It was another one of those nights.
Belda crouched on the icy rocks next to the stream that burbled through the village, her crutch wedged into a crevice to help balance her. It was autumn now, and the wind had fangs that chewed through her furs and chilled her skin. She shivered, and looked up into the sky at the innumerable hearth fires of the spirit world.
In the depths of the dark forest surrounding the village, wolves howled their hunting-calls. In Takkar's cave, Ulfa sobbed in agony as the skullfire raged behind her eyes. Belda listened to them both, wrapping her leopard-fur tighter around her and feeling the weight of the shell bracelet around her wrist as she did so. Ulfa and her brother Ull were the only not-Udam to wear such bracelets. No matter how much the Wenja in the neighboring villages liked to whisper otherwise, the siblings were Wenja too; Tensay had made cuts in their arms and mixed Takkar's blood into theirs to make them his children.
They were Wenja, just like Belda, and her father Karoosh called Takkar his own brother, so that made Ulfa and Ull like Belda's own sister and brother, and they had played together as children, and—and—and—
Ulfa sobbed again, the sound rising into almost-scream, and her cave bear roared in anger at the sound of its master's pain. Belda could see the dark shape of the animal pacing to and fro along the outskirts of the village, too wild to come close to the village fires but too loyal to wander away into the night.
Ulfa was a fellow Wenja, and Belda could do nothing to help her.
Footsteps behind her. "Cold night," Ull rumbled. "Winter coming soon."
"Hard night," Belda said, tearing her gaze away from the sky's fires. "Full of pain."
Ull's eyes gleamed in the moonlight beneath their heavy brow-ridges. He grunted an agreement and squatted next to her, huge and imposing next to Belda's smaller, slighter frame. The not-Udam was built like a boulder, with massive shoulders and a broad, hairy torso, his arms and legs as thick as tree trunks despite his youth.
"Tensay will give herbs soon," he said. "Make Ulfa sleep."
"Good." Belda wrapped her arms around herself and flinched as another high, wailing sob ripped through the village. The bear roared again. "I hurt too, inside, for Ulfa."
Ull sighed. "Me too," he admitted.
In Takkar's cave, Tensay started to chant: "U pawhaya, u pawhaya, u pawhaya hay pur…" and out of the corner of her eye Belda saw Ull's shoulders relax. The cries died into whimpers, then silence.
"It is done," Belda said at last, looking back up towards the sky fires. She touched the piece of red antler hanging by a cord around her neck, silently thanking the spirit of the tall elk for its possible intervention in Ulfa's pain. Maybe Ulfa's cave bear spirit wasn't strong enough to defeat the skullfire, even with the help of Tensay's herbs and chants. Maybe it took multiple spirits to defeat it, even for a single night.
Maybe sitting awake and watching the sky fires helped after all, even just a little bit. Belda liked to think so.
She and Ull sat in silence for a time, listening to the howling of the wolves. At the edge of the village, the bear settled down to sleep in a clump of bracken. Belda watched it, knowing the animal wasn't safe to approach without Ulfa standing nearby to calm its distrust of Wenja. To be a Beast Master... Takkar was one, and Ulfa was one, and Takkar's son Dakkar was meditating and preparing to take the spirit journey to become one, but Belda knew she could never tame a beast. She could look inside herself and see plainly the urge to reach for a spear rather than soothe with empty hands if she ever crossed paths with a wolf or cave lion.
If she had a spear. All she had was a crutch. And if she was thinking of her crutch—it was time to go back to the hut and sleep. Belda adjusted her leopard-fur and shoved her crutch under her arm, using it as a support to heave herself to her feet. Ull sprang up beside her, quick as a deer in a way that nobody who saw his huge, heavy-limbed frame would ever expect. The wood-and-bone crutch slipped on the icy rocks, and Belda swayed dangerously before grabbing Ull's arm for support. It was like grabbing onto a mountain; he was that strong. As strong as his Udam birth-father of the same name, which made the older Wenja nervous.
Ull let Belda steady herself, and kept his hand on her arm until she had hobbled onto firmer ground. "Little samipadi," he said, smiling. "Always running to catch up to other children."
"Still little," Belda said, smiling in turn, "Still samipadi." Once, the name Half-Foot had stung like rock salt in a wound, a symbol of being too slow and broken to be interesting to play games with. Now it was just a name, the same as Wogah being called 'Crafter' or Urki being called 'Thinker'. Only Karoosh hated to hear it.
"Sleep good, Ull," Belda said.
"You sleep good too," Ull said, and hesitated. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, fidgeting with the two boar tusks he wore in a cuff around his arm. What made him want to call on the strength of his spirit?
"I hunt tomorrow," he admitted eventually.
"Good hunting," Belda wished him politely. She was no huntress; being Half-Foot prevented her from being anything but a hindrance to any Wenja hunting party. Ull wasn't going to ask her to join him, so why bother telling her?
"I made a... spear-sling."
"Spear... sling?"
"It throws spear far for only little strength. Come. I show you."
"You want show me your 'spear'?" Belda asked, snickering.
"No! No!" Ull's ears and face were red with embarrassment. "Weapon. Good weapon for hunting, I think. I use first time tomorrow. You come with me?"
Belda's eyes widened in surprise, and then she looked out into the forest where the wolves still howled. She had only gone beyond the village and its surrounding fields twice in her life—once with Tensay, since as a child she had nagged and begged him until he agreed to take her on an herb-gathering expedition, and once when she'd been crippled. Her dreams of being a warrior like her father had died with the rockslide that had trapped and crushed her foot, and she'd always assumed that that had been the end of any excitement she might have in her life.
"I must talk with Karoosh. But I want to see the spear-sling! I do! We hunt!" Her smile was making her face hurt. "We hunt."
"Not for mammoth, samipadi," Ull reminded her, but he was smiling too.
"Next time, maybe."
Ull snorted. "Sleep good," he said, then turned and walked up the hill towards Takkar's cave. Belda watched him weave his way between the huts with a soundless hunter's tread, knowing she couldn't replicate it—because she was samipadi, certainly, but also because she had never tried. Tomorrow, she thought, and kissed the piece of antler to thank the spirit of the tall elk for giving her this opportunity.
Belda went in the opposite direction of Ull to Karoosh's hut. She barely had to use her crutch at all; her foot hadn't borne weight while she had watched the sky fires and therefore wasn't painful, and her limp was hardly noticeable on even ground. She tried to walk silently like a hunter, moving slowly and deliberately and keeping to the shadows between the moonbeams—and tripped over a basket. It bounced into the wall of a hut, spilling a bunch of small animal hides and a necklace of polished bone beads. Belda stumbled and fell, slicing the heel of her left hand on the edge of a flint shard somebody had dropped. She hissed in pain, then licked the dirt out of the cut and spat the blood out. She gathered up the scattered items and set the basket aright, trying not to leave bloodstains on anything.
Her cheeks were hot with embarrassment as she stood up and walked normally the rest of the way to Karoosh's hut. The village was quiet and still in the aftermath of Ulfa's battle with the skullfire, however; maybe nobody had seen her.
Belda hesitated in front of the brown bear skin hanging over the entrance. Warm orange firelight glowed in the cracks between the edge of the fur and the wall of the hut: the fire hadn't been banked down to embers for the night. Was Karoosh still awake? She reached out and touched the edge of the fur, preparing to sweep it aside—but lightly, so that no movement could be seen from within. She hung there for a moment, suspended by indecision, then took a deep breath and ducked around the skin.
Karoosh was indeed awake. He sat in front of the fire, drinking from a clay bowl of meat broth with stewed wild carrots and garlic. His hair was gray now, his back stooped, his limbs aching with the first twinges of arthritis—but he was still a powerful warrior.
"Smarka, Atta," Belda said.
"No," Karoosh grunted.
"No?" Belda echoed. She went to the fox-skin bag hanging from the point of an antler-rack that spanned one wall. Inside, there were a variety of other skin bags made from the hides of small animals. She picked one and opened it. Here were dried yarrow leaves, picked during the summer. When applied to an injury they would help stop bleeding and strengthen a person's spirit to fight off wound-poison. Belda placed the leaves directly onto her cut, then dived into another bag for fresher comfrey leaves that still had a bit of moisture in them. She wrapped one over the injury and secured it in place with a leather strip.
"You will not hunt," Karoosh said. "You cannot throw a spear, shoot a bow, swing a club. When the wolf prowls, the rhino charges, you cannot run. You die. No."
"But I—"
"No."
Belda's shoulders slumped. She sat down on the opposite side of the fire, studying her father through the curtain of flames. He was avoiding looking at her the way he always did, focusing instead on the bowl and his food within it.
"I will not go alone," Belda said.
"You will not hunt with the Udam."
"He is Wenja."
Karoosh's lip curled in a sneer, and Belda swallowed a sigh. She could remember a time when her warrior father had been happy. He had told her stories of the hunt for Mog who had killed his first child, whom he had dreamed of fighting alongside. That dream had been revived with her birth. Her first toys had been tiny spears and slings, and he had shown her the thrust, the throw, the charge. But Karoosh's dream had died for a second and final time when Belda had become samipadi, and his happiness had died with it. Now he often ranged far from the village, hunting down the last of the Udam in the north, and whatever grim satisfaction he took in their deaths didn't bring a smile to his face.
"I must hunt."
"No. Other Wenja, they must hunt. You weave baskets, tend plants for Roshani, watch children, cure leather, cook. You do many things, good things, but not hunt."
"I must hunt to be like you! Like mighty Karoosh, my pashtar!"
"You are not me! You never be me! I not... not..."
"Not Half-Foot?" Belda asked.
Karoosh drained the dregs of his bowl. "I sleep," he said, and retired to the pile of skins in a sheltered corner, far from the drafts near the doorway. He lay down with his back to her.
Belda opened her mouth, then shut it again. She chewed her lip, trying to think of the right thing to say, but then gave up; there was nothing she could do that would persuade Karoosh to change his decision. Belda moved through the rest of her evening chores, banking the fire down to embers that wouldn't need tending through the night and then eating the last of the stew out of the leather pot. She laid down in her own pile of furs to rest, setting her crutch next to her and pulling the leopard-fur up to her shoulders.
Tomorrow, since she would not hunt, she should find wood and leather to make sleeping platforms. With the onset of winter the ground would grow cold, and the chill would creep through a pile of furs and into the body. Belda's last thoughts before she fell asleep were of how many skins she would need to trade to find someone to cut wood for her outside the village.
Belda woke again just after dawn to the roaring of the cave bear. Ulfa was dead.
Wenja Glossary
Atta — dad/sir
Pashtar — father
Samipadi — compound of "sami" (part/half) and "padi" (foot)
Smarka — hello (informal)
U pawhaya hay pur — (imperative) cleanse/purify this fire
I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of the fic! All Wenja-language dialogue is taken from the blog "Speaking Primal". I'm doing my best with the grammar, but I'm an utter novice at this so please notify me of any mistakes. I'd love to hear any comments, concerns, or speculations about what you think might happen in the following chapters. Please leave a review!