Kim Robinson - Shaman

The eight eight festival site was south of an area that Pippiloette called Five Rivers, where several creeks met the Lir. The northers, Pippi told Loon as they hustled out of the festival camp, would almost certainly head up the valley of the Maya, a tributary of the Lir that ascended a gentle straight valley that trended north, often so much so that its river pointed right at the Spindle Star. At the head of the Maya there was an easy broad pass, and then a drop to a broad flat valley that sloped from east to west, where its river emptied into the great salt sea. On the northern side of this broad valley, Pippi said, was the big ice wall that covered everything to the north and in effect ended the world in that direction, just as the great salt sea ended it on its western side. The northers lived at this meeting of ice and land and the great salt sea.

—Does anything else live up there? What do they eat?

—The usual people. Salmon and caribou, geese and ducks, seals on the winter sea ice. Actually they eat very well. It’s just that it’s always cold.

—I couldn’t stand it.

—Don’t say that, Pippiloette said.—Never say aloud what you don’t want, didn’t your people teach you that one?

Loon didn’t reply. He hiked on the traveler’s swift heels, still feeling sick. His guts were knotting so badly they bent him as he walked. He wanted to run, but Pippi set the pace at a walk. A fast walk, it was true; Loon gritted his teeth and followed his guide, watching the ground closely in the predawn light of the steppe. It felt like it would have been easier to run.

Pippiloette breathed hard through his teeth as he walked, making a whistling sound that was like a little song, the song of himself walking at speed. A traveler provided himself with his own company, and Loon had seen a number of different ways they did that; some of them talked all the time, commenting on things no one from Wolf pack would have mentioned aloud; others sang, others beat their walking sticks together in between stabs into the earth. Luckily Pippi was not like any of those, he only had his little whistling, and he was proving to be fast, indeed very fast: Loon had to focus to match his pace.

They followed a riverside path for a long time, then a big tributary forced their trail upstream, to a bend in the tributary, and a ridge that bordered the Maya river valley on its west side. Up there a typical ridge trail broadened, and in the dawn light it was easy to hurry.

But now they had to be careful; the ridge was bare in the usual way, and in the gray they could see up it for a long way; meaning anyone up there could see down. It was crucial not to be spotted. And given that these people had stolen a woman, it was also possible they might leave behind some men to slow down any pursuit that might appear. A quick little ambush and no one would be following them anymore. So as the sky lightened, leaving only the morning star and a few others to prick the gray dome, they got off the ridge and hiked the border of trees and rocks on the Maya side of the ridge. This was hard ground to traverse fast, but they could slip between the little spruces and birches, and stay out of the willow tangles in the streambeds, and check the skyline of the ridge ahead as they proceeded upstream. It was safer, but slower, and so they pushed when they were concealed, to make up time.

They went very hard all that day, stopping only twice to sit and eat some food from their packs, and drink deeply from two of the little tributaries they crossed on fallen logs. Pippi ate fast. His long loping stride did not seem fast at any given moment, but covered ground with surprising speed. Over the course of the day Loon had seen that he had his own ways, cutting across the land in lines Loon would not have seen, but which revealed themselves when right under his feet to be slight trails.

—I’m a straightwalker, Pippi said when Loon asked about the trails.—I mean, I run a nice clean route. I don’t go straight at the land if it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t like extravagance. Ups and downs are usually not bad enough to justify a divagation. Anyway I look for the best way. I’m always looking to see if there’s a better way than the one I’ve used before, if I’m where I’ve gone before. And if I’m in new land, well, it’s the best thing there is, finding a good way.

—Do you remember everywhere you’ve ever been?

—Oh yes. Of course.

—And have you been this way before?

—Oh yes. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to go this fast. We’d have to track for sign. But as it is, I know where they’re going. And I’ve seen some signs that they’ve been by, and not so long ago. So we can catch up to them, hopefully. It would be ever so much better for your chances if you were to catch up to them when they’re on the move rather than in their encampment.

—Do they do this kind of thing often, then?

Pippi shrugged.—They fight the other northers from time to time. And there’s some wife stealing. As you have seen. Yes, there’s been bad blood up there for a while between some of those packs. Some say the great ice wall scares them and makes them angry, others that they get too cold to think straight. But they act hot, so I don’t know. They’re like otters.

—Ah, Loon said, feeling a shiver of fear. The indomitable otter, the murderous otter.—It seems strange to me.

Pippi looked over his shoulder at Loon, then turned and walked on.

—You come from a good pack. A good pack in a good pays. All the packs in the south are very friendly. But in some pays it’s not that way. The northers are tough. They fight for their lives up there.

—But why?

—What do you mean? There is no why. They like it. They like to fight, because the ones who survive think it’s not so bad. It gets them things, and up there maybe that matters.

Loon sighed, and tried to put the matter of the northers out of his mind. For the moment the task was to follow Pippi close and never slow the traveler down. Be his shadow, as one said when on the hunt. They would see what the situation was with Elga when they caught up to them. But thinking of her was even worse than thinking about these northern otter people. He felt his gut shrinking, and walked like a starved wolf, backbone hunched gingerly over its taut pain. He tried to watch the ground under Pippi’s feet and walk on it neatly.

Here in this long valley the soil was thin. In many places big broken flats of bare rock were furred in their cracks and low points by moss and ground-hugging willows. The rocks were covered with lichen that looked like splashes of paint. In the pass at the head of the Maya, a pale green lichen grew in big circles and then died from the inside out, clearing the rock of other lichens and leaving behind circles of clean pink stone. Briefly Loon glimpsed these things and then fell back into his fear.

He and Pippi crouched behind boulders among the pink and green splotches, inspecting the long prospect to the north. They saw nothing, and during the course of the rest of the day descended a ridge into the big flat valley running west. Pippi wanted to cross this valley’s river at a ford he knew, which was a bit to the west, he said. He headed that way.

Near sunset Pippi stopped.—Let’s eat, then see if we can go on by moonlight. They won’t do that, so we might catch them.

He pulled his food bag out of his backsack and rooted in it. He had a gooseskin bag of marmot fat in there, and offered it to Loon, who fingered a little of the liquid fat into his mouth. Ordinarily marmot fat was so rich that no one ate it by itself; if you did it would make you sick. Usually it was heated into a broth, and morsels of meat dipped into it. Out on the hunt, however, it could be downed in little sips, and after a little wave of nausea passed through one, it would expand in the gut and give a pulse of energy after. Little sips, fist after fist; it was the main hunting food in certain packs, and Pippi must have come from one of those.