“I could no more strike him than strike you, Dan.”
Battle fire cooling, it was as if haze drifted from my eyes. I saw my bond brother clearly, scarcely comprehending what he had said, knowing only that the side of his face was bruised black and streaked with blood, his brow cut open, one eye swollen shut. A thick red smear ran down from his nose and mouth. He was trying to stanch it with his fingers.
“Blood of Mahela,” I said numbly, vaulting down from Talu.
“No,” Kor retorted, “my own.”
With more haste than grace I went to him, slipping on mossy rocks, the mare trailing after me.
“He looks so much like you,” Kor said, veering back to the matter of Ytan. I no longer cared about Ytan. A pox on Ytan.
“Get down,” I told Kor, “and let me see to those cuts.”
I took him over by the nearest small torrent, laved the side of his face with the cold, clear water, eased it on with my hands until the bleeding had stopped and the swelling had come down somewhat. Kor sat and leaned against stone. I crouched beside him. The wolf came and stared at us for a moment, then trotted away with a liquid gait that flowed more gracefully than the cascades.
“But for the mien, you and Ytan might be twins,” Kor said.
That troubled me strangely. My hands faltered as I washed his wounds.
“Let them be, Dan.” He gently pushed me away, got up. “They’re scarcely more than scratches.”
“Lucky to be alive, you are,” I grumbled at him.
“I! Who was it that blundered up here? Mahela take your cock, Dan, what a leap! You must be mad.”
It was a touchy business, getting the horses down to the trail again. Boulders give poor purchase for hooves. After we had accomplished it, with some swearing, I went back and found Ytan’s bow, broke it, took his arrows for my own. The dead Cragsmen wore nothing worth looting. Kor and I rode on, shaken, alert for danger.
“Look,” I whispered once. Off to one side I had seen a flash of swift, bright gray. The wolf journeyed with us.
In my vision of Sakeema, months past, I had seen him ride a great stag into battle while the wolves followed at his heels. Now wolf and harts had fought side by side to aid us. It was of all things most wonderful, most unaccountable. There had been too many unaccountable happenings in the day.… A prickling feeling took hold of me, and I looked at Kor, his bruised face, his changing, sea-colored eyes. Sakeema, I thought, nearly shivering.
“Stop that,” Kor snapped.
I believe my heart held still, and I stared at him.
“You’re the one who summoned up yon wolf! And I daresay Birc sent the deer.”
“And you’re the one who has taken to hearing thoughts,” I said, my voice shaking.
He drew Sora to a halt and looked at me, his irritation gone. “Dan, you are so much a part of me …” His voice trailed away helplessly. “It frightens you,” he muttered at last. “Well, this ‘Sakeema’ nonsense frightens me.”
I kept silence. We went on in silence.
“It began only today, the mindspeak,” Kor said after a while. “It fills me with wonder. Does it trouble you so much?”
The thought of Sakeema filled me with wonder. I had to smile. “We seem fated to be always at odds over something,” I said.
“Yes.” His voice, low, told me he was thinking of Tassida, as was I.
“And it has served only to make us stronger. I daresay I shall get used to it, Kor.”
We camped that night in an island of fir trees amid cascades. The place smelled of green, even in autumn, but the ferns made a yellow blanket under the trees, and the night was freezing cold—we built a fire. We spoke of keeping watch by turns, against Ytan, and decided against it, for every night has its dangers, perils of enemies, perils of wild beasts, perils of devourers. There would be no proper sleeping for anyone who thought always of the dangers. Moreover, we had journeyed far enough so that we judged he could not have followed us. We both lay down, and I slept soundly, under furs.
Sometime after the fire had burned down to embers I was awakened out of dreamless slumber with a jolt. Something was crushing down on me and encasing me, taking me into a smothering embrace before I could so much as shout an alarm. The night was all darkness, cold paplike swellings against my face and the feel of slime. A devourer had me in its clutch. Once again my arms were pinned, though this time less shamefully, against my chest. And the skins under which I slept protected me from its teeth, at least for a time. If only I could wriggle my fists up toward my face, even just a little, to make a space near my mouth—
The thing tightened on me when it felt my struggles. I truly could not breathe.
Kor! I shouted within my mind. Surely one of the monsters lay on him as well, so I expected nothing of him—it was my terror that spoke. I called upon him as one might call upon the god, Sakeema, when in trouble. But at once I heard his drowsy reply.
What is it?
Confounded anew, I could not answer him. But even half-awake as he was, he felt my fear.
“Dan!” he cried aloud in horror. I heard him faintly. And then I caught a blessed breath of pure, chill night air. He was straddling me, wrestling the monster back from my face. In half a moment it had slipped out of his grasp and came down on me again with a fishy slap. But I felt a surge of strength, knowing that Kor was with me, and my hand crawled upward.
Again he was striving to pull the devourer away. I felt the rippling of all its muscles as it opposed him. He could not move it, but it could not utterly smother me, either.
“The thing is parlous strong,” Kor panted aloud.
If I can but get my hand free, I mindspoke him.
“Is it close?”
By my collarbone.
“All right. Ready. Now!”
With a warrior’s yell he prized the monster away from me, and though I could not see, I knew he was giving me an effort worthy of mortal combat. The devourer struggled, heaved, and threw him off. I heard him thud into the moss and ferns beside me. But it had been enough—my hand had shot up by my head, and my elbow levered the foul breasts away from my face. Kor was winded, the breath knocked out of him so thoroughly that he could not speak. But in a moment he had crawled to my side, and his fingers curled around mine.
Now, he mindspoke, we can wait out the night if need be.
Struggling up, he sat by my head. I lay in perfect ease, full of warmth and strength. Once we had handbonded, the devourer could no longer dismay me, and I knew it—I would indeed have been content to lie under it all night. But there was no need. Within a few breaths, before Kor had ceased to pant, the monster rippled and slithered off me and took to the air, lashing its snakelike tail in what might have been rage.
Kor gripped my hand hard for a moment, then let go. Dazed, almost disappointed, as if it had been too easy, I sat up.
“Are you all right?” Kor asked me, a catch in his voice as if his breathing still troubled him.
“Not a mark on me,” I told him. “You?”
“Blasted cuts open on my face. Nothing more.”
We both stank of slime. We washed in an icy cataract, came back and built up the fire, then sat by it, shivering. Kor’s face, the bruise shadowed in the light of flames, looked even worse than it would have in day.
“Even Mahela’s minions did not want you for bedding tonight,” I teased.
He looked up at me from under his brows, gravely. “No jest, Dan. I have been wondering why I was spared. Perhaps you had better beat my face for me, once it starts to heal.”
I laughed out loud, but he fell silent, moody.
“Yon was the largest, strongest devourer I have ever encountered,” he muttered at last.
“Mindspeaking has its uses,” I admitted, and he glanced at me with a flicker of a smile. Can you hear me? he asked.
“Yes.”
“But I am not privy to your every thought,” Kor said. “It is only when you wish me to hear. Yes, it has its uses.”
“But—it was not only when I wished you to hear.”
“That Sakeema notion of yours? But that is something you wish me to hear, in spite of your promise.”
Truth, and though I would not admit it to him, certainly I would not argue with him either. “Go to sleep,” I told him. I was weary, but I did not feel that I could sleep again. I settled back against a fir tree to keep watch.
Kor lay by the fire, but he did not sleep, or not deeply. When I finally dozed, he was awake. We both kept watch, for the most part, until dawn.
The next day while we rode, the wolf joined us briefly. The mares squealed and bucked and kicked at him—no small matter, as their temper threatened to pitch us into a chasm. We shouted and cursed, more at the mares than at the wolf, but it was the wolf who turned aside from the trail, tail down, ears half-lowered.
In the days that followed we saw it from time to time, often watching us from a rocky vantage, so beautiful that sometimes we stopped to gaze back. We were reaching the region of sea fogs, where the salt smell hung faintly in the air and the gray mists swirled around the dense green of the firs. Moving in the mists, the wolf shone more like a spirit thing than like a creature of flesh.
The sky had gone mostly gray, sometimes scarrowbright, sometimes dull, sometimes barred with ragged clouds of a yet darker gray drifting slantwise before storm winds. In the far distance, if mists and trees allowed us, we could sometimes see the glint of the ocean.
“Look!” Kor exclaimed. “Seal Hold!”
Far off at the edge of sight, the rocky headland where he and his people made their home. Lodges looked like no more than jutting edges on it, as weathered as the rock, but we knew the shape of that place well.
“By Sedna,” he whispered, looking weak with eagerness. “Do you think we will reach it today?”
Behind us, above us, the wolf lifted its head and suddenly gave forth a piercing howl. The sound shivered through us.
“What is it, friend?” I asked, turning to face the wolf.
It gazed at us across a distance we could scarcely measure, a chasm made of time and failed dreams. We could not see its speaking eyes. Its legs showed thin beneath the dense mass of its fur. In a moment it turned away from us, turned back toward the mountains, and vanished. Old, alone, lonesome, the last of its kind, and we were leaving it there.
Chapter Six
Kor came home at sundown, through the wind-twisted pines and down to the narrow strand between mountains and vast sea, then along the shoreline toward the headland. Rich, blood-red sunset light touched everything, and I felt for a moment an odd desolation, as if the smell of death lay on that place. As if almost I could see the strewn bodies.…
I blinked and there was nothing. It must have been the smells—ai, the sea smells. Salt and beached seaweed and fish offal and seal scats. A friendly reek, I knew, but it sent a tremor of memory through me, more feeling than memory, the despair of my first coming to the sea. I, a nameless madman. My beloved father had plotted to kill me, and rage and sorrow had sent me fleeing over the midwinter mountains until I struck like an embodied storm, they later told me, at Korridun and his people. Kor had felt the love and grief behind the attack—his mercy had saved me, and only he had at first befriended me, Dannoc the murderer.
Time gone by, nearly a year gone, and much had happened since. I shook myself, shaking off the sorrow I smelled in the sea. Fish, dead seaweed, black shells, salt … water salt as tears … Enough. Kor was looking at me, about to say something comforting, and I scowled at him to silence him. Sometimes, even now, his goodness was too much for me to bear. Sometimes I wanted to throttle him.
He grinned. “Pigheaded,” he stated. Then with a whoop he kicked Sora into a headlong gallop down the strand.
Startled, delighted, laughing aloud, I sent Talu racing after him. I had never known Kor to ride with such reckless joy. The Seal are not born to be horseback riders—Kor appeared more to fly above Sora than to sit on her. But with her he stayed, and he yelled crazily, keeping her at top speed. Talu’s best run could not catch them. We pounded down hard, wet sand, splashed through inlets and breaking waves, jumped rocks with scarcely a catch in the wild rhythm of the race. Coracles ahead, and the fishermen beaching them, and shouts of fear or welcome—
So it was that Rad Korridun, the Seal Kindred’s king, came home in a swirl of sand and water and confused noise and sunset glory. Stopping Sora—Talu and I nearly blundered into him—and down in the sand, half-falling, half-jumping, and into the embrace of six or more excited clansmen at once, and the waves washing about their knees, people calling, running down from the lodges on the headland above, slithering down rocks slippery with spray and moss—
“It is the king!”
“Korridun! What has happened to your face?”
“Dan! It is Dannoc!”
Someone caught at my hand, and then I was down as well and part of a mighty hugging, guardsmen and young women, Lumai and Lomasi and Winewa, the one I had chiefly loved for a time. Winewa bearing a tiny babe! I stared, for it seemed to me that the sparse hair on the little one’s shell-pink head was nearly as light as mine.
“You’ve given us a wee girl to break hearts when she’s older, Dannoc,” Lomasi said, and there were smiles everywhere.
And questions asked of Kor, and sorrow. Tohr, dead. Three other guardsmen who had gone with us, all dead. Birc—gone.… A few men stood woodenly, hearing tidings of a son or a brother. Women lifted their faces skyward and keened in formal lament. Two mothers, a pledgemate, a sister wailed in more heartfelt sorrow. Others stood somber. All clamor quieted except the uproar of the heartless sea.
“Istas?” Kor questioned that silence.
“Above!” Istas was too old to manage the rocks, or too dignified to tumble about on them. Clamor broke out again.
“Come, our king, she will be wild with waiting for you.”
“You should have seen her when the shout went up. She dropped the bowl she was holding and broke it—”
“—splattered chowder everywhere—”
“‘Slime of Mahela!’ she yelled!”
Istas’s favorite curse. Except for those who mourned, everyone laughed, chattering and climbing up the steep path.
“She’s well, then,” Kor said gladly.
“Well! Of course she’s well. She’s as strong as Dannoc.”
More laughter. She, the hunched old woman whose head reached only to my chest. Her strength had once been sufficient to break my foot. She had fully intended to kill me in a most unpleasant way, for I had killed her brother, who had never done any dishonor to me.… Bad days gone by, done with. I had taught her the meaning of mercy, Kor said.
“That one,” a man added, “she will never die.”
At the top she stood awaiting us, a strong old shrew with a deeply lined face and a hump on her back. Knowing her as I did, I expected a blunt comment as we came before her. Istas was honest, though not always honest enough to show her own love and joy. She wore a scowl of irritation like a mask. But the mask shattered when she caught sight of Korridun. Amazement and awe smoothed her face so that for a moment I glimpsed the young maiden she once had been.
“But you have grown!” she exclaimed, gazing up at him, throwing her head back as far as her bent body would allow her.
“Mahela’s blood, Istas, I was grown before I went!” He embraced her, and she returned the embrace, but she was not to be put off.
“You have grown!” she insisted. “Not just in body, though there is that, too—you are nearly as tall as Dannoc!” She turned to peer at me accusingly, more herself now, which was as well, for seeing her as other than an old scold had unsettled me. “Something has happened, and don’t you two try to tell me otherwise.” Her look strayed to the sword that hung by his side, and she stiffened. “Is that one of those great, strange knives?”
“Yes. Quite effective against Cragsmen.”
She glanced at his bruised temple and back at the sword. “Where did you get it?�
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“Out of a tarn,” he said, and she scowled, thinking he was befooling her. But the frown faded into perplexity.
“Rad, you look so much—stronger. What has done it?”
“Mountain air,” he told her, and she glared now in earnest.
“Rad Korridun, you young scamp, tell me truly!”
“Truly, then, Istas, there is too much to tell.” He was smiling at her with a tenderness that, for once, seemed to disarm her more than annoy her. “Say this: have my cousins come back?” The seals, he meant, returning to the coastal rocks for the winter.
“Yes. Though fewer than we had hoped.” Abruptly, possessed by a new thought, Istas whirled and began shouting orders at her people. “Bring in the catch, there, the whole of it! You children, start gathering shellfish, quickly, while the light lasts! To the hearth, you useless girls! We have a feast to prepare! Our king has come home!”
A shout went up, and a cry of joy.
“Istas—” Kor protested.
“Korridun King!” someone shouted, and others took up the chant, lifting arms in a happy salute. A few maidens started a dance.
“Later!” Istas bellowed, and she ran at them, shaking her skirts as if she were herding geese. Giggling, they bolted toward their tasks.
“Istas!” Kor complained.
She did not heed him except to run at him in like wise. “Go on, now, I have a score of things to do! Go wash! You smell of horse. And keep the stinking beast well out of my way or I’ll roast it!” She scuttled toward Seal Hold, the deep and many-chambered cave where Kor made his home.
“Blast it,” Kor grumbled to the salt-smelling air as much as to me, “how am I to tell them I am leaving again?”
I grinned at him, told him I would tend the horses, and went down to do it. After I had let them loose and stowed the gear in an empty lodge, I bathed myself under a cascade and went looking for a warm hearth to dry myself by. Youngsters and warriors of Kor’s tribe would have scorned the hearth. They bathed in the icy sea and rubbed themselves with sticks to awaken their numbed limbs, and these were the people who swaddled themselves in woolens and furs the rest of the time.… Twos and threes of them, old friends, hailed me at every turning of Seal Hold, so that by the time I reached the hearth at last I was dry and warmed with talking, and I went to look for Kor instead.
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