“Will the fire bring more foes?” Nita Qwan asked.
Ta-se-ho made a face. “We are at the base of the Tu-ro-seh. We will have strange dreams tonight.”
Nita Qwan shifted-his back was actually against the carved monolith. The carving was both bold and minute, and went in long whorls with no symmetry up the sides-but the closer that he focused on it, the more he saw. His eyes began to follow-
“Do not look too closely,” Ta-se-ho said.
“Who made it?” Nita Qwan asked.
“The Odine,” replied the hunter.
Nita Qwan shook his head. “I am new to the People, Old Hunter,” he said. “Who are the Odine?”
“Better ask, who were they?” Ta-se-ho said. He got out his pipe and began the lengthy process of filling and lighting it. There was silence punctuated by the exuberant sounds of birch burning. The smell was delicious-the very smell of warmth and comfort.
In the firelight, the shapes on the monolith seemed to move. The illusion was greater than it should have been. The surface of the stone appeared to have a million snakes crawling over it, and each snake to be covered with worms, and each worm with centipedes, and each centipede with some tiny creature-on and on.
“Do not look too much,” Ta-se-ho said again. He leaned back, fumbled for a burning stick, and found, like thousands of men before him, that a large fire is the worst place to light a pipe.
Finally he found a burning twig.
“Do you know how the People came here?” he asked.
Nita Qwan knew the legends of his own people. “My people-in Ifriquy’a-say that the black seas were parted and our people were led across the dry sea bed to our new home.”
Ta-se-ho nodded. “Too short to make a good story. But a good idea for a story.” He busied himself inhaling smoke.
“The earliest legends of the Sossag people are about the Odine. The Goddess Tar brought us here to defeat them. And we did. We destroyed them all-every tentacle and every worm.” He nodded. “The north is studded with their monuments and their tunnels.” He leaned back and exhaled smoke. “This is the tallest. The old women say that there is a city under our feet. Many who seek wisdom come here for the dreams of the old ones.” He nodded. “I did.”
“What did you dream about?” Nita Qwan asked.
The old man smoked quietly. “Awful things,” he said eventually. “Nothing from which to take a name, or follow a path.” He shrugged, and lay down. “But most of the Wild fears these places. Only men are too stupid, or too ill-attuned to stay near them. So perhaps the Odine are not dead, but merely sleep.” He grinned.
Nita Qwan took a deep breath. “You are mocking me,” he said.
Ta-se-ho shrugged. “Everything in this world is terror,” the old man said. “If you care to see it that way. We should have died on the ice. We’re not dead. Let that victory steady you. You worry too much.”
“We should have died,” Nita Qwan agreed. “What saved us?”
The old man tamped his pipe, and his eyes glittered across the fire. “Gas-a-ho, first and most. Even when he had his shoulders ripped open, he was casting. He brought the wind and took away the fog.”
Nita Qwan had guessed as much.
“And sheer luck. Or the will of the spirits, if you believe in such things.” The old man took a deep drag on his pipe.
“Do you believe in such things?” Nita Qwan asked.
“I think we shape our own luck,” the old man said. “With work. And practice. And care. A chance for life to a trained man is just another death to an untrained man-yes? Good shooting today.”
Nita Qwan all but blushed. The old man never praised.
“You could have died. Jumping for the spear-the salmon’s leap.” The words spilled out of Nita Qwan. “It was magnificent!”
The old man allowed a slow smile to cross his face. “It was stupid,” he said. “I should have died.” He laughed. “But instead, I flew like a bird!” His high-pitched laugh went out into the night. “I nearly shit myself when my feet left the ground.”
“Why’d you do it?” Nita Qwan asked.
“The spear. I love that spear.” The old man shook his head. “An old woman made a prophecy about it once, and look, she was right. She said one day the spear would fly away without me and I’d have to catch it. I thought she was talking about something deep and symbolic.” He shook his head. “Want some pipe?”
Nita Qwan’s dreams that night were more terrifying than anything he had actually experienced, and his only explanation later was that he had dreamt that he was being digested in the belly of a whale or a snake-his skin slowly flayed away by slime.
He was stunned, on waking, to find himself whole.
He had to pack for the other two, but there was still wood and he built up the fire in the late night darkness until it crackled again. Then he made breakfast. Gas-a-ho was alive, breathing deeply, the wound on his shoulders knitted and dry. Ta-se-ho was snoring, and from time to time he seemed to be fighting something.
Despite days of fatigue, Nita Qwan felt no temptation at all to return to sleep. So, as the light grew outside, he packed the toboggans.
Finally he woke his friends. Gas-a-ho stunned him by getting to his feet.
Ta-se-ho groaned. “Tomorrow will be worse,” he muttered. “Oh, to be young again.”
As the first orange rays of the new sun lit the landscape around them they were headed inland through what seemed like an endless alder thicket. It took them an hour to go a mile. The spire towered behind them.
“When did the People destroy the Odine?” Nita Qwan asked, as they emerged from the alder belt into an open woods of beech and spruce.
Gas-a-ho turned. “Ten thousand winters ago,” he said. The words passed, and echoed among the trees.
Nita Qwan almost stopped in shock. “That is a very large number.”
Gas-a-ho shrugged. “These are the things that the shamans know,” he said. “We defeated the Odine at the behest of the Lady Tar. And now we keep them under their stones.”
“Did you have bad dreams?” Nita Qwan asked.
The snub-nosed youngster gave him an impish smile. “No. For the shaman born, the places of the Odine are places of rest and power. That is why we are taken to them as children.”
Nita Qwan shook his head. “Why did the People kill the Odine?” he asked.
Gas-a-ho looked at Ta-se-ho. “I don’t know. Do you?”
The old man was sniffing the wind like a coyote. He turned. “Why does anything in the Wild kill anything else? Mating, food, territory.” He shrugged. “The way of the world. This world, anyway.”
Nita Qwan laughed. “You have just reduced all the glorious legends of every people in this world to mere greed. And conquest. Like animals,” he said.
Ta-se-ho grunted. “Ask me when my joints ache less and I’ll tell a better story,” he said. “Now let’s go.”
Forty hours later they stumbled into their own village. It now had a tall palisade, big saplings driven deep into the earth and briars and raspberry brambles woven about them to make a barrier impassable by men or most animals. The palisade was tall enough to tower above the snow.
Nita Qwan had feared that the village would be abandoned-that everyone would be dead, frozen corpses in the snow, surrounded by blood kept fresh by the cold. He’d dreamed of it since leaving the tall Odine spire. But they were met by flesh-and-blood men and women.
Nita Qwan’s wife embraced him, her tummy so round that he had trouble reaching past it to kiss her. Kissing in public was seldom seen among the People, and she-once the purest of vixens-was scandalized.
But he was still the ambassador. He left her to go to Blue Knife, the paramount matron, and her circle. Together they went into a long house that smelled of juniper and birch and fifty people who didn’t wash enough. Good winter smells, for the Sossag.
“Tell us,” Blue Knife said without preamble.