The Swirling Waters’ main outpost was a sprawling nest of bramble vines and pine trees. They were grown so they interwove together into one multilevel structure that stretched from a handful feet above the main water way to the tops of the trees in the delta. There were some areas that wound their way down to ground level as well, but they were small and well guarded. It seemed that the ground often wasn’t stable enough to support a person’s weight.
The whole thing felt insulated and entrenched. As if nothing could get in through the thickly woven, thorny walls and they wouldn’t budge even if Grislander came alive again and swatted the village. The bramble vines didn’t shift or crunch under our feet though they made for bumpy ground. Nor did it feel like we were up in the air—with the way the walls twisted up it felt more like we were in the ravines of Flickermark, only able to see the sky directly overhead.
I wanted to burst out into open air, but Juniper seemed settled in a way I had never seen her. Unlike the needle platform on the top of the Seedling Palace, or the view from any tree, she seemed utterly sure she wouldn’t fall. This was her world and she was glad to be home.
They had cultivated the different varieties of bramble berries so they grew in contained patches all throughout the enclosed village. The rest of the space, on the inside of the walls, had the bramble thorns pruned back and seemed to be coated in some kind of oil or mixture that kept the berries from sprouting. Meticulous, time consuming work, but it resulted in them having clean living spaces and open areas to practice fighting and complete other work.
There were access points to the waterway and lookout towers, so they could respond immediately to any threat by the fish. Juniper proudly declared that they had reedlike poles positioned through the river that would rattle if any fish tried to secretly swim past the clusters and other tactics to fend off underwater assaults.
I could hear the sounds of fighting in the distance, but they were faint enough that they could be brushed off as something imagined. Juniper wasn’t as pleased about that. It meant that the horde had pushed her people hard enough that they had made more gains up the river than they typically ever would in the cold season which, while being something we knew, was completely different to experience firsthand.
Everyone in the outpost had the look of a fighter. The elderly and children had already been moved to the cold season shelter, and everyone remaining did their best to fight the fish into a standstill, if not a retreat. It made me wonder again how these people could have produced someone like Juniper who had all the theoretical knowledge, but none of the practical experience.
That is until our guide took us to the top of the wall.
Bulbous pine trees spread out all around us and their roots were either surrounded by water or dangerous looking shrubs full of thorns and burrs and other unpleasant things. The ground was completely impassable except in one or two areas I could see where it looked like the tribe had strategically opened up killing grounds, muddy or spongy ground that offered a path forward through the bushes, but that was also surrounded by slingers’ nests and likely littered with traps.
There was nowhere to be but up high unless you wanted to struggle through the organic defensives or be easy pickings for a fish soldier in the water. The Swirling Waters tribe had built walkways, outlooks and outposts, all throughout the trees so they could rain death down onto the fish from above. Given these surroundings, Juniper should have been more confident up in the air than most of our cohort.
Instead, her fear of heights kept her at the bottom of the knobby steps leading up to the top of the wall, so she wouldn’t have to look at the expanse spreading all around.
She was locked away with the confines of the outpost by her own fear and it seemed no amount of exposure would dismiss it. Perhaps she could learn to better regulate it, like I could strangle down the terror of confining places depending on the circumstances, but that was certainly not foolproof or without consequence.
Juniper stared resolutely out at nothing from her position below us as our guide, an older man who might go with the elders to the cold season shelter in a year or two, softly confided, “Our Little Lady is as fierce as the knife dancers, but she prefers to hide her face from the sky. She knows Bramble Watch better than all of us combined though.”
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Knife dancers were a subset of the tribe’s fighting force that used were trained in dual wielding knives or daggers, like Ento. They had the highest mortality rate of the delta’s fighters but they could carve through large swathes of fish when they were trapped on killing grounds or during an ambush. What protection they lost from keeping the high ground, they made up for in pure killing efficiency.
Juniper had informed me about all sorts of things when it came to her tribe and the delta while we were waiting for our summons. Though she still kept quiet about the Water Frond Snake, her pearl, and the fact that her people referred to her as ‘Little Lady’.
They seemed to have an interesting mix of pride and pity for her. Pride because of her focus on fighting the horde, her position as the Tribe Master’s daughter, and her connection to the Water Frond Snake. When they made an effort to be formal they called her ‘Pearl Bearer’ instead of ‘Little Lady’. Pity because of her crippling inability to fully adapt to their way of life. She might desperately want to fight the fish, but she didn’t take shifts on the lookout towers or patrol the walkways. She couldn’t kill fish with one clean shot of her sling and no one would risk the Pearl Bearer with the life of a knife dancer. She panicked when she saw how high up she really was and at some point they had all decided it would be best to stop forcing her out of the outpost and see how she did as a whisper woman.
The only one who hadn’t accepted those circumstances seemed to be Juniper herself.
She was determined to fight the fish, protect the delta, and prove to herself and everyone else that she wasn’t a disappointment. I could understand the sentiment even my motivations were more to spit in the eye of my detractor rather than win approval.
No one in our group gave the guide the sympathy he seemed to be looking for. Rather Esie, Ingrasia, Ziek, and Ana all looked annoyed or otherwise displeased. For one, we already knew about Juniper’s fear of heights, and two, he shouldn’t have been so willing to gossip about her to outsiders, or about a Sapling at all, much less to other whisper women.
Esie covered her annoyance with a bright smile. “It’s time for us to speak with your leader.”
The man returned her smile and seemed to completely miss the hint of censure in her tone as he led us away. “Of course. Tribe Master Toniva has been looking forward to hearing your decision.”
Juniper rejoined the group as we trailed past her and I didn’t bother with breaking her silence. Unlike our guide, I knew better than to poke at old wounds in public. Instead, I kept my focus on Esie while not to be obvious about it.
I had been sorely tempted to hunt her down again, like I had after the initial meeting she set up, when Ingrasia revealed her manipulations, but rather than taking the hot headed approach and revealing my new knowledge I decided to see how things played out. After all, I wanted to become one of the Chosen even if I didn’t like being used. I could always protest in the future and I wanted to leave open options I wouldn’t have once others knew I was playing the same game as them in the Succession War.
I’d keep my eyes and ears open, learn all I could, and then use what I had learned to the greatest effect. That was likely the very least I’d need to be capable of if I wanted to catch the goddess’s eye and be Chosen. Otherwise, even if I caught Her attention the best I could hope for was being promptly dismissed. I had no desire to stare down a tide of lava again and desperately calculate whether it was better to burn or run.
The air in the delta smelled of wet with hints of frost and salt, and something faintly rotten. A far cry from the dry heat of the inner valleys, but not entirely different from my time fighting on the shore.
The High Priestess wasn’t going to be freezing everything around her this time. Not unless we screwed up so badly that it was determined there was no other way to protect the Seedling Palace. Instead, Esie had informed everyone already involved that the decision had been made to awaken the Water Frond Snake and see if that did the trick to take care of the horde. I still thought we should take other measures, but she didn’t give me any confirmation that my ideas had been even discussed.
The other whisper women Esie had brought into the meetings were also around, but they had splintered off with their own guides to get to know Bramble Watch. Morwen had nodded greetings to several tribespeople she recognized, seemed to discuss some business with one of them, and then she disappeared into the shadow paths again. Ingrasia said she was likely going to go check on the other Beastwatchers in the area, but I was more surprised how familiar the Beastwatcher second seemed to be with the tribespeople. My tribe had barely ever interacted with whisper women and here, while it might not be common, the contact wasn’t just restricted to funerals and when new seedlings were taken to the Seedling Palace during the Dark Night celebrations. Then again, Morwen had said Beastwatchers had worked together with the Swirling Waters tribe to grow the delta’s defenses. That would give them much more ample opportunity to interact.
Part of me wondered what would happen if, for all the talk of a proxy war, what would happen if the Water Frond Snake really was as effective as Toniva believed. Would Juniper be hailed as the Savior of Swirling Waters and win the proxy war before it even had begun? Or would the whisper women decide the battle here didn’t count and move on to other things?
That would be the best outcome for the fighting in the delta, at least in the short term, even if it conflicted with my own goals. Otherwise, I had to hope that we did come up with something that would break the horde or we would be in dire risk of being overrun.