Worlds That Weren't

The bear in his strength

Robre-Robre sunna Jowan, gift-named the Hunter, of the Bear Creek clan of the Cross Plains tribe-grunted as he strode southward past the peeled wands that marked the boundaries of the Dannulsford Fair. There were eleven new heads set on tall stakes in the scrubby pasture outside the stockade, fresh enough with the fall chill that the features could still be seen under the flies. One was of his own people, to judge from the yellow beard and long flaxen hair; that color wasn’t common even among the Seven Tribes and rare as hen’s teeth among outlanders. He thought he recognized Smeyth One-Eye, an outcast from the Panthers who lived a little north and west of here.

Finally caught him lifting the wrong man’s horses, he supposed with idle curiosity. One-Eye had needed shortening for some time, being a bully and a lazy, thieving one at that. Or maybe it was lifting the wrong woman’s skirts.

The other heads were in a clump away from One-Eye’s perch, and their features made him look more closely, past the raven damage-they weren’t as fresh as the outlaw’s. They were darker of skin than his folk, wiry-haired, massively scarred in zigzag ritual patterns that made them even more hideous in death than they had been in life, several with human finger-bones through the septums of their noses. The lips drawn back in the final rictus showed rotting teeth filed to points.

Man-eaters, Robre thought, and spat.

He waved greeting to the guards at the gate-Alligator clansmen, since Dannulsford was the seat of their Jefe. The Bear Creek families had no feud with the Alligators just at the moment, but he would have been safe within the wands in any case. A Fair was peace-holy; even outright foreigners could come here unmolested along the river or trade roads, when no great war was being waged.

Two of the Alligator warriors stood and leaned on their weapons, a spear and a Mehk musket, wearing hide helmets made from the head-skins of their totem and keeping an eye on the thronging traffic. They wouldn’t interfere unless fights broke out or someone blocked the muddy path, in which case they could call for backup from half a dozen others who crouched and threw dice on a deerhide. Those warriors kept their weapons close to hand, of course, and one had an Imperial breech-loading rifle that the Bear Creek man eyed with raw but well-concealed envy. The Alligators were rich from trade with the coastlands, and inclined to be toplofty.

One of the gamblers looked up and smiled, gap-toothed. “Heya, Hunter Robre,” he said in greeting.

“Heya, Jefe’s-man Tomul,” Robre said politely in return, stopping to chat. “A raid?” He jerked his thumb at the stakes with the ten heads. “Wild-men?”

The hunter stood aside from a string of pack mules that was followed by an oxcart heaped with pumpkins; axles squealed like dying pigs, and the shock-headed youth riding the vehicle popped his whip. The three horses that carried Robre’s pelts were well trained and followed him, bending their heads to crop at weeds when their master stopped.

“ Yi-ah, swamp-devils, right enough.” The Alligator chieftain’s guardsman nodded. “Burned a settler’s cabin east of Muskrat Creek-old Stinking Pehte.”

“Not Stinking Pehte the Friendless? Pehte sunna Dubal?”

“Him ’n’ none other; made an ax-land claim there ’n’ built a cabin two springs ago, him ’n’ his wife ’n’ younglings. Set to clearing land for corn. Jefe Carul saw the smoke ’n’ called out the neighborhood men in posse. Caught ’em this side of the Black River. Even got a prisoner back alive-a girl.”

Robre’s eyebrows went up. “Surprised they didn’t eat her,” he said.

“They’d just started in to skin her. Ate her kin first. ’S how we caught ’em-stopped for their fun.”

Stinking Pehte must have been an even bigger fool than everyone thought, to settle that far east, Robre thought, but it wouldn’t do to say it aloud. Men had to resent an insult to one of their own clan and totem, even if they agreed with it in their hearts.

“Where’s ol’ Grippem ’n’ Ayzbitah?” the guard asked, looking for the big hounds that usually followed the hunter.

Robre cleared his throat and spat into the mud of the road, turning his head to cover a sudden prickle in his eyes. “Got the dog-sickness, had to put ’em down,” he said.

The guards made sympathetic noises at the hard news. “Good hunting?” Tomul went on, waving toward the rawhide-covered bundles on the Bear Creek man’s pack saddles.

“Passable-just passable,” Robre replied, with mournful untruth. He pushed back his broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat to scratch meditatively at his raven-black hair. “Mostly last winter’s cure, the second-rate stuff I held back in spring. Hope to do better this year.”

“Jefe Carul killed two cows for God-thanks at sunrise,” Tomul said; it was two hours past dawn now. “Probably some of the beef left if you’ve a hunger.”