Sonjuh dawtra Pehte thrust her way into the beer shop through the swinging board doors, halting for a second to let her eyes adjust to the bright earth-oil lamps and push back her broad-brimmed hat. The dim street outside was lit only by a few pine-knots here and there.
There were a few shocked gasps; a respectable girl didn’t walk into a man’s den like this unaccompanied. Some of the gasps were for her dress-she’d added buckskin leggings and boots, which made her maiden’s shift look more like a man’s hunting shirt, and so did the leather belt cinched about her waist, carrying a long bowie and short double-edged toothpicker dagger and tomahawk. A horseshoe-shaped blanket roll rode from left shoulder to right hip, in the manner of a hunter or traveler.
One man sitting on the wall-bench, not an Alligator clansman and the worse for corn-liquor, misinterpreted and made a grab for her backside. That brought the big dog walking beside her into action; her sharp command saved the oaf’s hand, but Slasher still caught the forearm in his jaws hard enough to bring a yelp of pain. The stranger also started to reach for the short sword on his belt, until the jaws clamped tighter, tight enough to make him yell.
“You wouldn’t have been trying to grab my ass uninvited, would you, stranger?” Sonjuh said sweetly. “’Cause if you were, after Slasher here takes your hand off, these clansmen of mine will just naturally have to take you to the Jefe for a whuppin’. ’Less they stomp you to death their own selves.”
The man stopped the movement of right hand to hilt, looked around-a fair number of men were glaring at him now, distracted from their disapproval of Sonjuh-and decided to shake his head. A sensible man was very polite out of his own clan’s territory. If he wasn’t…well, that was how feuds started.
“No offense, missie,” he wheezed.
“Loose him,” Sonjuh commanded, and the dog did-reluctantly.
The man picked up his gear and made for the door; several of the others sitting on stools and rough half-log benches called witticisms or haw-hawed as he went; Sonjuh ignored the whole business and walked on.
The laughter or the raw whiskey he’d downed prompted the man to stick his head back around the timber door-frame and yell, “Suck my dick, you whore!”
Sonjuh felt something wash from face down to thighs, a feeling like hot rum toddy on an empty stomach, but nastier. She pivoted, drew, and her right hand moved in a chopping blur.
The tomahawk pinwheeled across the room to sink into the rough timber beside the door, a whirr of cloven air that ended in a solid chunk of steel in oak. The out-clan stranger gaped at his hand, still resting on the timber where the edge of the throwing-ax had taken a coin-size divot off the end of the middle finger, about halfway down through the fingernail. Then he leapt, howling and dancing from foot to foot and gripping the injured hand in the other as the mutilated digit spattered blood; after a moment he ran off down the street, still howling and shouting bitch! at the top of his lungs.
Most of the men in the beer shop laughed at that, some so loud they fell to the rush-strewn clay floor and lay kicking their legs in the air. She went and pulled the tomahawk out of the wood, wiped it on her sleeve, and reslung it; Slasher sniffed at something on the floor, then snapped it up. The roaring chorus of guffaws and he-haws was loud enough to bring curious bypassers to the door and windows, and send more hoots of mirth down the street as the tale spread; several men slapped her on the back, or offered drinks-offers she declined curtly. The older men were quiet, she noticed, and still frowning at her.
Instead she pushed through the long smoky room toward the back, where the man she sought was sitting. The air was thick with tobacco smoke-and the smell of the quids some men chewed and spat, plus sweat and cooking and sour spilled beer and piss from the alley out back. Still, she thought he’d probably seen all there was to see; those smoldering blue eyes didn’t look as if they missed much.
“Heya,” she said, and to her dog, “Down, Slasher.”
“Heya, missie,” he replied formally, as the big wolfish-looking beast went belly-to-earth.
“You Hunter Robre? Robre sunna Jowan?” The form of a question was there, but there was certainty in her voice.
“Him ’n’ no other,” the young man said. “You’d be Sonjuh dawtra Pehte, naw?”
His brows went up a little as she sat uninvited, pulling over a stool that was made from a section of split log, flat side sanded and the other set with four sticks. The rushes on the hard-packed clay floor rustled and crackled as she plunked it down and straddled it.
“Yi-ah.” She nodded, a little mollified that he hadn’t used her father’s gift-names. Nobody wanted to be called the daughter of the Stinker or the Friendless. “There’s no feud between the Alligators ’n’ the Bear Creek people, or quarrel between our kin.”
“No feud, no quarrel,” he acknowledged; both clans were of the Cross Plains folk, which meant they didn’t have to assure each other that there was no tribal war going on either. It was more than a little unorthodox for a woman to go through the ritual, anyway.
“How’d you know who I was?” she added, curious, as she tore off some of the wheat-and-injun bread he had before him, dipped it in the salt and ate it; that satisfied courtesy, in a minimal sort of way.
He was supposed to be a sharp man, but as far as she knew they’d never met-her family had lived solitary. Robre was famous, after a fashion: Sonjuh dawtra Pehte had begun acquiring a little notoriety only in the last few weeks.
“Figured. Old Pehte had red hair like yours before he went bald, ’n’ ’sides that, you favor him in your looks.” He ate a piece of the bread himself, which meant he had at least to listen to her; then he went on: “He was a dab hand with a tomahawk, too; saw him win the pig ’n’ turkey here at Dannulsford once when my father brought me, must be ten years ago now.”
Sonjuh tossed her head, sending the long horse-tail of her hair swishing. Being unmarried-likely she would be anyway at nineteen, even were her father someone else-she wore her hair down and tied back with a snakeskin band, in a torrent the color of mahogany reaching to between her shoulder blades; a thick band of freckles ran across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Any man of the Seven Tribes would have accounted her comely, snub-nosed face and red lips and the long smooth curves of her figure as well, until he saw the wildness in those haunted leaf-green eyes.
“Nice throw, too, missie,” Robre continued. “Pehte must’ve taught you well.”
“I missed, ” she snapped. “Wanted to split his ugly face!”
Robre laughed, a quieter sound than most men’s mirth, then stopped when he realized she wasn’t even smiling.
“Welcome to a share,” he said a little uneasily, indicating the pitcher of corn beer and clay jug of whiskey.
“Didn’t come to drink,” she said, after taking a token sip from the beer jug; refusing a man’s liquor was a serious insult. “I came to talk business.”
The young man’s black brows went up farther. “Shouldn’t your…oh.”
Sonjuh nodded. “My father’s dead.” Oh, merciful God, thank You he died first of all. “So’s my mother. So’s my three sisters. I saw-”
Of itself, her hand shot out and grabbed Robre’s glass. She tossed back the raw spirits and waited with her eyes clenched shut until the sudden heat in her stomach and a wrenching effort of will stopped the shaking of her hands and pushed away the pictures behind her eyelids. When she looked back up, Robre was frowning at her left forearm, where a bandage had slipped from a healing wound. A patch of skin had been removed-neatly, the way a skinning knife would do it in skilled hands.
She tugged the sleeve down over the rawness and went on: “Didn’t come for sympathy, either. Like I said, I’ve got business to talk with you, Robre Hunter.”
He took a pull at his mug of beer, wiped the back of one big calloused hand across his mouth, and nodded. “I’m listening, missie.”
That was more than she’d expected, if less than she’d hoped. “I didn’t have brothers. My pa didn’t hold with hiring help, either, so from my woman-time I’ve been doing a son’s work for him. Hunting, too.” She took a deep breath. “I know my pa wasn’t well liked-”
Across the table, a polite lack of expression said as plainly as words: He was about as disliked as a man can be and not be outlawed. Or just plain have his gizzard cut out.
More than one had tried, too, but Stinking Pehte had been a good man of his hands, and it had always gone the other way. All fair fights and within the letter of the law, but killing within the clan didn’t make you any better liked either. One or two was to be expected, in a hot-blooded man, but public opinion thought half a dozen excessive; the clan needed those hands and blades.
“-but he was a good farmer, ’n’ no one ever called him lazy. We got our crop in before we were hit. Not much, but we sold most here in Dannulsford. Deer hides ’n’ muskrat, too, ’n’ ginseng, and potash from the fields we were clearing, ’n’ soap ’n’ homespun me ’n’ my ma ’n’ sisters made. The posse got back most of our cabin goods ’n’ tools, ’n’ our stock; then there’s the land, that’s worth something.”
Not as a home-place; too ill-omened for that, and too exposed, as her family’s fate proved. But someone would be glad to have the grazing, plus there was good oak-wood for swine fodder, and the Jefe would see that they paid her a fair share. That would probably amount to enough ham, bacon, and cow to put her meat on the table half the year.
“Glad to hear you’re not left poor,” Robre said.
“What it means is I can pay you,” she said, plunging in. This time his eyes widened, as well.
“Pay me for what, missie Sonjuh?” he said.
She reached into the pouch that hung at her hip, supported by a thong over the shoulder; it was the sort a hunter wore, to carry tallow and spare bowstrings and a twist of salt, pipe or chaw of tobacco and a whetstone and suchlike oddments. What she pulled out of it was a scalp. The hair was loose black curls, coarser and more wiry than you were likely to find on a man of the Seven Tribes.
Robre whistled silently. Taking scalps was an old-timey, backwoods habit; Kumanch and Cherokee still did it, but few of their own folk except some of the very wildest. These days you were supposed to just kill evildoers or enemies, putting their heads up on a pole if they deserved it. And for a woman…
“I expect that’s not some coast-man out of luck,” he said.
“Swamp-devil,” she said flatly. “Not no woman nor child, neither. That was a full-grown fighting man. Slasher ’n’ I took him, bushwhacked him.”
“Well…good,” Robre said, with palpable uneasiness, blinking at the tattered bit of scalp-leather and hair. “One less swamp-devil is always good.”
“That’s what I want to hire you for,” Sonjuh went on in a rush. “I can’t…I swore ’fore God on my father’s blood I’d get ten for my ma, ’n’ ten for each of my sisters. I can’t do it alone.”
“Jeroo!” Robre exclaimed, and poured himself another whiskey. “Missie, that’s unlucky, making that sort of promise ’fore the Lord o’ Sky! Forty scalps!”
“Or that I’d die trying,” she said grimly. “I need a good man to help. All the goods I’ve got is yours, if you’ll help me. Jeroo! Everyone says you’re the best.”
“Missie…” There was an irritating gentleness in his tone. “A feud, that’s a matter for a dead man’s clansmen to take up. It wouldn’t be right or fitting for me to interfere.”
Her hand slammed the table, enough to make jug and bottle and cup rattle, despite the thick weight of wood. “The gutless hijos won’t call for a war party! They say the ten heads they took were enough for honor! Well, they aren’t! I can hear my folks’ spirits callin’ in the dark, every night, callin’ for blood-wind to blow them to the After Place.”
Some of those nearby exclaimed in horror at those words; many made signs, and two abruptly got up and left. You didn’t talk openly of ghosts and night-haunts, not where the newly dead were concerned. Naming things called them. A ripple of whispers spread throughout the beer shop, and bearded faces turned their way.
“It’s all because nobody liked my pa, ’n’ because they’re all cowards!” Her voice had risen to a shout, falling into the sudden silence.
“That’s a matter for your Jefe, missie,” Robre said. The soothing, humor-the-mad-girl tone made the blood pound in her ears. “’N’ the gathering of your clan’s menfolk.”
“I came to offer you two Mehk silver coins each, if you’ll come with me ’n’ help me,” she said, in a tone as businesslike as she could manage. “’N’ you can show these gutless, clanless bastards that a girl ’n’ an out-clan man can do what they can’t.”
“Sorry,” he said; the calm finality shocked her more than anger would have. “Not interested.”
“Then damn you to the freezing floor of hell!” she screamed, snatching up his mug and dashing the thick beer into his face. “Looks like I’m the only one in this room with any balls!”
That made him angry; he was up with a roar, cocking a fist-then freezing, caught between the insult and the impossibility of striking a freewoman of the Seven Tribes, and a maiden of another clan at that.
Shaking, Sonjuh turned on her heel, glad that the lanterns probably weren’t bright enough to show the tears that filled her eyes. She stalked out through the shocked hush, head down and fists clenched, not conscious of the two weird foreigners who blocked the door until she was upon them. One twisted aside with a cat’s gracefulness; the other stood and she bounced off him as she would off an old hickory post; then he stepped aside at the other’s word.
Sonjuh plunged past them into the night and ran like a deer, weeping silently, with Slasher whining as he loped at her heel.
“I wonder what that was in aid of?” Eric King murmured to himself, raising a polite finger to his brow as the room stared at him and Ranjit Singh, then walking on as the crowded, primitive little tavern went back to its usual raucous buzz-although he suspected that whatever had just happened was the main subject of conversation.
Even in the barbarian hinterlands, he didn’t think a girl that pretty dumped a pint of beer over a man’s head and stalked out as if she were going to walk right over anyone in her way, not just every night. In a way, the sensation she’d caused was welcome; the two Imperial soldiers probably attracted less curiosity than they normally would. Eric waited courteously while the man he’d come to see mopped his face vigorously with a towel brought by a serving-girl, looking around as he did. This wasn’t much worse than the dives he’d pulled soldiers overstaying their leave out of in many a garrison town; the log walls were hung with brightly colored wool rugs, and the kerosene lanterns were surprisingly sophisticated-obviously native-made, but as good as any Imperial factories turned out. He’d have expected tallow dips, or torches.
“Mr. Robre sunna Jowan?” he asked, when the man was presentable again. “I’m Lt. Eric King. This is my daffadar…Jefe’s-man…Ranjit Singh.”
“Robre Hunter, that’s me,” the native replied, rising and offering his hand. “Heya, King, Ranjeet.”
The hand that met his was big, and calloused as heavily as his own. They were within an inch or so of each other in height and of an age, but Eric judged the other man had about twenty or thirty pounds on him, none of it blubber. A slight smile creased a face that was handsome in a massive way, and the two young men silently squeezed until muscle stood out on their corded forearms. The native’s blue eyes went a little wider as he felt the power in the Imperial’s sword-hand, and they released each other with a wary nod of mutual respect, not to mention mutual shakings and flexings of their right hands. Eric read other subtle signs-the white lines of scars on hands and dark-tanned face, the way the local moved and held himself-and decided that native or not, this was a man you’d be careful of. And no fool, either; he was probably coming to the same conclusion.
“Dannul! Food for my guests from the Empire!” Robre bellowed. “And beer, and whiskey!”
King understood him well enough. The local tongue was derived from that of the Old Empire, and the Imperial cavalry officer had experience with the classical written tongue of the Pre-Fall period, with the speech of the Cape and Australian Viceroyalties, and some of the archaic dialects still spoken in remote parts of England, as well. With that, and close attention in weeks spent along the coast near Galveston, he could follow Robre’s speech easily and make himself understood with a little patience. It was mostly a matter of remembering a few sound-changes and applying them consistently.
“No beef,” he said. “Cow-meat,” he added, when Robre looked doubtful. The vocabulary had changed a good deal, too. “It’s…forbidden by our religion. Our Gods.” He pointed skyward.
To oversimplify, he thought, as Robre nodded understanding.
“ Yi-ah, like our totems,” the Bear Creek clansman said. “I don’t eat bear-meat, myself.”
King smiled. To vastly oversimplify, he thought.
His grandfather had eaten beef now and then; so his father had, at formal banquets among the sahib-log, though rarely at home. His own generation mostly didn’t touch it at all, although as Christians it wasn’t against their religion in theory. More a matter of not offending. The idea made him a bit queasy, in fact. Well, you don’t expect a taboo to make rational sense. That doesn’t make it any less real.
Luckily, Ranjit Singh was a Sikh, and so-apart from cow’s-flesh-had fewer problems with the ritual purity of his food than most Hindus. Nanak Guru, the founder of that faith, had made a point of having his followers eat from a common kitchen with converts of all castes, and even outcaste ex-Muslims; they were the Protestants of the Hindu world, more or less. It simplified traveling no end.
A stout middle-aged serving woman brought wooden platters of steaming-hot corn bread, butter, grilled pork-ribs slathered with some hot sauce, and bowls of boiled greens; the food was strange but good, in a hearty peasant-countryside sort of way. Local courtesy, according to Banerjii, meant that you had to eat with someone before getting down to serious business. And drink; the maize-beer was vile, but better than what the Seven Tribes called whiskey. The stuff they imported from the south, made from a cactus, was worse. The local wine was unspeakable even by those low standards.
“So,” Robre said. “You two are from the Empire?”
“Yes,” King said. Technically, so are you, of course, my friend. “We’re here to hunt. Mr. Banerjii tells me that you’re the man to see about such matters.”
“Awful long way to come just to hunt,” Robre said. “How’d you get the meat ’n’ hides home?”
“Ah-” Eric frowned. Obviously, the concept of hunting for trophies wasn’t part of the local scene. “We’re on our way home from England to India, which is the…biggest part of the Empire. That’s where I and my man here live…”
Robre frowned. “ England is part of your Empire? In the old songs, we spent a powerful amount of time fighting England.” He threw back his head and half chanted
“Fired our guns ’n’ the English stopped a-comin’ Fired again, ’n’ then they ran away-”
“Ah…well, that was before the Fall, you see.”
Local notions of geography were minimal; evidently these people had lost all literacy and most sense of the past during the Fall. Not surprising, since this area was on the southern fringe of the zone where total crop failure for three freezing-cold summers in a row had killed nearly everyone but a few cannibals who survived by eating their neighbors. These Seven Tribes might well be descended from no more than a handful of families. Small numbers meant fewer memories and skills passed down, and the older people who might remember most were most likely to die.
The lands farther south, what the old maps called Mexico, had preserved some remnants of civilization, with gunpowder and writing and a few small cities atop a peasant mass. India and the Cape and Australia had done much better, thanks be to Christ and Krishna and St. Disraeli…
There was no sense in stretching poor Robre’s idea of the world too far-and for that matter, King’s own schooling hadn’t covered the Pre-Fall history of the Americas in much detail. The Mughals and the East India Company had taken up a good deal more space, and so had the Romans. He did know that there had been a temporarily successful rebellion against the Old Empire here in North America by British colonists just about a century before the Fall, and that the New Empire had only started to make good its claim to the continent in the last couple of generations.
There’s so much else to do, he thought wistfully.
The growing tension with Dai-Nippon, for example, or the chronic menace of the Czar in Samarkand, hanging over the North West Frontier, and the Caliphate of Damascus in the west. It was a shame that the Powers spent so much time hampering each other, when the world was so wide and vacant, but such seemed to be the nature of man, chained to the Wheel and prey to maya, illusion.
“I’m sorry if I, ah, interrupted,” King went on, nodding back toward the door where the redhead had made her spectacular exit.
“Naw,” Robre said. “That was Sonjuh dawtra Pehte. Pretty girl, hey?”
“Indeed. Hope I wasn’t queering your pitch,” King said cautiously. He’d gotten the impression that the locals were more free-and-easy about such matters than most higher-caste Indians or other Imperials, but making assumptions about women was always the easiest way to get yourself into killing trouble in a strange land.
It required a little back-and-forth before his meaning was plain. Robre shook his head. “Coyote’s dong, I’d sooner sport with a she-cougar. She’s pretty, but mad as a mustang on loco-weed, or ghost-ridden, or both. Well, no wonder, seein’ as she saw all her kin killed ’n’ eaten by the swamp-devils, ’n’ they held her captive for two, three days. ’S too bad. Not just pretty; she’s got guts, too. Probably get herself killed some hard, bad way, mebbe some others with her.”
King listened to the story with a frown: keeping the peace and putting down feud and raid was his hereditary caste duty, and such lawlessness irked him even in a place only theoretically under the Imperial Pax.
“Well, no wonder she’s not looking for a man, then,” he said.
That took another bout of struggling with the language, and then Robre shook his head. “Oh, swamp-devils don’t force women. Kill ’em and eat ’em, yes; that, no.”
“That’s…extremely odd,” King said, conscious of his eyebrows rising. Unbelievably odd, he thought. Perhaps it’s some sort of make-believe to protect the reputations of rescued women?
Robre frowned, as if searching for some memory. “Near as I can recall, they questioned a swamp-devil ’bout it once, a whiles back. He wasn’t quite dead when they caught him, ’n’ he could talk-not all of ’em can. Anyways, story is he said our women didn’t smell right.” He shrugged. “Now, ’bout this hunt-outfit you want-”
Apparently there was a long-established etiquette for setting up a caravan, for trade or hunt. After an hour or two, they could talk well enough to exchange hunting stories. Robre enjoyed the one about the elephant in musth hugely, while obviously not believing a word of it-drawing the long bow was another local custom, in fact an art form, from what the merchant had said… King found the story of the yellow-striped black tigers even more fascinating, and the circumstantial detail very convincing indeed. Killing those beasts, alone and on foot and with only bow and spear…that took a man. He’d already bought both pelts, for what he suspected was several times the sum Banerjii had paid-not that he’d queer the little Bengali’s pitch by telling the natives, Imperials should stick together-but that wasn’t the same thing at all as a trophy brought down on his own.
“My father will be dumbstruck, for once,” he said, sobered by the thought of the fierce scarred face of the lord of Rexin. “He’s always on about a lion he got in the Cape with a black mane big as a hayrick. It gets a little bigger every year, in fact.”
Robre laughed and slapped the table. “My pa’s dead, but I know that feeling from the old days, when I was young.”
King kept his face straight; if the native wasn’t within six months of his own twenty-two, he’d recite the Mahabaratha backwards. “It’s a bargain, then,” he said.
“A bargain,” Robre agreed.
They shook hands again, not making it a trial of strength this time. “You can come collect the rifle tonight, if you want,” King said.
He’d seen the naked desire in the blue eyes when they spoke of that payment; modern weapons were deliberately kept expensive by Imperial policy and taxation. Trade in guns over the frontier wasn’t banned altogether, though, except in a few particular trouble spots: control over supplies of ammunition and spare parts was a powerful diplomatic tool, once buyers had become dependent on them. Robre surprised him by shaking his head.
“Put it with Banerjii,” he said. “I wouldn’t be good enough with one to be much use on this trip. Not enough time to practice-though I do expect some training with your weapons as part of the deal, you understand.”
“ Koi bat naheen… I mean, not a problem,” King said, and yawned. The local whiskey tasted vile, but it did its business. “And now, adieu…I mean, see you tomorrow.”
Sonjuh woke slowly, feeling stiff and sandy-eyed and with a dull throb in her head. Crying yourself to sleep did that, the more if you had been drinking; at least she hadn’t woken herself up screaming again, though a heaviness behind her eyes told her that the dreams had been bad. She swallowed past a dry throat and scolded herself for the whiskey.
Jeroo, how much did I drink? It’s too damn easy to crawl into a jug to forget, she told herself, rubbing her eyes fiercely. You don’t want to forget.
She ignored the stiffness, as she ignored the small voice that said oh, yes, you do, and sat up, scratching and frowning as she cracked a flea. Slasher stirred and whined beside her as she rose from the straw of the loft. The beasts below were starting to stamp and blow in their stalls, and they’d be up in the farmhouse soon-her uncle wasn’t what she considered a hard worker, and it wasn’t the busy season, but a farmer got up with the sun, like it or not. She slipped down the ladder and watched the dog follow more cautiously-even now, the sight of Slasher on a ladder made her smile-and tossed hay into the feed troughs, took up pitchfork and wheelbarrow to muck out, rubbed them down. Two of the horses and a mule were hers, and the others all knew her, blowing affection at her and then feeding heartily.
Then she took down the bowie and tomahawk and worked the rest of the sand out of her joints by shadow-fighting, lunge and guard, stab and chop, her bare feet dancing across the packed dirt of the threshing floor outside the barn.
Move light and quick, she told herself, in an inner voice that sounded like her father’s. Light and quick. Anyone you fight’ll have more heft, so you’d best move right quick.
Pa had taught her; being sonless and indulgent with his eldest daughter, and living far enough offside that neighbors wouldn’t be scandalized. Besides, a lone steading needed more than one fighter, and it was old law that a woman should fight when her home was attacked.
After a while sweat was running freely down her body, the sun was over the horizon, and her head felt clear. She worked the counterbalanced sweep to bring more water out of the well, drank as much as she could, then dashed more buckets over herself; at least her relative didn’t grudge water, having three good wells and a creek. She was rubbing herself down with a coarse piece of cloth when she became aware of a disapproving glare from the cabin; her uncle Aydwah’s wife, throwing cracked corn to the hens and taking in more wood for the hearth fire.
And she’s no brighter a candle than those broody birds, Sonjuh thought. Always there to have their heads chopped off just ’cause she throws them some corn of a morning. Still, no harm in being polite.
She tied on a fresh breechclout, slipped on her leggings and laced them to her belt, cross-gartered the moccasin-boots up her calves, and then pulled on a clean shift of scratchy undyed cotton. By then the house was roused, adults and older children scratching and spitting as they spread out for their dawn chores, naked towhaired toddlers tumbling about, dogs keeping a wise distance from Slasher.
Aydwah had a big place, two shake-roofed log cabins linked by a covered dogtrot, several barns besides the one she slept in, loomhouse where the women of the family spun and wove, slatted corncrib of poles, toolsheds, smokehouse and more. Several poorer kin and hired workers lived with him, too, sleeping in attics and lofts, and a single Kumanch slave taken prisoner from a band raiding the westernmost of the Seven Tribes, beaten into meekness and sold east. It was a prosperous yeoman’s spread, no wealthy Jefe’s farm, but two steps up from her father’s place.
Cooking smells came from the house, and Aydwah’s wife came out to beat a long ladle against an iron triangle hanging by the cabin door. Sonjuh’s belly rumbled as she sat with the others at the long trestle-table set out in the dogtrot, where everyone ate in good weather. Breakfast was samp-mush, with sorghum syrup and warm-fresh milk poured on, and she bent over her bowl with the wooden spoon busy.
Her uncle had the family hair, gray streaking bright fox red in his case, but he was heavier set than her father, slower of mind and words. His voice was a deep rumble as he spoke from the head of the table: “We’ve the last of the flax to plant today, ’n’ the goobers to lift. Sonjuh, you’ll-”
“I’ve got business of my own today, Uncle,” she said, trying for respectful firmness and suspecting it came out as sullen. “I cleaned out the workstock barn.”
Aydwah flushed; it showed easily, despite forty years’ weathering of his fair freckled skin. “You’ll do as you’re told, girl, ’n’ no back talk! I took you in-”
“’N’ you’re well paid for it,” Sonjuh said. “This milk’s from my folk’s milch cow, isn’t it? All that stock’s mine, not yours-that’s the law! You’re getting more than I’d pay in Dannulsford for tavern-keep.”
Her uncle’s flush went deeper; that was the truth, and he knew it and that the Jefe would uphold her.
Her aunt-by-marriage was shriller: “’N’ the stock ’n’ gear might get you a husband, if you didn’t gallivant around like some shameless hussy!”
Sonjuh restrained herself, not throwing the contents of her bowl in the older woman’s face. Instead she set it down on the puncheon floor, where Slasher gave the huffing grunt that meant don’t mind if I do in dog and went to it with lapping tongue and slurping sounds. He was used to yelling.
“I made an oath ’fore God, ’n’ I can’t make it good sitting in the loomhouse, or married off to some crofter you bribe to take spoiled goods with my kin’s stock,” she shouted back. “What’s worse luck ’n oath-breaking to God?”
“Fighting is man’s work, ’n’ so are oaths ’fore the Lord o’ Sky,” her aunt screamed, shaking her fist at Sonjuh; several of the younger children around the table began to cry, and most of the adults were looking at their feet, or the rafters. “You’re a hex-bearer, ’n’ you’ll bring His anger down on us all.”
“Lord o’ Sky saved us all in the Hungry Years, didn’t he? Brought back the sun after Olsaytan ate it? Leastways, that’s what the Jefe says come midsummer ’n’ midwinter day when he kills cows for God; you telling me he’s lying? Lord o’ Sky hears an oath, don’t matter who says the say.”
Aydwah’s head had been turning back and forth like a man watching a handball game. Now he rose to his feet and roared at her: “You speak to your aunt with respect, missie, or I’ll take my belt to your backside-that’s the law, too, me being your eldest male kin. Or have you forgot that part?”
“You could try!” Sonjuh yelled, all caution cast aside.
Her uncle’s roar was wordless as he started a lunge for her. Sonjuh jumped backward from the bench, cat-lithe, looking around for something to grab and hit with-never hit a man with your bare hand unless you were naked and had your feet nailed to the floor, her father had told her. An ax handle someone had been whittling from a billet of hickory was close by, and she snatched it up and held it two-handed.
That wasn’t needful; Aydwah froze as Slasher came up from beneath the table, paws on the bench and bristling until he looked twice his size-which was considerable, because the dog had more than a trace of plains wolf in his bloodlines, and outweighed his mistress’s 115 pounds. His black lips curled back from long wet yellow-white teeth, and the expression made his tattered ears and the scars on his muzzle stand out. Slasher had been her father’s hunting dog-fighting dog, too; the posse had found him clubbed senseless and left for dead at the ruins of her family’s cabin, and he’d woken to track the war band that carried her off.
“Get me my bow,” Aydwah said, slow and careful, not moving as others tumbled away from the table and backed to a safe distance. “Sami, get me my bow. That there dog is dangerous and has to be put down.”
“You shoot at the dog saved my life, you die,” Sonjuh said flatly. The words left her lips like pebbles, heavy dense things not to be called back. “I’m leaving. I’ll send for my family’s gear later; look after it real careful, or I’ll call the Jefe to set the law on you.”
She backed away toward the stable, her eyes wary and the ax handle ready, but none of the other grown folk tried to stop her; Aydwah wasn’t quite angry enough to call on them to bind her, although his son Sami did bring his bow. By that time Slasher had followed her, walking stiff-legged and looking back over his shoulder frequently. Stunned silence fell, broken only by the idiot clucking of poultry and noises of stock and a few dogs barking at the fear and throttled anger they smelled. Sonjuh saddled one of her horses, stashed her traveling gear on the mule’s pack saddle, slung the blanket-roll over her shoulder, and swung into the saddle; the morning’s mush was a cold lump under her breastbone, but her face was a mask of pale, controlled fury. The last thing she did was to use the goatsfoot lever to cock her crossbow, setting one of the short, heavy steel-headed and leather-feathered bolts in the groove.
She held the reins in her left hand and the weapon in her right; the spare horse and mule were well-enough trained to follow without a leading rein. Aydwah waited by the laneway that led out across his land to the Dannulsford trace, between the tall posts carved with the figures of the Corn Lady and Lord o’ Sky.
“I cast you out!” he called, as she came near. “You’re no kin of ours! I put the elder’s curse on you, Lord ’n’ Lady hear my oath!”
There were gasps from the other folk of the farm; that was a terrible thing, to be without immediate family. Not as bad as being outlawed from your clan, but close. Sonjuh dropped the reins for an instant to flash the sign of the Horns at him, turning the curse.
There were more shocked exclamations at that, and someone burst out: “She’s ghost-ridden!”
“Yes, I am-by my pa ’n’ ma, ’n’ my sisters, your blood you weren’t man enough to get revenge for,” Sonjuh said coldly. “I call their spirits down on you, Aydwah sunna Chorge, to haunt you sleeping ’n’ waking, by bed ’n’ field ’n’ hearth, you ’n’ all yours.”
Aydwah raised his bow, a six-foot length of yellow-orange boisdawk wood.
Sonjuh ignored the creak of the shaft being drawn and cast a jeering call over her shoulder: “Go ahead, Aydwah Kin-Killer-shoot your brother’s girlchild in the back ’fore witnesses, ’n’ put your head up on a pole!”
With that, she squeezed her mount with her thighs and left at a canter. The flat unmusical smack of the bowstring sounded behind her, but the shaft flashed off to one side to bury itself amid the stooked corn and pumpkins and cowpea vines; her uncle hadn’t quite dared.
I wonder if this is how father felt, when he pushed a quarrel, she thought briefly; it was an intoxication, a release of frustration like a dam breaking. Bet the hangover’s worse than whiskey, though.