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All that backbreaking labor, trying to clear the packstead of bodies, came
back to haunt her. She ached everywhere. Her muscles never quite loosened up.
Grauel was breaking trail. She tried to keep the pace down. But the silth
pressed, and it was hard for the huntress to slack off when the older of the
two could keep a more rigorous pace.
Once, during the first brief rest halt, Grauel and the taller silth fell into
whispered argument. Grauel wanted to go more slowly. She said, "We are in
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enemy territory, sister. It would be wiser to move cautiously, staying alert.
We do not want to stumble into nomads in our haste."
"It is the night. The night is ours, huntress. And we can watch where you
cannot."
Grauel admitted that possibility. But she said, "They have their witchcrafts,
too. As they have demonstrated. It would not be smart to put all our trust
into a single-"
"Enough. We will not argue. We are not accustomed to argument. That is a
lesson you will learn hard if you do not learn it in the course of this
journey."
Marika stared at the snow between her feet and tried to imagine how far they
had yet to travel. As she recalled her geography, the packfast lay sixty miles
west of the packstead. They had come, at most, five miles so far. At this pace
they would be three or four nights making the journey. In summer it could be
done in two days.
Grauel did not argue further. Even so, her posture made it obvious she was in
internal revolt, that she was awed by and frightened of the silth, yet held
them in a certain contempt. Her body language was not overlooked by the silth
either. Sometime after the journey resumed Marika caught snatches of an
exchange between the two. They were not pleased with Grauel.
The elder said, "But what can you expect of a savage? She was not raised with
a proper respect."
A hint of a snarl stretched Marika's lips. A proper respect? Where was the
proper respect of the silth for a huntress of Grauel's ability? Where was a
proper respect for Grauel's experience and knowledge? Grauel had not been
arguing for the sake of argument, like some bored Wise meth with time to kill.
It did not look that promising a future, this going into exile at the
packfast. No one would be pleased with anyone else's ways.
She was not some male to bend the neck, Marika thought. If the silth thought
so, they would find they had more trouble than they bargained for.
But defiance was soon forgotten in the pain and weariness of the trek. One
boot in front of the other and, worse, the mind always free to remember.
Always open to invasion from the past.
The real pain, the heart pain, began then.
More than once Barlog nearly trampled her, coming forward in her own foggy
plod to find Marika stopped, lost within herself.
The exasperation of the silth grew by the hour.
They were weary of the wilderness. They were anxious to return home. They had
very little patience left for indulging Degnan survivors.
That being the case, Marika wondered why they did not just go on at their own
pace. They had no obligation to the Degnan, it would seem, in their own minds
from the way they talked. As though the infeudation to which Skiljan and
Gerrien had appealed for protection was at best a story with which the silth
of the packfast justified their robberies to packs supposedly beholden to
them. As though the rights and obligations were all one-sided, no matter what
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was promised.
Marika began to develop her own keen contempt for the silth. In her agony and
aching, it nurtured well. Before the silth ordered a day camp set in a
windbreak in the lee of a monstrous fallen tree, Marika's feeling had grown so
strong the silth could read it. And they were baffled, for they had found her
more open and unprejudiced than the older Degnan. They squattted together and
spoke about it while Grauel and Barlog dug a better shelter into the snow
drifted beneath the tree.
The taller silth beckoned Marika. For all her exhaustion, the pup had been
trying to help the huntresses, mainly by gathering firewood. They had reached
a stretch where tall trees flanked the river, climbing the sides of steep
hills. Oddly, the land became more rugged as the river ran west, though from
the plateau where the Degnan packstead lay it did not seem so, for the general
tendency of the land was slowly downward.
"Pup," the taller silth said, "there has been a change in you. We would try to
understand why overnight you have come to dislike us so."
"This," Marika said curtly.
"This? What does `this' mean?"
Marika was not possessed of a fear the way the huntresses were. She did not
know silth, because no one had told her about them. She said, "You sit there
and watch while Grauel and Barlog work not only for their own benefit but
yours. At the packstead you contributed. Some. In things that were not
entirely of the pack to do." Meaning remove bodies.
The elder silth did not understand. The younger did, but was irked. "We did
when there was none else to do. We are silth. Silth do not work with their
paws. That is the province of-"
"You have two feet and two paws and are in good health. Better health than we,
for you walk us into the earth. You are capable. In our pack you would starve
if you did not do your share."
Fire flashed in the older silth's eyes. The taller, after another moment of
irritation, seemed amused. "You have much to learn, little one. If we did
these things you speak of, we would not be seen as silth anymore."
"Is being silth, then, all arrogance? We had arrogant huntresses in our pack.
But they worked like everyone else. Or they went hungry."
"We do our share in other ways, pup."
"Like by protecting the packs who pay tribute? That is the excuse I have
always heard for the senior huntresses traveling to the packfast every spring.
To pay the tribute which guarantees protection. This winter makes me suspect
the protection bought may be from the packfast silth, not from killers from
outside the upper Ponath. Your protection certainly has done the packs no
good. You have saved three lives. Maybe. While packs all over the upper Ponath
have been exterminated. So do not brag to me of the wonderful share you do
unless you show me much more than you have."
"Feisty little bitch," the taller silth said, aside to the elder.
The older was at the brink of rage, an inch from explosion. But Marika had
stoked her own anger to the point where she did not care, was not afraid. She
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