Wolf's Brother tak-2

by Megan Lindholm

  He pushed the pace of his tracking, followed the wolf tracks now as much as the boy's prints. Straight to the seite they led him, and he watched it grow larger before him. Yes, It would be there, he thought to himself. He was surprised how closely it resembled the seite of his vision. But a child's memories were clear ones, he told himself. He thought again of the old najd dragging the clacking antler around the gray stone flanks of the stone. If he blinked his eyes, he could sec again the bright emblems painted on its rough sides. And a hand-print? He told himself that if there were a handprint on the seite, it would mean nothing. Only that he had seen the mark as a boy and remembered it. No more than that. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the uneasiness he felt whenever he recalled his dream. The vision had come to him the same night that Carp had found him. Whenever he recalled it, he tried to believe his meeting with Wolf had been a dream, a product of a cold and lonely watch kept through the night. It seemed a thing apart from the rest of his life, an experience that had no common grounds with his reality. 'Such is the spirit vision of a man,' he heard the voice of the old najd echo down the years in his mind.

  'Kerlew!' he bellowed, as much to fill his own ears with a real sound as to call the boy. But there was no reply, and his voice bounced back to him from the great gray stone that now reared up before him. He halted, no more than the length of two men from the stone, and looked up at it.

  The seite. It radiated a powerful holiness, a sacredness that transcended the puny passage of men upon the face of the tundra. The seite had been here, had raised itself out of the earth's belly and stood up beneath the sky. Its godliness had nothing to do with the pitiful homage of the passing herdfolk. They might pay their respects to it with an offering of meat or fur or gleaming amber, but their honoring it did not alter or affect it in any way. It was the seite, implacable and unyielding in its awesome power. A man might visit it once or twice in his lifetime, coming in secret to offer thanks for a healthy child or a good year of calves. That women came here as well, he did not doubt, but he had no idea what they asked or offered or thanked for. He didn't want to know. The terrible ceremony of the antler and the drum had been the only formal gathering he had ever seen at the seite. Surely folk had visited it since then, from his own herd and from others. But he had not been among them, and he did not come willingly now. As if the seite knew that, it turned a chill gray face to him and greeted him with stony silence.

  'Well, Kerlew, you were here. Where did you go?' His own words sounded thin in his ears, their casualness forced. The boy had paused here, letting his weight sink his tracks into the earth. And then, and then, he had walked over this way, circling the seite, now pausing, now dashing on. Heckram frowned to himself. This was not the behavior of a boy pursued by wolves. He had thought that Kerlew had run toward the seite hoping to clamber up it and escape the pack on his heels. But perhaps the wolves had not been pursuing him. Perhaps he could hope still.

  And so around the seite, and then, here, the boy had turned and backed up to stand flat against the stone itself. Heckram scowled at the lush, crushed leaves and petals of a ranunculus. Kerlew had stood squarely atop that plant, not stepped on it in passing.

  Why? What had held his attention so?

  Then, as he stepped back from Kerlew's marks and glanced up, Heckram felt a sudden wave of dizziness sweep over him. The hand-print was red, the wolf's track below it black. Like a pledge marked together, like an agreement sealed with the gripping of hands. He swayed where he stood, denying it. Someone else had done it, he told himself, in some ancient time, and he had remembered it from his childhood in a bizarre dream. But another part of him laughed wildly inside his skull, demanding who else would have a handspan that wide and would set his mark so casually high. Who else would have been drawn, through a dream and across an impossible distance to Wolf and the Seite, to strike a bargain: Heckram's loyalty to Wolf, if Wolf would bring justice to Elsa's killer?

  Without will he lifted his hand and spread the fingers wide, held it before him to compare it to the mark. It would fit. It was on a level with his eyes, an easy touch for him, but a difficult reach for almost anyone else. He didn't need to fit his hand in that print to know it for his own. But like an insect drawn to a flame, he took the steps that carried him into the seite's cool gray shadow. He set his hand in the print, saw the precision of the mark. Ice and fire in the touch of his flesh against the stone, and when he drew his hand back to himself with a cry, he was surprised to find the familiar calluses and lines of his palm intact. Yes, the hand-print was his.

  Whose, then, the wolf-print?

  Every hair on his body hackled, and he stumbled away from the seite's shadow, back into the sunlight and soft wind of the tundra day. But for long moments the warmth of the day couldn't reach him, and it took even longer before he recalled his present errand. He let his eyes scan the earth again, and his belly churned at the multitude of wolf-tracks that arched around Kerlew's track. There he had stood at bay, then, while the wolves circled round him. And then? And then any wolves he had ever known would have pulled down their cornered prey and torn each his share of flesh and bone.

  But there were no signs of a grisly feast. Instead, there were the marks of the wolves packing up and moving off again. And among their tracks and on top of them, the bare prints of a young boy's feet.

  Heckram let out a shuddering breath. What manner of boy ran with wolves by night? And what manner of wolves allowed it? His eyes strayed once more to his handprint, and the wolf print below it. The sudden kinship he felt for Kerlew astounded and overwhelmed him. He set out in the wake of the pack's tracks, suddenly certain the boy would be alive and well when he found him. That he never need have worried at all.

  He trotted along, the wind and sunlight fresh against his face and hair. And there was Kerlew, tousled but whole, rising suddenly from a hollow in the earth. The boy's eyes were wide, pale as a wolf's, and the greeting he called to Heckram chilled his bones: 'Brother Wolf, I knew you would come for me!'

  But Heckram found no surprise in himself at all.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  She did not sleep, but morning came anyway, and with it a semblance of normalcy that chafed Tillu's nerves. She and Kari rose, they ate, and Lasse came for the harkar.

  They spoke very little and of Kerlew and Heckram not at all. Heckram had not returned, Kerlew hadn't wandered in. If Kari and Lasse knew of Heckram's plan, they did not betray it. The only sign was that Ristin's rajd had grown. She passed them with a solemn nod. Carp sat astride the last harke in her rajd. Tillu stared at him as he rode past, hating his unperturbed manner. She didn't blame Ristin for putting him on the last harke; from there he couldn't speak to her.

  The harkar and their loads were gone, the fire burned to embers, and still they lingered. Families and rajds moved past them as the temporary camp broke up and resumed the migration. Tillu wandered aimlessly in the trodden circle that had been their camp last night. The place held her; leaving this spot and moving on would be abandoning Kerlew. Surrendering him to death.

  'I thought you would come to ask for word of your son. I see you were not as worried as you seemed.' Cool words, edged words. Tillu turned her head slowly.

  Joboam stood at the edge of their camp, his fists on his hips. His jerkin was open halfway down his chest, displaying hair. His arms were bare and muscle bulged on them. She found the sight repellent.

  'I never thought to seek you out,' Tillu said softly, truthfully. 'I thought you would come to tell me if you had found anything.'

  He shrugged. 'Well, if you're interested. I found bones spread about, still red with clinging flesh. At least a dozen wolves had nosed and pawed through them.'

  Tillu's throat clenched. Kari's voice was shrill and raw in the chill air. 'And?' she demanded.

  'And I suppose they must have found a calf that straggled away from the main herd.

  It was probably half-starved by the time they pulled it down. There is a kindness in the savagery o
f wolves, making sure a lost calf does not suffer too long.'

  'But Kerlew? Did you find any sign of him?' Either Kari's voice shook, or the humming in Tillu's cars made her think it did. She hated Joboam and his ghastly teasing. He smiled so kindly as he sliced her with words.

  'The boy? No, I saw no sign of the boy. I called, but he neither answered nor came.'

  Tillu looked at him dumbly, unable to reply. His eyes met hers, and for an instant the anger and mockery in his died away, to be replaced with pitying condescension. 'It seems hard, I know. But only the strongest are favored on the tundra. Life is for the strongest. But mercy's teeth are sharp and swift.'

  'Perhaps. But not all strength is easily seen,' Tillu found herself answering. Her voice was surprisingly steady and she lifted her chin as she spoke. He stared down at her, and she saw his determination to master her grow. What had he imagined last night?

  That she would come to him in tears and pain, and he would comfort and distract her?

  Did he believe that with Kerlew gone, she would forget her son, and accept Joboam?

  'You had better get started, if you are to keep up with the caravan today. Capiam would be very angry if he had to send me back to look for you also.' The words were formed as a suggestion, but spoken as a command. Tillu and Kari stood insolently still, staring up at him.

  'And Carp told me last night that if you ignored his summons again, there would be little he could do to help you.' Bright color dotted Kari's cheeks as she suddenly flung the words at him. Tillu wondered what she was talking about.

  With a snort of disdain and anger, he spun away from them. He yanked the lead harke's head around, and dragged the rajd off at a lagging trot, hastening up the moving line of folk and beasts to take the place his status required.

  'What does Carp want with Joboam?' Tillu asked distractedly.

  Kari looked at her for a long moment, the secrets behind her eyes looming large. Her eyes were black as she said, 'All my life, Joboam has been making me do things. Things I did not want to do. Just once, I should like to be able to make him do something he didn't want to do. When I was small and he came to drag me back to Ketla, I used to scream and scratch at him. I remember screeching, 'You can't make me do it. You can't make me.' But of course he could. And did. He has been the biggest for so long, he has come to believe that gives him the right to command. My father does not see it, but I do.

  It chafes him that he is not herdlord, but he dares not dispute it yet. One day he will, in the meantime, he does not tolerate any defiance.'

  Kari turned to Tillu, a sad warning in her eyes. 'Don't defy him, Tillu. Give in to him, for awhile. And then, after a time when you do not resist, he will think he has mastered you. Then he will leave you alone. Pretending to give up is the only way to win with Joboam. Giving in is easier and hurts less than fighting him. You can't win.'

  'Kari,' Tillu began wonderingly, but the girl only shook her head angrily and turned away. She snatched up her gathering bag from the ground and set out after the caravan.

  Tillu followed silently, a dreadful suspicion gnawing at her heart.

  Tillu tried to focus her mind on the plants she passed. Her pharmacopia was complete now, or nearly so. These last few days of gathering had been mostly for Kari's education, and to provide fresh greens for their meals. Today they both moved slowly, pausing often to stoop and dig for roots. Rajd after rajd moved past the grubbing women. Both took exaggerated care in cleaning the roots and cutting them in manageable pieces. Old Natta finally passed them, limping and huffing, but too proud to let her grandson lead her rajd while she rode. Tillu had met her once before, when she had come to her for a liniment for sore joints. She slowed and then halted her two moth-eaten animals.

  'Healer?' she called in her cracked old voice.

  Tillu looked up from the roots in her lap. The old woman's eyes were set deep in her wrinkled face, and one had begun to film with age. She spoke slowly, pausing often.

  'I'm sorry about your boy. I lost a little daughter that way, years ago. Just a wee one, just old enough to run and play with the other children. But when they came back to the fires at night, she wasn't with them. They tell you not to grieve, there will be other children for you. And there will. But I know that none will be like the boy you lost, and you will never cease missing him. So grieve away, and know I grieve with you. But don't do what you're thinking of doing. Don't go back down the trail, looking and calling. You'll only be lost as well, and if you do find him, you'll wish you hadn't.' She paused a long time, taking quick, shallow breaths, and Tillu thought she was finished.

  But then Natta flashed a look to her from old eyes that suddenly brimmed with tears. 'I know. Don't go back to look.' Her old mouth folded in on itself and said no more as she turned her face away from them, looking to the far horizon.

  Then she was stumping on her way. She did not lead her head harke, but leaned one hand on its shoulder. Its muzzle was rimmed with white, and the pace they set suited them both. Silence flowed in slowly after they passed. Tillu squatted on her heels, staring after them. She started at Kari's touch on her shoulder.

  'She's right, you know.' Kari spoke simply. 'If he can be found alive, Heckram will find him and bring him to you. You have to trust that task to him. And if he finds him otherwise ... he will do all that can be done for him; you could do no more by being there.'

  Tillu tucked the roots into her shoulder bag, and rose. She looked back the way they had come. The passage of the people and hooved beasts had leveled a swath through the tundra's face. Her eyes followed it back to the horizon. Within her sight, nothing moved. No one followed. She trudged after Kari, and for the first time in days her legs ached with the long walk. The mosses and grasses of the tundra grabbed at her feet and slowed her.

  They were last into camp that night, arriving even after old Natta. Great worn gray boulders and outcroppings of stone characterized their stopping place. In the long gray twilight, the camp was visible as small red fires and children outlined against the sunset as they clambered and leaped from the stones. Tillu felt exhausted. Her head throbbed and her entire body ached with unrelieved tension. She knew she should be hungry, but the thought of food choked her. As they trudged into the camp Lasse slid down from a large boulder. They knew he had been keeping watch for them.

  Without preamble he told them, 'Ristin has cooked more than enough for all, and bids you join her. And if you say you would rather be alone now, I'm supposed to tell you that she would, too. But being alone right now is not good for you, and besides, if she has to share her fire with Carp, she'd like some other company as well.'

  Kari looked uncertain of the invitation, but Tillu was too tired to resist. She followed Lasse and Kari came behind her.

  Ristin had set her tent between two great boulders, and it gave an air of privacy to this home in the middle of the tundra. Her fire burned cleanly, reindeer dung and twigs turning to glowing coals. A pot of bubbling stew was wedged into the glowing embers, and flat cakes baked from reindeer moss were heaped on a flat stone where the fire could warm them. Skins were spread on the soft grasses between the boulders, and roofed with a slanting of hides. Ristin sat by her fire, her eyes narrowed as she stitched away at some project. Of Carp there was no sign.

  'Wash your face and hands,' she told them as they began to settle near her fire. 'You'll feel better.' And though Lasse was the first to obey her, it was clear she addressed them all. It was the first time Tillu had really looked at her since Elsa's death. Strange, how long ago that seemed now. This woman looked older than Tillu remembered. Older and stronger. There was sorrow and serenity in her features, and they somehow combined to suggest wisdom. Tillu wondered if her own mother would have looked like this, and behaved this way, calmly assuming dominion over anyone the same age as her son.

  Kari came to sit beside Tillu and as Lasse moved to sit beside her, Ristin calmly observed, 'I fetched a bucket of water for your grandmother, Lasse. She said that one would be pl
enty, as she eats alone now. I tried to get her to join us this evening, but she wouldn't. I think she thought we would be bored with her.'

  The stricken look on Lasse's face was not something he could control or hide.

  Without a word he rose and hurried away.

  'He's a good boy,' Ristin observed to no one in particular. 'But sometimes he needs to be reminded that there are responsibilities to being loved.'

  Beside her, Kari stiffened. Tillu did not know if the words had been aimed at her, but they had certainly struck. 'But sometimes one does not choose to be loved. Then does that one have a responsibility?'

  Ristin stared at the girl across the fire. Tillu could almost see the thoughts in her head being reorganized. She thought she looked surprised. 'Then one can always choose to be kind,' she suggested softly. 'It costs little enough. Come. Let's eat, and let words wait for later. I was waiting for Carp, but if he chooses to stay away, he chooses to eat after we have.'

  'Where did he go?' Tillu asked as she accepted the bowl of soup and the warm cake of bread.

  'I don't really know. He saw Joboam pass. Or rather, Joboam made sure we saw him, for he stood and stared at the fire and shelter quite rudely. Then, as he started to walk away Carp rose and followed him. But maybe it only seemed that way. He could have gone for a walk, or to see the herdlord, or just to relieve himself. He'll be back when it suits him.'

  'You seem to know him well already,' Tillu agreed with a mirthless laugh.

  'Better than I care to,' Ristin admitted, and a tension that had hung in the air melted.

  Kari smiled uncertainly and accepted another round of bread from Ristin.

  'Do you think he'll find him?' Tillu found herself asking the older woman, and then could scarcely believe she had spoken the words. But Ristin accepted them calmly.

  'If anyone can, Heckram will. He's a good hunter and tracker. I have always believed he was better than most, because he hunted so often alone. The lone hunter cannot afford to make a mistake, or to rely on others to see what he has missed. If anyone can find the boy, he will.' Ristin leaned forward to poke at her small fire. The yellow light played over her features, and Tillu saw Heckram's cheekbones, Heckram's brows on her face. Then she leaned back and turned to face Tillu squarely. 'Don't hide what you know from yourself, Tillu. With each hour that passes, it is more likely that Heckram will find only the boy's body. I know how my son works. He will go back to where he last saw the boy, and track him from there. But this time of year, tracks do not long remain on the ground. Moss springs up in the morning dew, and one bare footprint looks much like another. He will be thorough, and I do not think that he will return until he has found something. But what he finds may not be what we hope for.' Ristin took a breath, and suddenly looked away into the darkness. 'Do you blame him?'