by Judith Tarr
He had to go on. The women had been riding south. He had no reason to suppose that they would turn aside from that course, unless something turned them—and he had found no sign of them in the wrack of storm or tumbling in the swollen rivers.
As best he could in pain and fever, he continued his hunt. By now it might be a hunt for the edge of the world, unless he had the great good fortune to pick up their trail. But so many storms, so close and so evidently directed at him, scoured the land clean day by day.
oOo
He lost the horses in one even more terrible than that which had slain Spearhead. They had been struggling along the bank of yet another river—this country was one great tangle of them—when the storm struck.
The earth gave way beneath them. They tumbled and slid, buffeted by wind and rain. Wolfcub caught at a trailing root as the bay disappeared from beneath him, and held on for grim life, though it made his torn back and sides scream with pain. Even in the storm’s darkness, in the pouring rain, he could watch the river take the horses: the bay limp and broken even as the water took him, the dun alive, struggling, but overwhelmed in the turbulent water.
As always, the storm ended in peace, soft light and kiss of rain that washed the mud from Wolfcub’s face and body. He longed to let go, to let the river take him, but he was a coward. He could not simply die.
He made his halting way to firmer ground, then followed the river till he found the dun’s body. The bay he never found. The river must have kept him.
Maybe, with the sacrifice of a good hunter and two strong stallions, the gods at last were appeased. Or else they reckoned that Wolfcub would never find his quarry now, alone as he was, afoot, and stripped of all his weapons but a flint knife. The rest had been with the bay.
The dun had been carrying a waterskin, and the skin of the lion that Wolfcub had slain. He would have left that, but it was a blanket and a cloak as well as an empty brag. He would need it if he survived till winter.
Strange to think of that in this hot still weather. But leaves were turning in the copses, little by little. The days were shorter, the air very slightly different. Summer was passing.
With only a knife he could not hunt larger game, but he could set snares for rabbits and squirrels. And the wild grains were ripening. He had little strength and no tools to grind them into flour, but he could eat the sweet kernels, as he could harvest fruits from trees and brambles. He could keep himself alive while he must, if the fever would only let him be, and the wounds finish draining and begin again to heal.
They were hot to the touch and more painful than he would ever have admitted if he had not been alone, but they had not shown yet the red streaks that warned of death’s coming. As long as he did not see those, he told himself, he could go on. He could hope to see the end of the hunt.
oOo
It was a strong storm season—the strongest that anyone could remember, even the Grandfather, who was so old he could remember when most of the horses had been duns and bays. Now of course they were nearly all greys, Horse Goddess’ children as people called them, because like her they were the color of the moon.
Storm had been born in such a season. It was her time of greatest power, and she was deeply attuned to it. Before the first storm came, she had taken the people from their summer camp to one better protected, farther south, close to a river but not so close that its flooding would harm men or beasts. The rise of a hill sheltered it, and there was good grazing along the slopes. When the strongest storms struck, they struck the far side of the hill; the people’s tents and shelters were safe, and set up high enough that if the hard rain fell, it ran down away from them into the river.
It was a good camp, even with the storms. The river was rich in fish, and the hunting was much better than it had been round about the summer camp. There were apple trees near the river, and a stand of beeches, with nuts just coming ripe.
There was no need to hunt far afield. Deer came to the beech-wood, and there was a boar with a harem of wives. They were shy as pigs went, and not inclined to challenge passersby, as long as they were left to their rooting and feeding, and as long as no one ventured too near the boar’s lair. Some of the more headstrong boys wanted to try their hand at pig-killing, but while there was ample and less dangerous game, Storm forbade them to touch the boar or his tribe.
oOo
Cloud was thinking of this as he made his way through the beech-wood. He had heard the pigs not long before, feeding on the rich mast. He was hunting deer, but today, for whatever reason, he had found no sign less than a day old. There had been no storm the day before to drive them off; indeed it had been some days since the wild winds blew. Nor was there any other tribe within reach, or any party of hunters that he knew of. The nearest, the Stag, waited out storm season three days’ ride from the Grey Horse camp. Sometimes men or women of the Stag came to visit kin or lovers, but none of them would be inclined to drive the deer away.
Close to the wood’s edge he found wolfsign, tracks and dung and the half-buried carcass of a fawn. A pack had come through this morning, brought down the fawn and eaten it, then set off in pursuit of the doe and her twin yearlings. He sighed and shrugged. So: the rest of the deer had gone into hiding. Wise deer.
Maybe his mother’s tent would be content to dine on fish and waterfowl, since the wolves had laid claim to venison. He was not even slightly tempted to try for roast pig—not against his mother’s prohibition.
The sky was clear as he left the wood. No storm today, either; and that was well enough. He preferred not to be hunting and fishing along the river when the storm-gods walked.
He trotted easily through the tall grass, bow in hand, quiver bouncing comfortably between his shoulderblades. It was warm, but a light breeze blew, cooling the sweat on his breast and cheeks. Maybe, after he had done his fishing, he would swim in the river. That would be pleasant.
oOo
He saw the body somewhat before he came to the water, lying on the bank as if it had been cast there in a flood. But it was not wet, and the river ran quiet. It lay on its face, a long lean man’s body in much-worn leggings and boots worn through in the soles. Cloud could see what had likely killed him: great oozing wounds in back and sides, buzzing with flies. They rose in a furious swarm as he turned the stranger onto his back.
This was no tribesman of this country. The long face with its sharp curve of nose, the hair dark with oil and dirt but still ruddy brown, and the sparse beard, were unmistakably foreign. He wore as armlets the tusks of a boar who must have been divinely huge, and on a string about his neck hung the claws of a lion—maybe the same lion that had killed him.
If that was the lion, it had died for its sins. The man was lying on a lionskin.
He did not, for all of that, look terribly warlike. His only weapon was a knife of flint with a bone haft carved in the shape of a leaping wolf. His wounds circled round his ribs. Cloud saw what might be the white of bone.
The man stirred. Cloud jumped like a deer.
The stranger stirred again, feebly, murmuring something in a language Cloud did not know. His eyes opened. They were clear grey, like rain. They had a remarkable effect on his face. Without them it was rather plain, long-jawed and thin-lipped. With them, it had an odd and striking beauty.
He did not seem to see Cloud, or to recognize him as human. Though his shoulder had been cool when Cloud touched it, his forehead burned with fever. He spoke again, more loudly this time, to someone who appeared to be standing behind Cloud.
“Stranger,” Cloud said in the language that traders used, “you are welcome to Grey Horse lands. Can you stand? Or shall I carry you?”
The stranger blinked. He peered at Cloud. He did not, as Cloud had half feared, turn hostile and spring on him with the knife. That would have been hardly surprising if he was what Cloud thought he was; but he was too ill or too sensible to do such a thing. He spoke in traders’ patois, slowly, with a thick burring accent, but Cloud could understand him. �
�Grey Horse? Are you—am I dead?”
“Not quite yet,” Cloud said. “I can’t tend you here—I’ve nothing to tend you with. I’ll have to take you back to camp. Can you walk?”
The stranger nodded. It seemed to make him dizzy. His eyes closed; his face tightened. With an effort he sat up. With a greater effort, and with Cloud’s aid, he pulled himself to his feet. He stood easily a head taller than Cloud, even doubled over with the pain of his wounds.
He walked four steps. The fifth would have flung him flat on his face again, if Cloud had not caught him.
With a faint sigh, Cloud heaved him over his shoulders. He was light for his size, at least, and Cloud was strong. And he did not struggle, which was fortunate. He was still alive: his breath hissed in Cloud’s ear, fast and shallow.
Just as he would have done to bring back the body of a stag, Cloud steadied himself under the long limp weight, and made his way home.
oOo
Storm was waiting for him. She had not spoken to him this morning or sent him on that particular hunt, but she greeted him calmly and regarded his burden without surprise. It was Rain, happening past, who said what Cloud had braced himself for: “Fool of a man. What use have we for manflesh?”
Cloud glowered at her. She had the grace to look down, though she refused to blush.
Storm sent her in haste to fetch certain things from the stores. People had gathered, curious, to see what Cloud had brought back from his hunt. Storm sent some of them on errands, too, and scattered the rest with a word.
Some of those sent away returned quickly with a tent, which they raised beside the king’s, rolling and binding the sides so that it was no more, for the moment, than a canopy. In that fashion it sheltered the stranger from the sun but let in ample light.
Cloud was no shaman, but his mother had taught him what she knew of healing. He had a gift for it that Storm said was a kind of magic. But wounds like these, old and suppurating, were not anything he was delighted to contend with.
Storm helped him settle the stranger on a clean hide, raising her brows at the stained and bloodied lionskin that had wrapped him, folding it and handing it to one of the men who hung about. “Clean this,” she said.
He was none too happy to be dismissed, but he went obediently. People always obeyed Storm when she was in this mood.
Cloud and Storm together relieved the stranger of his leggings and took off his necklace and his armlets, laying them aside. By the time he was naked, warm water had come, and the wherewithal to bathe him and dry him.
While Storm washed his hair, Cloud studied the wounds. Now that they were clean, they were if anything uglier than before.
“Cautery?”
Cloud glanced over his shoulder. Rain stood just behind him with a basket in her hands. Cloud took it from her. Salves and potions would not be enough for this. But to burn away the diseased flesh . . .
Maybe he would need to do that. But there was a thing he could do first. It would not be pretty. He would have to pray that the stranger did not wake and run shrieking from it.
His mother had known. Some of the wilder children, at her behest, had brought what he needed from the refuse-heaps, white and wriggling and hungry for carrion. Flinching a little with revulsion, Cloud spread maggots like a poultice over the worst of the wounds, those that had begun to blacken on the edges. The others he treated with a less revolting salve, leaving them all open, as unlovely as they were.
It seemed precious little to do, but when he thought of other, more seemly things—bandages, bindings, poultices of mud or herbs or dung—the gift in him, that his mother called his magic, turned away in refusal. This if anything would bring the stranger back to life.
“And pray he doesn’t make us regret it,” Cloud muttered.
Rain’s brows went up. “Why? Did he try to kill you before he fell over?”
“No,” Cloud said. “Not at all. He seemed a very polite sort, for a man near dead. But if he is what he looks like—”
“That is a horseman from beyond the river,” said Storm. She said it perfectly calmly. “Are his eyes blue?”
“Grey,” said Cloud, “like rain”—just as Rain burst out, “How can a man have blue eyes?”
“Or grey?” Storm slapped her lightly. “Don’t be foolish, child. Horsemen are sun-people. Their hair is as often yellow as not, or sunset red. Their eyes are sky-colored, or the color of rain.”
“This one’s hair is brown, but almost red,” Rain said. “Like a hawk’s tail.”
“Sparrowhawk,” Storm said.
“Kestrel,” said Rain. “I shall call him Kestrel.”
“He probably already has a name,” Cloud pointed out.
She tossed her head. “I’ll wager that name is Kestrel. Doesn’t he look like one? Such a lovely beaky face, and that ruddy hair.”
Cloud sighed. When Rain took it into her head to name something, nothing would possibly do but that name, forever after. He had only escaped that headstrong magic of hers because his mother had named him when he was small, and refused to allow Rain to change it.
This man, this Kestrel, whatever he had been before, was going to wake and find himself made new, with a new name and, Cloud prayed to the gods of healing, new strength. And, alas, new scars; but there was no helping that. They were not on his face, at least, or on a limb, to weaken the use of it.
There was nothing now but to wait and watch, to pour gruel and potions into him, and to take care that he neither shifted nor took harm from lying so long on his side. They took watches through the night and the day thereafter, the three of them and their kin, and anyone else who came under Storm’s stern eye.
He did not die at once, as Cloud had feared he would. He still could die, and quickly; but for that night at least, he would live.
31
Wolfcub swam in and out of a black dream. Somewhere in it he paused in sunlight by the rushing of a river and looked up into the face of a stranger. It was a man, dressed much as he himself was, but unmistakably foreign: short but broad in the shoulders, with warm brown skin and a pelt of curly hair. The man spoke to him, and it seemed he understood, but he could not afterward remember what they had said.
The sunlight went away, but the man was somehow present, still with him in the dark. Then there were other people, women shorter and if anything broader than the man, with curling black hair and round lovely faces—women, indeed, like Sparrow. But she was nowhere in his dream. Nowhere at all.
oOo
He woke with a start. It was his dream again, the sunlight, the man with his curling beard and his broad black-furred chest. But this time Wolfcub could have sworn he was awake. A great lassitude was on him, and pain like a hand clenched tight about his ribs.
He stared at the man, who stared back with calm dark eyes. They were rather wonderful eyes, like Sparrow’s: clear and penetrating, with a light in them that he had always thought must be the spark of magic.
“Am I alive?” Wolfcub asked, searching for the words in trader-tongue.
It was not what he had meant to say, nor did it make any sense, but the stranger did not seem to think him odd for saying it. He answered, “You do seem to be. Do you feel dead?”
“I feel . . .” Wolfcub tried to move, but his breath caught. No; he was not ready for that yet. “I feel as if a lion mauled me and left me for dead.”
“Actually,” said the stranger, “I think you killed the lion.”
Wolfcub could not sigh, either. It made his ribs cry for mercy. “I suppose I did. It’s not what I set out to do. I was hunting something safer.”
The stranger laughed: sharply, as if it had been startled out of him. “By the Mother Goddess! You don’t talk like a wild raider of the steppe at all. Are you a foundling, then? A wanderer from some country we’ve never heard of?”
“I’m a hunter of the White Stone People,” Wolfcub said, somewhat cautiously. “I come from north of the river. If that makes me a wild raider of the steppe—yes, I am that.
Will you kill me for it?”
“We’d have done that already, if we were going to,” said an altogether new voice. It belonged to a woman, and a young, proud, delightfully forward one, too. She was as dark as the man, with the same curling hair and round face, and she was dressed just as he was, in embroidered leggings and necklace of colored stones. Her breasts were round and full, the nipples dark and very large.
Just as Wolfcub reflected on how like Sparrow she was, it dawned on him that his leggings were nowhere near him, nor was there any covering on him at all. She could see clearly what he thought of her: for all the weakness that beset him, one part of him was able and willing to rise for her. Not as high as it might, or as proud as it could, but high enough to be properly mortifying.
She smiled with profound sweetness. “I thank you,” she said. “And a fair morning to you, man of the White Stone People. I have decided that you are Kestrel—the hawk with the ruddy tail, the sparrowhawk. Tell me that your people call you that, too.”
“I can’t,” he said. “They call me the Wolfcub.” And the boarslayer and no doubt, if he ever came home, the lionkiller. But he did not say that.
That astonishing creature shook her head firmly. “You are not a wolf, nor his cub, either. Not you. You are a swift creature of the air—a falcon. A Kestrel.”
He found that he was gaping. He shut his mouth.
The man, who had listened with an air of high amusement, said in the silence, “You’d do as well to give in now as later, stranger. Once Rain names a thing, that thing stays named. Regardless of what it called itself before.”
“But I am not—” Wolfcub began. But he broke off. Not because he had surrendered—because a movement had caught his eye, something flitting past against the sunlight. A shape like—a falcon?
A small falcon, but swift. It swooped over him—into the place in which he lay, which seemed to be a tent without walls but with a roof of tanned leather—and came to rest just above him, where two poles joined to hold up the roof. It tilted its head at him, and fixed him with a wild yellow eye.