“We have meat,” Alturk said. “Enough for a month’s travel at least.”
“Not on ice,” the shaman insisted. “Need more and more.”
“From where?” Alturk gestured at the barren country around them. “There’s nothing to hunt here.”
Wise Bear stared at him for a moment then gave one of his cackling laughs, pointing towards the shoreline. “Sea brings gifts, Painted Man.”
? ? ?
Wise Bear disappeared with Iron Claw for several hours before returning to lead them to a cliff overlooking the bay where the beasts made their home. There were perhaps forty of them crowding the rocky shore, plump, fur-covered bodies flopping around as they squabbled and barked at each other, impressive tusks bared. “What are they?” Lorkan asked, his voice kept to a whisper although they were a considerable distance from the creatures.
“Fur seals,” Dahrena replied. “We have them on the northern shores of the Reaches, though I don’t recall seeing any so big.”
“Big,” Wise Bear agreed with a happy nod. “Big meat to take on ice.”
“It’ll spoil,” Alturk stated. “And we have not the salt to preserve so much.”
Wise Bear replied with a baffled frown and it took some time for Vaelin to translate the meaning. “Spoil, hah. Meat not spoil on ice. Too cold. Just smoke over fire. Keep many many days.” He beckoned to Kiral and started for a narrow track leading to the shore. “We hunt, you build fires.”
They toiled on the shoreline for the best part of another week, building fires and butchering the unfortunate seals at Wise Bear’s instruction. He skinned the first victim with an unconscious and rapid skill, harvesting a complete hide with seemingly only a few strokes of his knife, a feat none of them managed to match despite continued labour. The meat was cut into strips and hung over the fires to smoke whilst the hides were set aside to be cured, the shaman making it clear they would be needed later, his eyes constantly returning to the white line on the horizon.
“Have we made the journey too late?” Vaelin asked him on the last night. They sat together on a rocky outcrop near the shingle beach where the bloody work had been done, Iron Claw happily munching on a pile of entrails nearby.
“Still time.” Wise Bear raised a hand, the thumb and forefinger forming a narrow gap. “Small time.” He glanced over his shoulder at the camp where a crowd of Sentar were listening as Kiral translated Lorkan’s somewhat ribald version of the Woodsman’s Daughter, a cautionary tale of unrequited love involving murder and adultery, though not usually in such quantity or detail.
“Not all make the islands,” Wise Bear went on. “Way of things on the ice. Always takes some, even Bear People.”
“The islands?” Vaelin asked.
“Where we go. Other side of ice. Home of Bear People once.”
“I thought your people lived on the ice?”
Wise Bear shook his head, eyes moving to the ice once more. It seemed to glow, lit by a pale green luminescence in the night sky the Lonak called Grishak’s Breath in honour of their wind god. “Only small times,” Wise Bear said. “Our travel to your land the most time ever on ice for Bear People.”
Vaelin recalled the emaciated, hollow-eyed folk clustered at Steel Water Creek, a nation raised to survive the harshest climes and yet still brought to their knees by the ice. “I would not ask this of any soul,” he said, “if I didn’t know in my heart it must be done.”
CHAPTER SIX
Lyrna
“Are there no words I can speak to dissuade you from this course?”
They had requested the audience early that morning and stood before her now in the throne room, Hera Drakil’s hawk face betraying no emotion whilst Sanesh Poltar at least managed a regretful grimace. “War is won,” he said with a shrug. “The elk herds grow with no one to hunt them, eat all the grass. We are needed on the plains.”
Lyrna turned to the Seordah war chief, speaking in her barely adequate Seordah. “And you, forest brother?”
“We heeded the wolf’s call,” he replied. “Now it fades. The forest calls us home.”
The finest light infantry and cavalry in the world, Vaelin had called them, not assets to be easily lost. “Our enemies will return if we cannot defeat them,” she told them. “And when they do I may not be able to shield you from their savagery.”
“We fought for this land,” Hera Drakil insisted. “We are glad to have done so. The land across the great water is not ours to fight for.”