Wolf's Brother tak-2 Page 20

  'Pirtsi told me he was already dead,' he said unevenly.

  Tillu stood silent. Joboam lifted a hand to grip her, thought better of it and let his hand fall to his side. 'Don't toy with me, Healer.' His voice was deadly soft. 'We both know how ill Capiam is. And his son. You see who has been chosen to take up the reins for him. Be wise. Please the next herdlord.'

  'Have you buried him already?' Tillu asked calmly. Some small part of her mind screamed for caution, but she could not find the control to be wise. Her eyes tracked the long, livid scratch down the side of his neck. 'You'd better beware of infection in that,'

  she said coldly. 'Scratches from nails often infect.' He twitched as if stung, but made no reply. She turned away from him, and he let her go. She walked on. Behind her, his voice lifted in command, calling for quiet and for one man to explain what had happened to the najd. The gabble behind her died. They would obey him. They would follow him, when the time came. She found she didn't care.

  She walked back toward the tents, scarcely watching where her feet took her. Making plans. Heckram would bring Kerlew to her, and she would leave. She'd take her boy and leave these people, strike out across the tundra while the summer days were long.

  And Heckram? asked a small voice inside her. And Kari? And Ristin? And Lasse? the small voice nagged. 'I can't help them!' Tillu heard herself declare aloud. 'Kerlew and myself. That is as much as I can take care of. Kerlew and myself.'

  'Tillu?'

  Lasse. She hadn't seen much of the boy lately. He was taller than she remembered him. Was he growing that fast? After an instant, she realized he was silently staring at her. She tried to gather her mind. 'What is it?'

  'Are you all right?'

  The question puzzled her until she glanced down at herself. Carp's blood was on her hands, and mud caked the front of her legs from her knees down. She couldn't know that it was the look in her eyes that most rattled Lasse.

  'I think so. Were you looking for me?'

  'Yes. Actually, no. I was looking for Kari, but no one knows where she is. I had heard she was missing. I wanted to talk to her, to tell her ... there is a way to keep from joining Pirtsi. To join with ... someone else, instead. I went by Capiam's hut, finally.'

  Tillu could guess the courage that must have taken.

  'Ketla screamed at me to go away, but one of the women there came after me. She told me you had gone to look for Kari, and might know where she was hiding. Ketla thinks you told her to run away early this morning. She's very angry at you, but Capiam is too sick to do anything about it. I thought I should warn you ... she's sent for Joboam. She's saying he'll bring you back to the tent and make you tell where her daughter is. Please, Tillu ...' He looked desperate. 'Do you know where Kari is?'

  Tillu turned her worries carefully. She counted them out to herself. 'Kerlew is missing. Heckram's gone to look for him. Carp is dead. Kari is gone, and I don't know where. But I know she's run away because she doesn't want to join with Pirtsi. And Joboam is coming to look for me.' She looked into Lasse's stricken face. 'Do you know the way to the Najd's Steps?'

  He hesitated. 'Yes. Yes, I do. Follow me.'

  She trailed after him as he led her swiftly through the village, slipping between the tents and threading their way past meat racks and hides stretched to dry in the sun. The effort of trotting brought order to her mind again.

  'Heckram was going to climb the Najd's Steps,' she explained to his back. 'He thought he might find Kerlew there. He went seeking a najd's vision,' she added in answer to Lasse's puzzled look. 'I think I had better find Heckram. He'll know best what to do.

  And perhaps he has found Kerlew by now. Perhaps we could just slip away.'

  'Slip away?'

  'Leave,' Tillu said tersely. 'Run away from the herdfolk and Joboam. Kerlew and I.

  Find a new life somewhere else. Again.'

  Lasse looked at her incredulously. 'Alone?'

  She didn't answer. Her eyes had gone ahead of them, up the gentle swell of grassy hill to where a group of young men and women gestured and exclaimed to one another, and beyond to where the wall of the Cataclysm rose, sudden as pain. It shone black against the blue sky, and Tillu's neck protested when she rolled her head back to see its top. It was a wall across the wide world, a buckled wedge of stone and earth pushed up to bar the herdfolk and their reindeer from further wandering. Some places were tumbled and rounded with weather, cupping small green pastures or pockets of blessed white snow where the stinging insects never ventured. Reindeer clustered on the white patches in refuge from the bugs. But at this place the Cataclysm rose, vertical and uncompromising. A slide of schist and shale at the base marked its only flaking concession to wind and rain.

  She could not see what held the herders' attention but she thought she saw the Najd's Steps They scarcely merited the name. A jutting scar crawled across the Cataclysm's face, up the expanse of sheer black stone, and ended abruptly far short of the peak. The ridge of stone looked as if it projected no wider than a foot path from the precipice, and in places seemed to have crumbled away entirely. Other cracks and juttings marred the surface of the Cataclysm, but only one could be the Najd's Steps. She was scanning the long narrow way for some sign of Heckram or Kerlew, when she heard Lasse give a low cry of despair. He gripped her arm suddenly, pinched bruisingly as he pointed up.

  The figure materialized on a tiny outcropping of stone beyond the end of the Najd's Steps. For a moment it hung there. The wind billowed under its wings, spread the pinions black and wide to the bright fresh day. The bird rose, impossibly immense, lifting wide for flight.

  And plummeted.

  'Kari!' Lasse cried out, his voice cracking from boy to man on the name. And in that utterance, Tillu saw her, the wings becoming Kari's feathered cloak. Her small face was pale, her black hair streamed behind her. She did not scream. The Cataclysm thrust out a rocky spur to grip her. She caught on it and tumbled, the wind roaring through her cloak as she fell. Screams rose from the watching herders. The instant was forever.

  Lasse dragged Tillu with him as he ran, plunging through the horrified herders. It was farther to the base of the Cataclysm than it looked. Her breath caught painfully in her ribs. Tufts of grass and low bushes scratched her ankles and tore at her calves, but it could not distract her from the crumpled black figure on the green sward.

  They were there too soon. Lasse flung himself to his knees beside her, reached to roll her over. Tillu didn't try to stop him. He couldn't hurt her any more than she was already hurt. But he pulled his hand back from the body with a stifled cry. He turned a wide, white face up to Tillu, horror and grief shaking his lips. Tillu dropped stiffly to her knees, put a hand on Kari. And pulled it back. Gelid. Beneath the black feathered cloak, the body was sodden and still, pulped organs and bones inside a sack of skin.

  Tillu swallowed dryly, her mind reeling. If she had not stayed with Heckram last night

  ... if she had asked his advice earlier. If, if, and all useless.

  'Get up,' she croaked, rising on shaking legs. She tugged at Lasse's sleeve, then gripped his collar and dragged him to his feet. He did not resist her, but he didn't cooperate as she pulled him back from the body. 'Don't look at her. Don't touch her.

  You can't help her now, Lasse. Come away. Come away.'

  'What's happened?'

  'Who was it?'

  'Is he dead?'

  The bright-cheeked girls and tousle-headed youths had caught up with them. Their urgent questions rattled around Tillu as she dragged Lasse back from the body. She didn't want to be here when they rolled her over. Two deaths in a day. She couldn't take anymore. 'I have to see Capiam,' she insisted, pushing her way past the young herders.

  'Let go of me. Let me through.'

  'It was the healer,' she heard a young voice say behind her. 'Why isn't she doing anything?' And then a sudden scream rose, piercing the bright morning. They had rolled Kari over. She kept her grip on Lasse's wrist, dragging him along.

 
; The screams floated thin as splinters in the wind. Heckram flinched himself more tightly against the rock face. He wondered if someone had seen him. He doubted it. He considered leaning out, to look down the sheer rock face and see what the cry was about. He grinned harshly at the notion. He kept his hands and cheek pressed against the rock face and edged on another step.

  He forced his thoughts away from the sheer fall behind him. He thought of Tillu, and how he had told her of his youthful venture up this same path. He wasn't sure if bravado or forgetfulness had made him speak so lightly. Now that he was up here, he remembered the ache of calf and back and shoulder. And fingers. He had taken the bandages from his injured hand to improve his grip. Every time he closed his hand now, the pain leaped up his arm. He refused to let himself focus on it. The path was substantially narrower than he remembered. He had been smaller then, he reminded himself. Narrower of shoulder and more sure of foot. Certainly more blithely unaware of death and pain. He pushed on, sliding his foot forward through the gritty rock dust that coated the trail. His toes felt raw. He had discarded his boots long ago, left them on the last wide piece of the Najd's Steps. His bare feet gripped the cold stone more surely, but felt every abrasion. Something light brushed against his foot. He looked down in the narrow space between his body and the cliff-face. A black feather. Another one.

  Odd. He had seen cliffs full of birds' nests before, but they weren't as windswept as this one. He wondered that the feather stayed on the narrow path at all. He pushed on.

  The trickling sweat was from the warmth of fear and weariness. The sun on his back was still the thin warmth of morning. Its light touch reminded him of Tillu's hands on his body, of her hands spread against the small of his back as she lifted herself against him. A smile, almost foolish in its softness, came unbidden to his lips. Every time he thought he knew her, she surprised him. Her concern for Kari, her constant anxiety over Kerlew, her sober caring for Rolke had never prepared him for the woman she had shown him last night. She had cast her wariness aside, and revealed beneath it a deep hunger and an almost innocent joy in satisfying it. Like a child with a new toy, he thought, and blushed despite his isolation. No woman had ever so thoroughly explored his responses to her touch. The newness of it had made him a youth in her hands, ignited energies and curiosity he had thought outgrown. Even now, he wanted her again. This, he realized suddenly, is what Ristin meant. The feeling she had hoped he would have for Elsa, that no hardship was too great. Did Tillu feel it, he wondered? His face sobered an instant. Hadn't she trusted him to bring Kerlew safely home?

  He wondered what he would do if he didn't find the boy up here. Look elsewhere, he told himself pragmatically, refusing to worry about time lost. He chuckled sourly at a sudden idea; how would it be to return to camp and find that Kerlew had already returned on his own? Good, he decided. It would feel good to find the boy safe anywhere. An image of his small, uncertain face rose in Heckram's mind. There were so few times when he had seen the boy's face unshadowed by fear or uncertainty. When they had carved spoons together. When he had given the boy the bone-knife for his own. The night his thin fingers had awkwardly plaited strips of leather for a new harke-harness. He understood suddenly a father's pride in his child's small accomplishments.

  A lost memory bobbed into his mind. He held a tablo board up for a tall man's inspection, and his heart swelled tight with pride at the grin that split the man's dark beard. 'Well, and will you be the wolf now, son, and give your father a chance to win on your new board?' Heckram pressed flat to the cliff for a moment, feeling the light morning breeze finger his garments and hair. How had he lost a moment like that, forgotten it so completely? He had had so few moments like that. He stood very still.

  When he moved on again, he understood what drove him. It was time to close the circle. He wanted to look down into a boy's face and see that flush of accomplishment.

  He edged on, occasionally finding a wider spot in the trail where he could crouch and ease his screaming muscles. At such times he glanced out over the tundra but never looked directly down at the tents below. In one such spot he found two small feathers and the clear outline of a small foot. Had Kerlew brought a dead bird with him? He shrugged and pressed on, step after careful step, his determination refueled by the footprint.

  The afternoon heat found him at a wider spot in the trail. He crouched, stiff muscles screaming in the new position, and sipped water from his small pouch. He tried to relate today's climb to his boyhood one. Had it taken him this long that time? Had the boy Heckram moved faster, been more agile than the man? He poured water into his hand, washed the salty sweat from his eyes and lips. The end of the Najd's Steps could not be far. He was sure of it. He tried to see the end of the climb but the subtle rippling of the Cataclysm's wall and the climb of the path denied him. Kerlew might crouch at the end of this trail, or he might find only an empty spot and the sheer fall beyond it.

  Well, he would see. He started to rise, and then hunkered down in sudden consternation. With one thick finger he traced a peculiar imprint in the rock dust and fine gravel of the ledge. It was his imagination. Probably the boy had crouched here a moment, weight balanced on his toes. Yet he could have sworn the track was that of a wolf. He shook his head and pushed the fancy out of his mind. He slung his water skin over his shoulder, tugged it tight against his hip. On again.

  The path narrowed drastically. Heckram hesitated. But Kerlew had gone this way.

  And so he must follow. Face to rock, damp hands suctioned against cold stone, he shuffled along. He peered ahead and down between his chest and the cliff. When he came to it, he stared at it for a long moment. Yes, he had grown. The mark he had scratched at eye level was now between his chest and the cliff. It seemed little weathered, the scratches gray against the cliff's black face. It was the same shape as the small flaps of skin he cut from his calves' ears. His mark, as individual as his face, never given to anyone before him, never to another after him. He shivered at touching hands with his childhood. He pushed his thoughts back to that day, leaned slightly out to have a better view of what came next.

  It was as he remembered. A step or two more, and then nothing. Nothing. No path, no boy, just the narrow ridge of stone dwindling away to a crack in the stone's face. He felt the trembling start, suppressed it as he pushed himself tightly against the cliff face.

  He had seen the boy's footprint in the dust; he must have come this way. The next thought followed mercilessly. He must have gone that way. To the end of the trail and down, taking a false step in the darkness. Tears blinded him. Damn the old najd and his cursed vision. His wisdom had sent a confused boy to die. 'Kerlew,' he whispered agonizedly as the screams he had heard earlier took on a personal note.

  The rustling of clothing, close at hand. The sound startled him, set his heart thumping. Awkwardly he turned his head, glancing forward and back along the ledge, but saw nothing. He edged another step along the dwindling ridge, felt the bare edge of stone press his sole. He looked again, and cried out in despair. 'Kerlew!'

  He had forgotten the najd's alcove. There it was, three steps beyond the end of the trail. He could barely glimpse inside. He thought of leaning back for a better view, but there was nothing to cling to. What little he could see was chilling enough. Kerlew stood within it, face suffused with gladness. His arm stretched out straight before him, hand pressed flat against the empty air at the cliffs edge. His eyes were bright but unfocused. Behind him the shriveled body of the mummified najd was exactly as he remembered it. Time had not touched it. 'Wolf?' Kerlew questioned softly.

  'Kerlew, it's me. I'm on the ledge. I've come to get you.'

  The boy jerked suddenly, then swayed and put a hand on the rough wall of the alcove for balance. The shallow cave in the stone was no more than two steps deep.

  Kerlew licked his cracked lips. 'Wolf?' he asked again.

  'I'm over here, Kerlew. Right here.'

  The boy's eyes moved in slow jerks until they came to Heckram.
No recognition kindled in them, only curiosity. He stared at the man, and then stepped forward so that his bare toes curled over the lip of the cliff. Heckram's heart slammed in his throat. 'Step back!' he cried.

  The boy swayed. 'Why?' he asked distantly.

  Heckram's fingers found a tiny crack in the rock. He wriggled them into it. The sight of the boy standing so boldly on the edge of the fall rocked him with dizziness. 'How did he get there?' he demanded of the inscrutable stone.

  The question engaged the boy's mind. Kerlew's eyes suddenly met his and a faint smile touched his dry lips. 'I saw the bone najd waiting for me. He had come here, so there was a way for me to come. So I stepped across.'

  Heckram tried to take deeper breaths. Fear had been an abstraction when he was climbing the Najd's Steps alone. Danger had been behind him, a thing he could cheat by clinging to the cliff face. But now that he saw the boy, fear boiled through his veins.

  Should Kerlew slip now, he could do nothing. But he knew he would reach for the falling boy, tumble alongside him, feeling his stomach lift into his throat, the wind past his eyes. He closed his eyes, squeezed the images away.

  Slowly he opened them. He forced himself to look from his ledge to the alcove. Yes, there were lips of stone, cracks, and knobs that an agile boy could use to get across. He doubted he could squeeze his toes onto those minute ledges or wedge his thick fingers into the narrow cracks. But Kerlew had. And Kerlew could.

  He licked his dry lips, felt the wind snatch the moisture from them and crack the skin. He took a breath and steadied his voice. 'Why don't you show me how you did it?'

  he suggested. 'I'll move back out of your way. and you come across to me.'

  The boy stared at him. The wind blew long between them. 'You want me to come down with you.'

  Heckram hesitated. If Kerlew came across, he would have to come of his own will.