Renegade's Magic
Page 178

Soldier’s Boy’s status with the People had dwindled, but he remained a Great One. His feeders did not desert him: that would have been unthinkable for a Speck. It did seem to me that they had to work harder to provide for him. The kin-clan had turned the sunshine of their attention back onto Jodoli, and he was the one who benefited from their hunting and gathering. There was no want in Soldier’s Boy’s lodge, but there was not the sumptuous plenty of days past. If he noticed it, he gave no sign of it to any of his feeders.
For a time, his warriors continued to seek him out. They gathered outside his lodge to smoke and talk, and then go off to hunt and fish together. I could not decide if habit brought them, or if they somehow hoped that something more would come of their failed effort. Each morning, he went out to greet them but every day fewer of them came. He had nothing to offer them. His promises of victory had been empty. The intruders remained at Gettys, the ancestor trees were still in danger, and Kinrove’s dancers were still prisoners of the magic. None of the rewards he had offered them in exchange for all their hard work had been fulfilled. After a time, they no longer bothered to wait for him, but met up with their comrades and dispersed to the day’s hunting and gathering. No one spoke any more of driving the Gernians away by force of arms. His army was no more.
I made efforts to be neither idle nor passive. Any number of times, I tried to see if I could slip away from him to dream-walk. I never managed to. He was rebuilding his cache of magic, and he guarded it so jealously that I could find no way to tap into it and siphon off what I needed for that magic. I constantly watched for some vulnerability, but as day after day trickled away, my hopes receded. I felt I was an animal trapped and forgotten in a cage that grew ever smaller. Soldier’s Boy often sat and stared into the hearth fire, brooding. I wondered if he planned a return to power or merely dwelt on his failure and frustration. To me, Soldier’s Boy seemed like a man without a purpose.
As spring ventured closer, the Specks began to prepare for their annual migration. Food was prepared and packed for the journey, while the lodges were put in good order and all the winter equipment and garments were carefully stored away. I heard more talk about what the summer would bring, and especially I heard more discussions about whether there would be any trade at all with the intruders. The trading or lack of it seemed to bother the People more than the concept of danger or vengeance from the Gernians. Even without knowing Soldier’s Boy’s thoughts, I was forced to confront yet again just how different the People were from the Gernians in how they thought. These two cultures, I decided, would never find common ground. Perhaps Dasie would eventually be proven right; the war would end only when one side had destroyed the other.
The night before our migration was to begin was a busy one for everyone except Soldier’s Boy. He was a center of stillness as he sat in his cushioned chair and watched all his feeders busy around him. Olikea supervised the tidying of the lodge. She determined which cooking pots would travel with us and which would be stored, how much food we would take and who would carry what. She immersed herself so completely in her task that she seemed almost her old self. Then, one of the women asked her about storing Likari’s things.
The boy had not owned much. The cedar chest for his possessions was not a large one. His garments were as he had left them, tossed in, rumpled, crumpled, dirtied still from the last time he had worn them. Most of them showed the wear and tear that any boy of his years would put on clothing. Doubtless by now he had outgrown most of them, I thought. Then I wondered if he was growing, or if the constant dancing had stunted him as I’d heard it would. He had also, not toys, but the tools of a boy learning to be a man. I watched with Soldier’s Boy as Olikea took them, one at a time, from the chest. A knife. A fire-starting kit in a worn pouch, one that Olikea had passed down to him. A net for fish. The sharp crystal that Soldier’s Boy had used to cut himself to mark himself as a Speck. That was wrapped carefully in a soft square of doeskin. The last item Olikea exhumed was my sling. I didn’t recall giving it to him, and yet there it was, among the litter of things in his chest. Olikea picked up a pair of worn shoes, and suddenly clutched them to her chest and broke down in loud sobs. She rocked the old shoes as if they were a baby, clutching them to her chest and calling, “Likari, Likari!” in a voice that penetrated past any muffling.
Soldier’s Boy had not been helping with the packing. Instead, he had been sitting on a chair next to her, idly watching her work. I thought he would put his arms around her or that he would at least say something. Instead, he rose ponderously and walked away from her. At the door of Lisana’s lodge, he hesitated, then strode out into the mild spring night. When a feeder sprang to her feet and would have followed after him, he curtly waved her back. For the first time in weeks, he left the lodge alone.