The Swift finished off the porridge and hopefully held out the bowl, in case she could get another portion.
“In this next sun’s year is the time of greatest danger. If the Cursed Ones suspect that we mean to act against them, then they will send their armies to attack us. We need every ally we can find, whether Red Deer, or White Deer, or Black Deer. No matter how strange other tribes may seem to us, we need their help. If you are still alive after the next year’s dark of the sun, you will no longer have to fear.”
Orla made the sign to avert evil spirits and spat on the ground, and many did likewise, although not Beor. The younger ones withdrew to get on with their work or to check their bows and axes. As the villagers dispersed to their tasks, only the elders and the war captain remained.
“I will go with the war party,” Adica said.
They had no choice but to agree.
She went to her old house to gather healing herbs and her basket of charms. Inside, the small house lay musty, abandoned. She ran her fingers along the eaves. One of the rafters still leaked a little pitch, and she touched it to her lips, breathing in its essence.
Outside, Beor waited with a party of nine adults whom he trusted to stand and fight, should it come to that. They walked armed with bows, carrying spare arrows tipped with obsidian points, and axes of flint or copper. Agda had a stone ax, and Beor himself carried the prize of the village: a halberd with a real bronze blade fixed at right angles to the shaft. He had taken it off the body of a dead enemy.
As they set out, the Swift loped past them with her dog at her heels, but she took the turning that would lead her on to Spring Water: Dorren’s village.
No need to think of Dorren now. Adica could enjoy, surely, this transitory peace, walking under the bright sun and reveling in the wind on her back. It wasn’t as hot as it had been on Falling-down’s island home. She walked at the back of the band, keeping an eye out for useful plants. When she spotted a patch of mustard and stepped off the path to investigate, Beor dropped back to wait for her. The others paused a short way down the path, out of earshot but within range in case of attack.
She ignored Beor as best she could while she harvested as much mustard as she could tie around with a tall grass stem and set into her traveling basket. He fell in beside her as soon as she started on down the path. She did not look at him, and it seemed to her, by the way he swung the shaft of his halberd out before him, that he did not look at her. Yet it was still comforting to walk beside another person, companions on the long march. Ahead, the rest of the band set out, keeping a bit of distance between them.
“The elders spoke to me yesterday.” His voice was a little hoarse, the way it got when he was aroused, or irritated. “They said that the reason we never made a child between us was because your magic has leached all the fertility from you. They said that if I don’t give up thinking of you that evil spirits will drain me, too, and I’ll never be able to make a child with another woman.”
Her feet fell, one step and another and another. She couldn’t make any thoughts come clear. The sun was bright. The path wound through woodland where a fresh breeze hissed through leaves.
“I never wanted any woman like I wanted you. But that has to be done with now. So be it. The elders say that Mother Nahumia’s eldest daughter over at Old Fort just last moon set her man’s hunting bag outside the door and made him leave. She’ll be looking for a new man, then, won’t she?”
“You’d have to go to Old Fort,” said Adica, since he seemed to expect her to say something. “You’d have to live there.”
“That’s true. But I’ve a mind to leave. I’ve even thought of walking farther east, to hunt for a season with my Black Deer cousins.”
“That’s a long way,” said Adica, and heard her own voice trembling, not able to speak the words without betraying the fear in her own heart.
“So it is,” he agreed, and he waited again, wanting her sympathy or regret, perhaps, or an attempt to talk him out of this rash course of action. But she couldn’t give him more. She had already offered her life to her people, and the magic hadn’t even left her a child to keep her name alive among them.
“You’re a good war captain, Beor,” she said. “The village needs you. Will you at least wait until my work is done before you go? Then maybe it won’t matter that they lose you.” Here she faltered. It was forbidden to speak aloud of the great weaving, because words were power, not to be carelessly cast to the four winds in case the Cursed Ones overheard them. “At least wait until then.”