Madbond

by Nancy Springer

  “What was yours?”

  “A sorrel mane and tail the color of the snowpeaks at sunrise on a fine day. Her name was Nolcha, ‘the sun child—’” I turned to Korridun in sudden alarm. “Tell me not that it was she I rode here!”

  “No,” he said briefly.

  “I am glad of it. She was a good pony, swift but kind. Swift and fierce when we rode to war. I rode her the night the Fanged Horse Folk raided us, and she was one of the few steeds that gave scars rather than got. My father lost a horse that night.…” I paused, thinking.

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Some few years. He was a great war leader, my father. When he led, warriors followed unquestioning, for he led rightly. He rode forth only to drive back attack.”

  “Or to drive the Herders from your hunting lands,” Kor said quietly. I looked at him blankly.

  “He would not have done that! Some warriors and counselors of my tribe wanted to, but he always maintained that there was room enough for all. Even those uncouth Cragsmen he left in peace, for the most part. And they would sometimes throw stones down on us, or frighten the deer as we stalked them.”

  “Times must have grown hard of late.”

  “But why do you say that? Deer are plentiful since there are fewer wildcats and hardly any wolves. At least that is what my people say. Though at night around the cooking fires we tell tales of what it was like to have seen the great cats, to have heard the song of the wolves.”

  “How many were there around your fire?”

  “Five. My father, and he would tell us all the old tales and sometimes teach us the chants. My mother, Wyonet—‘magic dancer,’ the name means. She could ride as fast as he, but by the fire she would stitch tunics of white doeskin for herself, or stroke the throat feathers of a hooded hawk. My eldest brother, Tyee—he was a good heart, but always standing in my father’s shadow as the high plains stand in the shadow of the mountains and receive no rain. My elder brother, Ytan—he was sometimes as ill-tempered as a wild boar, but I never knew him to do dishonor. And I.”

  “No sisters?”

  “My parents were not blessed with many children. I do not know why. It was not a thing one asked.”

  “I suppose not.” Kor stirred absently. “What else do you remember about your father?”

  A bittersweet memory. “There was a time, once, when I caused a pony to take colic and die through my carelessness, and he felt he had to beat me because it was not his pony, but a tribefellow’s. Moreover, I had been very stupid and caused it great pain. And I was old enough to know better—I was nearly of an age to take a name. So he took a leather lash and led me out to a secluded place. I stood sullenly, and he struck me three times and then threw the lash away in an odd sort of rage, pulled me into his arms and we both wept.” My eyes moistened even to speak of it. “I grew a handspan that day.”

  “Were you his favorite, do you think?” Kor asked. Something taut in his voice, but thinking of my father, I noticed and paid no heed.

  “I was the one who gave him the most trouble, I dare say!” I laughed, thinking of the times I had strayed while hunting and he had left his own trail to find me, the times I had disgraced him by speaking out before the tribe, the times I had acted against his counsel. “For the most part he let me run as wild as the colts, finding out in my own blundering way the things I had to know. I would not always listen to him. I was stubborn.”

  “Truly?” said Kor in tones sweet with irony. I struck him lightly on the shoulder before I went on.

  “My brothers and I, when we fought, he made us settle it among ourselves. We gave each other far more blows than we ever received from him.”

  “He had the raising of you, mostly? You were young when your mother died?”

  “Not so very young, I think,” I said slowly. “Kor, I still cannot remember—how she died, or when, or of what cause.”

  “But the things you have told me—they all happened while she was still alive.”

  I thought back on what I had said. “Yes,” I admitted, wary. I smelled black water.

  “You say it was that way, it was this way, years ago. Is there not something that you remember of your father since? Something within the last turn of the seasons?”

  A simple enough task, that I should remember back a year, but the request filled me with terror and anger. “No!” I shouted, jumping up before I remembered my hurt foot. I sank back with a groan, and Kor gripped me by the arm.

  “Dan, forgive me and have patience with me. Just one more question. Please.”

  I owed him more than my life—I could bear with one question more. Facing him, I nodded.

  “When you speak of your father, you say, he was valiant, he had many horses, he was a great war leader. As if he no longer lives.” Korridun’s sea-dark gaze held me as did his hand on my arm. “Why is that?”

  Again I was terrified, but this time I leashed the terror. For the most part. “I don’t know,” I whispered.

  “Is he dead?”

  “Would you not have heard,” I cried out, “if he were dead?”

  “One would think so,” Kor agreed, letting go of me.

  I snatched up my crutch and struggled to my feet, very angry. “Are you saying I killed him?” I shouted.

  “No,” said Kor so flatly that all my anger ran away like mountain rain. He got up to stand beside me. “I am thinking that perhaps you should have,” he added very softly, as if to himself.

  “But why?” I protested, shocked. “He was—is—my father. Tyonoc of the Red Hart, a true and worthy king. He was—is—”

  Puzzled, I stood with my mouth going silently like that of a sea bass, for I could not say “good to me.”

  “Would you walk through fire for him?” Kor asked with some small edge in his voice. The question smote me like a Cragsman’s cudgel. Years before, I knew, I would have answered without hesitation “Yes.” But since—something had happened—black water all around me, and I think I whimpered. I could not see, but I felt Kor tightly holding me. In a moment my vision cleared and I could look into his face. It was full of shame.

  “Dan, I am sorry, truly sorry. I have no right—”

  “Hush,” I muttered at him, breathing deeply.

  “I who call myself wise, I am no better than a jealous child.” He stepped back and sank down by the hearth, despairing.

  “Kor, you ass, let it go! I do not need coddling. I hope.” I shook myself like a pony coming out of water, sending splinters of fear away. “You have every right,” I added after a moment. “I killed your guardsman and lifelong friend. You are the king, and you have the right to do what you will with me.”

  “In that case,” he remarked, “you have just called the king an ass.”

  The thought amused me. I grinned at him.

  “I’m no king to you, Dan, Sakeema be praised, and you know it.” He still looked distraught. “And friends should not hurt their friends.”

  “Kor, my friend, I think you have helped me far more than hurt me.” I said it to comfort him, but in the same moment I knew that it was true. I spoke half to myself in a sort of wonder. “I am no longer very much afraid.”

  “Perhaps your long night is nearly over, then.” He came and stood beside me, laying a hand on my shoulder. “Courage, Dannoc. The dawn cannot be far away.”

  Chapter Ten

  Spring came on apace. Catkins grew on the birches. There were two terrible storms, roar of thunder and surf and the ocean lashing at the headland clear to the top of the cliffs—the fury of that ocean terrified me. No one else seemed perturbed, though most of those who lived in the lodges came into the Hold for a few nights, and it was crowded. For the first time I shared my chamber with folk other than Winewa. Then, when the weather had calmed, the lodge-dwellers went back out to the lodges, and some of those who lived through the winter in the Hold went as well, to stay in the lodges during the milder weather of summer.

  Kor passed two more vigils, and I kept vigil with h
im. No challengers came, though he was frankly uneasy, expecting some. My foot healed enough so that I could rest some weight on it, and I put away my crutch and took up my stick again. I took to roaming the mountain slopes behind the headland, and I ventured out farther and longer each day. A strange wanderlust was growing in me, and a thought, half-formed, perhaps drawn out of me by the storms, that I had to—do something, face something, turn and retrace my tracks and find out the name of the thing that was chasing me, turn and stare down my shadow. More of me than my foot had to heal. Courage, Kor had said. There was growing in me a will to be strong and well.

  In a way I was very content among the Seal Kindred. I busied myself, found things to do, or others found them for me. The first quiet day some of the men offered to take me out in a coracle on the sweetly bobbing sea, and I went. But even that slight tossing of the waves sickened me, and the sight of so much water, so dark and deep, filled me with fear. I had always been afraid of drowning, ever since I was small and had bad dreams and cried in the night—they were always nightmares of drowning. Since then, until I had come to Kor, I had known no waters larger and deeper than beaver ponds, and I had ventured into no waters except the shallow mountain streams that came down over rocks with a singing sound, fell off cliffs in cascades. Or none that I could remember.… I had never envied the Seal tribe their fishing life, and I envied it even less after I had cowered in a coracle amid the vastness of the sea.

  Daily I sat on the headland and worked at shaping my bow and arrows, to keep up my spirits in thoughts of hunting again, of stalking the highmountain meadows. And I thought often of my father as I worked, he who had taught me the stable stance of an archer and the way of smoothly drawing the bow, he whose presence had given me the strength and heart to master all hard tasks—I who had not remembered him, I was now full of warm thoughts of him. Seldom was I lonesome, thinking of him, for in my mind I drew him there beside me, as he had so often been beside me when I was a stripling. But sometimes, when it rained, I would go into a lodge while I worked, for warmth and for the company of other folk.

  When I tired of working I would go to talk with Talu, or with Kor, or with Winewa and her friends, or with Istas. She had given over her shame on seeing me, Istas had, and I mine on seeing her. Shame had worn us down, and there was no use in it. She was a tough, busy old woman, and I liked being with her.

  One day as I lazed near her in the deep cave where she kept the grain a shout went up, and in a moment a boy came hurrying in.

  “A runner, Grandmother, from the Otter River Clan!”

  She was not his grandmother in truth, for she had borne no children, nor had she been pledged. But all the youngsters called her Grandmother. She frightened them not a whit, for all that she could be so stern.

  “Shall we bring him in to you?” The lad was dancing with excitement.

  “Slime of Mahela, no!” she snapped. “Don’t let him in here. I’ll come out.” She strode off after the boy, puffing and grumbling, and I limped along behind her.

  The runner was entirely naked except for a sort of pouch on a thong to cradle his cock, and all his long, flat muscles glistened with sweat. Being of the Otter River tribe, he was somewhat darker of brown hair than the Seal, and slanting of eye, and there was a bony sharpness about his face while theirs were more gently rounded. But he wore his hair cut fur-fashion like theirs.

  “Old Woman of the Seal Kindred, greetings,” he told Istas. “Old Woman” was a title of honor, for the rulers of the Otter River Clan were women, and the older the better. “I come by order of my lady liege Izu to request your aid.”

  “So the salmon are less again,” Istas grumped.

  “The salmon are less than ever before. Every year they have been less. We hunt, we plant, we gather, but our Riverland is small, hemmed in by the Red Hart Demesne, the Seal Holding, the Cragsmen—”

  “All these things I know,” said Istas curtly. “What I do not know is how it is expected that I should feed the world. Rad Korridun!”

  He ambled out as if he had just happened by at that moment, though in fact I am sure he had been listening and watching.

  “What am I to do? They want fish again.”

  “Is there enough?” he asked her gravely.

  “Well, if the season favors—and if the planting gets done in good time, so we can send the men out in the coracles—and if we eat lightly—and if that accursed fanged monstrosity finds her own meat, forsooth, or if a certain outlander shoots it for her—” Sour old eyes blazed at me, but then suddenly Istas gave up her spleen and flung her hands skyward. “Yes, blast it, I dare say we can spare a little.”

  “Have Izu send pack beasts,” Kor told the messenger. “Will you eat cod and jannock, and sleep a night in my Hold?” I sensed that this petition had been granted many times before.

  “Many thanks, but I must go back at once,” the runner said. “And there are no pack beasts, Korridun King. We ate them over the winter.”

  Kor frowned. This was new. “How will you take the food, then?” he asked quietly after a moment.

  “In dugouts, perhaps. We will paddle it over to the mouth of the river, portage it upstream. But the canoes are heavy and narrow. If you can loan us your coracles, which hold more, all will go faster.”

  “There are no boats to spare!” Istas protested.

  Kor was thinking. “You send folk,” he said finally, “and we will help you make boats.”

  “But then those who are sent will be gone the longer from the work to be done against next winter. Less will be gathered and laid by.” The man spoke softly, his look worried.

  “We need our coracles for fishing,” said Kor, not harshly but firmly. “The fish sustain us and sometimes you. I do not know what other offer to make you or your ruler.”

  “Izu will decide. Perhaps we can somehow bargain pack beasts from the Herders, should any of their traders pass our way.” The messenger bowed. “You are very generous. The matter is pressing, and I must go in all haste.”

  “Stay for the noon meal, at least.”

  “I cannot, Korridun King. But if you will give me what food I can carry in my hand, I will be glad of it.”

  Istas sent for bread from the hearth and dried fish from the stores stacked deep in the Hold. The runner loped off to drink lightly from the spring, and the moment the packet of food was in his hand he was on his way again, southward along the mountain flanks, the sweat not yet dry on his body. We all stood and watched him go. He carried not even a blanket for sleeping under.

  “He could not spare even a day,” Kor murmured. “Things must be hard with them.”

  “We will be hearing from Pajlat,” Istas said in dour tones.

  “I do not doubt it.” Kor gave her a crooked smile, which seemed to vex her. She sniffed and marched away.

  “What will you give Pajlat?” I asked Kor.

  “Oats.”

  “Do you always give him what he wants?”

  “Not all that he wants—we would be long since starved and dead if I gave him all that he wants! But I always give him something. Better so than that he should come and take what he wants perforce.”

  Undeniably better. I had faced the Fanged Horse Folk in battle, and I had no desire ever to do so again. They fought with shriveled human heads hanging from their bearskin riding pelts. Nor was their joy entirely in killing. Sometimes they took captives who were later “set free,” sent stumbling across the rocky steppes “in red boots,” with all the skin flayed from their feet up to their ankles. Alone of all the tribes they kept slaves, and they were so proud, it was said, that sometimes they killed the slaves for no better reason than to boast of their wealth to each other, showing that they did not mind the loss of a slave or two. Sometimes they even killed their horses in like wise, when their warriors vied with each other for honor.

  I shook myself, shaking off thoughts of Pajlat, turning my thoughts to Talu. “Give me a leg up?” I asked Kor “My foot is well enough, and I would like to t
ry riding that mare again.”

  He eyed me doubtfully. “What if she throws you and you land on it?”

  “She will not throw me. If she acts as if she might, I will swing down by her neck. Come on, Kor.”

  He complied. Talu was in among the aspens, hunting for mice and voles in the ferns. She had found a rabbit’s nest and was busily munching up the hairless morsels therein, so she let us approach without being coy as horses so often are. I threw my cloak over her back and Kor locked his hands to receive my knee, hoisting me up onto her. Talu’s head came up with a snort, and I passed a leather thong around her neck, mostly to hold on to—I did not have much hope of guiding Talu.

  “Are you sure—”

  I never heard the rest of what Kor said. We were off, the mare and I, plunging away from him and down the side of the headland. But for all her snorting and leaping it was a glorious ride. She soon settled into a steady lope along the mountainside, and the jarring of her gait pained my foot only a little. And oh, the spring-green cool smell of the blue pines, the smell and the sound of the freshwater torrents up on the slopes, the call of a falcon carrying far on the air … Up on the high peaks the snowmelt would be starting, the deer sleek-red for spring, the harts in velvet antler, and I longed to be there to see them. It was only after hours, reluctantly, that I coaxed Talu to a stop and turned her back again toward Seal Hold.

  After that, though I did not speak of it, I felt an ache other than that of my healing foot, and again I grew restless at night, though in a gentle way. After Winewa had gone off to her sleep I would get up and wander into the forest, the thick, wet, salt-swept coastal forest, spruce and birch all dark green with moss, trunks and dead lower branches dripping with it, dead ancestor logs plumed with ferns and glowing eerie orange with fungi. Sometimes young trees grew out of the bodies of their parents. It was a very different place from the open mountaintop forests I remembered. It troubled me that I did not know the names and customs of half the plants, the flowers. I felt very much the stranger there. Still, forest was forest, and when I was wakeful I went to forest for comfort.