‘And then, when he is weak, we will strike!’ said Ota Qwan.
Blue Knife shook her head. ‘No. When he is weak, someone else like him will strike, and we will rejoice quietly, and grow our corn.’
The People sang three songs – all songs of the harvest season, and then they filed out. Peter was near the door, but a small hand on his arm blocked him as effectively as a giant, and he stepped aside to let others pass. Blue Knife stood there, with Small Hands and the other matrons.
‘You will not accompany Ota Qwan,’ Blue Knife said.
Peter had very little experience of dealing with the matrons. They did not issue orders – no one among the Free People issued orders. So he was taken aback by her tone, and he looked around. His wife was standing behind him and she nodded sharply in agreement.
‘He will not like that,’ Peter said.
Small Hands nodded gravely. ‘He will have other followers and friends. You must not go. Please – we ask this of you.’
Peter bowed. ‘I will not go.’
The next week was one of the most difficult Peter had experienced since becoming a Sossag. Ota Qwan lost no time in asking him to come, and then, once the invitation had been declined, became increasingly angry about it.
‘Don’t let your woman turn you into a coward,’ he said in his third attempt.
Peter shrugged. ‘She won’t.’
‘I need you. Men follow me for my skills – but they also follow me because you follow me. Ta-se-ho has declined to come. You know what he said? He said, Nita Qwan isn’t going.’ Ota Qwan was growing red, and his voice rose, and heads were turning all along the village street. It was a cold, windy day – a presage of autumn. There was rain in the air, and two Ruk had been spotted in the beaver meadow south-east of the village, which had everyone on edge.
‘I’m not coming this time,’ Peter said, as calmly as he could manage.
‘Why? Give me one reason. I led the honey gathering well. I have done nothing to offend you. I am polite to your bitch of a wife-’
The two men looked at each other. Peter was quite calm. ‘Please walk away,’ he said.
Ota Qwan put his hands on his hips. ‘I’m doing this all wrong. I’m sorry – I don’t think your wife is a bitch. Or rather, I do, but I assume you see something in her that I don’t. Listen, brother. I appeal to you. I admit that we have only known each other this summer. But I need you.’
Peter knew in his heart that the admission – that he needed Nita Qwan – had a cost.
He tried to smile. ‘I’m flattered-’ he began.
‘Fuck your patronising shit,’ Ota Qwan said with sudden rage. ‘Stay here and rot.’ He turned on his heel and walked away.
Peter suspected he’d just lost his friend. And his brother.
Why are the matrons putting me in this position?
Ota Qwan left the next day, with six men, all seasoned warriors from the summer campaign. The six of them – three chosen from the neighbouring village at Can-da-ga – were considered the finest warriors the People had to offer – all hot-blooded, all highly skilled.
Ota Qwan left the village carrying his best spear, wearing a sword, with a magnificent wolf cloak over his shoulders and a tunic of deerskin carefully decorated along every seam with a stiff border of porcupine quillwork and moose-hair embroidery. He looked like the Alban notion of an Outwaller king, and he walked with pride. He didn’t glance to the right or left, he refused Peter’s embrace, and then he was gone.
As soon as he was gone the matrons gathered in the street. There was a flare of temper from Amij’ha, and her mother spoke sharply to her.
‘You have sent my husband to his death!’ she shouted, and ran into her cabin.
Blue Knife set her face like stone and beckoned to Peter. ‘Nita Qwan,’ she called. He walked to her. Ta-se-ho followed.
He came to a stop. All the matrons were gathered in front of Amij’ha’s house – among the Sossag, the woman owned the house.
‘Nita Qwan, the last week must have been hard for you. But we have chosen your brother for a lesser errand. He will fail. He will go to Thorn, and Thorn will seduce him with the offer of war. This is the way of men.’
The sound of Amij’ha’s sobs echoed in the cabin.
‘We will send you to Mogon. She liked you – she spoke to you. You must leave immediately and travel very fast. Her people are strong, and have strong powers and many allies. Tell her the truth – that Thorn comes for us, and that we are too weak to do anything but blow in the wind.’
Nita Qwan sighed with understanding. ‘It is unfair. My brother-’ He paused. The women’s eyes were deep with understanding, with unspoken knowledge. He lowered his voice, and found that he was angry; in the way that Ota Qwan had never made him angry. ‘If you had sent my brother to Mogon, he would have stood tall for the people. If you had sent me to Thorn, I would have crawled for the people. By sending Ota Qwan to Thorn, you condemn him.’
Blue Knife looked down her nose at him. ‘This is as it must be. War will be his own choice – and that will blind Thorn to our intentions. All the men we sent were warlike, like Ota Qwan.’
‘My brother could have been better than that,’ Nita Qwan spat. ‘Indeed, he had been trying-’
‘We have sent your brother as a sacrifice to Thorn,’ Blue Knife said. ‘He is the husband of my daughter and the father of my granddaughter. Do not imagine that this was not much debated and discussed.’
Nita Qwan breathed in his rage, and breathed out, as his father had taught him five thousand leagues ago. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will go. But you are no different than kings and chiefs and tyrants the world over if you send men to die like this, without giving them a chance.’
Small Hands shook her head. ‘You are angry and your head is big with tears, Nita Qwan. When you are on the trail, smoking your pipe in the darkness with the flames of your campfire before you, think on this: is the life of one man worth the life of all? Or this: we will not be there to choose for Ota Qwan. If he plays the part we told him to play he will return unharmed, and we will apologise and tell him how we used him.’
Blue Knife looked away. ‘But he will not. He will choose Thorn. Of his own free will.’ She turned back and her eyes locked with Nita Qwan’s. ‘Go to Mogon and beg for us. Yesterday, Thorn sent many creatures – some sort of bird or bat or moth – to kill people south of Can-da-ga. He will not end with that.’
Nita Qwan left the next morning, after some passionate lovemaking from his wife and a tearful farewell.
‘Am I being sacrificed like Ota Qwan?’ he asked her. ‘Would you know? Would you tell me?’
She leaned over, breasts brushing his chest, and licked his nose. ‘I might not know, but I’d always tell you. The matrons are all bitches. They don’t like me.’ She licked his nose again. ‘What they did to Ota Qwan, lover, he . . . I’m sorry. He had it coming. He is too much about himself. He wanted to be warlord and he said so. He was not like you. You have become one of us while he was a Southerner pretending to be a Sossag.’
Nita Qwan took the comfort offered and decided not to have a fight with his wife before leaving.
He took only Ta-se-ho who knew the way, and the shaman’s boy, Gas-a-ho. They took bows and pemmican and little else. Nita Qwan declined to carry the elaborate fur robe of an ambassador, and he rolled the quillwork belt that the shaman prepared for the matrons in his Alban snapsack with a blanket, and the three of them, having bowed to the matrons and kissed their women, left the village at a run, like hunters or warriors, and not at a walk like ambassadors.
For the first three days on the trail, it rained. The wind blew harder and harder, the temperature dropped, and the three men built big fires and huddled close under their brush shelters and were cold and wet most of the time. They ran almost all day – faster on the third day, as Gas-a-ho’s muscles hardened. He was young and not as strong as other boys, mostly because he’d chosen the way of the shaman and didn’t spend as much time hunting and fighting.