As he expected, the shaman gave him no answer to that, only: “Do you want to go find out?”
“I and a few bold friends,” Red Wolf said. “If we have not come back when the carcass is ready, you will know this country is not for you. But we have been so long homeless.”
“I will cast the bones.” They fell in such a pattern that the shaman ordered, “Leave me by myself until dawn.”
During the night Red Wolf and Little Willow heard him chant. His drum thuttered. Their children crept over to them and everybody clung together, yearning for sunlight.
At its first glow Red Wolf approached Answerer’s tent. The shaman came out, haggard and trembling. “My spirit roved widely,” he said low. “I walked in a meadow where the flowers were beautiful, but they forbade me to taste of them. I, an owl, hatched from the moon and in my talons caught the morning star. Snow fell in summer. Go if you dare.”
Red Wolf drew a deep breath and straightened his shoulders.
Five men went at his side. Running Fox was no surprise to him, nor Snowstrider and Broken Blade. He decided that Horsecatcher and Caribou Antler had need to wrestle down their fears. The quest bore them south. In that direction the yellow-haired woman had gone; also, the signs of man were not quite so sparse there as everywhere else.
The land grew drier as it rolled downward. Grass and patches of woods took it over. Finally the travelers came to where the Great Water rolled gray beneath a smoky, flying, whistling sky. Surf brawled, ran up the sands, hissed back. Gulls soared on a sharp salt wind. Bones, shells, plants, and driftwood lay strewn. The Cloud People had only a slight knowledge of this; their usual prey kept inland. Mustering courage, Red Wolf and his men followed the shore east, for it seemed likeliest they would find somebody yonder.
As they fared, they became aware of riches. Stranded fish meant live ones in the water. Shells must have held flesh. Seal clamored and cormorants spread their wings on crowded skerries. Otter and sea cow rode the waves. “But we know not how to take this game,” Broken Blade regretted.
“We might learn how,” said Running Fox.
Red Wolf kept his own counsel. Within him stirred an idea, like a child stirring in its mother’s womb.
Where a river flowed down a ravine and emptied across the beach, they suddenly spied two persons. Those saw them in turn and retreated up the stream. “Go easily,” Red Wolf told his companions. “We would be unwise to scare them off.”
He led the way, a spear in his right hand but the left palm held open before him. The strangers continued edging backward. They were young, boys rather than men, the beastlike whiskers of their breed still fuzzy. Hides, untanned but chewed to softness, were flung over their backs against the chill, fastened at the neck by thongs. The condition of the hides showed they must have been taken off carrion, not a kill. Pouches, not sewn but lashed together, hung over their loins. Footgear was of the same rough making. Each carried a shaped stone and a skin in which lay the mussels he had been gathering.
Snowstrider crowed laughter. “Why, they’re brave as voles!”
Hope thumped in Red Wolf’s temples. “They may be worth more than mammoths,” he said. “Softly, now.”
Alder grew on the slopes, man-high or less, seldom thickly enough to hinder movement or sight. A lad called out. His voice wavered. The wind bore it upward, through the rustling boughs. The Cloud People advanced. Others appeared from above the channel. They scrambled down to stand stiff. The boys turned and scampered to join them.
At the head of the forlorn group was a man whom Red Wolf recognized. Another, young but full-grown, was beside him. At their backs, two women and a girl entering upon womanhood, clad no better than the males, hushed several naked children. “Is this all?” Caribou Antler wondered.
“Some may be out searching for food,” Red Wolf said, “but they cannot be many or we would have known of them earlier.”
“Where is … she, the tall one with hair like sunshine?”
“Wherever she is. Do you fear a woman? Come.” Red Wolf strode forward. His hunters took formation to right and left. Thus had the Cloud People warred against the Horned Men until numbers finally overcame them. This band were striplings then, but their fathers had later given them training. Someday they might have to fight again.
Red Wolf stopped three paces from the leader. Eyes stared into eyes. Silence stretched amidst the wind. “Greeting,” Red Wolf said at last. “Who are you?’
The bearded lips moved. What came out sounded like birds twittering. “Can they not speak?” Horsecatcher grumbled. “Are they human?”
“They are certainly hideous,” Caribou Antler said.
“Not the woman so much,” Broken Blade murmured.
Red Wolf’s gaze traveled across the maiden. Her tresses tumbled thick past a delicate face. She shivered and clutched the cape about her slight form. He pulled his attention back to the man, whom he guessed was her father. Tapping his chest, he named himself. The third time he did so, the other seemed to understand, pointed at his own breast, and uttered, “Aryuk.” Waving a hand: “Tulat.”
“Well, we know what to call them,” Red Wolf said.
“Real names?” wondered Running Fox. Among his folk, that was a secret between a man and his dream spirit.
“No matter,” Red Wolf snapped. He saw, he could Well-nigh smell, the strain in his company. It was in him too. What of that mysterious woman? They must not let fear suck away their courage. “Come, we will look about.”
He stalked onward. Aryuk and the oldest youth moved to stand side by side, to hold him off. He grinned and jabbed air with his spear. They shrank, made way, whispered among themselves. “Where is your protector today?” Red Wolf jeered. Only the wind replied. Emboldened, his men pressed at his back. The dwellers trailed them, a disordered gaggle, half frightened, half sullen.
A little farther on, the Cloud People found their home. The gulch broadened and a bluff jutted into the river above high-water mark. From the brush-grown slope behind trickled a spring—surely fresh, for the stream was too salt to drink. Three tiny shelters huddled close together. For each, their makers had piled rocks in a circle about as high as a short man’s shoulders, leaving a gap for entry, and rudely chinked them. Deadwood poles laid across the tops held slabs of peat for roofs. Sticks, lashed into bundles with gut, formed windbreaks to lean across the entrances. A banked fire, doubtless always kept burning, glowed red in the gloom of one den. Nearby was a rubbish midden, around which flies buzzed in swarthy clouds.
“Faugh, the stink!” Broken Blade snorted. “And a rabbit digs a better burrow than this.” The sod huts his people would make against winter, until someday they could build real houses, would have more room and would be kept clean. Meanwhile, their leather tents were both snug and airy.
“See what is inside,” Red Wolf ordered. “Snowstrider, stand guard by me.”
The Tulat were plainly unhappy at having their places ransacked, though only Aryuk and the oldest son dared do so much as glower. The searchers found an abundance of meat and fish, dried or smoked, as well as fine pelts and birdskins. “They are clever trappers, at least,” Red Wolf laughed. “Tulat, we will take hospitality of you.”
His men brought out what they wanted and ate well. Presently Aryuk joined them, squatting on his haunches where they sat cross-legged. He gnawed a bit of salmon and often smiled, ingratiatingly.
Afterward Red Wolf’s band explored the neighborhood above the riverbed. Their eye for tracks led them to a spot some distance off, at a brook. A patch of bare, packed soil showed that something round like a shelter, but far larger, had lately rested there. What was it? Who had made it, and why? Who had removed it, and how? From one another they hid the creeping in their flesh.
Red Wolf overcame his uneasiness first. “I think this was where the witch-woman stayed,” he told them, “but she has left. Did she fear us or our help-spirits?”