Jo Clayton - Moongather

Her feet made soft slipping sounds over the pole floor as she walked back and forth, back and forth, hearing the noises of the stirring family on the sleeping platform on the other side of the flimsy wall. The wide low bed behind her was the Intii’s own. He’d moved his woman and himself out to join the immediate family who slept on pallets rolled out on a wide platform jutting out over the single large room of the great hall. Other dependents slept below, anywhere they could find space to spread their bedding. Though she was grateful enough for the privacy she suspected it wasn’t so much a matter of courtesy as it was a protecting of the people from the corrupting presence of an outsider. She stretched again, did a few quick bends and twists, then started dressing.

The sky was reddening in the east when she stepped into the street but the village was still dark and quiet, though most of the halls had lines of yellow light around doors and shutters. As she moved slowly along past the big square buildings built of white chalk and red sandstone, she caught glimpses of fisher vassals milking the varcam and feeding other stock, of the sheds and pens and corrals tucked in between the halls and the wall. She heard a grunt just behind her and wheeled to see a posser amble past her, cross the street and lean into a housewall, rasping its stiff bristles against the soft white stone. More of the squat shadows loomed up beside her and crunched past. Apparently the fishers turned their posserim loose to forage outside the walls where they rooted among the grasses for tubers and dug small rodents out of their nests.

She moved slowly toward the open gate; after last night’s violence the peace and the simplicity of the dawn was almost disconcerting. Even the sky with its faded stars and the rags of last night’s storm was tranquil. Then she saw the dark heads thrusting out the tower windows, turned toward the mountains. Life was going on as usual, but the Intii was taking no chances on a sneak attack.

Torches lit the dark forms of men working about the boats, turning them upright; sliding them into the water, stepping the masts. When they spoke, which they did seldom, their voices echoed hollowly over the water. Their shadows jerked and wavered over the grass and mud.

Serroi leaned against a massive gatepost sunk halfway into a groove in the chalk wall while more posserim trotted past her. She watched the busy men getting ready to ride the retreating tide out to sea and felt a restlessness that had little to do with her nervous apprehension about returning to Oras. She fidgeted a while longer then followed the posserim along the wall, walking out onto the grassland. The sun was showing layer on layer of transparent color as it came from behind the jagged peaks of the Earth’s Teeth. The forests carpeting the lower hills began to emerge from the smoky shadow still clinging to the earth.

“You’ll be crossing the mountains?”

The voice behind her startled her; she wheeled. The Intii had left the laboring men and come up so quietly behind her she hadn’t heard a whisper of sound. She looked into the wrinkled mask. “Yes.” The word trailed out as she tried to read him and determine how much she should say. It seemed safer to lie; no matter how little contact the scattered fisher villages had with outsiders and each other, accidents still happened. A hundred eyes-a thousand-might be looking for her, searching every shadow for her traces. In an odd way I’m safest going back to the city. That’s the last place they’d look for me. “I’ll be taking the Highroad south to the Biserica,” she said.

The Intii looked from the village walls to the dark smudges on the grass where the dead raiders lay still unburied. “The Kapperim will be waiting for you.” He pointed at the trees. “You won’t see them. One or two at a time, they’ll be waiting for you. Never forget an injury, those animals.” His mouth stretched into a slight smile as he reached out and touched the tip of the bowstave. “Do you ever miss with this, little meie?”

“Not often.” She watched the boats moving into the middle of the tappata. The men left behind were walking silently back toward the waking village. On the bank she could see at least half the boats still perched high above the water. “You expect the Kapperim to come back?”

He jabbed a long bony thumb at the sprawled bodies. “That bunch, they won’t be back but others’re sure to come behind them. Already had half a dozen raids hit us.” He tugged at a beard plait. “I tell you this, meie, I bear you no ill will, but better you go quick, you hear? My woman is fixing up the things you asked for. No need you going back in there.” He nodded at the village. “Fetch your macai.” He grinned suddenly and as suddenly sobered. “Lots of them to choose from.” Without more words he turned and strode off toward the gate.

A macai honked mournfully, then strolled past her chewing at a succulent louffa, the long slim leaves dangling from the mouth jerking rhythmically and gradually shortening. Chuckling now and then, Serroi moved through the grazing macai, looking them over with an eye trained by Tayyan until she found one that pleased her.

She edged cautiously toward it, using her eye-spot to send out waves of reassurance. It watched her warily but didn’t move off, only shied a little when she rested her hand on its skinny neck. She scratched at the slick warty hide, then rested her forehead against the macai’s shoulder, the sharp dusty smell of the beast triggering memory…

A long skinny blonde with scraped knees, a tear in her sleeve, a small bandage on her nose, Tayyan strolled into the stable, looking the macain over, her inspection accompanied by an assortment of sniffs, mostly scornful. Serroi was stroking the neck of a new hatched macai, pleased by skin striped a brilliant amber and umber and softer than new spring grass. Tayyan knelt beside her, hard blue eyes softening. She held out her scruffy hand for the colt to sniff, then settled herself beside Serroi. After a moment she edged her hand close enough to touch the quivering nose, stroked it gently until the little macai honked its treble pleasure. More moments passed in companionable silence, then Serroi and Tayyan began talking.

Tayyan’s father was mad about macai racing and shared that obsession with his daughter. She rode almost before she could walk, refused to sit meekly with the women and learn the maidenly arts her aunts struggled to teach her, escaped to the stables at every opportunity where she was treated more like a son than a daughter. But all this ended on the day they brought her father home belly down over a macai’s back, his neck broken.

Her oldest uncle moved in, a rigid man, dull and lumpish, jealous of his popular older brother, seeing slights in nearly every word. He shut her in the women’s rooms, demanded that she learn a woman’s tricks, had her beaten, beat her himself, when she defied him or sneaked away to the stables when life became too much for her. When she reached her twelfth year, her uncle betrothed her to a friend of his, thinking to rid himself of her. And so he did, though not the way he intended. She crept out one night, saddled a macai and took off for the Biserica.

Serroi sighed, rubbed the back of her hand across her nose. Humming a ragged tune, she stroked her fingers along the macai’s neck, then scratched at the folds of skin under its jaw. The beast nudged her, then butted its head against her shoulder, honking plaintively, begging for more scratching. With a shaky laugh, she complied. Then she pushed away, sighing, and swung up into the saddle.

The macai hopped about a little, but calmed immediately as she kept a firm hand on the reins and sent him toward the village. With every step she was more pleased than before with her choice. A smooth rolling gate. The saddle and halter well-crafted. Made to the measure of the small-hipped Kapperim, the saddle with its high front ledge and trapezoidal back fit her well enough. The stirrups were a little long, but that could be easily fixed. Saddlebags, lumpy now with the dead raider’s possessions, big enough to hold her own supplies. Ten days, she thought. Only ten days to Moongather. Ten days to get across the mountains and back to Oras.