The Sin Eaters by Aaron Summers

Author:Aaron Summers [Summers, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-05-31T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15 - BURNING FOLK

Camdzic of the Steppe lingered in the sun outside the tent. The menfolk squawked beneath its shade in a circle around the airag bowl. They would be drunk soon on the fermented mare’s milk, if they weren’t already. Their squabbling voices and foolish ideas made her think they were. She did not enjoy enclosed spaces, even if the walls were rolled up to let the eastern wind howl across the plains. Why could they not migrate to a forest?

Airag dulled her senses. What value was life if she could not sense it? She looked up to the fading sky and allowed a rare smile. This, this, was how a woman ought live her life.

The lithe Berian brought her hard stare back to earth. It was hardly the almighty sky but still, she mused, it was a good place to be. Fen had asked her to be just the third member of his young tribe, after himself and Old Jonah, and she accepted immediately as she stood in front of the feverish boy still covered in his own blood from his hunt. He would abide no hierarchy. She was simply with the Leyevi until she chose otherwise.

She considered herself again. It was a strange circle to make, but her days with Fen forced her to think more and more. It was easy enough to understand his attraction to her. She knew she was beautiful in the leonine way Berian women were, taller than most men with long slender limbs full of an unyielding sinewy strength. She could run almost as long as a Leyevolki, stalk better than the hyena, and longed to live every moment of her life beneath the endless sky that her ancestors called Tengri. They had believed in gods. She did not.

Nor did Fen. He lounged in the circle with his friends as they argued, somehow, about the long history of humanity. How could anyone know? It was so long ago. They were either making stories or chirping corrupt knowledge gleaned from the abandoned scrolls of the Hollow Folk.

She liked the healer Lundoo least of all. His paunchy belly belied the softness of his foreign life. He claimed to come from west of here but east of the Uralskiye. Jonah told Camdzic that the man’s accent sounded more like the wintery Novgorodi in the abandoned plains. It was just a few weeks travel from that middle place west of the Uralskiye to the true Hollow Lands. Lies were like vultures. One meant many. Camdzic, who enjoyed nakedness in most people, wished the sagging old man would wear more clothing.

Camdzic bound herself to Fen, no matter what corrupt knowledge found its way to the eastern edge of the known world. She knew it because of the fire she felt in her face while she watched him sprawl on the furs just now. The languid pile of bronze muscle and razor edges, the countless bone, wire, and beaded trinkets woven into his braided hair telling unspoken

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