"Did they all die in the fire?"
"Why would you think that? Do you think the fire burnt the whole world?"
"Give me another loon," Hopp said. "We've got plenty of scouts. We'll tell you if they come to take the town."
Dante smiled and handed him another earring. "Give us the word and we'll be there."
The old woman watched keenly as he returned across the stream. Blays spat out a blade of grass he'd been chewing. "How'd it go? Did the conversation actually take place via mouths this time?"
"No. Now if you'll excuse me, I need a moment with the creek."
"I'll be upstream. Far, far upstream."
"He took the loon," Dante said. "He'll tell us if they see the soldiers. Be ready for a fight."
They returned to Soll's, keeping the horses saddled and their weapons handy. Compared to the racket of industry of the last couple days, the streets were as silent as the wilds: while they'd been out, Soll's brother had spread word another troop might be approaching. The locals had taken to their homes with swords and hammers and spears and axes and hoes.
Hours dragged on. They ate a light lunch of cheese melted on flatbread with greens and herbs plucked from Soll's back garden. Dante killed a few minutes by checking on Soll's wife. She was pale and had lost weight. Her arms were perversely thin for a norren; when she sat up in bed, they hung from her shoulders like broken flowers. She spoke and gestured freely, however, and her stomach was pale and cool, free from infection.
The loon pulsed a couple hours before sunset. Dante's heart pulsed with it.
"I heard from your chief," Cally said in his ear. "They've located the soldiers. Hopp wants you to meet the clan at Farrow Hill at once."
"Where's that?"
"You know, I'm not quite sure. As it turns out, I'm more than a hundred miles away. If you'd like to wait two or three days, perhaps I can ride out and find it for you."
"Did he say anything else?"
"He did not."
"Then I need to go," Dante said. "If you never hear from me again, build me some statues." He broke the connection. The others stared at him, eyebrows raised. He turned to Soll. "Where's Farrow Hill?"
"Farrow Hill," he said slowly. "South and southwest. Eight or ten miles."
"Can you take us?"
"On my back if I have to." He gestured to his wife's room. "I still owe you the world."
They mounted up and rode south along a dirt path through the grass. Mice darted away from the clop of hooves. Borbirds squawked from the sparse and thorny trees. Dante rode fast over the rising path. The ground rolled for several miles, then began a steady climb. Every stir of the grass made Dante's eyes dart and his heart skip. The hill leveled off. Ahead, the stark ruins of a stone tower waited in the wind. Behind, the land spread like a full-color map, a sprawl of green grass and the haphazard squares of rich brown farms. Dante could just make out the ribbon of the road. Around it, Plow was a tiny cluster of dark mounds.
Blays gazed at the collapsed tower. One wall stood twenty feet high, orange lichen encrusted to the dark stone. Most of it lay in an uneven mound, half-buried. Grass and spring's first blue wildflowers sprouted between the cracked stone.
"So where is everybody?" Blays said.
Dante reached for his loon and made sure it was aligned to Cally. "You there?"
"Yes," Cally said a moment later.
"Well, they're not. Have you spoken to Hopp again?"
"I would have let you know if I had."
"Can you raise him? I just want to make sure we're in the right place." He switched off.
"That's Farrow Tower," Soll pointed. "There is only the one, and it is on Farrow Hill."
Dante stared over the distant plain. "This feels wrong."
"They probably figured we could win the battle by ourselves," Blays said. "Honestly, I can't blame them."
"I'm sure Hopp farting into the loon was just a sign of respect."
"I don't know why we're even wasting time out here. We should march straight to Setteven, storm the palace, carve a tunnel through everyone who gets in our way, and slap the king with a wet glove until he makes Mourn king."
"I don't want to be king," Mourn said.
"That's all right." Blays wiped wind-blown grit from his eyes. "You can cede the crown to me."
Wind rustled. Birds chirped. Three minutes later, Dante's loon pulsed. "What'd he say?"
"He's not responding," Cally said. "Do you think something's wrong?"
"I don't know. There's at least forty warriors in their clan. Unless they all fell down the same well, I'd expect one of them to have made it out here."
"I'll inform you the moment I hear a thing. I know how you get when things are uncertain."
The link blanked out. Dante stared down the hill, straining his ears so hard they rang with strange tones. He began to sweat under his doublet. Blays trotted around the crest of the hill and found nothing but open grass. As the sun dropped, the wind grew steady and cold. Dante felt sick, tingly, his head overrun by questions and doubts.
"What exactly did Hopp say to you this morning?" Mourn said.
"Nothing. That he'd take the loon and scout for the soldiers."
"That's all?"
"That's all." He blew into his hands to warm them. "There was an old woman with him. She told me the story of the fox and the votte."
A frown unfolded beneath Mourn's beard. "How does that story go?"
"I don't really feel like swapping campfire tales just now."
"Just tell me how it went. Please."
Dante gave him a look. His eyes were anxious, guarded. Dante sighed and repeated the story of the querulous votte and the silent fox.
At the end, Mourn winced like he'd just taken a big bite of soup and chomped down on an unexpected bit of bone. "We should go back to town."
"What is it?"
"That story wasn't a story. Well, it was. It told about a thing that happened. But it was also a test."
"Of his patience?" Blays said. "It didn't even have an ending."
Mourn shook his shaggy head. "Because there is no ending. The fox can't trust the votte and it doesn't need to because this isn't the first fire it's seen. It already knows the signs of fire and what to do when it comes. And long after the vottes have died or gone away, foxes live on, because they know when to change."
"Oh," Dante said.
"You see?"
"Right."
"All I see is two cryptic assholes," Blays said.
"The norren are like the fox," Dante said. "I don't know if the votte is Narashtovik, or Gask, or humans in general. Either way, they can't trust us and don't need us."
"So Hopp sent us on a votte hunt," Blays said. "Just for a laugh? Or to get us away from something?"
"Lyle's balls," Dante said. The sun neared the horizon, piercing and red. "We'd better get back to town."
Twilight slowed their return. It was full dark by the time they rode into Plow. Men jogged down the streets armed with bows and spears and pitchforks, whooping and laughing. Soll pulled aside one of his neighbors to get the news. The Clan of the Broken Heron had ambushed a detachment of the king's men miles north of town. Not a single redshirted soldier had survived the skirmish.
"Is it always going to be like this?" Dante said. "We come with aid, and they send us off in the wrong direction and laugh behind their hands? What will they do when an army of ten thousand sweeps through the hills?"
"You must understand," Mourn said. "Who are you to a clan? Do you look any different from the king?"
"Then let's move on. Try a different group. They can't all feel this way."
"We
could
waste our time," Blays said. "Or we can try something that'll work."
"You've got a better idea?"
"It's very simple. We stop being human and start being norren."
"I'll see what I can do." Dante splayed his hand, grabbed up a fistful of nether, and flicked it at Blays. "Kablam!" The shadows flashed in a shower of sparks. "Oh dear, it didn't work. Should I try again?"
"If you're having fun," Blays said. "But my plan's a little simpler." He grinned at Mourn. "I think we should join a clan."
18
Dante shook his head. "That is among the dumbest things you've ever said. And I once heard you ask what a female rooster was called."
Blays quirked his mouth skeptically. "I would rather not know that than have to grow up in the kind of place where it's common knowledge."
"Like where? The world?"
"Like your hometown. Not that you can call two cottages facing each other a town. Anyway, it's not like you can tell what sex they are by looking at them."
"It's a chicken!"
"Anyway, what do you know?" Blays waved his hand for peace. "Mourn, is this dumb? Or is it in fact brilliantly smart?"
Mourn's eyes shifted. "If you could join a clan, you would be taken much more seriously by many other clans."
"Can we join a clan?" Dante said.
"To my knowledge, which is not exhaustive, and is in fact quite limited, when you consider the small fraction of norren I've known personally, or heard reliable information about, during my as-yet brief life on this—"
"Will you get on with it?"
Mourn folded his arms. "No human ever has."
Dante turned to Blays. "You see? Dumb. Dumb in the way of a rooster with its head cut off."
"Oh, that doesn't mean anything," Blays said. "Look then, how does a norren join another clan? You guys must marry outsiders now and then."
"I'm not marrying a norren," Dante said.
"Is it the hair?" Mourn said. "Norren women aren't any hairier than human women. Not so far as I've been able to tell, anyway."
"It's not a species thing. I'm not marrying
anyone
."
"Women everywhere will be happy to hear it," Blays said. "Now will you answer the question, Mourn?"
"Well," he said. "There is marriage. There is also a debt system wherein if you can't repay what you owe to a member of another clan, and you're not well-liked enough within your own clan to be worth starting a feud over, then you may be offered to the other clan as a temporary slave, with the right to join that new clan once your period of slavery has concluded."
"How long does that take?" Dante said.
"Two or three years, typically."
"We'll just ask Moddegan to hold off the invasion until then. He seems reasonable."
"That's it?" Blays said. "What if you just like some other clan more?"
"Well, you could simply ask to join," Mourn said. "A clan can do whatever it likes with itself, can't it?"
Blays threw up his hands. "Why didn't you start with that?"
"Why don't we skip all this?" Dante said. "Why don't we just go to the Clan of the Nine Pines and get their backing to distribute the loons?"
"I'd rather not," Mourn said.
"Why not?"
"Because they might kill me."
"Well, that seems a bit reactionary," Blays said.
"I abandoned the clan in time of war. It would be their right."
"The Clan of the Broken Heron is right here," Lira spoke up. "What can it hurt to ask them?"
"This could work," Mourn said. "Right now, no one takes you seriously. If you were adopted by a clan, many others would suddenly discover that what you have to say is worth listening to."
"Fine," Dante said. Down the street, torches whirled. Norren laughed in their booming voices. Four men heaved around a corner, leaning forward as if into a gale, lifting their knees high as if wading through water. Taut ropes stretched behind them. Torchlight splashed over the bodies of four red-shirted soldiers bouncing through the muddy streets. "But if Hopp says no, we move on. Without argument."
Dante told Soll to go home to his wife and led the others through the hills to the stream. Even in darkness, he found it and the campsite readily enough, but the clan was nowhere in sight—they'd left nothing behind but fish bones and latrines. Dante rode along the stream half a mile in both directions and found nothing but grass and trees and moonlight. Shortly before midnight, he returned to Soll's, where the looming norren opened the door and promised to help them find the Broken Herons in the morning.
He came through. Following the slaughter of the king's soldiers, the clan had relocated several miles south to recuperate and hunt fresh fields. Warriors snored in the morning sunlight. Those who were awake came to stop Dante's band with spears and swords, but on the word of Mourn and Soll, they were allowed once more to see Hopp, who sat on a broad rock by the stream, flicking a lightweight hook above the surface of the water.
The chieftain didn't turn. He sighed through his beard. "Why don't you save us all the trouble and throw that sack of yours straight in the stream?"
"We're not here about the loons," Dante said.
"Then are you here to congratulate me?"
"Yeah, hell of a victory," Blays said. "It was so impressive it's inspired us to join your clan."
Hopp laughed, his thick middle bulging under his deerskins. "I don't think you're tall enough. Maybe we could hang you from your ankles for a month?"
Mourn shuffled his feet and gazed at the bed of grass beside the streambank. "They are regrettably serious."
Hopp gazed between their somber faces. "You are, aren't you? What do you even know of the Clan of the Broken Heron?"
"That you destroyed a troop of the king's soldiers with minor losses," Dante said. He glanced at the old woman who sat motionless beside a tree. "That even though I couldn't hear it, you were kind enough to tell me how to be a better friend."
The woman laughed softly. Hopp smiled slowly. "And what makes you worthy of the clan?"
"That's not for me to decide."
"Are we finally getting somewhere?" the old woman said.
Hopp touched the R branded on his cheek. "No. I see no claim to our clan. No right to even ask it."
"We were there when the Clan of the Nine Pines freed the Green Lake from Lord Cassinder," Dante said. "We brought peace between the Clan of the Golden Field and the farmers of Tantonnen, securing bread for your people against the upcoming war."
"Damn, that sounds outright heroic," Blays said. "Not to mention the four years we've spent bringing the Territories food, silver, and weapons. Put it like that, and you could say we're already a de facto clan of our own."