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They irded with staffs, torches, and traveling pouches slung over their shoulders Beor aderent way of flirting The Akka woman did not return his admiration She paid no attention to him at all Indeed, she sees She had the broad features common to the Akka people and the broad shoulders of a woman who has tackled a lot of reindeer, and it was hard to tell whether she conteaze because they looked fit to serve her, or to be eaten for supper
Adica hest rarave of bronze Six months buried in earth had caused the sword’s reen, and its soul to sluleam stroked the blade she felt it waken under her touch, felt it grope upward in the way a hand brushes aside a spider’s web that blocks the entrance to a cave
War is co The sword had a seductive voice Free ry soul, no way to bind it so that it would slu, then they had to defend thee with anything less than what the Cursed Ones the man of Old Fort could study this bronze sword and learn the secrets of itsPerhaps he could make more such swords Then the White Deer people would not always fight at a disadvantage
It still wasn’t easy to give Beor the sword
"Go," she said to hio back to the village"
He drew her aside, looking restless "I was a good husband to you, Hallowed One" He pulled on his right ear, as he often did when he was irritated "But you never said so"
He went on without waiting for her reply "Not that I begrudge you the ht him to you, then I’m not one to say ‘nay’ to her wishes, but I won’t have it said that I wasn’t a good husband to you or that I ithout protest when the elders o without protest," she h that he left, halberd and sword held triuht flashed off the tip of the bronze sword, and for an instant she thought she saw blood Then she lost sight of him
"Quick, quick," said the Akka woman
"Stand there, to that side" Adica stationed herself on the chalk calling ground and studied the stars The passageway to the Akka loo Man’s Eye rose in the east, but there were other, more circuitous routes to every loom just as there wereto catch and hold the threads of the Bounteous One and her swift, shy child, Six Wings But the Sisters were rising, and their twin lights could be woven in with the scatter of stars known as the Sha Cup as it dipped into the north
She raised the obsidian old-haired sister and, by shifting the ht in the stones As she wove it in with the other stars, threads flowered to life aeway leading to another loom
She picked up her sack and, with the others behind her, crossed through into a snow as light as feathers, spitting froh plateau composed mostly of boulders tumbled every which way, covered with lichens and ave way toward the horizon to heaps of golden stones jutting up like huge tuainst the cutting wind Only the circle of stones and the gleae along the eastern horizon The light was cloudy and gray, lightening with dawn, although Adica could not see the sun
Their guide trudged away down a path worn into scant earth, more pebbles than soil, and marked out with a trail of chalk that, curiously, was free of snow Adica hurried after her Alain took up the rear guard with his dog-headed staff raised and the dogs at his heels The path cut down through rock that fell by degrees into a steep valley smothered in trees and snow Winter still lay heavily on this land After a tis that had been hacked out of the forest Pigs and deer had s Otherwise they were a featureless white
Down by the valley’s mouth, near the arm of water that bounded the lowest reaches of the valley, rock corrals penned in reindeer Three boats draped with felt rode high on logs, upturned above the shoreline A half-dozen smaller, sleeker skiffs lay drawn up on the rocky beach Ice rilass, unfrozen despite the bone-chilling cold