Herschel spent six leisurely weeks with these plain áettar. Once he was strong enough to stand on his own, the days flew by talking with Lingur and playing games with the kids around the community tent.
The Nontie had no real leaders, instead they had a tent for every purpose a way of governing he found delightfully effective. These people knew how to take life in stride, working and relaxing as the mood took them. Their one set point was moving camp. As nature's larder ran low in one area of the grasslands, they moved on to the next.
Living to live, not chasing a reason to live, his primitive thought.
But even with his endorsement Herschel was a bit embarrassed to remember how he learnt out about the tent system. One of the women had invited him to a cuddle tent. He felt bad telling her he preferred the larger community tent, where he could listen to people talk. That was his kind of party. The woman hadn't taken it well.
After explaining to Lingur he'd asked, "why was she so angry?"
Lingur had already been working hard so suppress a smile, but at that the laughter dam broke.
"She...wanted to get to know you better."
"But we could have done that here?"
"You're really not getting this are you? Why do you think most cuddle tents are small? Made for two so to say?"
"Private conversations?"
Lingur broke again, Herschel had a way of unintentionally making the man laugh until his eyes ran.
"Well, they're for private something! But think about it, cuddle is a delicate name for something willing adults might do together away from prying eyes?"
"Oooh, that!" Herschel had been glad the evening hid his terminal blushing.
More than anything during his time here, it was Lingur's stories that helped him recover. Listening to his friend talk was like a balm for his weary mind, knitting the threads of his thoughts back together. Mainly, they were tales about Frel and the Nontie. But also about Agalaland and how the first Nontie had found these empty grassland long ago.
Their verbal history told that they had been forced out of Dim. At the time, what was left of the Khmur grassland had been abandoned due to superstitions about the neighbouring desert. But taming wild horses on the green plains had come naturally and in time the Nontie became experts in everything horse related. Once they also learnt to hunt the large, but skittish, boolenyn for their meat and soft furs, the plains had provided for all their needs.
They all loved talking about horse breeding, and the tall, lanky Lingur was no exception. But Herschel, being essentially just a meat and bone question machine, tried to ask more about their history. But on the subject of how they were forced out of Dim Lingur refused to go into detail.
Even so he learnt that for a long time, the only other people the Nontie met were the swamp-folk. Many rumours flourished about them and their river delta. But Herschel appreciated how Lingur was careful not to turn rumours into truth. Thetan was obviously dangerous, but the swamp-folk avoided outsiders almost as much as the Dim áettar.
This particular evening, Herschel was helping Lingur, who was pretending to keep the fire alive outside the single women's tent, where he'd spent his first days in camp, since it was also the caretaker's tent. As someone who cared for the sick, Lingur spent a lot of time tending to cuts and scrapes.
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Things got a bit awkward one night when his friend's story had turned serious, talking about his grandfather who'd been a young man when the first humans came from the east. The Nontie helped the humans when they first arrived, showing them good ways to hunt the boolenyn. And as the word spread, more people came.
"And with every pub built, the plains became more and more conquered for civilisation." Lingur crammed a lot of bitterness into that c-word.
Even so, the first settlers sounded a lot like regular people to Herschel. But with them came towns, and then sport hunters, killing herds of boolenyn for fun. As the size of the flocks dwindled, the settlers stopped hunting and started farming. Once they were calling themselves Agalians, the Nontie were no longer welcome in the settled areas.
Something bad must have happened between them, Herschel's curiosity wondered.
There had been an anger in Lingur's voice he'd not heard before, but that wasn't the only reason things were awkward.
Herschel poked the fire, sending sparks flying into the night air and saying, "you know I have to go."
"Why?" Lingur asked.
"I don't know."
"That's your answer for everything." Lingur smirked, lying on his side, facing the fire.
"It's a good answer. We can't learn anything new if we already know everything." Herschel counter smirked. "But I still have to go, as far east as I can get."
"You're serious?"
As he looked down at the soft leather shoes he'd been given. Herschel had that look, of someone who did a lot of thinking without much result. "Yes, I'm afraid so."
"Fine. You need a smart-horse?"
"No, it'd be nice to have someone to talk to, but even a smart-horse is too easy to track."
Most of these people were apparently like him, soft-footed and difficult to track. As childhood memories came back to him, the evidence that he was part áettar was mounting. But he had no way of knowing for sure since he'd been left at an orphanage drop-box in Bilib. No one there had ever mentioned anything about heritage; it was one of those things they just never talked about. Even so, this tribe thought it obvious and accepted him as a long-lost brother.
He knew Lingur was curious about his recent past, but those memories were fuzzy at best. And his friend had almost stopped asking. Herschel wanted to tell him everything, but he wasn't sure he wanted to remember everything. Because even thinking about it made his heart race and his tummy threatened to evacuate.
"What are you running from?" Lingur gave words to his frustration.
"I...I don't know."
This time, Lingur wasn't amused. "Okay, but you don't even know which way to go!"
"But you do..."
"Pfft." The sound of resignation. "Well, the passage to the east is through the valley of skulls."
"Of skulls?"
"It's only a name. Legend has it that Giants once filled the valley with heads mounted on pikes, but the Bergs don't take heads, just taxes."
"What kind of taxes?"
"It's per weight, so the less you take with you, the less it costs, but even if you go through naked, you'll have to pay for your body weight."
"How do I get there?"
"First the wet-way, then the dry-way," Lingur joked, relieving some of the tension.
"The what way?"
"It's an expression. First you follow the river, then you follow the road."
"Oh, I see, so follow Ganja?"
"Yeah, go up the river. You'll find two towns along the way, the first you should avoid like the plague, the second at all cost." Lingur gave him a meaningful look.
"That sounds like the same thing to me?"
"You've lived with bandits in Eastwood. It's like when someone says 'your money or your life', except Krite doesn't care about your money but might say it to make taking your life easier, Stagna wants your money but doesn't care if it takes your life in the process."
"So, the difference is between greed and hate but the result is mostly the same?"
"You got the gist. So, once the river forks into three, there's another offshoot from Zanja called Manja that heads east. Follow that one until you find a road. It'll take you right to the valley."
They sat quietly for a quarter of an hour before Lingur went to bed. When Herschel woke the next morning, his friend had left with a party of hunters. The women helped him pack some provisions and told him Lingur wasn't one for long goodbyes.
Later, as the sun was setting, Herschel followed the river north. The flat prairie made walking by moonlight easy. It was the second time he'd walked away from a place he could've called home. And again he was spotted, not by a living rock, but by a Goblyn of the swamp-folk.
