Shadowfire Read online

  Part II: The Warrior

  1

  TIME WENT BY; I never felt it go. The seasons slunk past like people in a mist.

  My tent was rich with plunder, and my wives shone and glittered with it. In four years I had wed two more girls in the fire-ring, supposing they might then fight among themselves and blunt their claws before they came complaining to me. Chula bore me sons three summers in a row, but Moka let two out of the gate in one night, and the next winter another two, though Asua seemed intent on sickly girls, most of whom died. At nineteen I had seven legal sons and two bastard boys in Ettook’s krarl, with three or four more farther afield.

  I had killed so many men in my battles, I had lost count. The magic ritual number in the krarls was forty, meant to appease any spirits who might be listening with its modesty. To say you had killed forty men was to say you had slain legion. Thus Tuvek Nar-Ettook, slayer of forty, master of three women, breeder of thirteen sons, was the creature men hailed when they hailed me, the creature the women looked at so intently, the creature warriors ran from or came at with a spear. Inside the creature, I was. If you put a leopard in a cage and cover the cage against the light, you will never know the leopard is there. It will sleep and pine and die. This is how it was with me, and I never knew it, a beast in a covered cage, asleep, half-dead, and silent.

  Ettook was getting old now, grizzled and gray, but still tough and glad to make war. He had a great belly from his drinking: he needed a boost to get him in the saddle, and more often than not the small horses dropped lifeless under him after a day’s ride. Age did not hinder his other riding. He had taken no new wife, but he had a couple of sluts he went to more often now than to Tathra. I was aware this frightened her, imagining he would cast her off. She took pains to bring him back. In the summer and winter truces Moi traders came frequently right in to the krarl, to stand outside Tathra’s tent with their curious barter from the ancient cities: perfumes, ointments, even drugs to stoke the blood. Now and then her pale hand, heavy with the rings and bracelets of Ettook’s previous lust, would part the flap and signal this or that she would have.

  I wished to say to her, “Let him go, and good riddance. I have my own tent, my own wealth, I can keep you safe.” But somehow the words would not come. It embarrassed me to speak of his rutting with her. Besides, she was nervous for me, too, as Ettook’s heir.

  I began to consider Ettook’s death, when I should get his chiefdom, such as it was. I was dimly surprised I had not really pondered it before. But the title and the krarl seemed of such small worth, I had hardly dreamed of wanting or coveting it. As it was, my cogitations were desultory and ran in circles. The krarl feared me in battle, but did not like me. Given an excuse, they might finish the out-tribe upstart, and happy to do it. I should have to be so extraordinarily cunning in removing Ettook—who they liked well enough, seeing he was exactly of their species—that I was not certain I might ever achieve anything. Occasionally, over the years, since my boy’s fight on the slope with the four braves, I had felt his own hatred of me scorch my back like a hot wind. Being slow and stupid and intent on enjoyment rather than thought, he too had got no workable plan to be shot of me. He would need cunning, as I did, for I was ostensibly a good son to him, courteous always, throwing my decision in with his at the pacts and little councils that sometimes took place krarl with krarl, rendering him gifts from my spoils. No, he could not just strike me down before them all. Doubtless he had been hoping the battles would see to it for him, for I was like a madman then, but my luck held.

  The winter of that, my nineteenth year, was bad, the worst I remembered. The snow fell like a curtain days on end, then froze like white iron. The mountain wolves ran in thin, sooty packs. They would come in the camps at night, through weak places in the stockade, regardless of spears and fires, drooling at the scent of men. There was no other game.

  The truces were broken, too. In the month of Gray Dog, fifty Skoiana raided Ettook’s krarl at black of night. They got a herd of goats and some horses—we had begun to eat the horses by then—and pushed a way with them over the knife-backed ridges, and were three valleys distant before dawn. Ettook gave me twenty men and some followed from neighboring Dagkta krarls the Skoiana had visited, and we tracked them down. We had a fight in a narrow gully where the spines of mountains clawed up on three sides, bottling us all in with each other. The white ground was soon red, and next morning there were forty or so red heads staked up along the Dagkta camping line, each with its Skoiana tattoos to warn off any others of like mind.

  The Moi sometimes robbed us too, but mostly they got by on barter. That winter silver necklets and iron city daggers went for a leg of goat flesh or half a horse’s liver. We heard something of their friends also, the city men, tales of riders on the passes even in thick snow, aglint with jewels, starved as the tribes were, but whether after meat or slaves or simply mad, no one knew.

  Neither did the weather break in Black Dog, as it generally did. Nor in the month of the Whip when the big winds and first rains should come. A few old men began to say there had been a winter like this when they were warriors, and that it was a year of catastrophe and disappointment. But old men will ever spin this wheel. The summers were always hotter and the winters colder in the days of their strength, and the air thick with epic dramas and portents.

  The priests, Seel too, went up to some cave in the mountain and stayed there three days, howling and beating gongs, and great good it did us.

  There was no hunting to be had it seemed from one end of the valley-chain to the other. Children were falling down and dying, and the tribes were exposing any new female born among the tents. Asua birthed her fourth girl at this unlucky time. Weak as she was, my wife beat with her fists on me when I took the baby from its basket.

  “Peace,” I said. “It is the law. Your brats die anyway.”

  “This one will live,” she cried. “I swear she will live. She will grow fair and bring you honor by marriage—oh, Tuvek, never take her from me!”

  I looked at her face, running with tears and sallow as curd. She had been pretty once, but bearing and death and sorrow and hunger had altered that. I felt sorry for her, poor thing, she had nothing else. The child would die anyway, as I had said, and besides, be damned to their laws; I was my own master.

  “Well, then,” I said, “keep it.”

  Two days later, the winds came flashing along the mountains, but no rain. Gusts blew the ice and heaped it against everything that stood. Presently, great avalanches began over on the huge slopes to the north; you heard their thunder day and night.

  One morning the blizzard eased, and I shot a couple of scrawny hares foraging among the trees. Their ribs showed as men’s ribs were showing, but I was glad enough for what I could get.

  I meant to leave a hare at Tathra’s tent. Ettook’s gifts of food to her were leaner than they had been since he had his two whores to keep plump now as well. But when I came there, she was absent. As usual, there was some woman skulking about nearby, tending a fire pit.

  “Where is my mother?”

  “She has gone to Kotta,” said the woman.

  I was uneasy at this, for though Kotta and my mother were often together, the women only went to Kotta’s tent when they were in need of help, or ill.

  I gave the woman the hares to skin and clean, and told her what she might expect if she stole any part of them, then made my way through the tunnels to Kotta’s place.

  I did not walk straight in, you never knew what women’s business might be afoot in there, but stood outside and called her name.

  “A moment, warrior,” Kotta said.

  I heard the muffled sounds of a woman vomiting, and my belly wrenched into a knot of snakes.

  Shortly, the figure of the blind healer went out of the back of the tent, dark against the white light of the snow. She saw to something there, then came around the tent to me.

&nbs
p; “Is it Tathra you have with you?” I asked her.

  Her blue, blind, seeing eyes looked into mine like two flints.

  “It is Tathra.”

  “Is she sick?”

  “No. Not sick. She is carrying another son for Ettook.”

  The shock of her words hit me like a fist. I knew all the stories—how Kotta kept Tathra free of pregnancy with certain skills, how it would kill Tathra if she bore again, as it had nearly killed her before. I said, “Your magic potions failed her then? Are you trying different sorcery to be rid of it?”

  “What?” she said, harder than I. “Do you suppose Kotta fool enough to tamper with the chief’s seed?”

  “Don’t anger me, woman. I know what you’ve been at. Do you think I want her to bear this child? It will kill her, will it not? She’s no girl, and almost died of me. So abort her. The red pig has sons enough.”

  “I hear you watch your tongue with the braves,” she said. “You should watch it now. Maybe I will tell Ettook how his heir speaks of him.”

  “Tell him. But first, lose her that burden, or we shall have further words.”

  She laughed, just one syllable of it and, lifting her veil a little, spit. She stood, big and rough, with her head back.

  “Don’t tutor me, black-hair. I am not your whimpering wives to take your lip and like it.”

  I would have knocked her flying, but I heard Tathra’s voice call suddenly to me from within the tent.

  I put the blow aside, and went past Kotta through the flap.

  The tent smelled strong of women, of herbs, and burned charcoal from the brazier. Tathra had been lying on the rugs, but had struggled onto her elbow to look at me. She no longer put on the shireen in my presence, and she was paler than Asua had been when she cried for the life of her daughter.

  “All is well, Tuvek,” Tathra said, smiling at me. “It will do me credit, for I thought myself beyond the age.”

  I looked at her, her face all shrunken and white, and Chula’s emerald green-blue in the hollow of her throat.

  “I will kill him for this.”

  She gazed at me in terror and clutched my wrist.

  “No, Tuvek. No. It’s good. I am happy. Now he will cleave to me.”

  Kotta had entered behind me. She said, “He has a loose tongue, the fine warrior, when he lets his wits off the leash. Do you suppose, boy, I did nothing to help your mother? I have given her drafts, and done other things too, but the fruit is lodged. I can do no more or I shall harm her. This being the case, I must see to it she is vigorous enough to bear. The women know nothing. The first child is often difficult, he makes the way. Thereafter it is better.”

  Tathra’s eyes were wild with fear and misery, and she smiled again and told me how happy she was.

  2

  That night the winter broke. The rain fell in torrents and the lower tunnels were flooded. Then came the sun, pale yellow as bleached brass.

  The Moi have it that the summer sun is a golden girl, who blows on a pipe to summon everything living out onto the earth. Suddenly the black-green emptiness of the valleys comes alive with birds and beasts, as if by a spell. And as they go dancing through the grasses, the hungry hunters bring them down. The bird stabs the worm, the big cat breaks the bird’s neck, the man casts his spear into the heart of the cat. That is how the world is. Even the man had better look behind him; the wolf may be near, or another man, or fate, the hungriest hunter of them all.

  In the Arrow month, the trek began down from the mountains to the Snake’s Road, and the winter truce ended. Just before the tents were struck, the men’s side of the Dagkta krarls came together in an upper valley, for a spring gathering.

  Everyone put on his best for the gathering, and I had caught the sickness. Leggings of dark blue wool and a woolen shirt of scarlet patterned with indigo and white from the looms of my wives. High boots and jacket of deer-hide, the jacket pierced and studded by golden rings. The black bear fur cloak I had taken from the bear myself; it was lined and edged with magenta, with clasps of silver. The knife belt was red velvet, Moi barter, a city thing as were the two iron knives in it.

  I let Moka shave my face with the bronze razor, for she had a steady hand.

  She was already swelling big, another duet of boys probably. The sight of it gnawed on me, reminding me of Tathra. Feeling my powerlessness in that quarter, I had tried to put it from my mind.

  I had few enough horses to choose from in my pen; we had eaten most of them in the lean winter. I mounted up and soon rode off with my wives’ kin, as was traditional, for marriage was a bond on the man’s side too. I knew I could trust Asua’s Doki, and Finnuk—Chula’s father—as little as any, and Moka’s eldest brother was Urm, the man I had thrown in my proving fight as a warrior. I had broken his leg and it had never healed straight, so he had no great cause to bless my name.

  We reached the valley of the gathering at noon, when the sun stood like a golden shield directly above the columns of black pines at the track’s summit. The chiefs of the krarls would cursorily meet here, clasp hands, exchange tokens. Families would pay off Blood-Prices, and fresh feuds begin. Presently the warriors would get drunk and stab each other in the guts as they were making water up against the trees.

  Down by the fires the chiefs’ sons were finding their usual preliminary ways to vie and compete, breaking stallions bareback, hurling spears in a mark, or simply matching cup for cup till they fell prone, or got out knives and fell dead. I did not join the drinking, not being able to hold more than a cupful down. But my pride led me into the other things. Each year they hooted for me to try my bow or spear or this horse or that horse, praying to their demons the while that I should make a fool of myself, but I disappointed and beat them every time. They would never learn. Soon I had won off them a set of fine peeled white-wood arrows with scarlet fletches, ten bronze rings, and someone’s wolfskin cloak.

  There was nothing in the land or in my mind to tell me how my life should alter through that day, to warn me of the hunter with his shaft aimed at my back.

  There was a rill of white water up the slope, where I took my horse to water him, near sunfall. While he was drinking, I stood among the trees, looking first down on the valley, which had become a dish of smoke from the fires, then out over the ridge to the mountain wilderness, west and north.

  The pines, like the posts of a dark loom, were weaving the deepening sunset between them. It was the sort of light to catch the heart, red, dying light, yet pure as crystal. The mountains stood upon it in clots of shadow and crests of flame, each like a huge crumbling coal on the hearth of the sun.

  Then there came a flash, for all the world like a spark out of that hearth. Then another, and again.

  I stared where these sparks were jumping, and I saw that some of the mountain shadows had come alive and were moving in from the west in a jagged surging.

  I put my hand between my face and the sun’s face. So I made out horsemen riding from the west, sixty, seventy, eighty of them, and the sparks were springing from the gems they wore, and the gems on the bridles of their tall horses. The gems and the horses spurred my brain, and countless stories came back to me.

  I left my mount to his drink. Disconcerted, he turned to watch me run down the slope toward the valley of the gathering.

  I found my father Ettook quickly enough, among a stand of thorn trees. He had got in a betting game of throw-bones, had just lost a gold nugget, and was roaring at the injustice and drinking like a drain. They were all drunk, but Ettook made them appear sober. Nearby, a thin deer carcass creaked above a fire, spitting its stinking grease on them.

  “My chief,” I said, “I must speak with you.”

  He nodded at me, his face congealed in merriment, and his eyes cloudy with dislike and beer.

  “My son Tuvek,” he said. “Behold, my fine son by my fine black-haired mare, my woman who
makes me boys, who even now is making me another fine Tuvek in her belly.” He shook his beerskin, and they guffawed, saluting his virility in various ways.

  “My father,” I said, “take some water to clear your brain. Something is happening. You had better be sensible for it.”

  This was not the manner in which to give him my tidings. I was too riled to care.

  He erupted from the game of throw-bones, spilling the beer down his shirt, his yellow teeth clamped together. For six months his brow had been level with my shoulder, which did not suit him. He swung his sweaty paw at me, and caught me a blow in the face. I did not bother to avoid it, though I could have done so; he was slow as treacle. It never even rocked me—the red pig was simply padding now, no muscle—but my own hand was answering on a reflex. I should have pulped his nose if I had let myself finish.

  I got myself still, and said, “My chief, there are riders coming up on the valley. I doubt if they approach in peace, whoever they are, but from their ornaments I think they may be city raiders.”

  Ettook did not hear. Fury was trying to burst his face open and reach me.

  I quieted myself further and said, “I ask your pardon, my chief. It is I who am drunk; I talked rashly. I came in haste to warn the krarls.”

  Another chief had risen; he bawled, and men trampled between the fires.

  Then it was a voice spoke that silenced us all.

  The sky overhead seemed to split along a white metallic seam; at the end of this sawing, squealing rent a thunderbolt fell, parting the earth.

  The ground shook. There was a smell of burning trees. Everything was altered by a black smoke that twisted and frayed, leaving behind broken red confusion. Out of this red confusion emerged stumbling men without arms or faces. A dog dashed briefly in a circle, shrieking, with half its belly tangled around its feet.