The Reindeer People

CHAPTER NINE

It had started out as a journey to no place, a long walk, the pace set fast enough to make himself breathe through his mouth and make the sweat trickle down the back of his neck. Now he stood on the hill overlooking the little tent and looked down, wondering if he had been hurrying here, or hurrying away from the talvsit.

The question irritated him, and he glared down at the tent as if it were at fault. She should turn it, he thought to himself. Turn it so the entrance didn't face the prevailing wind, and she should stack her firewood in the lee of it so the snow wouldn't drift against it. And she should soften the seams with grease, and lace them tighter. She probably didn't think about things like that. There were so many things that could be done to give them an easier life. Simple, easy things. He didn't understand why it almost angered him to look down at the tent and see the things that needed to be done.

The things that wouldn't be done.

He started down the hill, his boots breaking through the snow crust at each step.

They probably weren't even at the tent, and if they were, what was his excuse for visiting? 'To tell them,' he muttered to himself. 'To let her know I'm to join with Elsa.'

Glad news, he told himself, news a man should share with all. Did not all the talvsit buzz with it already? Did not every face smile at him and nod, full of the knowledge of his joining? Every soul he met asked him of it. When would the feast be, where would they build their hut, was he not glad to be getting such a strong and healthy woman?

Was he not happy to leave his lonely days behind? Soon he would never need hunt alone again, or sleep alone, or sit by himself of an evening. Soon Elsa would always be with him, sharing all the moments of his life. He took a deep breath, sucking in air as if he were drowning.

'Kerlew!' he called as the boy poked his head out of the tent. The boy turned his face toward the man, and the smile that dawned there was all a visitor could wish. 'Come in!' he called, his voice going shrill with excitement. 'Come in and visit me!'

He threw the tent door wide to the man's approach and stood barely out of the way to let Heckram enter. His fingers ran excitedly along Heckram's sleeve, daring to touch and then leaping away, like a shy puppy's sniffing. Heckram grinned down at him and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezed it firmly. The boy stood still under his grip, grinning back.

'This is how men greet one another,' he said suddenly, the words awkwardly turned, but the meaning clear. His thin hand reached up to pat Heckram's shoulder shyly.

'Welcome to my tent!' he said grandly and waved an inviting hand at the small fire.

'I thank you for the shelter,' Heckram replied formally, sensing the significance to the boy. He remembered that formless ache of boyhood, the needing to be seen as a man by other men after being 'Ristin's son' for too long. Doubtless Kerlew was tired of being

'the healer's boy.' He pulled his cap and mittens off, advanced to the small fire, and sat.

Kerlew circled the fire and sat down facing him. The boy's grin faded slightly. They sat in a silence that threatened to become awkward. He knew nothing of dealing with people on his own, Heckram realized. No notion of how to talk to someone; his mother handled all that for them. Kerlew's smile was becoming desperate.

Heckram spoke, saying anything to help him. 'I thought I could come visiting today, to see how you and your mother were doing.'

'I do well. I keep the fire burning. Sometimes I make a spoon.' Kerlew paused, groping for more thoughts.

'And Tillu? How is she?' Heckram asked helpfully.

'She is fine. Fine. But Tillu isn't here.' Kerlew stopped abruptly, his face setting in a strange expression.

'Oh?' Heckram prodded gently, wondering what the problem was.

Kerlew looked into the fire, then aside into the shadowed corners of the tent. 'Gone hunting,' he mumbled, 'to get meat for us.'

'Oh,' Heckram repeated.

'I keep the fire going. If I went, too, the fire might go out. Or something bad might happen here.' The boy sounded on the verge of tears.

Understanding suddenly dawned within Heckram. He shifted on his heels, hesitated only a fraction of a moment. 'I wonder who will bring back the better kill,' he said slowly, his voice casual. 'Will it be Tillu, or' - he grinned wickedly, and the boy's eyes went wide as he finished - 'us?'

Kerlew had to take two breaths before he could ask, 'We hunt, you and I?'

Heckram nodded, all hesitation swept aside by the boy's eagerness. He was grateful that habit had put his bow on his back this morning. The boy's eyes clung to it.

'Get your bow, and dress warmly,' he told Kerlew, and wondered at the sudden fading of the light from the boy's face.

'Not a good day to hunt,' Kerlew said suddenly, addressing Heckram's boots. 'We wouldn't get anything. And I have other work to do. The fire. And a spoon.' The boy seemed to be pushing the words out one at a time, as if they were jammed in his throat.

Heckram remembered suddenly the awkward way the boy had gripped his mother's knife, how she had brought out hide scrapers for the boy to carve with. His own chest tightened. Poor they might be, but no boy Kerlew's age should suffer that humiliation.

No wonder the boy groped so desperately for manhood. Could not his mother see? He tried to think of the right way to say it, without making it worse.

'You could learn with mine,' he offered quietly, 'until we can make you a bow of your own.'

Kerlew stood very still and small. He stared into the fire when he spoke, if ever you need my life, I'll give it to you,' he offered in a tiny voice. He lifted his pale eyes to Heckram's face. Heckram nodded, knowing the offer was sincere. It was all Kerlew had to offer him.

'Let's hunt, then,' he said, and Kerlew sprang suddenly to life. The boy snatched up his boots. 'Dress warmly,' Heckram reminded him. 'We'll be gone all day. I'll bank the fire so it doesn't go out.'

'Doesn't matter!' Kerlew told him joyously, if it goes out, I can make another.

Sometime I'll show you how.'

The sun on the snow was brighter than Heckram remembered it, the air crisper, the sky more blue. Eagerness and inexperience made the boy clumsy, but Heckram was amazed at his own patience. He found good cover overlooking a game trail, and waiting for a rabbit became more engrossing than all the reindeer stalking he and Lasse had done all winter. The bow was hopelessly too large for Kerlew; Heckram had to draw it back and help Kerlew hold it steady. The boy exclaimed over Heckram's brightly stained and feathered arrows and had to examine every one in the quiver before he could decide which one to nock. Heckram blessed whatever spirit made the game move so well today. Of seven rabbits that came their way, they felled three, and made great fun of retrieving the other arrows that had gone wobbling off into the woods.

They spoke little, lest they scare the game, communicating with nudges and nods that made the boy's awkwardness with words unimportant. When the first rabbit fell, he let Kerlew retrieve it. The boy lifted if by the heavy deer arrow that had speared its entire body. He stared at it as if he had never seen a rabbit before. When he stood up, his shoulders straightened and he stood taller, his body opened in the light. His chin came up, and something kindled in his eyes. 'Tillu will see this soon!' was all he said.

He came back to their cover to wait for the next rabbit; the smile did not leave his face again.

The sun was fading before they tired, and they walked back in the dimness, his hand on Kerlew's shoulder while the boy hugged his three rabbits to his chest. They said little as they walked back, both too busy imagining how Tillu would react to this magnificent feast. 'They're heavy rabbits,' Kerlew said once, 'very, very heavy.' Heckram knew better than to offer to carry them for him.

The wind was rising as they crested the last hill, and Tillu's voice rose up to them like the ululation of a she-wolf. 'Kerlew!' Her voice drew the name out and threw it to the wind, her hopelessness riding the dark breath of the night. The pain in it split Heckram's soul; it was the cry of a woman who had lost her everything. 'Coming! We're coming!' he roared into the night, and hurried, pushing her son on before him.

They came out of the darkness and she stared at the large silhouette that walked beside her son. Relief flooded her and she rushed to meet them, throwing her arms around Kerlew with a glad cry. He shrugged her off with an embarrassed exclamation.

She did not even notice the rabbits in his arms. 'Where have you been?' she demanded of him, and then of Heckram, 'Where did you find him?' She looked down at her son, at the wide grin on his face despite the worry and fears she had endured. Anger rose in her, that he would wander off on his own, and make Heckram interrupt his hunting to bring the boy back. 'Why did you go off like that?' she scolded. 'Do you think I have nothing to do besides worry about you? Do you think Heckram has nothing better to do than look after you? You know you should not leave the tent when I am gone! What if Heckram had not found you and brought you home?'

Kerlew's triumph melted in humiliation. He stood speechless before her growing anger, his worthless rabbits clutched to his chest. Heckram put his arm around him, squeezed the boy's unresisting shoulder. 'We went hunting,' he told Tillu, amazed at the defiance he heard in his own voice.

'I would think you would have asked before you took my son from my tent,' Tillu snapped back. 'You left no sign, nothing! I have searched and called until my voice was hoarse! You had no right to take him without asking me.'

'Kerlew wanted to go,' Heckram defended himself, the woman's words suddenly understandable to him as never before, though their accent remained strange. 'And he hunted well.'

'He is not old enough to decide such things for himself. Is it your custom to take a woman's child from her tent, and make no word to her about it?'

'Is it your custom for a mother to humiliate her son before his friend, instead of rejoicing over his first kill? The boy did well! It is time he learned to hunt!'

'That is not for you to decide! You don't know Kerlew, he is not like other boys! He is

-'

'Gone,' Heckram pointed out to her.

It was true. Kerlew had discarded his rabbits in a pathetic heap at her feet and disappeared into the tent. Tillu stood staring down at them silently for a long moment.

Embarrassment flooded her face with warmth. How could she have quarreled with a stranger over her own child, admitted to him that Kerlew needed constant supervision?

How dare he pity them and make excuses for her son to her. She glared at the meat he had brought. 'You don't have to hunt for us,' she pointed out coldly, 'I can get the meat we need. And I can take care of my own son. Take your rabbits and go.'

'They aren't mine!' Heckram longed to shake her, and the urge echoed in his voice.

'Kerlew shot them. Every one of them. To please you. To be a man. Why do you treat him so badly? Why doesn't the boy have a bow, why do you keep him like a baby?

Don't you want him to grow to be a man?'

Tillu sank down slowly, almost collapsing in the snow. She lay her mittened hand on the soft fur of the dead rabbits. 'He really killed these?' she asked, disbelief still strong in her voice. Heckram nodded silently. 'My son can hunt.' She said the words aloud, but Heckram knew they were not for him. They were spoken to herself, in a voice full of wonder and thankfulness. She looked up at him, her eyes shining wetly. 'His first kill.'

She paused. Her face clouded as she realized what she had said and done, 'I was so worried,' she said softly. 'So frightened.' She glanced up at him, her eyes dark, 'I'm sorry.'

He shook his head, refusing the apology. 'Tell Kerlew that. I should tell you I am sorry, for taking him in such a way. I meant no harm.' Now that the quarrel was ending, Heckram felt suddenly abashed at the frankness of his earlier words. Who was he, to interfere between Tillu and her son? 'I should go back to the talvsit. It is late.'

'No!' The vehemence in Tillu's voice surprised him. She gathered up the rabbits, cradling them like babies. 'Please,' she said in a softer voice. 'I've all but ruined it for him. Stay and watch me skin out his kill. Eat with us. Celebrate with him.'

'Any mother would have been worried. I was a fool to take him off that way, leaving no sign for you.' His own behavior suddenly seemed reprehensible, 'I should have asked you first.'

'No. No. I am always telling myself, if only the boy would do something on his own, if only he would decide for himself, then I would know there is hope for him. Then, the first time he does, I scold him and humiliate him. I've spoiled it for him, his hunt and his first kill.'

Hope for him. Heckram could not understand the anguish in her voice. How could she expect the boy to learn, if no one taught him? How could she love him so much, and understand him so little? Aloud, he asked, 'How did your own hunting go?'

She shrugged to his question. 'A couple of ptarmigan.'

'Only two?'

She nodded, perplexed.

'Then all is well, still.' He lifted his voice. 'Kerlew! Come out and help with the rabbits. It is as I told you! We two have hunted much better than Tillu. Your kill is three to her two! Kerlew! Hurry! Or do you think I will carry all these rabbits myself?'

The boy's hesitancy was painful to watch. He came forward cautiously, his shoulders hunched as if he feared them both. It was only when Tillu stepped aside that he dared come close to Heckram. The rabbits lay in the snow where Tillu had placed them. His eyes darted from the rabbits to Heckram and finally to Tillu.

'It's a very good kill,' she said softly.

He only looked at her. She lifted her eyes to Heckram, and then met her son's stare.

'Better than mine. All I brought down was two skinny birds. But you, you have brought home all this meat on your first hunt.' Suddenly she straightened, standing braver in the night. 'See how well my son hunts!' she exclaimed to Heckram. The pride in her voice rang true. 'Soon it will be, not rabbits, but fat deer he brings. The fat will sizzle over the fire, and all will smell its richness.'

A portion of his earlier triumph came back to the boy's face. He lifted the rabbits slowly, hefted them in his arms. 'Come into our tent,' he told Heckram grandly. 'My mother will cook my kill, and we two hunters will eat well tonight.'

Kerlew led the way to the tent and Heckram followed. He had to stoop to enter, and the light from the lamp struck a bronze sheen in his dark hair. The flap fell behind them, and Tillu stood alone in the dark. Had that been her son, speaking so well, standing almost straight? Had he really killed those rabbits, or had he only shared Heckram's hunt? She shook her head, and the question suddenly seemed to matter less than the question of why Heckram would take her son hunting. And then defend the boy from her own hasty judgment. And salvage the boy's triumph from her thoughtless humiliation of him.

Their voices reached her from within the tent, Kerlew's higher as he replied to something the man had said, and then their voices merging in a shout of laughter. I could walk away into the night, she thought. I would walk away and leave my son with him, and he would do well by the boy. I could not let Carp take my son. But I could give Kerlew to this Heckram and not regret it.

The tent flap lifted again, light spilling out. 'Come inside,' Kerlew called impatiently.

'Share my meat and Heckram's news. He is taking a woman soon, that Elsa. Is he not a lucky man?' He darted back inside without awaiting her reply.

'Is she not a lucky woman?' Tillu asked softly, then frowned over her words. She walked back to the tent she shared with her son.

CHAPTER TEN

'Mother?'

The pain in Heckram's voice jerked Ristin's attention from the tent hide she was piercing for lacing. He shadowed the door of the sod hut, the day bright behind him.

She squinted her eyes against the glare, and he stepped in, letting the flap fall behind him. He looked stricken. In that moment she knew what he would look like as a corpse.

It frightened her.

She tried not to show it. 'That's a long face for the man whose betrothal gathering is but five nights away.' She patted the hide on her lap. 'I've nearly finished boring the holes. Elsa has the sinew ready for the lacing. If you'd but make the time to cut and trim poles for it, this tent could be finished by nightfall. Or are you having second thoughts?'

As if he had ever had the first thought about this joining. He smiled a sickly smile.

'On the contrary. I've just decided to slaughter my fattest harke for the feast. Care to help me with the butchering?'

She stared at him in consternation, knowing full well that he grudged slaughtering any of his animals, let alone his heaviest reindeer ox. 'But I thought you were going hunting for meat ...' she began faintly.

'So I was, but something's saved me the trouble. It's Bruk. He'll have to be butchered.

I'd like some help.'

Ristin stood abruptly, letting the bone awl and heavy leather hide slip from her lap.

Without words she followed him out of the sod house and behind it, into the area where their pulkor harkar were hobbled. The sun was bright against the snow, but the air was cold. Ristin wrapped her arms around herself, wishing that she had paused to pull on her outdoor tunic. The back of winter was broken, and the light stretched longer with every day, but that did not mean that the true thaw of spring had begun. She hastened to match her son's long stride, straining to hear his muttered words.

'I was going to harness Bruk up and drive the pulkor over to the healer's. I wanted to invite her and the boy to the betrothal feast. But when I came out here -'

Heckram gestured.

Ristin's two harkar had wandered up to the edge of the woods and were busily pawing up the snow in their search for lichen. The rest of their animals grazed higher in the hills with the main herd. Those two harness harkar and Bruk were kept close by the hut for convenience. Bruk was a prime animal, weighing twice as much as her tall son, even if the harke's shoulders came but chest high on the man. Bruk's coat was sleek, and his neck and haunches rippled with muscle. He could carry his own weight in a pack load, or pull a loaded sledge all day without faltering. Heckram had broken him to harness two years ago when Bruk was a feisty three-year-old. Now he was as responsive an animal as any herder could wish for, healthy and strong, with a long life of usefulness ahead of him. Ristin could not think of a possession her son valued more.

But the harke was down in the snow, not browsing with the others. He rested now, but his sides heaved as if he had run all night. Then, as Ristin watched, the reindeer heaved itself up on its front legs. Panting and grunting, it struggled to rise. But his hind legs were limp and useless, remaining bent in the snow. He sagged back into the pawed snow around him, his exhaustion evident, and sounded his distress with coughing grunts.

'What's wrong with him?' Ristin demanded, fearing some new disease. She made no move to approach.

'His hock tendons are severed. Something did it in the night.' Heckram was keeping his voice carefully neutral, but Ristin knew the effort it cost him. Bruk represented the work of years, had been Heckram's sturdiest and best harke. Now he was useless for anything but meat. It was a staggering blow to a man considering marriage.

And an inconceivable accident. 'But how?' Ristin demanded, her voice rising with her outrage. 'No wolverine kills that way. A bear mauls. A wolf might hamstring a wild reindeer. But any predator would have killed and fed before it left. And we heard nothing last night.'

'Bruk was used to people. He probably just stood there, expecting the harness.' As Heckram spoke he moved closer to the panicky animal. He placed a gentling hand on his shoulder, and Bruk turned puzzled eyes to his master. 'Steady, fellow,' Heckram comforted him. He moved in closer to Bruk as the wearied animal let his head sink, calming him with his touch and soothing words. Then Heckram sank his knife in, a straight swift blow to the heart. He gave a practiced twist to the blade and left it in the wound. Bruk gave one startled bellow, then slowly foundered into the trampled snow.

Little blood escaped from the wound. It was the herdfolk's way of killing a meat animal.

The blood would collect in the chest cavity to congeal, then to be scooped out with birch scoops by the butchers and made into blood sausage.

Ristin, hardened as she was to butchering time, flinched as the knife went in. She was silent as a final shudder ran through Bruk's heavy shoulders.

'Who would do such a thing?' she wondered aloud in a choked voice. 'Have you reported it to Capiam? He should come and see this before we butcher, to witness the truth of what we say. Whoever did this must be brought before the herdlord!'

'No.' Heckram spoke softly but firmly. He knelt down in the snow beside the fallen animal. His knife haft stuck up from the dead beast, but he stroked the fur on its side as if it would take comfort from his touch. 'No, I have told only you. Nor shall we. Think about it, mother. Has Capiam sent word of his congratulations on my betrothal? Has he sent a gift of food, or offered one for the feast? Who has? Lasse's grandmother, of course. Rilk, and Reynor, Trode and Lanta, Jakke. Ibb and Bror. All of them folk living as close to the edge as we do. Those who could spare it the least have sent the most.

And those who wallow in food, and feed their dogs what our children would be glad for? They have sent nothing, no word, no gift, no sign.

'So shall I give them the satisfaction of watching me run to Capiam, bemoaning the loss of one animal and crying out for justice? No. There would be no justice, only satisfaction for whoever did it. He would know his blow had hurt. So. We shall have a butchering instead. You and I. Our finest harke, to honor Elsa and her family. Bruk will be a bit tough. He wasn't young, and he was struggling for a long time before I even found him. But there will be plenty of him, and it will speak well of our opinion of Elsa and her family.' He ran his hand again over the shining hair. 'He'll make a nice bedhide for Elsa.'

'Shall I ask Lasse if he will help?' Ristin asked softly.

'Not yet,' Heckram replied. 'Later. After he can no longer tell the hind tendons were cut before the animal died. I want no word of complaint from us or on our behalf.

Perhaps someone will be cocky enough to betray himself.'

'You suspect Joboam.' It was a statement, not a query. 'Are you going to tell Elsa?'

'No.'

'You mean later.'

'I mean no. These are supposed to be happy days for her. I won't have our betrothal degraded by worry and fear. Besides, wouldn't it spoil the effect of my slaughtering a harke if she knew I had to?' He gave his mother a wolfish grin. 'Let me keep credit for the act in the eyes of my wife-to-be.'

'Heckram, it's a poor way to start out, with secrets and hidden worries.'

'Don't scold me about it, for I didn't choose it.'

'Hmph.' His mother rose from crouching beside him. 'I'll bring the skinning knives.

Doesn't look very fat, does he?'

'Not as fat as he was two months ago. But better than anything else I've got set by.

Better than a wild reindeer. Poor Bruk.'

A note in his voice turned Ristin back to him. 'Heckram. If you aren't going to seek justice before Capiam, then you must let it go. There is no other way; not among our people. Such is our tradition.'

'New traditions are starting up everywhere, Ristin. Hamstringing the bridegroom's best harke before his betrothal feast, harassing a woman with your attentions because her family is not as wealthy as yours ... I may start a few traditions of my own.'

Ristin looked her contempt for the idea. 'Are you a man, or a little boy? So do children speak, threatening one another, rolling and tussling in the dirt as if that would prove who is wrong or right. Are you from some forest tribe, where they kill their own folk, and maim one another in their brawlings? No! We are herdfolk. Men do not kill men! If someone becomes so degraded that we cannot let him live among us, we drive him away, and that is punishment enough. Act like a savage, and you shame me, and your father's memory. And you will be the one driven away from the herdfolk.'

Heckram only stared at the fallen harke, silent but unrepentant of his words. Ristin sensed the depth of his anger and came to stand beside him. She spoke more gently.

'You never told me how Joboam reacted when you told him that Elsa was promised to you.'

'There was nothing to tell. I didn't confront him to shame him, though now I wish I had. I thought it better to treat the matter as if nothing were amiss. For the sake of Elsa's pride, more than his. I waited for a time that seemed fitting. A group of hunters had just returned, Joboam among them. They were standing about, comparing kills for the day. I walked up to them and said, "I have fared better than any of you at the hunt today, for Elsa has set a date for our betrothal feast." Some of them wished me joy. Amma, joker that he is, wondered aloud if I were the hunter or the prey. Some said nothing, but turned away to speak of other matters. Joboam glared at me, then turned aside. There was nothing said.'

'It's like him, to slink about like a heel-biting dog. You've a bad enemy there, Heckram. One who has the ear of the herdlord.'

Heckram grunted. 'Well, if he has the herdlord's ear, let him have Capiam's daughter as well. I've heard she's not happy with the mate she'll take this summer by the Cataclysm. So let her have Joboam instead.'

'You shouldn't listen to such gossip. Kari but pretends reluctance, to be seen as more maidenly. As I recall, there was talk of pairing her with Joboam, several years ago. But nothing came of it.'

'I shouldn't listen to gossip? Listen to you. If you must tell it, at least get it right.'

Heckram had drawn his blade of polished flint, the legacy of his father. He began a careful incision at the animal's anus, working carefully up the belly to avoid puncturing the gut sac and spilling bile and waste on the meat inside. 'Joboam wouldn't have her.

He made his excuses pretty ones, but that's what it came down to. Pirtsi only took her to get a place at Capiam's side. The girl is feckless as a late-born calf, and fey besides.

She's always either weeping or moping. Pretty as she is, who'd want to share a hearth with that?'

'And Pirtsi is such a man as should make any woman's heart leap?' Ristin asked sarcastically. 'When he isn't strutting like a marsh-bird in spring, he's rutting with any woman foolish enough to accept him. It cannot make Kari proud to hear such things of the man she will join this spring.'

'I thought she was but pretending maidenly reluctance?' Heckram asked. His incision inched up Bruk's hairy belly. He pulled the knife free, wiped clinging hair and blood from it against his pant leg, and then eased it back into its groove. 'They'll make a fine pair, no doubt. She can weep when he comes near her, and mope when he does not.'

Ristin rose slowly, her knee joints crackling. 'I'll bring the knives,' she repeated, ignoring his comments. But as she went she called back over her shoulder, 'Unless one knows a person's sorrows, one can't sympathize. But one shouldn't assume that misery is groundless, either.'

The hide pulled up, parting from the meat as the integuments beneath it gave way with a ripping sound. Occasionally the knife licked in, to slice across a stubborn bit. But skinning the animal was more a matter of pulling the hide free than of cutting it off.

'See? You keep the tension steady and slice along under the skin as you need to. That way you get a hide without holes, and no big chunks of meat stuck to it that have to be scraped off later. See? You only use the knife where you have to. When you get to the tail ... Kerlew!'

The boy's head jerked around and he pulled his bloody fingers quickly from the dead calf's mouth. 'What?' he asked his mother, shifting nervously.

'Why aren't you paying attention? You need to learn how to skin an animal, so you can hunt and prepare your own meat. What were you doing, anyway?'

'Nothing,' the boy answered guiltily. 'Here, I'll do it now.'

He drew his own blade, the one Heckram had given him. Rising, he took a firm grip on the loosened flap of hide and tugged it upward. The membranous layer that held the hide to the meat stretched tight. It was transparent stuff, bubbly and clear as froth to look at, but sticky and clinging to bare hands. As the boy pulled harder, some parted with a ripping sound. The inside of the hide was creamy white and slick-looking. The meat was covered with thinly transparent integument, the functional lines of muscle bared to curious eyes. The naked animal was purple and white and deep red. The hide clung at a stubborn place. Kerlew reached down with his blade and, with a slashing stab, ripped a gaping hole in the hide.

The boy froze, staring at the damage. Tillu expelled a long sigh, it's all right,' she forced herself to say. 'You're learning. Next time, make your knife follow the curve of the animal's body. Cut close to the meat, not the skin. Keep trying. But don't pull on the hide at the weak spot now, or it will rip further. Go to a different place and work from there.'

The warm smell of the fresh kill filled the air. Tillu had already rolled the gut sac clear of the body. Watching Kerlew's knifework, she was glad she hadn't allowed him to help with that part. One puncture of the gut sac could impart a rank flavor to the whole animal. Once the hide was off, she would butcher the calf into manageable pieces, and then they could lug it home.

She gritted her teeth as she watched Kerlew skinning. He pierced the precious hide again, but she kept silent. She watched it peeling back from the calf, creamy white where she had worked, marred with slices and gobs of red meat where Kerlew's knife cut through flesh instead of joining tissue. Scraping the hide would be a real task. But the boy had to learn. And he didn't learn as other children did, by watching and absorbing. Kerlew could watch her brew herbal tea a thousand times. Yet the first time she had told him to prepare a tea, he had dropped the leaves into cold water and then put it over a fire, instead of letting the water boil and then putting in the herbs to steep.

He tried. Tillu knew he tried and wished it were enough. But it wasn't. A man could die of cold trying to light a fire, starve to death trying to kill a rabbit. Kerlew had to do better than just try. Only days ago, when he had returned from his hunt with Heckram, she had been filled with hope. Her son, her Kerlew, had hunted and made a successful kill. But like his single triumph with the fire, it was an isolated incident, a single success in a row of failures. His memory was like a torn fishing net, now holding the catch, now letting it slip away. He could fetch the water, bring the wood, build up the fire. But if she told him to fetch wood to build up the fire, and bring water to heat for stew, he would lose track of his tasks. Later she would find the water bucket by the firewood stack. At her angry shout, Kerlew would rise from watching a swirl of leaves in the stream, to innocently ask her when food would be ready. Yet he could recite Carp's tales word for word, or casually ask her what she had meant by something she had said months ago.

Beating him did no good. When they were both much younger, she would strike him for such failures, believing him lazy or simply disobedient. She was girlishly envious of other women's handsome, bright-eyed children. She had wanted desperately for Kerlew to be quick-witted, or agile, or sweetly obedient. She had longed to feel proud of him.

Instead she heard the mockery of other children when the little boy spoke his halting words, and the commiserating words of other women for her misfortune that her only child was a half-wit. She would angrily deny it and set him to some task. He would fail.

Shamed and angered, she would strike him. Then he would weep helplessly, baffled by the punishment, for he could not remember having done wrong.

The sight of his small frightened face, running tears, would shame her. And her own soul would rise to smite her when she reached to comfort him and he cringed from the hands that had so recently brought him pain, or else stiffened and struggled against her repentant embrace. Eventually she had stopped slapping him or pushing him down to sprawl in the dirt; it did neither of them any good. Folk only laughed at both of them, or turned aside with embarrassed faces. She had grown out of being a child with a damaged doll. Instead she had begun to accept that he did not learn as other children did. But learn he must, and so a new way must be found.

So now she crouched by the dead calf, her chilled feet going numb in the snow, and watched patiently as he mangled the hide away from the body. The luck that had brought them this calf, alone and bawling for its mother, would not be likely to bring them another. It had been exhausted, staggering through the snow. Tillu surmised that its mother had been killed by a glutton. The clever wolverine would wait until the reindeer had its head deep in the hole it had pawed in the snow, nipping up the buried reindeer moss. The deeper the snow, the easier it was for the glutton to rush in and sink its teeth into the tender throat of the grazing animal. Tillu had come across the traces of several such kills in recent days. She had brought home a trove of red-rimed bones from such scenes, to stew into broth and crack for the marrow within. This calf, smaller than most she had seen, had probably fled from such a slaughter. Only to stumble into Tillu as she hunted, to be stunned with a broken branch and have its throat cut. She didn't regret it. Whatever gods or spirits reigned over these forested hills, they made no distinction between Kerlew and the orphaned calf. So Tillu had chosen for them which creature would survive the winter. And fetched the boy to help with the skinning and packing.

Kerlew paused in his skinning, to scratch busily at his cheek. His fingers left red streaks on his face. He had bloodied the knees of his trousers and the cuffs of his coat.

'I'll take a turn now,' Tillu offered. After a moment's frowning pause, the boy nodded. He stood up, his face set seriously. It was so conscious an expression of maturity that she had to smile at him. He was a good boy, and she did love him so.

There were moments, times when he tried and things were well between them, when her heart swelled with love for him. At those moments the future seemed bright and their troubles behind them. She nodded at him now and said, 'You did very good work, for your first time at skinning.'

'I know,' he replied. He touched the hilt of his knife proudly, 'I can do many things. I can carve spoons and make a fire. I can kill rabbits and skin animals. I am more of a man than you know.'

'Men don't boast,' Tillu observed shortly.

Kerlew merely stroked the hilt of his knife, unabashed by her rebuke. She sighed.

'While I skin,' she suggested, 'you carry home the basket. Be careful with it.' She nodded to a dripping basket that had melted deep in the snow beside them. It was heavy with the liver, tongue, heart, and kidneys of the small calf. 'When you get to the tent,' she went on, 'add wood to the fire, so it won't go out before we get back. Then be sure to come right back here, to help me carry the meat home. Can you remember all that?'

The boy nodded vigorously. 'What do you think, that I'm a baby still?' He frowned suddenly, his close-set eyes worried beneath his knit brows. But he slowly repeated, 'I'll take the meat home, build up the fire again, and come right back.'

'Go, then.' Tillu smiled. 'Hurry, but do not spill the meat.'

She watched him trudge away, the pack basket leaving a dripping red trail behind him. The boy was growing fast and well now. Perhaps this was what he had always needed; a chance to be alone with her, for her to concentrate on teaching him. And a chance to learn a man's skills from a man like Heckram. She shook her head. Kerlew could learn from anyone who took time with him. That was all that proved. Now that Heckram was taking a woman, they would see less of the man. But she didn't care. She could take care of herself and her son, teach him all he needed to know. Kerlew was going to be fine, just fine. She smiled to herself. Her son. Soon he would be the man he claimed to be. He would make his own decisions, take his own actions, live his own life.

And then? And then could she live her own life as well? She snorted with derision at the thought. She did well enough on her own. She bent back over the animal, pulling firmly on the hide as she carefully sliced it free.

When the hide was clear, she rolled it up, skin side out, and set it aside. She set about dividing the calf up into manageable parts. It would have been more difficult with a larger animal. But even her poor knife could work through the calf's flesh and muscles.

She dislocated the legs at the major joints and cut between the ball and socket to break the animal down into four quarters, along with torso and head.

By the time she was finished with the heaviest work, the sun was skimming the horizon. She was sweating inside her tunic, but knew the foolishness of setting it aside.

The sweat would chill on her body, and she would start shivering her way into a deadly chill. Better to sweat and keep moving than risk that. She stared a long moment down the trail, expecting Kerlew. But there was no sign of him yet. Perhaps it hadn't really been as long as it seemed. Perhaps he had stopped to eat something at the tent before coming back. The basket was heavy. He would stop to rest, so it would take him a long time to lug it home. She stooped to cut a fine slice of red meat from the calf. She bit off a piece of it, feeling the fresh blood tingle deliciously on her tongue. She finished it quickly, and another slice more slowly. Where was the boy? Well, she wouldn't waste time waiting for him.

With a sigh she turned to the gut sac. She separated the intestines and stripped the dung from them with her fingers. Cleaned, they had a hundred uses. She sorted out gobs of suet and set them in a pile. A slash of her knife separated the stomach, and she emptied its contents into the snow. It became a container for the tallow bits. She would leave little for the ravens to clean up. She straightened a moment, rubbing at her aching back, and then returned to her task. By the time Kerlew got back, she would be finished.

Later, when the shadows of evening had changed from blue to black on the snow, and she could no longer see the colors of the forest, she wedged most of the meat into the crotch of a nearby tree. She hoped no scavengers would find it before she could return. She rolled one hindquarter into the hide that was now stiff with frost and hefted it slowly to her shoulders. Her back ached from bending over her work, her feet ached with the cold, and the skin of her face stung with night's rising wind. She ignored the ache in her heart and the sting of tears that threatened her eyes. Once more she buried her knowledge that Kerlew would never be all right, would never be a fine and laughing young man proudly bringing home a kill. The snow dragged at her feet as she trudged home under her burden.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The questing tongues of fire popped the sap pocket under the hark of the pine log and crackled suddenly into reaching flames. Heckram opened his eyes to the new light.

It felt earlier than their usual rising time, but Ristin was already up, sitting beside the hearth, a cup of tea in her hands. His eyes met hers, and hers suddenly brightened with moisture before she could turn away from him. He rubbed at his face, self-conscious at having caught her watching him sleep.

'Is something wrong?' he asked, his voice still thick with drowsiness.

'No. No, everything is right. I was just thinking it was the last morning that my son would wake up in my home. Tomorrow I will wake up alone. And every day after that.'

Her voice tightened as she spoke, and she didn't look at him.

Heckram rubbed at his face wearily, feeling the new stubble scratchy against his palms. He didn't release the sigh coiled inside his chest. Mastering his own reluctance had been difficult enough. He didn't think he could contend with Ristin's new doubts as well, isn't that what you wanted? It seems to me that I've been told any number of times that I should be in my own home, fathering grandchildren for your entertainment. So I finally take your advice, and wake up to find you weeping at me.'

Ristin gave a short, high laugh and then sobbed. She turned to him, her smile showing between the tears that damped her cheeks, 'I am glad for you. So glad, and so pleased that it is Elsa with you. I don't weep for your joining. Only for the changes it will bring. We old people always weep for the change times: for births, and deaths, for joinings and sunderings. They are the proper times for these tears.'

'Old people!' Heckram scoffed at her. He threw back the coverings and rose from his pallet. 'Tell that to the foxes you brought down yesterday!'

'It's not the things you can do that mark your age. It's the things you find you can't do any longer.'

Heckram looked at her sharply, weighing the regrets in her voice. He tried to see her as a stranger, but could not. Ristin was Ristin. A little thinner perhaps, the lines around her eyes more numerous, the joints and knuckles of her hands more apparent, but still capable Ristin. He refused to indulge her melancholy.

'Are you saying you're too old to help build a talvsit hut for Elsa and me?' he asked innocently, 'I suppose I could ask Lasse's grandmother to fill in for you ...'

'What do you ... ? You puppy! Don't make mock of your mother's years. I'm not as old as that yet. Get out of bed now. I've cooked for you this morning; maybe the last time I ever shall - not that I regret that! You get up and eat, and pack in water to wash yourself. The least I can do for Elsa is see that she finds you clean, though why she'd want you at all is more than I can understand. Out of there now, you great lout! You've a sod house to build today, and a woman to claim.'

She took down her tunic from its hook as she spoke and dragged it on. She smiled at him as she left the hut, and Heckram found himself grinning in reply. But after she was gone, he found the smile fading from his face. A heaviness weighed on his heart as he clambered to his feet and went over to the cookfire. Today, in the construction of a sod hut, he would be laying a formal claim on Elsa. They would begin their life together today, even if the joining was not formally recognized until they had announced it before the gathering of all the herdfolk at the Cataclysm. He glanced about the smoke-darkened walls of his mother's hut, suddenly sharing her recognition that he would no longer wake up here, no longer share her fire and food. Changes. She would be living alone, and he would live with Elsa.

Resisting the temptation to burrow back into his bedskins, he stretched and then inspected the cooking pots. A porridge of meat and grain was bubbling thickly at the edge of the hearth. Set away from the embers to steep was a pot of herb tea. He dipped a mug carved from knurled birch into the pot and then sipped noisily at the steaming tea. The hot liquid cut the night thickness from his throat and cleared his head of useless regrets.

He ate quickly and as he dressed he tried to recover his acceptance of the situation.

Yesterday he had borrowed his mother's young harke on the excuse it needed further training, and had harnessed it to his pulkor and driven off into the forest. The sledge moved well over the snow, the young animal pulled almost willingly, and his head was free of the chatter of the other herdfolk. He had pondered, his eyes unseeing as he guided the pulkor around and between obstacles. He had thought of Elsa, mostly. His knees did not quake with lust at the thought of her; she did not fill his chest with sighs.

He had always felt a satisfaction in their friendship, a comfort in her steadiness. He wondered if it would be enough for her. Or for him. He could think of no other herdwoman he found more attractive. She lacked no skills that a woman should have.

She was not dull-witted, nor subservient. She had spirit, spirit he admired. And she had courage; not only the courage to resist Joboam's advances, but also to come to him and speak plainly. And she wanted him. Surely that should count for something. He'd heard of women wedded and bedded reluctantly. She would not come to him grudgingly. She could have had a wealthy man, rich in reindeer and bronze tools, a man who would have decked her in amber and bronze and ivory. She had preferred him.

He realized belatedly that three times he had approached and then turned aside from the path that led to the healer's tent. He wanted to go see Kerlew, wanted to see the boy's face light with excitement, wanted to take him driving in a pulkor. He was sure the boy had never seen one. Nor his mother. But Tillu would not light up as the boy did at the sight of him. Tillu would be like the fox watching her cub play. Watchful, ever watchful of harm to her young. So fierce a little woman she was; how she had scolded him for taking Kerlew that day. And when she realized her error, how her face had softened and filled with her love for her son. Ristin was like that over me, he mused to himself. She's a fine mother to the boy. They can take care of themselves; she's right about that. He turned his mind and his harke away from them.

He returned from his long drive as the sun was setting. He was still not in love, but he was not unappreciative of the woman who was giving herself to him. Nor could he deny the stirrings of desire in the base of his belly when he thought of her. He had set his doubts and reluctance aside, resolving to face his obligations. His dreams of the trading villages to the south and the strange lands beyond them were but fancies for a child. Something he had used to soften the harsh realities when he was too young to do anything else about them. Now he was a man, about to take Elsa to wife. He would have other things to think about.

As he dragged on his boots and laced them, he thought again of his decision not to invite the healer and her son. He would have liked them to come. He would have enjoyed watching Tillu watch the people, enjoyed letting Kerlew eat until he was filled.

And perhaps she would have spoken to him of the folk she had traveled among. She looked like no people he had ever met. Her appearance was almost as outlandish as his own. But he did not think Elsa would share his enthusiasm for tales of far places, or enjoy the healer taking the attention of the herdfolk away from her betrothal ceremony.

Another time, he mentally promised Kerlew and himself. Another time.

Taking up the buckets, he left the hut and went to the spring. Early as it was, the herdfolk were up and about, the talvsit humming with suppressed energy. Heckram was greeted with smiles and knowing nods on his way to the spring. The morning was clear and, though cold, there was a softness in the air that was the early breath of spring. He went down on one knee to fill the buckets, then starred back to the hut. He stopped once by Lasse's hut, to get a fresh grip on the wet handles and to incidentally inspect an area beyond the hut that had been swept clear of snow. Yesterday he and Lasse had paced it off. The youth had helped him sweep the snow from the ground with pine boughs and then scrape away a layer of frozen moss and turf. The circle of bare brown earth waited now, looking empty amid the snowy clearing. Stina would be a good neighbor, they were not far from the spring, and there would be good grazing for a pack harke or two behind the hut. It was a good site for a home.

He lifted the buckets again and set out for Ristin's hut. Bror was standing before his own hut, yawning and stretching in the thin daylight. He grinned when he saw Heckram.

'You've a bit of work before you today, young man.'

'A bit,' Heckram conceded with a smile.

'Just remember not to weary yourself too much, if you take my meaning. Stout walls alone won't warm a new hut properly. What's the water for?'

'Bath. And shave my face. I've never minded my grandfather's height, but did he have to pass on his whiskers as well?'

Bror, like most of the herdfolk, was smooth-faced, save for a few fine black hairs on his upper lip. These he stroked as he nodded again at Heckram. if it were me, I wouldn't take a bath this time of year, woman or no. A man can get his death-sickness from wet skin in winter. Wait until spring, when the water runs noisy in the streams.

That's the time for bathing. A bit of steam, a little oil on your skin to smooth it; that should be enough for any girl. You don't want to spoil her, do you?' Bror scratched energetically at the back of his neck.

Ibba poked her head from the hut to make a wry face at both men. 'Spoil her, Heckram, spoil her. Or you'll be sitting still, as Bror must now, while your poor wife picks the nits from your scalp. Get in here, you old gossip. Heckram has no time to stand and work his mouth today. He's a hut to build and a woman to claim. Get along, Heckram. And scrub the back of your neck well!'

He grinned his farewells as Ibba seized Bror's hand and tugged the old man, protesting, into his hut. He continued to smile as he made his way up the trail between the huts of the herdfolk to Ristin's hut. The mood was infectious. He was beginning to feel as a man should on the day he built his talvsit hut. Anticipatory and glad. He found he was singing softly, one of the long, almost wordless joiks of his people, timing his words to the squeak-crunch of the packed snow beneath his boots. The deep timbre of his voice made it little more than a pleasant rumble under his breath.

'So merry the bridegroom.'

The hard cold voice was like a dash of water in his face. Heckram had been looking at little more than the snowy path before him. As the too familiar voice broke his thoughts, he set the buckets down to either side of himself and casually rolled his shoulders to loosen the muscles. He glanced briefly at Joboam, who leaned against an upturned pulkor beside the path.

'Have you come to wish me luck in my joining with Elsa, Joboam?' he asked pleasantly.

'Would luck be enough, I wonder? It takes more than luck to keep a woman contented and at home. Remember, between now and the Cataclysm, she is still free to leave you without a word. Many's the woman who has joined a man, to find she didn't want to make the arrangement permanent.'

Joboam rose slowly and gave an elaborate stretch. The powerful muscles in his neck and shoulders cracked as he rolled them. Heckram lifted his chin to keep them eye to eye. Joboam was taller than he was, and broader, his muscular build coated with a layer of hard flesh. In contrast, Heckram appeared almost rangy. He'd often wondered which of them was stronger. As Joboam stepped offensively close to him, he wondered if today they'd find out.

'Elsa has said she'll be contented with me. Unlike some men, I'm inclined to believe women know with whom they'd want to mate.' Heckram's voice was low and pleasant.

He let his arms hang loose at his sides, waiting.

'It doesn't surprise me to hear you say that. There have always been men in this sita who have been contented to be ruled by their womenfolk, to live in their mothers' tents until women come to choose them.'

'Better than to live in my own tent and never be chosen at all,' Heckram agreed smoothly.

Joboam's eyes went a little narrower. Heckram felt his own breathing deepen, and then the swelling and tightening of his muscles. A deep patience rose within him. No haste to this game. It would never be said that he'd provoked the herdlord's man. A smile bowed his mouth as he waited for Joboam to make the first move. The moments passed, and Joboam's arms hung limp. A small knowing grew inside Heckram. Joboam would make more words at him, perhaps, but he wouldn't push the quarrel to blows.

Joboam was not anxious to find which of them was the stronger. Not yet, anyway.

Heckram's smile became a grin.

A small muscle jumped in the bigger man's cheek. 'Why be chosen by one woman when a man can choose any, or all?' he demanded suddenly, his voice too loud and harsh. Bluffing. 'The bitch in the heat of her season doesn't go to the slinking dog that whines for her, but is taken by the strongest male.'

'Joboam!'

Her voice was shrill, and both men jerked to it. Fey Kari, the herdlord's daughter, perched lightly on a nearby pulkor, looking like some airy bird. Her black hair sleeked smooth to the shape of her skull, pulled so tight that the strain of the braid pulled at her eyes. Her black eyes were raven bright, her lips too red, her teeth too white behind them. The fine bones of her face showed against her skin. 'Joboam!' she cawed again.

'What is it?' he asked grudgingly.

'Capiam requires you. Immediately. Twice he has sent to your hut, but neither time were you there. So he sent me to fetch you. Are you coming?'

'I come.' He spoke heavily. He turned challenging eyes on Heckram, waiting for him to speak. Heckram only grinned at the larger man. Kari hopped from her perch, her loose tunic of white fox swirling around her as she moved. She had lost weight again and the looseness of her clothing on her body contributed to her ethereal appearance.

She came over the snow to the men in short quick steps, coming too close to them both, all but touching them as she insinuated herself between them. She tilted her face up to Heckram.

'I wish you luck in your joining with Elsa,' Kari emphasized. Heckram wondered uneasily how long she had been listening to them. He tried to remember all he had said, and if any of it could be repeated to make mischief. Surely he would have noticed her perched there. Or had she used the white fox furs of her tunic as well as the snow fox himself did when he stalked his prey? Her eyes probed his deeply, 'I hope she realizes her good fortune. To not only know who she wishes to mate, but to have the joy of claiming him! Hurry on your way, Heckram, to make yourself ready for her, and to raise the walls of her home.'

Joboam had backed off a step or two as Kari spoke to Heckram. Now Kari turned back and clapped her hands sharply as if he were a recalcitrant puppy. 'And you! To Capiam, Joboam. Do not keep the herdlord waiting, after he has sent his own daughter to fetch you. Hurry now! Run!'

Joboam glared at them both, but as Kari barked the last word, he set off down the path at a grudging jog.

'Joboam!' Heckram called after him and, when the man glanced back, he said, 'I don't know much of dogs. But wolves mate for life. Remember it.'

'No one who hunts wolves should forget it,' Kari remarked, and her laughter was brittle as icicles in the cold air. She bit the sound off, sighed abruptly, and turned back to Heckram. 'I shall come to your betrothal tonight,' she announced suddenly and stared at him hard.

'You will be welcome, as will any of the herdfolk who honor us by coming,' he replied gravely.

For a moment longer she stood staring up at him, standing so close that her thrusting breasts nearly touched his ribs. 'You smell of butchering and reindeer. Go bathe yourself,' she advised him suddenly. She turned from him quickly and hurried away with her short, hopping steps, her white furs flapping around her like the wings of a crippled bird.

Heckram watched her as she wound her way between the huts and meat racks, never choosing the well trodden path between the rows of huts, but walking where no one else did. His heart was still beating strongly, the excitement of his near fight with Joboam flooding his veins but finding no outlet. He stooped once more for his buckets and hastened again for Ristin's hut.

In the hut at last, he put the water to heat in pots over the fire, set out a large basin, and then rummaged through his possessions for his father's razor. He poured a bit of warmed water into the basin, then stood looking at the implement in his hand. It was bronze, rare enough in this hut. The razor was almost the only bronze tool he possessed. There was a knife as well, one that had been his father's. A knife almost too precious to use. The traders said that far to the south now all tools were of bronze, and only the poor used flint anymore. But in Heckram's village, flint and bone were still the commonest materials used for tools. True, the flint tools were now polished and ground to resemble their bronze counterparts, but stone they still were, and far more brittle than the new metal. More and more bronze was finding its way north these days.

Heckram had seen the new bronze axe that Capiam had traded amber and white fox hides for. It was shaped just like Lasse's axe of polished flint, and its handle curved in the familiar curve of reindeer antler the herdfolk had always used for axe handles. But its head was bronze, and every bit but the actual cutting edge was etched with elaborate patterns. Despite its delicate beauty, it would take punishing use that would destroy Lasse's stone one. Perhaps he should think more of gathering amber lumps and hunting the thick white furs the southern traders valued and less of gathering up reindeer. But then he shook his head, the traditional measure of wealth too strongly ingrained to deny it.

The bronze razor had a bone grip carved with close–grained spirals. He damped his face and the blade, then scraped the edged tool over his skin. He ran his fingertips down his cheek, feeling with satisfaction the smoothness that followed the blade. Then, mindful of the time he had already wasted, he finished his shaving hastily.

He mixed steaming and cool water in the basin to a comfortable temperature, and then stripped hastily. Under his fur garments was his long shirt of woven wool. He could not remember when last he had removed it. Before the chill of fall set in? He dragged it off over his head and stood shivering and naked. He hesitated a moment, then stepped to the chest and opened it. On top of the other contents, as if anticipating him, was a leather poke of aromatic herbs and a square of coarsely woven fiber fabric.

He took them.

Placing a handful of the herbs in the center of the fabric square, he folded the fabric into a packet. This he dipped into the steaming water. As the herbs took in the moisture, their fragrance filled the sod hut. He scrubbed his face and neck with the rough packet, feeling his skin open to the warmth of the water. Dampening the packet repeatedly, he worked his way down his body. The water turned dingy, and he emptied it and refilled the basin again. He shivered as the water evaporated from his skin, chilling him further, but doggedly finished his bath. Then another basin of warm water, and this time a handful of the herbs floating loose in it. He knelt to pour more water over his thick mane of dark hair and then plunged his head into the basin of scented water. He scrubbed at his scalp, feeling his hair go to silkiness under his hands. At least he had no nits to worry about, as Bror did. Ristin would not have tolerated vermin in her tent. He suspected Elsa would feel the same way.

His fine hair tangled about his fingers, snagging on the work-roughened surfaces. He pulled his hands free, mumbling a curse, and plunged his head into the water again. He came up for air, and his hair swung forward past his face, streaming water into the basin. His scalp felt clean. He wrung his mat of hair over the basin. Elsa liked his hair.

Every time he had spoken to her since their agreement became public, she had taken the opportunity to touch it, to stand twining strands of it around her fingers as she talked to him. His hair was finer than that of the other men of the herd, and when the sun struck it, it shone not blue, but bronze. Heckram found its fineness annoying, for it blew into his eyes and clung to his fingers when he tried to smooth it. He shook it back from his face.

Shivering, he picked up his woolen long-shirt from where he had let it fall. But as he bunched it to pull it on over his head, the full impact of its aroma hit him. He dropped it, snorting. He had been wearing that? No wonder Kari had told him he smelt of butchering. He tossed it into the scented water still in the basin and looked for something else to put on.

In his clothing bundle he found two thin shirts of rabbit leather, fine for the mellow weather of summer, but not winter. But when he found nothing else, he regretfully took one and a clean pair of leggings from his bundle. They would have to serve. He tossed them across the hearth so they landed on his bedskins. Picking up his boots, he followed them, then stood staring down.

The shirt stirred dim memories. Images of his father, always a vague, tall man in his memories, suddenly snapped into focus. Heckram suddenly remembered a tall man, impossibly tall, laughing down at him as loudly as a wind roaring. The man had hazel eyes, and his nose was long and thin compared to the noses of the herdfolk. His big hands spanned Heckram's childish chest as the man lifted him up, touching his head to the rafters of the hut. A man wearing this brown wool shirt. Slowly he picked the shirt up and sniffed it, smelling the herbs his mother packed into the chest to keep the mice out. He wondered when she had placed it on his bed for him. Cautiously, as if afraid of shattering the memories he associated with it, he pulled it on over his head. He dragged on a pair of leather leggings and tied them and then stood, rolling his shoulders and trying to get used to the feel of it.

'It's tight on you. You're bigger than he was, I suppose, though I never realized it until now. Your southern blood must run strong, from both my father and yours. Still, the wool will stretch out to fit you.'

He turned slowly to find Ristin in the door, looking at him. Her smile was bittersweet. 'You've a lot of his looks. And his temperament, too. I suppose Elsa will learn to live with your moods as I learned to live with his.'

Heckram found himself nodding slowly. 'You saved this for me?' he asked.

She nodded in return. 'For this day. As he wore it on the day he claimed me.' She turned aside from him abruptly, no longer able to look at him. 'Comb your hair out, and be on your way. I'll clean this mess up for you, this last time, and wash out your shirt as well. Quickly now. Lasse and the others have been waiting for you long enough.'

She moved purposefully as she spoke, returning the bag of herbs to her trunk and pushing his shirt under the water in the basin to soak. He knew she didn't want to talk to him just now, so he ran a bone comb through his hair, slicking its dampness back from his face, jammed his hat over it, and left her tent quietly.

'A fine time of year to be building a sod hut,' Lasse growled mockingly to the other men as Heckram approached. Heckram greeted the men solemnly, touching hands with some, embracing others, and carefully ignoring the cluster of girls and women who had gathered behind Stina's hut to watch them. He thought he caught a glimpse of Elsa's bright blue cap among them, but refused to turn his head and see.

'So, Heckram, you've decided to build a sod hut today?' Bror asked him loudly.

'I might. I thought it might be a useful place to keep my things.' The men were elaborately casual as they followed him across the clearing and up the hillside. They watched in silence as Heckram brushed the snow away from a patch of ground, then forced a bone turf knife deep into the sod. Carefully he outlined a square in the surface of the revealed turf. Working with tools of wood and bone, he severed the thick mat of roots that held the block of sod in place and lifted it from its cradle. Dirt and bits of humus sifted from it as he lifted it. This first block of sod he carried down the hill in his arms, as if it were a fragile child. Carefully he lowered it to the earth, packing it firmly down where he wanted it. 'And here's the start of the wall,' he said loudly.

It was all they had been waiting to hear. Tools and sledges suddenly appeared. Some, more impatient than others, had already cut their blocks of sod while waiting for Heckram to finish bathing. These were off-loaded from sledges and set end to end with his starting block. A circle of sod blocks began to rise as the men moved and added more blocks of sod. In size and shape, the sod house would resemble a skin tent, but its thick walls offered more resistance to the wind and weather. Stout poles appeared, to frame in a doorway, and then more poles for the roof struts.

The roof itself was of birch branches and bark, set over pine poles and chinked with moss. The men returned from gathering the materials to find that someone had hung a hide on the doorframe. They made no comment on this, or on the thick layer of birch twigs that appeared on the floor while they were gone for their second load of roofing supplies. Lasse waved Heckram back from the roof when he would have climbed up to set the final barks in place around the smoke hole. 'You're too big. You'll cave the whole thing in.' Agile as a squirrel, the boy scrambled up and put the finishing touches on the roof.

Heckram walked carefully around the outside of the hut, looking for cracks to stuff with moss, or places where the turves might be set unevenly. But it was a good, tightly built hut, made to stand many a year of snow and rain. By the time he returned to it next fall, the walls would have taken on a life of their own. Small plants would cling to them, and the moss that chinked them would be green and growing. He nodded in satisfaction, then pushed the doorhide aside and entered. The bare birch twigs crackled under his feet. The other men clustered in the door, peering into the new hut.

'No hearth stones!' Bror observed with loud cheerfulness.

'It will be a cold hut with no arran to heat it and cook upon!' Lasse added, his shout ringing in the cold air.

'That it will,' Heckram agreed. The other men nodded commiseratingly as Heckram came back to stand in the door of the hut, crouching but still filling it. 'But what does a man know of building a hearth?'

'Nothing at all!' Stina cackled. She loved the ceremonies of a joining and was always the first woman to speak aloud. 'But here comes a woman to show you how! I bring you a stone for your hearth!' She hobbled forward as fast as her stiffened legs would allow her, to mockingly present him with a crumbling piece of shale no bigger than her fist.

But Heckram accepted it gravely and made a great show of inspecting it.

'It looks like a fine hearth stone to me,' he declared, inviting a chorus of hoots from the women. 'Yet it is not like the stones my mother used. I will not take your arran stone or you into my hut, woman!'

Stina pulled a face of great disappointment and retired to the ranks of the women.

Ibba came forward, to offer him a huge round rock as big as his head. Again he examined it gravely, but decided that it was not the same as the stones in his mother's arran. Woman after woman and stone after stone he inspected and rejected, and the roars of laughter from the gathered herdfolk grew louder as the stones were more and more unfit for a hearth. At last came Tranta, Elsa's friend, to insult him by offering him a handful of pebbles and bark bits for his hearth. Again he refused, asking loudly of the surrounding folk, is there no woman here who can build a hearth fit for a new hut such as this?'

The huddle of women parted and Elsa stepped out. Her warm skin was flushed even rosier than usual, her eyes shining bright. She wore a new cap of red wool and her black hair shone where it peeped from beneath it. Instead of a tunic of caribou hide, she wore a cloak of white fox fur over a woven shirt and a knee-length skirt of woven wool with fringes around the hem. A murmur of approval rose from the folk as she slowly approached the hut. In her two hands she held a fine flat arran stone.

Heckram took it from her gravely, their eyes meeting for a long moment as he received the weight of it. He turned it in his big hands, examining it gravely over and over again, until the crowd began to murmur at the delay. Elsa's dark eyes were wide when he finally looked up from the stone. He tried to keep the mischief out of his eyes.

'This, for a hearth stone?' he asked dubiously, and at the outraged cries of the women, he dropped the jest hastily and added, 'will make the finest arran a man could warm himself at. Your hearth stone I will take into the hut, and you with it.'

He put it gravely back into her hands and stepped back inside the hut to allow her passage. In the center of the hut, under the smoke hole, was an area left free of birch twigs. Here she put the stone. She worked carefully to set it into the earth. All was quiet as she left the hut and then returned with another stone to fit into place beside the first one. Again, and yet again, and then at last she came bearing a burning torch kindled from her mother's hearth. Her mother, Missa, and Ristin came behind her, bearing wood for the new fire. Early evening was falling, and the torch burned very brightly in the twilight. Once more Heckram lifted the doorhide to let her pass through. This time Missa and Ristin followed her, and faces crowded the door as Elsa knelt to build and kindle the first fire on the new hearth stones.

When the flames burned hot and high, she moved to Heckram's side. Together they turned to the folk clustered at the door. 'Why do you stand about outside in the cold night?' Heckram demanded. 'Come in and warm yourself at the fine fire my woman has built on our hearth.'

'Do not stand under the sky. Come into the tight hut my man has built for me and warm yourselves. We are poor folk, newly joined, but we will share with you what we have!'

The silence broke in a hubbub of voices as well-wishers pushed inside. All loudly admired the tight walls and bright flames of the fire. Then, one after another, they found fault with the new home, is there nothing to sit on but birch twigs?' demanded Kuoljok loudly. 'Well, I have here a poor rabbit hide that may keep the twigs from their skin!' So saying the bride's father unrolled a finely cured bear hide before the new hearth.

'Will they offer their guests nothing to eat?' panted Stina. 'Well, I've a small pot of tea I can spare them.' With a grunt of effort, she set a heavy pot of stew, still simmering from her own hearth's heat, onto the stones of the new arran.

'And how will they stir it? With a stick or a finger?' demanded Ibba. She plunged a newly carved bone ladle deep into the savory stew.

'She'll be a lazy wife that has put aside no cheese for the winter,' Lasse predicted woefully and proceeded to hang six large ones from the new rafters.

Heckram and Elsa could but sit on the bear hide before the new hearth, admitting their poverty and incompetence at home building, as their friends and relatives contributed to the new hearth. Tomorrow they would fetch from their old homes their possessions, but tonight their comfort would depend on the generosity of others. Elsa's eyes shone as her fingers stroked the bear rug they sat on. Ristin bore in spits of meat to set over the flames, all the while telling her neighbors how relieved she was to get her lazy son out of her hut. Missa, cutting cheese and ladling up stew for the guests, loudly confided to them that her daughter knew nothing at all of keeping a home warm and well supplied. Laughter greeted every disparaging remark, and the predictions of misfortune and misery grew wilder as every guest took a turn.

'So poor a hunter will feed his wife on shrews and mice!'

'The hair will slip from the hides she tans and her weaving come unwound!'

'His crooked arrows will fly into the trees, and her cheeses be rank and spoiled.'

'Am I too late to offer a stone for the hearth?'

All eyes turned to the hut's door and the late arrival who stood there. Kari was framed there, managing to look at once timorous and arrogant. No others of the herdlord's family had seen fit to attend this joining. The slight had been felt, though not commented on. Now she was unexpected, and no one moved to welcome her. Her cheeks blushed dark red, and her eyes shone. In her hand she held out a lump of amber as big as her fist. Kuoljok gasped audibly. Silence fell like a heavy snow, swirling among the guests as all stared at the proffered wealth. It was an awkward offering, out of keeping with their tradition. The quiet grew longer and the girl's discomfort grew.

Lasse stepped into the awkwardness, 'I never saw a stone like that in my mother's hearth!' he exclaimed. The guests laughed nervously.

'I shall set it by the arran,' Kari exclaimed loudly, her voice cracking in her nervousness. Eyes and silence followed her as she crossed to the hearth and knelt to set the yellow lump before the new couple.

Stina looked at Lasse and cleared her old throat. Her voice cracked as she observed,

'Don't set it there! Elsa will mix it with the kindling and try to burn it for wood!'

The jest was close enough for people anxious to be at ease. The moment of embarrassment passed, and the talk and laughter rose again in the night. Kari looked at Lasse gratefully and he responded by offering her some of the freshly roasted meat.

The talk grew louder; a keg of juobmo and then a keg of beer were opened. Someone brought in sausages from the meat racks. The fuel on the hearth was replenished and the flames leaped high again. Ristin made another trip to the meat racks. The air in the hut grew thick with the odors of people, roasting meat, and beer. Dark eyes shone and wide cheeks flushed as unjoined women flirted outrageously with the young men, and the older couples recalled the warming memories of their own joinings.

Several hides now graced the twig-strewn floor, and sundry tools and implements hung from the rafters. These, the poorer folk of the herd, had been generous. A komse, of wood and leather, was propped unabashedly in the corner, in the calm expectation that Elsa would fill it before the year was out. Cradle of a nomadic folk, it was fitted with straps so the baby could be hung from a pack saddle or hooked on a tree branch.

The buzzing voices and sudden shouts of laughter spilled into the night as the herdfolk rejoiced. And Elsa, squirming closer to Heckram, observed softly, 'Late as the night is, you would think they would seek their own hearths!'

'But the night is young still,' he protested and then, as he looked down into her face and saw her warm eagerness, felt a similar impatience stir within him. She knelt beside him on the bear skin. He was suddenly aware of her thigh warm against his. Her mouth parted in a smile as she saw the interest kindled in his eyes. Heedless of the others, he bent suddenly to kiss her. Her mouth was wet under his, and warm, tasting of the southern beer.

He did not see Lasse's grin, but heard it in his voice as he yawned loudly and exclaimed, 'Well, some of us have to hunt tomorrow. And those that do will want to sleep tonight.' He rose slowly.

'Kuoljok said he saw wolf signs on the south ridge,' Ristin observed, 'I think I will hunt there tomorrow.'

Lasse was holding the doorhide aside as Kari slipped out into the night. Ibba and Bror were not far behind.

'It's not such a bad hut, after all,' Kuoljok observed, and Missa nodded, her eyes shining with moisture as she stepped away from her daughter's hearth.

'The fire burns well,' Ristin agreed. She followed them out the door.

Heckram and Elsa sat before their hearth as their guests, with various inconsequential remarks, slipped out into the night. Stina puttered about a moment longer after the others had left, banking the fire and lifting a pot from the hot stones.

She stared at the couple a moment longer, opened her lips to speak, and then gave her head a short, hard nod instead. After the doorhide fell behind her, there was silence but for the crackling of the flames on the new hearth.

Elsa, suddenly shy in the stillness, exclaimed, 'I should put more wood on the hearth,' and made as if to rise. Heckram felt the blood thundering suddenly in his veins.

The fringe of Elsa's skirt dangled at the tops of her knees like an invitation. He stood, pulling her up with him, and became suddenly aware of her smallness. When she buried her face against his chest, he felt the warmth of her breath through his shirt. He looked down on the clean skin in the part of her shining black hair. She looked up at him for a moment, her eyes clear and liquid as the dark eyes of a little vaja. His heart leaped like a wild sarva in rutting time. He knelt suddenly, pushing his face against her shirt, nuzzling her breasts through the woven fabric as his fingers snagged and fumbled at the lacings. Her hands caught in his fine hair and pulled his mouth against the firmness of her breasts. Her nipples reminded him of raspberries still warm from the noon sun, her thighs sleek and strong as polished ivory to his touch. The warmth from the new hearth flushed their bared skin, and the gift hides were silky beneath them.

It was late that night when she rose to put more fuel on the fire. He watched her from the warmth of the bedskins as she moved, gold against the dying gold of the flames, her hair a black wave down her shoulders, and was almost content. Then she gave a sudden cry of dismay and sprang back from the hearth.

'Did you burn yourself?' he asked quickly.

'No.' She turned worried eyes to him. 'One of our arran stones has cracked.'

Between an older couple, it might have been no more than an omen of a quarrel to come, or a day's bad hunting. But this was a new hearth and their joining was new.

There could be no worse portent for a betrothal night than a cracked stone in the newly set arran, and Elsa's eyes reflected her knowledge of that. He knew she was waiting for him to scold her, to say she had chosen the stones poorly or made the first fire too hot.

Instead he only lifted the bedskins and beckoned her back to his side.

She came in, uncertain at first, but soon was cuddling against him, stroking the hair on his chest. Later they slept. But when he awoke, he could only recall that he had dreamed of watching laden pulkors leaving for the southern trade villages. The morning was cold, and the fire had died on the cracked hearth.

CHAPTER TWELVE

'But I thought we were going to the herd, to check our animals.'

'It's on the way. And it won't take much time.'

'It's not on the way,' Elsa said, a bit petulantly. 'And I don't see why it should take any time at all. Why do you want to go visiting today?'

Heckram slid his skis forward through the crisp snow for another three strides before replying. 'Just to visit.' His big shoulders moved in a shrug. He was glad he was in the lead and she could not see his face. She would have known he was holding something back. As it was, she suspected.

It was one of those rare days that came sometimes in the midst of winter, a day that reminded one that spring must come sometime, that the life of the forest was sleeping in the dark rich soil under the blanket of cold white snow. The sky was a bottomless blue, the dark green of the pines a stabbing contrast. The white snow held a light of its own, glinting so brightly that Heckram squinted and felt the water rise in his eyes.

There was a perfection to the scene that nothing man-made could even imitate. Each dark-needled branch balanced its precise limit of snow. They crossed an open meadow where the tall heads of grasses poked up through the snow, each tassled stalk frosted with white crystals that emphasized the asymmetrical beauty of each individual. The coldness of the day burned against his cheeks, but the warmth of its beauty numbed him to the pain.

'But why? There's nothing we need from the healer. And it isn't really on the way; the herd is more west of here, in those hills.'

He didn't look back to see her pointing pole. He knew. A month with her, and already he knew her too well. He wanted her to be quiet, to look at the day as he was looking at it, to share the seeing of the frost on the tassled grasses, to feel the sunlight and the wind touch her cheeks with warmth and cold.

'I want to visit the boy,' Heckram said, surprising himself with the sudden honesty of his words. 'He's too much alone.'

'He's with his mother,' Elsa pointed out bluntly, 'If she thought he was too much alone, she'd move her tent closer to the talvsit. But I think she keeps him alone on purpose.'

'Perhaps.' Heckram's voice was grim; his shoulders worked more than they needed to as he pushed himself along.

'Well, you know how he is. I don't think he'd get along with the other children.

They'd have nothing in common. So, even if they moved right into the talvsit, he'd still be alone. Heckram, I've an idea. Let's go to the herd first, spend the day checking the reindeer. And then, on the way back, if we have time, we'll stop and see them.'

'Their tent is just over this hill and down,' he replied and pushed on, driving himself up the hill with a fury that left Elsa panting in her efforts to keep up.

The snow around the tent was trampled, and there were other ski trails now, evidence that several of the herdfolk had had reason to seek out the healer's skills. Tillu was out before her tent, lacing a calf hide onto a stretching frame. She looked very small as she crouched in the snow. Very alone, as if her tent were the only one in the world.

Kerlew was to one side of the tent. He gripped a stave and made an elaborate show of stalking a stump. His movements were stylized, more dance than play. His body swayed lithely as he moved, in a manner far different from his usual awkwardness.

Now he crouched and plodded toward the stump as if he fought a great wind, now his body lifted on tiptoe, and he menaced the stump with short jabbing thrusts of the stave.

A gust of wind carried some words of his chant to Heckram's ears. It was in no language Heckram had ever heard. He stood still on the crest of the hill, watching.

'See what I mean,' Elsa said suddenly beside him. 'What kind of play is that for a boy of his age? Why isn't he doing something useful to help his mother?' Her small face was set in a look of disgust, and the condemnation in her features made them hard and old.

Heckram pulled his eyes away from her.

'He's only a boy,' he observed gently, and he pushed off down the hill. An instant later he heard the sound of her skis cutting the snow as she followed him.

Kerlew saw them first and with a glad cry raced up the hill to meet them, coming straight at Heckram so that he had to turn his skis in an awkward stop that all but spilled him into the snow. Behind him Elsa exclaimed in annoyance and swerved gracefully around them. Her action carried her past him and into the clearing before the tent. Tillu rose awkwardly, greeting her with obvious surprise. And Heckram was left alone with Kerlew.

They grinned at one another, in an understanding that was complete without words.

Kerlew gripped the man's wrist with both hands. 'You have come to see the calf skin. I skinned it from the deer myself, taking it carefully, carefully, with the reindeer knife you gave me. Tillu has no knife so fine.'

'Um.' Heckram stored the bit of information. 'Then you hunt well, small man?'

Kerlew shrugged, a man's deprecating gesture to cover swelling pride. 'The calf was small,' he said casually. 'But it will feed my mother until I can kill another. Today I do the hunt dance, to bring me luck in hunting.' The boy paused, then said with elaborate casualness, 'Perhaps tomorrow you would care to hunt with me?'

The hidden plea in his words was a thing Heckram could not deny. 'Perhaps,'

Heckram replied, already planning the day. He glanced down at the tent, where Elsa stood, the set of her shoulders suggesting both annoyance and awkwardness. Both she and Tillu were staring up at them. He'd better get down there. 'Here,' he told the boy.

'Behind me. Put your feet behind mine. No, you have to hold on to me, I need the poles.

Now, when I move my feet, you move yours. First the left ... now the right. Ready?

Here we go!'

It was but a short run down the hill, but the boy whooped all the way, his grip around Heckram's waist surprisingly strong. Crossing the flat was more difficult, not so much because of the boy's awkward weight on the back of his skis but because of the two faces that awaited him. The smile on Tillu's face was a rare and cautious thing, while the look of warning that Elsa wore was becoming all too familiar to him. She did not approve of this silliness and the time it was taking.

'Jump off,' he told the boy when they halted before the women. Yet Kerlew's arms lingered around his waist an instant longer, tightened for a second in a convulsive hug of thanks before the boy stumbled away from him. His small face was shining with excitement.

'And now you will see my calf skin, and then have tea in my mother's hut,' Kerlew began excitedly.

'I'm afraid we cannot stay that long,' Elsa cut in smoothly. 'We have to visit the herd today, so we have still a ways to go. And we must get there soon enough that we can return before dark.'

The light went out of Kerlew's face like the sun going behind a cloud. Elsa went on, 'I was just telling Tillu that we only meant to say hello on our way. It is a nice calf hide; it is only a shame it was cut in the skinning.'

Heckram tousled Kerlew's hair in a gesture that was almost possessive. 'A few cuts in a hide matter little. A clever woman can always sew them shut.'

Now the look of gratitude on Tillu's face was unmistakable, if you would care to stay for just a few moments,' she said, her eyes going swiftly from Heckram's to Elsa's, 'you could have a cup of hot tea to warm you. And I have tallow, from the calf. I could mix the rub for you, Elsa. For your shoulder.'

'I have nothing to trade for it today,' Elsa said, and there was no mistaking the chill of formality in her voice.

'There is no need,' Tillu said awkwardly. 'When you gave me the needles and case, I said I would make it for you. It will take me but a moment ...' She glanced from Elsa to Heckram, plainly puzzled at Elsa's displeasure. Then her eyes went to Kerlew. He was crouched in the snow by Heckram, his hands tracing the pattern of lines and colors that decorated Heckram's ski pole. Her eyes narrowed and the light went from her face.

Dullness seemed to flood it, muting the life in her eyes. 'Of course, if you are in a hurry, you could come for it another time. Whenever it is convenient for you. Kerlew. Kerlew!

Run into the tent and find the other hide scraper for me. I think it is in the medicine box.'

The boy moved reluctantly at her bidding. And there it is, Heckram thought to himself as he kept a friendly smile pasted on his face. The vixen senses a threat to her cub, and chases him back to the den. Is this why they live apart? Elsa had been right, he realized. The woman lived alone out here deliberately. Not to deprive Kerlew of company, but to keep him from the danger of other folk. To protect the boy from hard looks and mocking words, and sly blows when no one was looking. Something inside his chest squeezed tight.

'I'd like to take Kerlew with us today,' he said suddenly. The idea had been in his mind since this morning. But now it seemed very important to him that it come to pass.

Tillu looked wary, while Elsa gasped as if he had doused her with cold water.

'How can we, Heckram? We're on skis; he could never keep up.'

'He could ride on the back of my skis. Or on my shoulders. He isn't that big, Elsa.'

Heckram spoke slowly, deliberately.

'But he would slow us down,' she objected in dismay. 'And already we have lost time, stopping here. Oh, Heckram, we cannot, not today.' Her voice was politely firm.

As was Tillu's. 'You are kind to offer, but the boy has work to do.'

He might have argued with Elsa. Tillu's words left no room for any objections. He looked at her, saw for an instant her watchfulness that would not allow her son to go into any situation where she could not be sure of protecting him. Then her face was politely empty. Her eyes looked away from his.

'I had hoped,' he began, 'to take the boy hunting with me tomorrow.'

'But Heckram -' interrupted Elsa, her upset evident.

'No.' Tillu's voice was smooth. 'Tomorrow I will need him here. You must see how it is, the boy and I alone. I depend on Kerlew for many things; I cannot allow him to go with you.'

'Tillu!'

The cry of anguish was Kerlew's. He had come up quietly behind her. The scraper fell from his hand as he darted forward toward Heckram. She caught him by his tunic back, held him beside her. 'They are in a hurry,' she said firmly. Kerlew wiggled, and her bare knuckles went white with keeping her grip. 'They have to leave now, Kerlew, and you must stay with me. Are not you the man of this tent? Have you not tasks of your own to keep you busy?'

Kerlew darted a glance at Elsa's face, saw her disapproval of the entire scene. He turned his eyes, bright with despair and betrayal, to Heckram. It was a gaze Heckram could not meet. 'Perhaps another time, Kerlew,' he muttered and bent to brush imaginary snow from his leggings.

Kerlew suddenly stopped struggling against Tillu's restraining grip. Very still he stood, and when Heckram dared to look up at his small face, it was closed. As carefully empty as Tillu's own. 'And perhaps not,' he said, his voice cracking on the words. His speech came suddenly faster, the words tumbling and twisted on his awkward tongue.

'It is not as if I have time to spare. To hunt is fine, but a shaman has many other things to attend. There is a world other men see not, the world a shaman moves in. It is there that I am more of a man than you can imagine, yes, and it is there that I protect my mother and bring animals for her to kill. It is there that I go and I call to Carp and he will come, very very soon he will come and I will have no time to go hunting, no, nor to use a bow, so there is no sense in your making one for me, for I would never use it, it would only lie in the corner of the hut -'

'We have to go,' Elsa said, her voice low and uneasy. She planted her ski poles firmly, swung herself suddenly away, and Heckram found himself following her, letting Kerlew's words fall to the snow behind him. 'I'm sorry,' he said, knowing the boy didn't even hear the words. He had to hurry to keep up with Elsa; he could not look back to where Kerlew babbled, his words flung like useless missiles against his own pain.

Heckram felt as if something within him had torn, as if he had broken a bond and the torn flesh was sore, very sore.

At the crest of the hill he ventured a glance back. Tillu already knelt by her hide again, busy with the scraper. Kerlew crouched in the snow, his face in his hands. He rocked as he grieved, looking like a much younger child than he was. The boy's pain sank its teeth into Heckram's heart. 'Why doesn't she go to him, hug him?' he demanded fiercely.

Elsa glanced back at him. 'What did you say?'

His anger flared at her. 'Why did you behave that way? Didn't you see how the boy's feelings were hurt?'

Her face went stony. 'All I saw was a young boy with no manners. A boy whose mother should teach him better. No wonder they have to live apart from folk. Who could tolerate a child like that in a village?'

'I could,' Heckram muttered.

Elsa's face suddenly warmed. She moved to his side, put her mittened hand atop his.

'I know you could. Who would have thought that a man like you could be such a fool over a boy?' Her hand traveled up his arm. 'We waited too long, you and I. But do not be impatient now. I have no doubt that by this time next year, there will be a little one in the komse. A boy, perhaps, that will look like you and will grow strong and tall. A boy of your own to teach and play with and hunt with. You will have a son of your own to share these things with, Heckram. A bright, well-mannered child.'

He looked down into her face, saw her own hunger. She would be a good mother, full of dreams for her children. She would bear fat, healthy babies, would protect them jealously when they were small. And when they were older, she would set her children free into their independence, launching them like leaf-boats in a stream. Looking into her face, he could see the rightness of her wanting. There would be children for them, a boy of his own, with none of Kerlew's subtle differences. Their son would be a good hunter, would be healthy and strong, all a father could ask. A boy to make a man proud, with none of Kerlew's awkwardness and difficulties. He and Elsa would have a good family. Their children would thrive. But ...

'What about Kerlew?'

Elsa frowned, then softened the gesture with a laugh. 'Foolish man. Is your heart so easily touched? He is nothing to us. The boy has a mother to care for him. He will be fine. You must leave them to their own lives, Heckram. If you interfere, you will only make things harder for the boy, make him want things that are beyond him. Let them live their own lives, Heckram. You and I have a life of our own to fill.'

She pulled his hand close, cradled it against her breast. Her smile was full of a tender promise. He found a smile of his own to answer it before he pulled gently free of her.

She pushed off on her skis, moving silently down the bright hillside, and he followed.

But a question followed him, a question merciless as wolves.

What about Kerlew?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

He should have stayed with Elsa. He knew that, knew that the others had expected it of him, and would be shocked that he hadn't. But he couldn't. He had to move, to strain himself and his animal as the pulkor raced over the snow. In the pumping of his heart and lungs, in the flash of snow and black trees that passed, he found an edge of comfort. He was doing something, not standing horrified and stricken. He could pretend to have some control over what was happening. He fled his own pain and anger. And fear. Yes, fear, but not for himself. Fear that if this could happen among the herdfolk, then anything could happen. Anything. The outrage that had bubbled inside him since Bruk's mutilation rose to a boil that overflowed and scalded his soul.

Short hours ago, the night had been a comfortable place, folk gathered around the hearth, the men to play at wolf tablo while the women wove and talked. He and Elsa had gone visiting to her parents' hut. The yellow light of Missa's fire touched everyone, warming colors and softening lines. He and Kuoljok had set up the board on top of the traveling chest. The heavy wooden chest had once been incised with a brightly painted design. Now the patina of frequent moves obscured the pattern, and the colors were faded. Yet in the warm light of the fire, it seemed handsomer for its scars.

As did the parents' faces. Kuoljok's hair was thin and black and unruly, standing out in a halo about his seamed face. His black eyes were deeply set, the whites of them stained with brown as if by running dye. His sallow skin was reddened by the weather and made ivory by the firelight. He pondered his next move, hiding a shrewd smile behind a hand all knuckles and tendons. Heckram's mother, Ristin, was there as well.

She worked at weaving trim for his wedding shirt, stopping often to compare it with the weaving Missa did. The ceremony at the Cataclysm in summer would be the formal one, requiring elaborate garments. The folk of many herds would gather there, and Capiam's herdfolk would be judged by the richness of the pledged couple's attire as much as by their reindeer. Mothers took pride in the weaving of such things.

Both women sat stiffly erect on the floor of birch twigs and hides. Their ribbon looms tethered them to the center pole of the hut. Weaving materials of grass and fiber and strips of fur, bright dyed lengths of wool yarn and leathers, whispered against one another as their busy old fingers danced them together. Small basins held beads of bone and horn and amber to be worked into the design. The two women spoke and laughed over their work, paying it little mind as the intricate patterns flowed from their fingers.

Missa's trim would adorn Elsa's wedding garments of snowy white fur. The furs were lush winter-taken fox. Elsa herself sat with her head bowed over a basin as her fingers squeezed excess color from the fibers she was dyeing. The golden firelight highlighted the scene.

'You'll be too hot,' Heckram pointed out annoyingly as Kuoljok pondered his next move. 'The wedding will be at the height of the summer. No one wears fox fur then.'

'The beauty will be worth a little discomfort,' Missa assured him placidly. 'And Elsa wants the wedding to be in the evening, when the cool wind blows down from the ice packs.'

Heckram grunted his defeat and turned back to his gaming. The dice were made from the toe-knuckle bones of a reindeer calf, while his marker, the pursued wolf, was a larger knuckle bone stained black. Kuoljok tumbled the dice and then smiled as he moved his own markers closer to the fleeing wolf. Heckram picked up the dice and warmed them in his hand, pondering strategy. The smell of freshly carved new wood mingled with the homey smells of the hut. In one corner of the hut stood the beginnings of a traveling chest, chips and curlings of wood littering the area around it. Heckram had been doing the carving, under the watchful eyes of the old man, but both had decided their work had progressed far enough this night and had abandoned it for the game.

Heckram moved his piece grudgingly. Old Kuoljok snickered, cast the dice, and moved quickly. 'That traveling chest could be finished by tomorrow night, if we worked on it tomorrow,' he suggested.

Heckram shook his head slowly as he polished the dice between his hands. 'Lasse and I are going hunting.'

'Again?' Elsa asked in dismay. 'Can't you ever stay at home for two days in a row?'

He closed his eyes a moment, then opened them again, keeping them on the game board. 'Not if you still plan to slaughter two animals for our joining feast at the Cataclysm. If I can drag in a couple of young sarva now, they could be fattened by the time we reach the Cataclysm.'

'Heckram, you sound as if we were starving. One of your animals, one of mine: that's not going to deplete us. New calves will have been born by then. We'll return with as many animals as we started with.'

'I'd like to return with more,' he said softly.

Elsa snorted. 'There's but the two of us to feed. And we've plenty of animals for that.

Why must you always be off hunting more reindeer and furs? We have everything we need.'

The dice in Heckram's hand ground against each other, 'I can remember when my father wore his talley string around his waist, and the ear flaps on it were thick as leaves on a branch. Every year he had furs and amber to trade south, and his tools were bronze, not bone. Every year he traveled south to meet the traders. He always had tales to tell, food to share. Always, we ate well and our tunics were thick.'

'Umm,' Kuoljok agreed softly. 'So we all did, in those days. No one had ever seen the herd so large. The wolves grew fat off the weak ones, but the strong ones were so many that they poured over the land like water. Folk held feasts for no reason, and all the meat racks were heavy. For three, four, maybe five years it was like that. More and more reindeer, every year. When they moved, we felt the thunder of their passage through the earth's bones. It was a time of plenty for all. Then, of course, came the plague. And the herd was smaller than I had ever seen it, and the wolves tore one another in their frenzy to feed off a kill. Heckram, there will always be fat years and lean ones, but I do think neither I nor you will see years as fat as the ones before the plague.'

'The wealth of the herd was the plenty of the folk,' Missa added softly. 'No man can hunt enough to create that level of wealth for himself in these times. Not even the best and most diligent hunter.'

Heckram sat silent, his eyes bowed to the board, and did not speak. A hard determination inside him grew, threatened to split his chest open in a roar of defiance for their placid acceptance of these times, for their dumb contentment in the predictable rounds of their lives. Didn't they want, didn't they wonder? He knit his brows over the game board. His teeth were clenched and he kept his eyes down. The silence in the room passed as Missa and Ristin conferred over their weaving.

'Are you ever going to cast those dice, or are you going to give up the game now?'

Kuoljok asked slyly.

'I'm thinking,' Heckram said, trying to make his voice easy.

'That's it. Take your time. Never be in a hurry to lose,' the old man suggested with a cracked laugh, as Heckram warmed the dice in his hands. Heckram growled, but threw the dice anyway, knowing he had already lost. He moved the wolf conservatively, biding his time. Always biding his time.

'There. That's done.' Elsa rose from her work, shaking her fingers. Heckram let his eyes wander from the board to follow her movements. The firelight touched her hair, illuminating the blue highlights of its deep black. Her hands were stained blue from the dye, and there was an errant streak of blue beside her nose. Yet no herdman would have said the evidence of her diligence made her less fair. Her face was still thoughtful of the work she had just completed. But as she picked up the water bucket to pour water to wash her hands, her eyes caught his. She smiled at him, almost shy to catch him watching her. The genuine fondness in her gaze called up his own slow smile, but he dropped his eyes from her look. He felt his heart must break, not because he loved her, but because he did not. She warmed his bed and cooked his meals, she rubbed his shoulders when he came in cold and weary from the hunt, she stroked his hair as he lay breathing deeply after their mating. But the feeling he had thought would grow in him seemed more absent than ever. He liked the girl. But sometimes he longed to put her hands from him, to shake free of her gentle touch and stride alone into the night. She had so little understanding of the determination that drove him. Always she tried to lure him aside from the things he knew he must do, to make him content to sit out a stormy day by her warm hearth. Sometimes he felt he could not breathe. And sometimes he dreamed of another hearth, and a boy who sat beside it.

He had not been back to the healer's hut since that day. He felt ashamed to go back, as if he had committed a great and cowardly wrong there, one there was no explaining.

He thought of Kerlew, crouched and sobbing in the snow, and sighed. He was too busy to go, really. He had a wife now, and a life of his own to tend to.

Elsa was right. He had no right to interfere in the boy's life, to make him hungry for things he could not have. He stared at the board and at the trap he had been maneuvered into.

'The bucket's empty!' Elsa exclaimed in annoyance.

'So fetch more water,' Missa told her daughter calmly, not glancing up from her work.

'I'll go for it,' Heckram volunteered. The sod hut seemed suddenly suffocating, closing him in like a sorting pen closes in a herd of reindeer. Like them, he felt the urge to gallop wildly against the boundaries, seeking some way out. But even as he rose, thinking of cool air and the black sky arching over all, Kuoljok's hand closed on his wrist.

'No you don't, Heckram!' Elsa's father cackled. 'You won't slip away from the game that easily. Stay and lose like a man!'

'Finish your game! I'll be back in just a moment,' Elsa promised them. She did not even bother to slip on her outer tunic for the quick dash down to the spring. Bucket in one hand, she lifted the door flap and vanished into the night outside.

'A word of warning, young man,' Kuoljok counseled him in a loud whisper. 'Never do for a woman what she can do for herself. Or soon there'll be nothing she does for herself!'

Missa gave a derisive hoot. 'Listen to the old man! As if this woman ever asked him to do for her! I do my own work, and half of his as well! Where were you when your vaja and calf nearly drowned in that stream crossing three springs ago? This one was in the water up to her shoulders, trying to hold onto the calf, and hold off the mother that thought I was hurting it! And what does he call from the stream bank? "Looks like you can handle it, Missa. I don't want to ruin the new pants you made for me by getting them wet!" Such a help he is!'

The incident had been herdlore for three springs now, but they all laughed anyway, Kuoljok loudest of all. Heckram alone frowned at the dice that had fallen in the worst possible combination. Slowly he slid his hunted wolf from the apex of one triangle to another. There was no winning this game. The old man had him, and he knew it.

Kuoljok shook the dice fiercely, grinning at Heckram's long look. Heckram looked aside, let his fingers idly trace the fading pattern on the trunk top. Joining Elsa had been like wedding Lasse, he thought to himself glumly. A fine and merry companion, honest, competent, skilled, and caring. What more could he ask for in a wife? he demanded of himself. And had no answer. A surge of anger and panic pulsed through him suddenly at the choiceless direction his life was taking. He found himself reaching, to snatch the wolf marker from the board just as Kuoljok's knuckly hand was about to capture it.

'Hey!' the old man exclaimed in surprise. Heckram forced a frozen grin to his face and dropped the wolf marker into the hand that opened to receive it.

'You've caught me, fair enough,' Heckram conceded. As Kuoljok grinned and scooped the markers and dice into their little leather bag, Heckram rose. He stretched, his fingertips brushing the rafters of the hut.

'Elsa has been gone a while, hasn't she? I thought she was just going to the spring.'

He idly touched his fingertips to the long fibers of beaten root that she had hung to dry.

They came away blue.

'Don't touch that!' scolded Ristin. 'You'll spoil her work. No doubt Elsa ran into someone and has stopped to talk. Don't fret so much over her. You're joined now!

Surely you can be apart for a few moments.'

'It just seemed that she had been gone a long time,' he said lamely.

'So it does,' said Missa sagely. 'Put your mind at rest, then, Heckram. Go and fetch her.' Heckram didn't miss the conspiratorial look that passed between the two mothers.

Had not they once been young women finding an excuse to be alone under the crisp winter sky with a handsome young man? 'And the two of you might bring some of the good blood sausage from the meat rack. A bite or two would taste good this evening,'

Missa added.

'Mind you don't kiss her, Heckram. You'd be playing right into her hands,' Kuoljok suggested wryly, with a look that said that women were not the only ones who played such games.

Heckram snorted noncommittally and shrugged into his heavy tunic. Since he and Elsa had joined, they treated him more as a child than as a man. He, who was several years past the age when most herdmen wed, was addressed as if he were a moonstruck youth. It was but one more thing that rankled this evening. One more goad he would not respond to.

Pushing the flap aside, he stepped out into the night. The winter camp was quiet.

Evening chores were done and folk were snug inside their huts. The village dogs slept close to the doorflaps of their owners' huts, savoring the warmth that leaked out.

Heckram stretched in the chill night, drawing in a deep lungful of the cold night air.

There was a moon tonight, nearly full. The snow reflected its silvering light, painting a world of blacks and silvers and grays. His kneeboots crunched on the packed snow of the path as he passed the crouching huts. Light leaked from some of them, voices flowing out with it to warm the night. One dog stretched and rose to greet him as he passed. A quick pat and a quiet word settled the animal again. He passed his own hut, silent in the darkness.

The spring was at the far end of the village, set in a tangle of willows. No huts were built close to it, for in spring the ground became soggy muck hidden by a waving forest of reeds and grasses. Only the freezes of winter reduced its flow and tamed it. The cold water welled up from the earth, black and chill, in a still pool no wider across than a man's two strides. It flowed away in a stream now covered by ice and a layer of smooth snow. But the herdfolk kept open this one circle of water, where they might fill their buckets.

Elsa knelt by the stream, almost hidden in the shadows of the surrounding willows.

Her bucket lay empty at her side, and she stared at the black circle of water. Heckram wondered what could fascinate her so, to sink in the snow, so lightly clad, and stare at the water. 'Elsa?' he called softly, not wishing to startle her. She made a guttural sound.

Her head swung slowly to face him.

'Elsa!' he cried, and the cold night swallowed his horrified cry and gaped over him for more. The moonlight was gentle as it touched her, but its shadows could not hide the ruin of her face. Her jaw sagged awry and the darkness that dripped from her open mouth stained the front of her shirt. She lifted a hand to him. White fingerbones flashed an instant in the moonlight; then her hand fell into the white snow beside her. Darkness spread from it.

There was no way to be gentle enough. She cried out wordlessly as he lifted her and her legs flailed him with her pain. Running would have jarred her, but his soul fled ahead of him, racing between the long row of sod huts. He couldn't find a voice to call for help, to raise an alarm. They were unprepared when he kicked the tent flap aside and entered the hut. The heads turned slowly, the faces froze as he knelt before them and offered them the broken body their daughter's soul was trapped in. For a long teetering instant, the world balanced in silence.

Then it came crashing back against him, like a roar of wind down a narrow valley, like the merciless rushing of a spring-thawed river.

'What happened?'

'Put her here! Gently, gently! Oh, her hand!'

'Cold water. Clean bandages. She's shivering, cover her. Elsa, Elsa. Lie still, little one, lie still. You are safe now. Give me some cold water!'

'I left the bucket by the spring,' Heckram said stupidly. He stared at Elsa. If an avalanche had caught her up and swept her through trees, then she might have looked this way. If she had been caught in the sudden roar of a spring flood and bashed against rocks and debris, then he would have expected this. But she had only gone to fetch a bucket of water, from their own village spring at night. He stared at her, unable to grasp the reality.

Something had struck the side of her head. It had torn her jaw loose from its hinges so that she gaped stupidly at nothing. The flesh had torn from the corner of her mouth up into her cheek. The flow of blood stained her cheek red and dripped on her chest. He had an almost uncontrollable urge to reach over and shut her mouth for her, to put her face back together. A horrid little sound came from it with each breath she expelled. A useless, hopeless little cry. One arm hung unnaturally from a shoulder that sagged in its socket. The hand of the other arm seemed scarcely a hand anymore.

'Heckram!' His mother's voice crashed against him; her hands grabbed his face and shook him. 'You can't just stand here. Go wake Lasse and send him for the healer. Then get Capiam. Report this to him. No bear did this. This is man's evil. Hurry!'

He felt himself pushed from the hut back into the dark and bloody night. He stood, blinking stupidly, taking in the image of Kuoljok hastening from the spring with a bucket that slopped water at every step of the old man's shambling trot. 'Elsa, Elsa,' he was panting as he ran, quavering out the helpless cry. The sound galvanized Heckram.

He found himself running through the night, fleeing before Kuoljok could speak to him.

His pulkor. His mother's harke, a young, strong animal that was still but half trained.

But Britsi was fleet and had stamina. Tonight Heckram was not gentling and coaxing.

When the skittish Britsi leaped away from him, he seized him roughly by his lower jaw.

Britsi tried to rear up on his hind legs and lash out with his front legs, but Heckram was merciless. He dragged the reindeer down to a stand.

The harness went on quickly, the leather collar slung over his neck and the ends pulled down over his breast and between his forelegs. Behind the forelegs it was fastened to the reins, which then ran back between his hind legs to the pulkor. Britsi danced as Heckram leaped into the pulkor and then the reindeer was off, streaking half terrified through the snowy night. The pulkor careened after him, Heckram shouting encouragement.

The keeled wooden sled slid smoothly behind the animal down the packed-snow trail that ran the length of the village. It was slower going when Britsi took to the deeper, less packed snow outside the village. The darkness of the forest closed in around them as they left the village behind. Heckram tried to keep to the more sheltered parts of the hillsides, avoiding the deepest snow where Britsi would have floundered to a walk.

The night was still but for their passage. He struck the vague trail made by their skis the last time they had visited the healer. An image of Elsa struggling to tuck her thick hair back under her cap. He shook it from his mind. Lasse had been to see Tillu twice since then, once for a flux remedy and once to fetch a tonic for his grandmother. The snow was packed enough to take the reindeer's weight. The pulkor slid smoothly and silently in Britsi's wake.

The forest stretched endlessly around him and ahead of him. It was made of the night and his fear, and his unacknowledged guilt lurked in it, as intangible and penetrating as fog.

At the bottoms of the vales they raced through willows and alder that reached scraggling hands toward him. The frosted tips of the branches glistened white as fingerbones in the moonlight. Then up the side of the hill, through a stratum of ghostly birches, naked and grieving, and into the dark and forbidding pines with their lowering branches. The path seemed endless and he cursed Britsi and yanked the reins whenever the animal stepped from the path and faltered. Then they started a long descent of a gentle hill, and the feeble firelight that leaked from Tillu's worn tent was like a beacon of hope to him. 'Tillu! Tillu the Healer!' he cried, his voice breaking against the cold black night.

Sleep had begun to close over her like a soft blanket when she heard the anguished roar from outside her tent. She rose hastily, pushing the hair back from her eyes and belting her nightrobe more tightly around herself as she stepped quickly through the door.

The scene that met her eyes was like a tapestry of some strange fable. A reindeer rushed down the hillside toward her while behind it came a man atop a sliding log. She recognized Heckram's voice, and as he came closer she caught the gist of his words.

'Elsa ... hurt ... must come.' She darted back into her tent and was pulling on her clothes when he burst through the tent flap, still shouting. His hair was wild, his eyes frantic as he caught at her arm. She seized his hands firmly in both of hers and spoke calmly.

'I have to get my medicine bag and waken Kerlew. Calm down. What's happened?'

He let go of her, but the words tumbled from his lips so rapidly that she could not decipher them through his accent. All traces of his former restraint were gone. His shouting awakened Kerlew, who sat up in his sleeping skins and looked about, bewildered. Tillu stepped past him to take down her bag of medicines. She checked quickly through it to make sure she had supplies of the most common herbs. But when she opened a small box to replenish those she was low on, Heckram stepped past her to slam it shut and tuck the whole box under his arm. He grabbed her by the upper arm, dragging her to the door.

'Has he come to take me hunting?' Kerlew asked hopefully, sleepily.

'No. Someone at the village is hurt. Elsa, I think. I have to go to her.' Tillu pulled her hood up against the cold.

'I'll come, too.' The boy kicked off his blankets and reached for his leggings.

For the first time, Heckram became cognizant of the uproar he was creating. He released Tillu's arm and passed his hand before his eyes. He suddenly fell silent and looked from Tillu to her son in worry. He took a deep breath and tried to speak in a normal voice, but he panted out the words. 'Kerlew, you'll have to stay here. No room in the pulkor. Be a good boy?' he asked hopefully.

'Kerlew, stay here and behave yourself,' Tillu instructed him firmly, 'I won't be gone long. Go back to sleep, and I'll be back before you wake up. You're big enough to stay by yourself. You do it all day.'

'Night's different. What if a bear comes? What if Owl-spirit comes to steal me?' His halting words quavered.

'Don't be silly,' Tillu said firmly. 'Those are just old tales. Just go back to sleep and I'll be back by morning.'

'All right!' Kerlew replied savagely. He shut his jaws with a snap, but couldn't keep his lip from trembling.

'We must hurry. Elsa needs healer very much. Kerlew be brave boy. I'll send Lasse back, to keep you company. You show him spoons, okay?' Heckram bartered hastily as he pulled Tillu toward the door. But the boy only turned away from them.

'Kerlew will be safe?' Heckram asked as the flap fell.

'I think so,' Tillu replied, glancing back uneasily. She hoped he would do nothing foolish while she was gone. Whenever he was displeased, he acted it out in strange ways. Well, there was no time for fretting now. She found herself staring at a reindeer tied to a boat. The animal reared up on its hind legs and lashed out at them as they approached.

Heckram seemed to find nothing strange in this. With a swiftness born of practice, he reached, grabbed the reindeer's jaw, and brought it down. 'Get in!' he shouted to Tillu, gesturing at the boat. She stepped up beside it to stare hesitantly down into it. There was a nest of furs inside, and the long trailing leather strips that ran up to the reindeer's neck. Yes, it was a boat, made of planks of wood bent and pegged together. 'Get in!'

Heckram roared again, and she clambered in.

She was scarcely settled before he seized the reindeer's harness and they started off at a run up the trail. Tillu's head was snapped back by the suddenness and she gripped the sides of the sliding boat. Pulkor, Heckram had called it. Trees, snow, and darkness slid past her at a frightening speed, all the more unnerving for the smoothness of the movement. The hind legs of the reindeer flashed very close before her, flinging up bits of snow that stung when they struck her. There was the creak and rush of the pulkor, the crunching footsteps of man and reindeer on the trail, and the black night pressing down. Tillu shivered deeper into the nest of furs.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Tillu had thought she was immune to screaming. She had heard so many kinds: the screaming of a woman in her first childbirth, cries swiftly forgotten when the babe was put in her arms; the screaming of a child, more frightened than hurt, when Tillu had to pry his grip loose from his mother to treat a badly cut lip; the startled scream of a brave man, the sound bursting from him when the broken ends of a bone grated together. Yet they were nothing compared to the constant mewling that flowed from Elsa's torn mouth with every breath she expelled. Heckram's panted words had not prepared Tillu for this.

She shivered with apprehension and chill as Heckram thrust her before him into the sod hut. His faith in her was pathetically apparent as he pulled her toward the injured woman. His face was red and white from his run, his chest still heaving with exertion.

There was hope in his dark eyes. She dreaded it. 'The healer is here; all will be well now,' it seemed to say. She hoped he was right.

The two older women in the room parted and moved aside, surrendering Elsa to her.

Their faces were expectant and waiting. Tillu tried to appear calm as she knelt down by Elsa. Her medicine bag slipped from her grip to the floor beside her. Heckram stepped forward to set the chest of extra supplies beside her. He staggered as he stood upright again. Tillu felt the eyes of the women drilling into her like the spiral seeds of summer.

With an effort she forced her attention to Elsa.

It was difficult to recognize the fit and capable woman who had come to trade with her. Elsa was a huddled wreck. Tillu wondered what merciless instinct kept her conscious. Whatever had savaged her had been thorough. Tillu touched Elsa with her eyes only, cataloging those injuries she could help, and the order in which to work.

There was little she could do for the broken jaw and torn cheek other than to place them into their former positions and hope the body could heal itself. Whether she would ever again speak normally, Tillu could not tell. From the way one arm lay, it was dislocated at the shoulder. The hand on the other arm was a puzzle; it looked both sliced and broken. Later, when the broken pieces of Elsa's knife were found by the spring, Tillu would realize that these injuries had been caused by her desperate struggle to keep her weapon, to no avail.

Her torn clothing might hide other injuries, but these were the wounds that most frightened the others. Spilled blood and broken bones were a fearsome thing to look on.

But healers learned to fear most the secret hurts, the ones that damaged the hidden places of the body and defied healing. Places where the eyes could not see, or the fingers touch. Tillu would wait to be sure before she told them of her own fear. She had not seen it all that often. Once, it had been a child who had tumbled down a hillside and struck his head on a rock. Another time it was a man who had received a glancing blow from a rival's club. Tillu did not like to remember them. They had been long in dying.

First there was the slight bulging of the eyes, such as she thought she detected in Elsa.

Later the pressure within the skull would build, distorting the face with swelling. No healer could cure it, though she had tried, with cold compresses and bleeding and warm poultices on the wound. It was a killing thing, mysteriously caused by a blow to the head. An unseen, unhealable injury.

Heckram sank slowly down beside her, kneeling on the hides right at Tillu's elbow.

His body blocked her light, his quick panting breath distracted and unnerved her. As she reached a hand toward Elsa, he gasped, anticipating his woman's pain.

Tillu turned to him and gripped him by the shoulder. 'Heckram. You're in my way.'

She spoke kindly but firmly. He didn't hear her. She turned to the women, glad to distract them. 'Take him away. Soup. Sleep. Or he'll be sick.' Her eyes caught on an old man in the comer who rocked himself wordlessly, helplessly, his eyes vacant. 'That one, too. Take away from here, out of my way. Big help to me.'

The alacrity with which the men were seized and urged from the tent was an indication of how helpless the two women had felt, and how badly they needed to help.

As soon as the flap fell behind them, Tillu turned back to Elsa. She must work swiftly now, to get the worst of her pain-causing done while they were not here to witness it.

'Elsa? Elsa?' she asked, but there was no sign the woman knew she was there. There was only the sound that welled from her agony. Tillu debated whether to give her a soporific before she began. Reluctantly, she decided against it. The semiconscious woman would have been more likely to choke than to swallow.

Her jaw was broken in more than one place. Tillu's deft fingers manipulated the swelling flesh, trying to align the hidden fragments of bone. She eased the jaw back into an approximation of where it belonged and smoothed the ragged edges of torn flesh together. Someone had had the sense to leave water warming by the fire, and snow water melting by the door. Tillu chose the warm water for this. She wiped the wound carefully, ignoring the sounds of the woman she worked on. A careful binding held flesh and jaw in place. There. She looked better now, but a glance at her eyes told Tillu it would make no difference. Elsa was going to die.

As she worked over her hand, she wondered why she did it. What good to bind the poor crumpled fingers, to spread soothing unguent on the torn flesh, to bandage from sight the bloody and broken places? The new pain of having her broken fingers straightened changed the cadence and pitch of Elsa's moaning. As Tillu carefully drew one finger straight, Elsa gave a sudden gasp. Her heels drummed against the hides she rested on. Then she was still, at last unconscious.

Tillu seized her opportunity. Elsa would not feel the pain now. She would do the rougher healing. She snapped the wrenched shoulder back into its socket. She looked for and found a better knife than her own and used it ruthlessly to cut through the leather and wool and bright woven bindings of Elsa's garments. Tillu laid her tunic open, to reveal the blackening bruises down the left side of her rib cage. Her fingers probed delicately, and she decided no ribs were broken. A small frown creased her brow. She wondered briefly why the woman bad been beaten so, and who had done it.

She did not appear to have been raped; merely mauled and left to die. Perhaps she had broken some tribal rule.

Tillu shook her head at her own curiosity. These were not questions for a healer to ask. She had seen women of other tribes beaten this badly, sometimes by a rapist, sometimes by a lover or father. Kerlew's strange prediction that Elsa would not return with bear grease rose in her mind. Had Heckram done this? It might be so. She had seen men just as repentant and guilty as he seemed to be. It was possible. And none of her worry. Over the years, she had learned to ask no questions. The answers never made the healing any easier. She covered the poor battered body gently. Her lingers touched Elsa's skull, gently probing through the thick, black hair. She found the spot, as she had known she would, and felt her stomach turn over as she touched it. No blood flowed from it. All the damage was within.

Turning her back on Elsa, Tillu drew closer to the fire. She felt chilled and weary, more than the long ride through the cold night and her interrupted sleep could explain.

It was this 'healing.' A healing that was more a preparation for burial. There had not been many of this kind in Tillu's life, but each one dragged at her, making her question her skills. This Elsa would die. Any of her other injuries, she might have survived. But Tillu could no longer ignore the signs. Still she did not call for Heckram and the others yet. Elsa had been strong. Her dying would take days and nights. Their vigil would be long enough. Let them rest now.

She unrolled a piece of scraped, bleached hide. On it she arranged packages and bundles of herbs, tossing spoiled bits into the fire as she selected others and put them in two small piles. Her fingers and nose knew each dry leaf, each curl of bark, as she sorted. Here was strong-scented yarrow that could start a woman's flow of blood or treat a wound, and the long leaves of deer tongue for an emetic. Here was the curling bark from the bear-berry shrub, good for urinary disorders, and the long dandelion root for a tonic or a mild laxative. Some herbs she had known from her lessons when a child, others she had learned from the folk she moved among. Their names might vary from people to people, but not their properties. Tillu chose carefully. Into the first pile went those for cleansing bleeding wounds and ones for easing the pains of cuts and gouges.

Into the second pile went those that eased pain and encouraged sleep.

She turned next to the wooden box Heckram had brought along. Opening it, she began to assemble her tools. Her mortar and pestle were the ball and socket from a reindeer calf's joint. Tillu scooped up the first pile of herbs and began to grind them together. The fine powder was mixed with lukewarm water. She soaked a fresh bandage in it, and wrapped it dripping over the bound fingers. She wiped blood from Elsa's face, noted that her torn cheek no longer bled. She tried to ignore the bulging of her closed eyes.

The second mixture she hesitated over. Elsa's wounds were severe. She knew she must increase the strength of the mixture for it to have any effect. But Elsa was already weakened. Too much would ... perhaps be merciful. Tillu pushed that thought aside.

True healers refused such decisions. Her profession was to repair the body and cure the illness. Let others decide when someone was beyond her help. Her vocation demanded that she always believe her patients would survive. Her hand hovered over the neatly arranged piles of herbs. After a long hesitation, she picked up two night berries and added them to the small pile before her. Death's Seeds, Benu's folk had called these, and another folk had named them Bitter Sleep. She wanted a mixture that would heavily sedate and separate Elsa from her pain, but still allow her to bid her family farewell. If ever she opened those eyes again.

Tillu crushed the berries and herbs together into a coarse mixture, added it to water, and set the vessel to heat by the fire. It might never be needed, but if Elsa awoke to pain, Tillu did not want her to have to wait for relief.

She placed her palms on the earth and pushed herself upright. The walls of the hut swung slowly before her for an instant; she had stood up too rapidly for one so weary.

She rubbed at her gritty eyes as she stumbled over to sit beside Elsa. She tucked covers gently against her. 'Rest now,' she told Elsa. 'Rest.' With a sigh, Tillu leaned back against a cool sod wall.

A sound turned her head. One of the women was coming back into the hut.

Something about her face ... A memory twisted elusively through her mind, and then Tillu realized she was seeing Elsa's features subtly reflected in this older face. A relative.

Behind her came a handful of men that Tillu didn't recognize. Last came the other woman who had been in the hut when Tillu first arrived, followed by Heckram. Tillu sighed to herself. He should be resting. He looked weary and bedraggled, and angered at something. She hadn't noticed before the tracings of gray in his black-bronze hair. It reminded her of a wolf's pelt. There were lines in his face that had deepened this night, and she wondered suddenly how she could have thought he was a young man. He was older than she was.

The people filed in silently, their very silence a continuation of whatever argument had created the tension stretched among them. It was plain the other men had not seen Elsa's injuries before. Their faces reflected various emotions, and cloaked others. One was the headman of the village. Tillu did not need to be told of his importance. His rumpled black hair attested that he had been roused and dressed hurriedly, but he had not neglected to deck himself with a necklace of amber beads. His clothing was richer than that of the others, the furs softer and more lush, the colors of the woven strips brighter and wider. The skinny whelp beside him must be his son. Tillu disliked him instantly. His face mirrored none of his father's concern for Elsa. There was only the avarice of one fascinated by blood and pain. He licked his narrowed lips and peered at the girl. Muscles twitched around his eyes as he stared.

The third was a barrel-chested bear of a man. Had Tillu not seen him, she would have supposed Heckram an anomaly to the herdfolk. But this man, too, showed the marks of mixed blood. He stood half a head taller than Heckram, and his hair was brown bleached by the sun with streaks of gold. He had started life with a good face, Tillu judged, but along the way had spoiled it. There was a heavy cast to his features and his eyes didn't seem to open completely. A waiting, hiding man. His clothing was plain, but well made. Its reserved color and simpler braid suggested wealth more than the gaudy decorations the headman's son wore. Moreover, this man bore himself as the son should have, but did not. As he gazed on Elsa, he expelled a deep sigh like a hiss, and crossed his heavy arms across his thick chest. He was the first one to break the silence.

'If she had accepted my offers,' he said sternly, 'I would not have let her go out to the spring alone at night, to take her chances with beasts. Why is it some men claim what they cannot care for? You've only yourself to blame for this, Heckram. I understand why you did not report it to Capiam until now. No man of any pride would want to admit a thing like -'

'Joboam.' The headman's voice stopped him. The woman seizing Heckram's arm aborted his swing at the man rebuked as Joboam. Tillu made herself smaller, crouching by her patient as she scowled at this drama. This sort of tension never did an injured person any good. If there was any more disturbance ...

Heckram shook the woman off and stepped clear of her. Tillu wondered if he were aware of the way he put his body between Joboam and the woman on the floor, it was no beast,' he growled. 'A man did this. And I went for the healer first, because I knew this is exactly what you would do. Stand over her and make useless remarks, seeking to fix the blame on someone rather than finding out who did it.'

'It could have been a demon,' Capiam's son breathed. His eyes glowed at the prospect. No one paid him the least attention. Tension sang between Joboam and Heckram. They could have been alone in the hut.

The woman who had clutched at Heckram's arm spoke abruptly, changing the direction of everyone's stare. 'Capiam. Are you the herdlord or not? Do you lead this sitor? Then there is someone among us who has done this thing. If you lead us, then it is you, not my son, who must answer for letting one such as that live among us.'

The very softness of her voice made the accusation sharper. The herdlord's son gasped. The jaw of the other woman sagged open an instant. Then she snapped it shut and her gaze hardened.

'She's right,' she said, her voice cracking. 'She's right! Never has there been a time when a woman was afraid to go to the spring alone! Never has a woman been savaged like this, on the very edges of our camp! What are we coming to, when there is among us one who can do this? Where are you leading us, Capiam?'

Her voice went shriller with every word, and suddenly she was gasping. She clutched at herself and sank slowly down on the floor, her face caving in as her tears found her.

'Who are you to speak to the headman like that, old woman!' Joboam demanded in a voice laced with fury.

Heckram spun on him, the cords in his neck leaping out like plucked bowstrings. The headman's son scrambled backward in his hurry to be out of the way, stumbling against Tillu's pot of pain potion and nearly upsetting it. Heckram took a step forward and suddenly found the little healer woman thrusting herself in front of him.

'Quiet! Quiet!' Tillu hissed furiously. In a moment more, they would be fighting, and she would have more heads to bind and hands to set. Not tonight, she promised herself.

'Out! Men out!' she added firmly as they showed no signs of obeying. 'Elsa needs quiet.

Elsa needs rest. Other men, out! Healer say, Heckram stay here, help take care of Elsa,'

she added shrewdly, thinking to occupy one of the combatants. 'You. Headman.'

Capiam might not have recognized her word, but he recognized the finger that jabbed at him. 'Take men away, not let them fight here. Talk in morning, not now. Not now!

Out. Quiet!' she hissed again when the headman's son opened his mouth.

For a long instant they held their positions. Then Capiam clapped his son on the shoulder and propelled him from the hut. 'Joboam?' He made the burly man's name a question and a warning. Joboam clenched a fist and let Heckram see the small movement of it. Then he backed from the hut, his eyes on Heckram as he departed.

Heckram stared after him like a snarling dog.

Tillu gave in to the rubberiness in her knees and knelt beside the keening mother. She put her arms around her and rocked with her, letting her take the comfort of weeping, and feeling a small relief herself in the rhythmic movements. One day she would trust too much to her status as a healer. She had gambled that she could order a headman from a tent and not be beaten for it. She had been right, but now she trembled at what might have been the consequences had she been wrong.

The other woman came to take her place, her tears and soft cries mingling with her friend's. Tillu eased away from them. Healers had no time to grieve. Instead, she moved to her herb chest and took from it chamomile and sleep's ease, bilin root and willow bark scrapings. She put fresh cold water on the hearth to heat while she mixed and measured her herbs. When the water boiled, she took it from the fire, added the herbs, and set it aside to steep. These were the herbs for sleep, and to ease the headaches of weeping. All would need them this night.

She turned from her work to find that Heckram, too, had obeyed the orders of the healer. He sat flat on the floor by Elsa, her unresponsive hand resting in his. He was looking earnestly into a face that looked less and less like Elsa. With a sinking heart Tillu wondered how long it would take her to die. For now she could have no doubt of the pressure building inside the skull like the festering inside a closed wound. She did not understand this injury. It could not be lanced like an infection or a boil, could not be eased down with a poultice like the swelling of a twisted joint. Nothing to do but watch her die.

The tea had steeped to a honey darkness. She chose a dipper at random from those hanging from the rafters, looked about, and found the carved wooden cups. The women had wept themselves to silence. They leaned against one another and watched her passively as she brought them tea. 'You should rest,' she told them, and each nodded, believing she spoke to the other. She left them holding one another and took a third cup to Heckram. She offered it to him, but he did not notice it. When she touched it against his empty hand, he started as if she had stabbed him. Slowly he put Elsa's hand down, tucking it gently beneath the covers. Then he took the cup Tillu still held.

For a long moment he just held the cup as he continued to look at Elsa. Finally he shifted his gaze to Tillu, and she regretted telling him to help with Elsa. She saw now the effort it had taken for him to hold that lax hand.

'She's dying.' She read the words from the shape of his lips, the sound barely breathed out. He was not questioning her, was not asking for a lie to ease himself. He was telling her what he knew, passing on information to the healer. She bowed her head in assent. The next words he spoke made no sense to her. 'I didn't love her enough,' he confessed. Then he lifted the cup and drained it, scalding as it was.

Tillu waited to receive the empty cup back from him. He gave it to her, then stretched out slowly on the floor hides. His reaching hand touched, not Elsa, but the edge of the hide that covered her. She heard his stiff swallowing and turned to leave him alone. The women were talking still, in soft, thick whispers. They no longer wept or ranted. The passion of their grief was spent for now. Soon they would sleep.

As Tillu would now. A little distance from the fire, she made a place for herself, baring the floor's covering of birch twigs as she took one of the hides to cover herself.

She stared into the fire and then closed her eyes, letting her mind glide just under the edge of sleep as she kept her ears alert for the slightest stirring from Elsa.

The fire had burned low. The softening shadows in the hut, the gentle sound of breathing, calmed the night. Heckram lay silent, listening and staring. The healer's brew had not put him to sleep. Part of him wondered if there was any left in the pot, if a second cup would let his mind sink into emptiness. But the other part of him was too occupied to think of rising and looking for a cup of soothing tea.

He was trying to remember the first time he had touched Elsa as a man touches a woman. He couldn't. It had been during a time that no longer seemed to fit into the general context of his life. He had awakened to his manhood later than most boys, and been prey to that awakening for a shorter time. He tried to remember the Heckram of those days, a male with burning blood like a leaping, snorting sarva in its first rut. Like a sarva, he had bounded from one willing female to the next, sharing but a moment with each, taking his pleasure with eyes closed, his own heart loud in his ears. It was a time he regretted.

No member of the herdfolk condemned him. Did not all, men and women, pass through the first heat of knowledge, to emerge as adults? The older folk turned their eyes aside from the excesses of youth, trusting to time that these things would pass, or deepen into permanent relationships. Heckram had been so steady and sober a youth, and was now so settled and responsible a man. Yet those two lives were divided by that wild season. He had fought like a sarva, too, finding insults in the most innocent of teasing, and battling all, youths his own age, and those years older. He had not won all his fights, nor bedded every woman he courted. But though he couldn't seem to remember his losses in either kind of struggle, his victories were equally blurry.

Elsa had been one he had won, but he could not remember much of the conquest.

Like him, she had been flushed with the first touch of fertility, but she had been younger, so much younger. He tried to remember something, a word in the dusk, a touch, the shape of a bared young breast. Nothing. She had been but one of the many for him. It made it so much worse to know that of her many, he had been the one.

It took a few seasons to cool his blood, but when his passage was complete, he saw himself in a cold hard light. It did not matter to him that no one else faulted him for his conduct. He found his own peculiar shame in knowing that the heat of his body had never touched his heart. Elsa, so simple and trusting, had found ways to let him know that she would come to his call. She had been willing to wait for him to feel ready for commitment, never doubting that in time he would want her. Now he wished he had found the courage to turn her aside, to find some gentle way of telling her to find a better man. She might have had children by now, be a wife and a mother. So much she had missed waiting for him.

He waited for tears to come, but his eyes were dry, the lids abrasive when he closed them. He sighed, then stiffened at an answering sigh from Elsa. In an instant he was on his knees beside her, whispering 'Elsa? Elsa?'

She answered with a trailing moan that rode on her breath. It was followed immediately by another. He took her lax hand. The fingers twitched lightly against his rough palm. He closed his hand over them, hoping she could feel he was there.

A rustle of garments, and the healer was beside them. Her hair straggled about her face and her eyes were old as she bent closely over Elsa to peer at her. As she straightened, she looked into his face. Slowly she shook her head at him. 'Don't torment yourself,' she whispered softly. 'Don't hope.'

'She hurts,' he replied.

Tillu said nothing, but returned to the fire. Taking a ladle from her own chest, one stained dark at the dipper end, she scooped a measure from the pot she had kept simmering by the fire. She signed for him to ease her up to drink. Elsa's bandaged head was stiff against his shoulder as he supported her. Tillu held the dipper to her swollen lips, but gave her no more than would moisten them. He frowned at her stinginess.

'Night berry,' she explained in a whisper. 'Too much kills. Little bit, sleep deep.'

He eased Elsa back to the floor, but continued to sit by her, gently holding her hand.

For long moments her breath moaned in and out. Then her sounds became softer and finally were stilled.

'She sleeps,' Tillu told him. 'Heckram sleep now, too?'

'No,' he told her, but lay down once again beside Elsa. He longed to tuck her into the curve of his body and hold her close. He wanted to feel he was protecting her, holding death at bay with the warmth of his own life. But he knew that the pressure of his body against hers could only cause her pain. He contented himself with taking her hand. He stroked her small fingers, pressed them once to his lips. He closed his eyes to the night.

This time he kept her hand in his, followed her down into the darkness of deep sleep.

Morning came, a chill gray beast that nosed Heckram from the comforts of sleep. He kept his eyes closed, resisting consciousness. But his body complained it was chilled, stiff from the cold, from being still all night. He grumbled softly and started to shift to a more comfortable position, only to become aware of a cold hand in his. The events of the night before swept him remorselessly into wakefulness. Heckram jerked his body up, kneeling straight, to stare at Elsa in silence.

She was dead. He had felt her death chill in his hand and known it in his sleep. He had dreamed her dead, watched her walking away through the snow to Saivo. Her bow had been on her shoulder, her embroidered game bag swinging at her hip. Her stride had been easy, carrying her across the crusted tops of drifts. She had pulled her red cap off to the early spring sunshine, and her unbound hair had gleamed brighter than the snow drifts. So beautiful. He had watched her go, smiling after her. He had not called her back.

This morning did not find her so beautiful. He turned from that chiseled face, not wanting to remember these new colors flushed across it. Carefully, he pulled the covers up to hide it from the light seeping in the smoke hole. As he did so, something rolled from where it had rested on top of her bedding. It thudded softly on the floor hides, rolled in an arc to rest against his knee. He stared down at it. There was a grimness to its plain, ungraceful handle and black stained bowl.

His eyes traveled to the hearth, and the near dead embers on the flat stones. The small pot that had held the potion sprawled on its side. His mind whirled slowly as he refused conclusions. He would not check to see how much was left in the pot, would not try to remember if Tillu had put the dipper back in the pot the night before. Had she been asking him something, when she said too much of it would kill? Had she thought she read an unspoken answer in his face? He had a sudden vision of Bruk foundered in the snow, his own calming hand preceding the seeking knife. He moaned softly.

Picking the ladle up by its handle, he carried it back to the pot. He dropped it beside the hearth and it clattered once against the stones. No one else stirred. Ristin and Missa slept side by side, huddled together in sorrow. Elsa had been the last living child of Kuoljok and Missa. With her had gone their grandchildren. They ended today, the unraveled ends of a long line. He thought of poor old Kuoljok, soon to awake in Heckram's hut, alone and puzzled. He had seemed so confused last night. 'What happened?' he had asked over and over again, long after Heckram had wearied of telling him he didn't know. The simple question had stung worse than Joboam's foolish accusation.

And the healer? He turned slowly to find her asleep in a shadowed corner of the tent.

Inexplicably, Kerlew was curled beside her, smiling in his sleep.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Clumps of soft wet snow were dropping from the trees with dull plops. It was an erratic, stealthy sound, as if some great creature were stalking through the woods. It was not the only sign of the change. The papery bark of the birch trees was suffused with a pink glow, while the tips of the reaching willows showed red against the snow.

But the dropping snow load was the most apparent sign. The lightened branches sprang up as they shed their burdens, shaking the trees and triggering a new flurry of falls. Even the small dark spruce of the clearings had doffed their white caps to spring's entrance.

Earlier in the day a falling load had found Heckram's back and shoulders, and some had slipped inside his tunic collar, sliding icily down his chest. He was still chilled and wet. The daily thaws of early spring were miserable. The thin sunlight that softened the snow and tried to warm his back glinted up into his eyes from the sinking snow drifts, making him squint. The wet snow he waded through soaked into his boots and trousers, and clung to his legs to weight his every stride. The change of seasons that used to lighten his heart now only wearied him. He stood on the side of the hill, looking down at the reindeer and frowning.

The reindeer struggled through the heavy wet drifts, sinking in the clinging stuff, surging through it in plunges when they were startled. They pawed through it for lichen, lowering their heads into the snow hollows and nibbling it from the frozen ground. And every night winter returned, to lock the soft snow into a thick icy crust that could chafe and cut the deer's legs as they tried to work through it. Worst of all, when the reindeer did paw through the upper crust, the savve layer, they found flen on the ground. The thick layer of ice on the ground beneath the snow locked away the tender white lichen known as reindeer moss. Stubbornly, the hungry animals pawed up the frozen chunks and ate it, becoming sluggish and sometimes ill from consuming too much ice. His own animals still looked all right, but those of Elsa's parents were beginning to look thin and pinched. He would have to act.

'Heckram!'

He turned, startled, and already irritated with whomever came to break his solitude.

In the last few weeks he had had enough talk to last a lifetime. At first he had wanted only to sleep, to hide from thought in unconsciousness. Then he had roused from his lassitude to anger. Against the advice of his mother and Elsa's parents, he had gone to Capiam. He had boldly voiced his suspicions before Capiam and his elder advisers.

And they had rebuked him. His stomach clenched as he remembered.

Capiam's eyes had shone like angry black gems. His chest had swelled with his wrath, but he had demanded calmly, 'On what basis do you accuse Joboam of this abhorrent act?' Heckram winced as he remembered his faltering effort to put his uneasiness into words. As he told how Joboam had pushed himself upon Elsa, how Joboam moved among the huts by night, and that even since their joining, Elsa had complained that the man followed her when she hunted. Even to his own ears, it had sounded like the querulous complaints of an imaginative child. The elders had listened, exchanging glances as he spoke. And then Capiam had spoken the most scorching words of all. 'Cannot you let it go, Heckram? It is pain enough for Joboam that the woman he desired chose you instead. It is anguish enough for him that she has perished. I will not accuse him of this thing. I know that he was playing tablo with Rolke when first we heard of Elsa's misfortune. It is also known to all of us, Heckram, that you followed her out into the night. Yet, none spoke against you on so slight a basis. You would do well to follow our example. Set the petty jealousies of childhood aside. Mourn Elsa, as is fitting. But do not seek to set the blame for her death on a man who showed only concern and affection for her. Your father was a man I trusted, Heckram. I leaned upon his wisdom. I wish you had inherited it. Go now. Say no more about this. Whatever beast or demon killed Elsa has escaped us. There is no sense in dwelling upon it.'

So he had left the herdlord's hut and said no more. But it was soon obvious that all had heard of his accusation. Most thought it an act unworthy of a herdman.

But he could not let it go, nor could he lose himself in sleep anymore. His thoughts chased themselves through his brain, leaving him unable to eat or sleep. He had felt his mother and Missa watching him, been pestered by Lasse's repeated efforts to get him to go hunting. He thought occasionally of the healer and her son, but felt no desire to face the boy he had slighted for too long, let alone the woman who had practiced such a deadly healing upon Elsa. His thoughts had run and worried him like a pack of wolves encircling an old sarva. Then one day he had risen and gone out alone into the silence of the grazing herd. He had immersed himself so deeply in work that he could not think beyond the next moment. Except when some fool came to talk to him.

Lasse was toiling up the hill, sinking into the snow with every step. Heckram looked at him critically. The boy was thin, but his hair was glossy in the sun. He still tended to carry the long-healed arm closer to his chest. Fond as he was of Lasse, he wished the youth would go away. Lasse seldom spoke of Elsa to Heckram. But somehow his silences were worse than the consoling words of the others. So he called to Lasse before the boy could come closer and fix him with those sympathetic eyes.

'Keep the deer clear for me, Lasse. I'm going to bring a tree down.'

He fumbled at his belt for his hand axe. The handle was made from the natural curve of a reindeer antler, the head of ground and polished stone. 'Wait!' Lasse called, and Heckram saw that the boy was carrying a full-sized axe with him. He waved it at Heckram, and the man returned his smaller axe to his sheath.

'I thought you might want this,' Lasse panted as he drew close enough for words.

'And I wanted to tell you I saw the godde making for the higher hills. What do you think?'

'I haven't thought about the wild herd for days. I've no time to hunt anymore. I've my own animals to watch, and my mother's, and Kuoljok's and Missa's.' He didn't mention Elsa's. Their ownership had reverted to her parents, though Missa had tried to insist that Heckram, as her intended, should take them. The memory of the painful argument stung again.

'I didn't mean we should go hunting. I meant we should follow them, move our animals up to better pasturage until spring is stronger. The flen is so thick; you can't get a staff through it. I know, I've probed it.'

'That's why I want to bring a tree down for them. Keep them clear, would you?'

He took the axe from the boy with a silent nod of thanks and chose a tree that already had a pronounced lean. Moss and beard lichen festooned its branches. The first few blows brought the heavy wet snow crashing down. It spattered the snow around him and he danced back to avoid it. When he had loosened most of its load, he stepped in, set his feet, and swung in earnest. The axe bit into the wood, sending bits of bark and then white chips flying. Lasse floundered in the snow, trying valiantly to drive back the older animals who knew that the sound of the axe meant food. When the leaning tree began its groan, Heckram roared, 'Get clear!' As the youth rushed to one side, the hungry animals surged forward. With a sudden crack the tree fell, its outstretched branches slapping the muzzles and shoulders of the most eager reindeer. The animals staggered from the impact, but immediately plunged back. In an instant the tree was surrounded by reindeer stripping it of beard lichen.

While the deer were occupied, Heckram and Lasse cut two more trees in rapid succession, taking turns with the axe. Lasse's animals, hearing the falling giants, came from their place farther down the hillside to join in the easy feeding. The two herdmen sat down, panting, on the stump end of one of the fallen trees and watched their beasts feed.

'You're right. It's about time to move them,' Heckram said as if their conversation had never been interrupted. 'The godde know where the feeding is best. A wise herdman sees that his animals follow them.'

'Good. Tonight?'

Heckram considered. Night was the best time to move in this weather. The colder temperatures froze the top of the snow in a hard crust that men and beasts could walk on. He and Lasse could move their animals up higher in the hills, where the thaws of spring had not yet ruined the grazing. Then, when spring reached that high, they would bring their animals down again, to begin their longer migratory trek from the forests across the flat tundra to the summer grounds.

'Tonight. Is your grandmother coming?'

Lasse looked aside, squinting across the bright, snowy hillside. 'No. Not this time.'

It was a bad sign, and Heckram knew it. When the older folk began thinking they were too old to move from the talvsit to the temporary camps in the higher hills for the early spring grazing, it was a sign they were wearying of life. 'I don't think my mother will come this year either. Nor Elsa's parents.'

Lasse considered this gravely. But all he said was: it will make a lot of animals for you to manage.'

Heckram snorted, trying to speak lightly. 'They say our fathers managed this many and more, and all belonging to themselves. We've a way to go before we regain all they had.'

'It's so important to you.'

Heckram gave Lasse a strange look. 'And isn't it to you? Besides, what else is there?

Wouldn't it be nice to kill a fat, strong harke for meat this autumn, instead of having to harvest the sickliest one that might not winter through anyway? How would it be to have fresh, thick hides on the floor of the kator this winter, instead of making do with the old worn ones? Wouldn't you like to load pulkors and harkar with your excess meat and hides, and go south to trade? To have tools of bronze instead of stone and bone, and shirts of warm wool instead of patched leather?'

'Do we live so poorly, then?' Lasse asked softly.

Heckram was startled into silence for an instant. 'No. But it's not so rich, either.'

Lasse stared off across the snow while he spoke, and Heckram wondered if he spoke to him or to himself. 'Yet, there's poor and poor. There's Joboam, with twice the animals that you own, the richest furs, the sleekest vaja, the best of everything. Yet, with all his wealth, Elsa wouldn't have him. And there's you, with enough to go around, if you are thrifty and careful. But Elsa was willing to wait for you to be ready. I think you two would have been wealthier than Joboam or the herdlord himself. Heckram, do you ever wish you hadn't waited?'

Heckram looked at Lasse, seeing him anew. His color was high, and his grandmother had put new braiding on his old hat. He wasn't sitting like a boy waiting for Heckram's reply. His posture said that he was a man now, and they were men discussing the ways of herd life. Idly he wondered who the girl was, and how well Lasse would herd the impulses of his heart. But when he spoke aloud, he said coldly, 'No. I've never regretted my waiting.' Only hers. But he did not add the last aloud, and Lasse would never suspect it.

If Lasse heard, he gave no sign of it. Instead, he abruptly announced, 'Capiam is thinking of asking Tillu to come with us to the summer grounds.'

Heckram stiffened slightly. 'What for?'

'What for?' Lasse echoed incredulously. 'As healer, of course. How long has it been since we've had one? The old women do their best, but all they know is what they have from their mothers. They aren't really healers. And Tillu is good, even if she couldn't save Elsa. Look how well my arm healed.'

After she shot you, Heckram thought to himself. And you'll never know just how effective her 'cure' for Elsa was, my friend.

'Lanya took her son over to see Tillu,' Lasse was gossiping on. 'For that rash he's always had. Tillu asked a lot of questions and then told the boy, "no more reindeer milk or cheese." The rash is nearly gone now. And she made a rub for my grandmother's shoulder that takes the stiffness out, even in the cold weather.'

'I expect she'll come with us, then,' Heckram observed. He hadn't spoken to her since Elsa's death. His lack of feeling puzzled him. Either he should be grateful to her for ending Elsa's suffering, or hate her for ending Elsa's life. This peculiar emptiness he felt was inappropriate. It was too close to what he had felt at the thought of marrying Elsa.

Did he think the healer was as inevitable? Idly he took out his belt knife to cut a slender whip from a nearby sapling. He began to whittle at it, half listening to Lasse.

'If Capiam asks her, I bet she'll come. There's some talk against the idea. Joboam can't stand her half-wit son. He says the boy has wolf eyes. Some of the others feel the same.

Kerlew didn't seem all that strange to me, but the other -'

'Kerlew is not a half-wit,' Heckram said firmly, and this time it was the strength of his emotion that surprised him. His knife bit deeply into the bark.

'Well, that's true, I suppose. I mean, he doesn't go about drooling or anything like that. But when Missa tried to send him for water that morning, he acted like he couldn't understand what she wanted. Finally she gave him the bucket and pointed at the spring. When he got to the spring, he turned the bucket upside down and sat on it.

Didn't go any farther, just sat and stared at the water, with that spooky look in his eyes.

Then he knelt down and touched the blood-stained snow ...' Lasse's voice suddenly faltered. He cleared his throat, obviously shortening his story. 'Two of Kelr's little boys tried to talk to him, but he didn't answer. So they pelted him with snow, just to stir him, you know how boys are. And Kerlew, twice their age, ran back to Tillu, howling. And wouldn't go back, for the bucket or the water. You can't say that isn't strange.'

'The strangest part is that Kelr would let his sons so treat a stranger.' A chunk of bark flew.

'It was just a boys' prank!' objected Lasse. He bent to pick frozen clumps of snow from his damp leggings.

'Perhaps to Kelr's boys it was. But what was it to Kerlew? And you can't judge a boy's worth from a minor thing like that. Look how he came alone to the talvsit that night. I still can't believe he followed the pulkor trail all the way from his tent to our camp that night. Alone, in the dark.'

'But that's another thing,' Lasse objected stubbornly. 'Why didn't he stay in his tent, as he was told?'

'I'd promised I'd send you to keep him company. And, in the rush of things, I forgot to even ask you.'

'That's not a very good reason to walk all that way in the cold and dark.'

'Perhaps not for one of us. But Kerlew strikes me as a very single-minded young man.'

'Single-minded, you say. Simple-minded, say the others. Well, it's no difference to me. Tolerating Kerlew is a small price to pay for having a healer with us again.'

Heckram was silent for long moments. Then he gave a harsh bark of laughter that made Lasse jump. He looked at the crooked arrow shaft he had just fashioned and flung it away into the snow. In a tired voice he asked, 'I wonder if anyone has ever asked what price Kerlew will pay for us to have Tillu as our healer?'

'What price?'

Tillu turned slowly from her fire. She had just finished pouring steaming water into a small wooden trough. 'What you want to give.'

Joboam thought it was a question. He sat bare-chested on her pallet, cradling his left forearm in his lap. A poultice of cooked and pounded inner bark from a spruce tree covered the angry suppuration on the back of his forearm. The cut was no longer than a man's finger. But the swelling it had caused had puffed and stiffened his elbow, and made his fingers into fat sausages on a thick hand. Despite his pain, he bartered. 'Two wolf hides, without the tails. Or a sausage and two cheeses?'

'Whatever you choose. How long, this hurt?'

Joboam glanced down at the injury and wrinkled his brow, as if looking at it increased the discomfort. He took his time to answer. 'Long time. Long, long time ago. I was carving, and cut myself. Not bad. It didn't bleed that much. It heals for a while.

Then swells, and oozes. I take my knife, open it, wash it. It starts to heal. Then, again, it swells up, bigger, worse. Again, I cut it. I think it is healing. Then, one morning, sore again, swelling. This time is the worst it's been.'

Joboam spoke slowly in simple words, matching Tillu's speech. She didn't bother to tell him she understood their language now. Specific words she might not know, but she was comfortable with the flow of the words and their strange inflection. And she could speak it more fluently than she did. She found it easier to speak very simply and briefly. Maybe to keep from having to talk about anything besides healing. Maybe to keep a distance.

'Lucky man. Lucky you're still alive, not poisoned. Bad kind of hurt. Maybe something in there. If something is in there, we have to find it, get it out. Going to hurt a lot to find it. But going to kill you if we don't.' As she spoke, she opened a tiny leather sack and spilled from it a small pile of salt. Biting her lower lip, she reluctantly added more to the heap of gleaming crystals. The salt was precious, not only as seasoning, but for its drawing properties when used in poultices and soaks. From the look of Joboam's arm, it was going to take most of her supply to heal him. She wondered idly why those with the most were the stingiest when it came to offering payment.

'Stop staring, boy!' Joboam growled suddenly.

Tillu glanced up. Joboam had arrived very early. She had been preparing food for the boy and herself, but had set that aside at the sight of Joboam's arm. Kerlew was waiting on the hides by the fire. He watched her like a hungry dog as she rook out her healing supplies. Kerlew didn't answer Joboam, but hung his head. His hands toyed listlessly with his precious spoons. Tillu spoke softly.

'Kerlew. Go outside. You can gather firewood for me.'

'But I'm hungry!'

'Then take cheese and sausage with you and eat that.'

'I want hot food.'

'Out, boy!' Joboam growled. Kerlew's eyes flickered sideways. Other than that, he gave no sign of hearing the man. He sucked his lower lip in tightly as he looked at Tillu.

Tillu set her jaw. She forced herself to speak calmly. 'Go for the firewood, then. Have cheese and sausage now, and pile up some wood. Then I will cook some of the reindeer that Lanya brought us. Go, now. Then I can work faster. Go on!'

She didn't look at Joboam as she urged her son from the tent. There had always been men like Joboam, would always be men like Joboam. Men who felt they could take charge whenever there wasn't another man around. Men who could not meet Kerlew's peculiar stare, who were offended by his slow speech and odd mannerisms. Men she couldn't trust not to strike the boy if he came too near or looked at them too long. Men who feared him, as they feared the touch of disease or madness.

As she dissolved the salt in the steaming water and set out clean white moss, she reminded herself that Joboam was in pain. And probably tired from traveling here, and uneasy in a strange place. She had to be patient and remember that she was a healer. A healer. After a moment, she sighed and let the tension ease out of her shoulders. She would be able to treat him as she did everyone else. And then he would go.

'Hot water. Slowly, slowly,' she cautioned him as she set the trough before him. It was just large enough for him to submerge the festering arm. She removed the poultice from the wound and motioned toward the water. She watched his face, saw him wince as his elbow touched the hot water. He set his jaw and narrowed his eyes, but slowly his arm entered the water. Sweat sprang out on his chest and forehead, but he made no sound of pain. She found herself turning away, unwilling to admire the control he exerted over himself.

'Why didn't you come sooner?' She picked through the moss, discarding bits of sticks and dirt into the fire.

'I thought it would heal by itself.' His voice was slightly strained. 'How long must I leave my arm in the water?'

'Water let wound open. Wound drain, then we clean out pus, then we reach inside, dig and probe, look for thing inside it.'

'Oh.'

His reply was soft and Tillu looked over her shoulder to see lines of stress embedded in his face. She started to speak, then bit her own tongue, ashamed. Her description had made him squirm as she had known it would. She was a healer, and she must not be petty. Breaking his control and making him cry out would not gain his respect for Kerlew or herself. It would only make her lose her respect for herself.

She moved to his side, eased her hands into the hot water, and gently touched the surface of the wound. It opened almost immediately, releasing its foulness into the water, and Joboam gasped at the release of pressure in his arm. 'Steady. Sit still. Be still,'

she said softly, keeping her eyes on the arm. He smelled of sweat and fear and maleness.

She worked deftly, using her moistened bits of white moss to clear the pus from the wound. Tillu motioned Joboam to lift his arm from the water. The wound gaped wide and angry in his flesh. 'Something in there,' she decided. 'Have to find it, get it out.'

Rising, she took the fouled water outside to dump it.

Kerlew was standing beside the tent, looking bored, 'I'm cold,' he began whiningly.

'No, you're not.' Tillu's voice brooked no argument. 'This is the warmest it's been for days. If you're cold, work. That will warm you. Bring down more wood.'

'Is it nearly done?'

She took pity on him. 'Nearly. I'm working as fast as I can. If I can heal him well, we will have wolf hides to sew with. New leggings for Kerlew, hmm?'

'No one needs new leggings in spring,' the boy pointed out, but looked pleased anyway.

'More firewood,' she reminded him, as Joboam's voice boomed from the tent.

'Healer! Healer, what is keeping you?'

Tillu didn't bother to answer as she pushed her way back into the tent. She wiped the trough clean with moss and set it to one side. Measuring more salt, she poured it into the trough and set water to heat again. She came then to kneel beside Joboam and peer closely at the injury. She could guess where the problem was. There were signs of the flesh trying to close over an object, only to break open again when Joboam used his arm. Whatever it was, it had gone in deep. Yet it probably hadn't been much of an injury at the time. Just a short, deep cut.

'Going to hurt. Cut open, get it out. I make a medicine first, help with pain.'

Joboam hesitated, then nodded. Wise. She stood up, measuring his size and weight, and then turned to her herbs. This was going to take a strong brew. She knelt by her fire, measuring out and crushing the herbs. She set raspberry root and willow leaves and bark to soak. Bound on a wound, they controlled bleeding. She hoped she would not need them.

'Where is your man?' he demanded suddenly to her back.

She didn't even turn. 'Gone.'

'What happened? Is he dead, or did he just leave you?'

'Gone.' She repeated it flatly, and went on with her work.

Joboam gave a knowing snort. 'The boy, eh? Well, it would be a hard thing to live with. But don't you have other people?'

Tillu finally turned to face him. 'Gone.' Her eyes were flat, her lips thinned to a line.

Joboam didn't falter.

'All alone, hmm? Must be hard. Would you like to join with the herdfolk? Go with us?' There was a strange note in his voice, a voice like a trader holding up prime merchandise.

'Go?' Tillu was doubly puzzled. She had seen the talvsit as a permanent village, but now this man spoke of 'going' as if they were a wandering, hunting people. Go? With a wrench she realized how accustomed she had become to the idea of living alone, but within reach of a village. She had thought she had a place as a healer, and yet the privacy she needed for Kerlew to be safe. She had thought ...

'Yes, go.' Joboam hadn't sensed her confusion. 'Capiam say, you might go with us to the summer grounds, be our healer. Better life for you. You have food and hides and help to move your tent, even if no one needs healing. Maybe even give you some reindeer. Maybe. What do you think of that?'

It was too many new ideas, too fast. She was trying to juggle the idea of so many settled people suddenly rising up and going somewhere else with the idea of giving reindeer. Since the night she had ridden in Heckram's pulkor, she had accepted that these people used reindeer as domestic animals. But to be, possibly, the owner of one herself was too strange. Like owning a tree or a spring. And she was not happy to give up her image of planted fields and a settled life again.

'Herdfolk go soon?'

'Yes. Not very long from now. We'll go to the tundra. We'll leave the talvsit behind. If you don't go with us, you'd be alone all summer. Completely alone.'

There was a subtle taunt to his words. A veiled threat of some kind? Why? For what?

'Not alone,' she corrected him calmly. 'Kerlew with me.'

Joboam gave a snort of deprecation. Tillu almost regretted the sense-dulling mixture that was now simmering on her fire. She should have dug it out of his arm as he sat. She quelled her temper and turned back to stir the mixture. She could not say exactly why she found this man so irritating. The sooner he was healed and bandaged, the sooner he would leave.

She poked at the sodden mass in the bottom of the small pot. It would do. Carefully she added warm water, stirred, and ladled off a scoop of the dark liquid that formed.

She advanced on Joboam. His nose wrinkled at the odor.

'Bitter,' she told him, trying not to sound satisfied. 'Drink all. Make you sleepy, not hurt so much.'

Joboam took the ladle carefully and stared down at the dark brew. 'Maybe I don't need it,' he suggested.

Tillu shrugged, 'I cut, you hurt. You decide. But must not jerk arm while I cut. Maybe Kerlew hold arm down for me.'

Glaring at her over the rim of the ladle, he drank. A shudder ran through him and he swallowed with an effort.

'Water?' he asked.

'No. Make you sick, vomit. No water. Lie down. Wait.'

He didn't like it. She didn't care. But she still helped him lie hack on her pallet. He swallowed noisily and looked up at her with wary eyes. She stood over him, waiting for the medicine to take effect. She watched the steady rise and fall of his wide chest. She had been surprised when he took his tunic off. He was more hairy than the men of Benu's tribe had been. Dark hair formed a triangle on his chest and tapered down the line of his belly. The ridged belly muscles showed clearly, tight with worry. He was cleaner, too. She wondered if all the men of the herdfolk were so. Heckram's stubble-cheeked face came into her mind. What did his chest look like?

With a snort of contempt for herself, she turned aside. If Joboam was going to sweat and worry and fight the medicine, it was going to take longer to work. In the meantime, she would cook something for Kerlew and take it to him. She was no eager girl to spend her time staring at a man's chest and smirking. She was a woman with a son to tend and a healing to do. As Joboam's breathing became more steady, she cut a generous slab of meat from the chunk suspended from the tent support. It was not that she had so much to spare; it was the recent warm temperatures. The meat was dripping and would soon spoil unless it was eaten or turned into jerky. That was one thing she regretted about the coming spring. Meat would not stay nicely frozen as it did all winter. There was more work to preserving a kill, and more pests that tried to ruin it.

Skewering the chunk, she put it across the spit supports to roast over the low flames.

Drops of blood fell from it to sizzle on the fire below. The rich smell made her remember that she had not eaten yet, either. But she could wait. She had mastered the control of her appetites. She turned the meat, searing it on all sides, and then left it to cook through while she made a quick check of Joboam.

He lay on his back, his injured forearm cradled on his chest. His eyes were only half open. He was not asleep; he was in that dreaming state before sleep, where wakefulness has lost its importance. Taking his arm at the wrist and elbow, she eased it off his chest and out from his body. She arranged it, palm down, atop a clean piece of scraped hide.

Joboam dreamed on, staring at the peak of the tent poles. Tillu laid out clean moss, a damp pack of the herbs that would control bleeding, and finally her knife. She wished it was sharper. She should have told Joboam that she would heal him for a sharp knife.

Maybe when he awoke, he would agree to such a trade. Kerlew always carried the knife that Heckram had given him. And he was still adamant that she must not touch nor use it. But the hilt of Joboam's own knife showed above his belt. Why not? He didn't move as she eased it free and examined it.

She had not expected the bone haft to clasp a bronze blade. She stared at it, entranced. The metal was cold and sharper than any blade of bone. Decision tightened her grip on it. She would use it. She set it down beside her own and leaned once more over Joboam. She touched his cheek. He didn't stir. She pinched it, lightly, and then harder. He grumbled, his eyes still not turning to her. After a few moments, he turned his head aside, pulling his face from her hand. He was ready.

'Mother?'

Tillu turned. 'There's meat on the spit on the fire. Don't burn yourself. Take it outside and eat it.'

'Good!' Kerlew bounced in. His nose and cheeks were red from being outside, but his hood had been pushed back, so he was not all that cold. He knelt by the fire, took one end of the spit in each hand, and bore his prize away. He was already trying his mouth against it before he even reached the door, exclaiming as it burnt his lips, but not ceasing in his efforts to eat. Tillu said nothing. He'd learn. She added a few dry sticks of wood to the fire for better light, then took out a stone lamp. She had little fat for it, but it would not have to burn long. She knelt carefully by Joboam. She was just lifting one knee to set it firmly on the back of his wrist when she heard the voices outside.

'Give it back!' Kerlew, outraged, angry, already close to tears.

'In a moment. Did you tell her I was here?' A superior, taunting tone.

'Tell her yourself. I'm hungry. Give it back or I'll kill you!' Kerlew, already pushed to making wild threats. Tillu sighed.

'And you such a mighty warrior. I tremble. I think I shall eat it while you go inside and tell her I am here. Stop that!'

She had risen at the first sound, but the struggle had already begun before she was out of the tent. An older boy held the skewered meat out of Kerlew's reach. His other hand gripped Kerlew by the hair on top of his head and held him at arm's length as he struggled and swung and yelped. At the edge of the clearing, a reindeer still harnessed to a pulkor stared at the struggle with round, brown eyes.

'Let him go!'

Neither heard her. Tillu stepped resolutely in, to grip the older boy's wrist. Her competent fingers squeezed down on the tender spot between hand and wrist bone.

'Let him go!' she repeated, and the stranger quickly did. She found herself eye to eye with a youth she suddenly recognized as Capiam's son. She still remembered that look, both sullen and avid. His tunic and hat were gaudy with bright braid and beads. The amount of it went beyond decoration to braggery. He met her stare boldly.

'So here you are, healer. I asked the boy to tell you I was waiting.'

She wasn't going to be sidetracked. 'Give him the meat back. Now.'

He refused to be cowed, 'I didn't want it. I was just keeping it from him until he did as I told him. Here, boy, take it and stop your sniveling.' He flipped the skewer at Kerlew as he spoke. He did not intend that the boy should catch it, and Kerlew didn't.

The meat sizzled as it hit the snow and sank from sight. Kerlew howled as if he had been kicked and ran to dig after it like a little dog.

The older youth smiled snidely at the sight. He twitched his wrist free of Tillu's grip and straightened his tunic, 'I am Rolke,' he announced grandly. 'And I bring you a message from my father, Capiam, herdlord of the herdfolk.'

He found he was speaking to Tillu's back. Kerlew had already retrieved his meat from the snow and was brushing the icy particles from it, sobbing as he did so. She stepped to his side and bent to speak to him. She would not humiliate him further by hugging him in front of this stranger, though she longed to. She knew from past experience that Kerlew would only pull quickly away. She was the one who wanted comfort. He only wanted his meat back, as it had been, hot and dripping. 'Take it inside,' she told him softly. 'And put it over the fire again. In a minute or two, if will be just as hot as it was. Do it!' she warned him, stepping in front of the glare he was giving Rolke, 'I will see to him.'

As Kerlew vanished into the tent, she turned to Rolke. She drew herself up to her full height. It was not enough to allow her to look down on him. She doubted that he would have been impressed anyway. There was very little respect for anything in this young man. But she would teach him some.

'Do you want the message from the herdlord, or don't you?' Rolke demanded.

'I want nothing from you.' Tillu set her jaw, hoping she wasn't turning aside a plea for healing. But surely one sending such a message wouldn't choose so rude a messenger.

Rolke was speechless. Tillu turned and lifted her tent flap. He hiccuped as he caught his breath, and then seemed even angrier because of it. 'Then I shall not give it. I shall tell my father that you and your brat turned me away! You are not fit to join our people anyway. But my father will be angry that you have not heard my words. Very angry.

You will be sorry if he sends Joboam to deal with you.'

'Will he send someone who is already here?' Tillu asked in an innocently curious voice. She turned away from the youth's reddening face. Over her shoulder, she observed, 'If the herdlord wishes to send me a message, it must come by a courteous messenger.' She entered her tent. She stood just inside, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness after the brightness of the snow. In a moment she heard Rolke berating his poor animal. She pitied any beast that belonged to such a master. Somehow she did not think the boy would improve with age.

Kerlew crouched by the fire like a small beaten animal. His hands were curled at the ends of his wrists as he held them before his chest. He stared at his meat as the higher flames licked against it, blackening the bottom of it.

Tillu sighed lightly, but said nothing. Any other boy his age would have known better. She stepped forward, to take the rewarmed meat from the fire and hand it back to him. He took it, gripping it like a squirrel, and looked up at her with pleading eyes.

'All right,' she said softly. 'You can eat it here. But be silent, and don't get in my way.

Don't come asking me questions in the middle of this healing. Do you understand?'

He nodded silently, already trying to nibble at the meat. Another question occurred to her. 'Why didn't you come and tell me there was someone to see me, when Rolke first got here?'

Kerlew's forehead wrinkled with concentration, 'I did. But you gave me the meat and told me to go outside, so I did.'

'Must one thing chase another out of your head? Next time, give the message first.

Anytime you have a message for me, give the message first. From now on.'

'I didn't know,' he complained as he went back to his meat. 'You never told me that before. It wasn't my fault.'

She gave him a warning look and went back to Joboam. As she knelt beside him and put his wrist back in position, his lashes fluttered. He rolled his head toward her, to ask in a thick voice, it's done?'

'Nearly,' she lied. The interruption had occurred at the worst possible time. He was already rousing from the medicine and she dared not give him any more. She moved the oil lamp into position, poking at the wick for a taller flame. She placed one of her knees on his wrist and the other on the inside of his elbow. She let most of her weight rest on her buttocks atop her heels, but was ready to rock forward and pin the arm still if he struggled. She took up his knife and set the blade tip into the wound at the deepest point. Something had dug in there and stayed. She probed with the tip, lightly at first, but when she encountered nothing, she pressed it gently down. Joboam groaned, but did not twitch. Deeper. The blade touched something hard that moved. As it did so, Joboam gave a deep grunt and lifted his head. Tillu rocked her weight forward to pin his arm down. 'Steady,' she told him. 'Lie still.' Again she put the tip of the knife against the object. Joboam's fist clenched suddenly and he took a shuddering breath. She slid her thumb down the knife blade. Bright blood was welling up in the wound; she could not see what she reached for, but went after it by touch. Her thumbnail found it and she clenched it down, pinning it against the blade. She pulled at it. It was stubborn, half grown into the flesh. Joboam was panting now and she smelled pain in his sweat.

Quickly. She gripped hard and tugged.

Joboam gave a wordless cry as it came free. Blood gushed up to fill the wound. Tillu dropped the knife and object onto the skins and pinched the wound closed with a blood-slippery hand, it's out now. It's out!' she assured him. She rocked her full weight onto his arm as he writhed. 'The worst is done.' In a reflex action, Joboam had gripped his injured arm, clutching it above the elbow as if to pull it out from under her. 'That's it, now, hold it tight. Grip as tight as you can,' she encouraged him.

She freed his arm, to grab the herb poultice she had laid out. Joboam lay half on his side now, gripping his arm and staring at the welling blood. She arranged the poultice on his arm, pressed it gently against his flesh. His breath hissed out, but he held steady.

The flow of blood was slowing. He was strong and in good health. He would heal well, she thought. 'Keep it tight,' she encouraged him as she wrapped the arm. Her fingers were slick with his blood and the bandages were stained before she had them in place.

But she wrapped it firmly, the wound held closed. 'This time it will heal and stay healed,' she reassured him. She rose to rinse her hands off. She glanced at the salt in the trough, glad she had not needed to soak the arm a second time. She knelt beside him again.

'Better now?'

'I don't know.' His eyes were shiny, his breathing shallow and fast, 'I feel dizzy.

Weak.' His voice trailed off. Tillu eased him back flat on her pallet. She set the injured arm on top of his chest and covered him warmly.

'Rest, then,' she told him needlessly. His eyes were already closing. She pulled another skin over him and snugged it down around him. There had been more pain for him than she had planned. Sometimes pain could disable a man more than the injury itself. Only rest healed that.

She rubbed her face, feeling suddenly tired. And hungry. But the habits of tidiness were strong. She wiped the knife and set it aside. Herbs and salt were stowed away neatly, the dish lamp extinguished and set away. It was when she was taking up the piece of skin that his arm had rested on that the small object fell to the dirt floor.

Stooping, she took it up and turned it curiously in her hand. This was what she had taken from his arm. She wiped it on the piece of skin and stared at it curiously, 'I know that I know what this is,' she murmured to herself, 'I just can't remember what it is.' It was shaped bone. A line had been etched into it and stained black, perhaps as a decoration. Something Joboam had been working on that had shattered?

She set it down by the knife and with a sigh rose to her feet. Now she could eat.

KERLEW: THE NIGHT

He awoke. As he often did, after a period of not sleeping. He did not need to open his eyes. They were already open, had been open since he lay down on his skins. He had been staring at the peak of the tent, at the smoke hole and the few stars beyond it.

Now he had come back to awareness of himself and his surroundings. A shiver ran over him, and he wondered what had drawn him back. He flared his nostrils, taking in the smells of the tent. There. Joboam. He bared his teeth in the dark.

He turned softly on his skins, but the birch twigs still cracked beneath his bedding. It did not matter. The big man slept deeply. Kerlew smiled thinly, remembering the man's pain when Tillu had healed his arm. He had been tight and silent, even when the blood flowed red. It was only later, when he had become feverish, that he had cursed and roared. His head had tossed about, and his undecipherable words had been full of fury.

Kerlew had giggled to hear him, and Tillu had gotten angry and told him to go to bed.

So he had, but he had still enjoyed Joboam's pain. He had giggled until Tillu had threatened to beat him. Then he had felt angry with her, so he had gone away with the smoke. And now he was back. And Joboam was still here.

By day, Kerlew feared the big man with the cruel hands. Joboam's eyes were hard and mean, angry that Kerlew existed. He was one of the ones who looked and struck.

Kerlew knew and kept clear of his hands. But, in the clear darkness of a shamanic night, Kerlew had only hatred for Joboam. No fear at all. He slipped silently from his bedding.

This was a power time. Carp had spoken with relish of the times when the night opened itself to shamans and the spirit world merged with the day one. Kerlew had never known one until now. Now he could not doubt it. The night surrounded him and intensified him. He felt engorged with its darkness, immune to the daylight world. Cold did not touch his skin and his body knew no hungers. Another shiver ran over him, erecting every hair on his body. Something called him this night. What?

For a long moment, he stood listening. Then he turned back to his bedding, knelt, and gently pushed aside the birch twigs that cushioned his skins from the cold earth.

From the hollow he had scratched there, he took his shaman's pouch. Carefully he lifted the pouch and set his ear against the side. He listened. Knife. Knife was calling him.

Reverently he untied his pouch, reached in with blind fingers. Knife touched them.

He drew it out slowly and returned the bag and other talismans to the hollow. Then he stood again. 'Knife?' he breathed questioningly. He held it in two hands, pointed it toward the dying embers of the fire. He held it a long time, until he felt it grow heavy in his hands. Knife was ready. Slowly he drew the sheath off.

The pale bone blade gleamed even in the dying firelight. It would lead him. It would not be the first time he had followed it. But the first time, he had stumbled frightened and cold in the blackness of the woods, with Owl-spirit peering from every shadow and branch. Then he had wept and pleaded with Knife, and Knife had heard. Knife had led him to the herdfolk's village, to the very hut where his mother slept.

Only one had been awake in that place. In the dimness of the hut, he had stood over her. She who had shaped Knife was there, breathing her pain out in a soundless sigh.

She did not rant and roar as Joboam did. Her pain was silent, sealed into her. Heckram held her hand. He shivered, remembering. Her eyes had been closed and she had been still, but the pain vibrated out from her, like ripples in a still pond. Her pain washed over Heckram and put lines in his face. The Knife in his hand had shivered with her pain. He had known she wanted to rest.

He knew the black ladle of the sleeping potion. He had used the back of the knife to hold her lips open while he trickled the sleeping tea in. A last word had bubbled up through the tea, broken against the back of Knife's blade. Some secret or word had been passed between she who made Knife and Knife. Knife had trembled with it, and then he had felt the ebbing of all her pain.

And now Knife had awakened him. There would be a reason, and Knife would lead him to it. He held the tool at arm's length in front of him. His arms ached with holding it still, but finally he felt the tug of the blade. It drew him forward and down. He followed it.

The blade did not hesitate or wait for Kerlew's stumbling feet. It pulled him through the fire, so that Kerlew felt the brief lick of unbearable heat against his bare legs, the bite of a small coal on his callused heel. He barked his shins against his mother's chest of herbs, clattered over it and on. Despite the noise, no one stirred. He alone felt the power of his night and moved through it.

Two more steps and he stood over Joboam. Knife halted and hovered, dragging on Kerlew's arms.

The man was heavy in his sleep, bigger in his laxness. He lay on his back. One arm was flung wide, hanging over the side of the pallet, the back of his wrist resting on the ground. Sleep held him like a thick fog around him. Kerlew smelled it, a fog of blood stench and sweat and the odor of his morning's food that he breathed out of his sagging mouth. His hair clung in damp locks to his forehead and cheeks. In his fevered sleep, he had pushed aside the hides meant to warm him. His chest was wide and gleaming, his bandaged arm cradled protectively against it.

The darkness swirled sweetly around Kerlew as he stood over the man. Knife's hilt was rough and sweaty in his hands. The blade turned slightly in his grip, catching and cradling the wan light that filtered in from the smoke hole. Light ran down the blade in wavering forms that shifted and changed, reminding him of a dark stain on clean snow.

Knife soaked up the light and the dark, taking power into itself. It smiled.

Then it plunged down swiftly, dragging him to his knees with the force of its descent. It passed narrowly between Joboam's chest and outflung arm, to sink haft-deep in the earth of the tent's floor.

Kerlew dragged himself up from his bruised knees. No one stirred. His heart thundered inside the cage of his ribs, leaping in its struggle to be free. He rubbed his sweaty hands across his face and looked down at the floor. The hilt of Knife stuck up from the cold dirt, but a portion of the blade lay beside it. Knife was broken.

He sat down flat in astonishment. He scooted himself closer, stared woefully at the fragment of blade that lay atop the earth by Knife's upright hilt. Wolves of despair devoured his heart. Slowly he picked up the fragment of bone and stared at it. Even in the dim starlight and rusty glow of the dying coals, there was no mistaking it. Half of a swirl and one flying hoof were on the shattered blade. He lifted the piece, held it sorrowfully against his cheek. It was cold. Cold and broken and angry with him. As angry as Carp and the Blood Stone. In his eagerness, he had failed again. Tears flooded his eyes.

With a trembling hand he took hold of the hilt and drew Knife from the earth. It dangled between his forefinger and thumb as he stared at it. It was whole.

He brought it close to his deep-set eyes and studied it. Whole. Not a splinter out of it, not a nick. One reindeer still galloped, the other grazed with her calf at her side. The swirls still spun like stars. His slow gaze traveled from Knife to the fragment of bone.

Gradually his two hands brought them together. For long silent moments he studied them side by side. Here was the hoof of the galloping reindeer; here was the hoof alone.

Here were the swirls spinning on the blade; here was one swirl and part of another.

Here was ...

He stopped. His mind leaped the gap, and the knowledge swelled in him. This knife from the knife-making woman. This piece of a knife from Joboam's arm. Kerlew smiled.

Shifting his weight carefully, he knelt by Joboam, leaned over the sleeping man. He held the fragment of blade before the closed eyes and grinned down. A prickling chill ran over his body as he felt the power that coursed though the broken blade. Yes, it was cold and angry. But not with Kerlew. No. It was angry with Joboam. And in its anger, the fragment of blade offered much power to Kerlew. Much power.

He curled his fist around his own Knife, held it close to his chest as he knelt over Joboam. He leaned very close, studying Joboam's closed eyes to be sure he really slept.

The man's breath was hot and rank against his face. Slowly Kerlew lifted the knife chip.

He touched it softly to Joboam's forehead, then to each of his closed eyelids. He carefully traced the outline of Joboam's sagging mouth with the tip of the broken piece.

The man twitched, closed his lips.

Kerlew held up Knife and the fragment side by side. He turned them slowly, letting them catch the light and then grow black as old blood in the shadows. He leaned very close over the man, his eyes wide and fixed on Joboam's for any sign of wakefulness as Knife and the fragment wove a slow pattern over his bare chest. He could feel the power the fragment was drawing out of the man. He felt almost dizzy in the great clarity of the night and of the forces that whispered through it.

He gave voice to them. 'Joboam.' Softly he called him by name, the word no more than a shaping of his exhalation. No one could come to such a call, except for a spirit.

His spirit would hear Kerlew's words. 'Joboam. It has soaked in your blood, Joboam.

You cannot deny it. It knows the inside of your flesh. It has tasted your life, and longs to taste your death. Feel the knife that failed, Joboam.' He drew the fragment lightly down the man's bare chest. 'The knife hated to fail, Joboam. It wished to be true. So it has called out to its brother Knife. And its brother Knife has called to me. And I have made it a promise, to give it what it wants.'

He leaned closer over the sleeping man. Ridges divided Joboam's brows and his breath was becoming uneven. Joboam's spirit was uneasy. Kerlew fixed his wide eyes on Joboam's closed ones, breathed his breath into his face as he said softly, 'You know what the Knife wants, Joboam.'

The big man's eyes flickered open wide.