Dawnlark Plains ι

The mountain had asked for one thing from Darukaal: to keep away from their land. Darukaal had not complied. They had begged when faced with opposition; tried their hand at fearmongering when rejected and thrown paltry insults at the man she loved instead. And still they had the gall to gape their mouths when Skorpa refused. It was laughable. It was shameful! But it was more than this; Ayovi did not trust them.
Now the glacier’s enmity was not only with Saatsine, but the wolves of Winsook.
“Jeg er glad for dig lavet lys om det, elsker.”   Lover. The newest word she’d learned. The latest enshrined in ochre on the wall of their den. She liked to murmur it between kisses before dawn. Or tease him with it in evenings before bed. Now it is tossed unceremoniously through gritted fangs.
“Jeg kan ikke. De er som hvalpe. Kaster raserianfald, når de ikke får deres vilje. Det er godt, Darukaal ikke har nogen gravide kvinder. Børn bør ikke opdrage børn.”
“De er tåberne og for tomme i hovedet til at se det,” she blows an annoyed breath but maintains her pace. In the span of a week her belly has doubled in size and the new weight is odd, as is the way it laps against her thighs. Her teats are pronounced and sensitive, and she curses the glacier for enkindling war in the taiga at such a critical time. 
Winsook’s stance was clear: they would not fight another man’s war without reason. She and Skorpa’s route into the woodland was not to raise arms for Saatsine. No; she thought instead of the pregnant woman. The chieftain’s wife, who’d by now birthed those guiltless lives into the taiga.
She adjusts the oxen hide at her shoulders, a calming whiff of its contents gracing her nose: yarrow, burdock, sweetfern, bluebead and sheep laurel. Tough roots for chewing and sphagnum moss for wrappings.
They came to heal.
Ayovi cuts her tread alongside Skorpa, ears pinning in wariness. But it is the woman she sees, and visibly the huntress softens, a brisk step aiding her pace.
“Saatsine,” Ayovi greets, for she does not yet know her name, “we have heard news; that war from the glacier is coming to you. We bring herbs and remedies; medicines from the mountain.”