shísha shook her head. “They were not called the Sisterhood then, and Taber did not yet lead them. They were an older church, but became what they are now during the wars, and after your Matriarch.”

Adria nodded her understanding. She knew the Sisterhood had existed in another form, but she had thought it was only in Kelmantium. She had not realized they had come to Heiland.

“They sent missions all over the world, alongside the other temples of the old gods. They were not overly welcome in Heiland. But they were strong in medicine and in learning. They studied the Aesidhe culture and language, lived among them. They took in the People’s children who had survived diseases and famines that had decimated tribes, and they put them into schools to teach them. They meant it as a kindness.”

“That is where you learned Aeman?” Adria whispered.

Shísha nodded. “They taught me their language and their ways, and would have made me forget my own, but I left.”

Adria had many more questions about this and about Shísha, but by the set of the Holy Mother’s face, she new that this particular discussion had ended. Still, Shísha did not retire, and so Adria continued with other conversation.

“
Do you think Uncle’s plan might work?
”

Shísha simply shrugged.

“
He thinks they will come at us in force soon, and chase us into battle in the open,
” Adria continued.

“He is shaking their bees,
” Shísha said.

Adria laughed, then, for the phrase sounded strange even in Aesidhe. Shísha seemed to realize this as well, after a moment, and smiled. “
You don’t know this expression yet?
”

Adria shook her head again, before remembering the motion might still be too subtle for the woman’s senses. “
I have not heard this.
”

“When Mateko got your honey, did he move slowly, and did he make the bees sleep with smoke?
”

“
He did,
” Adria answered, still smiling.

“
Then he was not looking for a fight,
” Shísha said.

After a moment’s consideration, Adria nodded. “
I understand,
Lichushegi.”

As they drifted to sleep soon afterward, Adria imagined, or maybe dreamed of, Preinon picking up a castle full of Knights. When he shook it between his hands, black and violet striped honeybees swarmed out of all the gates, doors, and windows, covering him in a cloud of violent smoke.

When spring crept its way in from the ocean, through the forests and to the pine-covered foothills, the distant scouts again returned, bringing word of movement in the north, and Watelomoksho and the Runners began preparing their counter-motions.

Adria was resigned to the talk with Preinon she knew would come, deciding her fate for the summer, but even as she packed her things to remove to the Shema Ihaloa Táya camp, little was said.

“Do you think this will be a difficult summer?” Adria asked Preinon as she helped him to dismantle and pack his own tent.

“They are all difficult now, I think,” he said. “A little worse each year, and yet... I feel as if the Knights have been holding back, even still. They have been waiting for the chance to escalate their efforts against us.”

“Do you think that this will be the year the Hunters take the field?”

He sighed, frowning. “I cannot say. There are new forts, a little nearer — but this is always so. The deforestation from the west, the north, and the east has brought their borders closer, and will allow for new settlements in many places. They will find some second and third sons of Heiland nobles and offer them knighthood if they form estates and pledge themselves to the Sisterhood.”

“What of the nearby fort to the northeast?” Adria asked, remembering the camp and the Knights from her first hunt. “Has it increased its strength, or established any more outlying camps?”

“It does not seem so yet,” Preinon shook his head, but added after consideration, “But... it is good to be safe. There is a little time before we leave. Take Mateko and go and check. Given what has happened before, we should not be too careful.”

Eager to be of further service before their parting, not to mention pleased to spend the remaining time with Mateko, Adria nodded, trying not to smile and betray the sobriety of the task.

Mateko still proved more than her equal as they traveled. Where snow shaded into mud, Adria had trouble keeping her footing and finding the solid path, especially since he had insisted they wear their full packs, tents and bedrolls included.

There was more life about, at least, more noise to mask their passage, and Adria welcomed the change. Still, they were obliged to skirt or wade through the groves of pine, whose needles provided more cover than the leafless limbs of oak and ash grove.

Although he still led, Adria was careful to learn their path, should she need it again. She now began to distinguish the landmarks he used to navigate, and appreciated the uniqueness of certain trees, the height and slope of hills, the paths of creeks and rivers.

They did not approach the fort itself, to Adria’s disappointment. She had not yet seen any of the Knights’ frontier fortifications, and her curiosity was considerable. Instead, they skirted the periphery, where any signs of expansion would have become apparent, but they found nothing of concern, only the empty paths and blinds of Aeman hunters — obvious even to Adria’s eyes.