The Reindeer People Read online

  But the healer in her spoke through her jangling need to protect her son. Her belly had tightened when he had mentioned the child dead of tainted meat, the herder who now must limp. For so many people to be without a healer was not right. Her skills gave her a duty. As she had so many times before, she could always leave them if things became too uncomfortable. Her resolve of the night before melted.

  ‘I need to think,’ she said softly, her voice carrying clearly through Kerlew’s babbling. ‘At least for a while.’

  Rolke nodded curtly and hung his head to hide a venomous glare at Kerlew. He was not pleased with his success as a messenger. For a moment the herdlord’s eyes met hers, assessing her. His face was serious, as if he knew of her private doubts. He gave a slow nod of acceptance. Then his eyes darted suddenly past her, to widen in surprise. Tillu turned in consternation to see what was behind her.

  ‘Joboam? You are here?’ Capiam asked in disbelief.

  ‘As you see.’ The big man emerged from her tent, standing to stretch in the daylight. His hair was still tousled from sleeping and he had not bothered to put on his outer tunic. Tillu was baffled. Had not he just ordered her not to speak of him? And now he wandered out in plain sight of them, as if to flaunt his presence.

  ‘But what are you doing here?’ Rolke demanded, curiosity making him forget what courtesy he knew.

  ‘I -‘ Joboam began and then hesitated long.

  ‘Rolke!’ his father reprimanded him, and the boy’s eyes flew wide with sudden understanding. He swung his stare to Tillu, and a slow, offensive smile spread across his adolescent face. He leered at her knowingly.

  ‘I came to speak to the healer and to add my … persuasion that she should come with us.’ Joboam’s voice was oily with self-satisfaction. Capiam looked uncomfortable, Rolke avid. Tillu wondered what message she was missing. Even Kerlew stopped his hopping about and stared from one adult to the next, his mouth agape. Tillu knew their language well enough now, but what had passed among the men was a non-verbal implication that eluded and annoyed her. A moment longer Joboam stood in her door. Then he ducked back within her tent. Capiam shuffled his feet awkwardly.

  ‘Healer, we are hopeful you will come with us. I promise you that you shall lack for nothing, though I am sure that Joboam will make sure that you have all -‘

  ‘I think I shall drive back with you, Capiam, if you will wait a moment. My harke and pulkor are behind the tent. It will take but a moment to harness up.’

  Joboam buckled his heavy belt over his tunic as he spoke. He gave Capiam a bright smile of good fellowship, then stepped close to Tillu. He smiled down at her, and she looked up into his teeth. When he spoke, it was in a soft, fond voice that still carried clearly. ‘Tillu. I am sorry to leave so abruptly, but there are things I must attend to, especially since you have decided to be one of us. But you know I’ll be back soon. What shall I bring you?’

  His syrupy voice and the masterful way he loomed over her were impossible to mistake. She couldn’t understand what his game was about, but she could play it, too. She smiled up at him, all teeth and thinned lips. ‘I have not decided yet,’ she said clearly, ‘but you may bring me a bronze knife. As healer for the herdfolk, I would need one. If you come back to see me, bring a bronze knife for me. A thin blade is best, but I can manage with a wide one.’

  She saw the quick flash of anger in his eyes as she named the exorbitant fee for not betraying his game. He masked it quickly. She felt a small quiver of worry as she realized how important his deception of Capiam must be to him. ‘A knife, then,’ he agreed smoothly. He was not so foolish as to try and touch her in farewell. But the way his eyes wandered over her face was touch enough to inspire unease in Tillu. He turned from her abruptly, and the snow crunched under his boots as he went around her tent to where his tethered harke waited.

  The silence was back, hanging between them like a curtain. Kerlew had completely lost interest in the proceedings. He had hooked his hands over a low branch of a nearby birch, and he dangled by his arms, feet on the ground still, but knees bent so that the tree swayed with his weight as he bounced. Rolke was staring at him, his upper lip drawn up in distaste. Kerlew spoke suddenly. ‘Joboam had a vision of Wolf in the night. He yelled out, Wolf! and Tillu jumped from the bed to grab her stabbing spear!’

  ‘Kerlew!’ Tillu rebuked him, not so much for the gossip as for the way he told it, his amber eyes probing Capiam for a response to the story. For an instant, it might have been Carp hanging in the tree, working his magic on Benu’s folk with his sly intimations and cryptic insinuations. But if the story meant anything to Capiam, he covered it well. He gave the boy the sickly smile adults often gave her son when they did not know how else to respond to his strange behavior.

  ‘He does well to fear Wolf,’ Kerlew added, ignoring Tillu’s glare. ‘For one of Wolf’s own will pull him down one day. Joboam may fancy himself a Bear, but that is not what looks out of his eyes at me. I am to be a shaman; did you know that?’

  Before anyone could respond to this latest comment, the squeak of Joboam’s pulkor was heard and he drove his harke from behind the tent. He seemed oblivious of the changed mood that greeted him. He pulled his animal to a halt and, smiling, glanced from one face to the next. ‘Well. Shall we be going, then?’

  ‘When will the herdfolk be leaving?’ Tillu asked suddenly.

  Capiam answered her. ‘Some of the folk are still in the higher country with their animals. When spring is a bit stronger and the ice has left the moss, they will come down from the hills, and we will go.’

  ‘West?’ Tillu guessed, thinking of more hills and forest.

  Capiam looked surprised. ‘North. From the hills out onto the wide tundra, and across it to the Cataclysm. To follow the wild herd, and to meet with the other herdfolk for the summer.’ He turned a bemused smile on Joboam. ‘She has much to learn of our ways,’ he commented affably.

  ‘I shall not mind teaching her,’ Joboam assured him. Tillu seethed at his proprietary air, but said nothing. She’d let him keep his game intact, until she had her bronze knife. Then they would come to an agreement on her terms. The thought brought a real smile to her face as she bid them farewell. She marked how Joboam brought his pulkor abreast of Capiam’s, to converse with him while Rolke trailed behind them. She sighed softly when they were out of sight. If it were only the healing she had to deal with! But if she went with them, it would be the day-to-day life among the herdfolk that would be hardest for her. And for Kerlew. She glanced about, but didn’t see the boy.

  ‘Kerlew!’ she called, hoping desperately he hadn’t followed the men and reindeer. There was no answer. ‘Kerlew!’ she called again sharply and pushed her way into the tent. He bounced up quickly, guiltily, from his pallet, furtively stuffing something inside his shirt. She knew of the shaman’s pouch he had made by taking one of her herb bags and marking it with charcoal and blood. She had even see it once, when he had thought she was asleep and had come to the fire to examine his treasures. She never spoke of it; she didn’t want to encourage him. She knew it held his red stone and other oddments. What other bits he added to it were no concern to her. His behavior was.

  ‘Whatever made you speak our that way?’ she demanded angrily. Snatching up a cup, she dipped up some of the tea she had set to steep earlier.

  ‘Whatever made you keep silent?’ he returned, his eyes gone flinty.

  The tea was cold and bitter in Tillu’s mouth as she met his stare.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘It’s the last flurry of winter,’ Lasse observed.Heckram assented silently. There was a peace to the thickly falling curtain of white flakes that he was reluctant to disturb. All day he had sensed the snow coming. The thick clouds had been snagged on the near crest of the mountain like a swatch of gray woolen stuff. All day the softening snow had been slogging underfoot, sinking undetectably, glistening on the trodden paths but white and blue-shadowed under the trees. The reindeer had grazed easily, nuzzling the sof
t wet snow from tender moss, or reaching their shaggy necks to nibble the suddenly tender tips of the birches and willows. Even the sunset had not brought the cold back. The snow that fell now was wet, sticking to the branches of the trees but doomed to melt before noon tomorrow.

  Heckram and Lasse sat back to back in a crude shelter of branches leaned against a tumble of jutting gray boulders and shist, memorial of some glacier’s ancient passage. The tangle of branches kept out most of the snow, but not the diffused light of the overcast moon or the soft placidity of the snowy night.

  For the first time in many days, Heckram felt at peace with himself. Here at the winter pasturage there were no reminders of pain and failure. But for Lasse’s company, it was like any other early spring he had passed in the mountains. They hadn’t bothered to bring a skin tent with them, but only sleeping hides sewn into a sack. The bunched hides were beneath him now, atop a cushioning pad of pine boughs. The night was too mild and Heckram too comfortable for him to think of crawling into his bed and sleeping. He would doze back to back with Lasse, occasionally stirring to look out on the gray and brown backs of the forty-odd animals scattered across the slope below them.

  A soft, almost warm wind crept through the trees, now parting the snow flurries, now swirling the falling flakes more thickly than ever. The steady fall of the white stuff was almost as restful as sleeping. Heckram was not sure he was awake when he heard Lasse’s whispered ‘What’s that?’

  Heckram cleared his throat quietly. ‘What’s what?’ he murmured softly. He squinted his eyes, tried to focus his gaze through the falling snow. He could see nothing. Confirming his own lesser senses were the peaceful attitudes of the animals below. They were not milling in agitation or muttering to one another in their coughing grunts. Whatever had disturbed Lasse had nor bothered them at all.

  ‘There. Hear that?’ Lasse whispered.

  ‘Just the wind,’ Heckram muttered irritably. The wind had many notes on a night such as this. It soughed through bare branches, overbalanced snow loads on heavy ones to make soft plopping sounds, and set smaller limbs and twigs to creaking and clattering softly against one another. Lasse should know those sounds as well as Heckram did himself.

  He tried to go back to sleep, but found himself annoyingly alert, listening for whatever peculiar note had roused Lasse. The wind blew harder, the snow swirled and for one moment seemed to coalesce into a crouching wolf by a pale-trunked birch, but the next swirl of wind dispersed it and revealed the cheat of an old lightning-blasted stump. Heckram sighed, letting the tension ease out of his back. Was he a child to be spooked by shadows and shapes in the night?

  Lasse’s back was still tight against his. ‘See anything?’ Heckram asked, his deep voice soft in the night.

  ‘I almost did. I mean, I thought I did. Like the biggest wolverine ever made, but white, every bit of it. Just the snow playing tricks on me.’

  ‘Moonlight through clouds on new snow will do that,’ Heckram acceded. Silence followed his words, falling and drifting as deep as the snow. His eyelids began to sag again.

  ‘What will you do when we go back?’ Lasse asked suddenly.

  Heckram opened his eyes, frowned into the night. ‘Do? What do we always do in spring? I’ll put my winter gear up on the rack, load my summer gear onto a harke or two, and follow the herd. What will you do?’

  ‘The same, I suppose.’ Lasse sighed. Heckram felt it more than heard it. ‘I’ll spend the first day or so listening to my grandmother recount every little incident that occurred while we were gone. And the next few days trying to account for every moment that I was up here, while she imagines a dozen things wrong with every reindeer I’ve tended.’

  Heckram nodded. ‘There’s a lot of silences up here. But all the talk when I get home somehow seems lonelier than this.’

  Lasse paused, considering the sense of his words. Then: ‘Won’t it be strange for you, to go back to your own hut in the talvsit? You’ll be going back to silences.’

  ‘Yes.’ Heckram bit the word off short. ‘But it will only be for a night or so, and then we’ll be off for the tundra.’

  ‘But you’ll be taking your own tent this time, won’t you? The one Elsa and your mother made?’

  ‘I suppose.’ After avoiding these thoughts for days, the questions stung like fresh scratches. He realized suddenly that his guilt cut more sharply than his grief now. And knew in the same moment that while his grief might fade with time, the guilt he felt would not. It would not be any easier to meet Missa’s eyes when he returned. Kuoljok’s were even worse, for the death of his daughter had turned the old man’s mind. When he looked at Heckram, he did not seem to see him at all. When he spoke to him, he looked through or beyond him. Neither one had ever spoken a word of blame; they didn’t need to. Joboam’s accusation that night had been enough. He remembered, sometimes, that Missa had spoken out against Joboam’s words. When he did, he took comfort from it, but could find no case from his own self-accusations.

  Lasse had fallen silent, but hadn’t relaxed his vigil. The sleep that had come so easily moments before now eluded Heckram. His temples began to ache as his thoughts raced around and around like reindeer in a sorting pen. Around and around and around, pounding like rolling thunder, but finding no escape. Who had killed Elsa, and why? Joboam, he wanted it to be Joboam; he wanted a reason to challenge the man and unleash his fury and guilt on him.

  But what if it were not Joboam? Sometimes in the night, it seemed impossible that Joboam could have hurt Elsa. Had he not been courting her just a few months ago? No herdman would kill a woman he wanted. He might try to lure her away from the man she had joined, with gifts and sweet words. There was nothing dishonorable in that. But why would any man destroy a woman he desired? For Joboam to have killed Elsa made no sense. Maybe Heckram only suspected him because he had always hated Joboam, and longed for a reason to act on that hate. The other herdfolk, true to their tradition, had set the death aside in their minds. Elsa had died; no one had seen, so no one could say what had killed her. They did not feel pressed, as Heckram did, to find something or someone to blame, to make someone pay for Elsa’s death. Such was not their way. It should not have been Heckram’s way. Yet he hungered for vengeance as a wolf hungers for meat in the dead of winter. The aching need for revenge set him apart, made him a stranger among his own folk and put lines upon Ristin’s brow. Yet he could not turn his thoughts away from the unfairness of that death. Someone must pay.

  But if not Joboam, then who? There was no answer to that. Had Elsa made an enemy he knew nothing about? Had it been a single marauder, one of those wild men old women spoke of, on late evenings around the open fires during the migration times? They were supposed to come by darkness, to carry off young women for mates. He had always thought them scaretales, nothing but a woman’s device to keep her daughters from straying too far from the fire on warm spring nights.

  His temples were thrumming. He reached up to touch his own face, felt the deep thought wrinkles between his brows, but could not remember how to smooth them out. Around and around and around. A demon, perhaps, as Rolke had suggested on that horrible night. Heckram did not know if he believed in demons anymore. Yet if ever he had seen a demon’s work, it was what had been done to Elsa.

  He closed his eyes against the swirling snow. The peace had fled from it. Now it danced before him, a demon that wrought itself over and over into images of Elsa. Again and again he saw her shattered hand lift in that terrible greeting. Slowly he drew his knees up to his chest, curved his neck down to rest his forehead on his knees. His body felt hard and hollow, like a sucked out marrow bone, a thing thrown aside.

  Lasse spoke softly, without moving, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you again.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Heckram lied. His voice came out hoarse and thick. Sometimes he regretted letting Lasse come to know him so well. To grieve was bad enough. To know that the friend who sat back to back with him knew the depth of his pain did not ease
it. It subtly intensified it.

  Back to back they stiffened simultaneously, speaking no word as they listened to the soft drumming that suddenly filled the night. Had it just begun, or had it only now increased in volume so they were aware of it? Its rhythm was one piece with the night. The sound was sourceless, eternal, soft and yet undeniable. ‘Heckram,’ Lasse began softly.

  ‘Shh,’ the older man cautioned him. Neither one moved. The drumming went on, in infinite variations that yet formed an elaborate pattern. Heckram could imagine the fingers on the drumhead, tapping, brushing, rapping, moving from the edge of the tight-stretched hide into the center and then back again. An old image from a time he had thought forgotten came suddenly.

  It had been a night in fall, on the trek back from the summer grazing grounds. He had been small, still looking up to his mother, and his legs had ached from walking all day. The smell of death was in the unseasonably warm air. Behind them, on the tundra, like scattered berries from a leaking basket, were the bodies of the reindeer that had fallen to the plague. Their bellies were bloated and their legs stuck up stiffly at obscene angles from their bodies. Flies buzzed audibly in the twilight.

  Around a large fire the herdfolk had gathered, circling in rows around Nadunin the Najd. The najd’s hair was streaked with white and hung long and wild past his face. He knelt on the hide of a white reindeer, so close to the fire that sweat streamed down his seamed and wrinkled body. He was clad in a loincloth of twisted yellow leather and his skin was a sallow brown like old bones moldering by a stream bank. His flesh was tight over his bones; Heckram had watched his ribs move with his breath. His kobdas was before him, and its strange voice filled the night. He tapped it with his hammerlike drumstick, making it cry out, now loudly, now softly. Gods were painted on the drumhead in red alder-bark juice, and also the Trollskott, the emblem used to inflict harm on the herds of an enemy.