Worlds That Weren't

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.