Pochst dwi’kem-et-deyim ayohs.

Thirty years later.

It was only in the last fifteen years that the tribe had started wandering into the ghrasarg e wolwa lakia. The round lake steppe. Some of the lakes were thousands and thousands of shins across. Most were only two or three thousand. The camp was strewn across a long-ish stretch between two of them; eleven tents and a few spent fire-pits, surrounded by some stakes coming out of the ground to deter wolves. The dogs were territorial enough that the tribe were rarely bothered by anything substantial.

Nayam led the unsuccessful hunting party between the lakes and towards home; their failure was not a problem now, but the winters were growing colder. After nearly a hundred years of manageable years, this one might be the worst he had ever experienced. He was a young man, but he led the hunting party as the son of Koppila and Hyerna and the grandson of Ensila who, if the line was traced back far enough, had a leader of the tribe in her ancestry. The respect of the Gods was still just about with him. That’s what they said, anyway.

The sacred mushrooms were starting to emerge beneath the conifers at the edge of the steppe; winter was setting in. The six of them had come across a herd of aurochs but had decided getting too close was not worth the risk, and thrown their darts from some eighty shins away, at which distance you couldn’t really aim for anything in particular. There were no visible fish in any of the lakes they passed, and although there was smoked meat at the camp, the lack of prey today was an indication of bad times ahead. The shamans all suggested that their luck had run out, and that they should expect direction from the Gods again soon.

Having moved to a more southerly area of the lake steppe, this was unfamiliar hunting ground, and the group had traveled in a broad circle in an initial survey of the new parts of the environment. As they walked along the muddy boundary of the nearest body of water, which was just short of freezing over, Nayam saw and heard a fish’s tail – a taimen’s or a salmon’s, most likely – slap the water, as though the fish it belonged to was struggling.

“I didn’t know there were fish in here,” one of the younger hunters said.

“Most of the ones I’ve checked have no fish,” an older one agreed. Whatever it was leapt out again, but now that Nayam looked closely, it resembled a human hand. It was more brown in complexion than grey, as might be expected of lot of the local fish. The hunters froze. A moment later, a woman began dragging herself out of the shallower water and towards the shore. She was wearing a knee-length parka that looked to be lined with something like aurochs skin – atypical of the Sichpita. She was pursued by a similarly-dressed man, who emerged from the water with a thrusting spear. They were both in their twenties, by the look of them.

The woman shrieked when she saw us, causing the man to slip and fall back, hitting his head badly on a rock. He began to groan as the woman approached us, her hands clasped desperately.

‘Jehwoan mye,‘ she told Nayam, in a voice wrought with either desperation or determination. Something like ‘help me,’ though the dialect was a little hard-to-grasp. She reached into her pocket and threw the hunting leader a strip of smoked reindeer.

‘Oja eg ika,‘ she shrugged. ‘All I have.’ Nayam nodded, pocketed the meat and gestured for her to follow the group. He paused, knelt beside the injured man and said with some venom;

“If you follow us, we will kill you.”

The man did not respond, but Nayam was confident that there would not be any attack. He led the other hunters and the woman, who had rather regained her composure, back to the camp, discussing her situation as they did so. Her name was Pria. She came from a tribe who had moved to this steppe from further north a century ago, which explained why she spoke a discernible language. The man who had pursued her, she said, was her husband, and he believed her to have gone off with another man. Pria assured the hunters that it was a misunderstanding, and she had been faithful. When probed further, she became reluctant to answer some questions. She had taken refuge in the lake, breathing through a hollow length of reed, and had nearly frozen to death when the husband had leapt in and attempted to kill her with a spear.

Upon the hunting party’s arrival at the camp, the old priestess – whose opinion was at odds with the priest’s, but as Pria was a woman, it was the priestess’s jurisdiction. The priestess claimed that one more woman would not do any harm, and that the Sichpita were better off taking their chances with new people who may provide new skills rather than starving by themselves.

Over the next four years, five more non-Sichpita women and two men were married into the tribe. Pria proved to be a substantial help with her skill creating three-layered aurochs parkas and, for the time being, a catastrophic winter was avoided.