Hessanrala scowled. ‘A knife to your words, Ralata.’ She waved one hand. ‘Look at this good fortune. Horses for each of us and three more to spare, a bag of coins and mint-soaked bhederin and three skins of water-and did we not amuse ourselves with the pathetic creature? Did we not teach him the gifts of pain?’
‘This is all true,’ said Ralata, ‘but I have felt shadows in the night, and the whisper of dread wings. Something stalks us, Hessanrala.’
In reply the warleader snarled and turned away. She vaulted on to her horse. ‘We are Ahkrata Barghast. Skincuts-and who does not fear the women slayers of the Ahkrata?’ She glared at the others, as if seeking the proper acknowledgement, and seemed satisfied as they drew their mounts round to face her.
Ralata spat into her hands and took charge of the only saddled horse-the Akrynnai trader’s very own, which she had claimed by right of being the first to touch her blade to the man’s flesh. She set a boot into the stirrup and swung on to the beast’s back. Hessanrala was young. This was her first time as warleader, and she was trying too hard. It was custom that a seasoned warrior volunteer to accompany a new warleader’s troop, lest matters go awry. But Hessanrala was not interested in heeding Ralata, seeing wisdom as fear, caution as cowardice.
She adjusted the fragments of Moranth chitin that served as armour among the Ahkrata, and made sure the chest-plate of Gold was properly centred. Then took a moment to resettle into her nostrils the broad hollow bone plugs that made Ahkrata women the most beautiful among all the White Face Barghast. She swung her horse to face Hessanrala.
‘This trader,’ said the warleader with a faint snarl directed at Ralata, ‘was returning to his kin as we all know, having chased him from our camp. We can see the ancient trail he was using. We shall follow it, find the Akrynnai huts, and kill everyone we find.’
‘The path leads north,’ said Ralata. ‘We know nothing of what lies in that direction-we might ride into a camp of a thousand Akrynnai warriors.’
‘Ralata bleats like a newborn kid, but I hear no pierce-cry of a hawk.’ Hessanrala looked to the others. ‘Do any of you hear the winged hunter? No, only Ralata.’
Sighing, Ralata made a gesture of release. ‘I am done with you, Hessanrala. I return to our camp, and how many women will come to my Skincut cry? Not five. No, I shall be warleader to a hundred, perhaps more. You, Hessanrala, shall not live long-’ and she looked to the others, was dismayed to see their expressions of disgust and contempt-but they too were young. ‘Follow her into the north, warriors, and you may not return. Those who would join me, do so now.’
When none made a move, Ralata shrugged and swung her horse round. She set off, southward.
Once past a rise and out of sight of the troop-which had cantered off in the opposite direction-Ralata reined in. She would have the blood of five foolish girls on her hands. Most would understand her reasons for leaving. They knew Hessanrala, after all. But the families that lost daughters would turn away.
There was a hawk out there. She knew it with certainty. And the five kids had no shepherd, no hound to guard them. Well, she would be that hound, low in the grasses on their trail, ever watchful. And, should the hawk strike, she would save as many as she could.
She set out to follow them.
The low cairns set in a row across the hill’s summit and leading down the slope were almost entirely overgrown. Windblown soils had heaped up along one side, providing purchase for rillfire trees, their gnarled, low branches spreading out in swaths of sharp thorns. High grasses knotted the other sides. But Tool knew the piles of stone for what they were-ancient blinds and runs built by Imass hunters-and so he was not surprised when they reached the end of the slope and found themselves at the edge of a precipice. Below was a sinkhole, its base thick with skalberry trees. Buried beneath that soil, he knew, there were bones, stacked thick, two or even three times the height of a grown man. In this place, Imass had driven herds to their deaths in great seasonal hunts. If one were to dig beneath the skalberry trees, one would find the remains of bhed and tenag: their bones and shattered horns, tusks, and embedded spear-points of grey chert; one would find, here and there, the skeletons of ay that had been dragged over the cliff’s edge in their zeal-the wolves’ canines filed down to mark them as pups found in the wild, too fierce to have their massive fangs left in place; and perhaps the occasional okral, for the plains bears often tracked the bhed herds and found themselves caught up in the stampedes, especially when fire was used.
Generation upon generation of deadly hunts mapped out in those layers, until all the tenag were gone, and with them the okral, and indeed the ay-and the wind was hollow and empty of life, no howls, no shrill trumpeting from bull tenag, and even the bhed had given way to their smaller cousins, the bhederin-who would have vanished too, had their two-legged hunters thrived.
