The Cavers had ways of making traps for animals that the Swamp People didn’t know. Ones like bush-pigs and horn-heads that they didn’t kill immediately, they kept captive inside a walled pen built from rocks at one end of the space behind the rampart enclosing the caves. A female that Rakki called Pig Woman brought grass for them and collected the dung to be dried by the fire for fuel. There was also a cleared area outside the rampart that they had crossed the day before when Rakki was brought in, where there seemed to be some kind of attempt being made to induce food plants to grow. All the food that was prepared or collected went into Fire Keeper’s stock, which was kept in a guarded recess behind the cooking area. The law against stealing was strict. The Screecher—thus named permanently by now—had told Rakki gleefully of how the last one to be caught pilfering from the common stock had been impaled on a stake by Mistameg’s order, and the body hacked into pieces for the dogs.
Mistameg—the Oldworlders called him Meggs—was the Cavers’ chief. He was large, even for an Oldworlder, and immensely strong, with eyes and teeth shining white against his face and a mane of hair hanging to his shoulders, tied in a braided leather band. He was fierce, violent, and allowed no questioning of his decisions. Rakki was impressed. He could learn much about power and controlling others to do one’s will from such a man. Three of the few Oldworld women were Mistameg’s. One that Rakki had dubbed Yellow Hair was pink of face like the man he had thought of as Lightskin yesterday, but knew now was called Bo and held place as Mistameg’s second. Although Bo seemed to have a choice of Neffer females, he didn’t like Mistameg owning Yellow Hair. Rakki could see it in his eyes and read it in his body talk. But Bo was not enough of a warrior to challenge Mistameg, and so he took out his anger on others beneath him in the order. Yellow Hair might have had other children also for all Rakki knew, but one was a Neffer girl with the same hair and light skin. Rakki called her Shell Eyes, since they were the color of a reed-nester’s eggs, unlike anything he’d seen before. The vision conjured itself up in his mind of him one day killing Mistameg and taking Shell Eyes for his female. Then Bo would hate him too, and he’d kill Bo. Then he would be worthy to become a chief. The thought was sweet and helped him forget his hunger.
“The way to become a great warrior is not to let your thoughts show,” a voice said. Rakki turned toward White Head, who had to be the oldest among the Oldworlders. Rakki didn’t understand all the words that White Head used, but he spoke in a tongue that was closer to the Swamp People’s than the one most of the Cavers used. He was sitting on a mat of reeds among the rocks at the cliff base, trying one of the stone edges on a piece of root wood from a fangleaf bush. There were several larger pieces of a firmer, straighter-grained wood than scrub roots in the cave behind him, but they had come from afar and were kept for cutting shapes needed for special purposes. Before the Long Night, so it was said, bushes with stems as wide as the span of a man’s arms and as straight as a taut vine had grown higher than a bow could shoot. Dead pieces of them sometimes turned up buried in mud or washed up among rocks, and were highly valued. Rakki sometimes saw images in his mind of huge green growths and the sky lit by a brilliant light, but he didn’t know if they were from things he had seen once or just imagination. Far to the north there was supposed to be a land where such things remained, but he had always doubted the story . . . until White Head showed him the round wooden rocks in the cave where he worked. Rakki’s edged club of Oldworld metal had aroused great excitement when Screecher presented it on their arrival, and Rakki hadn’t seen it since. After being questioned by Mistameg, he wasn’t of a mind to protest.