Woven Steel

CHAPTER 8: Wolf Head, Bear Head

As Kestrel and Co. came down from the mountains, the seasons went by in reverse. First came heavy snow on Hummingbird pass as they climbed out of the Moray valley. It piled up knee-deep on the treeless rocky wastes around the summit. As they descended, the snow turned to freezing rain, and the rocks were studded with scrubby dwarf pines. Next came of groves of naked aspens, their golden raiment moldering in slimy, wet piles at their feet. Gradually, as they descended, the rain warmed, though the four companions, thoroughly numbed and soaked, did not notice it at first. They only really felt  it 3 days later, when the pass road hit Savo's creek and took a sharp right, to follow the little river as it emptied out into the foothills. The rain finally lifted, and it was true fall again.

As soon as they had come down below tree line, Kestrel had started parting company with the boys during the day. She would leave her mule with them, then venture off the road into the back country on foot. Then at the end of the day they would find her sitting on a stone by the roadside skinning a rabbit with her thick, triangular knife. Or she might come padding quietly into the circle of light around their campfire, with a string of fat quail dangling off her muscular shoulders.

Kestrel never lost them or fell behind. She saved time by cutting across mountaintops that Hither, Yon, and Zalia, following the road, had to take the long way around. This left her plenty of time to search out game and still keep ahead of the boys, for the most part.

The little extra food she brought in every night was not, strictly speaking, necessary. They had plenty of provisions. The mules each carried a saddlebag full of trail bread and dried apple. She herself had a pound of venison jerky, as well as two near-stale but jealously hoarded cheese dumplings from Magya's shop in Latimer, wrapped in a leather pouch and in reserve for a special occasion. Everyone appreciated something fresh and hot and the end of a day's cold travel, but they could have gotten by without it.

In truth, Kestrel needed these daily, solitary sojourns for their own sake. These were not her mountains. Yet they were similar enough that wandering through them tamped down the burn of homesickness, even if it did not extinguish it entirely. She needed the time alone, as well. Before she had left Hakria, three years ago, her life had been alternating, rhythmic, pattern of extreme solitude followed by cheek-to-cheek immersion in a tight-knit community.

In the spring and fall, she and the other hunters from her village would disperse in the high country, meeting up only occasionally to help butcher and haul a big kill, or share a casual night underneath the furs. She might not see another human for weeks at a time.

In winter and summer, she returned to the village. Summer meant joining everyone in the great alpaca-shearing, working side by side for days on end. She always hated the way the poor creatures looked so impossibly thin and disoriented afterwards.   Winter meant the whole village cozying up together in the longhall, buried under feet of snow. She would work at her spinning wheel, turning all that wool into cloth, drinking cider and mead, and long, winding storytelling and gossiping sessions with her cousins.

She was growing fond of Zalia and the twins, little by little. She liked Hither and Yon's often sordid, often ridiculous stories about their time with the mercenary company. She liked Zalia's endless discourses on pre-moonbreak history.

But then there was the arguing. Hither And Yon once spent an entire day bickering over which one of them was the true owner of a simple, wood-handled hoof pick. The argument had set off a chain reaction, one that uncovered mutual slights and moral failings going back to when they were both six, and Yon had allegedly spilled a pail of milk and blamed it Yon. The two brothers had a ridiculously complex and rigid set of petty little laws that existed between them, governing who could borrow what when, who was paying for drinks, whose turn it was to tell the story of that brothel in Skai Verano. A set of rules so complex, in fact, it seemed purposefully designed to be broken every other day or so.