Merciless Hunter

2: Bear with me

Before Wrenne has time to reflect on what she has heard, the farm girl jumps off her boulder with gleaming eyes. "I need no week," she exclaims. "I will follow you now!"

Wrenne can see Arkteia exchange glances with Tirisi before she answers. "We are honoured and glad, Linder, but we will not go to this secret valley at once. We will visit the villages around to see if we can find more people to share our vision." She hesitates, then goes on. "I and Tirisi are used to walking far and fast through wild country, which I think you are not. And you have brought no clothes or other gear that we mean to ask you to bring if you want to follow us. Can you not wait for a week?"

But Linder shakes her head vigorously. "I will not go back there! I'll follow you at any pace you go. Or wait here. I won't go back."

Arkteia bites her lip, but before she can reply, Ma Crowth speaks. "You can stay the week with me. I have also already decided to join, but I am in no rush. I live on my own in a small hut at the edge of the forest. Two people will make it cramped, but if you can live with that, you are welcome."

Linder looks at her with quivering lips and eyes shiny with restrained tears. "Anything, anything as long as I needn't go back."

Arkteia smiles gratefully at Ma Crowth and turns to Wrenne. For a moment she just gazes wistfully at her in silence. Wrenne frowns back. "What?"

Arkteia catches herself, shakes her head and sighs. "I just admired your hair. It's so beautiful... I remember wishing I had such hair, before..." Her face clouds over and she bites down on her words. Then she grunts and gives Wrenne a lopsided grin. "I had in mind to advise anybody who wants to follow us to cut their hair short. I've found it the most convenient in the wild. But I couldn't ask that of you."

Wrenne waves the words aside. "It's a curse and a blessing. I sometimes wonder if I would have ended up like this if not for my hair. It seems like a honeypot for man-flies."

"If you come with us, we will help you ward off those flies," Tirisi says.

Before Wrenne can answer that she'd rather have them swatted, Arkteia asks her if she can manage to wait for a week. Wrenne feels the little lump of coins tied into the waist of her skirt and nods. She can always find a barn or stable to sleep in. While summer was still in the air she could sleep outdoors, but last time she tried it, she nearly froze to death before she gave up and roamed the fields through the night just to keep warm. The year is too far gone for that.

Lastly, Arkteia turns to the auburn woman. "And you, Ardele, can you wait for a week?"

Ardele shrugs and draws her lips in a brief grimace that is nothing like a smile. "I have survived for this long, I can hold on for another week. And I need to think. To be honest, your vision frightens me and I am not sure if I wouldn't just trade one terror for another. Build your own world? You make it sound easy. But where's the ruler that would tolerate it? This is still a world where men are in power and they don't want to share it."

"This valley is so remote," Arkteia begins to explain but is interrupted by Tirisi.

"She is charmed." All look at Tirisi and she spreads her hands wide. "She is! If you had seen her do the things I have seen, you would know I tell the truth. Arkteia, is it not true?"

Arkteia smiles grimly. "If it is a charm, then it was dearly bought and I will have to spend the rest of my life making it worth the price. But I have received certain... gifts, that is true. Most of them I cannot show you here and now, but as a token of faith, I will show you the one I can. But you must not be alarmed, there is no danger." With that, she turns and calls into the shades of the trees on one side of the cliff behind her. "Brun!"