Free Scarred Man by Bevan McGuiness Page B

master.
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    He drifted in and out of consciousness for uncounted days as his body and mind recovered. Most of hiswaking time was spent eating the simple fare of the Kuvnos. The food was mostly derived from the hardy cague flock. It seemed that everything about the Kuvnos people derived in some way from the tough little animals. The normal meal was some of the curdled milk mixed with its blood, usually served in a cague leather bowl made waterproof by smearing it with fat. The thick mixture went solid after a day or so and was shaped into travelling food that was carried next to the skin to keep it from freezing solid. The cague bred prolifically, and one in every three males was set aside for slaughter.
    The woman who first greeted Slave maintained her vigil by him. After a few days, he regained enough energy to engage her in conversation, halting at first, but slowly becoming comfortable. He started to enjoy seeing her face whenever he awoke.
    Her name was Kirri and she had seen thirty-three Crossings. This made her old to be unmarried among the Kuvnos. She mixed the blood of the cague with plants and rare, coloured earths to make poultices and tonics.
    â€˜Why are you called Slave?’ she asked one morning. She spoke as she rolled him over and started applying a thick orange mud to his back.
    â€˜I have never, urgh,’ he grunted as she started rubbing the mud vigorously into his skin, ‘had a name. My master only ever called me slave.’
    â€˜What did your mother call you? Lie still!’
    â€˜I never had a mother.’
    â€˜What? Did you spring from the ice, fully formed? Everyone has a mother, someone’s womb carried you.’
    Slave shrugged as if uncaring. ‘So I have heard.’ Now two members of this little tribe, the Kuvnos, had asked him the same question. Why did it matter?
    A gust of wind shook the low, dark structure — the natona — that sheltered him. The ever-present sound of the wind had the effect of washing out conversation, blurring it, giving more privacy than he would have imagined in such a small, communal place. He looked around at the stretched hide and the sturdy stakes that were all that stood between him and freezing to death. It occurred to him that it had been a long time since he had seen a tree.
    â€˜Where do you get the wood for the supports?’ he asked.
    Kirri flicked a glance towards the walls. ‘We trade for them from the southerners, or sometimes even the Acolytes.’
    â€˜What do you have to trade?’
    She smiled, a flash of colour against her wind-darkened skin. Like most of the women he had seen moving about within the natona, she kept her teeth polished and adorned with intricate hand-painted designs. He had watched the women sitting at night, with their teeth clamped together, lips wide, while another woman painted the complex patterns. He had not seen enough to be sure, but he guessed each woman’s pattern was different. It seemed to be the only real adornment the women had, being wrapped permanently against the cold and wind. It was only here, beneath the natona, that anyone peeled off even the outermost covering. At first, the stench had been overpowering, but hequickly became inured to its pungent bite. Now, he hardly noticed it.
    â€˜Trade?’ Kirri repeated. ‘We trade what we harvest from the tundra.’
    â€˜Harvest? What is there to harvest out here? Nothing grows.’
    â€˜Sssa,’ she hissed in agreement. ‘But we do not harvest what grows.’ She unhooked the first three loops that held her outer garment, her yok, fastened, and pulled out a leather thong that was tied around her neck. Hanging from it was a lump of what looked like metal.
    â€˜What is that?’
    â€˜Mangase,’ she replied. ‘It is a metal that we find just below the surface of the ice. We gather these lumps wherever we set our natona.’
    â€˜Mangase?’ Slave struggled to sit up. He had