Chapter 20: Leader Of The Herd Part 3

Njrea raved for a day and a night while Trals and Vrem tended her. She fell silent as the sun climbed higher on the second day, and by the time the smoking, hair-tasseled tents of the Eethlek herd came into view, she was almost dead.

Trals Scarback did not worry - what did the life or death of another matter to one such as he? - but he had invested too much in the stranger to allow her to escape his plans so easily. Luna Meridiana would fall. The Slavers would suffer for what they had done to him. Njrea was the key that revenge-quest.

"I will run ahead." Trals swung down from the travois. "You stay here with Njrea while I find someone to heal her." He whistled for Srav, who hopped after him. "We meet at the riverward rim of camp."

Trals considered the problem as he jogged away from the triceratops's path, Srav the snatcher weaving about him on her endless search for prey. The Healer of the Uppalitch Ethlek was Mree, whose husband was the son of blind old Sayer Shra, the aunt of unruly Jgghav. Sayer Shra hated Trals more than anyone he knew, which was saying something.

It would be better to send one of the others to fetch the aged woman. Trals grunted as he shoved himself between the spiny saltbushes. The problem was that after Njrea's murder of Lee, the men in the raiding party were not so well disposed to her. Or to Trals, for that matter. Curse the Ethlek and their endless politics.

And curse Eethlek independence of will. The other men ran ahead even when Trals gave them no order to do so, which meant that when Trals jogged into the central ring of tents, the Sayer was already there, waiting for him.

"What's this I hear about you burning Fort Alluvia?" Sister of the previous Leader, mother of the Uppalitch Ethlek's Revelatee, Sayer Shra the White-Eye was not the oldest woman in the herd, but she was the most influential. Only she could Say what was Revealed to her prophet son, and only she knew how to properly banish evil influences from a dead or dying man.

Perhaps it was this supernatural aid that gave her the wisdom not to trust Trals.

Trals bowed before the bent old crone. "I don't know, Sayer, what do you hear?"

"You idiot!" she said. "Whom do you expect us to trade with now?"

Trals had no time for the Sayer's nonsense. He would take her at sword-point to...no. Trals must have her skills and her followers if he was to crush the Slavers. "Must we trade for metal blades?" he forced respect into his voice. "We stole from the Slavers all we'll need for years. It was a great victory. Now - "

"A great victory, you say?" Her toothless mouth puckered like a triceratops's cloaca. "Face of God save us from more such victories. What have you brought us aside from some useless war-toys, beasts we will have to work into the herd - "

"Yes, Sayer, but - "

" - and for these so-called prizes, you have sacrificed the good will of our source of sun-mud, and palm meal and - ."

"Sun-mud?" Trals rolled his eyes. "Are we Slavers, to bake red in the sun? Normal mud will do, or we can make parasols. We need no such northern luxuries as sun-mud, and we can always find more people stupid enough to grind palm nuts into starch while real men do real work."

"Like senseless killing?" Tassels of human hair swung as Shra's staff thumped against the ground. "Don't talk as if you know women's work, Trals Scarback. We have the leisure to braid the God-nets and caponize the young triceratops because we don't have to spend all our time making palm meal. But now the Slavers won't sell to us. They drove out the Nwa people, and it will be more than a moon before we can cross paths with the Spek or the Fesh or another herd of Ethlek. So what will thicken your porridge until then, eh Leader?"

"We have many weapons with which to attack the next trade caravan. We can obtain from it the rest of the goods we need." And there would be an opportunity to rescue some more slaves.

"The caravans are starting to avoid us," Shra grumbled.

Trals bit down on a sharp retort. He had been away with the scouting and raiding parties for too long. Curse the anarchic Ethlek, and curse their grandmothers doubly. "I wouldn't presume to tell you of women's work, but," he placed a hand on her shoulder to forestall her interruption, "as far as men's work, I count my mission a success. Have you inquired about the captive we took?"

"Why would I care about that?"

"Because she is an angel in human flesh."

The blind eyes darted under her lowered brows. "What are you talking about? Have you gone mad?"

"Not unless your nagging has driven me there, Sayer."

"If only that were possible." She worked her gummy mouth. "So you found a shaman then with the Slavers? A Revelatee? If you think this herd will accept a rival to my son - "

"Oh, she's no Revelatee."

"She? What she?"

"My captive," said Trals. "She's an angel."

"Nonsense," the Sayer spat. "Everyone knows that angels are just friendly ancestors who came back to the Face of God. When an angel looks like a person, it's called a baby."

"Njira is no infant."

"Njruwa? That's an Eethlek name. Is she one of the People who Speak Alike?"

"No."

She held out a hand. "Well, what is she then?"

"See for yourself." The Sayer would not be led by pleas for help - not from Trals. By her curiosity, however, Trals could drive her.

***

"What do you see? What does she look like? Is there anything...unusual?" the Sayer cawed.

Trals and Vrem had unhitched the conveyance from the triceratops and dragged it, Njrea, baggage and all, into the outer ring of the Uppalitch Ethlek camp. Healer Mree, the Sayer's daughter-in-law, knelt to examine the unconscious and mud-wrapped Njrea.

"I see a very sick woman, Sayer. Although the face is a bit odd." Mree squinted up at Trals. "She isn't a Slaver. Is she a cycad-woman?"

"Nothing angelic about a lost traveler," grunted Shra.

"When we first saw her," said Trals, "she killed a platoon of Slaver soldiers single-handed. She obliterated the wall of their fort, thick as three mature cypress trunks." He scowled at Vrem, willing the boy to not mention the many Ethlek she had killed as well.

"I see," the Sayer's lips pursed while Mree pulled dried mud away until Njrea lay shivering and exposed on the hide surface.

"Odd. That darkness to the skin isn't tanning. She's the same color all over." Mree's fingers probed the woman's sides and belly. "She's clearly well-fed, but not fat. She's wounded. Knife scars on the legs, arms, shoulders, hips...those looks clean, but..." Mree rolled Njrea over and grimaced, "what did this to her back? Wild dromaeosaurs? No. No bite marks. A snatcher, then." She glared up at Trals. "Yours, I assume?"

Trals shrugged.

The lines on Mree's face deepened. "What did you do to her?"

"No worse than my old master did to me," said Trals Scarback, "when I tried to escape."

"I seem to recall you later stole a sword, returned, and killed that particular Slaver," Shra commented.

Trals smiled at the memory. "And thus I will kill all Slavers."

"By becoming one, yourself?" said Shra.

"Is she going to be alright?" asked Vrem.

Mree passed her hands over Njrea's twitching back. "You didn't boil the mud. There're things living in it."

"So?" said Trals. "Means it's healthy."

"I can never tell when you're joking," said Shra.

Mree rose. "Those wounds will need healing mold."

"And two skins of water, deviled and fresh," ordered Shra, as if her daughter-in-law had never healed a wound before, "the makings of a fire and rocks to heat with it. Tongs and a potsack, talons of out-drawing, and a bouquet of healthweed to pack the wound."

Trals shuddered.

"No taste for healing, Leader?" Mree said, "I suppose you enjoy causing the damage more."

"We each have our given tasks," Trals observed. "If it weren't for people like me, what patients would you have to sew up?"

That got a smile. Mree didn't exactly follow Trals's lead, but at least she didn't pull the other direction like her mother-in-law. Thinking of which, "And what do you think, Sayer?"

"I think I would have been wiser to let you die that day we came across you, passed out in your canoe." Her blind eyes quested. "Is Mree gone?"

"She is."

"My question was not directed at you," the Sayer sniffed. "Vrem? Is she gone?"

"Yes, Sayer."

"Alright," Shra knocked her staff against the travois and Njrea curled into a ball. "What game are you playing, Trals?"

"Game, Sayer?"

"Don't play stupid with me." Shra shook her finger in his general direction, "I know what you are."

Vrem shot a concerned look at Trals. "Sayer, Trals wants only to help this poor woman."

"The woman he captured and nearly killed."

"He felt - "

"Hold your tongue, boy. Trals is a madman. He feels nothing but anger and bloodlust."

"That isn't true!"

Trals squinted at the sun. He did not have time to waste while these idiots discussed him. If he murdered them all right here, he could be standing on a pile of skulls by sunset. But then, as always, Trals's thoughts returned to Luna Meridiana, and how the Slaver city had to burn. He sighed.

Shra's age-ruined face twitched toward him. "None of us can trust you farther than the interests of your insane plan to end slavery. Not that it matters to me how you use this foreign woman, as long as - ."

"She isn't just some foreign woman," Vrem said hotly, "she's - "

"Don't you interrupt me, boy."

"He means," said Trals, "that I took this woman to wife."

"Wife?" screeched Sayer Shra. "I have conducted no marriage."

"Fiancée then." This time Trals's belly shook with a true laugh. "Why that face, Sayer? I thought you'd be happy. Now you know I won't marry into your family, at least."

Her swollen knuckles whitened on her staff. "I long ago learned never to be happy with any of your actions, Trals Scarback."

Trals bared his teeth. "How wise of you."