Текст книги "The Last Hour of Gann"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 23 (всего у книги 80 страниц)

All the humans were watching.

Meoraq turned around and walked in the opposite direction. Her temper and the pride that fueled it would cool. She would return and he would take the higher path and allow her to ask his forgiveness for her fit of human petulance.

The wind blew. The morning air was still clear and dry, but not so fresh as it had seemed. The sun had risen higher behind the rolling clouds, yet the world seemed no brighter. Meoraq walked in darkness and he walked alone.

4

Meoraq’s heart may not have been in the hunt, but his heart was not necessary. His body made an easy kill of two panicked saoqs drinking at a distant ground-spring, which he could have taken at once back to camp for his hungry humans. Instead, he butchered them alone in the plains and he made thorough work of it, not merely fleshing and skinning. There was dried dung enough for a thousand fires, so he built one and sat beside it as he worked. There was bowel to clean, long bones full of precious marrow, and time, plenty of time, to think.

He thought of the spear he had broken. The clumsy, crooked, childish spear which Amber had probably made herself. Over and over, he saw himself breaking it. Over and over, he saw her walking away into the wildlands with the splintered tip he’d left her.

He prayed.

At last, Meoraq buried the meat and moved his fire atop it. He threw the most of the emptied bones into the coals to burn, trusting the foul smoke to ward away any beasts who might otherwise be drawn in by the smell of blood. He bundled his marrow and all the clean fat he’d scraped off to render down if he had the time. Into the last carrying pouch of his possession, he set the edible offal, wrapped in grass to soak in the blood. Then he left it all in Sheul’s hands and walked half a span across the plains to the nearest stand of zuol trees.

Making the spear took all the rest of that day, which was fine, because the saoq had to roast anyway. He hadn’t made one, even for idle amusement, since his boyhood days, but it was one of the lessons Master Takktha had taught and what the body has had beaten into it by Master Takktha, it does not soon forget. This spear might never have had the honor of hanging on the wall in the training yard, but Meoraq was certain it would have earned a turn in Takktha’s hand at least. He’d cut six zuol saplings before he’d found the balance he’d desired in a haft; he did not consider this a waste, since there were ten thousand uses for the fine, straight poles of young zuol and the humans were entirely without them. He then spent easily two hours peeling bark, trimming branches, and smoothing its length with the rough side of a stone—far more work than was strictly necessary, but it did look damned nice when it was done. There was plenty of xuseth around, all gone to seed this late in the year, but he dug up a few roots and split them to rub its oily fibers into the green wood. After some meditation, he took the flared wings of the saoq’s hip-bones (which he had tossed to the coals earlier, but which had fallen aside by Sheul’s grace and gone unburned, though heat-cured and hard as rock) and carved along their outer edges. Then he carefully split the green wood of the spear’s tip—a difficult task made infinitely easier by the xuseth oil—and worked the shards of bone beneath so that they protruded in flaring points along four sides. By this time, the fire had died down to perfect coals and he spent the rest of the day alternately baking the spear over them and applying more xuseth until the spear was as strong as stone. He made a few practice throws just to satisfy his vanity, then swiftly bound his spare poles into a sled and loaded the meat for travel.

It was dark when he finally left, but the shine of the moon behind the clouds was enough to guide him until he could make out the many fires of the humans in his camp.  He was surprised to see meat in several hands as he pulled his sled through their slow-moving bodies, and he saw that they were almost as surprised to see him at all. So. They thought he had abandoned them, and this had been all the motivation they required to see to their own survival. He was now of half a mind to abandon them again tomorrow.

He could not see Amber at a casual glance, so Meoraq turned himself and his sled toward the sound of Scott’s voice, because Scott sounded angry and that usually meant he was talking at Amber. Soon, he saw the man himself at the fore of a loose ring of other humans, all together around a fire where the smell of roasting meat and burning bones was strongest, and yes, Scott stopped his angry words at the first sight of Meoraq and said instead, “He’s back. Get up right now and apologize,” so Amber had to be there somewhere.

Meoraq hissed and humans moved aside for him, revealing her on her knees with the fire turning her hair to red and her back full to him, but she was starting to turn and there was a grudging sort of curl on her mouthparts as she raised her hand to greet—

The poles of the sled fell out of his grip and the world itself seemed to drop away with it.

There was a knife in her hand.

“O my Father, no,” he heard himself say.

She scowled, deciding to be angry. “What the hell is it now?”

He threw the spear down—the spear he’d spent all damned day making—and turned away from her with both hands digging at his scales. He closed his eyes, not daring yet to speak, not daring even to think.

“Meoraq?”

The law was clear.

“What’s wrong with him?” someone asked and Scott said, “If you two are going to fight again, do it somewhere else.”

Was that it? Because he’d shouted at her? ‘Please,’ he prayed. ‘I didn’t mean it.’

His will was nothing. The Word of the Prophet must be upheld.

‘She’s human. She didn’t know.’

But the law was Sheul’s. If the humans were His children, they were subject to His rule and to the judgment of His Swords.

And after all, some evil voice observed, you don’t even like her.

“So this is Your lesson,” he said in the dark. His voice, no louder than a whisper, caught at his ears like hooks.

“Well, Jesus Christ, lizardman, what the hell did I do n—”

He pulled a knife as if it were a bone he pulled from his own body. He used the knife of his fathers. He could do that much. He opened his eyes and looked at her.

“Amber!” Nicci cringed back even as she cried out, but no one else moved. “Someone do something! He’s going to kill her!”

“No, he’s not,” said Amber, frowning uncertainly at the knife he held.

It hurt.

“Do you wish to pray?” he asked hoarsely. “Please. Do not make me send you from this world into darkness.”

There followed a terrible stillness. Amber looked past the gleam of ancient metal to search his face and for a long time, it was only that and the watchful eye of Sheul upon them both.

“Are you really going to kill me?” she asked at last. Her voice trembled, but only once.

“I am a Sword and a true son of Sheul. I am the arbiter of His law, which you have broken. I have no choice in this matter.” And then he said, not thinking, what he had never said with a blade of judgment in his hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Someone stop him!” Nicci begged.

“We can’t interfere with their customs.”

Amber’s baffled stare turned briefly molten. She swung around, snarling, “Fuck you, Scott! Nicci—” Her voice trembled again, then turned harsh. “Don’t look. Someone get her out of here. Dag…or someone…Don’t let her see this.”

Nicci began to wail, but she walked away, she was not carried. Many other humans faded back with her. Scott stayed. Scott meant to watch. His eyes were bright in the firelight.

Amber turned her back on them all. She lifted her chin with a defiance belied by her too-bright eyes. “Do it, if you’re going to do it. I don’t care.”

“Will you not pray?”

“I had nothing to say to God before. I’ve got nothing to say to him now.” Her jaw clenched, biting on the shiver in her words.

“So be it. Human, you have broken the Third Law and taken up a bladed weapon—”

“Wait a minute, what?” Amber looked down at the knife in her hand and then back at Scott.

All the remaining humans were looking at Scott, whose skin had gone a curious greyish color. And as Amber opened her mouth to speak, he lurched forward and shouted, “She’s a fucking liar!”

The temper broke in Meoraq and suddenly his kzung was in his other hand—not his father’s knife, not for this human—and he shouted, “I do His will now, but I will be free to do my own when it is over, so do not provoke me!”

Scott put up his open hands, but his eyes stayed on Amber, hissing, “There’s nothing anyone can do about this and you know it, so don’t you even think about getting anyone else in trouble!”

“You fucking yellow bastard.” Amber put her hands on the knife, folding the blade into its own haft, then threw it to the ground between Scott’s feet. “It was my knife,” she said loudly. And turned to face Meoraq. “But I didn’t know that was your law.”

“It is Sheul’s law and not mine to forgive.” Meoraq took resolute hold of her shoulder and put the blade against her neck. “I will be quick.”

“Wait, just…What is the law exactly?” she asked. “The actual words.”

He frowned.

“Humor me,” she said. “As my final request.”

He could feel the heat of her shoulder through his hand. Living warmth. He could feel the tremble of her mortal fear, but she stood and she faced him.

“No man may raise his judgment higher than the true Word of Sheul,” he said, reminding himself as much as her. “I am Sheulek. I have no mercy to show you.”

But he did not make the killing cut and after another long moment, he eased the edge of his blade away from her thin skin. Red blood, red as dye-berries, welled up where it had rested.

“‘And the third law writ was this,’” he said in something like surrender. “‘Let no man who is not born of the warrior’s caste and raised under its sign take up the bladed weapon, for the age of the Ancients is ended and wrath belongs to Sheul alone. For he who is born under the Blade, all liberty is given, but for all other men of this world, this sin shall be unforgiveable.’” The last word fell like a hammer on his heart, briefly silencing him. “No allowance can be made,” he told her, as soon as he felt he could. “The Prophet writes plainly that whatever man touches the bladed weapon, even if he has taken it up in defense of his life or that of his son or even of his abbot, if he is not born to that caste, he must be judged unforgiveable. He…You must die.”

Amber’s eyes had narrowed. “Are these laws open to any interpretation?”

“None.”

“Not even from you?”

“I would spare you if I could.” He raised the knife. “But I am Sheulek and His law is mine. I will be quick.”

“You said no man can hold a knife,” she said, and reached up to catch the bone-hilt of his. “But I’m a woman.”

The world dropped away for a second time.

“Is there a law against women holding knives?” Amber asked. Her eyes were intent. Elsewhere, at some unknown distance, human voices began to whisper.

Meoraq bent his head. He breathed.

The First Law: Sheul is master over all His children. There is no mortal being or beast born of clay who does not bend before Him and none whose judgment can be raised higher than His sacred Word.

The Second Law: The Age of the Ancients is ended. Let their cities fall to ruins. Let their time pass out of memory. Let no one seek to master or remake the machines with which they poisoned Gann, lest they be corrupted in return.

The Third Law: Let no man take up the bladed weapon…no man…

Meoraq opened his eyes and found them already gazing into Amber’s. He sheathed his father’s knife. Then he bent, as a man in a fever, without conscious thought or plan, and licked the blood from her neck. It tasted coppery and bitter and he drank it in like wine and pressed his brow to her warm shoulder.

“I take it that’s a no,” said Amber. Her air fell out of her in a shaky rush. “You scared the piss out of me, lizardman.”

“Sheul instructs with a burning hand,” he replied, still somewhat light-headed. “I have to pray.” He turned around, but caught her arm as she first moved away, no doubt to find her weeping Nicci.

She waited, tense, while he tried to puzzle out his reason for stopping her. He only knew that he wanted to say something, but whatever it was would have to be witnessed by all these damned staring humans.

Nicci was coming. He could hear her sobbing through the crowd, as hysterical with joy as she’d been with grief. Amber’s gaze wavered; she looked behind her.

Meoraq released his hold and stepped back. “I have meat,” he said, and rather unnecessarily plucked up his travel-pack to thrust into Amber’s arms. “See that your people are fed.”

Then Nicci was there and Meoraq retreated so he wouldn’t have to watch them embrace and feel…whatever the hell he was feeling.

* * *

Meoraq was sleeping when Amber finally nerved herself up to try and talk to him, or at least, he was lying down with his eyes closed and his arms tucked beneath his head. He was outside though, and fully dressed, boots and all, so Amber waffled for a second or two, and maybe he could feel her stare, because he said, without opening his eyes, “What do you want?”

“Nothing. I brought your, uh, entrails. Thanks for the food. Go back to sleep.” Amber set the leather pack down by his mat, trying to get in and out of his space fast to disturb him as little as possible, but he was faster.

His scaly hand locked around her arm. He sat up, frowning at her, then beyond her, and then let go. He grunted, pointed at the ground and picked up his pack.

“I don’t want to keep you awa—”

“Sit down.”

She sat.

He rummaged through the organs, pulling out this or that disgusting lump of bloody grossness and occasionally grunting to himself. One of them he set on the ground, hesitated, then picked it up and gave it to her.

“What is it?” she asked dubiously, eyeing the pile of blood-streaked yellow mush and hoping it was not edible.

It was marrow, as he eventually managed to explain, and he wanted her to eat it.

“How do I cook it?” she asked.

He looked at her. “I have roasted it already. Eat.”

“I’ll just save it for later,” she hedged, easing it toward the ground behind her.

“Eat it!” he snapped.

She scooped a jiggly blob of it up in two fingers and sucked it squeamishly down. It tasted pretty much just like bland, vaguely blood-flavored jelly, which made it easily the most disgusting thing she’d ever had in her mouth and that included the time Bobby Wykes up the street knocked her down and made her eat a slug.

Meoraq reached over and helped himself to a heaping palmful, licked his fingers, then went back to untangling intestines.

“I saw the spear,” said Amber after a while. “It’s nice.”

He grunted. “It belongs to you.”

“I figured.” And, inanely: “I’m glad you didn’t have to kill me.”

“So am I.” He glanced at her. “Where did you get the knife?”

It wasn’t an unexpected question. “I’m not going to answer that.”

“So be it.” He took more marrow. “He would be well-advised to be rid of it. If I see it in his hand or the fold of his clothes, I will kill him. That is not a threat, mark me. That is the vow of Uyane Meoraq and God hears me. I will kill him and I will not burn his body. It can lie there and rot. And I hope ghets scatter his fucking bones.”

“Hypothetically speaking, if someone did give me the knife, he wouldn’t have done it to get me killed.”

“Only because he didn’t know the law. If he had, he would have urged the knife on you the first day of our meeting because he is an evil little clay-born smear of shit.” He said this without inflection or any sign of interest, yet long patches of scales on either side of Meoraq’s throat were turning yellow. He was doing that a lot lately.

The yellowing intrigued her, especially as it seemed to go hand in hand with high emotion. Maybe she’d been wrong about the ‘he’ thing this whole time. Maybe he really was a girl, and he was PMS-ing. It was something hormonal, plainly.

“Can I ask you a question?”

He grunted, put his empty pack aside and pulled out one of his many knives.

The knife gave her some pause, but now she felt more or less obligated to finish. “You are a man, right?”

He stared at her. Then the double-row of spines on his head kind of flicked forward and he looked at the knife in his hand. “Ah,” he said. And looked at her again. “I am a man. I am also Sheulek, born of the warrior’s caste to serve God as his Sword and his Striding Foot. Blades are not forbidden to me.”

“Oh.” Amber waited, choking down marrow and watching the yellow patches on his throat fade back to black as he sliced the saoq’s intestines into long strips. She didn’t say anything until he was done, but once he had, she said, “So…what did I do to piss you off this morning?”

He frowned, glanced at her, and kept working.

“I thought we had an agreement and yeah, okay, I didn’t wake you up, but is that really a good enough reason to go at me like that?”

He ignored her.

Amber picked at the marrow, then put it aside. “Do I bother you?” she asked bluntly.

He made a few half-hearted passes at the stripped bowel, then leaned the blade of his knife against his boot and rubbed at his brow-ridges. He didn’t answer.

“That’s a yes,” said Amber. She made an effort to sound cheerful, or at least, the sarcasm-laden sort of cheer she usually dished out when she was in a good mood and her feelings weren’t hurt. “It’s okay, Meoraq. Believe it or not, I understand.”

“No,” he said quietly, still rubbing. “You do not.”

“Yeah, I do. I wouldn’t want to be stuck with us either. For what it’s worth, I appreciate everything you’ve done for us. I’ll try to give you your space. I know I’m in the way and I’m not the easiest person to live with even when I haven’t been stranded on an alien planet, that’s for damn s—”

“Enough.” He moved his hand and looked at her with eyes that pierced but were impossible to read. His voice had not risen, but there was something new about it that she did not imagine because she could see people looking their way and wearing pretty much the same expressions they’d worn when they’d thought he was about to cut her head off.

It bothered her even more now that no one was doing anything to interrupt than it had then.

Meoraq tipped his head back and looked at the sky. He stayed that way as Amber picked at her bootlaces and rubbed traces of marrow off on her pants. She’d never been good at social stuff. She got the feeling he wasn’t, either. The silence sat between them like a cancer, squeezing everything else out as it grew.

“I don’t—” he said, and then just sat there, watching the clouds roll by.

There were too many ways that sentence could end to walk away from it.

“You don’t what?”

Silence. And just when she’d decided he wasn’t going to answer, he said, quietly and without a shred of emotion either in his voice or anywhere on his body, “I don’t know what to do with you.”

“I thought…I thought you were taking us to this temple place.”

He grunted. It could have meant anything. Then he finally looked directly at her, if only for a second. It seemed to her that he flinched a little before he went back to staring at the sky. “I know you want to learn things. It may even be that this is God’s will as well. But I don’t…I don’t think I can teach you. You…upset me.”

Her heart sank. She could actually feel it sinking.

“Meoraq, I know I haven’t given you a lot of reasons to believe me, but I swear I’m not as dumb as you think I am. I’ve just been in the city all my life. I can figure this out. Please, just give me a chance.”

“You do not mark me,” he said, but he didn’t say how and after another long stretch of cloud-watching, he abruptly changed the subject. “Did you kill the saoq I saw you roasting?”

She huffed out a little laughter. “Yeah. With my broken spear. Like the stubborn bitch that I am. And then I had to drag it all the way home. I was trying to be careful, but it still looked like I’d rolled it off a cliff by the time I got it back. Plus, it tasted like shit because all the blood was clotted inside. Some of the guys told me I should have drained it, but how the hell was I supposed to do that?”

He frowned, but didn’t answer.

“Then you show up with two of them, already skinned and roasted, on a friggin’ sled…” She tried to smile, but the bitterness in her tone made the effort somewhat wasted and Meoraq was just looking at her, so she let it drop. “And I felt like a fool.”

He stared into the sky.

“For about three seconds. And then I felt like a walking dead woman. You are one scary son of a bitch when you want to be.”

“I know.”

He wasn’t in the mood to talk, clearly, and she was all out of things to say, except for the stuff she’d had seething through her head all day—you made me run out of here like a fucking little girl you yelled at me for no good goddamn reason you broke my spear you made me cry no one’s begging you to stick around and I don’t like you either so there—and the stuff she’d never say even if he stuck another knife to her throat—I thought we were friends—so she guessed they were done. Amber managed another wan smile for the road and started to get up again.

“Take the marrow.”

She hunted around for a tactful way to say what came next, then just said it: “It’s gross, Meoraq.”

“I don’t care what you think of it, human. Eat it.” He rubbed at his brow-ridges, scowling, then crossly added, “Share it out with your N’ki if you must, but eat it.”

“Well okay, but she’s going to think it’s gross too.” She bent over to get it.

He reached up and brushed the back of his knuckles across her forehead.

It was the third time he’d done something like that and she never seemed to see it coming. She looked up, startled.

He looked back at her, frowning, silent.

She straightened up haltingly, fussing with the marrow until she had it folded again in the wide square of leather he’d used for its wrapping. ‘That was a weird touch,’ she thought, tossing the words out defiantly into the recesses of her brain just like it was all there was.

And the thought came back, like some distorted echo: ‘He’s going to ask me to sleep with him.’

Her stomach flipped over, but not in a scared and pukey way. She wrapped up the marrow some more, thinking (no he’s not don’t be stupid that’s just his half-assed way of saying he’s sorry for picking a fight this morning or even heck trying to kill you tonight except that was more of his god stuff and he probably doesn’t feel sorry about it but whatever he doesn’t want to sleep with you he’s a lizard) nothing in particular.

“I’ll do what I can with you,” he said finally. “For as long as I can stand it.”

“You won’t be sorry.”

He grunted in a way that suggested he already was, and rubbed at his knobby forehead again. “Go. Now. I…I need to pray.”

She backed away, clutching the leather with its jiggly blobs of marrow to her churning stomach and watching as he bent over and put his hands flat against the ground. His eyes closed. His breathing evened out.

He did not ask her to sleep with him.

‘Jesus Christ, you really are a fool,’ she thought disgustedly and picked her way back to Nicci, peppering herself with silent and scathing recriminations until she excused herself on the pretext of visiting the bushes, where she threw up and had a record-breaking second crying jag in one day and then went back and fell miserably asleep.

5

Things changed after that, but Amber found it difficult to say whether they were good changes or not. They should have been good. Sitting up for a few extra hours at night didn’t win her any prizes with Scott and his loyal Manifestors (although sometimes the Fleetmen might come over to sit with her for a while if they were awake. Crandall, mostly, whose profanity-thick banter was surprisingly welcome provided he kept his hands to himself, or Mr. Yao, who rarely said or did anything at all, but was still oddly good company), but she seemed to have come back from her near-execution with a smidgeon more of Meoraq’s respect.

He still hadn’t taken her hunting with him, but every morning, as soon as dawn and his footsteps woke her, he took her out into the world beyond their camp and tried to do something with her. Finding water always came first, because “water is life in the wildlands.” He could spend hours hunkered down over a mudbank, trying to make her see animal tracks in what her city-bred eyes stubbornly kept telling her was just a tore-up mess. If it was dry, which wasn’t often, he might attempt to teach her to crawl, which she would never have thought was a skill anyone over the age of two would need to have. Belly-down in the grass, she kicked and elbowed her way through thornbreaks and over rocks, while Meoraq snaked silently over the ground beside her to prove it could be done, hissing at her when she got too noisy or smacking her butt whenever it popped up too high. If it rained, crawling lessons were cancelled and he instead stood over her and made her throw the spear and fetch it back several billion times, so that she inevitably started the day’s hike exhausted. He never gave her so much as a “Nice try,” not even on those rare occasions when she thought she’d actually done pretty good, and on the really bad days, he wouldn’t even look at her when he grunted out his commands. Those were the days she was likeliest to find herself trudging back to camp just a few minutes after leaving it, with nothing to do except wonder what she’d done wrong until Meoraq came back and ordered everyone to start walking.

And then he ignored her. Throughout the day, he circled them, freely doling out cuffs and hisses if he thought people were talking too loud or straying too far from the group, but he never so much as glanced her way when he chanced to stalk by and wouldn’t offer even a grunt in return if she spoke. The only time he ever interacted with her was to use her to yell at Scott and those moments were mercifully few. He kept his distance, and the miserable planet they’d crashed on made sure there was plenty of cold whistling wind to fill it.

Once he gave up for the day and let them set up camp, she seemed to be worth noticing again, but only to work. The very first night after he’d put a knife to her throat, before she’d even had the chance to dig the rocks out of her boots, he was standing over her with his empty and almost-empty flasks. “Fill these,” he’d said, dumping them unceremoniously in her lap. “And start a fire.”

And off he’d gone to hunt.

She’d filled them, although it meant another meandering hike back and forth between promising greenbelts before she found an actual creek, but there weren’t more than a handful of trees around her, and all the dead branches she’d been able to drag back to camp burned up in less than an hour. There she’d sat, beside a clumsy ring of stones and a heap of cold ash, until Meoraq returned with an enormous, crab-mouthed eel-thing and nothing to cook it over. He let her get just three words into her excuse—“There’s no wood”—and then threw down his eel, grabbed her by the scruff of her shirt and dragged her out into the plains with him.

According to Meoraq, wood was an extravagance. The real fuel of the wildlands was dried poop.

Saoq poop was common and burned well when bundled with dried grass, but corroki poop was the best, he told her, if the beasts themselves were not around. If they were, she was not to approach. They had poor sight and hearing and were very aggressive when they believed themselves surprised. When he described them further, she quickly realized that corrokis were the giant armadillos she’d stumbled across the day Scott made her take her walk.

“I don’t see any corrokis around here,” she said, scanning the plains. “So why are you telling me all this?”

He sighed, gripping at his brow-ridges. Then he caught her head in both hands and aimed her eyes like a cannon. She stared, feeling hot and sick and frustrated, but saw nothing except grass, pale on the slopes and dark in the valleys. At last, hissing into the back of her hair, he let go and pointed.

But at what? Amber searched all the way to the horizon and back, wind stinging at her eyes (yeah right, the wind), but it was just…grass.

“Sheul, my Father, give me patience,” he muttered, and gripped hard at the back of Amber’s neck. “Tell me what you see, human.”

“Grass.”

“What color is the grass?”

“I don’t…brown. Just brown!”

“All over?”

“Light brown, dark brown! It’s all brown!”

“What makes it dark?” he asked, sounding very testy.

“How the hell should I know? It’s a shadow!”

“A shadow?” He spun her around to stare at her directly. “Cast by what?”

She looked up at the cloud-shrouded sun and felt herself blushing. Of course it wasn’t a shadow. “It’s mud, then,” she mumbled.

“It is mud,” he agreed. “Made by?”

“Water?”

“Water would grow a greenbelt,” he told her, and she blushed hotter because she knew that, damn it. He’d lectured her most of the morning about what water looked like. “What else makes a path of mud so wide and so long as to be seen at this distance?”

She looked back at it helplessly, but there were no magic clues hovering in the air above it.

“A herd,” said Meoraq, biting off each word very clearly, “of corrokis. They have passed through. They have moved on. Go down and fetch dung.”

She went. Fetched. It took six trips there and back, lugging armloads of dry, crumbling, shit-patties as high as her chin before he told her to stop and start the fire.

Back she went to Scott’s side of the camp for the second time that evening to beg for his lighter. This time, grinning, he refused.

“Don’t fuck with me tonight,” she snapped. “You know you’re going to want to eat, so just give me the stupid lighter and let me get started.”

“I really don’t think I want to eat anything you’ve touched tonight, Miss Bierce. Ask me sometime when you haven’t been wallowing in manure for several hours first.”

And back she had to go, empty-handed, to tell Meoraq she couldn’t get a lighter.

He was not sympathetic.

“If I wanted you to use tools, human, I would have given you mine.”

“Meoraq, for crying out loud, I can’t start a fire without a lighter!”