Free Calamity's Child by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

Sweet Waters
     
    The trap had taken a kwevit -- a fat
one, too.
    Slade smiled, well-pleased. Beside
him, Verad, his hunting-partner and his oldest friend among the
Sanilithe, saving Gineah, grunted in mingled admiration and
annoyance.
    "The Skylady Herself looks after you,
small brother. Three times this day, your spear failed to find its
target, yet you return to your tent with a fair hunting of
meat."
    "The hunters before us this morning
were noisy and hurried -- making the game scarce and distant even
for your arm," said Slade. "My spear flies not quite so
far."
    Verad waved a broad hand at the sky in
a gesture meant to take in the whole of the world, and perhaps the
whole of the universe.
    "It is the trail we find today,
hunter."
    Slade nearly smiled -- Verad's
stern-voiced lesson could have as easily come from one of his
merchant uncles, for all that those uncles would scarcely
acknowledge Verad human and capable of thought, much less sly
humor. The humor was lacking at the moment, so Slade kept his smile
behind his teeth, and moved quietly toward the trap and its
skewered victim.
    "If I am a poor hunter," he asked, "is
it wrong to find another way to take meat?"
    "The tent must eat," Verad allowed.
"Still, small brother, a hunter should keep several blades in his
belt, and be equally skilled with all."
    Slade knelt on the wiry moss, put his
spear down, and carefully removed his kill from the
trap.
    "One skill at a time," he
murmured. "
The tent must
eat
speaks with a larger voice
than
Slade must hunt with
erifu
."
    From the side of his eye,
he saw his friend make the sign to ward ill luck. Slade
sighed.
Erifu
-- "art," or, as he sometimes thought, "magic" -- was the
province of women, who held knowledge, history and medicine. Men
hunted, herded, and worked metal into the designs betold them by
the women.
    "If you are a bad hunter and
discourteous, too," Verad commented, settling onto a nearby rock.
"You will be left to stand by the fire until the coals are cold."
He blinked deliberately, one eye after another.
    Slade frowned, rubbing the
trap with
nesom
, the herb hunters
massaged into their skin so the game would not scent
them.
    "What if I am left unChosen?" he
asked, for Gineah had been vague on this point. He situated the
trap and set the release, then came to his feet in one fluid
motion.
    "Those left unChosen must leave the
Sanilithe and find another tribe to take them."
    Slade turned and stared -- but, no,
Verad's face was serious. This was no joke.
    "So, I must be Chosen." He chewed his
lip. "What if I do not come to the fire?"
    Now, Verad stared. "Not come to the
fire? You must! It is law: All blooded hunters who are without a
wife must stand at the fire on the third night after the third
purification of the Dark Camp's borders."
    Tomorrow night, to be
precise,
thought Slade. He would be
there, around the fire -- a son of the grandmother's tent could do
no less than obey the law. But...
    "Sun's going," Verad said.
    Slade picked up his kwevit by the long
back legs and lashed the dead animal to his belt. He recovered his
spear, flipped his braid behind a shoulder with a practiced jerk of
his head, and nodded at his friend. "I am ready."
    *
    The scattered tents of the Sanilithe
came together for Dark Camp in a valley guarded by three toothy
mountain peaks. It was toward the third mountain, which Gineah had
taught him was called "Nariachen" or "Raincatcher" that Slade
journeyed, slipping out of the grandmother's tent after the camp
was asleep. He went lightly, with a hunter's caution, and spear to
hand, the cord looped 'round his wrist; the broad ribbon of stars
blazing overhead more than bright enough to light his
way.
    He should not, strictly speaking, be
away from night camp at all. Man was prey to some few creatures on
this world, several of which preferred to hunt the night. But come
away he must, as he had during the last two Dark Camps -- and which
he might never do again, regardless of tomorrow