Douglas Niles: The Messenger

“Five more seals?” Bruni’s broad face split into a disbelieving grin. “Praise to Moreen Seal-Slayer!”

“They’re all gutted-about a half a mile up the coast, behind a big flat rock,” Moreen said, staggering under the load of the one animal she had carried back with her. Exhausted, she dropped the cleaned carcass and collapsed to the ground, suddenly feeling weak in every limb, every muscle.

“Rest yourself-we’ll get the others,” Bruni said cheerfully. “I’ll carry two. C’mon Tildey, Garta, Little Mouse. Let’s go get dinner.” The big woman pushed herself to her feet. Accompanied by her three willing helpers, she started up the shore at quick pace. From her waist, hung the heavy stone hammer she had found in the rubble of the village after the ogre attack. Since that day Bruni was never seen without her favorite weapon close to reach.

“Did you really get six seals?” asked Feathertail, wide-eyed, as she came up to stare at the gutted animal.

Moreen nodded tiredly. “Would you like to learn how to skin it?”

A cluck of sound drew Moreen’s attention. Dinekki was hobbling toward her, shaking her head and making a tsk-tsk noise over and over.

“She has to learn sometime,” Moreen said, wondering what the elderly shaman wanted.

“Well, of course she does,” Dinekki agreed readily, “but there are plenty of us who can teach her that. Why, I myself used to know how to use a skinning knife, before my hands got all knotted up like a sun-dried cord.” She inspected her wrinkled and knobby fingers with a scowl.

“Can I learn how to skin the seal?” Feathertail asked tentatively.

“Didn’t I just say you could?” snapped Dinekki, though an affectionate light in her eye softened the rebuke. “Hilgrid, you have a sharp knife, don’t you?”

Hilgrid, who was stretching out a pelt from the seal Moreen had killed yesterday, smiled and nodded. “Just a minute, Feather. I’ll show you how to do it. You know, if Moreen keeps hunting with so much success, I’m going to need to teach someone how to preserve these pelts also.”

“You,” Dinekki said, glaring down at Moreen, who wanted only to close her eyes and loll on the soft tundra for the last hour of daylight. “You must come with me.”

Knowing better than to argue, the huntress pushed herself to her feet and followed the shaman up a gentle slope, toward the small niche in a cliff wall, where the Arktos had collected the few meager belongings they had brought with them away from ravaged Bayguard.

Moreen sighed as she entered the scant shelter beneath the overhanging rock. She saw a pile of straight sticks off to the side, next to a stack of sealskin pelts, the few that had been overlooked by the ogre raiders. There were some skins full of fresh water, a couple of clay pots containing whale oil, a pile of ivory harpoon and spearheads that the survivors had scavenged from the broken weapons left behind by the attackers.

Just outside the shelter, three sealskins were drying on racks, pelts that had been cleaned and mounted by Hilgrid from animals that Moreen had stalked during the past two weeks. During that time, ever since the tribe had abandoned their ancestral home and moved to this rocky enclave ten miles up the coast, they had managed to increase their reserve of food supplies. Moreen’s hunting prowess, Tildey’s skill with the bow, and the wealth of bounty from the sea and beach, had yielded perhaps twice as much provender as the tribe needed for the short term, but it was still not enough for the long, hard winter ahead.

“How are we ever going to last the winter!” Moreen declared, trying unsuccessfully to keep the despair out of her voice.

“There are some who say we should go back to Bayguard, try and make shelter from the ruins of our houses,” Dinekki said, neutrally. “Or go live in the Hiding Hole.”

Moreen’s face flushed, and she shook her head violently. Her mind burned with the memory of her mother, staked to the ground by an ogre spear, and of her father whimpering and thrashing and dying.

“That place is cursed forever!” she snapped. “The ghosts of our ancestors will stalk the winter night there!”

Dinekki nodded, still noncommittal. “Truly, the ogres left us so little that I can see no benefit to returning there, even if the ghosts choose to leave us alone.”

Moreen turned to look outward, her gaze falling across the Arktos who were gathered across the flowered hillside below. The blue water of the gulf sparkled beyond. Here and there young children played, while several women stood along the banks of a nearby creek, fishing spears raised. A few of the elders scoured the beach, collecting such clams and crabs as they could, protein-rich morsels that would add variety and nourishment to the tribe’s diet.

“We’re finding enough to eat, day by day,” she said quietly. “Now we’ll have some extra seal-meat-some to smoke and preserve for winter. But I would have to kill six seals every day to store up enough food for the winter, even if we manage to find shelter from the Sturmfrost. You and I both know what our chances are like!”

“Yes, we know these things, and other things as well,” replied the shaman. “We know that it was a very good thing that Redfist Bayguard taught his daughter how to hunt. We know that we were fortunate that you were up on the hill, that you saw the ogre ship in time to for many of us to reach the Hiding Hole-”

“Time for what?” demanded Moreen. “So that we can starve and freeze in the cold season, instead of perishing swiftly under ogre spears?” She saw the old woman stiffen and she immediately regretted her harsh tone. “I’m sorry, Grandmother,” she said meekly. “I do not rebuke you, I rebuke myself.”

“A good thing that is,” clucked Dinekki, “else I should be tempted to rebuke you back, and I am getting too old for such foolish exertion.”

“You asked me to come up here. What did you want?” Moreen said, feeling weariness wash over her again.

“Fill this bowl with water, clean water,” Dinekki said, gesturing toward one of the ceramic vessels, “and bring it over to me.”

By the time Moreen had followed the shaman’s instructions, Dinekki had started a small fire, using nothing but rocks for fuel. Her fire-magic was a gift of the goddess Chislev, Moreen knew, and it was a power that the tribe relied on heavily in their unforested land, where wood was precious and rare.

The old woman sat cross-legged before her blaze, her eyes closed, her toothless gums mumbling some kind of chant that seemed more like half-chewing and half-grunting. Moreen sat down on the other side of the fire, holding the water bowl patiently, knowing enough not to interrupt Dinekki’s concentration.

“What is your question?” Dinekki asked abruptly, without opening her eyes.

“My question?” Moreen was caught off guard. “I have lots of questions!”

“What is your question ?” repeated the shaman, holding out her hands, swaying her head back and forth while she continued chewing and grunting.

Moreen handed the bowl across the fire, letting the flames warm her hands for a moment, and thought carefully before she replied.

“How can we make ourselves safe before the advent of the Sturmfrost?”

Instantly Dinekki inverted the bowl, sending the water cascading across the fire to spatter and sizzle on the rocks. A cloud of steam billowed up, moist warmth enveloping the two women, wetting Moreen’s skin and suddenly obscuring her vision.

“Look!” urged the shaman. “Look into the vapor. Tell me what you see!”

Moreen wanted to cry out, to object that all she could see was a cloud of stinging steam, but then her eyes discerned vague shapes, white tufts of vapor bending and curling unnaturally. The steam flowed away, formed a column trailing up the coast. “It’s heading north, I see,” she said. She saw a wrinkled face glaring at her from inside the mist, brutish eyes perched above a broad snout and two long, curling tusks. “I see a thanoi,” she added quickly.