Soon after first light, the three of them walked along the beach a short way, until they found where the wardens had beached their boats, and then walked up the beach to the forest edge. There, just inside the cover of the big birches, was a plashed wood fence that stood twice the height of a man. They followed the fence cautiously until they came to a gate.
‘There’s no one here,’ Ta-se-ho said, but even his voice held tension. They crept inside, looking with some awe at the big sleeping platforms and the woven mats.
‘Human work,’ Ta-se-ho said. ‘They have slaves – sometimes they trade.’ He shrugged. Then he pounced like a cat on a mouse.
Under a sleeping mat was a beautiful otter skin. The skin was sewn shut and had a cunning pocket in it, and the opening and part of the back were decorated in beads and quillwork – beads of solid gold, and quillwork in red and purple, the colours of royalty. He opened the bag, sniffed the contents, and let loose a piercing yell of triumph.
‘Tobacco!’ he shouted. He opened his own bag and took out his smallest pipe and filled it with shaking hands. He went to the fort’s hearth – dug with his knife in the ashes, and then lifted a live coal, on which he blew. He lit his pipe with the kind of satisfaction that men usually save for food and other passions, and sat on the edge of the stone hearth.
Then he looked around carefully. ‘If this was not Mogon herself,’ he said, ‘it was one of her brood mates – the royals of the lake Wardens. And I would warrant that they are not a war party. The tobacco pouch almost settles it – no one would take such a thing to war.’
Nita Qwan raised an eyebrow. ‘My people and the Albans both tend to take all their most precious things to war,’ he said.
‘There were men with them – and at least two irks. See the prints? That’s a woman, or I’m a heron. So – not a war party.’ The old man shrugged, pleased with himself and smirking.
‘They could be captives,’ Nita Qwan said.
Ta-se-ho grinned. ‘If we had come from the land side, they could be captives,’ he said. ‘Tracks must be read in tehsandran.’
Nita Qwan’s command of Sossag was very good, but he had never heard this word before. ‘Teh-san-dra-an?’ he asked.
Gas-a-ho looked at the older hunter. The two men had a wordless exchange.
‘Is this – hermetical? Magical?’ asked Nita Qwan.
‘No! It is an idea,’ said the older man. ‘It is like – when I say something by the campfire, in jest, it might have one meaning, and if I say it when we are hunting, it might have another meaning. Meanings change depending on who says the words, and how he says them, and where he says them. Feelings change.’ He flailed the air with his hands. ‘Tehsandran is that thing. The change. The place. If we had come from the landward side, this might be a raiding party. But we came from the east, on the inland sea. All the people – the humans – live in the east. So they did not take a woman prisoner in the east, because they would have paddled right past us.’ He spread his hands. ‘See?’
Nita Qwan thought hard and then laughed. ‘I do see. At first, I was afraid you were trying to tell me that if we came from the land, that would change the reality of your observation. Instead, you are saying that it changes your perception.’
Ta-se-ho shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And I’m not sure. Tracking is never about sure. It is about a vast range of possibilities, bigger than a herd of fallow deer on the plains.’
‘You are a philosopher,’ Nita Qwan said, using the archaic word.
Ta-se-ho said the word several times and chewed the stem of his pipe while he smiled. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. He walked around the enclosure for another minute, leaving a trail of pungent smoke – then walked out the gate and vanished for some minutes before he returned and emptied his pipe. ‘Eight boats. Fifty warriors, and two irks, both wearing shoes – and one man and one woman, barefoot and in moccasins.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘If they went east, we’d have seen them. If they go west, they reach Mogon’s realm in a day or two – her caves in eight days’ travel. But they came here by boat. So the natural assumption is that they came from Mogon’s caves and dens in the west. They did not pass us. Hence they went south – to Tapio at N’gara. It is an embassy – the irks were sent out by Tapio as guides. The man and woman are slaves – but trusted slaves.’
Nita Qwan followed the logic. ‘Why trusted?’
‘They went far to defecate,’ Ta-se-ho said. ‘Humans are far more fastidious about this than Wardens. They were allowed to walk off with no guards.’
‘Perhaps they are not slaves?’ Nita Qwan said.
‘They cooked all the food,’ Ta-se-ho said. He shrugged. ‘But yes – perhaps they are well paid, or merely content.’
‘How sure are you?’ Nita Qwan asked.
The old man was repacking his pipe. He met Nita Qwan’s eye with a wry smile and a raised eyebrow, and went back to packing his pipe.
‘How much time do we lose if we go to N’gara and they aren’t there?’ Nita Qwan asked.
‘A week,’ Ta-se-ho said. ‘More, if Tapio kills us.’
He and Gas-a-ho barked their laughter, and it rang from the rocks and low bluffs around them in the still autumn air.
Natia Qwan had to smile. ‘You think that’s the right thing to do,’ he said.
Ta-se-ho shrugged. But he relented. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If Tapio and Mogon bury the axe and make friends, they will be the most powerful allies in the north country, and we could not do better than to offer our people to them. Mogon’s brother and father were never bad to the people.’ He made an odd motion with his head. ‘They were never particularly good, either,’ he admitted.
‘And this Tapio?’ Nita Qwan asked.
Gas-a-ho leaned forward. ‘The horned one says he is a deeply cunning shaman – almost like the old gods. He says you must never go to sleep in the halls of Tapio, or you wake to find a hundred years have passed.’ He realised he had probably said too much for a young person, and looked at the ground.
Ta-se-ho lay back on a giant sleeping bench meant for a daemon nine feet tall. ‘Tapio fought a war against our forefathers,’ he said, dreamily. ‘All the stories about the faeries under the earth and the war underground are about that war. He is very old.’
Nita Qwan had never heard such stories. ‘Does he hate the Sossag?’ he asked.
Ta-se-ho cocked one moccasined foot over the other. ‘I doubt he even remembers us. But we most definitely remember him. We used to hold all the land around N’gara. This was Sossag – the people of the western door. Tapio took our great towns and sent us to flee into the Burned Lands in the north.’
Nita Qwan sighed. ‘So much for our embassy, then,’ he said.
Ta-se-ho shook his head. ‘No. We have a good life now. Tapio might help us – he took what he wanted, and we survived. Not unlike the sorcerer who wants our Sacred Island. Listen, Nita Qwan. These Powers happen. It is best to accept the change and avoid death. If we can lead them to fight among themselves-’ The old man chuckled. ‘Well, all the better. If Tapio and Thorn destroy each other, the Sossag will laugh.’
‘And be stronger,’ said Nita Qwan.
The hunter shook his head. ‘That’s your brother talking. Stronger is for those who seek strength. The people want to live. Life is not about strength. Life is about living. The matrons know this – you need to know this, too. We do not seek an alliance to make us strong. We seek an alliance to avoid as much trouble as we can avoid, so that hunters can hunt, and mothers can raise children.’
Nita Qwan looked at the old hunter with new eyes. ‘You sound as if you hold the Powers in contempt.’