by Gabi Moore
Taren was alive, her best friend was alive.
Once more she felt rather than thought that perhaps it was not really dark.
Not yet.
Chapter 5
The fire was burning quite well when Laova finally stepped out of the tent where Taren lay, naked from the waist up. The meat of his shoulder had been savaged a little, but his thick winter clothes had taken the worst of the wolf’s bite. It was miraculous, really. If the wolf had put just a little more gruff into it, Taren would be not only headless, but likely snapped in two. Bizarre and blessedly fortunate that his injuries were so forgiving.
And yet, something in the back of her mind whispered still… Perhaps the wolf had not meant to harm Taren. Maybe, it had only come to deliver a warning.
“Laova.”
Beside the fire, Rell sat cross-legged. She’d been cleaning the Scim; a soiled rag was in one hand, and she was scrubbing with care at the blade. It gleamed, now, catching the firelight. It shone like sunlight off water. Nothing Laova’s people made could compare, and Rell cared for it with deliberate and delicate caution.
Rell’s eyes dropped back down to the weapon. Laova understood her perfectly, and took a seat beside her at the fireside.
For the few minutes that Laova waited, her stomach was sinking. She knew what was coming—what else could Rell possibly want to speak about? The fire crackled mockingly, and the wind sighed as if in reprobation. Laova tried and failed to recall how she had expected to explain herself, what she had planned to say.
Rell finished cleaning the Scim and sheathed it. But then she simply sat, staring at the firelight, catching it in her red hair and her stony eyes. Laova tried not to fidget. Ghal was in the tent caring for Taren. Khara and Bamet had watched first last stop, so now took the chance to disappear for the night into the second tent, wordlessly avoiding the conversation that approached.
Nemlach lurked quietly out of the firelight, whittling at the point of his spear. Laova saw him and felt something like relief. At least he was here with her; even he was certainly more ‘over there’ than ‘here’.
“What did you think would happen, Laova?” Rell asked finally.
Laova met her eyes; Rell’s were flashing and bright and hard, but Laova could meet them. At least she wasn’t stiff with fright, unable to react as she had been under the wolf’s stare. She took a deep breath.
“I was tracking the wolf,” Laova lied.
Rell did not move.
“I was looking for my ritual hunt to be… great. Maybe too great.” Laova watched Rell’s face.
“Taren almost died.”
“I know.”
“You almost died.”
“I know—”
“It is different to hunt something that will hunt us back.” Rell’s words were sharp as arrow-points, each one punched through the air. “Even an idiot can understand. Deer and elk will run away—that is what we all thought we were hunting. Because you said so.”
Laova swallowed; her throat was dry as grass in high summer. She waited to see if Rell had more to say, and in a moment more she apparently did.
“If that wolf had been part of a pack, we would all be dead. Did you ever consider that?” Rell snarled. “Did you consider the very likely possibility that the creature was returning to its pack? That we might come upon them any time?”
“Yes, of course…”
“So you meant to get someone killed?” Rell stood. “You meant to sacrifice one of your hunters so your kill could—could be a surprise?”
Laova opened her mouth, but found it mute. Tears sprang into her eyes, and she wished she had something, anything to say. But the only thing she could possibly offer in explanation was the one thing she felt sure Rell must not know.
“This is not how we hunt,” Rell’s voice lowered again, and Laova nearly wished it wouldn’t. She looked up at the Hunt Leader in dread. “As the wolf pack hunts, so do we. The wolf does not fool its pack-mates. The wolf hides nothing, because each wolf supports the next to survive.
“When you fool us, you fool yourself,” Rell hissed. “When you lead us to death, you walk into it yourself, as well.”
Laova trembled; she knew she wasn’t meant to speak, which was good, because she felt she could not.
“Would it have been you that brought his dagger back?” Rell asked quietly, staring down at Laova. “Would you have presented Taren’s weapon to his mother? What about Ghal? Bamet? Khara? Nemlach? Myself? Would you have walked back alone with your kill, and presented the tokens of our deaths to the tribe?”
What a cruel thing to ask. As Rell said the words, they took shape in her mind, and Laova could see herself return to the village alone. Explaining to first Rell’s family, as the Hunt Leader. Then Taren’s. Then the others. Then the next tribesman who asked her quietly, in private, what happened. And then a dozen more. Until everyone knew…
“Childish.” Rell spat. “Childish. Selfish. Foolish. “
She crossed around Laova and the fire and stormed into the tent where Taren lay. She did not come back out, and Laova was left alone by the fire, tears streaming down her face. She refused to sob. If it took all the strength in her, she refused to sob. Her vision blurred and blinded and the fire became a great smudge of white-orange against a world of muted black. Still, not a sound.
Laova had never imagined a day when she’d hate him doing so, but eventually Nemlach came to sit beside her. He sat near, and set a hand on her shoulder.
She’d almost gotten him killed, too, didn’t he understand? When that thought surfaced, Laova finally coughed out an ugly, gurgling whine, and she bit her lip shut tightly to prevent another one escaping.
“Laova,” Nemlach murmured with a sigh.
“Please,” she hissed through her teeth. “Just go. I’ll sit the first watch. Please go. I can’t… I just can’t.”
“I understand,” Nemlach nodded.
And go, he did. Laova relaxed, out alone in the dark night, in the biting wind. Would Taren have left her in peace with so little resistance? No. She would have had to fight and scream and force him away, which would have made her more upset still. Nemlach was wise, where Taren was not, and Laova cherished that wisdom.
Eventually her tears dried, or perhaps they only froze. The shadows around her did not move, and yet… at times, Laova looked into the woods and seemed to feel something there. It would send a chill down her spine, but she was only a little afraid. After all, she suspected she knew exactly what watched her.
Chapter 6
A guide. A hand to show you the way.
Laova felt the words, as if understanding the meaning of a language she did not speak. It was the same as looking into a pup’s eyes and seeing his happiness, seeing him ask wordlessly for a bite of fish. It was understood, communicated in graceful ease.
In the blue-gray stillness of her dream, these impressions sunk through her flesh, into her heart, and she heard movement in the trees. She looked and saw the black shape of a shade prowling at her side, although she could not discern its features. Perhaps fear would have been prudent, but she did not feel it. She knew clearly, this shape in the dark was not here to hurt her. It had come to show her the way.
This was not necessary in her dream. The way was clear; it lay before her feet, closer than ever before. Laova took step after step, looking up at the shimmer of the god lights over the crags of Star-Reach. The sheets of snow at the summit were pristine and blank, untouched by mortals. Untouched, perhaps, by anyone.
Laova trudged onward. The snow was still thin and put up no resistance to her boots, but it was growing deeper. It had swelled gently around her ankles before. Now, it was midway up her calf. If there was one thing Laova understood, it was snow; before long, it would be up to her knees, and further still.
Was it cold? Laova couldn’t feel it, although she was certain it should be. She was far from the peak, but the mountain stretched downward behind her to the shapeless valley far below. So high, and she co
uld feel only a breeze, a hint of a chill. It was odd; in her waking hours, Laova would fear she’d taken a nasty frost, perhaps bad enough to lose fingers. Perhaps bad enough to die from.
If she’d taken a frost, she’d feel tired and warm. Laova felt neither of these. She was energized, or at least moving on momentum. As for warm… Laova felt nothing. No cold, no heat. Nothing.
Upward, ever upward. The cut path in the snow before her grew fresher, as if she were drawing near to the feet that made it. The thought was a little daunting, but not enough to slow her. After all, this was the way she was meant to go. Fear or hesitation could not stop her now. Guilt could not stop her now. Rell could not stop her now.
The night seemed to grow brighter the higher she climbed, and Laova knew why. The trees were thinning, leaving greater spaces of white snow to bounce back the colorful, wheeling lights overhead. The air should have felt thinner, as well, but of course in her dream Laova felt no different. She didn’t gasp for breath. She didn’t struggle.
And finally, when she chanced to throw her eyes forward farther up the slope, her persistence was rewarded. It took her by surprise. Obviously someone had to have been ahead leaving the footprints for her to follow, but it was jarring for Laova to finally look up and see the tiny, moving figure of another climber, ascending Star-Reach just barely within her sight.
And like a passed message, a voice carried back to her in the shifting mountain wind. It spoke one word, and one word only, just barely audible.
Laova.
***
Rell crawled out of her tent the next morning, or what passed for morning. The sky was clear today, a brilliant black-blue speckled with glittering stars. It peered down through the tree branches, through needle and bough that were quite used to the dark.
The fire was still burning, tended now by Nemlach, who was turning a series of meat chunks on a spit over the fire. The traps that Khara had set the night before must have been successful.
“Morning.”
Nemlach glanced at her with his eyes only. He mumbled something that might have been a greeting without moving even one muscle more than necessary.
Rell sighed and let him be. She wandered out for a moment into the forest to attend nature’s calling, came back to find Nemlach still intently cooking the rabbit, or fox, or whatever had stumbled across the trap. After washing briefly with a cup of melted snow, and checking over her gear, Nemlach was no more talkative. Not that she expected him to be; with another low, slow sigh, Rell sat beside him at the fire and watched breakfast as it sizzled and browned.
Nemlach waited with patience. Not many men were as patient, as gentle, as he. Even fewer could balance that gentle nature with an ability to be fierce, to answer the call for action when it came. He was unique in that. Rell’s well-missed husband had been no such creature. He had died three winters ago when he was injured on a hunt and froze before she could find him; Rell often wondered if he’d made a mistake, just a foolish mistake, on account of his sometimes foolish nature. Sometimes foolish, and childish. But she missed him still.
Not Nemlach. Rell knew he’d never die of a silly error, nor let anyone else perish of needless or negligent cause. He was protective towards those he cared for, even more for those he loved, which was probably the reason that he was giving her the cold shoulder this morning.
She was a little jealous, she had to admit.
“You know I had to do it,” Rell said eventually.
Nemlach’s mouth twisted. “Do what?”
Rell frowned. “Don’t play that game with me. You know exactly what I mean.”
Nemlach gave the spit a quarter turn and shrugged. “You do many things. You’ll have to give me more of a hint.”
It would be undignified and inappropriate for her to grab him by the hair and shake him until he cried for mercy, but Rell imagined it for a moment. She rested her arms safely on her knees and clicked her tongue.
“You’re angry that I did it, but you also are well aware that I had to impress upon Laova how serious a wrong she committed, and how dire the results could have been. She could have killed us all. I didn’t even mention the most frightening truth of it—most of the hunters are here with us.
“You know it’s true, Nemlach. If we all died, there are only three other hunters left in the village. They would survive this winter, and might scrape by the next. But we are few,” Rell tried to catch his eye, but Nemlach ignored her attempts. “We are very few. By leading us all to our deaths on this mountain, Laova could have ended the village.”
“I know that,” Nemlach murmured.
Relieved that he’d at least spoken, Rell continued. “She had to learn, without a shadow of a doubt, what could happen. She’s to be a hunter with us. We must be able to trust her. When we hunt together, there is no time to wonder if someone will do what they must. There is no room to think about what to do if someone fails to play the part they were given.”
“I know that, as well,” Nemlach agreed softly.
“More than that,” Rell pressed on, leaning forward. “I won’t live forever, Nemlach. When I am gone, someone must be the next Hunt Leader. Perhaps it will be a youngling that has not chosen our path yet. Perhaps it will be Taren. But if it is Laova, she must be a Hunt Leader who respects and values her hunters.”
Rell’s voice had dropped to nearly a whisper. “What she did yesterday terrified me. I saw it clearly; her becoming Hunt Leader one day, and leading her group into danger again and again. Losing men and women. Killing us off with her recklessness.”
Shocked out of his sulking mood, Nemlach turned to her. “You really think Laova could be Hunt Leader someday?”
Jealous she might be, Rell still smiled wryly. “Does it make you want her more?”
Nemlach’s surprise melted into embarrassment. “That isn’t why I disapprove your methods.”
Rell chuckled, although it hurt. “Yes it is. If it were the other way around, and Taren had gotten Laova injured with his idiocy, you would have thrown him off the mountain.”
“He’d throw himself off the mountain,” Nemlach replied softly. They were the only two awake, as far as they knew, but it wasn’t difficult to eavesdrop. “He cares for her, at least as much as I do. In a way, I think more so.”
Rell looked at Nemlach, deeply, directly. “You could reconsider my offer, you know. Laova would probably be happy with Taren if you were no longer available.”
Nemlach’s embarrassment took a sharp spike, and his dusky face reddened. “I… you already have my answer to that, Rell.”
“I thought we had fun together,” Rell whispered. She glanced back the tents; there didn’t seem to be movement or sound, but the last thing she wanted was for Laova to overhear this.
Nemlach opened his mouth, left it hanging uselessly open for several seconds, then closed it again. Rell laughed; it had been a while since she had, and it felt nice to relax a little.
“We wouldn’t be good together,” Nemlach protested finally. “You are too wise, and I am too wise. Between us, there isn’t any innocence or newness left.” He looked at her and grinned a little. “I already bore myself to death. I’d hate to bore you to death, too.”
Rell shoved him lightly. In her heart, she agreed. Nemlach was not thirty, and she’d left thirty behind a year or two ago. He was still old beyond his years, which was, maybe, the source of his serenity. It was said the Elder Men had lived to be a hundred or more winters old; Rell didn’t care to consider the Elder Men much, but she did know that she was only human, and thirty-something was too old for a soul like Nemlach’s.
The soul maybe. His body, however, still had her wishing he’d reconsider.
And in his tent, beside a sleeping Ghal and a sleeping Laova, Taren heard this and prayed silently. Rell was beautiful, too; there was no reason, in Taren’s understanding, why Nemlach couldn’t chase after her instead.
Surely, if Nemlach were taken, Laova would see how mistaken she’d been. She’d choose Taren. Surel
y, she would.
***
Laova opened her eyes.
Immediately, she groaned and closed them again.
She’d been dreaming of the mountain again. From the moment she slept to the moment she woke, she dreamt of it, now. They were pleasant and invigorating dreams, but waking from them today put her back into the real world, a world where Taren still fought to win her over and Rell was still furious with her.
Yesterday, she’d spent hours fantasizing about finally having Nemlach to herself. She wished it were still possible, but even though she was alone in her tent, there was no way to summon Nemlach inside with Taren noticing.
Laova sat up to check anyway.
Outside the tent flap, Ghal and Khara were huddled near the fire. Rell was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Taren. Perhaps Bamet was still sleeping, because he was missing, too, but across the fire, clear within sight, sat Nemlach.
Laova couldn’t believe her luck; her stomach cramped with nerves, as suddenly she realized she had every opportunity to do what she wanted.
Should she beckon him over? Laova’s mouth went dry thinking of it.
It seemed she thought too loudly, because at that moment Nemlach looked up and caught her eye.
Her heart thudded into her throat, but Laova smiled. She felt that her eyes were too wide, and maybe her face was pale with indecision. But when his eyes were on her, she couldn’t help but smile, and her heart spluttered into frenzy as Nemlach smiled back.
He was getting to his feet; Laova watched in horror and excitement, dread and desire. He was approaching, and Khara and Ghal pretended not to notice in good-natured conspiracy. Laova silently thanked them; if they’d teased or even sent a scandalous wink in her direction, she wouldn’t have the stomach to move aside and let Nemlach slip into the tent with her, which is exactly what he did.
