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Yaqut pretended to sleep, propped in the crotch of a stout oak. He watched Timov get up and slip into the moonlight. He thought the lad intended to flee and felt glad of that. Kirchi lay under the neighboring yew, collapsed in her grief. She was the one Yaqut wanted.
Not a beautiful woman, not as clansmen judged beauty, she filled too skinny a frame—yet Yaqut liked her vulpine stare, green as lit ice, and the way her cheekbones flared. A witch, she stoked the heat of his desire. What a brutish joy he would know with her, for she would resist, certainly—just as the bonesucker had resisted the prick of Yaqut's poison.
Let her resist. He wanted a good flesh-packed fight. He wanted the mixed delight of matching his cleaving ache, swollen from summer-long denial, with a biting, scratching truculence—enough pain to turn his desire into gleeful plunder.
Yaqut gritted out a curse between set teeth when he saw Timov return. The boy had merely gone off to empty his bowels. Should I kill him now? Or let him tag along until an accident finds him? Sleep claimed him as he pondered this, and when he woke, the first rays of sun riddled red through the smoke from the burned woods.
Charred spines of trees stood above brimming fog. Magpies shouted their loss from surviving trees and hedges on the bluffs. Yaqut, after throwing to the ground his blanket of pelts and standing tall in the oak, stretched the sleep-cramps from his muscles. He took the tracking stone from his hip-pouch and pointed it east. The crystal chill faded as he aimed it north. He watched Timov and Kirchi relieve themselves in the bushes, then crept down from his night perch and emptied his bladder over the shackled roots.
East, torn veils of fog revealed foliage, red, yellow, and patches of lingering green. There would be food. Deer, startled by last night's blaze, stumbled among the hedges, and one would be enough for several days.
First, he would claim his prize and get rid of the weakness Kirchi stirred in him. He sauntered to where the witch bent, gathering her pelts, lashing them with twine for the day's trek. When he stuck his lance in the ground and put his hands on her hips, she straightened as if stabbed.
"Here or in the bushes?" Yaqut asked. He caught Timov's alarmed stare, flicked his eyes to the side, telling the boy to go somewhere else.
Timov stood, staring dumbly, as if trying to remember something.
"I'm mourning Hamr," Kirchi said, not even looking over her shoulder.
"You mourned him last night." Yaqut kept his hands on her hips, stepped close enough to smell the leaf-mulch scent of her matted red hair. "Time now to worship the life that remains. Let us go sing the Beastmaker's praises in the bushes."
"No, leave me be."
"We all need more time. But we only get what we have." Yaqut thrilled to feel the tension in her stomach muscles as she readied to twist about or flee. There would be a fight. He looked to the boy with a harsh stare, warning him off. If he had to speak to him, he swore he would do him real injury. "Fight me if you want," he whispered into her bright hair. "I will take you anyway."
For a stretched moment, they stood still. A blackbird screeched like a cat. Sunlight ripped through creaking mists, and the rolling air carried thunder from the Big River. Then, Kirchi jumped forward, seized a club-sized bough from beside the burned-out campfire.
"Stay away from me," she said, with a threatening wave of the club.
Yaqut grabbed his lance, showed his brown teeth in a dread smile. With a swift twirl of his lance, he struck the club from Kirchi's hand and sent it winging away. She staggered backward, and he lunged for her, grabbed her right arm, slipped his lance between her legs and with one push flopped her onto her back.
Timov leaned forward to jump, and Yaqut stopped him with a murderous shout. "Watch if you want—but touch me and you die."
Kirchi struggled ferociously, clawing for Yaqut's good eye. He blocked her arm with a bruising blow from the shaft of his lance, and pressed himself down between her legs, taking her awkward kicks gratefully. His scar-riven cheek took the force of her head-butts, one hand pressing his lance against her chest and arms. With the other, he freed his turgid manhood from his loin-strap and groped for her cleft.
Timov swayed indecisively. If he attacked, he would die. He knew it. If he did not do something, he would want to die. What would Hamr do?
No. He could never be Hamr. He had to do what he could do.
But what? He looked for a weapon, found nothing fatal. It had to be fatal—there would be only one blow.
Fear pounded in him as blood whipped deeper into his body—hiding from the fight to come. He had spotted the pouch at Yaqut's hip. The tracking stone sat in there.
He started forward, stopped. What am I going to do?
He pitted his whole body against fear, determined to do something. Timing alone would judge him now. He waited, watched with his heart soughing, as Kirchi bucked and fought and Yaqut rode her, trying to fit himself to her.
The moment opened: Kirchi's rise met Yaqut's thrust, and Timov leaped into the moment of the hunter's abandon. He snatched the hip pouch, squeezed it open, and tore free the crystal.
Yaqut spun about with a curse of surprise and rage.
By then, Timov had rolled away. He sprang to his feet, the tracking stone shaking in his hand.
As Yaqut rose, his member dangling through his loin-strap, he thrust his lance forward. Fury distorted his torn face. "You are dead, boy!"
Timov knelt before an impacted rock. He smashed the crystal against it, again and again, until it shattered.
An involuntary cry drove through Yaqut, and, automatically, he cocked back his lance.
"Kill me and you'll never find the bonesucker." Timov stood up, streaming with sweat. To speak, he had to rock loose the muscles strapping his jaw: "You know I'm your only hope, Yaqut. Kill me and all you'll ever see of Baat are his droppings."
Kirchi lifted herself to her knees in amazement. The boy had mastered Yaqut. She could see the hunter's murdering lust subside, then disintegrate into embittered resignation. His lance-arm wilted. His cunning face hung forward in enraged submission.
Yaqut stalked toward Timov, menacingly.
Timov held his ground. The hunter stepped so close his blistered visage blocked out everything else. Timov noticed blood tatters in the whites of his eyes, the roots of gray hair at the bony edges of his head.
Yaqut fixed him with a murderous glare. "Find the ghost dancer. That is all that keeps you alive."
Timov's gaze wanted to slither away, yet he held it fast on the blue irises in Yaqut's eyes. Fear, needless now, he had found his strength, a strength stronger than Hamr's had been, and he had to use it—now. "You're not going to touch Kirchi anymore."
A laugh so toneless it touched silence fell from Yaqut's slack mouth. Crazy willfulness rose in him—to gut this whelp and strangle him with his own bowels. The ghost dancers' teeth tied across the hunter's chest harried him at the thought.
His family's blood, soaked into these fangs, cried out to him. For them alone, he would tolerate this show of arrogance. He would not kill the boy, yet. He would let him live for the dead, who lived in himself and, for now, in the boy. He grinned like a skull. "You think you are man enough for the witch?"
"Just don't touch her again, ever." Timov held Yaqut's dire stare another moment, then strode past him to help Kirchi gather the pelts.
"Thank you," Kirchi said with a soundless breath.
Timov managed a tremulous smile. He helped to fit the bound pelts to Kirchi's back. Then, he picked up the satchels, and they left camp, following Yaqut east into the fire and smoke of a new day.
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At the first painted light of dawn, Baat stood up to try his new strength. He wore the stitched pelts he had slept beneath thrown over his shoulders against the dew-cold. His left arm felt weak, yet tingled with feeling. The gash where Yaqut's poison had entered him itched and ached.
He walked around the scrubby yew, where Duru lay curled in sleep. Only her black hair appeared under the deersk
in.
His legs swayed with the plunging motion of his knees, yet managed to keep him upright and moving. The painful needlework stitching in his heart had departed, and he could breathe deeply again.
Baat paused to gaze at the leakage of green light in the east. He scanned north and, finally, west into the scorch and smoke of last night's wild fire. Thanks to Duru the Dark Traces had fled. Yet, he knew what they would be shouting as he stared over the black spikes of the burned Forest: Yaqut moves relentlessly toward me with more of his poison. There is no escaping him.
North, the deep lanes of the Forest led to the Big River. He could hear the sliding water above the early racket of birds. Through the slipping wall of smoke and fog, the abrupt end of the Forest came in and out of view. Unless Yaqut or other smallheads caught them, they would reach the grasslands today.
Deep gratitude moved through him like a slow river for this child, who had forgiven him for killing her clansman. With her, he would see the north again.
An oceanic breeze lofted the river scent along the bluffs, carrying with it the daring smell of the open plains: minty keen heather, purple and humming with bees. A thousand memories and their griefs littered Baat's heart in that drafty moment.
He remembered his first summers on the tundra with the People—the solemn rituals and festive songs, the carousing and the careful hunting, and at night the men and women huddled in their circles, and the cold fires of the sky blazing among them. All gone—yet ever-living in his dreams.
This could have been his last sweet summer on the tundra, but sweetness soured when the Dark Traces used him to kill the Longtooth and rape their priestess.
No matter now. Summer had gone. Ahead, the short days labored under the long nights, naked to the sky and the hard stars. Sunlight, already frail, would only grow weaker.
Baat looked at the girl curled around her sleep and worried about what would become of her. Again, he knew what the Dark Traces would say: She will die. Everything living dies.
What would the Bright Ones say? They had led him to her. They had selected her for his companion. They would not abandon her in the north after he had left this world.
An echo of the Dark Traces' laughter mocked him for this thought, for even thinking he would survive today, let alone the trek across the tundra. He sighed and let his helplessness take over.
Duru sat up and peeked blearily into the lingering dusk.
Baat watched her apprehensively, afraid of her grief.
She took his hand and smiled at him.
After she refreshed herself at a creek, they faced west, where Hamr had died and where his soul had gone, and Duru sang a lamentation she had learned from Mother.
Behind her, Baat chanted. Even though he knew she could not understand him, Hamr's spirit could, and to him, Baat sang:
Now you are dead.
Now you are the secret part in us
We meet in the darkness.
You are the song of our wounds.
Baat wandered silently through the woods, Duru on his shoulders. They foraged as they traveled. By mid-morning, they reached the Big River, and there they found stream mussels and kelp to eat.
Duru's leg gash had healed well enough for her to limp without her crutch, and they ate as they walked.
The land smoothed, and the Forest grew dense to the crumbly banks of the river. At noon, they reached a bend where the colorful trees fell back before a stony plain spiked here and there with conifers. Shallows wobbled with sunlight, trickling westward toward grasslands, while the deep waters of the Big River swerved east in a stately arc that descended from the mountains.
Staring at the ghostly patterns of snow on the distant purple range, Duru wondered if she would ever see her Hamr again, or any of the dead. Baat read the dreaminess in her stare correctly, and spoke again his chant for the dead.
They waded west, leaving the Forest behind, and entered the wide-open flatlands that stretched north to the glaciers. Now that they moved in the open, exposed, Baat sought out the deeply rutted migratory paths and ravines carved by spring flood waters rushing to the Big River.
Ahead, a herd of woolly rhinos nibbled the green shoots of the shallows. Baat knew that this red-shag herd moved north, to winter at the spur of the icesheets. They used their horns to probe under the snow for lichen. In a few days, they would pass their less hardy black-furred cousins trundling south. The dark-haired ones preferred the shelter of the Forest when the gale winds blew.
Baat carried Duru through a ravine that led upwind of the beasts. Along the way, they gathered a sheaf of hassock grass and bearded oat. Baat used a rock to crush the stems and paste their skin, hair, and pelts with the aromatic pith. He braided the oats to crowns for their heads and laced bracelets on their arms.
Bedecked in the fragrant mash, Baat and Duru rose from the ravine and let the wind waft their scents into the herd. Duru, frightened of the giant creatures, lingered behind the ghost dancer as he ambled gradually closer. He stopped frequently to sit and pick at the stones, finding grubs and sweet shoots and breathing the deep musk of rhino. A few of the behemoths raised their heads. With their tiny eyes, they watched the intruders, then lowered their lips again to their feeding.
"They're too big to kill," Duru whispered.
Baat smiled, not comprehending, and offered her a snail.
Slowly, Baat and Duru insinuated their way into the herd, disturbing not even the birds perched on the humped backs. Baat showed the girl how to hold out bunches of the oat mash for the rhinos to eat. At first, she feared extending her hand to the big animals, but after she watched them accept the grass docilely, she imitated Baat. Soon, the rhinos had eaten all their mash, and Baat demonstrated a way of digging in the mud of the shallows for the tubers and root mats the animals favored.
The wind changed, freighted with the mentholated scents of the north. The herd began lumbering away from the shallows. Baat hoisted Duru onto the back of a still-feeding rhino. The beast twitched a conch-ear but otherwise did not seem to notice. Baat signed for the girl to hold fast to the thick fur. Then, he laid a pelt over her and lashed it under with twine.
Baat climbed onto the back of an adjacent rhino and pulled a deerhide over himself. He waved to Duru as the animals began moving, following the others in the herd, tramping north. The earth rumbled and juddered, and Duru hung on with all her fierce strength until the powerful rhythms of the beast became familiar, and she relaxed.
She smiled, waved at Baat, and hugged the animal under her. The sun-rippled shallows fell away and lithe grass wavered on all sides. Birds whizzed overhead, the sky shook, and Duru laughed, riding the back of thunder.
The Door of the Mountain
The wind poured out of the north, blue with the smell of ice. At night, the full moon gazed through auroras over the woolly rhinos drowsing in small groups. Horned heads bent, the herd lowed with dark, seismic music.
Baat's glowing body interested the herd less than did the whiskers of autumnal grass among the cobbles. Their faces of living rock only occasionally looked toward his radiant dance.
Duru stared in wonder at Baat from inside the big reindeer skin she had pulled about herself. Out here, with no trees to block the view, she could see the spiraling trail of stardust glittering down the sky to the ghost dancer's body. In the distances on every side, similar funnels of sparks glinted, and Duru thought those must be other dancers.
Baat carried the cold fire to her. Shivering energy washed through Duru. Seraph-like forms waded out of the moon-glare, weightless, faceless frost-bodies. Almost human, they moved in breezy rags of light rayed with darkness.
The ul udi had come down to guide Baat on his night journey. Though the rhinos had provided a clever way of escaping the Forest, their migration would not lead to where Baat must go. From here, Baat needed to carry Duru at night, and by day Duru would watch over the ghost dancer and prepare food.
"What about the others?" Duru asked, pointing to the numerous blue filaments
along the horizon.
There are no others, a Bright One said. Those are decoys we have lowered to distract hunters.
"Then the tracking stone—"
Your brother destroyed it.
Duru looked to Baat, astonished.
"He's brave," Baat said, and in the glassy light of the ul udi, Duru understood him. "Yaqut would kill him if he knew."
Yaqut knows. But he has not killed him, yet. Timov has made himself useful to the Longtooth hunter. He is tracking you with his own inner sight.
Duru clutched Baat's hand. "Timov has spoken with the Bright Ones. I saw him. He won't lead Yaqut to you."
Baat smiled at her with sad understanding. "Yaqut can read spoor well enough to know if your brother deceives him. That is why the Bright Ones have let down other ropes of fire in places where we are not. Without them, Yaqut wouldn't need a tracker."
We must help Timov, the ul udi acknowledged. The Dark Traces are in him, too. When Yaqut no longer needs him, the hunter will kill him. And if he dies now, the Dark Traces will own him.
"Bright Ones, what will you do?" Duru asked beseechingly.
He has made himself useful to Yaqut. There is nothing more we can do. The Dark Traces are powerful. You must move quickly. Hurry to the door of the mountain.
Baat lifted Duru and followed the ul udi through the docile herd and into the amethyst night. After the violent motion of the rhino, the motion of the ghost dancer's loping seemed gentle: rocking like a dugout on a placid sea.
And though Duru tried hard to stay awake and listen to the ul udi, she heard only a little before falling asleep: The bodies of light never die. They are as timeless as the light that they are. When the body of flesh dies, its light is released. It belongs again to the freedom of the universe and to the mysteries of its own nature.
Hunting the Ghost Dancer Page 33
