Veyra Flintstep's Arc

Chapter 4 of 14

Shahndiin stood as soon as Veyra spoke. She set her cloth aside and pulled a hide over her shoulders. "Then we go now. Before he eats and closes his door." They crossed the village in the last light. The chieftain's hall rose above the other houses, its roof spined with old tusks and hung with dyed banners. Two carved posts flanked the door. Veyra had stood before them a dozen times in her life and still felt small at the threshold. Shahndiin did not slow. She pushed the hide flap aside and went in. Barren Meadow sat at the low ceremonial table, a bowl in front of him and a spoon in his hand. He was old. He was also broad in the shoulder and thick in the arm, and he set the spoon down without hurry when he saw who had come. His second stood behind him against the wall and did not move. "Speak," Barren said. Shahndiin nodded at Veyra. Veyra stepped forward. "There are beasts in the high wood above the moss beds. Big ones. Three-toed tracks, wider than a bear's. They travel in a group. They stripped a pine to twice my height today." "How many." "Six prints I counted. More I did not." Barren looked at the shaman. "You saw this?" "I saw what she brought back. I stopped the harvest. No one goes up." Veyra pressed on. "We are asking for warriors. Enough to clear the grove. If the beasts come down, they take the moss beds first, then the lower pens. If we go up now, we choose the ground." Barren picked up his spoon. He turned it once in his hand and set it down again. "No." Veyra waited. He did not add to it. She said, "Chief—" "No warriors go up the high wood." He looked past her at the door. "I have men meeting in houses I was not invited to. My own blood among them. If I send a war party out of the village now, I come back to a new chief in this hall." "People will die if—" "People will die if I lose the village tonight." His voice did not rise. "The harvest stays stopped. Post a watch on the moss beds. That is what I give you." Shahndiin's mouth thinned. She said nothing. She knew a closed door when she heard one. Outside, the cold hit Veyra's face and she stopped in the packed snow. The forty poles were still promised. The dye was not. The road west would not be marked this season. Something large walked between her and every route she had left to open. "I need Giloa," she said. "And I need to see those tracks again before the snow covers them. If the chief will not send warriors, I will learn what we are dealing with myself." Shahndiin looked at her a long moment. "Then I go with you."