by neetha Napew
“Zinkh grows bold since he has reclaimed the ‘lucky’ headdress that Karana spurned and left behind in Torka’s pit hut!” Lorak had only impatience and disdain for the little headman.
Navahk was pleased.
Zinkh glowered petulantly at the supreme elder. “Perhaps Karana’s luck would not have run out if he still wore it!”
“And perhaps Zinkh has other reasons for fearing to venture from this camp?” Navahk accused, sensing that the man was strengthening Lorak’s position and weakening his own.
“No man hunts in weather like this!” Zinkh responded hotly.
Navahk’s eye never blinked; his smile never wavered. “The storm will not last forever.”
“Storm or no storm, it is no good thing for men to hunt women or take the lives of other men as though they be game. Zinkh says enough has been done to the people of Man Who Walks With Dogs. Let the storm spirits, not men, decide whether to take them to walk the wind forever.”
“Navahk has been told that Zinkh walked into the Great Gathering with Torka,” said the magic man. “Perhaps there is a bond between you? When Torka was put out of this camp, should Zinkh have been put out of it as well?”
Zinkh wilted visibly, but beside him the young hunter Simu snapped angrily to his feet, having had enough of insults and threats to his headman. “Navahk is not supreme elder of this encampment! Navahk is not even an elder. This man does not know Navahk from past camps! Navahk dances an impressive dance and chants an impressive chant.
Navahk’s band has driven mammoths before it, but trouble has walked into the Great Gathering at Navahk’s side! People have died since Navahk has come to dwell among us! By what right does he challenge Lorak and threaten the headman of my band, who is known to all assembled here as a brave hunter and one who has brought harm to no man or woman in his lifetime!”
Navahk’s head went up. Pain flared within his ruined eye-caused by lana in defense of Torka’s children, intensified by Lonit’s shaming of him. He snarled at the bold and impetuous young hunter who had dared to challenge him. “By the right of the wanawut does Navahk speak! Be cautious when you address me, Simu, for your woman is great with child, and the wanawut prowls the storm, with its belly full of the unborn child of Aliga. Perhaps the wanawut feels a growing hunger for more of the same kind of meat.”
Simu, his face ashen, seated himself as though he had been knocked down. There was not a man in the room who did not suffer an identical reaction.
For a moment Navahk wondered if he had gone too far, but fear had always been his ally. Men who feared could be led. And he could not expect to kill Karana and Torka’s people alone.
He smiled at Simu kindly, benevolently, as a loving brother. “Only Navahk can keep the wanawut beyond the walls of this camp, and only Navahk understands that as long as a single member of Torka’s band remains alive, the wanawut will hunger for human flesh. This man shares the heart and soul of the wanawut. The spirit of the wanawut bleeds as this man has bled. It is filled with pain as this man is filled with pain. It hungers to destroy the source of the pain ... in blood. Will Simu and the brave hunters of the Great Gathering not be willing to cut boldly from the hide of the world those whose lives enrage the wanawut and endanger their loved ones .. . their women .. . their unborn sons?”
Lorak frowned, sensing deception. One of his old gnarled hands was pressed wide against his gut. “If the wanawut would feed upon blood, let it ride the back of the storm to seek out the ones who have maimed you, for it will find none of them here.”
Navahk’s smile was radiant. From the moment that he had entered the encampment, he had wished that Lorak would sicken and die. The old fool was apparently so sick that he was distracted and weary and anxious to return to his bed skins, where Naiapi awaited him. Navahk could smell the strong, rich smells of roasting meat emanating deliriously from the supreme elder’s private shelter. Navahk was not surprised that now that Sondahr was dead, the old man had taken a woman to ease his days and pleasure him in the night; nor was he particularly surprised to find that he had chosen Naiapi. She was still a handsome woman, and she had a fawning, sexually avaricious way that would be appreciated by an old man whose male pride needed oiling.
He would oil that pride now. “If the wanawut goes with the storm spirits when they leave the sky, Navahk will speak no more of this.”
The storm cleared slowly from the east, but for two long days and nights, as Torka and his people traveled under clear, albeit cold and windy skies, they looked back into the western world of men and saw snow clouds still bulked upon the horizon. The storm lingered there, howling and striking the land with gale-force winds. In spite of their injuries and stiffness, Torka urged the others on, grateful to the weather, for he doubted that any men would leave a safe encampment in such a storm.
“Navahk would travel in any weather,” Karana said. “In spite of the storm, his eyes will see the route.”
“He has one eye now,” reminded lana.
“But Navahk has an inner eye lighting the way for his other senses. Sondahr called it the gift of Seeing, although his sight is not as clear as hers or mine.” Karana paused, not wanting to sound like a braggart, but the Seeing gift was his; there was no use denying it. “But he can see into the hearts of men and know their thoughts, anticipate their actions, and more importantly, their reactions. With this gift he can twist their wills to serve his own. Mark me well: Navahk is not a man to forgive or forget. As soon as the storm is over, he will follow. And he will not come alone.”
“This woman is not afraid!” insisted lana, and with her head held high, she smiled a strong little smile because she knew that her boast was the truth. “Good spirits guided the stone of Lonit’s bola, and their strength was in this woman’s arm.” “I am afraid of him,” Mahnie confessed, refusing to speak Navahk’s name as she knelt beside Aar, checking the wound on the side of the dog’s head. Karana had sutured it. It was clean and scabbed, and in the severe cold there was little chance of infection. Still, the girl was concerned, and only after looking close and flicking away a fragment of dried suture did she turn her face to the others. “My father has taught me that fear is a good thing. It gives strength and makes us alert for danger. Never will this girl—uh, woman-slow her step when she thinks that there is even the smallest chance that Spirit Killer might be following!”
She rose then, and Karana saw that Aar nuzzled her mittened hand as he stood ready to proceed at her side. The dog had walked since the end of their first day of traveling. At night he whimpered and circled a long time before settling down, posting himself to look back along the route, as though expecting Sister Dog and the pups to be following. He howled often, seemingly without reason, but the girl had told Karana that she was certain that he was calling to his lost family, hoping they would hear and follow. Karana knew that she was right, and as they walked together, he could understand why Aar had taken a strong liking to the daughter of Grek. She was a pretty, strong-willed little thing, but he wished that she would stop looking at him every time she declared her womanhood. He had no doubt about her word; if she said that she was a woman, it must be so. But after Sondahr, whose loveliness and womanliness no other woman could equal, Mahnie would always seem a child to him.
“We will go on, then, if Torka and Grek agree?” Wallah sighed, weary but ready to continue.
“Torka leads, Grek follows,” assured Grek, helping Wallah to her feet. “And if Torka should grow weary, he has only to point the way and Grek will lead. Together with Karana we will make a strong band in the new and game-rich country!”
“It is far, this forbidden land.” Wallah sighed again, adjusting her brow band so that it would not cut so deeply into her forehead.
“It is far,” conceded Torka, wishing that he could tell the sturdy, patient, and almost uncomplaining woman otherwise. “We must reach it before the time of the long dark. Otherwise I fear that we will be forced to encamp within the Corridor of Storms itself.”
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nbsp; “Is it as savage a land as they say?” pressed Grek, worry thickening his features a little; like lana, he, too, had been reborn and would not allow fear to cripple him.
Torka nodded. “It is a land of endless wind and cruel winters. There is little snow, but the cold is so bitter that the skin of Mother Below freezes solid to its heart and the stars crack into uncountable pieces as they fall to cloud the earth with a killing mist no men may dare to breathe lest they die. But to this man the far and forbidden land seems no more savage than the land of men to the west, and within the corridor there is a valley that will protect us. By its warm pools we will encamp, feeding on the caches of food that we left behind. Game is plentiful and will feed us through the dark days that will soon be upon us. If the forces of Creation allow it, life will be good for us there.”
“Then let us get on with our journey,” encouraged Grek, “for by Mother Below and Father Above, life here is not!”
It snowed for three more days in the country of the mammoth eaters. The wind blew hard from the high barrens of the polar north, so the snow could not settle. It blew southward in a howling white tide, across the Arctic Ocean and over the rolling, tundral steppe land which was an exposed seabed that stretched for thousands of miles to the shrunken shores of a vast ocean that would someday be misnamed Pacific.
On the fourth day Navahk awoke to silence within the encircling wall of the encampment of the Great Gathering. He lay awake for a long time, waiting to hear the sound of snow stinging the walls of his pit hut. But there was only silence. In the pale light of dawn he dressed and went out.
Snow was still falling, but thinly now, straight to the ground—soft and so fine that it made no sound falling upon the land and huts and face of the magic man as he looked up. It would not last. He closed his eye and let it melt upon his lid. His one lid. He scowled and wiped the moisture away. He would need to see clearly now, before the others awoke.
Now that the blizzard had abated, there was something he must do. For two long days the voice of the wanawut had not been heard. The people of the many bands rejoiced, and Lorak, sick though he was, had continued to tell them that the beast had gone off into the storm in pursuit of Torka and his band. Safe and warm within their shelters, their bellies full of mammoth meat and their women hot and willing against them beneath their sleeping furs, the hunters had no desire to abandon their leisure to pursue the people of Man Who Walks With Dogs, no matter what one of his women had done to Navahk. Things were good in the camp. No one had died since Torka had been driven out. True, Lorak was not well; but he was old, and old men were often sickly.
Navahk’s scowl stretched his lips over his teeth until the tips of his canines showed. If it had followed to prey upon Torka and his people, he would be denied the pleasure of his vengeance against them—unless they killed it, destroying the magnificence of its power forever. The thought appalled him almost as much as if he had contemplated his own death. He wanted the wanawut alive. Its living close to him, feeding from his hand, looking at him out of its strange, wondrously beautiful eyes excited and strengthened him. But what if it had died? The storm had been so vicious and unrelenting. Twice he had secretly risked venturing out to the lake to leave meat for the beast, but he had seen no sign of it in the raging wind and blinding snow. On his second trip the meat he had left was still where he had placed it, untouched and frozen. But then, that was not the only meat that had been brought out into the storm from the encampment. Bodies had been put to look upon the sky forever. The wanawut might be feeding off them.
He knew he must find it and make it howl again. Or, if it was dead or gone from this country, he must howl in its place, to terrify the people and convince them to follow his will---and he must do it soon, for each day spent in camp put Torka and his people farther away. If they reached the Corridor of Storms, it would take the forces of Creation to convince any of the mammoth hunters to follow them into that forbidden land.
The child saw him coming through the white, silent mists of snow. She ran from him. In her panic she clutched the willow-leaf-shaped man stone to her breast as she fled back to her nest near the lakeshore, leaving the corpses where they lay, one half-eaten now, their flesh hard, their faces covered with grass.
The child did not like their ugly, staring faces, their beast eyes blank and glazed in death. She had covered them with grass lest she be revolted as she ate. And yet as she had hunkered over the bodies, delighted to discover the usefulness of the man stone in cutting away the freezing flesh beneath layers of skins and furs, she was nevertheless disturbed by the vague similarities between the beasts and her own kind: The shape of their torsos and their arms and limbs were weak and tendonous, yet they were somehow the same. And one had breasts not unlike her own. The child could not bring herself to eat that one, although she had sucked the blood; curious, she suckled the breasts for milk and was disappointed—but not surprised—when she found none.
Man meat was the best meat. Mother had taught her that. But the bodies were stiff with cold, and the flavor of the one she ate of was gone now that she had sucked the blood from it. The blood tasted identical to the blood that she had sucked from her own body whenever she cut herself. And there was something in the shape of the skull. So fragile! Such delicate eye sockets and weak, narrow snout. Such tiny, useless teeth.
When the other beasts had carried them out from the wall of bones and left them to lie upon the earth, the child had watched the bodies for a long time before daring to venture near. At last hunger made her bold. Despite the cold and snow, the stink of death was bad in one of them. The child had dragged it away from the other two and had not eaten of its black-swirled flesh. When wolves and a lioness had come near, the child had let them have that corpse; it had been nearly dry of blood anyway.
But the wolves and lioness had wanted no part of such foul meat, and the child had fought them for possession of the other two, marveling how lions and wolves seemed so much smaller and more timid to her now. One lunge and stabbing feint had driven back all but a single wolf, and that animal had been dispatched with a single blow of the child’s fist. The other wolves had run away then. The lioness had dragged off the wolf, preferring its meat to’ that of the stinking corpse. And until now no predators had come to bother the child again.
She exhaled low, quick grunts of frustration as she ran, looking back over her shoulder at the figure slowly advancing through the falling snow. A beast. The one in white? Mother Killer? She could not tell. She only knew that an inner sense warned her to run. She had eaten of the flesh of man, and man would be angry.
Navahk pursued the creature through the grasses until he reached the place where the beast had been feeding. He slowed his step and saw what was left of Stam. There was no sign of Aliga. He was unconcerned and untouched by what he saw; he had seen kills before, what was left of game when large carnivores had been driven off after feeding awhile.
Then, for one sharp, stabbing instant, Navahk looked upon the body of Sondahr. The imperious, magnificent Sondahr. He stared down at the dead woman as he toed away the mounded stack of snow-covered grass that covered her face.
He gasped in horror as he took an inadvertent step back. Sondahr’s face was intact. Iced and colorless, it appeared to float like a flawless moon on the black sea of her hair. Her eyes were wide and staring—seeing him. Her mouth was slightly open, up curled—smiling at him, as though her spirit remained alive within the shell of her unmarred and exquisite skull ... to name him trickster and man of flesh, not of spirit to mock him and name him unworthy of her love or affection, even now;, when she was a corpse and he was a living man.
With a brutal kick that half decapitated her, he wheeled and continued his pursuit of the beast, glad that it had not desecrated Sondahr’s body and yet hating it for that .. . loathing it for that .. . wanting to kill it for allowing Sondahr to remain so beautiful, someone who had never been, could never be his.
Breathless with fear and from the exertion of her
run, the child hurled herself into the high sheltering grasses within which she had made her nest. Snow was barely falling, and it was quiet within the windbreak. The child crouched silently, listening to the pounding of her heart and the rasp of her breath as she wrapped her long, hairy arms across her chest, rocking herself, shivering so violently against her fear that the man stone sliced into her palm. Instinctively knowing that she was being hunted, she made no sound against the pain as, with a purely reflexive outward flick of her fingers, she released the dagger and raised her hand to suck her wound.
The child listened. The man was close. She could hear his steps—slow, cautious, and measured, like a great white lion stalking game in the protective undercover of thick brush. The child could see him now. It was Mother Killer. The child relaxed. All in white, he was not wearing her mother’s skin. Even one eye was banded in white, and as he moved forward, the child could see that snowflakes starred his night black hair. Although he carried a flying stick and walked in the way of an animal that is wary and watchful and afraid, the child sensed no threat in him until he paused and parted the grasses with the sharp, stone-headed tip of his stick.
The child looked into his face and was terrified of the savagery that she saw there. Leering, showing his teeth, his black eye was full of something that the child had never seen before—something dangerous, as dark and treacherous as a pitch pool. It was more than the focused, direct expression an animal shows when it is about to leap to the kill. This was an expression unique to the emotions of the beast man: It was a look of cruelty and hatred, and the child was wise to fear it.