He stood near the cave entrance, watching Shell Eyes as she sat poring over the remnant of the Oldworlder vest that he had once worn, now torn, bloodstained, and almost coming apart into two pieces. She separated some of the strands that it was made from to see if she could devise a way of saving it. Rakki now wore a shoulder-wrap of skin sewn with sinew, which he had wanted ready for the expedition leaving the next day. With Jemmo’s approval, he had set her and several other females the task of investigating the scraps of Oldworld materials that were left, such as the pieces of clothing taken from Bo and Scar-arm, and other oddments used as sleeping covers or for cleaning, to see if they could be duplicated. White Head had told them that such things in the Old World were made from the fibers of certain plants and soft down from the hides of animals. The women had collected samples of various plants and attempted to work them, but without success. Everything was too short and stiff, and could never weave together to form the fine, unbroken order that they found in the old fabrics.
“The plants were a special kind,” White Head said, squatting nearby in front of the place where he worked, shaping spear tips from hardstone. “Could be they never grew in these parts.”
“What they look like?” Rakki asked him. That could be another thing to look out for on the reconnoitering journey starting tomorrow.
White Head made a helpless gesture. “I cannot tell you. It was not what I knew. I was just a herder of cows.”
Rakki frowned. “What is cow?”
“Large animal. Bigger than hairhide.”
“You own? . . . Like those.” Rakki motioned toward the pens holding the animals that had been inherited from the Cavers.
White Head emitted one of his wheezing laughs. “That few! They are nothing. I work for Great Lord who owns them. More cows mean bigger worth. The land his cows needed to hold them was”—White Head waved toward the outside again—”here to the water on far side of swamp lands. More, even. Could be as far as fire mountains.”
Rakki couldn’t imagine enough animals to fill that amount of land, and took it as just another of the things White Head said that he would never understand. He turned his head again toward Shell Eyes and lifted his chin in an unspoken question. “This, I cannot remake, my lord,” she told him. “I am sorry. I can maybe tie with sinew. It will last a small time longer. I am sorry.”
Rakki nodded curtly, suppressing the surge of annoyance that made him want to slap her. It didn’t seem worthy of a warrior to beat a female who had committed no fault. He discerned the same disapproval in White Head also when he witnessed it happening with others. It seemed to be part of the Oldworlders’ way. Rakki could tell from the way Jemmo looked at her that he resented the way Rakki had claimed her as his female immediately, without deferring to Jemmo’s right to choose first. Rakki would be in danger now until the thing between them was settled, one way or another.
Gap Teeth—whose name was Enka, Rakki now knew, but he still stuck to the original that he had coined—and Shingral were nearby as always. Since the day of the ambush, when Rakki had spoken for them to be spared, they had attached themselves to him in the way dogs would to the master who commands them, and appointed themselves the task of watching over his safety. They saw the rising tension between him and Jemmo, and had made it plain by their actions that if things came to a fight between rival factions to resolve matters, he could count on two henchmen who would be loyal. Although Rakki valued the protection, he considered them mildly foolish. Life could not be lived for the benefit of others. The weak tried to harness the strong to save them, instead of learning to be strong themselves. And if the strong let themselves be harnessed, they themselves would become weak—like the hairhides that allowed men to tie lines around their necks and worked for them.