Shortly thereafter, the signal was passed down from somewhere ahead: Make camp where you can for the night. We depart at first light tomorrow.
Guo looked around. They were in a place where the path broadened slightly. To one side was a large mound of moss. One of Guo’s flankers inspected the mound and announced that it was (relatively) free of pests. Guo and her flankers moved onto the mound. She noticed the apprehensive glances which her flankers cast about in the gloom. It was almost dark. The swamp was horrid enough in daylight. What monsters crept within it during the dark?
She commanded them to gather closely around her bulk—atop her mantle, even, as many as could fit. The flankers quickly agreed on a system of rotating guards. (So, Guo noticed with admiration, did the males of her cluster.) Then, feeling reassured by the proximity of Guo’s great muscles, the flankers not on watch fell quickly asleep. No large predator would likely approach such a formidable creature as Guo, even in the dark. If they did, the watch would sound the alarm, and whatever predator might lurk in the swamp would soon learn the bitter lesson which Guo had taught, that very day, to the Utuku. Even in sleep, the great battlemother did not relinguish her grip on the maces.
Guo’s last memory, before she fell asleep, was a faint whisper from Woddulakotat.
“Tomorrow, Guo, we will talk about Kopporu, and what you must do. But think on this, as you drift into sleep. I was there, at the end, with the Great Mother. My bondmates and I had taken position on her cowl, alongside her own cluster, for we knew that her husbands would be useless. We saw Kopporu’s retreat, at the same time as the Great Mother.
“She did not hesitate, Guo. Not for a moment. She commanded an attendant, and gave her the shell; and ordered us onto the attendant. Then she gave the attendant the message for you, and bade her leave.
“I looked back, Guo, at the Great Mother. It was my last sight of her. Her mantle was glowing like the Mother-of-Pearl itself in midday. One color, Guo—one color alone. The deepest green I have ever seen.”
Chapter 17
When Guo awoke the next day, the answer to her dilemma was clear. As she slept, her mind seemed to have reached a conclusion on its own. A problem, however, remained: How should she carry out her decision?
Here, she was treading on uncertain ground. By choice, she had spent as much of her short life as possible in the company of warriors. She knew little of the customs and traditions which prevailed within the yurts of the mothers and clan leaders, even though she herself was a high-ranked member of the tribe’s prevalent clan.
She did not think in these terms, but the essence of her problem was that: she needed a lawyer.
Lawyers, of course, did not exist among the Kiktu. (They had only just begun emerging, as a distinct subset of the priestly caste, in the civilized realms of the south.) The Kiktu were barbarians. They had no written language beyond a crude system of notations which were even more limited than the runes of Earth’s ancient barbarians. Like the tribes of northern Europe a millenia past, custom and law was maintained by oral tradition transmitted from one generation of clan leaders to the next.
Had Guo ever read the old Icelandic sagas, she would have found the scene toward the end of The Saga of Burnt Njal quite familiar. The tribe, gathered in full assembly, deliberating on a matter of law. Each old and wise being of the tribe advancing their arguments; only to be refuted when an older and wiser being remembered a different law which everyone else had forgotten.
Law and custom was the province of the old clan leaders. What was she to do? All the clan leaders were dead. There were not even very many old warriors left alive, Guo suspected. Other than Kopporu’s personal guard, and the members of her own small clan, the vast majority of the warriors who had filled the ranks of the left flank had been the young and adventuresome warriors of the tribe who had flocked to Kopporu’s standard.