Creative Commons – The Plainsrunner – Chapter Seven

Announcement

I have decided to release The Plainsrunner under a Creative Commons license – Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA). To celebrate that, I am going to publish it here serially, one chapter at a time.

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Sage finally leaves her home territory and sets out on the month-long trek to the city.

Chapter Seven – Going South

Sage didn’t sleep much the rest of that night. She built up her fire and extinguished the torch, then tried to occupy herself with repacking her panniers. If she was going to take a long journey, then she wanted everything to be right. An unbalanced load could lead to trouble. She might end up hurting herself by trying to compensate for it. Not to mention the danger of chafing. What took the most time was deciding what to leave. Some of the things her father had added were not useful, only sentimental. They were still hard to leave behind.

She checked and double-checked her blankets for holes and worn spots. They protected her skin from constant rubbing by the panniers. She wouldn’t be able to make very good time if she had to deal with open sores on her back. At the least it would make her go through her medicine bag too quickly.

With that thought, she took out the bag and did another inventory of its contents. Tonight’s injury had caused her to dip into it again. More of the healing paste and more bandages were gone. She could clean the bandages and use them again, but once the paste was used up, it was gone. She sighed, put everything back in the bag and stowed it in the pannier. She knew this wasn’t about her supplies, or about how well they were packed.

In the morning she would be setting out for the city. Even if she survived the month-long journey, and even if there was something for her when she got there, she knew this meant it was real. She was really leaving the village for good. She would really never see her family again. Never see her friend Tallgrass again. Breaking camp and heading out down the river was acknowledging that the banishment was real and final.

She gritted her teeth and choked back the tears that were trying to fall. She refused to cry now and she swore that she would never cry again. They might be able to banish her, but she wouldn’t let them break her. She prepared everything for her departure, then as the sky slowly lightened, she carefully honed the edges on her knife and spear.

The rising Sun was on her left. The city was to the south, about a thousand kilometers if the traders were to be believed. She was walking now, taking a breather from the canter she had started out with. She had wanted to gallop, to get away as quickly as she could, but after a few hundred meters had settled back into an easy canter. Now she was walking, her breathing normal and her eyes scanning her surroundings with constant vigilance.

Following the river did not mean walking along beside it as it meandered across the plain. That could double the distance or more, and it wasn’t easy going in amongst the trees for someone of her size. That was for small creatures, like the little fliers that flitted among the trees, or the buzzing insects that they pursued. It was for the little animals that scampered among the bushes and along the branches of the trees. But she was a plains animal. She was meant to be out running in the grass, with the open sky above her. She would spend the night in there, camping by the river, but in the day she would travel in straight lines from one bend of the river to the next.

In the daytime she had to be alert for the day runners and the day fliers, but at night she only had to worry about the night stalkers. The night fliers wouldn’t be a problem because the trees over her head would protect her. One out of four isn’t bad, she thought. And as long as she had a fire going, the night stalkers tended to stay back anyway. So, she told herself, it’s really two out of four. So the times of greatest danger were when she was crossing the open ground between river bends, and when she was passing close to the trees and the cover they provided for lurking predators. She laughed to herself. “Pretty well all day, then,” she muttered.

She was approaching the trees now. She stayed about ten meters away from them, so if a day runner wanted to ambush her, it would have to cross open ground to do so. At those times she kept her knife in her right hand and her spear in her left.

It burst out of the bushes after she made her closest approach. Its run was timed such that it would be coming at her as she was walking away. Typical, she thought as she turned to face it. They always like to come at you from behind. It was similar in appearance to a night stalker. It was low and wide, with six legs and a big head full of teeth. There were some differences in its proportions and in its colorations, but it was clear that these animals were close to each other on the tree of life.

As she turned, it practically ran right into her spear. She adjusted the aim slightly and thrust the point into its neck where it joined the shoulder. She felt it sink in deeply and she gave the shaft a few tugs back and forth to increase the damage to its innards. It gave a loud, hideous scream and, with its legs churning and its teeth gnawing the spear, it died.

Sage had a quick look around to make sure nothing was trying to take advantage of the confusion, then she carefully approached the body. She kicked it a couple of times to make sure, her knife at the ready, then she began to work at getting her spear back. Its jaws were clamped on it, but its bite was not strong in death, so she was able to get it out of the mouth without too much trouble. Then it was a matter of working it out of the body. Since the spear point was a simple blade, it didn’t have any barbs or protrusions to snag the flesh, and it came out quite easily. She only had to work against the resistance of the wound seeming to cling to the weapon. She always wondered why it did that. Why did a dead body seem to clutch at the weapon that killed it?

She got a good look at the body now, lying in a mess of its own blood. She could see that it was quite young. It was smaller than a full-grown day runner adult. Sage thought that must be why it did so poorly at attacking her. She had another good look around. A day runner this young and inexperienced should really still be with its mother, learning how to hunt. She looked carefully, but there were no other day runners around. As she crouched to wipe the blood off her spear in the grass, she said, “You poor thing. Your mother’s dead, isn’t she?”

It didn’t have anything to say. It just sprawled there with its tongue hanging out in the dirt. “Now what?” she said. “Am I supposed to eat you?” Her mouth twisted at the thought. She knew that predator meat was not very good. Her people didn’t eat it if they didn’t have to, but she had been given some during ceremonies. It was supposed to make her think about the web of life and where everything was on it. Mostly she just remembered that it tasted really bad.

She thought about it. Her natural abhorrence of waste made sure of that. She put her hand on her knife as she visualized how to butcher the carcass. Then she would have to smoke the meat and cure the hide. She’d have to make camp here for days, then she’d be left with a lot of stuff she didn’t want and couldn’t use. She lifted her hand off her knife and headed to the river to wash her spear. She’d leave the day runner for the scavengers.

Sage walked on for a few more bends of the river before making camp for the night. She didn’t want to be anywhere near the carcass and the activity it would stimulate. She also didn’t want to be reminded of her wastefulness. She was walking away from resources when she was facing a month or more where she might need them, and there was the sense bred into her that Plainsrunners should show respect for the life on the land. If she was going to take that life, then she shouldn’t just leave it lying on the ground. These thoughts turned in her mind through the dark night.