Across the table, a polite lack of expression said as plainly as words: He was about as disliked as a man can be and not be outlawed. Or just plain have his gizzard cut out.
More than one had tried, too, but Stinking Pehte had been a good man of his hands, and it had always gone the other way. All fair fights and within the letter of the law, but killing within the clan didn’t make you any better liked either. One or two was to be expected, in a hot-blooded man, but public opinion thought half a dozen excessive; the clan needed those hands and blades.
“-but he was a good farmer, ’n’ no one ever called him lazy. We got our crop in before we were hit. Not much, but we sold most here in Dannulsford. Deer hides ’n’ muskrat, too, ’n’ ginseng, and potash from the fields we were clearing, ’n’ soap ’n’ homespun me ’n’ my ma ’n’ sisters made. The posse got back most of our cabin goods ’n’ tools, ’n’ our stock; then there’s the land, that’s worth something.”
Not as a home-place; too ill-omened for that, and too exposed, as her family’s fate proved. But someone would be glad to have the grazing, plus there was good oak-wood for swine fodder, and the Jefe would see that they paid her a fair share. That would probably amount to enough ham, bacon, and cow to put her meat on the table half the year.
“Glad to hear you’re not left poor,” Robre said.
“What it means is I can pay you,” she said, plunging in. This time his eyes widened, as well.
“Pay me for what, missie Sonjuh?” he said.
She reached into the pouch that hung at her hip, supported by a thong over the shoulder; it was the sort a hunter wore, to carry tallow and spare bowstrings and a twist of salt, pipe or chaw of tobacco and a whetstone and suchlike oddments. What she pulled out of it was a scalp. The hair was loose black curls, coarser and more wiry than you were likely to find on a man of the Seven Tribes.
Robre whistled silently. Taking scalps was an old-timey, backwoods habit; Kumanch and Cherokee still did it, but few of their own folk except some of the very wildest. These days you were supposed to just kill evildoers or enemies, putting their heads up on a pole if they deserved it. And for a woman…
“I expect that’s not some coast-man out of luck,” he said.
“Swamp-devil,” she said flatly. “Not no woman nor child, neither. That was a full-grown fighting man. Slasher ’n’ I took him, bushwhacked him.”
“Well…good,” Robre said, with palpable uneasiness, blinking at the tattered bit of scalp-leather and hair. “One less swamp-devil is always good.”
“That’s what I want to hire you for,” Sonjuh went on in a rush. “I can’t…I swore ’fore God on my father’s blood I’d get ten for my ma, ’n’ ten for each of my sisters. I can’t do it alone.”
“Jeroo!” Robre exclaimed, and poured himself another whiskey. “Missie, that’s unlucky, making that sort of promise ’fore the Lord o’ Sky! Forty scalps!”
“Or that I’d die trying,” she said grimly. “I need a good man to help. All the goods I’ve got is yours, if you’ll help me. Jeroo! Everyone says you’re the best.”
“Missie…” There was an irritating gentleness in his tone. “A feud, that’s a matter for a dead man’s clansmen to take up. It wouldn’t be right or fitting for me to interfere.”
Her hand slammed the table, enough to make jug and bottle and cup rattle, despite the thick weight of wood. “The gutless hijos won’t call for a war party! They say the ten heads they took were enough for honor! Well, they aren’t! I can hear my folks’ spirits callin’ in the dark, every night, callin’ for blood-wind to blow them to the After Place.”
Some of those nearby exclaimed in horror at those words; many made signs, and two abruptly got up and left. You didn’t talk openly of ghosts and night-haunts, not where the newly dead were concerned. Naming things called them. A ripple of whispers spread throughout the beer shop, and bearded faces turned their way.
“It’s all because nobody liked my pa, ’n’ because they’re all cowards!” Her voice had risen to a shout, falling into the sudden silence.
“That’s a matter for your Jefe, missie,” Robre said. The soothing, humor-the-mad-girl tone made the blood pound in her ears. “’N’ the gathering of your clan’s menfolk.”
“I came to offer you two Mehk silver coins each, if you’ll come with me ’n’ help me,” she said, in a tone as businesslike as she could manage. “’N’ you can show these gutless, clanless bastards that a girl ’n’ an out-clan man can do what they can’t.”
“Sorry,” he said; the calm finality shocked her more than anger would have. “Not interested.”
“Then damn you to the freezing floor of hell!” she screamed, snatching up his mug and dashing the thick beer into his face. “Looks like I’m the only one in this room with any balls!”
That made him angry; he was up with a roar, cocking a fist-then freezing, caught between the insult and the impossibility of striking a freewoman of the Seven Tribes, and a maiden of another clan at that.
Shaking, Sonjuh turned on her heel, glad that the lanterns probably weren’t bright enough to show the tears that filled her eyes. She stalked out through the shocked hush, head down and fists clenched, not conscious of the two weird foreigners who blocked the door until she was upon them. One twisted aside with a cat’s gracefulness; the other stood and she bounced off him as she would off an old hickory post; then he stepped aside at the other’s word.
Sonjuh plunged past them into the night and ran like a deer, weeping silently, with Slasher whining as he loped at her heel.
“I wonder what that was in aid of?” Eric King murmured to himself, raising a polite finger to his brow as the room stared at him and Ranjit Singh, then walking on as the crowded, primitive little tavern went back to its usual raucous buzz-although he suspected that whatever had just happened was the main subject of conversation.
Even in the barbarian hinterlands, he didn’t think a girl that pretty dumped a pint of beer over a man’s head and stalked out as if she were going to walk right over anyone in her way, not just every night. In a way, the sensation she’d caused was welcome; the two Imperial soldiers probably attracted less curiosity than they normally would. Eric waited courteously while the man he’d come to see mopped his face vigorously with a towel brought by a serving-girl, looking around as he did. This wasn’t much worse than the dives he’d pulled soldiers overstaying their leave out of in many a garrison town; the log walls were hung with brightly colored wool rugs, and the kerosene lanterns were surprisingly sophisticated-obviously native-made, but as good as any Imperial factories turned out. He’d have expected tallow dips, or torches.
“Mr. Robre sunna Jowan?” he asked, when the man was presentable again. “I’m Lt. Eric King. This is my daffadar…Jefe’s-man…Ranjit Singh.”
“Robre Hunter, that’s me,” the native replied, rising and offering his hand. “Heya, King, Ranjeet.”
The hand that met his was big, and calloused as heavily as his own. They were within an inch or so of each other in height and of an age, but Eric judged the other man had about twenty or thirty pounds on him, none of it blubber. A slight smile creased a face that was handsome in a massive way, and the two young men silently squeezed until muscle stood out on their corded forearms. The native’s blue eyes went a little wider as he felt the power in the Imperial’s sword-hand, and they released each other with a wary nod of mutual respect, not to mention mutual shakings and flexings of their right hands. Eric read other subtle signs-the white lines of scars on hands and dark-tanned face, the way the local moved and held himself-and decided that native or not, this was a man you’d be careful of. And no fool, either; he was probably coming to the same conclusion.
“Dannul! Food for my guests from the Empire!” Robre bellowed. “And beer, and whiskey!”