“By the Three Kennedys! You are unable to read the map,” he exclaimed.
The warrior queen nodded. “A strange affliction that infected our tribe soon after the coming out. All the newborn of one generation were unable to distinguish the letters and words as anything other than a jumble, although they could feel impressions. Some say that it was a rad-blast sickness, others that it was a sign from the exalted ones that we must learn on the journey, and so it could not be quick. Either way, we became wanderers unable to divine from our own maps in the space of less than two generations.”
Ryan looked her in the eye, his single icy blue orb meeting with her piercing diamond blue stare. “Well, we can read these, and if our current direction is anything to go by, your time of learning may just about be over…”
OTHER ALLIANCES and enmities were forged in the quietness of the journey. Krysty found herself spending time with the young Amazon who had a mass of tumbling auburn curls. She was taller than the rest of the tribe, and was glad to find in the statuesque Krysty someone of a similar size. The woman was named Tammy, and was barely out of her teens, yet already she had proved herself in battle and explained to Krysty how the girls in the Gate tribe were trained from birth to carry the wisdom and fight of the tribe. Although the men did many of the everyday tasks about the camp, the secrets of medicine and healing were carried down the female line. The young girls of the tribe were schooled in camp every day on the techniques for both healing and harming, and Krysty watched Tammy take a class of younger girls in unarmed combat, while Margia taught them the skills of handling and maintaining blasters.
Remembering her own youth with Mother Sonja in Harmony, the Titian-haired warrior was keen to discuss the secrets of healing with Tammy, who was herself learning the skills of being a medicine woman. They spent much time discussing the skills of herbal medicine and healing, finding that both had the natural earth touch that enabled them to locate injury and heal with the body’s own natural energy and force. Tammy had the bubbling enthusiasm of the young for the skills she was learning, and was keen to learn from Krysty. Mildred, who had spent her time since awakening into the Deathlands learning natural healing skills to augment what she knew from predark, was also interested in learning from Tammy, as anything that could supplement the meager resources of scavenged predark medicines and drugs was to be welcomed. It also took Mildred’s mind off something that was bugging her more and more.
Tammy took great pleasure in the attention that the two women paid her. She also noticed the looks she was getting from Dean as he occupied himself with Jon and Petor.
The young Cawdor had made himself known to the two friends when, on the morning after the companions’ arrival in camp, he had happened across Jon and Petor wrestling. Rising early, he had decided to take a look around the camp while the others were barely stirring, and his attention had been drawn by the sounds of scuffling from behind a tent in the far corner of the camp.
Not stopping to wake anyone, Dean ran to the tent, keeping low and as light of foot as possible, skipping over the few guy ropes that secured some of the more primitive tent constructions.
As he approached the source of the noise, Dean crouched closer to the ground, his hand snaking to where the Browning Hi-Power was holstered. In an almost unconscious and instinctive gesture he checked that it was easily to hand, the holster unhindered by any obstruction. He knew that the safety was on and that the blaster was fully loaded as he had checked it before turning in the night before. But hopefully he wouldn’t need it. The struggle sounded like no more than two people, and was possibly only a fight between Gate people rather than an intruder from outside the camp. From what he knew of the tribe, Dean reckoned that it would have to be an incredibly good guerrilla fighter to get past the guard patrols.