Wolf's Brother

by Megan Lindholm

  'No. Oh, no.' She lay down carefully beside him, fitting her belly to his side. 'Kerlew said it was not you; it was Elsa's knife and Wolf who killed Joboam. Not you. I heard the talk as I was bandaging you. Several came forward to speak for you. But Capiam said it was not necessary. That the najd had explained all.'

  He was silent then, and when she spidered her fingers lightly over his face, his eyes were closed. 'Sleep, then,' she told him, and lifted her face to kiss the tip of his ear. She thought briefly of Ketla. Tillu had insisted that she be moved to Carp's tent. It had given her great satisfaction to bed Ketla down in the lush furs, surrounded by the wealth that had paid for her misfortune. Capiam, too, probably slept there now. They would both live, or so Tillu believed, if they did not surrender to their grief. The unheard-of events in Capiam's tent had brought the other herdlords, eager to hear the tale, and had somehow increased his stature among them. He would live, she believed, to lead his people to the winter talvsit again, and for many winters beyond that.

  She leaned her face against Heckram's shoulder, filling her nostrils with his scent. Now she could close her eyes and see, not blood, but reindeer, a vast herd of them spilling across the tundra, as many as the stars in the night sky. She would follow them, in the wake of this man at her side. She imagined the reindeer running, their heads up, their antlers thrown back, leading them on forever in an endless cycle. Heckram would always follow them. And she would follow him, she realized, wherever he chose to go.

  Kerlew muttered in his sleep, then cried out suddenly, clearly. 'If you would be Wolf's mate, learn to follow the herd.'

  Beneath her hand, Heckram murmured an assent. Tillu snuggled closer, and closed her eyes to sleep.

  KERLEW: THE NAJD

  He sat in the afternoon sun, feeling it touch his skin and shine redly through his closed eyelids. The bandages were still tight around his chest. Tillu said that the ribs beneath the scored flesh were broken, and had wrapped the bandages so tightly he could scarcely breathe. Then she had dared to scold him for standing up to Joboam. 'You could have gotten both of you killed. You and Heckram both, and I would have had nothing in my life.' Foolish talk. 'The Wolverine could not have killed me,' he tried to explain. 'He could not stand against the Wolf and I.' She had only leaned closer and whispered, 'And don't think I don't know where that fragment of blade really came from.' He had given up talking to her then. She could not glimpse the greater reality. Only the greater truth mattered. The blade had come from Joboam's arm; when was of no consequence. The herdfolk had needed to see it red still with his blood, so that they could accept the truth and be at peace with it. Pirtsi had needed to see it before he could admit the truth that was festering inside him. All had seen, and been convinced. All but Tillu. She alone still had no respect for him. She alone would not admit his powers. But he would teach her to. He grinned wickedly to himself.'Najd?'

  He opened his eyes slowly. It was a little girl child standing beside his bare feet. She was all big eyes and unruly black hair. She was very young, probably two years younger than himself. And very shy.

  'What do you want?' he asked her gruffly. Her eyes grew bigger, her mouth smaller as she lifted a leaf cup into view. It held a red trove of early dewberries, probably the first ones she had found this year. She did not breathe as she offered it. He didn't reach for it. 'You are Kelr's daughter, are you not?' he asked her. She nodded once, looking scared. He held out his hand slowly and she placed the leaf-cup of dewberries into it. He looked up at her through his lashes. He smiled at her slowly, watched her mouth widen with pleasure. Her own smile came cautious as a fox-kit peering from its den.

  'My father, Kelr, sends me to tell you his eldest son breathes free now. He sat up this morning and ate.'

  'Good.' Kerlew looked down at the cup of berries in his hand, and then measured half of them out onto his palm. He held the leaf-cup back to her. 'Take these to your brother,' he told her. 'They'll do him good.'

  She stood transfixed. Then, 'Thank you,' she breathed, took the cup, and was gone. Kerlew sat up as he ate the berries. Then he picked up the piece of carving he had been working on, looked at it, then set it down again. He leaned back, closed his eyes, felt the sun against his face and the light of it red through his eyelids. Carp would have demanded a better gift than berries, Kerlew thought to himself. Carp would have called him a fool to take so little. He opened himself, let the sounds of the herdfolk wash against his senses. Children shouted at their play, men and women yelled to one another as they worked with the reindeer, mothers called after children. He smelled the cookfires, the meat and fish drying on the racks, the musty smell of hides stretched to the sun to dry, the wild smell of the reindeer. The herdfolk were all around him. He felt them like a spider in its web feels the vibration of every strand. Another block of awareness tumbled into place. This was what Carp had been missing, why he had not cared when he set the sickness loose among them. Carp had not been herdfolk. Kerlew was.

  Tillu's voice was leaking out of the tent. He could hear her nattering at Heckram, fussing at him because he had only risen from his bed yesterday, and today he was working at something. Kerlew smiled to himself, knowing. Heckram was stretching leather from a wolf's hide carefully over the old drum's frame. First he had marvelled at the workmanship in the old drum. Then he had shook his head over the old wood and said it would not take the strain. But Kerlew knew it would, and he had insisted. So Heckram worked on it now, fastening the leather down so carefully, stretching it as tight as might be, damping it, and stretching it again. Kerlew had grown weary of watching him, and had come outside to work on his own carving and to nap on the soft fox-skins that Capiam had given him. But again Tillu's voice broke in on his dreaming. She was annoyed.

  'Willow bark. That was all it was, no matter how long he chanted over it. Willow bark and salt. And to each one that came, he gave a portion of willow bark, to be taken for the fever, and salt, to make a poultice for the sores. The same things I had been telling them. Salt to draw the poisons from the abscesses, willow bark to keep the fever down. But now they noise it about as 'The Najd's magic,' and loudly tell me how much better they are.'

  'And you are jealous.' Heckram's deep voice, the amusement in it even deeper.

  'I am not. I only think, why cannot it be seen as it is? Why can't the folk see ...'

  'Maybe it isn't that simple. Does it matter?'

  Kerlew could sense her sigh of resignation. 'I suppose not. As long as they get better. Capiam was better, yesterday. Ketla tends him well.'

  'She has no one else now,' Heckram pointed out.

  There was silence. Broken by Tillu's muttered, 'I suppose not.' She changed the subject suddenly. 'What are you doing?'

  'Taking this to Kerlew. It's finished, I think.'

  'Sit down. I'll take it to him.'

  'No. I'm tired of sitting still. A glimpse of the sky will do me good.' He heard the sounds of shuffling, could imagine Tillu scowling over him as he stood. Kerlew turned his eyes inward a moment, grinned to himself, then wiped the smile from his face as the tent-flap was lifted.

  'You walk like an old man,' he observed as Heckram crabbed out of the entry.

  'Kerlew!' Tillu rebuked, and was ignored.

  'I feel like an old man,' Heckram admitted. 'Here. What do you think?'

  Kerlew accepted the small drum. He turned it over in his hands, looking at the creamy new leather stretched across the old frame, already seeing the figures he would paint on it, red and blue, reindeer and men and wolves. 'From Wolf,' he said to himself, and 'Yes, wolf hide,' Heckram agreed, not understanding at all.

  'It will do. Luckily, you are better at this than you were at fighting.' He looked up at Heckram slyly, through his lashes as he asked, 'Did you learn anything from your fight with Joboam?'

  'Kerlew!' Tillu, in angry rebuke. But Heckram only knelt slowly, and then sat beside him. 'Was I supposed to?' he asked in a voice breathless with pain. A sincere question, from a man who glimpsed his powers
. No need to teach Heckram respect.

  'Of course.'

  Heckram's eyes were turned inward, unaware of the angry look Tillu was giving her son. 'I'd never fought a man before. Not like that. I'd never realized what it would be like to fight hoping to kill.' He looked at Kerlew with a strange respect. 'Joboam was better at it than I. I don't know why I'm alive.'

  'Because of the magic. Because you are more herdfolk than you know. You thought you might be a man-killer. You aren't. You fought Joboam like you were wrestling a pregnant vaja. But for my magic, he'd have killed you. There is no murder in you.'

  'I'd come to suspect that,' Heckram admitted grudgingly. He fingered his still swollen mouth. 'So I'm not a fighter. But you like the drum.'

  'Yes.' Kerlew laughed his cracked laugh. 'You learn from me now. But I have learned from you, too. See?' He lifted his work into view. Already Heckram knew not to touch it, but only to look with his eyes.

  'It looks like a wolf's paw,' Heckram said. Kerlew smiled at the uneasiness that tinged his words. 'Yes,' he agreed. He leaned suddenly, touched the carved wand to his mother's belly. 'The baby will be a girl-child. Name her Willow, for luck.'

  Silence.

  Then, from Heckram, 'What baby?'

  Tillu fled, whirling away from them both and back into the tent. Heckram looked at Kerlew incredulously. He stood up much faster than he had eased himself down and limped after her, struggling with the tent-flap, and then demanding again, 'What baby?' Kerlew heard Tillu's muttered reply, and then Heckram's deep voice going high on incredulous words. He didn't bother to listen.

  He drew Wolf from his najd's pouch, set him atop the new drum head. 'Now, she will respect me,' he told him. Black eyes bright, red tongue lolling, Wolf stood and laughed with him. With the wolf's paw Kerlew tapped the taut drum-skin, and Wolf began to dance for him in the warm afternoon sunlight.

  NOTES

  The Reindeer Fly is an insect that afflicts reindeer by laying eggs on their hide that develop into larvae. The larvae burrow into the animal's back. Boils develop around them, and the larvae live off the pus within the boil until the following spring. Sometimes the fly will hover near the reindeer's muzzle, to inject minute larvae in a glutinous liquid into the muzzle. When this happens, the larvae are inhaled and a stream of larvae make their way on the nasal mucous to the throat. Animals thus afflicted often die of a cough, cold, or asphyxiation. This is the condition referred to in the story as the Great Plague. Reindeer usually escape the flies by seeking the ice fields that remain intact on the tundra even in summer.Tularemia is an acute, plaguelike infectious disease, caused by the Francissella tularensis. It can be transmitted to man by the bite of an infected tick or other bloodsucking insect, or by direct contact with infected animals, or by consuming inadequately cooked meat or drinking water that contains the organism. Symptoms appear one to three days afterwards. Symptoms include headaches, chills, vomiting, fever, and aching pains. The site of infection may develop into an ulcer, and the glands at the elbow and armpit may become enlarged and painful. Later, it may develop into an abscess. Sweating, loss of weight, and general weakness follow. The fever may come and go over a period of several weeks. If the bacteria enters through the skin, local sores occur at the site, usually on the hands and fingers. The most common complication is pneumonia. Wet saline dressings are generally soothing to the lesions, and analgesics relieve the headaches.

  — MEGAN LINDHOLM