Walking the Dust
19: Tribal Gathering
There are some things you just can't prepare for. I found that out soon enough.
I'd been travelling for a couple of years by that point, and I was prepared for all kinds of shit in the Suntop Peaks. I knew riverwater was more common in the mountains, for instance (but I still put my tarp out to catch water in the mornings).
I knew food would be hard to come by, so I killed everything I saw and salted it in my pack. I got lucky early on and found a wild goat herd that gave me a good carcass, but by then I'd also learnt how to kill and eat scorpions. It's dangerous, they taste awful, and you need to eat about a dozen to make a meal, but it can keep you alive.
Whenever I found riverwater I looked for water rats, too. They're bigger than the ones in cities, so there's plenty of meat. They taste better, too.
Daylight in the mountains is almost as cold as night on the plains, so you can guess how cold the mountain nights were. But a thick blanket will see you through, and there's plenty of shelter where you can get out of the wind. No whipstorms, either, which is a real blessing.
So all in all, I was pretty well prepared. I knew I could survive up there, and all I had to do was follow the sun West. I expected to come across some small settlements, maybe a few goat farmers... I was even wary of Sand-Eaters and wulves. Had myself a good pair of binnox so that I could see critters like that coming.
But I didn't expect a dog tribe.
Everyone stays as far away from the tribes as possible. It's not that they rampage and slaughter their way across the land like Sand-Eaters. It's just that they're so damned (or, as they'd say, ‘dog-damned') weird.
I mean, these people talk back to their hounds, sleep with them, and I heard they even wear their dead dogs' bones as jewellery. Now you tell me that's not just plain odd.
I was mounting a low ridge, and in front was nothing but taller and steeper slopes. I heard water running somewhere over the ridge, and I almost missed the wulf watching me from an outcrop further along. But I did see it, so I started walking at an angle that would take me far away from the wulf but keep me heading up the ridge.
Except it wasn't a wulf. As I soon realised when I topped the ridge and ran into three dog tribe members and their hounds.
My first instinct was to yell in surprise, and that was a mistake. The next thing I knew I was flat on my back with one of the dogs standing on my chest, baring its teeth at me. I was off-balance to start with, what with hiking up a mountain with my entire life on my back, but don't let that fool you. Those dogs are strong.
Luckily for me, this one was also pretty obedient. It got off me as soon as the owner told it to. I thought they'd just ignore me and move on, but instead the guy offered me a hand up and introduced himself.
His name was Scout Patch, and they were from the Black Snouts clan. I didn't even know dog tribes had clans, but apparently they're all broken up into these sort of huge extended families.
And they don't like each other. See, these guys were here — and the rest of their tribe wasn't too far away, as I saw when I got to my feet — because of the riverwater. The people were bathing and drinking, with their hounds right in there doing the same. And Patch was all ready to dust me down and send me on my way, but one of the others — a mean-looking woman stripped to the waist — started questioning me.
She thought I was a spy from another tribe, come to scope them out and figure out where the good riverwater was. It took a few minutes of quick thinking to satisfy her, and it wasn't made any easier by the half-dozen hounds surrounding me, all looking like I'd make a tasty midday snack.
But eventually she believed me, and they let me go. I decided to push my luck and ask Patch if he knew how to get to Sunspot before I left, but he said he'd never even heard of it.
So then I asked if he'd ever seen the Endless Water, and you know what he did? He laughed.
I didn't stop at the river.
<< Back to Walking The Dust index
