by J. C. Hendee
Fiáh'our would never abandon an ally unless something worse had happened. Again there were no answers in anything Karras saw.
The more he looked over the body, the more he felt there was something there right in front him that he did not see. Other than head and arm wounds, Jackdaw was unmarked, still fully clothed. Nothing had touched him after the limb had been bound.
The twitch in Karras' back and neck came again, and this time he had heard something and glanced upslope through the trees. It was barely more than a silhouette.
In the shadows and framed by the open sky at the crest, yellow eyes watched him. That little sluggïn looked bulkier than before. Perhaps it had scavenged armor or clothing or something to shield it from the cold.
Karras quickly looked down at Jackdaw's body.
The ex-bandit had not been gnawed, but that was not the only oddity. He looked to the twine binding around the torn off limb and…
“Ancestor's mercy!” Gän'gehtin snarled.
Karras barely looked up as the shirvêsh lunged up the slope. And all he could do was act upon intuition.
“No!” he shouted, dropped his ku'ê'bunst, and charged after the shirvêsh. “Stop!”
Karras grabbed Gän's trailing cloak, and the shirvêsh turned on him in fury. He wrenched that cloak hard trying to send his friend sprawling, but only spun the shirvêsh to one side, slipping and sliding downward in the mulch. Karras quickly shifted upslope to block the way.
“No more!” he shouted before calming, and in a panicked whisper, “please… please, Gän… no more… killing.”
Gän'gehtin's face twisted in hate as he shifted to one side. Karras sidestepped to block him, arms spread wide with empty hands.
“I will not leave any of them alive!” Gän'gehtin rasped at him. “How could you… leave it to… to feed on any of us left dead?”
“It did not!” Karras shouted back. “Look at the body… look at it!”
Gän'gehtin hesitated and barely glanced.
“It is not like the others,” Karras insisted. “It has not been touched.”
He did not know why that was so. Unlike those of the little one's own kind, nothing had fed upon Jackdaw's body. With the rest of the pack supposedly gone, there could be only that little, crippled orphan still here.
Fiáh'our had killed its mother on their first foray up in the northern frontier; there had been no choice in that for their own survival. Here and now was not the same, and Karras still remembered the little cripple howling and screaming at them after its mother died.
“Maybe it fed on its own,” Karras said. “Or not. It did not touch Jackdaw.”
Gän'gehtin stood quivering in restraint and barely glanced at the body again.
“Please, I cannot take… anymore… killing,” Karras whispered. “It will not help anyone, anymore, even you. It never has, Gän.”
The shirvêsh stiffened and his fury fixed fully on Karras.
Gän'gehtin began to shake even more, as if winter had sunk fully into his flesh. He closed his eyes and merely stood there in silence, and his shivers turned to open shudders. Whether or not he finally accepted grief for a mother and father he would never bring back, who could say there and then.
Karras knew only one other thing that Gän had not noticed. In his supposed better life as a sea trader, he had had to mend lines and ropes for the family's ship. There was always spare twine and good hemp of the best quality to do so. And no sensible traveler—or even “champion” like Fiáh'our—was ever without a bit of good rope, for lives could depend upon such.
The binding on the Jackdaw's severed arm had been made with twisted grass-stalks, perhaps hastily gathered in the open plain below the trees.
Karras risked a backward glance up the slope, but the little deformed sluggïn was gone.
16. In Waiting
At dawn on the fourth day after Karras returned to Fieldhaven with Gän, he sat in the same commonhouse as before, though he had not slept all night. Before their return, they had taken Jackdaw's body into the abandoned village and torn out parts of huts to make a pyre.
The one-time bandit would not be left for scavengers, and that was all they could do. There had been no adequate tools or time to dig a grave in half-frozen earth. And now, as Karras waited for the shirvêsh to return from final errands, he looked about where fewer children slept on the floor.
Kaitlin had seen to that, finding some of them lodging elsewhere until spring. But most households could not take in three at once. William, Jeron, and little Kaity remained near the hearth, and that bothered Karras almost as much as one other unknown.
There still had been no sign or word of Fiáh'our or those with him.
Too short a life in too big a world for all of the knowing.
Karras sighed hard in remembering the old man's dismissal for a lack of answers. Like most things with the thänæ, it was frustrating to infuriating.
The last heavily guarded merchant caravan of the year from the far eastern coast had arrived two days ago. Even those among it had seen nothing in the long haul through the Broken Lands. Nothing moving, nothing watching, not packs… and not an old dwarf with an elf and a human soldier.
Today, the caravan would head for Calm Seatt, capital of the nearest Numan—human—nation on the western coast. From there, it was a short trip by ship or a three-day walk to the peninsula across the bay and Dhredze Seatt, the mountain home of Karras' people.
His parents had waited longer and longer over the last year to hear anything of his whereabouts or well-being. And he wondered if at least one other person had ever wondered about him.
Skirra barely popped into Karras' thoughts when Kaitlin sat down across the table from him.
“Here,” she said, sliding over a bit of folded paper.
He took it with a nod and slipped it into the front of his badly worn and scarred hauberk.
“I will see it to the guild,” he promised again.
Kaitlin released a long, tired breath. “Hopefully some previous acquaintances can help find lost relatives—and a new home for some of these.”
She looked about the room, where some children were stirring.
“I will check on that as often as I can,” he assured and glanced toward hearth.
Jeron was rising as William shifted beneath a blanket, grumbling and frowning with eyes still closed. Little Kaity slept between her brothers and did not stir. It was something of a relief to him that she was able to sleep so deeply.
“I'll see to them—to her—one way or another.”
At that, Karras looked back to Kaitlin, who was watching him and not the children. He did not like the thought of leaving the ex-sage any more than leaving the girl, but at least they were safe. And exactly what did he have left to return to when he did leave them?
Karras rose, picked up his hauberk, slipped it on and began lashing it closed, but when he grabbed his belt, he stalled.
“What's wrong?” Kaitlin asked.
The brass buckle's engraving was so scarred and gouged that no one would have recognized its vubrí for his family name—Iamílchlagh or “Tumble-Stone”—even those who knew it.
Karras looked to Kaitlin the “younger”—little Kaity—and began digging in his satchel. He pulled out a small coin pouch and dropped it on the table.
“It is mostly mixed coin,” he said, “from wherever I have been in the last year. None of the rôtin of my own people, which do not trade well among humans.”
Kaitlin frowned in puzzlement, looking from the pouch to him.
“Use it for the children… and yourself,” and then he pulled his scavenged knife and cut loose the buckle. “It is only brass but the best quality. Trade or sell it to a metalworker, but only one worthy enough to know it as rughìr smelting.”
And he placed the buckle with the pouch.
Kaitlin shook her head once. “What about passage with the caravan? How will you pay for it?”
Karras did not know. While he might have
made the return on foot, the caravan would take him more quickly. Waiting here longer might gain nothing. Fiáh'our was never known to be away from his people for so long without returning or sending word, if he still lived.
“A barter of some kind,” Karras finally answered. “Gän may have arranged to it already.”
At that, he cut loose some strapping from his pack to use in place of his belt. They fell silent too long; all things considered, a happier parting was not possible, and both jumped a little when the commonhouse's front door opened.
Karras looked back, and there was Gän in the doorway.
“Ready?” the shirvêsh asked.
Karras did not turn back before Kaitlin was on him, wrapping her thin human arms around his wide shoulders. She was still almost a head taller than him, and he hesitated before returning in kind.
Without the buckle, he dropped the belt upon the table behind her before he let go and, without another word between them, he turned away rather than linger any longer.
A light snowfall had started when Karras stepped out into another cold dawn.
17. Awake
Nearly two seasons at home in the seaward settlement of Dhredze Seatt, Karras awoke once again in his own room. He roused slower and much, much later than ever before.
Today there was no cargo to prepare or deliver. The family vessel would not disembark again until the moon's end. And when it did, and he went with it again—and again—nothing would be like it once had been.
From that far past day, when he had taken the plunge into the bay below his people's peak, and only a rope around his waist held by his father could bring back up, he had thought that life was all that he would ever want. Most of his people believed his whole family mad for their life as sea traders. What right-minded rughìr would live like that, when all knew dwarves could not swim and simply sank?
Those sea voyages were now a joyless distraction from other thoughts and wants.
Karras swept back the bed covers, sat up, and stared at nothing.
In his free time, he had gone repeatedly to Gän's temple in hoping for word of Fiáh'our. The old man favored that place even above the temple where he had been made a thänæ, an “honored one” among the people. Whether it was Gän or the temple's head shirvêsh Háttê’mádzh who slowly shook his head at the sight of Karras, again, it did not matter. Every visit without word of Fiáh'our left him in limbo as to whether or not he was still bound in apprenticeship.
In time, he went to other temples and to his clan's—Fiáh'our's clan's—réhanâkst or “commonhouse” in searching for anyone who knew the old man. That as well gained him nothing and left him and those others even less hopeful. It weighed upon him more than he thought it ever would and worsened his emptiness.
A few times, he had snuck down into the mountain's bowels, to the lowest underlevel, hoping for a glimpse of Skirra without her seeing him. Until he knew for certain if he was still bound or not to the old man, there was no point in facing her again. And even if, what could he say that he had not already said that would change anything with her?
She had given her final denial to take his family's name. Nothing had changed that, and it left him wandering in a dark fog.
And that was not all that bothered him.
Why should he even care what had happened to Fiáh'our, that bane and ruin of his life? But what of 'yan and Urval as well? With only the tracks of the pack found, had the others met the same fate as Jackdaw and been carried off as…
No, that could not be.
Karras would never wish death or worse on anyone, even the blusterer. Not truly, not even if he had thought so once or twice in fury, spite, or both.
It had been over a year since he had felt truly safe, out of harm's way, or at least with his fate in his own hands. So why did the world seem a littler place without the old boar?
Karras heaved a deep breath and rose.
There had also been trips to the Guild of Sagecraft, as promised to Kaitlin. He even asked specifically about the three siblings: William, Jeron, and little Kaity. One sage in gray, and a dwarf no less, told him of some notion of an “uncle” for the children somewhere south along the coast. That was at least one good moment, and hope of any kind had become rare.
There and then, Karras had immediately penned a promissory to the guild to help with any cost to get Kaity and her brothers to a new home. He had even thought of going with them, when the time came, and still did.
Karras went to his half-high cabinet opposite the room's heavy oak door and dug through finer wears for something comfortable but plain. After a year of traipsing about with Fiáh'our, freshly laundered clothing should have been a pleasure, but no. He dressed out of habit and necessity and nothing more.
In a white cotton shirt and plain brown tunic with darker pants to match, he looked into the small mirror atop the dresser cabinet and touched the two-plus moons of growth on his face. He had once preferred to be clean-shaven, like human males.
That had not changed; he simply did not care about it. And last, he uncoiled the thick new belt atop the dresser. It was as plain as anything else he put on, right down to its simple and blank octagon-plate buckle of polished pewter.
“Is it not time to do something about that, at least?”
Karras did not start at his mother's voice. He half-turned to find her fretting in the opened door of his room. She was not particularly beautiful. More, well, “handsome” some would say, even to those few strands of gray in her bound-back, near-black hair. But she had a more ostentatious taste in attire than anyone else in the family.
Holding closed her heavily embroidered sea-green tunic was a belt like the one he had once worn. It was fitted with a fine brass buckle, a large octagon with the family's honored vubrí, like the mutilated one he had left with Kaitlin to barter for the needs of orphaned children.
The sight of the buckle suddenly doubled his misery.
He knew what this visit would be about in the end.
“Do you not have any pride left in your family name?” she scolded.
Karras grew more agitated. “Yes, mother.”
“At least the beard is a change, and a proper one. That is something… and that you are home and safe again.”
Karras turned away toward the cabinet but did not look again into the mirror atop it. Others had not gone home and never would. Still others no longer had a home to which to return. And after too long a silence…
“I am sorry,” she said. “I meant no disrespect to anyone, certainly not those you served, those you lost, but… you are home and safe. That always matters the most to me.”
“I know, Mother.”
But he no longer felt at home. There was simply nowhere else to go. And sooner or later, his mother would lose her patience over other things.
Karras rubbed at the plain pewter buckle with his thumb.
“I know yours was damaged in following that… that thänæ,” she said. “But truly, it is time that you looked a bit more proper.”
Karras' thumb stopped.
“You might come to the next clan gathering with your father and me,” she went on softly. “An apprenticeship with a thänæ has some advantages for the family as well as… your future alliances.”
Karras felt the pewter buckle start to bend before realizing he was crushing it with his thumb.
“Of course, I know, you cannot consider marriage at present, but in time—”
“Yes, Mother.”
“It is just, well, your younger brother and sister already have—”
“Yes, Mother, I know.”
And another long silence.
“At least have another proper buckle made, for your father's sake and family pride. And could you please put that away.”
Even in rising anxiety, a tweak of confusion cut through and made him turn. He found her frowning and wincing in distaste as she fixed on something in the back corner of his room.
Karras turned the other way, and there was
his ku'ê'bunst—Skirlan—laid carefully upon a chest within arm's reach of his bed. He might have stored it in that chest. He might have had a proper wall mount made for it, like many warriors did.
Ever since his return, it had rested there nearby within his sight. Without even thinking, he had turned it to expose the mended part of its haft.
Karras heard the door creak shut. When he looked, his mother was gone. His thumb began to ache in the silence from grinding upon the blank buckle. And all he could think of was Skirra.
That loss overwhelmed all others. That loss was the one he could do nothing about. And it would be permanent—absolute—by his family's expectations and his family name.
Panic set in.
He had another reason for Fiáh'our to return, if only to reaffirm his forced apprenticeship and hold off an arranged marriage to come. And what would that even matter, if Skirra still did not want his family name—did not want him?
Barely able to breath, he looked at the plain buckle and stopped breathing altogether. His gaze then rose to his own reflection in the mirror.
All of a sudden, he saw one slim chance.
Karras tossed the belt with that plain buckle atop the cabinet.
Was the answer that simple?
It took longer to find water and soap to shave his face clean and not cut himself, for his hands shook too much. The whole time, there was the new buckle lying before him. And he left it there. About to leave, he turned back and studied his weapon, his ku'ê'bunst, but mostly the scar in its haft that hid a secret within its heart.
Karras picked up Skirlan and left.
18. A Wake and a Shard
By the time Karras reached the lowest underlevel, it was far later than he knew. After sneaking out of his home, he had wandered everywhere in the settlement amid wavering doubts. He could not count how many times he had faltered and fled into hiding in some obscure place.
