The Reindeer People

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

'Wolf! Wolf!'

The hoarse cry rang in Tillu's ears and jerked her from sleep. It was inside the tent.

She heard the rustle of flung hides and the sound of quick movement, panting breath.

Tillu rolled from her pallet onto her knees and came to her feet with a short jabbing spear in her hands. She gripped the close-quarters weapon, glaring with sleep-blurred eyes around the darkened interior of the tent. Nothing stirred. Her eyes probed the shadowed corners. All was still and quiet. Her heart slowed its hammering. Kerlew was a hunched bundle under his sleeping furs. She saw him twitch them in closer and guessed he was awake. Awake and hiding from wolves. She sighed as she stepped to the tent door and peered out into the darkness. Nothing at all. Just the cold and the empty darkness under the trees beneath the starry skies of early morning. She turned to Joboam. He was propped up on one elbow. His wide eyes shone black.

'What did you see?' she demanded.

'I ... yellow eyes. Staring at me.' His breathing was coming in ragged gasps. Tillu set down the spear and stepped to the firewood stacked neatly by the door. She tossed a few sticks onto the dying coals of the fire and then crossed the tent to kneel by Joboam.

She touched the side of his neck and then his bandaged arm with quick, cool fingers.

His face was still heavy with sleep and the pain of her healing.

'Your fever's broken. That's all. Sometimes when one goes from fever sleep to dreaming, the dreams are bright and hard. There's nothing here. Go back to sleep.'

'I ...' Joboam seemed both dazed and exhausted. He looked about her tent in bewilderment. 'What am I doing here?'

Tillu hunkered down on her heels beside him. The earth was cold under her bare feet. 'You came to have me heal your arm, remember? I gave you a tea to relax you, and dug a bone splinter out of your arm, and bandaged it. Your arm bled again, you were sleepy from the tea, and draining the swelling of your arm gave you a fever. That sometimes happens. We healers say the body burns itself clean. So I let the fever burn, but not too high. And now you are better. Remember? You woke twice and I gave you water. Remember?' She spoke soothingly, as if to a frightened child. After a moment Joboam relaxed.

'Yes. Yes, I remember now. Drink and rest, you told me. But the wolf ... I felt his hot breath in my face. His eyes were yellow and he laughed at me ...'

'A dream. Only a dream.' Tillu pushed the sweat-soaked hair from his forehead, checked once more for fever. The man smelled sour with fear. 'You've sweated out the poisons. That's good. Sleep now, and by morning you'll be ready to go home.'

'Yes. I'll sleep.' His words started to drag, and then suddenly he was up on one elbow again, deep creases furrowed between his brows. 'A bone fragment? From my arm?'

'Not your own bone. A piece of worked bone or horn.'

'Where is it? Let me see it. I want it.'

'It's here, it's right here, just a moment,' Tillu soothed him. Shadows in the tent were deep. She was tired and sleepy and growing impatient with his dream fears and compulsions. Her fingers trailed along the earth floor, finding first his knife, then a piece of bark, then some bits of the moss she had used to clean his wound. She groped some more, her toes going numb against the cold earth. 'I'll find it in the morning,' she promised, wondering why he was so anxious. She offered him the knife, hilt first, 'I borrowed your knife to open your arm. My own is old and dull, and a sharp blade is best for such work.'

He took it from her wordlessly, stared at it in puzzlement, and then let it fall from his fingers back onto the dirt floor. He rolled onto his back and stared into the shadowed point of the ceiling. 'Wolf. It was Wolf, and he showed me two knives. One was whole, and one was ... broken. He showed them to me, and then he laughed. He said ... he laughed. That was all.'

'A dream. Just a fever dream.' She wished he would go back to sleep. She was getting cold, crouched here in just her long shirt. She was taken by surprise when his good arm shot out suddenly and his hand gripped her upper arm hard.

'Tell no one,' he ordered her fiercely, if you tell anyone you healed me, I'll kill you.'

'Easy.' She pulled at his digging fingers, wincing as his grip only tightened. 'You're dreaming still. Let go, you're hurting me. Let go!'

'Tell no one!' he repeated insistently. His eyes blazed.

'I won't tell anyone. Why would anyone be interested? Let go.'

'Good. Don't tell.' He stared at her. His grip loosened but he did not free her. Instead he pulled her close, until she was leaning over the pallet. His eyes darted to the shadows behind her, then came back and moved slowly down her body, 'I didn't mean to hurt you. I'm sorry.'

'Let go of me.'

'Don't be angry. I was ... it was just the dream. I didn't mean to hurt you.' His voice was low, soft.

'I know that and I'm not angry. Just let me go.'

'Why?' His eyes still burned, but with a different fire. He winced slightly as he moved his other hand up to touch her face, 'I saw you looking at me. Before you healed my arm.' She pulled back from the caress, baring her teeth.

'Let go of me, or I'll hurt you.' She spoke quietly.

'You? You're no bigger than a child!' He smiled indulgently. His free hand touched her breast through the thin leather of her shirt, pinching her nipple. Then he gasped as her hand fell on his injured arm and tightened on the bandage.

'I'm not pretending. Let go of me, or I'll give you pain.'

His grip dropped from her arm and she sprang back instantly. 'You leave my tent tomorrow morning.' She bit the words off. She could feel Kerlew watching, listening.

'As soon as it's light. Do not come back.'

Joboam eased himself back onto the pallet. He stared at her with round eyes. 'Like a little wolverine. I didn't mean to hurt you, Tillu. And you shouldn't try to hurt me.

Come here.' He smiled crookedly, only encouraged by her rebuff.

She stared at him. He had actually believed she wanted him. Still believed it, still believed her reluctance was a game. Had she wanted him? She turned her back on him and went silently back to her pallet. She could not hide from his eyes; they followed her as she lay down and covered herself again. Her heart beat a little faster and she felt more vulnerable lying down. He was a big man, and strong. She let her arm slip down beside her pallet, to find the short spear. She closed her eyes, but listened for movement. She would not sleep again this night. She opened her eyes slightly, peered through her lashes at the fire as it devoured the sticks and fell into coals again. Beneath her lashes she glanced at Joboam. His face was turned toward her, watching her.

Smiling.

She pulled her eyes away. Had she wanted him? No. A man, yes, her body hungered for a man. She was a woman, she had her needs. Desire swelled and ebbed inside her with the cycle of the moon. Some nights her thoughts were filled with images of men, and her thighs tingled and her nipples grew hard with longing. But not this man. It had been a long time for her, but it would never be so long as to make her want a man like him. Even if he had not been so arrogant and rude, she would have turned him away.

He was too large, too daunting. He would make her feel helpless and childish. Again she felt the suffocating weight of a man's body atop her, pinning her to the earth, smelled the smoke of a burning village.

Her desires vanished. She shook her head, banishing the old memories. Never again.

She wanted nothing of men larger than herself, nothing of dominant, crushing men.

There had been Raduni, of Benu's folk. He had been a small, quick man, his smile almost bigger than his face. When she had first joined Benu's folk, he had smiled at her often. She had admired his litheness. She had marveled at his quickness as he lay on his belly and scooped shining trout from the stream. And offered a share to her, unasked.

She had hoped he would approach her. But too soon he had become aware of Kerlew.

Strange Kerlew. His strangeness had been enough to make Raduni hesitate and then turn aside from her. Her son tainted her. She wondered what made men behave so.

Raduni was not the first. Did men believe all her children must turn out as Kerlew had?

Did she believe so herself? She wasn't sure. She only knew the outcome. She had been left with the attentions of Carp, another man she did not want.

She shifted in her bedding, sighing. Rolke's offer came to her mind. She wondered if the offer would be extended again. And if it was? Did she want to travel with these herdfolk? She did not think so. Kerlew was not ready for such a life. Nor was she. Why would she wish to give up her independent life for a place within the herdfolk? With men such as Joboam, so ready to assume control of her household? With men like Heckram, so quick to assume the decision of life and death?

Something very like betrayal squeezed her heart. She had thought better of the man.

Her mind roved back to that night, to chew again at the puzzle bone. She had warned Heckram that too much of the medicine would kill. Why had he given it to Elsa?

Because he could not watch her suffer, because he cared for her? Or had it been colder than that? Was that the fate of women among the herdfolk when they became disfigured or useless?

Neither piece fit. She had seen Heckram when Lasse was injured. He had not tried to hide the sympathy and concern he felt. She had sensed his friendship with the youth.

And with Elsa? With Elsa, it had been just the same. A deep friendship, a loyalty. Not a relationship of the kind that presumed power over life and death. Yet the same friendship was what made her sure that the killing had not been a casual disposal of a useless chattel.

Only recently had Tillu come to understand the strange status of women among the herdfolk. In no other tribe had she encountered women who not only possessed their own property, but retained their private ownership even after marriage. The meat Leyna had paid her with had been meat from Leyna's own animal. The women made their trades independently of their men, hunted alongside their men, or alone. Her weaving and sewing had the same value as his carving and building. In a society where a man could not assume possession of his wife's handiwork, a woman of the herdfolk knew her own worth. For the first time in her life, Tillu had encountered women who took pride in their independence. She envied them.

But always the speculation took her back to Heckram and Elsa. It could have been no one but him. The women in the tent did not know what the brew was, would not have given it to Elsa without asking. And there had been the way he turned aside from her that next morning. His eyes had been empty when he looked at her, his face held straight. Guilt. Useless to tell herself it did not matter, that Elsa would have died anyway. Sometimes she tried to convince herself that Elsa had simply died, that she had let go instead of lingering in pain. She wanted to believe that, but couldn't. Even more, she wanted to understand why he had done it, why he felt guilty about doing it. Then perhaps she would know why she thought less of Heckram since then. Perhaps she would even understand why it saddened her that he could no longer meet her eyes.

What did it matter? She sighed to herself. A glance at Joboam showed that sleep had claimed him again. Good. Tomorrow he would be gone and, soon after that, all the herdfolk. Gone from her life, leaving her to her independence. Alone again. She remembered her terror of being alone when she had first left Benu's folk. But she had overcome it. A small pride swelled inside her. She could take care of herself and her son. Could hunt for them, sew for them. Could even repulse the advances of someone like Joboam. And Kerlew was doing so well lately ... In some ways, she qualified it to herself. He carved now and even tried to hunt, though as of yet he had had no success on his own. He remembered things now, to gather the wood, to watch the fire. And he remembered them on his own. It was good he had not become attached to Heckram, it was good that he was doing things on his own. She felt they were nearing a day when Kerlew would make his own decisions, would see himself as a person independent of her. She waited, watching him silently, conscious of the small changes in him. She smiled to herself and realized she had no regrets. Let the herdfolk go.

Morning found her none the better for her sleepless night. Her eyes were reddened and itchy as she steeped the inner bark of alder, brewing a reddish tea from it. It was a useful tonic for anyone trying to recover from illness. Or after a sleepless night, she told herself as she poured a cup.

She drank it standing, staring around the tent. It was not the poor place it had been in midwinter. Everywhere she looked were the signs of her trade with the herdfolk.

Their mark on her life could not be denied. She cut up the last of Leyna's meat and dropped it into the very battered bronze kettle that Bror and Ibba had given her for worming his best harke and mixing a herbal wash to discourage lice. She stirred the simmering meat with a ladle of knurled birch with bright colors carved into the handle.

These things were hers, even if the herdfolk left her. She did not need to go with them, for summer was near, the time of plenty. She did not need to go with them.

She woke Kerlew and he ate. As was usual when they were alone, they spoke very little. Few words were needed. It was only after he had eaten that she had to speak to him. He had finished his bowl of stew and sat crouched on his heels, running his finger around the greasy inside of the bowl and licking it. This Tillu could have ignored. But Kerlew had chosen to perch at the end of the pallet where Joboam still slept. He stared at the sleeping man as he licked his fingers. When he noticed Tillu watching him, he snickered his brittle little laugh.

She stared at him solemnly, refusing to be baited. He giggled again.

'Leave him alone,' she told him coldly.

'Wolf!' he sputtered and trailed off in helpless laughter. Joboam's eyes flickered.

Kerlew leaned forward, heedless of how the man might react. 'Did Wolf really visit you in the night?' he asked delightedly. His hazel eyes sparkled.

'Kerlew!' Tillu exclaimed angrily, even as Joboam growled, 'Keep that brat away from me!'

'Outside, son,' Tillu directed calmly. 'Firewood.'

'I got it yesterday,' Kerlew complained.

'Then get more. We can always use it.'

'Not if we go with the herdfolk. Comes the herdlord now, to ask you to be healer.'

'Outside!' Tillu repeated sternly. 'Take the bowls and clean them with moss and snow. Now!'

He turned from Joboam, who clutched the sleeping skins about himself as if Kerlew were vermin that might be warded off. Laconically the boy gathered Tillu's bowl and lifted the door flap. As he lifted the flap, the gray light of morning filtered in. Distant shouting reached their ears, the words indistinct.

'Capiam,' breathed Joboam. His eyes narrowed with suspicion or fear as he stared after the boy. An instant later, he had flung back the bedskins and was struggling to rise. 'I will leave,' he told Tillu tersely as he kicked clear of the skins and groped after his boots. 'And you will not tell I have been here. Understand?'

She didn't understand why he wouldn't want Capiam to know he had been in her tent. It was pointless, anyway. 'Capiam knows you are here. Yesterday, his son come.

He knows you are here.'

Joboam dropped the boot he had been pulling on. 'Rolke? Rolke was here yesterday?

What did you tell him?'

'I tell him, Capiam cannot send to me one who is already here.'

'And that was all? You didn't say you were healing my arm?'

Tillu cast her mind back to the day before, tried to recall her exact words. 'No. I just say he could not send someone who was already with me.'

Joboam sat toying with his boot. Unreadable emotions flickered over his face as he sorted ideas. Tillu heard now the crunch and squeak of the snow as it gave under hoof and sledge. To her surprise, Joboam eased back on the pallet. He dragged the furs across himself and stretched out. 'Go out!' He gestured at her authoritatively. 'Go out and meet him. Say nothing of me, unless he asks. Then say I am here. Go out! Hurry!'

'This is my tent!' Tillu spoke through clenched teeth.

'Hurry!' Joboam urged her.

She went slowly, smoothing her hair back from her face. She gave him a final glance as she went out. He was staring after her, his face set in a grin born of both tension and satisfaction. She couldn't understand him and didn't want to.

Two sledges had pulled up in front of her tent. Rolke was there, as sullen-faced as ever, with his father standing behind him. Capiam's face was stern. He stood straight and solemn, his black eyes fixed on the healer. Short and stocky he was, as were most of the herdfolk, but his bearing and dress conspired to give an impression of height. His garments were both opulent and severe. His cap was of knotted black wool, his coat and leggings of black wolf. The hem of his coat had been trimmed with the black-tipped tails of weasels. The braid that decorated his cuffs was a stark pattern of black on white.

His coat was cinched tightly around his waist by a thick leather belt held with a large bronze clasp. A leather thong about his neck supported another massy piece of bronzework. If he had intended to impress Tillu, he had succeeded.

She tried not to imagine how she must appear, in her tunic and leggings of worn leather. She stood straight and returned his gaze, trying to ignore her son's foolishness.

Kerlew crouched behind a tree much too slender to hide him, peering around it at them, but not giving any greeting. Tillu pressed her lips together, took a breath, and advanced to meet them. She did not smile as she spoke, but kept her voice even and her face calm.

'Capiam. Rolke. I am honored that you visit me.'

Capiam said nothing. Nor did Rolke, until Capiam nudged him violently from behind. The boy's eyes glittered angrily when he spoke, but his words were courteous.

'I wish you good morning, Healer Tillu. I come bearing a message from my father, Herdlord Capiam of the Herdfolk. May I speak it to you?' She could nearly hear his teeth grate as he closed his jaws on the last word.

'Certainly,' she replied serenely, 'I am always glad to receive a message courteously delivered.'

He flinched at her words, and she knew she had hit the mark. Capiam had come to be sure that his message was politely delivered.

'The Herdlord Capiam' - Rolke glanced aside to find Kerlew grinning at him from behind the non-shelter of the tree. He caught his breath in frustration, and jerked his eyes back to Tillu - 'The Herdlord Capiam invites you to join our people on our spring migration. Long have our folk been without a trained healer. Last year both humans and reindeer suffered injuries that a healer could have eased. A child ate tainted meat and died. A herder's broken leg healed badly, so now she must limp. Herdlord Capiam is a man who cares for his folk. He would not see them crippled and scarred for lack of a trained healer to tend them. So I am sent to offer you these things, if you will come with us.' He took a deep breath and began his listing. 'Hides for a new tent, and the use of a harke to carry your belongings. Meat as you need it, and woven cloth for clothing for you and your son. The herdlord will see that you do not hunger or lack any necessity. And so I ask you: Will you go with our folk, to be our healer?'

Tillu stood silently, a decision still eluding her. But Kerlew leaped out from behind his tree, crying, 'Yes, oh, yes, Tillu, say yes! I am sick of eating rabbit, and tired of always staying in one place. Let's go with them!'

Rolke's face flared with hatred as Kerlew capered wildly in the snow before them.

Distaste showed an instant in Capiam's eyes; then he regained his stoic bearing. If she went with them, their feelings for Kerlew wouldn't change. They would only deepen.

Kerlew would be like an annoying scab to Rolke, a thing to be picked at and irritated endlessly. She should stay here, by herself with the boy, and teach him and protect him.

But the healer in her spoke through her jangling need to protect her son. Her belly had tightened when he had mentioned the child dead of tainted meat, the herder who now must limp. For so many people to be without a healer was not right. Her skills gave her a duty. As she had so many times before, she could always leave them if things became too uncomfortable. Her resolve of the night before melted.

'I need to think,' she said softly, her voice carrying clearly through Kerlew's babbling.

'At least for a while.'

Rolke nodded curtly and hung his head to hide a venomous glare at Kerlew. He was not pleased with his success as a messenger. For a moment the herdlord's eyes met hers, assessing her. His face was serious, as if he knew of her private doubts. He gave a slow nod of acceptance. Then his eyes darted suddenly past her, to widen in surprise. Tillu turned in consternation to see what was behind her.

'Joboam? You are here?' Capiam asked in disbelief.

'As you see.' The big man emerged from her tent, standing to stretch in the daylight.

His hair was still tousled from sleeping and he had not bothered to put on his outer tunic. Tillu was baffled. Had not he just ordered her not to speak of him? And now he wandered out in plain sight of them, as if to flaunt his presence.

'But what are you doing here?' Rolke demanded, curiosity making him forget what courtesy he knew.

'I -' Joboam began and then hesitated long.

'Rolke!' his father reprimanded him, and the boy's eyes flew wide with sudden understanding. He swung his stare to Tillu, and a slow, offensive smile spread across his adolescent face. He leered at her knowingly.

'I came to speak to the healer and to add my ... persuasion that she should come with us.' Joboam's voice was oily with self-satisfaction. Capiam looked uncomfortable, Rolke avid. Tillu wondered what message she was missing. Even Kerlew stopped his hopping about and stared from one adult to the next, his mouth agape. Tillu knew their language well enough now, but what had passed among the men was a non-verbal implication that eluded and annoyed her. A moment longer Joboam stood in her door.

Then he ducked back within her tent. Capiam shuffled his feet awkwardly.

'Healer, we are hopeful you will come with us. I promise you that you shall lack for nothing, though I am sure that Joboam will make sure that you have all -'

'I think I shall drive back with you, Capiam, if you will wait a moment. My harke and pulkor are behind the tent. It will take but a moment to harness up.'

Joboam buckled his heavy belt over his tunic as he spoke. He gave Capiam a bright smile of good fellowship, then stepped close to Tillu. He smiled down at her, and she looked up into his teeth. When he spoke, it was in a soft, fond voice that still carried clearly. 'Tillu. I am sorry to leave so abruptly, but there are things I must attend to, especially since you have decided to be one of us. But you know I'll be back soon. What shall I bring you?'

His syrupy voice and the masterful way he loomed over her were impossible to mistake. She couldn't understand what his game was about, but she could play it, too.

She smiled up at him, all teeth and thinned lips. 'I have not decided yet,' she said clearly, 'but you may bring me a bronze knife. As healer for the herdfolk, I would need one. If you come back to see me, bring a bronze knife for me. A thin blade is best, but I can manage with a wide one.'

She saw the quick flash of anger in his eyes as she named the exorbitant fee for not betraying his game. He masked it quickly. She felt a small quiver of worry as she realized how important his deception of Capiam must be to him. 'A knife, then,' he agreed smoothly. He was not so foolish as to try and touch her in farewell. But the way his eyes wandered over her face was touch enough to inspire unease in Tillu. He turned from her abruptly, and the snow crunched under his boots as he went around her tent to where his tethered harke waited.

The silence was back, hanging between them like a curtain. Kerlew had completely lost interest in the proceedings. He had hooked his hands over a low branch of a nearby birch, and he dangled by his arms, feet on the ground still, but knees bent so that the tree swayed with his weight as he bounced. Rolke was staring at him, his upper lip drawn up in distaste. Kerlew spoke suddenly. 'Joboam had a vision of Wolf in the night.

He yelled out, "Wolf!" and Tillu jumped from the bed to grab her stabbing spear!'

'Kerlew!' Tillu rebuked him, not so much for the gossip as for the way he told it, his amber eyes probing Capiam for a response to the story. For an instant, it might have been Carp hanging in the tree, working his magic on Benu's folk with his sly intimations and cryptic insinuations. But if the story meant anything to Capiam, he covered it well. He gave the boy the sickly smile adults often gave her son when they did not know how else to respond to his strange behavior.

'He does well to fear Wolf,' Kerlew added, ignoring Tillu's glare. 'For one of Wolf's own will pull him down one day. Joboam may fancy himself a Bear, but that is not what looks out of his eyes at me. I am to be a shaman; did you know that?'

Before anyone could respond to this latest comment, the squeak of Joboam's pulkor was heard and he drove his harke from behind the tent. He seemed oblivious of the changed mood that greeted him. He pulled his animal to a halt and, smiling, glanced from one face to the next. 'Well. Shall we be going, then?'

'When will the herdfolk be leaving?' Tillu asked suddenly.

Capiam answered her. 'Some of the folk are still in the higher country with their animals. When spring is a bit stronger and the ice has left the moss, they will come down from the hills, and we will go.'

'West?' Tillu guessed, thinking of more hills and forest.

Capiam looked surprised. 'North. From the hills out onto the wide tundra, and across it to the Cataclysm. To follow the wild herd, and to meet with the other herdfolk for the summer.' He turned a bemused smile on Joboam. 'She has much to learn of our ways,'

he commented affably.

'I shall not mind teaching her,' Joboam assured him. Tillu seethed at his proprietary air, but said nothing. She'd let him keep his game intact, until she had her bronze knife.

Then they would come to an agreement on her terms. The thought brought a real smile to her face as she bid them farewell. She marked how Joboam brought his pulkor abreast of Capiam's, to converse with him while Rolke trailed behind them. She sighed softly when they were out of sight. If it were only the healing she had to deal with! But if she went with them, it would be the day-to-day life among the herdfolk that would be hardest for her. And for Kerlew. She glanced about, but didn't see the boy.

'Kerlew!' she called, hoping desperately he hadn't followed the men and reindeer.

There was no answer. 'Kerlew!' she called again sharply and pushed her way into the tent. He bounced up quickly, guiltily, from his pallet, furtively stuffing something inside his shirt. She knew of the shaman's pouch he had made by taking one of her herb bags and marking it with charcoal and blood. She had even see it once, when he had thought she was asleep and had come to the fire to examine his treasures. She never spoke of it; she didn't want to encourage him. She knew it held his red stone and other oddments. What other bits he added to it were no concern to her. His behavior was.

'Whatever made you speak our that way?' she demanded angrily. Snatching up a cup, she dipped up some of the tea she had set to steep earlier.

'Whatever made you keep silent?' he returned, his eyes gone flinty.

The tea was cold and bitter in Tillu's mouth as she met his stare.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

'It's the last flurry of winter,' Lasse observed.

Heckram assented silently. There was a peace to the thickly falling curtain of white flakes that he was reluctant to disturb. All day he had sensed the snow coming. The thick clouds had been snagged on the near crest of the mountain like a swatch of gray woolen stuff. All day the softening snow had been slogging underfoot, sinking undetectably, glistening on the trodden paths but white and blue-shadowed under the trees. The reindeer had grazed easily, nuzzling the soft wet snow from tender moss, or reaching their shaggy necks to nibble the suddenly tender tips of the birches and willows. Even the sunset had not brought the cold back. The snow that fell now was wet, sticking to the branches of the trees but doomed to melt before noon tomorrow.

Heckram and Lasse sat back to back in a crude shelter of branches leaned against a tumble of jutting gray boulders and shist, memorial of some glacier's ancient passage.

The tangle of branches kept out most of the snow, but not the diffused light of the overcast moon or the soft placidity of the snowy night.

For the first time in many days, Heckram felt at peace with himself. Here at the winter pasturage there were no reminders of pain and failure. But for Lasse's company, it was like any other early spring he had passed in the mountains. They hadn't bothered to bring a skin tent with them, but only sleeping hides sewn into a sack. The bunched hides were beneath him now, atop a cushioning pad of pine boughs. The night was too mild and Heckram too comfortable for him to think of crawling into his bed and sleeping. He would doze back to back with Lasse, occasionally stirring to look out on the gray and brown backs of the forty-odd animals scattered across the slope below them.

A soft, almost warm wind crept through the trees, now parting the snow flurries, now swirling the falling flakes more thickly than ever. The steady fall of the white stuff was almost as restful as sleeping. Heckram was not sure he was awake when he heard Lasse's whispered 'What's that?'

Heckram cleared his throat quietly. 'What's what?' he murmured softly. He squinted his eyes, tried to focus his gaze through the falling snow. He could see nothing.

Confirming his own lesser senses were the peaceful attitudes of the animals below.

They were not milling in agitation or muttering to one another in their coughing grunts.

Whatever had disturbed Lasse had nor bothered them at all.

'There. Hear that?' Lasse whispered.

'Just the wind,' Heckram muttered irritably. The wind had many notes on a night such as this. It soughed through bare branches, overbalanced snow loads on heavy ones to make soft plopping sounds, and set smaller limbs and twigs to creaking and clattering softly against one another. Lasse should know those sounds as well as Heckram did himself.

He tried to go back to sleep, but found himself annoyingly alert, listening for whatever peculiar note had roused Lasse. The wind blew harder, the snow swirled and for one moment seemed to coalesce into a crouching wolf by a pale-trunked birch, but the next swirl of wind dispersed it and revealed the cheat of an old lightning-blasted stump. Heckram sighed, letting the tension ease out of his back. Was he a child to be spooked by shadows and shapes in the night?

Lasse's back was still tight against his. 'See anything?' Heckram asked, his deep voice soft in the night.

'I almost did. I mean, I thought I did. Like the biggest wolverine ever made, but white, every bit of it. Just the snow playing tricks on me.'

'Moonlight through clouds on new snow will do that,' Heckram acceded. Silence followed his words, falling and drifting as deep as the snow. His eyelids began to sag again.

'What will you do when we go back?' Lasse asked suddenly.

Heckram opened his eyes, frowned into the night. 'Do? What do we always do in spring? I'll put my winter gear up on the rack, load my summer gear onto a harke or two, and follow the herd. What will you do?'

'The same, I suppose.' Lasse sighed. Heckram felt it more than heard it. 'I'll spend the first day or so listening to my grandmother recount every little incident that occurred while we were gone. And the next few days trying to account for every moment that I was up here, while she imagines a dozen things wrong with every reindeer I've tended.'

Heckram nodded. 'There's a lot of silences up here. But all the talk when I get home somehow seems lonelier than this.'

Lasse paused, considering the sense of his words. Then: 'Won't it be strange for you, to go back to your own hut in the talvsit? You'll be going back to silences.'

'Yes.' Heckram bit the word off short. 'But it will only be for a night or so, and then we'll be off for the tundra.'

'But you'll be taking your own tent this time, won't you? The one Elsa and your mother made?'

'I suppose.' After avoiding these thoughts for days, the questions stung like fresh scratches. He realized suddenly that his guilt cut more sharply than his grief now. And knew in the same moment that while his grief might fade with time, the guilt he felt would not. It would not be any easier to meet Missa's eyes when he returned. Kuoljok's were even worse, for the death of his daughter had turned the old man's mind. When he looked at Heckram, he did not seem to see him at all. When he spoke to him, he looked through or beyond him. Neither one had ever spoken a word of blame; they didn't need to. Joboam's accusation that night had been enough. He remembered, sometimes, that Missa had spoken out against Joboam's words. When he did, he took comfort from it, but could find no case from his own self-accusations.

Lasse had fallen silent, but hadn't relaxed his vigil. The sleep that had come so easily moments before now eluded Heckram. His temples began to ache as his thoughts raced around and around like reindeer in a sorting pen. Around and around and around, pounding like rolling thunder, but finding no escape. Who had killed Elsa, and why?

Joboam, he wanted it to be Joboam; he wanted a reason to challenge the man and unleash his fury and guilt on him.

But what if it were not Joboam? Sometimes in the night, it seemed impossible that Joboam could have hurt Elsa. Had he not been courting her just a few months ago? No herdman would kill a woman he wanted. He might try to lure her away from the man she had joined, with gifts and sweet words. There was nothing dishonorable in that. But why would any man destroy a woman he desired? For Joboam to have killed Elsa made no sense. Maybe Heckram only suspected him because he had always hated Joboam, and longed for a reason to act on that hate. The other herdfolk, true to their tradition, had set the death aside in their minds. Elsa had died; no one had seen, so no one could say what had killed her. They did not feel pressed, as Heckram did, to find something or someone to blame, to make someone pay for Elsa's death. Such was not their way. It should not have been Heckram's way. Yet he hungered for vengeance as a wolf hungers for meat in the dead of winter. The aching need for revenge set him apart, made him a stranger among his own folk and put lines upon Ristin's brow. Yet he could not turn his thoughts away from the unfairness of that death. Someone must pay.

But if not Joboam, then who? There was no answer to that. Had Elsa made an enemy he knew nothing about? Had it been a single marauder, one of those wild men old women spoke of, on late evenings around the open fires during the migration times?

They were supposed to come by darkness, to carry off young women for mates. He had always thought them scaretales, nothing but a woman's device to keep her daughters from straying too far from the fire on warm spring nights.

His temples were thrumming. He reached up to touch his own face, felt the deep thought wrinkles between his brows, but could not remember how to smooth them out.

Around and around and around. A demon, perhaps, as Rolke had suggested on that horrible night. Heckram did not know if he believed in demons anymore. Yet if ever he had seen a demon's work, it was what had been done to Elsa.

He closed his eyes against the swirling snow. The peace had fled from it. Now it danced before him, a demon that wrought itself over and over into images of Elsa.

Again and again he saw her shattered hand lift in that terrible greeting. Slowly he drew his knees up to his chest, curved his neck down to rest his forehead on his knees. His body felt hard and hollow, like a sucked out marrow bone, a thing thrown aside.

Lasse spoke softly, without moving, 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to remind you again.'

'It's all right,' Heckram lied. His voice came out hoarse and thick. Sometimes he regretted letting Lasse come to know him so well. To grieve was bad enough. To know that the friend who sat back to back with him knew the depth of his pain did not ease it.

It subtly intensified it.

Back to back they stiffened simultaneously, speaking no word as they listened to the soft drumming that suddenly filled the night. Had it just begun, or had it only now increased in volume so they were aware of it? Its rhythm was one piece with the night.

The sound was sourceless, eternal, soft and yet undeniable. 'Heckram,' Lasse began softly.

'Shh,' the older man cautioned him. Neither one moved. The drumming went on, in infinite variations that yet formed an elaborate pattern. Heckram could imagine the fingers on the drumhead, tapping, brushing, rapping, moving from the edge of the tight-stretched hide into the center and then back again. An old image from a time he had thought forgotten came suddenly.

It had been a night in fall, on the trek back from the summer grazing grounds. He had been small, still looking up to his mother, and his legs had ached from walking all day. The smell of death was in the unseasonably warm air. Behind them, on the tundra, like scattered berries from a leaking basket, were the bodies of the reindeer that had fallen to the plague. Their bellies were bloated and their legs stuck up stiffly at obscene angles from their bodies. Flies buzzed audibly in the twilight.

Around a large fire the herdfolk had gathered, circling in rows around Nadunin the Najd. The najd's hair was streaked with white and hung long and wild past his face. He knelt on the hide of a white reindeer, so close to the fire that sweat streamed down his seamed and wrinkled body. He was clad in a loincloth of twisted yellow leather and his skin was a sallow brown like old bones moldering by a stream bank. His flesh was tight over his bones; Heckram had watched his ribs move with his breath. His kobdas was before him, and its strange voice filled the night. He tapped it with his hammerlike drumstick, making it cry out, now loudly, now softly. Gods were painted on the drumhead in red alder-bark juice, and also the Trollskott, the emblem used to inflict harm on the herds of an enemy.

The herdfolk ringed him; men, women, and children, gathered to see if respite might be gained through magic. Not far from this night's resting place was an ancient seite.

They passed it every year on their annual migration. The great gray stone streaked with black reared up from the earth, jutting out of the tundra, visible for miles in any direction. Over the years streaks of color and bits of fluttering cloth had been added to it by passing peoples, enhancing its mystical appearance. No one gave a name to it. It was a seite, a place of power, a stone idol erected by the mother earth herself, beyond the worship or appeasement of men. Earlier today they had watched Nadunin as he took an antler cut from a plague-killed reindeer and rubbed it over the surface of the seite. Eight times he had circled the seite, dragging the clacking antler against its rough surface, making one circuit for each season of the year. At the end of the final circuit, he had broken a tip from one antler prong and buried the rest in the gravelly clay at the foot of the seite. The tiny bit of antler prong he had taken back to the camp. All day Nadunin had sat before his fire, making his sorcery, singing his magic into the prong in a monotonous joik. With his knife he had worked into its brown surface special symbols of his trade. No one had disturbed the old najd or asked him what came next. His was the magic; they could but witness it.

When he had begun to gather dung and dried moss and bits of sticks for a fire that evening, all the herdfolk had wordlessly joined in his task. Soon the heap was mounded taller than a man, and they had watched him start the fire in the old way, with his own firebow. His bow was a rib, and the string on it was sinew. Heckram had heard older boys say that his firebow had been made from the body of the old najd before him. He had never doubted it. When the smoke had wafted, then billowed, from his bow's work, the herdfolk had gathered closer. The najd sat very close to the fire. He set the bit of antler, a charmed pointer of their fate now, atop the head of the red-figured drum and began to tap upon the skin with his little drum hammer.

With each tap of his hammer, the tiny charm skipped across the drum's surface, touching first the heel of this god, then the cheek of that one. Only the herdfolk's najd could know the meaning of its passage, and they watched, breathless, as the striking of his little bone hammer vibrated the surface. It skated, it danced, it jounced, and the sweat poured from the najd's skin. His eyes were far, far, and his lips moved soundlessly as he drummed. Closer and ever closer to the Trollskott the charm skipped.

Finally it settled on the red and black figure and clung there. Louder became the drumming, the little hammer striking the drumskin incessantly, but the hopping, jumping charm would not be budged from its chosen spot.

The words of Nadunin's chant began to be heard, breathless at first, then taking strength and filling the night. The essence of the sacred herbs he had ingested while making the charm could be smelled in the sweat that streamed down his ribs and the hollow track of his spine. His words were not in the language the herdfolk spoke to one another in their daily doings, but the tone was clear. He importuned, he pleaded, he begged, but still the charm clung stubbornly to the Trollskott. Then, with a dullness more deafening than the sharp thumpings that had preceded it, the drumhead split.

The gap in the stretched leather opened as suddenly as a good knife opens the belly of a rabbit, racing from the hammer's head to cross the drum and open a mouth in the Trollskott. The Trollskott swallowed the fate of the herdfolk. Drum and najd were suddenly silent.

Heckram couldn't remember what had happened next. He thought he had been bundled away by his mother, carried off hurriedly to their tent and tucked into his blankets, closed off from the terrible omen of the split kobdas. The herdfolk had been swallowed in their own curse. So he had heard whispered the next day. At the next deep lake they passed, the najd had slit the throat of a fine, fat vaja. He had opened her belly and filled the hollow within with stones, and caused the body to be sunk deep in the lake. The offering should have helped. But three days later the najd himself was discovered crouched by his arran inside his tent, staring into the dead ashes on the stones. The murky smoke of sacred herbs had been thick inside the skin tent. Ranged before him were the bits of bone, feather, and stone from his shaman's pouch. No one else could read what his castings had told him on his last journey into the spirit world.

The najd was dead.

'Maybe one of the other herders brought a drum. Maybe they're trying to signal us,'

Lasse suggested softly.

Heckram gave a doubting snort. 'No one else followed us up this canyon. The others stayed in the lower hills, closer to the stream. And no one would drum to call us. They'd whistle.'

'I know,' Lasse admitted and fell silent again. Heckram could feel the tension in the back that pressed against his. He didn't blame the boy. His own muscles were stretched tight, ready to knot in their tension. The drum thudded on and on in its unhurried rhythm, the sound carrying hollowly through the night and the blowing wet snow.

Steadily it tapped on, but its very regularity seemed to mean it was building to something, to some ominous change. Every tap of the thrumming drumhead drew his muscles a notch tighter. He strained his eyes into the darkness until points of light danced before him. He still saw nothing. Most eerie of all, the reindeer dozed placidly.

The snow fell more thickly, swirling into the rough shelter to cling to his eyelashes.

They melted on his lashes and shattered his vision with prismatic distortions. He could see nothing clearly, but the things he could almost see were not of the daylight world.

The hair prickled up on the back of his neck, the flesh on his body crawled, as the remnants of ancient hackles rose in hostility and fear. He dared not speak to Lasse, but took comfort from the solid warmth pressed against his back.

The hide of the world had been peeled back and he looked on its mysterious inner workings. Lights and shapes and shadows surrounded the little camp and peered at him. That brief flurry of silent snow that stirred the branches of a small birch might have been a white owl, but for the way it disintegrated into snowflakes after peering at him. From the corner of one eye he spotted the white brush of a snow fox, only to have it dematerialize into a fall of snow from a branch.

The drum thudded on monotonously, and Heckram's heart matched its beat. His head jerked as his eyes twitched from one vision to the next, each creature disappearing just as he almost recognized it. He heard sharp panting breath behind him, thought it was Lasse's, and in that instant missed the warm press against his back.

'Lasse!' he cried, springing to his feet so that he stood up through the dry branches that had formed their shelter. A stub on a dead branch raked down his cheek, tearing the flesh, and he felt the warm blood run. He gasped with the pain and clapped his hand to it as he stared wildly about. He could see no sign of the boy. Enraged with fear, he ripped the crude shelter open, flinging and kicking the branches aside. He watched as the falling snow began to coat their sleeping skins and gear bags. Lasse was gone, and he was alone with the muffling snow and the deafening drumming that now rose one notch in rhythm and pitch. It drove him to a frenzy, and he roared wordlessly at the night, at the cloaking snow and the unseen drummer.

He sprang clear of the collapsed shelter, feeling its poles and branches tumble as he leaped away. He scanned the snow about the camp for tracks of the fleeing boy, but the falling snow had already masked them. 'Lasse!' he roared, pushing the sound from this throat with all his strength. But the covering snow bore the sound to the ground and buried it while the steady drum throbs marched over his cry. There was no reply.

'Lasse!' he cried again, and his voice broke on the word. He thought he spotted a shadowy movement by the blasted stump, and he walked toward it. Nothing. But there, again, in the blackness under that pine something shifted. A dozen steps took him close enough to see that the shadows were empty. 'Lasse?' he called again, more softly.

Whatever it was slunk deeper into the shadows.

Fear such as he had never known assailed him. He knew it was luring him on, deeper into the woods, and yet he knew he would follow it because there was no safety in returning to the tumbled shelter. His bow was back there, buried under scattered boughs and drifting snow, as was his great knife, and had he been hunting any beast of flesh he would have returned for them. But the drum had transformed the night. He no longer moved in a world ordered by logic, in which the hunter armed himself and went after his prey. The reality of the forest had shifted, and he knew he moved in the spirit world, where man was seldom the hunter. He walked forward blindly, following whatever summoned him, entering a tunnel of swirling snow. The drumming followed.

The night was a small place, bounded by falling snow and tree trunks. He followed something he never saw, but felt as a darker place that moved ahead of him, blocking the swirling snow and lighter trunks of the birches from his vision. Occasionally he glimpsed other things on the periphery, pale shapes that altered for an instant the pattern of the constantly swirling snow. He refused to let them distract him. He no longer called for Lasse, for he knew it was not Lasse he followed. Wherever Lasse was, he could not help him, nor could Lasse aid Heckram. On these journeys, a man was alone.

He came at last to a clearing. He could not see its boundaries, but as he stepped away from the last trees, he saw no more trunks, no more swoop of needled branches to block his vision. There was only the eternally swirling white around him and, far above, the muffled silver of a full moon behind the clouds. He stumbled forward, his feet and legs heavy with the clinging damp snow. He was not cold, but panting with effort, and sweat ran salty and stinging into his eyes and the cut on his face. He scooped a handful of cold snow, held it against the wound. The white flakes increased suddenly, rushing into his face, blinding him with their light. He closed his eyes, then flung up an arm before his face to ward off their cold touch.

When he let his arm fall again, the snow and the drum had ceased. Around him the night was black and silver. The round moon dangled heavy in a black and starry sky over an endless clearing of smooth white snow. There was no boundary to the plain on which he stood; it was vast as the tundra. Briefly, he wondered about the trees he had passed; then, as he took in the scene more completely, he did not dare to look back for them, forgot them completely.

In the center of his vision, dominating the endless plain before him, was the seite. He recognized it and knew it, though he had never seen it as he saw it now, coated thick with the snows of winter. Gray and black it reared up before him, its rough irregular surface almost suggesting a living creature, but never baring enough detail to make it clear which one. White snow clung lacily to the uneven planes of its face. Red as blood were the symbols someone had painted on it. He knew them from the drumhead of the kobdas before it had split, recognized their awesome significance. He took a step forward, and his keen nose knew then that they were painted in blood, fresh warm blood that scented the clean cold night with its strength.

The Wolf atop the seite sat up. So huge he was, Heckram did not understand how he had not seen him before. So huge he was that no wolf could he be, but only Wolf. A light wind ruffled his coat, and the silver tips of his guard hairs sparkled in the moonlight. Mighty thewed shoulders rippled beneath his lush hide. His small ears were pricked sharp, swiveled toward the man. His nose was black, and his nostrils flared thrice as he took in Heckram's scent. Wolf was silent and still, staring at Heckram with eyes that were now red, now green, now yellow. Heckram returned his gaze, silent and still as Wolf himself.

Wolf stood suddenly, looming over Heckram. Slowly he stretched, his chest dipping down behind his outstretched forelegs in a movement that could have been a greeting.

He rose from his stretch, then leaped, higher and farther than any mortal wolf could, to land with silent lightness before Heckram. Heckram did not move. The rules of the day world did not apply here. One did not flee or challenge Wolf. Eye to eye he stood with the enormous creature. Hot, rank breath puffed against his face. The yellow eyes measured him as Heckram stood firm in their glare. Slowly, a great gray paw lifted from the ground. Wolf held it before Heckram's face, let him study the black claws on the wide-spread foot. He did not flinch. The great paw touched his face. He felt the roughness of the toe pads, the strength and weight of the huge beast behind it, the drag of the dull nails down his cheek. Then Wolf turned from him, leaped once more to sit atop the seite. He looked down on Heckram.

Something ran on his face, dripped from his chin. Slowly he drew his hand free of his mitten and lifted it to his cheek. The wound stung as he placed his hand against it. Then he lifted his hand free, saw the blackness of his blood on his palm and fingers. Silently he stepped forward, to press his bloody hand against the seite's cold surface. He felt the seite press back against his flesh, felt it suck the warm blood from his hand and take it deep within itself. When at last he drew his hand back from the stony surface, the handprint that remained was not red, but white as snow. He looked up at Wolf, smiling, and Wolf looked down at him and parted his jaws, showing his red tongue and white teeth as he laughed joyously. It was done. The bargain was sealed.

The snow fell again, suddenly and solidly, in a sheet that coated Heckram's face and filled his mouth and nose, making him sputter for air. He heard the drum muttering again. The wind pushed against him, and he staggered blindly through the snowstorm.

He opened his eyes a crack, and the wind drove icy flakes into them. He reached to wipe the snow from his face and felt the brush of branches as they dragged against his sleeve. He clawed the snow from his eyes frantically and stood for a long moment in disorientation. The black night was silent around him, the snowfall long over. But where was he? A huge whitened stump loomed up immediately before him. This was what had snagged at his sleeve. Then from behind him he caught the familiar click and shift of the herd's movements by night. He turned.

Their animals were spread out on the slope below him. The stump behind him was the same one that had tricked him earlier. The crude shelter he and Lasse had built was but a dozen steps away from him. It was as they had built it, and within it he could make out the shape of Lasse burrowed into his sleeping skins. He staggered toward it, confused and strangely grateful.

A lump rose in his throat. Lasse was safe, and he himself was returned alive from that other place. How had the world seemed such a bitter place earlier this night, when it was the only place where one might know the sweetness of life? The heart-thumping euphoria of survival washed over him.

He was within arm's reach of the shelter before he noticed the man who sat by the door. He was perfectly still, his hooded head bowed over his bent knees. His attire of white fox skin had merged him with the drifted snow he crouched in. Heckram stopped still. His dream was too recent and the man too motionless. What might look out at him from that hood?

'Who are you?' he demanded in a low voice. He swallowed the quaver at the end of his words.

The man turned his face up. The clouded eyes fixed unerringly on Heckram's, chilling him to his soul and beyond. The old man smiled, and the gaps between his teeth were black and bottomless in the moonlight. 'Carp I am,' he said in a soft voice.

'An old man whose long journey is nearly at an end. You would be one of the herdfolk of Capiam's tribe?'

Heckram nodded briefly, reassured by the man's mention of the herdlord, but still not liking the circumstances. 'I am.'

'And your name is ...' the old man pressed.

'Heckram,' he conceded. 'My companion is Lasse.'

'Heckram,' the old man repeated in a voice well pleased. 'Ah, Heckram. You wouldn't have a bit of meat about your camp for an old man to gnaw on, would you?

Or anything at all? I have come far seeking your folk, and am both weary and hungry.'

'I'll see what I can find,' Heckram muttered. He felt naked as he stooped to crawl past the old man into the shelter. Something about the seamed old face and murky eyes made him feel vulnerable to the darker side of the night. He didn't want ever to be alone with that old man. He took care to nudge Lasse awake in passing. Inside his gear bag he found strips of jerky and a rind of frozen cheese. Lasse grunted complainingly as Heckram carefully crawled back over him to the old man.

'I was asleep, you gut-bag,' Lasse muttered grumpily.

'We've got a guest,' Heckram informed him.

'I know. He arrived right after you decided to go off into the woods. But he would hardly speak a word to me; said he was waiting for you, and I should get some sleep. If he doesn't mind if I sleep, why should you? And what took you so long, anyway? Too much cheese?'

Heckram let the conversation die. It was something he might sort out with Lasse later, in private, or perhaps not at all. While he was very curious to know what Lasse had experienced that night, he was not at all eager to share his moments with Wolf with anyone. They had become, inexplicably, precious and private. Terror could be a form of intimacy. He considered for an instant, as he handed the food to the old man, that Lasse might be guarding a similar treasure.

Carp took the food, sniffed it curiously in a way that put Heckram in mind of Kerlew, and then began gnawing damply at one end of a piece of jerky.

After several moments of watching his guest chew, he ventured a question. 'You say you are looking for Capiam's herdfolk. Why? You don't look like a trader.'

Carp bit off the partially masticated piece and swallowed it. 'I'm not. I'm a shaman.

I'm seeking for Kerlew, my apprentice. Capiam's herdfolk will lead me to him.' He thrust the end of the jerky into his mouth again and spoke around it as he chewed.

'Tillu, his mother, is a healer. When you go to have her mend that gouge down your face, you can take me along.'

Heckram put cautious fingertips to his stinging cheek. It wasn't that deep a gash, 'It won't need healing. It'll close up on its own.'

'Do you think so?' asked the old man. 'I don't.' He cackled short and sudden, then grinned at Heckram around the jerky in his mouth, 'I wouldn't be surprised if it was infected. Wolf claws can leave a nasty scar. The sooner we go to the healer and her son, the better.'

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The cavalcade of reindeer crunched their slow way down the hillside. Their toe bones clicked as their wide cloven hooves spread their weight out on the frozen crust of the snow. Their heads bobbed, their white tails flicked in an endless pattern too complex to be deciphered. Somewhere, at the head of the line, Jakke guided the herd's lead animal down through the dark pine fells. They returned to their talvsit now, traveling by night under white stars in a black sky. Usually he was sensitive to the stark beauty of these nights, but tonight Heckram felt irritable, and deadened to such things.

Jakke was an experienced herder, and he set an easy pace that would still have them back at the talvsit by morning. The vajor were heavy with their calves now, their sides bulging out like misshapen packsaddles. They minced awkwardly down the trail, their swollen bellies swaying gently from side to side as they felt for the best footing.

Heckram guarded them jealously, seeing the doubling of the herd in their bulging sides.

He had another reason to travel slowly. While Lasse skied ahead of him through the darkness, alongside their animals, Heckram came at the rear of the herd, leading a harke with Carp perched atop it. The old man had attached himself to Heckram; Heckram did not enjoy the role. Heckram made enough sense of his strangely accented words to know that a shaman was a najd, a wizard, one who crossed ceaselessly between the day world and that other world of which no man spoke lightly. Heckram knew enough of that world to know that Carp was not a man it would be wise to offend. Yet he did not want to know more of the man or be drawn into his confidences.

Just being physically close to Carp made Heckram nervous. It was hard to ignore his endless bragging stories and impossible to avoid his nagging questions. But while Heckram patiently led the harke with Carp clinging and swaying on its packsaddle, he made no effort to befriend the old man or to ask any questions of him. He deliberately kept his eyes fixed on the rump of the animal in front of him, ignoring the shaman at his side. It didn't discourage the najd.

Carp nattered on, unashamed of riding a harke like a child while Heckram plodded beside him in the dark. His words rattled off Heckram's bent shoulders like flung pebbles.'... and in that hunt, three men were able to bring down the bear that had been raiding our food stores. Enu fell to the bear, but that was as the spirits decreed and not a thing to mourn. Enu had offended Bear in the first place, by letting his woman eat of the heart of the first he-bear killed that season, or none of that bad luck would have found us. Then, after we had skinned the bear and taken the meat, I put the skull in the hollow of a burned birch stump, and within its jaws I placed the bear's heart and Enu's heart, joined together by a pine stake thrust through both of them. Thus was Bear satisfied, and we lost no more meat caches that year. And four moons later, Enu's woman birthed a man-child, and on his skull and on the back of his shoulders was coarse black hair, just like Bear's. Such a hunter as that boy grew to be! What furies could take him!

Sometimes in the heat of a hunt, he would fling his weapon down and leap at the beast, his teeth flashing whiter than a wolf's. He would grab the deer by its antlers and force its nose to the earth, and then ...'

Heckram plodded on, letting the old man's voice blend with the clicking of the reindeer's hooves and the crunch of snow under them. By morning they would reach the talvsit, he told himself. And then ... Images of a sod hut, its hearth cold, of old Kuoljok's empty eyes, of Ristin's careful smile. The unfinished traveling chest crouched in his hut like a reproached dog. In the gray light of dawn, he'd have to face it.

Each thought dragged at him, pulling his spirit down deeper into a cold, numb place.

He pushed his mind on. After a few days of rest, the real spring migration would begin.

All the herdfolk, all the animals, moving from the foothills and forest out onto the open tundra. Sweet spring grasses springing up as soon as the snow bared the ground, the vajor dropping their gangly calves, the gentle wind smelling of tundra flowers as it wandered in and out of the scattered tents. The wide places under the unsetting sun.

It was no good. None of it would be any good, until this thing with Elsa was finished. It was like a task that would give him no peace until it was accomplished. The rest of his life would have to be put off until it was solved. He would take no joy in spring, would not find satisfaction in the new calves, would not relish the fresh greens, until he had made some sense of Elsa's death. Like a terrible debt he must pay. He scratched at the cut down his face, distracting himself. It was healing well, despite Carp's prediction.

'... but that is the value of a shaman. We are the go-betweens, who stitch the worlds together like sinews joining hides into garments. People without a shaman are people alone and half blind. Their lives can make no sense, for they are only living half of it.

Things happen to them, and they cannot understand why, or what they can do about it.

Some lose their spirit guides, and sicken and die without knowing why. Children are born and grow and go blindly through their lives, sometimes offending the very spirits that would shelter and guide them. Their days are long and sad and filled with misfortune. Life becomes a burden to them, and they are vulnerable to any who wish to work harm upon them.'

Heckram found himself nodding to the najd's words. Long, sad days, filled with misfortune.

'Don't you want to ask what I can do for such a one?' Carp's words hung black in the night. Heckram turned to him slowly.

The old man's pale eyes showed almost white in the night, gripping him with their strangeness. He stared into them, unable to reply. Carp answered his own question.

'Such a one can be put on a pathway, and ushered into a journey back to his spirit beast. The journey is dangerous and only the strong return. No one can go with a man on that journey; he must undertake it alone. Along the way, he may meet spirits. If he has wisdom, when he meets his spirit guide he will know him, and he will know how to bind his spirit guide to himself. Then, when the man returns from his journey, his spirit guide comes back with him. If he is very wise, he listens to his spirit beast and accepts his aid. Wisest of all is the one who seeks the guidance of a shaman to find what his spirit beast desires, and what he must do to restore balance to his life.'

Heckram realized with a start that he was standing still, his feet numb in the snow as he stared into Carp's clouded eyes. He no longer heard the click and crunch of the moving herd. He was alone in the blackness of night with the peculiar old man crouched on the back of the harke like some predator ready to sink its claws. A wind slipped past them and wandered off through the trees. An unworldly silence followed it, quenching all familiar night sounds. No branch sighed in the wind, no twigs rustled to a lemming's passage. The stillness was complete.

'Look!' The shaman's shrill whisper cracked the silence. 'Look who follows!'

Heckram turned wide eyes back the way they had come. There was nothing there, only the trail wending off into darkness. He held his breath, listening, as his eyes scanned for any shift of shadow. There was none.

'Nothing follows us, old man,' he rumbled softly.

'Not us!' hissed Carp, a note of laughter in his whisper. 'Not us. You!'

Unwillingly Heckram looked back once more. He stiffened. His grip tightened on the harke's lead rope. Something large and shaggy slipped across the trail behind them and merged with the trees on the other side. He did not breathe as he eased the reindeer into movement. The harke's eyes shone round and black, his nostrils flaring as he snorted out his fear. When Heckram tried to breathe, the air jammed in his throat and he wheezed. He stumbled off the hard crust of the trail and plunged knee-deep into softer snow. Frantically he dragged himself up and tried to increase his pace. On the harke's back, Carp rocked back and forth in silent paroxysms of laughter. Heckram longed to strike him and knew he did not dare. Only a fool offended a najd. His movement made the panicky animal stagger. It jerked against the halter and tried to rear despite the shaman's weight on its back. Heckram dragged it on, taking long swift strides.

A part of him knew what followed. Another part of him refused the possibility of such a thing. Glancing back did no good. The treacherous moonlight showed a flash of fang, a glint of silver guard hairs, a gleam of lambent eyes, but never betrayed the follower entire.

Sweat broke out over his whole body, trickling down his back and ribs. 'Grip to the pack frame,' he croaked to Carp. 'Hold tight so that if we have to run, you won't be thrown.'

'There's no outrunning him!' Carp cackled, spraying spittle. The old man rocked in the packsaddle.

'Maybe not,' Heckram muttered. 'But we'll try. I'm not going to try to stand and face that.'

'Run, then!' cackled the old man. 'I'm sure he won't mind! The faster you run, the sooner we'll get there.'

Heckram burst suddenly into motion. The reindeer beside him sprang forward gladly, stretching and straining to put distance between itself and that which followed.

The najd clung to the lurching packsaddle. Heckram gave the harke the best part of the trail, so that at every fifth or ninth step he plunged through the snow crust and had to wallow up again. Twice he dared to look back, and each time found his pursuer no farther behind. The whisk of grayish shape, the flash of glowing eye, haunted him.

He lifted his eyes to glance down the trail before him, hoping to see the other reindeer and herders. Wolves did not attack groups of men and animals. In numbers there would be safety. His feet pounded on. Any moment he expected to see the gray shape slip past him, to head the reindeer off and turn them back into the pack that certainly followed. He ran until the reindeer was staggering and a lancing pain stabbed up through his ribs. Sweat stung his eyes, the najd stoically bounced on the packsaddle, the reindeer made a bad step, and, as the snow gave way beneath its hooves, it went to its knees.

Heckram turned, pulling his knife, to face their pursuer. He caught a glimpse of something blending suddenly into the gray shadows and trunks of the surrounding forest. It should have been pressing its advantage, rushing forward to harry the exhausted man and animal. Nothing. The blowing reindeer shuddered its way back onto the path and stood with its head drooping. Terror had wearied it as much as exertion; the old shaman was no heavier than its normal workload. The harke had run as only wolves make a reindeer run.

'It was real!' Heckram turned defiant eyes to the old man.

Carp no longer smiled. 'Real. That's what I've been telling you. But you did not seem to be listening.' He leaned so close that Heckram saw the tiny bubbles in the spittle on his lips. 'You insult him,' the old man whispered harshly. 'Was not the bargain made last night, and sealed with blood? Trust him. Give over your vengeance to him, and let your own mind be emptied, ready for what he will ask of you.' Slowly Carp straightened on the reindeer. 'Let us go now.' Despite the jostling ride, Carp sat calmly.

His fogged eyes looked deep into Heckram's eyes, but barred all entry to themselves.

Heckram turned aside from him, shaking his head wearily, baffled and somehow angry with him.

He looked back again. Nothing. Just white snow. He realized abruptly that dawn was well begun. Looking about himself again, he recognized the trees and the lay of the hills. The village was not far now.

As if to prove him correct, he heard a glad call from down the trail and turned to find Ristin hastening toward them. Welcoming words spilled from her.

'I was worried when you did not come in with the rest. Lasse said you were right behind them, but did not know why you were coming so slowly. He offered to look for you, but he was nearly asleep on his feet, so I told him not to bother.' Her words were nearly apologetic, but her eyes roamed over her son in obvious relief. Heckram's glance was equally piercing. Was the dawn light that harsh, or had she aged in the days he had been gone? There was strain in the lines about her eyes and mouth, but also relief and gladness as she looked on him. Then, as she noticed the man with him, she became more formal.

'You must be Carp, of whom Lasse spoke. Welcome to the talvsit of Capiam's herdfolk.' She glanced quickly at Heckram. 'When Lasse said you were bringing a guest, I took it upon myself to kindle a fire on your hearth and prepare food for you both.'

'It will never be said that Capiam's herdfolk were inhospitable to a stranger,'

Heckram said to Carp, but he wondered for whom she had really kindled the fire. Had she known how much he had dreaded coming home to a hut with a cold arran and the musty smell of emptiness throughout?

He smiled his thanks at his mother, and she met his eyes with warmth and sympathy. Then she frowned. 'What have you done to your cheek?' she asked, reaching to touch his face.

'Scratched it on a branch. It looks much worse than it is.' He pulled away from her touch.

'Let's hope so. Still, I think you should see the healer as soon as you can.'

Heckram frowned. 'Can't you make me a poultice for it, Ristin? We used to manage without a healer.'

Ristin moved her head, studying the slash. 'Yes, we managed well enough, if you don't count the people scarred and dead that didn't have to be. If that gash were on your arm, I might try to treat it myself. But not that close to your eye. It's for a trained healer, and as soon as possible. Eat first, and get a bit of sleep, but then go to her. An infection like that is nothing to trifle with.'

Heckram reached to pat at his face. It was swollen stiff, and throbbing pain echoed through it. He glanced with narrowed eyes at Carp, but the old man said nothing.

He made no move to dismount from the harke either. With a sigh, Heckram tugged at the weary beast's halter. They started down the path to the talvsit. His mother gossiped as they went. Heckram listened numbly, letting the words slide by him, responding to her questions by rote as his tired brain chewed at other mysteries. He thanked her for unloading his gear and putting it in his hut. Yes, he knew they'd have to break a few more harke to pack this year; no, he hadn't decided which ones yet. No, he hadn't had any problems with the reindeer on the grazing grounds; yes, it might very well be an early spring. He nodded as he heard that two of Bror's vajor had already calved. It was early, but calves born now would keep up with the herd better on the migration. He was rather hoping his own vajor would calve soon. It never hurt a calf to have a few days to find its legs before having to follow the herd.

Then Ristin was saying that Capiam had decided they would leave ten days from now. Everyone was in the usual spring uproar, putting winter equipment up on the racks, taking down summer gear, mending the worn or making new harness.

Heckram nodded to her endless commentary as they walked through the talvsit. He noted with detached humor that many folk were turning to stare at his companion.

Carp's outlandish garments marked him a foreigner, and Heckram noted how quickly the eyes of the villagers turned aside and down when they met his gray-filmed gaze.

Carp was enjoying his grand entrance. He sat up straight on the harke and nodded down on the herdfolk they passed. His mouth hung slightly agape with pleasure.

Heckram was torn between being annoyed at Carp and enjoying the stir he caused.

Pirtsi watched them with gaping mouth; then the youth whirled and ran up the path.

Well, the herdlord would soon know there was a stranger in the village, staying at Heckram's hut. He wondered if he would send Joboam to investigate, or come himself.

The old herdlord would have come himself to welcome any stranger, no matter how humble, and to ask news of the far places. That had been in better times, though.

Heckram was willing to wager that Capiam would send Joboam.

'Heckram?'

He paused at the questioning note in Ristin's voice, and, as he halted, he realized that he had unthinkingly been making for her hut. His own was off to the left, past Stina's.

His tragedy, forgotten for a moment, weighed on his heart again.

'Let me take the harke for you,' Ristin said. 'You must be tired. I'll peg him out near good feed. You take care of your guest and settle down for some rest. I'll come by later this afternoon.'

Heckram felt the sudden weight of Carp's hand on his shoulder. The old man leaned on him as he clambered heavily down. He smiled at Ristin, dismissing her with a benign wave. 'Don't come back this afternoon,' he instructed her grandly. 'Heckram will be taking me to the healer Tillu.'

Ristin's back stiffened at Carp's condescending tone. Heckram didn't blame her. But she turned graciously, seeming to remember that the old man was a stranger to their talvsit. She would tolerate his foreign rudeness and attribute it to ignorance. She looked straight into Heckram's eyes as she spoke her next words. 'The meat on your rack is thawing. Best use it up soon, perhaps to pay Tillu. Though she may have no need of meat.' She paused for half a breath, touched her son's hand. 'Joboam may be at Tillu's.

He has been finding out for Capiam what the healer will need for the journey. So, if you do go that way ...' She let the sentence dangle, but her meaning was clear. Avoid trouble. She tugged at the weary harke's bridle.

Heckram felt his mind whirl and questions filled him. 'Joboam is bringing the healer on the migration with us?' he muttered bewilderedly, but Ristin was out of earshot.

Carp grinned his gap-toothed smile and tugged at Heckram's sleeve.

'First, eat. Carp is very hungry. Then, sleep, and then we will go find Tillu the healer.

Yes, and Kerlew, my apprentice. You are surprised that Tillu is going with the herdfolk?

Before the day is over, others will be much more surprised than that. Much, much more surprised!' Carp laughed sprayingly and dragged him toward his own hut.

The hot throbbing of his face woke him. Dim afternoon light seeped in through the smoke hole of the hut. Carp snored noisily on the hides Ristin had placed by the hearth.

She had prepared all for them. Soup had been simmering in a pot near the hearth stones, dry firewood piled neatly by the door, the sleeping hides aired and spread smooth. He wondered briefly how it would have been to have come home with Elsa.

For a moment he imagined how he might have unloaded the harke as she gathered dry wood and rekindled the fire on their hearth. He stared at the unfinished chest in the corner and then pulled his eyes away from it. Why couldn't he just say to himself,

'That's done,' and let it go? Let it all go and get on with his own life. He tried to roll over and find sleep again, but the press of his swollen cheek against the skins was a throbbing agony. He touched the pulsing swelling with careful fingertips. Last night, he had thought he was healing well. Today, this ugly festering demanded attention.

He glared at the smug old najd and then started as Carp's eyelids slid up and his snoring stopped in midrasp. The shaman sat up smoothly, regarding Heckram with his blank stare. He didn't yawn or stretch or scratch himself. He simply sat up and announced, 'And now we go to see Tillu the healer. Bad infection, yes? Face hurts a lot, right?' He grinned at Heckram amiably. 'Tillu's a healer. She cannot tell a man with an infected face to go away.' Carp laughed jovially, as if at a marvelous prank. Heckram did not join in.

The path to Tillu's hut seemed longer than he remembered it, and better trodden. To either side of them, the afternoon sun was melting the soft snow that lay in the open places between the trees. In the shadows snow lingered, more icy than soft now, and the path itself was a packed ridge of ice that meandered under the trees. He tugged at the collar of his tunic, loosening it to let more of his body heat escape. He wished he were alone. Give his revenge to Wolf? He needed to mull over that idea. He needed to know what Wolf would ask in return.

He had expected Carp to complain when they set out on foot, but the old man scuttled willingly along. Heckram had never seen legs so bowed or an old man so spry.

But then, he had ridden down from the mountains on the back of a harke, and he hadn't made a wild dash with a wolf at his heels in the dawn. Heckram sighed away the memory of the encounter, pushing it down with all the other things he didn't want to consider. Vainly he tried to just keep on living his life, ignoring all the events that tried to jar him into action. He wanted, if he wanted anything, to just keep on being himself; to hunt the wild herd for more animals to add to his stock, to sit of an evening and plait a lasso or fletch an arrow, or carve a spoon. Kerlew and his spoons. How was he doing with his carving? he wondered. Then he shook his head at himself, marveling how once more he had dragged himself back to thinking of his problems. Could he just give them over to Wolf?

He took a deep breath of the air. Spring smells. Moss awakening to life after its frozen dormancy all winter. Sap was moving in the trees, their buds just starting to swell, yet the bite of their odor scented the air. And why was Kerlew one of his problems? he suddenly asked himself. Forget it.

'Top of this rise and we'll see Tillu's tent.' He spoke over his shoulder to Carp. He had taken the lead, ostensibly to show the way, but mostly to prevent conversation.

He'd be glad to be rid of the old shaman. Then he felt a twinge of guilt at leaving his problem at Tillu's door. Ridiculous. Carp was not a problem to Tillu, he was her son's mentor. And the old man had hinted that he was more than that to her. He glanced back at the crook-legged old man with his foggy eyes. He frowned to himself. Well, it wasn't any of his business, anyway.

He paused at the top of the hill to let Carp catch up with him. Wordlessly he pointed through the trees to the just visible tent. Heckram spotted a harke, then two grazing to one side of the tent. Probably hobbled there. He recognized one as Joboam's and felt a tightening in his gut. He remembered Ristin's warning and set his jaw carefully. No trouble. No problems. Take the old man to Tillu, get his face tended, and then go home and sleep. And sleep.

He had been so deep in his own thoughts, and the sight that greeted him as he stepped into the clearing was so unexpected, that he stood staring.

Kerlew, rolled into a ball, lay on the melting snow and exposed earth before Joboam.

His long narrow hands were clasped over his head, his eyes squeezed shut, and his mouth quavered as the long ululating wail of a very small and frightened child escaped them. Even as Heckram stood frozen by consternation, Joboam, unaware of them, stooped to grip Kerlew's tunic and drag the boy up. He lifted him high, his dangling feet clear of the earth, his leather shirt tightening about his throat and stifling his cries.

'When I tell you to do something,' Joboam said in a deadly, pleasant voice, 'you will do it. Swiftly.' The great muscles in his upper arm bunched, and then Kerlew was flying through the air. He landed, rolling, and curled into a ball. He made no sound, only gasping for the air knocked out of him. Joboam advanced on him, and suddenly Heckram knew that what he had witnessed was a repetition of what had gone before and was about to happen again. A rush of angry strength flooded him.

'Joboam!' he hissed as the big man reached again for Kerlew.

Joboam's attention twitched up from the boy to Heckram moving in on him. Joboam set his weight and crouched like a snarling wolverine, and the same unholy anticipation lit his face.

'Heckram!' wailed Kerlew with the first breath he drew. With the resilience of children and madmen, he scrabbled to his feet and raced to intercept Heckram, flinging himself at him. Kerlew gripped him around the waist, dragging at him, panting into his shirt, wordless with fear. Caught between strides, Heckram all but fell over the boy. He lurched to a halt and put his hands on Kerlew's shoulders. He tried to loosen the boy's grip, but he clung like lichen on a rock. Beneath his touch the boy was shaking still; Heckram glared wordlessly at Joboam, no words strong enough for the promises he wished to make the man.

For a moment Joboam was likewise wordless, expecting Heckram to cast the boy aside and come after him. When he knew that Kerlew's clinch had stopped him, Joboam bared a mocking grin. 'Two of a kind,' he sneered. Then, as he studied Heckram's frozen face, he added, 'The cut's an improvement. Wish I had done it myself. If you want Tillu, she's busy now. You'll have to come back later.'

'I can tell she isn't here,' Heckram growled so low that the words were barely intelligible. 'You'd never dare to treat the boy that way if she were.'

Joboam's smile never wavered. 'No? Things have changed while you've been gone.

The little healer has come to appreciate me. I'll be seeing that she travels comfortably when she joins us for the spring migration. And I think that the boy will have learned some manners by then.'

Kerlew made a fearful noise and buried his face deeper in Heckram's shirt. He tried to untangle himself and step around the boy, but Kerlew only gripped tighter.

'You are wrong, big man. I am the one who will be giving the boy his lessons from now on. Come, Kerlew. Look up. Have you no greeting for me?'

For a long moment Kerlew didn't move. Then his face lifted from Heckram's shirt front and he peeked warily at the source of the voice. 'Carp!' he cried out, relief and joy in his voice. Abandoning Heckram, he flung himself toward the twisted old najd. 'Every day I have sung the calling song. Every day!' the boy rebuked him gladly.

'And every day I have heard you, but some days not as loud as others. It was a long way for me to come. And some trails an old man travels by ways longer than a boy's, and somewhat slower. But here I am. I have come.' His old hands patted the boy, smoothing the tousled hair, lightly touching his shoulders and arms as if to reassure himself that the boy was real. Kerlew wriggled under his touch like a pleased puppy.

Heckram watched them, trying to decipher the emotion spilling through him. Hadn't he believed Carp when he said Kerlew was his apprentice? Hadn't he known Kerlew would be glad to see him? Then what was this he felt; surely not jealousy? His hands hung empty.

Joboam stared at the old man whom Kerlew greeted so strangely. There was appraisal on his face and bafflement. The scrawny little man spoke so boldly, but had nothing visible to back up his authority. He did not keep a wary eye toward Joboam; he dismissed him altogether. It made no sense. No one treated him so. No one dared to ignore him. As if reading his thoughts, Carp suddenly lifted his eyes from Kerlew and fixed Joboam with an ice-white stare. Joboam expelled air from his lungs as if he had been struck. He could not meet that stare. But when he looked away from Carp, he found Heckram, his arms now free, staring at him. He was not smiling, or glaring. His face was impassively cold as he stepped toward Joboam.

'Carp!'

The word that cut across the clearing was more a cry of disbelief than a greeting. All eyes turned to Tillu. She stood at the edge of the clearing, an armload of white moss held to her chest. Her face was as white as the moss, and she rocked where she stood.

Yet the old najd looked up with a grin to her cry, while Kerlew danced about him, fairly shouting, 'He's come, mother, he's come, just as I knew he would! Didn't I tell you he'd come to us! And this time he will teach me all of it, all the magic, all the songs!'

Heckram had halted at Tillu's cry. Now both men looked from her to the najd.

Silently she came across the slushy clearing. Bits of the moss she had gathered dripped from her arms; she paid no heed to it. Her face was white and strained. As if she looked upon a ghost, Heckram thought, and felt a night chill creep up his back. From what he knew of the old man, he very well could be from the spirit world. The najd gripped Kerlew by the shoulders, turned him to face his mother, and held the boy in front of him, like a shield or a hostage. There was defiance in the cold smile he turned on Tillu over the innocent boy's head. The contrast between Kerlew's ecstatic grin and the najd's sneer grated on Heckram and raised a strange guilt in him. What had he guided to Tillu's tent?

'You did not forget me so soon, did you Tillu? Surely you knew I would be coming for my apprentice?' Carp asked sweetly.

'Your apprentice?' This from Joboam. 'You've come to take him away?' There was appraisal in his voice, and Heckram didn't like it. Why was Joboam so interested in Kerlew?

'He is mine, yes. Mine to train. But not to take away. No. A shaman must have a people to guide. I have chosen the herdfolk for Kerlew.'

'Shaman?' Joboam tried the strange word on his tongue.

'Najd.' Heckram filled it in softly and enjoyed the look of sudden wariness that spread over Joboam's face.

But in another instant, Joboam was hardening his face and asserting an authority that was not his. 'And what does Capiam say to this?'

'Nothing, yet, for no one has told him. But I expect the headman will be most welcoming. I have never yet met a headman who was inhospitable to me.'

There it was again, that arrogant assumption of authority and power. This najd, with his manner so like Joboam's, already made Joboam's jaws ache. Heckram could tell, and he took a furtive delight in it.

'Kerlew,' Tillu said brokenly.

The boy reached up to pat one of the wrinkled hands on his shoulders. He seemed impervious to her distress as he asked, 'May I take Carp into the tent and give him tea and some of the salt fish that Ibba brought us? I am sure he is both hungry and weary.'

His speech had a new fluidity to it, his face a new confidence. As if his encounter with Joboam had never occurred.

'No, no,' the najd cut in. 'Heckram has fed me well and I have rested. I would rather walk with you, Kerlew, and speak privately of things that are not for women's ears.

Besides, your mother has a healing to do. Heckram has an infected cut on his face. Let her practice her craft while we discuss ours.'

Carp put his arm around her son, smiled at her as he turned the boy and walked him away, showing her how easily he took her child away from her. Kerlew did not look back, and Heckram felt an echo of the abandonment that sliced Tillu's soul. She aged before his eyes, the lines at the corners of her mouth and eyes going deeper. She shut her eyes, shook her head slowly.

Joboam snorted. 'Don't be a fool, woman. Let him have the boy. I see no problem with that. But he may be surprised when he announces to Capiam that he will be our najd.'

Tillu waved a hand at Joboam, in an angry gesture of dismissal, heedless of the moss it spilled.

'So now you tell Tillu what to do with her son, as well as advise the herdlord about najds,' Heckram observed, 'I wonder if she knows how you "discipline" Kerlew when she is absent?'

Joboam turned to him. Color rose in his face, but his words were calm, 'I wonder what would happen if I hit you on that slash.' Looks as if your whole face would break open.'

'I wonder if you have the courage to try?' Heckram met his gaze. 'Here I am, Joboam.

There's nothing hampering you.'

'Shut up, the both of you!' Tillu whirled on them suddenly, anger flaring. 'Do you think I have nothing better to do than mend your stupid heads after you've broken them? Make me extra work, Joboam, and Capiam will hear of it. Yes, and of other things, too.' Her dark eyes snapped from Heckram to Joboam. Joboam's eyes narrowed at her threat. 'Now. Joboam, you may tell the herdlord what I have told you several times already. That I am not decided to go. You may even tell him that your daily visits here have reminded me of all the reasons that I have for avoiding people. And Heckram. If you want me to clean up that gash, then go to the tent. But if you stand here and fight, I shall do no healing for either of you. And I shall tell Capiam you interfered with my gathering of supplies.'

She turned, clutching the moss to her chest as if it were a child. She walked to her tent without looking back. Heckram saw her shudder once, as if she held back a sob or a cough. He turned to look at Joboam through narrowed eyes.

Joboam snorted. 'Let her stamp and shake her head now. She'll learn the harness soon enough.' The look he sent after her was proprietary. Heckram's anger went one notch tighter.

'Aren't you still wondering about my face?' he asked softly.

Joboam turned aside from him. 'You'll keep,' he said casually. 'News won't. Since you haven't informed the Herdlord Capiam of the troubles you have dragged home, I will.

A najd. Even a simpleton knows the problems that can create. And you had to bring him here. Still, if he takes the healer's son with him when he goes, that may solve a problem. For me.' Joboam's voice had become speculative. He began to walk back toward the talvsit.

'Joboam!' Heckram called. The man stopped.

'Stay away from Kerlew. Not because he's the najd's apprentice. Because I say so.

And one more thing. If you won't fight me now, be ready to later. A time will come.'

'That it will,' Joboam agreed. He started to walk away, but Heckram's voice stopped him again. 'Be sure to give Capiam all the healer's message. I'll be stopping by his tent this evening to be sure it was delivered correctly.'

Before Joboam could walk away from him, Heckram turned and walked toward Tillu's hut.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was dark and stuffy inside the tent after the bright coolness of the spring afternoon. The earth floor had softened with the warmer weather. It gave beneath Heckram's heavier tread. Moisture, unlocked from frost, damped the furnishings of the tent, giving them a musty smell. Tillu should take everything outside into the early sun to air. The herdfolk always aired their possessions before packing for the migration.

Heckram wondered if Tillu were really coming with them, but couldn't muster the courage to ask. He stood awkwardly inside the door flap, feeling an intruder. Tillu hadn't spoken, hadn't even acknowledged him with a nod. She crouched, stirring herbs into a pot of water beside her hearth. Something in her physical attitude was familiar; her back bowed like a shield, chin tucked into her chest as if she awaited the next blow.

Recognition hit him. She, too, tried to go on with her life as she struggled with an insolvable problem.

He looked around, trying to think of some neutral comment. Her poverty had given way to meager comfort. There were more hides on the pallets, and dried meat and fish hung from the tent supports beside utensils of wood and bone. Her dealings with the herdfolk were prospering. The thought recalled the last time he had seen her. The day after Elsa died. They had had little to say to one another amid the hubbub of grief. And just as little now. The things he shared with this woman were not the things that drew folk together. He wished suddenly he hadn't come. She was ignoring him, crouching with her back to him, stirring something in a pot. He wondered if he could simply back our of the tent and return to his own hut.

As if she had heard his thoughts, Tillu spoke. 'Leave the tent flap up. The light is better that way.' She glanced over her shoulder at him, irritable. 'Sit down on the pallet.

You're too tall for me to work on that slash if you stand.'

Without a word, he looped the door string around its support. A narrow triangle of light spilled into the tent and across one pallet. He went to it and sat, silent. Not talking seemed easier.

She lifted the steaming pot and set it on the floor by his feet. As silent as he, she took a handful of white moss from a basket near the fireside. Her capable fingers picked through it quickly, discarding bits of twigs, a pellet of rabbit dung, the skeleton of a leaf.

He watched her. The rising steam from the pot had a pleasant fragrance, like the forest in true spring, when the rising warmth from the leaf mould smelled of generations of pine and alder. He relaxed, until Tillu knelt suddenly before him. It put her face on the same level as his. She dunked the moss into the water and let it soak as she studied his face.

It was an uncomfortable arrangement for Heckram. He had no place to put his eyes and he didn't know what to do with his hands. He folded his arms across his chest, then, feeling foolish, let them fall to his sides. Her face was close to his as she examined the cut. Her mouth was impassive, and when he did look into her eyes, she didn't notice. The injury had all her attention. He started slightly when she took his chin in a firm, cool grip and turned his face toward the light. Her fingertips rasped lightly against his chin. She kept her hand there, holding him steady, as she moved her head to study the injury. He stared at her frankly, noting the fineness of her hair, the way it pulled free of its binding and strayed around her cheeks. Her nose was narrow and more prominent than was thought attractive among the herdfolk. Much like his own.

Her cheeks were not broad and flat, but were molded back over high cheekbones. Her dark eyes were sharp and bright as they peered at him. Like a vixen, turning her head and cocking her ears as she watched and waited at a vole's burrow.

'What happened?' she demanded suddenly.

It took him a moment to reply, 'I scratched my face on a tree branch.'

'Oh?' She turned his chin again. 'It looks like an animal scratch. Not as bad as a bear swipe, not as big, but similar.'

'I stood up inside a branch shelter that Lasse and I had built, and scratched my face on a snag.'

She didn't agree with him. 'Then it shouldn't have become infected like this. But even a mild swipe from a predator usually becomes infected. Like this.'

'It was a branch,' Heckram repeated irritably.

'Mmm. It's close to the eye. You should have come sooner. Now it's going to hurt.'

With no more warning than that, she scooped a handful of moss from the warmed water and held it firmly against his face. The heat accented the pulsing pain of the wound. He set his teeth and held himself still. Sweat sprang out all over him.

'I can hold it there,' he offered after a moment.

'I've got it,' she replied, it will take a little while. It has to open. Sit still.'

It was unnerving to sit so close to a woman, face to face, being touched by her. There was the hot pain of the wet moss and its pressure against the swollen slash. But the smell of her hair and skin was another pressure against him, as warm as the poultice, and stirring. Her touch on his face, the brush of her warm breath, the points of her breasts so close to him, and the serious eyes that stared at him but didn't meet his gaze were all combining to disturb him.

His face flushed suddenly and he looked away from her. His sudden arousal surprised and shamed him. He expected better control of himself. He hoped she wasn't aware of it. A drop of sweat tracked a line down his face.

Why, she wondered idly, would a man lie about being clawed by an animal? Most hunters bragged of their struggles with beasts, as if being maimed were a feat to be proud of. She saw the pinch lines around his mouth go deeper and white. 'I know it's uncomfortable,' she said quietly. 'But in a few moments we'll ease the pressure.'

She lifted the spongy moss away to inspect the swollen gash, then dipped it again into the warm water. 'Here. Hold it against your face while I make a poultice to draw out the infection. It may not be as bad as it first looked.' He put his hand against the moss as she lifted hers away. Their fingers brushed in passing.

She stepped clear of him, glad to put a cooling distance between them. I should be thinking of Kerlew, she told herself sternly. I should be worrying about what nonsense Carp is telling Kerlew, and how to get rid of that horrid old man. Instead, she had been lost in Heckram. She had meant to examine the gash. But when she had touched his chin to turn his face, she had become aware of the rasp of his unshaven skin. With a sudden ache, she had remembered the brush of her father's whiskers against her cheek when he hugged her. He had been a big man, strong, like this Heckram. When he carried her on his shoulder, she had been safe. If he had been home the day the raiders came ... but he hadn't, and she had never felt safe since then. She swallowed against a rising lump in her throat and half angrily pulled her thoughts away from those lost days. She should be concentrating on her work. On Heckram.

Like an intruder breeching a broken wall, he had made her aware of the man behind the injury. There was his smell again, as she remembered it, the smell of live reindeer and behind it the subtler musk of his own maleness. She had felt his eyes trying to meet hers and resisted them. Bad enough that she could not bring herself to take her hand from his face. His body warmth had crossed the small space between them, touching her and making her blood quicken. She quenched her rising warmth firmly. It had nothing to do with the man, she told herself. It was only that she was at that time of her days when her body ached for a man's touch, warmed and quickened at the thought of one. Another hand of days and her blood time would come, and this foolishness be forgotten. Was she a girl to be ruled by such urges?

Going to her herb box, she began to sort through it. The sorrel leaves were shriveled brown, nearly too dry to use. Put them in anyway, it couldn't hurt. Yarrow. Willow leaves. Goldenrod root? Well, it worked on burns and scalds. She added a little. She'd be glad of the fresh green herbs of spring. These old gatherings had nearly lost their potency. She began to pound them together on a slab of wood. She could mix them with lichen, cook it with a little water into a soggy paste, and -

'You're angry at me, aren't you?'

Tillu turned in surprise to his question. 'What?'

'You're angry at me. For helping the najd to find you and Kerlew. And for threatening Joboam.'

For a long moment she did not reply. Then she gave a great sigh. She rocked back on her heels, her pestle forgotten in the hand she raised to prop her chin, 'I'm not angry,'

she decided. 'You couldn't have known that he wasn't what I would choose for Kerlew.

And even if you had ... it wouldn't have mattered. I believe that he still would have found us. Sooner or later.'

'And Joboam?' he pressed. She wondered why it was important to him.

'Joboam is a ... problem,' she admitted grudgingly. 'But it is a problem I have had before. There are always men who like to control things. Men who believe they should rule anyone weaker than they. I wasn't protecting him when I interfered between you.

What I said was true. A healer sees so many injuries that could not be avoided. We get weary of treating the ones deliberately caused. And soon he will be gone. Soon you will all be gone.'

She heard the dilemma in his voice as he pushed on. 'Why do you let him ... treat Kerlew like that?'

'Let him?' She let her bitterness bloom in her voice. 'What am I to do? He doesn't strike the boy when I am here. And I try always to be here when Joboam is. But sometimes he comes when the boy is here alone, and then ... but I have told Kerlew not to be alone with him. To come and find me as soon as Joboam arrives, not give him a chance to be angry.'

'And Kerlew forgets.' The understanding in his voice surprised her.

'And Kerlew forgets,' she agreed, it is hard to explain to someone who doesn't know him. The thoughts of this moment drive from his mind the instructions of a moment ago. It is not as if he were stupid. He is always thinking, but of something else. He has his own ideas of what is important and what is not. Two days ago I saw a bruise on his arm, and asked him about it. Three days ago, Joboam grabbed him there. Why didn't he tell me? Because he forgot, because that was the day he found the patch of frozen berries and dug them up and ate them, and I asked him what the red on his mouth was, so he told me about the berries instead. And, to him, that makes sense!'

She heard her own voice shaking. She turned abruptly to Heckram. He was sitting quietly, the dripping moss still cupped against his face. His eyes were brown, she realized suddenly, not black. And there was no pity in them. What she saw in them startled her. It didn't seem possible that he was sharing the pain she felt for her boy.

'The sleeve of your tunic is soaking wet,' she said with a calmness she didn't feel. 'Take it off and hang it by the fire. You'll want it dry to go home in.'

She became aware again of the pestle in her hand and used it with a vigor the dry herbs didn't require. She heard him ease out of his shirt. She mashed the herbs with some lichen in the bottom of a small pot, added water, and put the poultice to heat. She turned to find him naked from the waist up, wringing water out of the sleeve of his woolen undershirt. There was a tracing of hair on his chest, starting just below his throat, widening slightly on his breast, and stretching in a line past his navel.

'The men of my grandfathers' blood,' he said, a husky embarrassment in his voice,

'are hairy, like this. On the face and chest.' She had been caught staring.

She lifted her eyes, tried to meet his gaze nonchalantly. it is so with my people, also,'

she admitted.

'The women also?' he asked incredulously.

She laughed aloud, caught the look in his eyes, and wanted to stop, but couldn't. He was blushing, embarrassed by his ignorance. She caught her breath, found a solemn expression, but lost it again. Perhaps it didn't matter. He was starting a smile now, rueful and shy, but a smile.

'That was stupid, wasn't it?' he admitted, chuckling.

'Not really.' She got her face under control. 'You have probably always been with your own people. How are you to know the ways of other folk?'

'I haven't always been among the herdfolk,' he defended. 'When I was very small, I once made a trading journey with my father. It was when he was wealthy, before the plague. I saw the village of the traders, like, like ...' He groped for words. 'Like two great square huts, made into many little huts.'

'Rooms,' she suggested.

He paused, shrugged his shoulders, and gave a tentative nod. 'Two of them, with many families living there, each family with a "room." And the wide path between the two great huts. The men had beards that billowed over their chests. And the women had hair like different shades of wood. Some of the children were my cousins, but we could not talk well together. Still, we played.'

'Was it far from here?' Tillu found herself asking.

Heckram frowned to himself, 'It didn't seem so at the time. But I was small, riding in my father's pulkor, so the distance meant little to me. Still, it couldn't be that far. Some years the traders come from that village to trade. Not as often as they used to, but then, we used to have more to trade. Now it is more common for the herdfolk to go to their village. The year my father took me, it was an unusual thing. All the folk in the village were surprised to see us and marveled over our harke and pulkor. Do I have to put this back on my face?'

He had caught her dreaming, her thoughts riding on his tale. She looked at the handful of moss he held out.

'Wet it again and put it back. It will soften that gash.'

He made a sound between a sigh and a growl and sat down again. She heard him slosh the moss in the pot. She bent to study her own pot of lichen and herbs. She poked at it with the pestle, decided it had softened enough, and removed it from the heat. The white lichen was very useful as a binder. It could be used to thicken a stew, or to make a poultice, or even to be cooked into a sort of bread. She touched a finger to it, flinched, and set it aside to cool a bit. She felt both reluctance and anticipation as she walked over to Heckram.

He took the moss away from his face as she knelt before him. A few strands of the white moss clung to the edges of the slash. She picked them off carefully with her fingernails, then touched the injury. The soaking had taken down most of the swelling.

It was red and warm about the edges, with a yellowish crust down the middle. The herbal soak had softened the scab so it would slough away easily. 'This doesn't look near as bad as it did.' She picked cautiously at the edge of it and felt him wince. 'We'll try the poultice now.'

'What do you say to him, afterward?'

'Who after what?' she asked absently, poking at the mass in the pot. It was a little too runny.

'Joboam. After he's been rough on Kerlew.'

'Very little. It does no good. He denied it the first time I accused him, and the next time he said he had been wrestling playfully with the boy and the boy misunderstood.

I've told him to keep his hands off my son. Then he said something about Capiam making him responsible for us, so he must make the boy understand your rules before we go with you. Then I said if it involved beating the rules into Kerlew, I'd as soon not go. After that, he left Kerlew alone. Until today.'

'Have you ever spoken to Capiam about it?' Heckram asked.

Tillu shook her head silently. She brought the poultice pot over beside him, took up a handful of white moss, and mixed it into it. The result was a warm fibrous mass that would cling together when she smoothed it onto his face.

'Do you want me to speak to Capiam about it?' Heckram offered softly.

'Would he listen to you?'

Heckram hesitated fractionally. 'The herdlord is supposed to listen to all of his folk.

But Capiam has not been herdlord long. Nor did he have the benefit of a father's long experience. Relf, who was herdlord when I was a boy, died about five years after the plague, leaving no children. Capiam's father had been one of his most trusted men, and he assumed the leadership. Some were not happy about it. Several spoke up in favor of Eike, who was Joboam's father and another of Relf's men. But Eike's father was not of the herdfolk, but was a trader, like my grandfather. A friend of his, in fact. So many said the herdfolk needed a leader with the blood of herdfolk strong in him. So, Capiam's father was chosen, despite his great age. He died three years ago, and Capiam became herdlord.'

'Was Eike bitter?' Tillu asked thoughtfully.

'No. Eike was a good man, big in both size and heart. He supported Capiam's father right up until his own death. But I know what you are thinking. Yes, Joboam resented it. We were only boys at the time, but I remember it still. When no grown folk were around, he often said that the leadership should go to a man strong enough to lead.

Then, if any disagreed, he would wrestle them and hold them down until they were shamed. And say that good men take pride in a strong leader. Meaning Eike; he was large, like Joboam.'

'And you,' Tillu added.

Heckram bobbed a nod of agreement. 'Same blood. But we were seen differently.

Joboam was strong, and his family had plenty, even in the worst times. No matter how angry the other children got with him, it was easy to forgive him, because in his tent there were cheeses and suet puddings for his friends.'

'And what about you?' she pressed curiously, even though she sensed he remembered pain.

He smiled ruefully, 'I was a bit of the fool. Then, and some still think now. Clumsy, always too big for my clothes. And Joboam disliked me.' Heckram gave a deprecating laugh. 'He could wrestle me down, but I was never smart enough to admit he had won.

I'd always keep struggling until he had to let me up or until one of the adults came to end it. So I was never welcome in his tent with the other children. Most of the other children avoided me, for Joboam was unfriendly to any who befriended me.' He shook his head suddenly. it wasn't a good time. I was glad to grow up, glad when the wrestling and struggling stopped.'

'So glad that you nearly started it up again today,' Tillu observed wryly. 'But I think I understand now. Enough to know that your speaking to Capiam would not make any difference. I will have to think, and decide. It may be that the only way to spare Kerlew from him will be for us to go our own way. Lie back on the pallet while I put this on, or it will drip off your chin. It's not as thick as it could be. Close your eye, too.'

He eased back on her pallet, feeling the soft prickle of the furs beneath his bare back.

Her smell was on the furs, rising to make him aware of her closeness. She knelt beside the pallet, scooped some of the poultice up on her fingertips, and then leaned over him to pat it softly onto his face. She was very close, her face intent. The poultice was runny.

Some of it trickled down by his ear, tickling unbearably. She scooped it back with a finger. Her hands were warm, her breath sweet. Her small face was so solemn. He could reach up and pull her down on top of himself. She probably weighed nothing at all. He gave his head a slight shake to rid it of the impulse, and Tillu exclaimed in annoyance. 'Be still!' she chided and steadied his face with her free hand. It made it worse. The throbbing of his face under the poultice wasn't painful enough to distract him from the sudden throbbing in his loins. He tried talking.

'It would be a sorry thing for the herdfolk if you did not go with us. Long have we needed a healer -'

A glob of the poultice slipped into his mouth, flooding it with bitterness. He made a move to sit up, but Tillu held him down, exclaiming with annoyance, 'Be still, or it will go all over!'

He reached to claw the glob from his mouth with his fingers and more slid in. He nearly choked on it. Her free hand was on his forehead now, trying to hold him flat while her other hand was laden with more poultice. He managed to turn his head slightly under her grip and scoop the offending gunk out of his mouth. That left him with a handful of it and no place to put it. Embarrassed, he glanced up at Tillu who chose that moment to burst out laughing.

The transformation was remarkable. The years dropped from her face, her cheeks dimpled in, and her eyes shone. Kerlew's resemblance to her became obvious when her white, even teeth flashed in her smile. Without her habitual small frown, she seemed young, almost girlish. Her laughter was good, low pitched and earthy. Their eyes met, and he found himself grinning in response as the poultice slid down the side of his face.

'It's too runny,' she apologized. Still smiling, she shook the poultice from her fingers back into the pot. Her hand had not left his face. 'Here,' she said and took the gloppy poultice from his hand and flicked it into the fire. She reached over him toward a worn square of hide on the other side of the pallet, could not quite reach it, leaned further, slipped, and was suddenly sprawled across him. Under her, his chest shook with laughter. Her cheeks burned. She snatched up the square of hide, wiped her fingers and handed it to him as she rocked hack onto her heels. He took it from her, still grinning, and wiped his fingers clean. He could feel the poultice dripping down the side of his face and neck.

His eyes sought hers, but suddenly she was not smiling. Her lips were pursed, her face grim as she took the patch of old leather from him and wiped the side of his face.

'We'll have to start all over,' she said gruffly. The smile faded from his face as he looked up at her. There was such constraint on her face, such control. Over what? The failure of the poultice?

'Anyone can make a mistake.' He hesitated. She paused, the square of leather wet with poultice hovering over his face, but didn't meet his eyes. He didn't pause to think.

Reaching up, he took the leather from her, wiped his own face clean. She didn't move.

He dropped the scrap to the floor, touched her hand. 'What's wrong?' he asked.

The gentleness in his voice broke her. Her eyes met his, frank with hunger. She saw his eyes widen as his own warmth kindled. His hand moved very slowly to cup the back of her neck and pull her face down to his. He moved his face against hers, taking in first the smell of her skin, then the taste. His mouth was warm and tentative. She was transfixed by the sensation. There was no resistance in her body as he reached out a strong arm to pull her closer. She stopped thinking and moved her mouth against his.

Time stopped. Warnings and cautions hammered frantically in her mind. She blocked them. This, now, this man, this touching, she took for herself, she stole from the world as a gift to herself. Atop him, she could forget the differences in their size. His strength was no threat to her.

She lost herself in him. The skin of his chest was warm under her fingers, stretched firm over muscle. She lifted her mouth from his, brushed her lips over his flat male nipples, watched the black hair spring back from her touch. She let her fingers trail down the center line of his chest, over his belly to his navel, then heard Heckram's sudden gasp as she set her hand flat below his navel. It broke her trance and she lifted her eyes to the face of this stranger in her bed.

She could not name what was in his eyes - a stillness, a wonder almost. He was breathing rapidly, shallowly. But he did not move. There had been other men for her since those raiders had first carried her away. She had taught herself that not every mating was pain. But always, with every man, there came a time when he asserted mastery, a time when he gripped and took her, a time when his own needs were all he responded to. It was a time she always steeled herself against, that moment when gentleness was routed by force. She pulled back slightly, testing him. But he did not drag her back. He only touched her face with tantalizing fingers that trailed down her cheek and throat.

Voices. A murmur she could not decipher, and then Kerlew's voice lifted high in question. She stiffened against Heckram and then pushed firmly away from him. For an instant the circle of his embrace resisted her. Then as he became aware of the voices, he made a sound between a sigh and a groan and released her. She lifted herself clear of his body, feeling the cool air blow in between them. 'Tillu?' he questioned softly, but she did not look at him. She tugged her tunic down straight, righted the pot of poultice that had tipped and nearly spilled. She pushed her hair back, felt the stickiness of the poultice that had smeared from Heckram's face to hers. She rubbed her sleeve cuff down her face, felt unreasonable tears sting her eyes. A sudden shakiness beset her knees and the pit of her stomach. Taking a long deep breath, she forced steadiness onto herself. She glanced at him, to find him leaning up on one elbow, looking at her anxiously. She turned away.

'Tillu?' he repeated, but the crunch and squeak of boots over damp snow was right outside the tent now. She shook her head wordlessly without looking at him. Heckram fell back onto the pallet with a sigh. She knew how he felt.

'Heckram?' The old man's querying voice cracked as he called, is the face better?' He ducked into the tent, squinting his eyes as he came from the brightness to the dimness.

Heckram was silent, looking to Tillu for an answer. Kerlew bustled into the tent and up to Heckram. it doesn't look so bad to me!' he exclaimed.

'It wasn't as bad as it looked at first. It was mostly swelling,' Tillu filled in.

Heckram was staring at Kerlew. Even with sharp anticipation fading into aching disappointment, he was not blind to the change in the boy. The difference was like that between fall and spring. Kerlew's narrow shoulders were no longer bowed in on his chest. There was confidence and self-importance in his face as he met Heckram's gaze squarely. But there was also an unworldly translucence to his gaze. As if Heckram were not as substantial as whatever it was that Kerlew saw behind him. His face was evasive, dreaming. A chill rose in Heckram, as if he had seen the boy sucked down and swept away by a river. The contacts he had made with the boy were gone, the ties unbound.

The certainty that he would never reach Kerlew again rose in him. The boy he had begun to know was gone. Gone, in one afternoon. Carp was smiling also, a smile with cutting edges for Tillu. A smile of triumph and vengeance. Tillu withered in that gaze, shrinking in on herself. Heckram sat up slowly.

'Get your shirt on,' Carp directed him calmly. 'Time for us to go.'

'Go?' Kerlew asked in sudden bewilderment, and in that instant Heckram glimpsed the vulnerable boy he had known. 'Go away, Carp? Why? Where?'

Carp laughed his cracked old man's laugh. 'Not far, Kerlew, don't worry. I am staying with Heckram. He has a fine warm hut, with much food and many soft skins. I am very comfortable there. And I must see the Herdlord Capiam, to tell him I will be shaman of the herdfolk now. But I will be back tomorrow, to teach you. And soon we will all be traveling together.'

'No.' The firmness of the word was spoiled by the sharp note that broke Tillu's voice.

'No,' she repeated, gaining control. 'You may go with the herd, perhaps. But not Kerlew, and nor I.'

'Oh?' the najd asked coldly. 'And is that so, Kerlew?'

The boy turned his face to Tillu, and in that moment all in the tent knew she had lost.

His small jaw was set. His eyes were distant as he spoke, 'I go, Tillu. I am a man now, and the decision is mine. For a few days more, I stay here with you. But when the herdfolk follow the herd, I will follow Carp.' The words were Carp's, spoken carefully.

But the decision in his voice was all Kerlew's. Tillu stared at him.

Here, before her, was what she had dreamed about. Her boy, standing as a man, making his own decision. Speaking with confidence, standing straight before her. And here, beside her, watching her face with sympathetic eyes, was a man such as she had imagined. A man to make part of her life, part of her own life, separate from Kerlew's.

Bitterness filled her mouth. 'No,' she said again softly. But it was an internal denying, a forbidding of tomorrow to come. The new day had already dawned in her son's eyes.

Something long fastened within her let go. Weariness was a part of it, the sense that she could no longer battle to keep Kerlew safe from the world he had chosen. But there was also a certainty that if she fought Carp for the boy, she would destroy him. The self-confidence that set his shoulders was too new and shining a thing to crush with bitter words. Better that he walked straight without her and failed than that he huddled forever in her shadow, safe but without substance.

'You are going,' she said, looking deep into her son's eyes. Kerlew nodded. 'And so am I,' she said aloud, and the surprise was loud in her voice.

There was too much to read in Tillu's eyes. Heckram pulled his eyes from her face.

Rising awkwardly from the low pallet, he found his woolen shirt and pulled it on, holding it away from his face. Next he dragged on his skin tunic, its heaviness suddenly unwelcome in the soft spring air. As he cautiously poked his head out the collar, he found Tillu standing in front of him, looking up at him. Reaching up, she took him firmly by the chin and turned his face to the light again. Her brow furrowed slightly as she studied the gash.

it looks better. It may heal itself now. But' - she paused, a ghost of a smile in her eyes

- 'you should come back tomorrow and let me check it.'

He nodded slowly, but she turned aside hastily, leaving him to wonder if he had understood what she hadn't said. 'Come on, come on,' Carp was urging irritably. 'The walk back is long and already I am hungry. And I have yet to see Capiam today. I have important things to tell him.'

'As have I,' agreed Heckram, and followed him out into the early spring evening.