Feather by Susan Page Davis

why you helped me? Because of what they did to him?”
    “Perhaps. Just remember, if you work hard, Hana will not be cruel to you, and once she decides she likes you, she will not let Lex beat you.”
    “Do you think about running away?” she asked. “About going home?”
    “I have no home now. And you mustn’t ever speak of it. If you do, they will try to find your village and raid it.”
    She stood staring at him in the dark shadow of the tree, shifting her weight from one sore foot to the other. She could barely make out the glitter of his eyes. “Why didn’t they look for it yesterday?”
    “Who knows? Although they ambushed a band of cattlemen only a few days ago, so they have plenty of food for now. But you’re right. It was unusual to take a prisoner and not try to find the rest of her people.” He studied her for a moment, then whispered, “Why were you alone?”
    Feather clamped her lips shut. Almost she had blurted out the fact that she wasn’t alone at the berry patch, but it occurred to her suddenly that Tag might be spying for Lex and the others. Perhaps they had threatened him and told him to question her.
    “It doesn’t matter now,” she said.
    There was a moment’s silence, then he said, “You’re right. It’s better not to trust anyone. Not yet. I hope you will learn later that you can trust me. But the Blens come this way every summer. If you let slip anything about your people, they will have to beware next year. Here.” He fumbled in the darkness and pushed a damp bundle into her arms.
    “What is it?”
    “A blanket. Take it.”
    “What will you use?”
    “I have a leather tunic in my pack. I will be warm enough.”
    “Where are we going?” she asked.
    “Tomorrow we will head westward to meet the other bands of their people at Three Rivers. Then we will go on to the City of Cats. Every year they go there. They will make several stops along the way, to raid and to trade with the few clans they have made peace with. Then we’ll go south for the winter.”
    “The City of Cats? What is that?”
    He chuckled. “You will see. It is where I shall either become a man or suffer the worst humiliation possible in this tribe.”

Chapter Four

    Under the hot sun of late summer Karsh worked with his tools.  Alomar sat near him, watching as he heated a thin strip of iron, then lifted it and quickly set it on another piece of metal and began to hammer it before the heat fled. All too soon the iron cooled, and Karsh heated it again and again, worrying at it with his hammer. He was determined to shape a hundred nails that day.
    The adults not working in the gardens were building a new shelter, and Neal, who directed the project, had asked Alomar if they could provide strong nails or pins of metal to hold the timbers together. It would make the work of building go much faster than carving wooden pegs and boring out the holes for them.
    “If we could only contain the fire better,” Alomar sighed. “Then we could make it hot enough to soften the iron more. It would be so much easier for you.” Karsh knew the old man ached to take the hammer in his own hands once more, but his arms were too weak to wield it.
    “How could we do that?” Karsh asked. “A bigger fire pit?”
    Alomar shook his head. “Some people use a kind of big oven.”
    “Build the fire inside the oven?”
    “Yes. And they have machines to blow on it and make it hotter. In the Old Times, when they rode horses, the king had a man who did nothing but make iron shoes for the horses. And others made tools and weapons from iron.”
    “There were a lot of people then,” Karsh said.
    “Yes.” Alomar sighed. “The towns held many people. Hundreds. My grandfather said that a thousand lived in the town near the castle back then.”
    Karsh shook his head. It was hard to think what a thousand meant, or how much space the houses of a thousand people would take up. He didn’t think he’d like to live among so many people, but