She gazed at the garb. The most wonderful thing about it was the colour. It was the pink of a sunrise sky or a cliff-bird's breast feathers, and patterned with silver leaves. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Not even the most favoured women of the most successful hunters had ever had anything so glorious to wear.
The man stirred in his sleep and the old woman hastily withdrew to crouch beside her bundle, feigning sleep. She didn't hear him wake, so she opened her eyes again and studied him. His skin was a familiar hue but he had hair as brown as a tree scurrier's, even if it curled as tightly as her own. She recalled the reddish-brown tint that sometimes appeared in children's hair when the end of a long dry season left them with swollen bellies and shrunken limbs, their cheeks hollowed by hunger. But like the girl, this man was straight-limbed and well fed and showed no sign of having ever gone hungry.
The old woman looked at the man's long knives, hidden in their hide casings. Whatever were they made of, that could be crafted into so long and narrow a blade? A niomentary pang surprised her. The old man would have been fascinated by these people and their strange knives.
As the strangers slept on, the old woman shifted to sit
cross-legged and considered the other two newcomers. She had never seen anyone like either of them.
The older one, with the golden hair and light-brown skin, was fast asleep in a niche, knees drawn up and head uncomfortably canted to rest on one shoulder. The face was softened in sleep and lacked any hint of a beard, so the old woman concluded this one was most probably a woman, despite her lack of curves at breast or thigh.
She clenched her hand tight against the desire to creep over and touch the golden stranger's hair. It was as straight as the dark-skinned girl's but cut shorter still. Would it feel like the pelt of some animal or like the sun-dried grass it so closely resembled? What lay beneath the stranger's dusty garb? The old woman could see the brown skin end and creamy pallor begin where the fibrous stuff the stranger wore had slipped awry around her neck. Was she parti-coloured like some lizard? Did she have stripes or patterns beneath her strange garments?
The other man — and he plainly was a man, judging by the stubble shadowing his jaw - was as much of a puzzle as the golden stranger. His hair was the brown of leaves at the end of the dry season, his skin a sandy colour with an underlying reddish cast on his nose and forehead. Had he come from the same place as the golden stranger? Where could that be?
They were evidently both painted people with all the power that implied. The old woman watched them sleep on. There was no point in being afraid of them now. They could have killed her last night if they had chosen to. They could just have left her on the other side of the river to take her chances between the lizards and the followers of that painted man with the horned skull. Instead, they had helped her cross over the river. They had even invited her to share the cave's shelter instead of killing her there and then for profaning it. Why had they done that? Were
they keeping her to make an offering of her? Much good it would do them. There wasn't enough flesh on her bones to impress a beast, not if she was offered up alone.
She debated whether or not she should creep away while they were all still asleep. But if she ran away, she still risked being captured by the followers of the painted man with the horned skull. Or by those other people she had seen last night. The skull wearer evidently didn't rule everyone in this valley. No, she concluded, leaving was just too dangerous a prospect.
On the other hand, if she stayed, just possibly, these painted strangers might protect her, for a little while at least. She had made herself useful to them, even if it was only by bringing them firewood. Everyone knew that painted men showed most consideration to those who made themselves useful or held precious knowledge. Besides, now they knew her, they would find her if she ran away. Everyone knew there was no escaping a painted man's power.
She frowned as she considered a new puzzle. She had found this cave easily enough, even in the dark. The moonlight had shone on the scores cut into the trees and on the arrangements of stones that warned of its presence. Since her life was forfeit to whoever caught her anyway, and she had hidden in other painted caves on her wanderings without her skin catching fire to melt the flesh from her bones, she had been ready to risk it again, to escape a night so full of dread.
Yet all the while the strangers had been huddling like addled children in some terrible lizard's scrape, even after they had attacked the skull wearer, after they had humiliated him in front of his followers and the local people. They hadn't shown themselves to claim their victory, nor asserted their authority over this place and any who dwelt there. They hadn't killed the skull wearer nor yet
challenged him to yield to their greater power and serve them instead. They had just run away and hadn't even been able to find this sanctuary for their kind.
But then, wherever they had come from must be further away than she could imagine. They didn't understand her words and she certainly could make no sense of their tongue. Their talk sounded like the evening birds chattering back and forth in the depths of the green forest.
The old woman rubbed a thoughtful hand around the back of her neck. Why had she returned and shown them the way to the cave? Perhaps they wouldn't have bothered pursuing her if she had just disappeared into the night. But there had been so many terrors out there in the darkness. Well, the old man had always told her there was no point in regrets. They had helped her cross the river and that meant she should help them, if she could. Because the gratitude of a painted man had a value beyond reckoning in an ordinary life, never mind when you were caught in an ominous valley where a river separated two painted men's territories.
Had they come to drive out both painted men and seize the valley for themselves? There was no doubt that these strangers were painted people. She had seen them kindle coloured light and set tree roots and the ground itself against the skull wearer. The reddish-skinned man had summoned flame out of the empty air to light the firewood. They had the power even if they wore none of the usual adornments to declare it. Unless that was what the reddish stranger's peculiar shining leg was. The old woman looked at that for a while, utterly mystified.
Some while later, she looked back at the other man, the dark-skinned one with the brilliant knives. She'd seen no sign of him using a painted man's power. Or the girl in the soft pink garb. Yet the golden stranger and the reddish one both followed this man's lead. Well, he did
hold the most lethal weapons she had ever seen. How many men had he killed or beaten into bloody submission in their unknown homeland? How many would a warrior have to kill to establish such authority over two painted
ones?
Reluctant to pursue that notion, the old woman looked at the black-haired girl. She had kept close to the tall man as he had led them all the long way through the spine thickets and down to the grassy plain. Even in sleep they were close together. The girl must be his woman, she concluded. Not the golden stranger, though. There was no hint of such closeness in the way the two of them had dealt with each other. Or in the way the golden stranger and tiie reddish one had behaved. They weren't mated, she was sure of that.
Where was their blue raft? This new question struck her with the force of a blow. She hadn't expected to see them again after they had floated away ahead of her up the coast. She had only been concerned with escaping the followers she expected would come after them. But there had been no sign of followers, and now there was no sign of the blue raft. They had been walking through the spine thickets when she had seen them in the distance.