Other tents rose across the yellow grass, similar to hers, their animal-skin covers stretched across cedar poles. In the distance rolled a red forest, a place of berries and the whispers of secret men, and beyond the trees rose the faded blue mountains where the elk roamed. A murder of crows circled above, cawing, and Laira felt her head spin and she nearly fell. She clutched her doll, a wooden little thing she had named Mustardseed. The crone's talon-like hand tightened around Laira's arm, dragging her forward; Laira felt like a doll herself, helpless and small.
"Keep walking and don't close your eyes," said the crone, a shaman named Shedah. Her arms were knobby like old carob branches, and her fingers ended with sharp, yellow nails that nicked Laira's flesh. Other fingers—torn off the hands of dead men—hung around Shedah's neck in a lurid necklace of bone and dried flesh, charms to ward off evil spirits. The crone was ancient beyond measure—some claimed her two hundred winters old—and so wizened her eyes all but disappeared into nests of wrinkles. Her gums were toothless, her nose beaked, her body withered, and yet she was still so strong, strong enough that Laira thought the crone could snap her arm in two. All Laira could do was keep walking, guided by the old woman.
"I won't close my eyes," Laira whispered.
Shedah cackled. "If you do, I'll rip off your eyelids and make you watch. So be a good little maggot."
They kept moving through the camp. The tribe's totem pole rose ahead—the great bole of an ancient cedar, carved with images of bison, eagles, and leaping fish. Near its crest flared a gilded mammoth tusk, long as a boat, attached to the pole with rawhide thongs. The cross of wood and ivory towered above the tents—the god Ka'altei, a deity of meat and fire. Wherever they set down this pole marked their territory, a beacon for all other tribes to fear.
Around the pillar brooded its guardians—the rocs, fetid birds the size of mammoths. Oil dripped down their black feathers, and their long, naked necks turned as Laira approached. Their cruel beaks—large enough to swallow men—clacked open and shut, and their talons, which were longer than human arms, dug into the soil. Their eyes watched Laira, gleaming orbs like circles of bronze. Were they not tethered to the totem, Laira thought they'd leap toward her, tear out her entrails, and feast.
The tribesmen stood everywhere, dour, staring, clad in fur and leather and holding spears. Some stared at Laira balefully. One hunter, a burly man with a scraggly red beard, spat at her. Others gazed in pity. Clad in a robe of patches, a druid woman whispered ancient prayers, reaching toward Laira but daring not approach. In Laira's old home across the sea, men now wove wool and cotton, built houses of stone, and shaved their beards, yet here in the north—in the Goldtusk tribe—lived an older, prouder, rougher people, warriors of fur and stone and hair. War paint covered their leathery skin, and tattoos of totem animals coiled around their arms.