Fessran gave her ruff a disdainful lick, as if the noxious stuff was already on her. “I don’t mind herdbeast dung, but I can tell these beasts don’t eat grass. Ugh!”
“May you eat of the liver and sleep in the driest den,” Ratha said, touching noses with him, but her whiskers twitched back. She rubbed her forehead against his cheek and started to slide along him, her tail crooked over, but she broke off midway, saying, “Fessran may be rude, but she’s right. Phew, that’s strong!”
Feeling like a pariah, he took a position downwind from both and asked them stiffly if that was better. Now that his own aroma was carried away by the breeze, he caught the maddening meat-smell and wondered where it was coming from.
Ratha had only her treeling on her back, but Fessran was festooned with something odd. It looked like she had rolled in some vines and had ended up tangled in strands and bundles of leaves.
Fessran turned abruptly to Ratha and said, “Well, we’ve carried the food long enough. Get your treeling to undo these leaves, and we’ll feed Thakur before his tongue hangs out so far he steps on it.”
At a nudge and purr from Ratha, Ratharee hopped onto Fessran’s back and started pulling a leafy bundle apart. From the covering, Ratha drew a chunk of meat with her fangs and offered it to the herding teacher. Thakur didn’t think about where it had come from; he just plopped down with the food between his paws and began slicing it with his side teeth. It was liver.
The richness of it soon sated him enough so his curiosity arose once again. He got to his feet, licking his chops, and asked how the two females had carried it. Ratha showed him cords of twisted bark fiber that bound large leaves still covering the remaining bundles of food. He saw how the cords were wrapped about the Firekeeper’s body to lash the packets to her sides.
“The leaves keep flies off,” Ratha explained. “The meat isn’t as good as we’d get from a cull, but it isn’t carrion either.”
Thakur sniffed a packet then turned to Ratha. “Did you think of this?”
“A Firekeeper student and his treeling came up with these twisted bark vines. You saw them being used to bind wood. Fessran figured out that we could use them to lash things onto ourselves, and since we knew you’d be hungry... ”
“And we thought we’d be hungry too, after a while,” Fessran reminded her. “Although I’m beginning to wonder if the idea was so clever. I’m not sure I’m ever going to get myself untangled from this mess.”
Thakur stretched, enjoying his full stomach. One thing good about liver was that it was so rich that one didn’t have to gorge oneself to feel sated.
“You can have more, Thakur,” Fessran offered, evidently wanting to be rid of the sticky bundles against her sides. “After all, we did come to see your duck-footed dapplebacks, and the best way to start is to see how they taste. I imagine we’ll have plenty of fresh meat, so there’s no use saving this.”
“I would save it anyway,” Thakur answered carefully, trying not to show the sudden dismay he felt when he heard her words.
Ratha glanced at him curiously, and he knew she sensed his change in mood. He might be able to conceal his feelings from Fessran, since she often paid little attention to such things, but not Ratha.
She took him aside and said, “Thakur, have you found that these animals are not suited to our purpose after all? If that is true, I won’t be angry. You did say you needed to study them before we arrived, and you have done so.”
Thakur looked back at her, knowing she had grown well into her role as leader. “No, that is not what troubles me.” With a wary glance at Fessran, he explained his concern that a Named invasion of the seamare herd might frighten away the young cripple who lived among the creatures. And too much disruption might cause the herd itself to flee from the jetty.
“It would be better for us to learn with just a few animals,” he said. “There is a smaller group of duck-foots who make their homes in the rocks north of the jetty itself. If we work with those, we will do better.”
Ratha agreed that his plan sounded wise and asked him to take her and Fessran to see the creatures. But first, she said, she wanted to see the spring. If the Named were to bring their herds here, she must be sure that there was forage and water to sustain them.
Slightly inland from the beach lay a scarp whose face was cut in a sheer cliff. A forest of mixed broadleaf and small pine grew in the cooling shadow thrown by the cliff. From cracks in slate and blue bands of rock, the water came, bearing the scent and taste of earthen caverns. It did not gush but ran in a steady, even stream without faltering.
“The smell of this water tells me it will never dry up,” Ratha said, squinting up through the rich, slanting light between the trees. Thakur watched her crouch on a stone and dip her chin into the pool that collected beneath the spring. “The gravel bottom won’t muddy when the herdbeasts drink. You have done well to find such a place.”
Then she and Fessran began inspecting low-hanging boughs to be sure none of the new foliage could harm herdbeasts. Nosing through brush and grass, Thakur helped them search for poisonous weeds or plants with white berries. He also kept a lookout for an annoying herb with leaves that grew in clusters of three, which could cause the Named to itch if it got through to the skin beneath their fur or on their noses.
He walked with Ratha between thickets, looking at the quantity and freshness of the leaves, then wandered through the scattered clearings where grass grew, watered by seepage from the spring.
At last she gave a satisfied grunt. “This will be the clan’s ground until the drought passes,” she said finally. “Now, show me the animals.”
Thakur led the two females behind the bluff overlooking the seamare terraces. He deliberately circled inland, giving the cliffs a wide berth so that the scents of his two companions would not betray their presence to Newt, who patrolled the rocks below.
He brought Ratha and Fessran to another, smaller headland area that overlooked a steep graveled beach. From an overlook above, he stretched out a paw toward the seamares.
Fessran wrinkled her nose at the sight of the creatures sprawled out all over the beach. “They don’t look like much to me. Such lazy lumps. I like a creature with some spirit. And that smell is worse on them than on you.”
“I think you will find they have spirit, especially when you try to taste their flesh,” Thakur retorted.
Fessran wrinkled her nose again, but he ignored her. She wasn’t the one who would decide.
“How would you keep these creatures?” Ratha asked.
“I would do as I saw the young stranger doing. I would gain their trust by defending their young from other meat eaters and take only those who have died.”
“That will take much work and many days and provide only scraps while we do it. I think we should begin the way the first ones of the clan did with herdbeasts: catch and gather them in a place we can keep them.”
“They must live in water,” Thakur argued. “They will die if we drive them onto land and don’t let them swim.”
“Well, we certainly can’t herd them on this beach. One sniff of us and splash—off they’d go.” Ratha turned, scanning the landscape. “Look,” she said, pointing with her muzzle. “There’s another river emptying into this salty lake, and its waters look shallow. Perhaps we could keep the animals there.”
They investigated the river mouth. Thakur judged the water salty enough for seamares, and holes on the muddy shore indicated the presence of the heavy-shelled clams on which the creatures fed. One channel in the river delta had made a deep meander into the side of a cliff, creating a crescent-shaped beach surrounded by sandstone walls on one side and the river on the other. The shallow and slowly flowing water allowed Ratha, Thakur, and Fessran to wade close to the center of the channel before their bellies even got wet.