“Great Sakeema,” I protested, “I am not hungry enough for all this.”
Then, as they laid a cloth and set the things on the uneven floor, I saw what was in the bowls.
“Red meat!” I exclaimed.
The maidens smiled and laughed, and one of the women nodded. “Istas thought it would please you and give you strength. She sent out everyone she could spare with spears and arrows and snares.”
Istas!
“She is troubled, but more like herself now,” the woman added, “and we are glad of it.”
The three maidens whose names I knew, Lumai, Lomasi and Winewa, came and helped me sit up, settling themselves behind me to support me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Birc backed up against the far wall, eyeing them and grinning sheepishly.
I made up my mind that I was going to eat every morsel of the meat, even though it was only tough old winter rabbit. The soup was good, and shaky though I was I spilled only a little. The women nodded and smiled at every bite I took. I gorged myself to please them. It was hard work, being an invalid—no sooner had they left than Birc had to help me to my cuckpot, both of us swearing softly with embarrassment. Then no sooner had I slept a small while than the maidens were back, the three of them, with water, tallow soap, and several of the long clam shells, sharper than knives, such as their men used to scrape the beard from their faces.
“What, more torments?” I jested. “I don’t need to be shaved.” Men of my tribe grew very little beard, less even than the Seal did. The Fanged Horse men, on the other hand, were bearded worse than mountain antelope—
“Istas wants us to do something about your hair,” Lomasi said.
I felt my smile fade, and I raised one hand to feel the hacked stubble of my hair where the braids had hung. An odd lightness about my head, as if I were now unrooted, a leaf in the wind, a drifting thing. Perhaps I knew even then that in a sense I would never be a Red Hart again. A fell stroke, what Istas had done to me—my face grew so somber that the maidens knelt beside me.
“She wants us to cut it like that of a clanfellow, Dannoc,” Lumai said softly.
An honor I could scarcely refuse. And though I scarcely knew it, I bade farewell to a Red Hart’s selfhood that day. I let the young women take me in hand, and they washed my head and trimmed what was left of my hair fur-fashion, so that I resembled a Seal tribesman. Their soft touch cheered me, and I talked with them as they worked. One of the maidens in particular, Winewa, had wise, sleepy eyes, and I think she knew what I was thinking. Though I was in no condition.
The next day, when I felt stronger, Istas came with the women who brought the food.
I grew grave when I saw her, not because I bore a grudge or was afraid of her, but because I did not know what to say to her. She herself brought the bowl to me, full of good dark stew. Her eyes, as the women had said, were troubled.
“You will walk again on that foot,” she said curtly, “or I will give you mine. I bound it up myself.”
Her tone so astonished me that I smiled. “Am I under your orders, then, to get better?”
“Yes, you young fool. You wanted to die!” I heard anger, accusation, but as much grief as anger. “You were willing to stand there and let me torture you, mutilate you—”
“You have not mutilated me!” I hoped not.
“Your ears.”
I reached up and felt at the notched rims, then shrugged. “The hair will grow over them.”
“Bah.” She grimaced, more annoyed now than passionate. “So you would have let me kill you. All for the sake of a crime you cannot recall … It is not natural.”
“Dannoc is very brave,” one of the other women interposed gently.
“It was more than courage. It was despair.” Istas faced me quietly, her anger spent for the time. “My lad Rad Korridun was right. Something terrible has happened to you, and it has made a madman of you.”
I looked away from her. “Sakeema help me if I ever remember what it was,” I muttered.
“Remember, go ahead and remember! I remember everything, and it is not so fearsome. And in my way I was as mad as you.”
What a woman. Blunt and hard as the seaside stones.
“If a storm wind had toppled Rowalt into the sea,” she mused, “or if a wave had come up and taken him, would I then had hated the sea, taken a knife to it, hurled myself against it? That would have been madness, and it was just as mad to hate you. When you slew Rowalt you no more knew what you were doing than storm, sea, or wildfire.”
I shivered for a moment. The thought of such storm troubled me. If ever it came on me again, might I not hurt someone I—cared for …?
“I am not mad now,” I muttered, fighting down fear.
“Are you not? If you still wish to die, you are.”
The barking words, the dour face of her! Suddenly happy and more than a little perverse, I grinned. “No, I no longer want to die, Istas,” I retorted. “I got over such nonsense the moment you pressed your knife to my gut.”
She did not cringe at the words. “So I cured us both at a stroke,” she said dryly.
“Yes. And as I heal, so must you, Istas.”
“I am tending to it,” she snapped. And she sat by me sternly to see that I ate what she had brought me.
That night as I lay drowsing, not quite asleep, as if by some signal Birc left me and Winewa came in to me. That was her courtesy, I knew, and no one else’s. Women of the tribes bedded as they saw fit until they chose a lifelove. I felt both ardent and honored, though I did not think I was able—but she was deft and tender, keeping away from the wounds and delighting the rest of me very much. Talu had not hurt me after all, nor had Istas, for my cock raised his head happily, and presently Winewa eased on top of me—I did not have to move. Her breasts were small and firm, the nipples brown, her buttocks round and firm, just as I had imagined them. And ah, she took me expertly. Bliss … I had never been bedded so softly, lying as still as if in a dream, first my mouth to her breasts and later my hands—her breasts were warm, and I remembered the warmth of them when I awoke in the morning.
Chapter Eight
So taken up was I with the many who came to see me, with relief at being no longer shunned, with delight in Winewa, with dreaming of her, that it was not until the third day that I started to feel uneasy about Korridun. Though I had been wondering for two.
“Why has Kor not been to see me?” I asked Birc.
His thoughtful look told me that he had been wondering the same. “Perhaps it is that—there are others to care for you now.…”
“Would you tell him I asked, when you see him?”
He told him at the noon meal. But the rest of that day went by and I saw nothing of Kor. When the following day was half spent in like wise, I asked Birc to find me a stick.
“It is time I was up and about, anyway.”
“If you hurt that foot,” he warned, “Istas will have your head.”
“She wanted parts of me badly enough before, and refrained. Can you find me something to walk with?”
He returned some time later with a piece of spearpine by way of a staff, and he helped me wrap on my lappet and leggings. No harm in that, for most of the wounds were on the upper part of me, and they had scabbed up so nicely that we had taken off the bandaging the day before, the maidens and I. It did not occur to me to cover the ugliness of the wounds with a tunic. I had gone bare-chested since I was born. I pulled a boot onto my right foot, and Birc helped me up and watched me crutch my way out, my left foot held well up off the floor.
“Kor is in the hearth hall, last I knew,” he remarked.
He was there yet, sitting idly by the blackening fire, though the place was dim and empty. His glance flickered up when he heard me, then down again when he saw who I was, and I knew at once that my surmise was right, that he had been avoiding me. I was amazed.
“Why?” I exclaimed out loud.
“Why what?” He met my eyes finally, but his were hard.
“Why are you angry at me?”
“Angry? You tell me. Why should I be angry?” There was no heat in his voice, but something like irony or bitterness, and I noticed he did not motion me to sit down, though I stood leaning on my staff only a few paces away.
“I don’t know!” I spoke with heat enough for two. “Unless you are only now waxing wroth at me for what happened more than half a month ago, and that seems unlike you. What have I done to you since? I have tried to act with honor—”
“Honor!” The word brought him to his feet, his eyes flashing. “You and your bloody honor! If I had thought only of honor, you would have been dead the day you came here!”
“And that might have been better,” I shot back, knowing at once that the words were untrue—my heart had fainted for joy the moment I knew Istas would not kill me.
“You proud ass. You and your fool’s honor be damned.” Coming from him the words stunned me, widened my eyes, for I had never known anything but kindness and mercy from him, had scarcely ever heard him raise his voice. But he was shouting now. “Do you suppose it was easy, standing by and letting you and Istas play out your vicious, hellish game? Do you really think that, just because the blows fell on your great hulk of a body, they hurt me any the less? I knew Istas would come to herself, she had to, but I never thought it would take her so long, so cursed long—and you, you damned cock-proud jackass, you would not cry out, and no more could I.…” He was shaking with passion, and though his voice fell to a whisper, the words came out no less intensely. “By great Sakeema’s blood, I would far, far rather have taken that suffering, yours and hers, on my own body than to stand by so helplessly.”
It was true. Why should that stagger me, I who had never heard less than truth from him? But it was true, fire-true and not just a manner of speaking, all that he had said. He had felt my pain, redoubled with hers, redoubled with—his own.…
I could not speak. I could only grip hard at my staff for support and stare into his furious eyes, myself now helpless—the look in those eyes had struck me to the heart. In a moment he turned stormily away from me and strode out.
I wanted to sit down, I felt weak. But not there. I needed air, out, outside.… Half desperate—or I would not have found the strength—I hitched and plunged my way out and up the headland. Talu whinnied when she saw me, but I did not greet her. I crawled to the edge of the forest, collapsed under the wind-beaten spruces and closed my eyes, listening to the wailing of the gulls.
When Kor found me, half a day later, I was numbly watching a red squirrel nibbling at the early spring buds.
Kor sat silently beside me. I knew without looking who it was. He watched the squirrel with me.
“In the time of Sakeema,” he said softly after a while, “my elders have told me, there were gliding squirrels, fawn-colored and with great eyes and very beautiful.”
“Time of Sakeema be damned,” I muttered peevishly, though I had not known until then that I was sulking. I had believed that I was drawing solace and strength from the wild things in the manner of my people.
“Well,” Kor said wryly, “we’ve damned a lot today, between the two of us.”
I rolled over to face him, at that. “I didn’t know,” I blurted, getting the words out quickly, for this was not easy. “You told me, but I—I didn’t understand, Sakeema forgive me. I never meant to burden you with my pain.”
“Stop it,” he said.
I sat up so that I could face him more levelly. “If you feel all that I do,” I told him, not quite steadily, “then I had better go away, for there is a plenitude of hurting in me.”
“Dan,” he said in gentle exasperation, “don’t be an ass. You can barely walk.”
“I can ride. Talu will take me.”
“She threw you off!”
“Only because I tried to master her. I can sit on her and let her take me where she will. Or, what am I saying, she is yours. Where is my own pony, the one they said I rode here?” With my mind whirling as it was, I thought perhaps he had hidden it along with my great uncouth weapon.
He sighed, not wanting to reply. “It died shortly after you came,” he said finally.
“How so?” Some strange seaside disease, I thought.
“You had ridden it to exhaustion, Dan.” Very softly, very gently. He knew me.
For a moment I could not believe him. I, Dannoc son of Tyonoc, ride to death one of our tough little blue-eyed, curly-haired ponies, the tribe’s pride? I would as soon have ridden one of my brothers—ai, Mahela’s hell. Despairing, I dropped my head to my knees.
“I suppose you want to know the penalty for that, now,” Kor muttered. He was trying to jest, but the words jarred me. My head snapped up.
“I have told you, I will go away! My troubles will not trouble you much longer.”
“Dan, you sound like a child! Run away, don’t care where, poor thing. Plenitude of hurting, bah.”
“I am trying to spare you!” I flared at him. “I see no end to this.”
“Well, I do.” Kor stretched out on the mossy ground and surprised me by grinning up at me. “Istas is almost herself again, my people are singing with happiness that they need no longer shun you and quarrel with me, you are dreaming of Winewa—don’t look so aghast, Birc told me. And I have at last vented my spleen after twenty-some long, long days.”
I stared hard at him. “It was more than just venting spleen,” I said slowly.
“Not much more. Great Sakeema, can’t a person do some shouting once in a lifetime without having poor invalids riding off on wild mares?”
I had to smile. “Well,” I admitted, “your spleen is perhaps an improvement on my early days here. You were so—so sweet, half the time I wanted to hit you.”
He sat up and laughed aloud, a joyous laugh. It warmed me to hear it. But then he sobered suddenly.
“Dan,” he requested, meeting my eyes, “don’t think of leaving yet awhile. Please.”
“But why? I have caused you nothing but trouble.”
“Yes,” he agreed lightly, “and having gotten thus far with you, don’t you think I want to see trouble through? Stay awhile. Truly, you cannot go off with that foot unhealed, even on a horse.”
It was true enough, and I nodded. There were better reasons, but he was not speaking them, and I was too tired to seek any longer for reasons. It was sundown, though the sunset was only a yellow blur in the foggy white of the western sky over the ocean. Kor looked that way a moment, then stood up and reached down to me, helping me rise. With his arm under one hand and the staff in the other I hobbled back toward the Hold.
There was a distant flash in the yellow-white of the sky, a flash or glint as bright as that great, strange, fearsome knife of mine. Kor stopped where he stood and squinted toward it, frowning.
“No bird shines so,” he said.
Very true. It shone like a fish, but large. Perhaps a sea hawk had caught a great salmon. No, no hawk—
I could see it flying with a rippling motion and drawing swiftly closer. I could not help gripping Kor’s arm. It was—Sakeema help us, it was the thing he had told me about, the soul-swallowing, life-sucking, destroying thing, bluntly broad at the front and then tapering, taller than I from head to tail—no, there was no head, only a single eye staring whitely and a mouth, a maw, like that of a starfish, leading directly into the belly of the thing’s bulk—it was altogether eerie, silent as an owl in flight, and it was coming straight at us.
“A devourer,” said Kor in a voice gone dead.
“Your knife!” I urged him. I had worn none since I had been a madman.
He stood still. “Knives do no good,” he said in the same way.
I saw the breasts—large, comely even, but gray, and sickening on that strange cloaklike body of cold flesh. I saw a sort of clamshell-shaped organ farther back, under the tail, which looked strong, like a thick, flattened snake.… I had once seen eels slithering across the grass by a river on a moonlit night, but I had never seen anything
that made me shiver as did the sight of that devourer.
It shot over our heads and veered off inland, rising until it had disappeared over the snowpeaks. Kor and I stood rigid in the darkening day, looking after it, and only when it had been gone ten breathspans did we speak.
“I like that no whit,” Kor said, grim. “I have never seen a devourer in daylight before. Never at all, except on my vigil nights.”
“It is dusk,” I said. “Perhaps the thing has an errand to another king, somewhere.” My own words chilled me, though I had intended them as jest—no other kings but the Seal kings kept vigils, to my knowledge. Suddenly I could not still my own shaking.
“Perhaps. Sakeema help him or her if it does.”
“Was that the same devourer you have seen before?”
Kor turned and stared at me.
“I mean, can you tell any difference—”
“Dan, I was too stupid to think that there might be only the one! You mad dreamwit, you are trembling. Sit down.” He lowered me to the ground, sat beside me. The look on his face had lightened somewhat.
“Perhaps it is Mahela herself in one of her many forms,” I said.
“What a comfort you are.” Irony, now. “I had thought that the things were her minions, and that there were many. But I have not seen more than one at a time. How would one tell any difference, in the dark?”
“The size of the breasts, maybe,” I said promptly. “Or the shape of them, the feel—”
I spoke in all seriousness, but he started laughing.
“Dannoc, I am not such an adept with breasts as you seem to be!” He laughed without much mirth, and he sobered suddenly. “Dan, how is it that the women take to you so easily? Winewa is not the only one willing to bed you. Half the maidens in the tribe look with warmth at you, and they would have let you know it long since if it were not for Istas and her grudge.”
“Truly? Confound that interfering old woman—”
He would not be diverted. “Dan,” he insisted.
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