Wolf's Brother tak-2 Page 23

  'As you wish,' Kerlew said sweetly, lifting the knife. 'I kill him now, as Joboam so wisely commands.'

  'Not the herdlord!' Joboam bellowed. 'The boy! Kill the boy!'

  Men shifted uneasily, but no one dared obey. Kerlew lifted the knife swiftly, touched the tip to the hollow of his own throat, then to Capiam's, then his again, then to rest on Capiam's. He spoke only to Capiam, leaning forward to meet his eyes. 'You see,' he said, 'It is as I told you. He wants us both dead. Speak to them, now, or they will make his wish true. Tell them.'

  'Stay back!' Capiam gasped. 'Stay back. Hear what the boy has to say.' Sweat dribbled down his face, and the look he gave Joboam was not a fond one.

  'It is as I was telling you before Ketla awoke and made such a fuss.' Kerlew spoke conversationally, his words still slow as they had ever been. 'I have been to see the old najd up the cliffs. Long has he looked down upon the herdfolk, his own folk, and he is wise in many things. He has taught me when to speak, and when to keep silent. Now, he says, is the time to speak.' The boy turned unforgiving eyes upon Joboam. 'I know things.'

  'He lies!' Joboam declared. Too quickly.

  'Your hands do not.' Kerlew spoke softly, keeping the crowd gaping after his words.

  'You have carried sickness to the herdfolk, Joboam. You planted the seeds, but it has blossomed in your hands. Look at them.'

  He did not. He folded his arms slowly on his chest, disdaining to obey. But his face paled.

  Kerlew stared at him for a long moment. Then he laughed, his high, ungraceful laugh, shattering the stillness. He stopped just as suddenly. 'Capiam,' he wheedled softly. 'Listen to me. Joboam will not hear my words. But you and your herdfolk will.

  You will hear me and live and in days to come will call me one of your own. I will be herdfolk,' he promised, and paused. No one breathed. Heckram stole a glance at Tillu.

  Her face was sallow and she held herself stiff and tight. He wished he could touch her for an instant. Then her eyes darted to his, and they were together without touching. He felt her fear.

  'I know much. Shall I tell you all? I think so.' Kerlew looked around, enjoying the audience. Then back to Capiam. 'Listen. Here are riddles for you. Find the answer and you will be wiser. Who brought plague to the herdlord's family? Who traded a boy's life for a dead rabbit? Who would trade your life for your position over the herdfolk?'

  A puzzled silence followed his words. He had their attention. The knife at Capiam's throat did not hold them as tightly as a tale well begun. He let his eyes swing slowly over them. Then he giggled, an incongruous sound. 'No one knows?' He suddenly flashed the knife aloft, and then whisked it back to rest against Capiam's throat. 'The Knife knows,' he said softly. He smiled slyly at Joboam. 'Doesn't it, Joboam?'

  'He is mad!' Joboam exclaimed angrily. He turned to leave.

  'Don't go yet, Joboam. Or folk will think you are not interested. They will think you already know the answer to the riddles.' Kerlew's voice was sweet, pitched to carry well.

  Joboam turned back, snarling. Kerlew smiled at him. 'Oh, you do wish to hear? Very well, then.' For a long moment he crouched silently over Capiam. The herdlord's face was lined and gray; the merciless light of the clear day illuminated the illness that devoured him. Kerlew ran his free thumb up and down the back of the knife. When he spoke, it was on a new topic. 'Did I ever show you my knife? Heckram gave it to me, but he didn't make it. No. Elsa made it and gave it to him. The bone for it grew inside Elsa's reindeer. Elsa it was who took the bone from the reindeer, took it and shaped it and etched it with figures. Elsa's knife, when all is done, from Elsa's hands. And it knows who killed Elsa.' The last words he whispered, leaning closer to Capiam. The herdlord's eyes were wide. In the back of the crowd a baby whimpered and was hushed.

  He leaned closer. 'Knife says it was ...' and then he dipped his head down so that his long hair fell past his face and his mouth brushed the herdlord's ear. No one else heard what he uttered in that instant before he sat up again, his face gleaming with merriment. He looked down into Capiam's pasty face and dull eyes. 'You don't believe me? Let me tell you what else Knife heard. Knife heard that that same one wanted to kill a boy. And the man who cared for the boy went to that same one, and said to him,

  'Let the boy live on in peace, for he is harmless to you. And if you will do that, I will give you this rabbit.' But that one said to the man who cared for the boy, 'Why should I want your dead rabbit? Look, it has begun to stiffen already, and you have not even skinned it, nor taken its entrails from its body.' Then the old man said to that one, 'Why, this rabbit can be useful to you. For whoever eats of its raw flesh, blistered as it is, will sicken to death.' And that one thought long, and then told the old man that he would let the boy live on in peace, if he could have the rabbit. And so the trade was made.'

  Kerlew looked out over the rapt people. 'But the man who cared for the boy did not tell that one that whoever touched the rabbit's bare flesh would also sicken. That upon the hands that touched him, sores would open and run and swell. Did he, Joboam? Did he say you would die just as Rolke did?'

  The big man came on, running in a flat charge, teeth bared wolverine white. Kerlew rose to meet him, stood like a reed in a storm's path. The bone knife flashed before Joboam's eyes, Kerlew snarling like a wolf, and then the boy was falling backwards, stumbling over Capiam's body, sprawling full length upon the hides. Knife in hand, Joboam fell upon him, and a sharp scream rose above the yells of the crowd. Men surged forward to drag their herdlord from the melee, while women with babes in arms pushed their way back, away from the danger. Heckram plowed a path through them, seized the back of Joboam's collar and dragged him up and off the boy. Blood ran from Joboam's forearm, the only score the boy had made. Kerlew lay still on the earth, red streaming down his chest. Screams rose.

  The knife Joboam lifted to Heckram was bronze and red.

  Heckram howled his wrath, set free the killing frenzy he had so long contained. He fell on Joboam without caution or thought, his knife plunging in for Joboam's belly.

  Joboam's hard forearm swept the wild blow aside, and Heckram felt Joboam's blade skitter across his tunic and then burn down his ribs. He roared with the pain and made a grab for Joboam's wrist, but his swollen fingers failed him. Joboam pulled free of his grip easily and drew back for another stab, his blade snagging for a moment in Heckram's shirt. Heckram seized the front of Joboam's shirt, jerked him close. Hot pain and trickling warmth down his side let Heckram know how well the blade had scored him. He could not get a breath, but independent of him, his knife fist thudded against Joboam's back. The bronze blade, gift of his father, met the thick leather, sank fractionally, met Joboam's shoulder blade. Joboam butted him suddenly, his forehead smashing Heckram's lips and nose and making the day sparkle blackly. His two-fingered grip on Joboam's shirt weakened, while some cool part of his mind noticed Joboam draw his knife back for a killing blow. He twisted his body aside, felt a blow meant to sink into his belly rip along his hip instead. His own blade snapped as its ancient brittleness yielded to forces beyond its tempering.

  He staggered back from Joboam, saw a panorama of folk spin past as the hot blood seared his leg. He should have known Joboam would be better at this game, more savage, more experienced. Better as he had always been better, stronger as he had always been stronger. Tillu's scream rose above the others, her hands reaching wildly toward her fallen son and the struggling men as Stina and Ristin clutched her and mingled their cries with hers. He glimpsed the broken haft in his own hand, oddly distant, and then felt the world explode against his jaw. He knew he was falling from the suddenly peculiar angle of Joboam's legs, from the traveling chest that leaped up against his forehead. It took forever to roll onto his back. The world spun around him, full of cries and searing pain. Joboam had felled him with his knife hilt and fist, was coming now with his knife's point. Heckram pushed against the skins that cushioned the earth, rose, but too slowly. Kerlew lay near him, blood leaking from his chest. W
ith a sudden clarity Heckram knew he would not be the first person Joboam had killed with his hands. The thought brought with it a peculiar strength, and he surged full to his feet, crouched weaponless to grapple with him.

  A small man suddenly leaped from the gaping, circled folk, screaming 'No!' and flinging himself into Joboam's path. Joboam brushed him away, the small man tumbled back before the push of that muscled arm, struck one of the tent supports, and suddenly became Lasse sprawling at the edge of the circled folk. His eyes met Heckram's as he stood swaying stupidly and waiting for Joboam to kill him. 'The bone knife!' Lasse screamed. 'By your foot!'

  He looked down dully to see Elsa's knife, his knife, Kerlew's knife lying on the hides where it had tumbled from the boy's lax hand. Joboam was coming, his bronze knife low, his mouth wide with teeth and madness. He stooped for it as Joboam collided with him, felt Joboam's knife momentarily stopped by his leather jerkin, then biting through into his flesh. Heckram cried out wordlessly at the new agony, felt the bronze knife within him, felt the bone knife under his hand. He gripped it as he fell. With a terrible wrench, he felt Joboam's bronze knife leave his body.

  The blood that followed it was the river of his life; his thoughts seemed to flow out with it. 'No!' he cried, as much to forbid the loss as from the pain. The world narrowed around him as blackness closed in from all sides. He felt the familiar hilt in his hand, felt Elsa's carving under his fingers. He was looking up at people spinning past him, their faces white, their mouths red and open in horror. The circle of his vision grew smaller and yellowed and Joboam suddenly filled it. He held a knife that dripped red, Kerlew's blood, his blood, Elsa's blood, and as the knife came down, Heckram saw only the yellowness around him. The light that surrounded Joboam was like the yellow glow of a wolf's eyes by night. Joboam was in the Wolfs eyes. Heckram cried out aloud at the sight and strove to surge up, to follow the bone knife that leaped suddenly in his grip.

  But there was too much pain, and his blood was ebbing out of him in pulses. Joboam's blade descended. All sound stopped.

  Tillu screamed wordlessly, in pain and fury. She lunged forward, but Ristin and Stina gripped her with the force of hysteria, and she could not break their hold. Their screams mingled with hers, the cries of people who witness the unthinkable, men fighting like beasts and beloved blood spilling. The noise and the crowd around her had snared her, she could not escape their grip. She could only watch Joboam as he finished killing all she loved, all who loved her. She wanted to be unconscious, to be dead, but her eyes went on seeing.

  She took a deep breath, willing it all to stop, to be a hideous dream, but it went on.

  She had to watch Joboam's knife leap in, saw Heckram twist his belly away from the danger only to take the blow along his hip. The blood, impossibly red, leaped out as if anxious to leave his body, and then Joboam's fist connected with the angle of his jaw with a terrible cracking sound. A small part of Tillu noted how Joboam used the butt of his knife to strike, and within her the healer was nodding, saying to herself, yes, even so was Elsa's jaw broken, only she was smaller, so it was torn loose entirely, and with just such a blow was her skull dented in.

  Tillu stopped screaming, could make no sound at all. The pack noise of the herdfolk around her swelled up, filling her ears unbearably as she suddenly knew she must watch Heckram die as Kerlew had just died. Joboam was killing with savage efficiency now, with skill born of practice, and the shock was so great, the law broken so implacably, that no one could remember how to intervene. Joboam was an avalanche, a river in flood time, a killing force impossible to avert.

  Heckram had fallen, the broken knife haft still gripped in his hand. 'Oh, please, please, no!' Tillu cried out, her voice high and thin as a child's, and if in answer to that plea, Heckram scrabbled once more to his feet. He crouched, weaponless, looking more like a man getting ready to wrestle a calf down than a man facing a killer. Joboam, almost unscathed save for Kerlew's cut down his forearm, moved in. His lips were drawn back in a mirthless sneer. She was not the only one who saw the difference between the two men's attitudes. She heard someone call Heckram's name, in a voice deep with pain, and another cry out without words.

  Then, impossibly, someone did act, someone leaped in as no one else had dared, small, unarmed, Lasse flung himself into the cleared area that had once been Capiam's home, to stand before Joboam. 'No!' he roared, in a voice filled with fury and pain, and met Joboam's advance, only to be brushed aside with shocking ease. No one had ever suspected the true strength in Joboam's thick arms. Lasse went flying as if batted by an angry bear, struck one of the tent supports and slid down it to lie half-stunned on the floor.

  Heckram was swaying. Blood dripping from his chin, running down his chest and leg in red swaths. His mouth moved, but no words came. His eyes were distant. Tillu wondered if he could see at all. Then, 'The bone knife!' Lasse screamed. 'By your foot!'

  Tillu found she had fallen to her knees, that she could no longer stand. Stina crouched beside her, her arms locked around Tillu's waist, and Ristin's grip bit into her shoulder. 'Please,' she begged, struggling to get free, but they were deaf to her, their eyes filled only with the horror of the spectacle of killing. 'I have to go to him,' Tillu whispered as she saw Heckram stoop slowly as an old man, to take up the bone knife.

  In the same long instant, Joboam was stepping in, his bronze knife was travelling down in a ripping arc. She heard the solid thud as it sank into Heckram, felt the impact of the blade as if in her own flesh.

  'He's dead,' she said softly, watching him fall, seeing Joboam's knife jerk clear of his body and the bright gout of blood that followed it. It was the way he fell, bonelessly, making no effort to catch himself, that told her he would not get up again. His heart might still beat, he might take a few more breaths, but there was nothing left in him to fight. He landed badly, his legs crumpled, his head turned to one side so that for an instant he seemed to be staring right into her eyes. His back was wide and exposed, and Joboam was moving in, coming swiftly, stooping like a hawk with talons of bronze, and all gasped, knowing he was as unstoppable as a falling tree.

  'Heckram!' Tillu screamed, and still he did not stir.

  And then he blinked, his eyes widening afterwards, his jaws opening in a snarl that displayed his teeth. An inhuman sound roared from his throat, and Tillu believed he finally saw his own death coming. She cried aloud, a sound that echoed his.

  She knew that what happened next was not possible. Heckram flipped onto his back, and all saw the bone knife gripped in both his hands. He thrust it up before him, as if hoping Joboam might fall upon it, and then, incredibly, followed the knife up. It seemed to jerk him to his feet as if he gripped a lasso around a wild sarva instead of a knife carved from reindeer bone. Joboam's eyes went wide as Heckram rose to meet him.

  Perhaps for the first time in his life he experienced pure terror. His mouth gaped in disbelief as Heckram met his blow and stood before it. Joboam's knife skipped suddenly over Heckram's leather jerkin, finding no place to bite.

  Terror still reigned on Joboam's face as he winced at the impact of Heckram's blow.

  All saw the thin blade slip sweetly into his chest, all felt the rush of red warmth that leaped out around it as it slid into his flesh. Joboam jerked spasmodically, his knife flung wide, and then his fists were hammering Heckram's back like the flapping of a desperate bird's wings. They fell together, embraced like lovers, to roll on the floor skins. From that tangle, Joboam pulled himself up, crawled a staggering reach of his arms, and fell again. His hands came up and curled around the bone handle that jutted from his chest. He looked down at it, swallowed convulsively, and died, his eyes open and full of disbelief. Heckram lay as he had fallen.

  Pain opened his eyes again. No more than a moment could have passed. He rolled his head on the rich pelts that floored Capiam's tent. Joboam, he remembered suddenly, Joboam was coming to kill him. But Joboam was gone. Someone had stopped him.

  Someone had put an end to
their fight. He blinked stupidly, wondering what had happened, why all was so silent. Folk still stood awe-stricken, frozen from watching the unimaginable: two herdfolk battling to the death. Horror transformed their faces, outlined skull bones, and aged them. Heckram lifted his head, feeling bloody fur cling stickily to his cheek. He tried to sit up, but found he could do no more than hold up his head. His head swayed on his neck as he gazed around the circle, trying to decide what had happened.

  Joboam lay on his side, curled up, his hands clutching at the slender knife that had slipped so neatly between his ribs. He was still, and the puddling blood was still spreading. Heckram felt ill. Pain surged through him in waves, but could not distract him from the warm stickiness that coated his hand. It dirtied him. He lifted his head slowly, then gave it up, letting his cheek sink down on the bloodied furs. He wondered why the ring of people were so still, why the silence was so deafening. He had killed.

  Were they gathered to witness him dying of his wounds? Would they turn away now and walk off, leaving him to his punishment? 'Tillu?' he asked softly, his lips moving painfully, and found her suddenly kneeling beside him, heard the mutter of folk begin.

  'He lives!' a woman screamed suddenly. Heckram rolled his head toward the sound, saw the pointing finger that marked not him, but Kerlew. The boy staggered upright, his hand pressed tightly to his ribs and the sheen of blood across them. Tillu stiffened, her eyes going wide. Her hands, that had begun to touch his wounds, fell to her sides.

  'Go to the boy,' Heckram croaked at her. But, 'Stay as you are!' Kerlew commanded in a voice high with pain. 'Stay, and see!'

  Voices rose, but over them Capiam's panted shout, 'Obey him!' Stillness followed, people shifting awkwardly but no one daring to step forward. Capiam, pale and sweating, staggered forward, seated himself atop a chest. He curled forward around the pain in his belly. 'Listen to him,' he gasped. He looked around the circle of gathered folk challengingly. 'The herdlord commands it.'