According to White Head, they moved from place to place in the region they named Roundhills for almost half a year. During that time Neotto gashed his chest on a poisonous thornbush and died after being consumed by fever, and Shell Eyes began the swelling that meant she would produce a child. Then they encountered a group of people consisting of several couples, most of them crazy-ones, and a number of children, living under makeshift roofs of branches and leaves built over crevices in the rocks. After two of the males were killed in a short but fierce fight, the others submitted to Rakki’s leadership. Both the dead Neffers possessed females. Rakki gave one of them to Gap Teeth as a reward for saving his life. She was called Hyokoka and had yellow-hued skin with straight hair and curiously slanted eyes of a kind Rakki had never seen before. Uban challenged Sims over who would take the other, whose name was Engressi, but Sims declined to fight and so she became Uban’s. Of the children, two were old enough to fetch, carry, and be given chores. Rakki ordered them to be kept, but not Engressi’s boy baby, who was just able to walk. However, Shell Eyes offered to help Engressi with him and suggested he could be raised to be a special attendant for Rakki. “Another leg for you, to replace the one that is crooked,” she urged. Rakki had laughed at the joke and relented, and the baby was spared.
But he wouldn’t let himself become soft like the Oldworlders, he told himself inwardly. Always, burning at the back of his mind, was the thought of one day exacting revenge on Jemmo. And Alin and Dorik. He sometimes spent long hours visualizing the ways he would watch them die if it ever came within his power to order it.
The location was good, with thick growth around, a creek running down to join a long lake not far below, and although the ground above sloped up to a broken ridge above, it was away from the steep heights that were liable to avalanches of rocks and boulders when the earthquakes came. Rakki decided they would remain there. The people that they had subdued called it Joburg, which they said was the Oldworld name of a place far to the south, now buried under snow according to a lone traveler who had passed through a long time ago. Rakki liked the name and decided they would keep it.
More had joined them in the time since: several couples in a group, again with more children; a number of Neffers traveling in twos and threes, and in one instance, a lone wandering female. All were from the south, where they told of snow and ice covering the land. The clan built more shelters of dried grass thatched onto frames of woven vine, cleared space for growing food plants in the way the Cave People had done, and fenced in an area for keeping the animals they were beginning to acquire. Sims and two of the newcomers made a bowl-shaped frame covered in skins, and floated out on the lake below to find fish.
For the first time that he could remember, Rakki was able to live free from uncertainty and suspicion of everyone around him. Life at Joburg was better than he had known. But still, the thirst for revenge never left him.
He surveyed his domain with pride as he and White Head came down from the ridge side by side astride the mules. Smoke was rising from the hearth outside the open-fronted cooking hut, where a bush-pig was being roasted. The hut for storing a reserve supply of food was nearly complete. A large rock had been levered out of the creek and rolled to one side as part of a plan to clear a portion of it and widen it into a pool for washing and bathing. Rakki felt satisfaction in what they were doing. But he was unsure how long it might last.
“It looks as if they have started working on the creek,” White Head observed. “The path down to it is clearer.” He turned his head and read Rakki’s face. “But you seem troubled.”