Worlds That Weren't Page 10

  “Are any available? The garrison commander in Galveston lent me a few men. Locally recruited there, but reliable.”

  And you should have asked for more, radiated from Ranjit Singh.

  Banerjii shook his head. “Oh, most definitely you must hire locally,” he said. “Coastal men would be of little use guiding and tracking here—” He gave a depreciatory smile. “—as useless as a Bengali in Kashmir. But the natives have some reliable people. They are savages, yes, indeed, but they are a clean people here, all the Seven Tribes and their clans. From the time of the Fall.”

  King nodded in turn; that was one of the fundamental distinctions in the modern world, between those whose ancestors had eaten men in the terrible years after the hammer from the skies struck, and those who hadn’t. The only more fundamental one was between those who still did, and the rest of humanity.

  “And they are surprisingly honest, I find, particularly to their oaths—oh, my, yes. But proud—very proud, for barbarians. There is one young man I have dealt with for some years, a hunter by trade, and—”

  With a gesture, he unrolled the tiger-skins. King caught his breath in a gasp.

  III: THE MAIDEN IN HER WRATH

  Sonjuh dawtra Pehte thrust her way into the beer shop through the swinging board doors, halting for a second to let her eyes adjust to the bright earth-oil lamps and push back her broad-brimmed hat. The dim street outside was lit only by a few pine-knots here and there.

  There were a few shocked gasps; a respectable girl didn’t walk into a man’s den like this unaccompanied. Some of the gasps were for her dress—she’d added buckskin leggings and boots, which made her maiden’s shift look more like a man’s hunting shirt, and so did the leather belt cinched about her waist, carrying a long bowie and short double-edged toothpicker dagger and tomahawk. A horseshoe-shaped blanket roll rode from left shoulder to right hip, in the manner of a hunter or traveler.

  One man sitting on the wall-bench, not an Alligator clansman and the worse for corn-liquor, misinterpreted and made a grab for her backside. That brought the big dog walking beside her into action; her sharp command saved the oaf’s hand, but Slasher still caught the forearm in his jaws hard enough to bring a yelp of pain. The stranger also started to reach for the short sword on his belt, until the jaws clamped tighter, tight enough to make him yell.

  “You wouldn’t have been trying to grab my ass uninvited, would you, stranger?” Sonjuh said sweetly. “’Cause if you were, after Slasher here takes your hand off, these clansmen of mine will just naturally have to take you to the Jefe for a whuppin’. ’Less they stomp you to death their own selves.”

  The man stopped the movement of right hand to hilt, looked around—a fair number of men were glaring at him now, distracted from their disapproval of Sonjuh—and decided to shake his head. A sensible man was very polite out of his own clan’s territory. If he wasn’t…well, that was how feuds started.

  “No offense, missie,” he wheezed.

  “Loose him,” Sonjuh commanded, and the dog did—reluctantly.

  The man picked up his gear and made for the door; several of the others sitting on stools and rough half-log benches called witticisms or haw-hawed as he went; Sonjuh ignored the whole business and walked on.

  The laughter or the raw whiskey he’d downed prompted the man to stick his head back around the timber door-frame and yell, “Suck my dick, you whore!”

  Sonjuh felt something wash from face down to thighs, a feeling like hot rum toddy on an empty stomach, but nastier. She pivoted, drew, and her right hand moved in a chopping blur.

  The tomahawk pinwheeled across the room to sink into the rough timber beside the door, a whirr of cloven air that ended in a solid chunk of steel in oak. The out-clan stranger gaped at his hand, still resting on the timber where the edge of the throwing-ax had taken a coin-size divot off the end of the middle finger, about halfway down through the fingernail. Then he leapt, howling and dancing from foot to foot and gripping the injured hand in the other as the mutilated digit spattered blood; after a moment he ran off down the street, still howling and shouting bitch! at the top of his lungs.

  Most of the men in the beer shop laughed at that, some so loud they fell to the rush-strewn clay floor and lay kicking their legs in the air. She went and pulled the tomahawk out of the wood, wiped it on her sleeve, and reslung it; Slasher sniffed at something on the floor, then snapped it up. The roaring chorus of guffaws and he-haws was loud enough to bring curious bypassers to the door and windows, and send more hoots of mirth down the street as the tale spread; several men slapped her on the back, or offered drinks—offers she declined curtly. The older men were quiet, she noticed, and still frowning at her.

  Instead she pushed through the long smoky room toward the back, where the man she sought was sitting. The air was thick with tobacco smoke—and the smell of the quids some men chewed and spat, plus sweat and cooking and sour spilled beer and piss from the alley out back. Still, she thought he’d probably seen all there was to see; those smoldering blue eyes didn’t look as if they missed much.

  “Heya,” she said, and to her dog, “Down, Slasher.”

  “Heya, missie,” he replied formally, as the big wolfish-looking beast went belly-to-earth.

  “You Hunter Robre? Robre sunna Jowan?” The form of a question was there, but there was certainty in her voice.

  “Him ’n’ no other,” the young man said. “You’d be Sonjuh dawtra Pehte, naw?”

  His brows went up a little as she sat uninvited, pulling over a stool that was made from a section of split log, flat side sanded and the other set with four sticks. The rushes on the hard-packed clay floor rustled and crackled as she plunked it down and straddled it.

  “Yi-ah.” She nodded, a little mollified that he hadn’t used her father’s gift-names. Nobody wanted to be called the daughter of the Stinker or the Friendless. “There’s no feud between the Alligators ’n’ the Bear Creek people, or quarrel between our kin.”

  “No feud, no quarrel,” he acknowledged; both clans were of the Cross Plains folk, which meant they didn’t have to assure each other that there was no tribal war going on either. It was more than a little unorthodox for a woman to go through the ritual, anyway.

  “How’d you know who I was?” she added, curious, as she tore off some of the wheat-and-injun bread he had before him, dipped it in the salt and ate it; that satisfied courtesy, in a minimal sort of way.

  He was supposed to be a sharp man, but as far as she knew they’d never met—her family had lived solitary. Robre was famous, after a fashion: Sonjuh dawtra Pehte had begun acquiring a little notoriety only in the last few weeks.

  “Figured. Old Pehte had red hair like yours before he went bald, ’n’ ’sides that, you favor him in your looks.” He ate a piece of the bread himself, which meant he had at least to listen to her; then he went on: “He was a dab hand with a tomahawk, too; saw him win the pig ’n’ turkey here at Dannulsford once when my father brought me, must be ten years ago now.”

  Sonjuh tossed her head, sending the long horse-tail of her hair swishing. Being unmarried—likely she would be anyway at nineteen, even were her father someone else—she wore her hair down and tied back with a snakeskin band, in a torrent the color of mahogany reaching to between her shoulder blades; a thick band of freckles ran across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Any man of the Seven Tribes would have accounted her comely, snub-nosed face and red lips and the long smooth curves of her figure as well, until he saw the wildness in those haunted leaf-green eyes.

  “Nice throw, too, missie,” Robre continued. “Pehte must’ve taught you well.”

  “I missed,” she snapped. “Wanted to split his ugly face!”

  Robre laughed, a quieter sound than most men’s mirth, then stopped when he realized she wasn’t even smiling.

  “Welcome to a share,” he said a little uneasily, indicating the pitcher of corn beer and clay jug of whiskey.

  “Didn’t come to drink,”
she said, after taking a token sip from the beer jug; refusing a man’s liquor was a serious insult. “I came to talk business.”

  The young man’s black brows went up farther. “Shouldn’t your…oh.”

  Sonjuh nodded. “My father’s dead.” Oh, merciful God, thank You he died first of all. “So’s my mother. So’s my three sisters. I saw—”

  Of itself, her hand shot out and grabbed Robre’s glass. She tossed back the raw spirits and waited with her eyes clenched shut until the sudden heat in her stomach and a wrenching effort of will stopped the shaking of her hands and pushed away the pictures behind her eyelids. When she looked back up, Robre was frowning at her left forearm, where a bandage had slipped from a healing wound. A patch of skin had been removed—neatly, the way a skinning knife would do it in skilled hands.

  She tugged the sleeve down over the rawness and went on: “Didn’t come for sympathy, either. Like I said, I’ve got business to talk with you, Robre Hunter.”

  He took a pull at his mug of beer, wiped the back of one big calloused hand across his mouth, and nodded. “I’m listening, missie.”

  That was more than she’d expected, if less than she’d hoped. “I didn’t have brothers. My pa didn’t hold with hiring help, either, so from my woman-time I’ve been doing a son’s work for him. Hunting, too.” She took a deep breath. “I know my pa wasn’t well liked—”

  Across the table, a polite lack of expression said as plainly as words: He was about as disliked as a man can be and not be outlawed. Or just plain have his gizzard cut out.

  More than one had tried, too, but Stinking Pehte had been a good man of his hands, and it had always gone the other way. All fair fights and within the letter of the law, but killing within the clan didn’t make you any better liked either. One or two was to be expected, in a hot-blooded man, but public opinion thought half a dozen excessive; the clan needed those hands and blades.

  “—but he was a good farmer, ’n’ no one ever called him lazy. We got our crop in before we were hit. Not much, but we sold most here in Dannulsford. Deer hides ’n’ muskrat, too, ’n’ ginseng, and potash from the fields we were clearing, ’n’ soap ’n’ homespun me ’n’ my ma ’n’ sisters made. The posse got back most of our cabin goods ’n’ tools, ’n’ our stock; then there’s the land, that’s worth something.”

  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.

  Even in the barbarian hinterlands, he didn’t think a girl that pretty dumped a pint of beer over a man’s head and stalked out as if she were going to walk right over anyone in her way, not just every night. In a way, the sensation she’d caused was welcome; the two Imperial soldiers probably attracted less curiosity than they normally would. Eric waited courteously while the man he’d come to see mopped his face vigorously with a towel brought by a serving-girl, looking around as he did. This wasn’t much worse than the dives he’d pulled soldiers overstaying their leave out of in many a garrison town; the log walls were hung with brightly colored wool rugs, and the kerosene lanterns were surprisingly sophisticated—obviously native-made, but as good as any Imperial factories turned out. He’d h
ave expected tallow dips, or torches.

  “Mr. Robre sunna Jowan?” he asked, when the man was presentable again. “I’m Lt. Eric King. This is my daffadar…Jefe’s-man…Ranjit Singh.”

  “Robre Hunter, that’s me,” the native replied, rising and offering his hand. “Heya, King, Ranjeet.”

  The hand that met his was big, and calloused as heavily as his own. They were within an inch or so of each other in height and of an age, but Eric judged the other man had about twenty or thirty pounds on him, none of it blubber. A slight smile creased a face that was handsome in a massive way, and the two young men silently squeezed until muscle stood out on their corded forearms. The native’s blue eyes went a little wider as he felt the power in the Imperial’s sword-hand, and they released each other with a wary nod of mutual respect, not to mention mutual shakings and flexings of their right hands. Eric read other subtle signs—the white lines of scars on hands and dark-tanned face, the way the local moved and held himself—and decided that native or not, this was a man you’d be careful of. And no fool, either; he was probably coming to the same conclusion.

  “Dannul! Food for my guests from the Empire!” Robre bellowed. “And beer, and whiskey!”

  King understood him well enough. The local tongue was derived from that of the Old Empire, and the Imperial cavalry officer had experience with the classical written tongue of the Pre-Fall period, with the speech of the Cape and Australian Viceroyalties, and some of the archaic dialects still spoken in remote parts of England, as well. With that, and close attention in weeks spent along the coast near Galveston, he could follow Robre’s speech easily and make himself understood with a little patience. It was mostly a matter of remembering a few sound-changes and applying them consistently.

  “No beef,” he said. “Cow-meat,” he added, when Robre looked doubtful. The vocabulary had changed a good deal, too. “It’s…forbidden by our religion. Our Gods.” He pointed skyward.

  To oversimplify, he thought, as Robre nodded understanding.