I looked at him. Darkness was gathering quickly, and I could scarcely see his face, but I could see the tense line of his shoulders.
“Do you mean to say—they do not come to you?” I could scarcely believe it. He was comely enough, and king, and a worthy king.
“No.” Flatly.
“But why?”
“I am asking you, Dan,” he reminded me, half amused, half annoyed.
“Well …” I floundered for a reason. “I do not understand these women of your tribe,” I admitted at last. “They hold themselves apart from men, aloof, as if there were a mystery to their affairs. Yet the men stand in scorn of the women because they do not go out in the coracles.”
Kor shrugged. “I have thought perhaps it is because I am king. But you are a king’s son in your tribe. Did you have lovers among your own people?”
“Yes.” Memories came back to me in a sudden rush, making me feel warm and easy, so that my shaking left me. Sakeema, yes, there had been lovers, Olathe and Naibi and Leotie—“white fawn,” that meant. Leotie was a beauty. Every buck in the tribe had wanted her. She had favored me for a while, and I was so happy I could scarcely walk for dancing. Then she had left me. A sweet pain, remembering, for it had been a tender leave-taking.
Then a harsher pain, and I frowned. There had been some reason why she had left me—but I could not remember what it was.
Kor sat watching me.
“Never mind, Dan,” he said abruptly. “I must be an idiot, keeping you out here in the dark and chill.” He got up, helped me up, and gave me my stick and his arm to lean on. “And I know you have not eaten, for I drove you out.”
“Poor invalid, I.”
“Make the most of it.”
Never mind, he had said. Even so, that night when Winewa came into my chamber and gently woke me, I was not entirely willing that she should play with me in her usual manner.
“Do you like me, Winewa?” I asked her.
“To be sure, I do,” she retorted promptly. She was nothing if not prompt and ready, my Winewa. “I am not much in the habit of bedding with men I do not like! Would you think that of me?”
“No, no. But how is it that you like me?”
“For yourself! You are different, and I will never forget you. But I do not love you,” she added in her frank, forthcoming way, “if that is what you mean.”
I smiled, having known full well the limits of dalliance. Questions, though, were easier to ask in numbers. “You, your friends, the other maidens, Lumai, Lomasi,” I went on, “do none of you ever go to Kor?”
“King Korridun.” Her candid voice grew softer than I had ever heard it. “We would give life and breath for him, make no mistake, Dannoc. But no, we do not lie with him.”
“Why not?” I felt my smile fade.
“He is too—too fearsome.”
“How so?” I let her hear my astonishment. “It can hardly be said that you lack for boldness, Winewa.”
She smacked me lightly in reproof. “He is an oddling,” she said defiantly. “His father was of the Otter. He is different from the rest of us.”
“Winewa!” I protested. No one could have been more different from her than I, with my hair the color of bleached seregrass, my blue eyes. She raised her hands in a gesture of surrender.
“I—I don’t know, then, why he is an oddling. But we all feel it, don’t you? Something—fated—about him.”
My skin prickled, and I kept silence, I who had seen his eyes blaze earlier that day. After a moment, in the same very low voice, she went on.
“Something—so old about him, though he is yet so young. As if a god lives in him. I—if I were to go to him, it would be like—like going to death. I could not come back. I could never leave him, not after even the one night.”
A long silence before I stirred and spoke. “As you will leave me,” I muttered finally.
“As you will freely let me leave you, Dannoc, you rogue. You know as well as I what we are.”
“Sparring partners?”
Then I quelled her retort with a kiss. I liked her, indeed I liked her very much, brash and honest as she was. That night I did not lie still and await her, but it was I who made love to her. And when she took her customary place atop me, I thought briefly and uncomfortably of the devourer I had seen, the devourer of which Kor and I had told no one, grim thing.… Winewa’s breasts were far smaller, far sweeter. Still, I rolled her over into my furs so that I straddled her. It pained my foot only a little.
Chapter Nine
Those were good days, and they went quickly. Birc found me an aspen with a broad fork—he tramped for miles, I learned later, in search of it—and he cut it to the right height, burned the end hard, and padded the top of it with fleece to make a comfortable crutch for me. I hobbled about merrily with it, flirting with Winewa and the other young women until they or Istas drove me away, then going out to flirt with Talu. As I generally brought her meat from the hearth, she seemed always to welcome me. She seldom strayed far from her pen, and Kor, trailed by a band of children, would bring her fish offal by the basketful. He found me a scrub cloth woven of tough sea grass, and I bound together a brush of the same stuff, and over the course of the days I managed to clean up the mare somewhat. She shied from the handling at first, but she did not maim me—perhaps she thought my crutch was a club to beat her with. As for the grooming, she grew used to it little by little over the days. Talu was shedding her heavy winter fur, and she itched. I rubbed the itch for her. Within the week I had the worst of the dirt and dead hair off, and I could see that she had gained some weight: she looked veritably sleek. Ugly, but sleek.
It was spring. The aspens were coming into pale green leaf, and there were bright yellow-green tips on the spruce boughs. More than half the time it rained, but the smell of the air was glorious, and when, as sometimes happened, the sun shone, then the misty air filled with rainbow upon rainbow. In the mountain valleys of the lower slopes Kor’s folk were sowing oats. I could not help them, but Birc had brought me yew for a bow, ash for arrows, and I was working at the shaping of them. By the time I was well I would be able to bring in meat.
Winewa came to me nearly every night. It was spring, the season of love, and for a wonder she seemed to be in no hurry to leave me for someone else. In fact she exhausted me, and I always went to sleep soundlessly and dreamlessly after she had left me. But there was a night, a mere ten nights plus one after I had taken my wounds, that I did not sleep after she left me, but groaned and got up, struggled into breechclout and leggings, and crutched my way outside. By my reckoning, it was the night of Kor’s vigil, and I had made up my mind that never again while I was with him would he keep that vigil alone.
It was very dark, the night of the new moon, even that thin crescent hidden in cloud, as were the stars. Only the greenish gimmer of the sea gave light. I felt my way warily, accustoming my eyes to the darkness, but even by the time I drew near the lodge I could see only a little.
“Kor, it is Dannoc,” I said in a low voice so that he would not come pouncing down on me again.
There was no answer. Night crouched like a cat, utterly silent.
I made my way around to the door. “Kor?”
Still no answer nor any stirring. I went in, feeling my way along the wall, still calling out from time to time, not very loudly but a bit more loudly each time, beginning to be afraid—I did not wish to think it, but perhaps he was lying wounded! Perhaps even dead, all because I had dallied with Winewa, like a wantwit fool—though in truth, the night was not yet at its mid.
At the far end of the lodge I found the hearth. A few coals glowed. I stirred them into small flame and laid on dry kindling—a pile of wood stood at the ready, for this lodge had been the main hearth and hall of the Seal Kindred until lately, and the firepit inside the Hold only a sort of foul-weather cookplace. I crouched, intent on fanning and blowing the fire into a blaze, knowing that before I could be of any use I needed light. At last I had it, and I to
ok a flaming pine splinter by way of torch, then went in search.
Within three steps I saw him standing like a monolith at the center of the hall. Man-high and man-shaped, it had to be Kor, but it did not look like him. I saw a strange and swaddled thing, like a gray cocoon—
A devourer had him!
I dropped my torch to the dirt and hobbled forward, nearly falling in my haste. He stood completely hidden in the chill folds, even his face and head, how could he breathe? I got hold of the top of the fishy thing and struggled to wrestle it off and downward, feeling its snakelike strength as it resisted, glimpsing the angry flash as it rolled its single eye at me. Desperate—then I could see Kor’s eyes, closed, his face, very calm and pale, so quiet that I could not tell if he was breathing. In a moment the devourer slithered out of my grip and its horrible breasts closed over him again.
Frantic, for the second time I forced it down and off his head. Great Sakeema, how I longed for my full strength, for two strong legs to brace with, the use of two arms! I wedged my right elbow against what should have been the thing’s chest between the breasts, braced my right hand against Kor’s collarbone, hoped my crutch would hold steady and reached with the other hand around his back to peel loose the folds there. Kor’s body was cold, and I did not dare to feel for a pulse—
He stirred slightly under my touch, turning his head a little, taking a breath. “No use,” he murmured.
“Kor,” I bellowed in his ear, “come back!”
His eyes snapped open. At the same moment the devourer, clever demon that it was, let loose its hold on him, throwing me off balance. I swayed on my crutch and lost my grip on the slithery thing, and it made for me. Kor’s eyes widened.
“Dan, ’ware! No, curse it, you monster, you cannot have him!” He had moved nearly as quickly as the devourer, catching hold of it by one flange as the other closed around me. He hung on doggedly, and I hitched backward, unwinding myself, gagging, nearly retching—the slimy breasts had touched my face. In a moment the thing moved to change its line of attack again, but I grasped it with both hands by the other wing.
“Kor! We have it!” I was exultant, though the devourer still fought us with all the force of a three-day storm, buffeting us and dragging us about the floor. “Hang on, get it down on the ground and we’ll sit on it! In the morning we’ll cut it apart and see what it’s made of.”
“Sorry, Dan,” Kor panted, though he did indeed hang on. “You keep forgetting these creatures don’t mind knives.”
“Fire, then! I’d lay my life it doesn’t like fire. Let us see if we can drag it back toward the hearth.”
Forthwith it was no longer trying to attack us, but hurling itself away from us to escape. The sudden change of direction unbalanced us. My weight came down on my injured foot, I yelped, and my hands let go. The thing tore loose from Kor’s grasp—I gulped in fear, but it shot straight away from us, seaward, toward the door. Like the sea, it gave off its own greenish light. We watched as it swooped out the doorway—I had once widened that entry, by the looks of things, and it stood open to the weather, yet unrepaired. Just outside, the devourer collided with something. We saw it shudder in its flight. There was a fishy, smacking sound and the shriek of a man in utter terror. Then a stocky fellow in a doomster’s mask got up and ran speedily back toward Seal Hold, giving forth a line of small screams, like beads on a string, all the way.
“Olpash!” Kor exclaimed, and he laughed so hard he sagged against me. The devourer soared upward, disappeared in the darkness over the ocean. A strange catch came into Korridun’s laughter, and with a shock I realized he was crying.
“Kor!” I put my arms around him. “What is it?” He was weeping against my bare shoulder. He scarcely knew, I think, what he was doing, and in a moment he stiffened and stepped back, head bowed, pressing his hands to his face as if to force down the sobs.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“No need!” I reached out and touched him on the arm, felt him quivering. “Has the devourer hurt you?” I demanded, frightened.
“Not much.”
“Sit by the hearth, let me see.” I urged him to the king’s place by the fire, stumbled to one knee at his side and tried to open his shirt. He gently pushed my hands away.
“Truly, it is nothing.” He lifted his tunic himself to show me the red marks. No blood had been drawn. “Clothing can be of good use, Dan,” he teased me. But scarcely had he spoken than he sobered. “The thing has never before come so early in the night. I had scarcely entered the lodge before it was on me. And I—I am not sure I could have lasted until daylight.”
“Is that what is wrong?”
“Wrong? But wrong doesn’t make me weep. Something is right for a change.” Kor wiped his face with his sleeve, wiping away tears and the faint reek of the devourer. Looking down at me where I kneeled, he gifted me with a small, grave smile. “Ten years, ten hellish years have I kept this vigil, and no one has ever helped me—except on that one uncanny night when I screamed for my twelve—”
I winced and turned away. He reached down and caught me under the chin by three fingers of his right hand, directing my gaze back to his. His eyes—I have never been able to tell truly what color were his eyes, as green-brown-gray as the sea, but they were as dark and deep as that ocean.
“It means much to me that you are here, Dan,” he said.
“I would walk through fire for you,” I told him softly.
Sakeema knows why I said that, except that it was true, but it stunned him. His eyes widened, his hand dropped limply to his side.
“I would,” I told him more firmly. “I would beard Mahela herself, in her own den, if it could help you. Kor, make me your guardsman, so that I may serve you.”
“Dan—”
I interrupted his protest. “Your guardsman and your fosterling. So that I may swear allegiance to you. Please.”
“Dan, no! I have retainers enough. I need—far worse than warriors I need—a friend.”
Kneeling there at his feet, ready to swear to him my loyalty, I heard that word and it touched me to the center of my heart. Kor, for his own part, had straightened where he sat and spoke to me fiercely.
“Do you really think, if you were my guardsman, you would have come here tonight? Could have? Guardsmen must obey commands. Do you think there is anyone in my Holding, any clansfellow of mine, whom I can talk with as I talk with you? Anyone whom I can tell the secrets I have told you? Anyone here who calls me—who calls me Kor?”
A pang of shame. “I meant it for mockery at first.”
“I know it. But I loved it, even then. Dan, you greathearted dolt.” He spoke more softly, but even more intensely. “Did you really think I would have let Istas slay you? If it had come to that, I would have stopped her, even if it had meant leaving the kingship and my tribe. Do you still think you have meant nothing but trouble to me, Dan?”
I could not answer. I could not speak. After looking at me a moment Kor reached over and gave me a quick, hard hug, then pulled me up to sit by the hearth beside him. Recklessly he piled more wood on the fire, until the whole lodge danced with light. Apparently he cared no longer for the censure of his people. For some time he and I sat side by side, saying nothing, letting fire settle into warmth. Vigil night though it was, it seemed no longer perilous as we sat there together, but full of comfort and friendship. When Kor spoke, his voice was quiet, easy.
“Anyway, you cannot be my fosterling, Dan. You have a father.”
Very true. And following the thought there flowed a tide of memories of my father, all bright and warm, as if the warmth of the night had drawn them forth, the warmth of Kor’s regard. Odd that I had thought so seldom of Tyonoc since I had been with the Seal Kindred.
“And he is king of the Red Hart tribe.”
“Yes,” I said promptly, “and he was a valiant king.”
“So I have heard. Tell me about him, Dan.”
There were too many things to tell, all in a jumble. How his
braids were the color of tufted grass in winter and came down nearly to his waist, with the blue-gray feathers of the mountain peregrine tied in them, feathers of a bird not seen since the time of Sakeema, emblems of a kingship passed down since that distant peacetime. How he often carried a gray falcon on his ungloved hand. How his face was browned with weather, though his eyes were a brighter blue than the skies of mountain summers. How he had once turned a running herd of many forest bison away from the meadow where the children played by charging at the huge beasts on his barebacked, unbridled pony. I had been one of the children, and I had seen, and remembered.
The pony. “He taught me to ride,” I said, speaking, for some reason, with difficulty. “He sat me on the horse with him before I was old enough to walk, and when I was ready to learn to ride on my own he taught me.” The talking grew easier as I went on. After a moment words came in plenty. “He put me on the oldest pony, and for days he stood by and taught me with never a harsh word, only many reminders. But the old, safe pony was balky and galloped with a thudding effort, and I had dreamed of racing the wind across the meadows, but it seemed that riding was nothing but rules and reminders after all. I hated the rules, the old pony, the riding itself. And my father saw the hatred in me, though of course I did not speak it, and he did something brave and great of heart. He brought his war pony, helped me on and placed the reins in my hands. Then he went away.”
I paused, smiling at the memory, and Kor was grinning broadly. With his people, I had noted, his face was most often sober, and I felt blessed by the smiles he sometimes gave me.
“Was it as wild a ride as the first one Talu gave you?” he asked.
“Very nearly! I was so scared I soiled myself, and ecstatic. And I raced the wind, and did not break my foolish neck.
“After that I rode every horse in his herd. He owned many ponies, more of them or less as he traded or gifted or as they foaled, but the ones he kept or gave to his honored guests were always the best ones in the tribe, their manes and tails falling in long curling locks, the hair of their flanks thick and curling but as fine as spiderweb. I helped him train the fillies and colts. He trained his ponies as he trained his children, by patience, and I never knew him to punish a horse by beating it, and seldom even by scolding. We boys spent much time with him and the ponies. When we were old enough and had undergone our name vigils, we each chose one of our own.”
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