Three were four-foot javelins balanced for throwing, with heads made from table knives ground down to points. The other was man-high and heavier, made for thrusting; the head looked like it had been fashioned from a strip of steel salvaged from a railing or something of that order, hammered and ground down by simple rubbing on rocks into a double-edged blade the length of Artos’ hand from wrist to fingertips. All the heads were secured by butting the tangs into a slot at the top of the ashwood shafts, then binding tightly with a layer of wet rawhide thongs that shrank as it dried to an unbreakable grip. Hoof glue had been poured over the join to set in a resinlike mass and keep the leather bindings tight. The wood was straight, carefully shaped by a knife to give good balance, and rubbed with a little oil of some sort.
Not too bad, Artos thought. Still, not what I’d use to hunt wild cattle by preference, much less a tiger. I’d say this lad’s folk have fewer arts than the Bekwa, but more than my Southside Freedom Fighters did when I encountered them in the Wild Lands of Illinois last year. Whether they were Eaters or no in the dying time, I doubt they are now. Not as a matter of course; he looks too healthy, and you can catch every disease there is by eating human meat.
“That’s all his arms,” Edain said. “Though if we could train up his stink, it’d be a weapon of power to match your Sword, right enough.”
Artos nodded; the man had a hard dry smell about him as if he’d never washed except by accident, and it had been awakened by the fear-sweat pouring off his face and flanks. He pointed to the other side of the little fire.
“Sit,” he said.
The captive obeyed, or at least squatted on his hams. Garbh released his wrist, backed three paces, and stood staring at him, slightly crouched, her yellow-gold wolf eyes fixed on his throat. Her lips were drawn back over her long yellow teeth; she was at least the man’s weight, and the mouth in her massive head was broad as his palm. He glanced at her out of the corners of his eyes and visibly decided to stay very still.
“Here,” Artos said. “I’m Artos of the Mackenzies.”
He pulled one of the sticks of organ meat from where it rested over the fire on Y-shaped twigs, sprinkled it with salt and handed it to the man. Their prisoner relaxed very slightly as he took it. Then he gobbled with a roynish lack of concern for manners, juices running down his chin and dripping onto his chest. When he finished he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, licked his fingers to get the last of the salty liquid, and then smeared his hands across his vest and belched.
“Dik Tomskid,” he said, and jerked a thumb towards his breast. “Lunnunbunh.”
Repetition made the syllables clear: Dick Tom’s kid, of the London Bunch.
“This dialect’s even thicker than the Southsiders’,” Artos said aside to his companions. “Fortunately we don’t have to learn it.”
“It’s amazing how fast the tongue can change its ways in these little wild-man tribes,” Mathilda observed. “The smaller, the worse, it seems. It’s only been one generation and I can hardly understand him at all-perhaps they were feral children, too.”
“Easier for changes to spread when there are few speakers,” Artos guessed.
The captive had been examining them more closely, now that he wasn’t in a blind funk and expecting to be put over the fire himself.
“Yuh nuh Bekwa,” he said. “Buh godda cuns widt.”
“Yes, we have women with us, and indeed we’re not Bekwa,” Artos said. “We just killed a many of the Bekwa tribes and left them dead on the field.”
That took more repetition to get across; Dik’s smile showed an intact if discolored set of teeth.
“Yuh fukr dedum!” he said enthusiastically. Then, scowling slightly: “Nuh bunh ettin a-un Lunnunbuhn lan.”
No other tribe eats. . or does he mean hunt?. . on London Bunch land, Artos translated; the Sword seemed to make that easier, though he’d always had a good ear. Or it might just be keep off my tribe’s territory. He’s a brave man, to tell us so when he’s in our power.
“We go tomorrow,” he said. “Go. Keep going. Go far away.”
He pointed to himself and his companions, then traversed his arm from the east until it was aimed southwestward, which brought a nod of approval. Then he went on:
“You can have that one,” he said, pointing to one of the yearlings hanging a good distance away. “We’ll leave the hides of the others, and the horns and bones. Tell your folk that we come in peace, but it would be a very foolish thing to get in our way.”
He stood and hefted one of the wild-man’s javelins. Then he moved with a sudden skipping half-step, and his long arm whipped forward. The captive fell backward to follow the flashing streak that ended with a thunk and a quivering hum as the point stood in a tree trunk fifty paces away.
Then Artos nodded to Edain. The Mackenzie wheeled, drew and shot three times in the space as many breaths would take, aiming for the most distant of the beef carcasses. There was a meaty thwack-thwack-thwack sound, and the big animal’s body twisted and swung under the impact. All the shafts transfixed the beast’s chest, all within a space the size of a man’s palm. Dik’s eyes went wider still, though presumably he’d seen at least part of their hunt. This close you could see how the arrows made nothing of thick flesh and cracked through the heavy bone of the beef ribs.
“Stay!” Edain said to Garbh, and dropped the wild-man’s weapons near his feet. “And you’d best be going.”
The savage snatched up his possessions, but he was careful to keep his movements unthreatening. He sidled over to retrieve his throwing-spear, grunted in surprise as he had to work it back and forth to free it, turned and raised it towards Artos. Then he ducked his head and trotted away to the northward. Edain retrieved his arrows before he and Garbh followed at a leisurely springy trot.
Bjarni finished his second skewer of meat. Then he took out the long single-edge seax-knife he wore horizontally across the small of his back and used it to cut a circle of turf. Artos drowned the coals in a hiss and sputter with the contents of his canteen, then pushed dirt over them with one boot and tamped it down and wet the results. Bjarni dropped the circle of turf in place and walked on it.
“You know,” he said thoughtfully as he wiped the patterned steel of his seax on a twist of grass, polished it on his sleeve and sheathed it. “This is good land.”
He dug up a handful from the space where he’d taken the grass, squeezed it to show the open, resilient crumb structure, tasted, spat and dusted off his hands.
“Very good land,” he said, washing his mouth out with a swig from his water bottle and spitting again. “It tastes sweet. Not too heavy with clay, not too sandy, not sour either; there’s plenty of wild clover-that means there’s lime in the soil.”
Artos signed agreement. “I’ve not seen much better. Iowa, yes, but this is more varied. I’d still prefer the Willamette country, but this is fine and no dispute. And there’s a very great deal of it since we left your homeland.”
Bjarni had a hungry look on his face as he considered the disheveled richness around:
“Good wheat and barley land, good for spuds and pasture and hay, and the weather’s better than ours. You can see how much further along the spring is, and there are all those fruits we can’t grow at all. Good hunting, enough timber, fishing in the big lakes, and we could ship cargo on those too. Plenty of fast-moving rivers for mills and forges. Good land all the way from Royal Mountain to here. . and beyond, you say?”