“No whit!” she shouted back to me, her voice harsh and trembling. Then I heard her sobbing. Shakily she whistled for Calimir, and still clinging to the sheer rock, I heard the hollow sound of hooves.
“No!” I yelled wildly. “Tass, stay! For Kor’s sake—”
She did not know that Talu was ailing, did not know that I would walk to Kor without her. I heard the reckless speed of Calimir’s hoofbeats as he bore her away.
I very nearly let myself drop, for I was so struck down by despair that there seemed to be no strength in my arms. I who had wept for the sake of a horse and a deer, now I was in despair too deep for weeping. Tass … she had given me no time to try to calm her, to talk with her, tell her about Talu, anything. And Kor—I had failed him yet again, I would come to him very much the laggard without Calimir.
Nevertheless, I had to come to him, if only to die where he had died.
Face against the rock, I clung until the thought had hardened in me. Then slowly I inched and heaved my way back onto the top of the crag.
Roundabout, I made my way down to Tass’s fire, though I knew well enough that she was gone and far out of my reach. She was quick, she had left nothing that she might come back for. I stood for a while where she had stood, then kicked dirt to kill the fire and struck off across the wooded slopes, not much caring whether Ytan might be on the hunt for me or not. It was dawn before I found my way back to my own campsite, where Talu stood awaiting me dully, her head drooping, not even making a pretense of running away from me, as she had always felt she must do when it came time for her to be caught and ridden.
I strapped my gear onto her, but that day I walked. All day I trudged upslope, letting her trail along behind me at an easy pace, and my angry pride made me keep my head up, watching for Ytan, but I did not see him.
When we came to a slope of scree I kicked the stones loose myself, heedless of whether I might be stung, until I had found a nest of adders for my horse to eat. I found her more as we made our way farther upslope, and she found some for herself, and I began to hope a little for her.
I walked through the dusk, out of a sense of duty to Kor, but I knew that all my walking had not brought me even a quarter of the distance of a good day’s journey on horseback. Talu and I had not yet reached even the region of spruces below the tree line.
The walking had numbed my sorrow somewhat. And I was spent. Come Ytan or come world’s end, I had to rest, for I had not slept at all the night before. When dusk had darkened into nightfall, I unstrapped my bags and the riding pelt from Talu, lay down where I was, in the middle of the trail, and slept the slumber of the dead.
Nor did Ytan come. For when I awoke, shortly after daybreak, I found the wolf standing over me, guarding my sleep.
I sat up and blinked at it, surprised by the surge of joy that went through me so that I blinked back tears more than sleep. “Wild brother,” I whispered to it, “welcome. I had thought you would long since be starved and gone to Mahela’s hell, like the others.”
I wanted to reach out and caress it, embrace it, even, I was so glad. But I knew well from times gone by that it would not let me touch even the tips of its fur, it would dart away. So I hugged my own shoulders instead, to still my hands. Thin beneath its dense graysheen fur, perhaps, but not overly thin, the wolf sat and panted at me.
“Ai, I am hungry.” Suddenly I found that I was ravenous, and I rooted frantically in my baggage. There were a few shriveled crowberries left. I ate them, then picked the sugar resin off the bark of certain of the pines, as I had done for days past.
“I am going to have to eat potherbs and moss and lichens again,” I said to the wolf. “What have you been eating, wild brother? Have you learned to graze, like the deer, to eat the sour berries in the highmountain meadows?”
Or were the mice and lemmings and voles, which I had thought gone, not all gone after all? The wolf could not answer. It merely grinned toothily at me.
“It cheers my heart to see you,” I told it.
Talu carried me part of the way that day, but no faster than I could have walked myself, and after halfday I gave up riding and walked. The wolf trotted along beside me. Talu lagged behind, and all my pity and sorrow and anger came back whenever I turned to look at her.
“Not Tass’s fault,” I muttered, though there was anger in me at Tassida also. But chiefly at Ytan, for driving her away. And, the viper, for what he had meant to do to her. What he might yet mean to do to her, if he caught her unawares.
“If you scent Ytan on the wind,” I instructed the wolf grimly, “tell me, my friend. I intend to kill him and feed him to my mare.”
Chapter Fourteen
By the time we reached the twisted spruces that grew below the tree line, I could climb the steep trail afoot faster than Talu could manage it any longer. So I took the gear off her, shouldering what I thought I would need the worst, flinging the rest to the ground, and I told her to go hunt snakes in the scree. If she could stay in one place and find food, she yet might live—for a while. Then I strode on, urgently, underneath a mountain sky that mocked my urgency with its clear blue beauty.
Far into the night I walked, and I made my way through the stunted spruces to the thin-aired, treeless highmountain meadow beyond. I could no more than stumble when at last I lay down and slept, with the wolf by me to guard my sleep.
And the halfnight later, just as daybreak was waking me, Talu plodded up the trail, stumbling as badly as I had, gave a huge sigh and stopped where I lay, her head hanging over me. With a groan for her sake I sat up and rubbed her forehead, nor did she trouble herself to scorn the caress.
“Talu,” I begged her, “spare yourself. Stay, rest.”
She swung her head and butted me with her outlandish nose, knocking me backward against a boulder. Limply I sat there and picked the flakes of lichen off it to eat. The wolf, I saw, was gnawing tiny black berries off a low shrub with leaves as jagged as a blackstone knife, and as red, in the early highmountain autumn, as a knife wet with blood. I tottered to my feet and picked some of the berries for myself—the things were so small and tart and seedy that years gone by I would not have thought them worth the effort. But I ate all I could find, then made my way up the trail toward the Blue Bear Pass, stooping to pick more wherever I found them by the wayside.
And even slow and dallying over berries as I was, I soon left Talu far behind. She had grown very weak.
That night, again, she caught up to me on toward dawn, waking me from sleep with the thudding of her hooves as she blundered up to me. There had been no rest for her, after all, even less than there was for me. But the next day at last I topped the pass, and I knew that I would soon leave her behind in truth, for on the downward far side I would make my best speed.
Looking for a moment back the way I had come, I saw nothing but meadow and rock and eversnow. The mare stood nowhere in sight. “Talu,” I whispered nevertheless, as if she were there, “farewell,” though I knew she would not fare well, she would die and I would not be with her to ease her dying. She might be dying at the moment I thought it, and I was not with her. I would not have thought that she wanted me with her, ill-tempered mare that she was, yet she had followed.… With an aching feeling in my chest I turned westward, toward the sea, toward Kor, and I started to run. The wolf loped beside me.
I ran wildly, heedlessly, and Ytan attacked me at the first turning of the trail.
He was waiting atop the crags that rose to either side of the narrow way, and he caught me utterly unawares. Even as he stood and drew his bow I did not see him. But my friend the wolf must have seen him or scented him a heartbeat before he let the arrow fly, and it dodged into my legs as I ran, tripping me so that I fell hard and headlong, scudding down the rocky path on my chest, and the bolt flew over me. I had not seen it or Ytan, and I wanted to curse the wolf for its clumsiness—within my mind I was cursing it fervently, but I was knocked too breathless to speak. And then I heard Ytan laughing.
I must hav
e made an oafish sight, and Ytan had always taken every chance to laugh at me, even before the devourer had possessed him. He gave forth great yelps of laughter. A moment before, knocked nearly senseless, I would have said I could not move, but when I heard that laughter I moved forthwith, filled with rage and a reckless despair that made me forget all caution. Talu was dead or dying, Kor dead or in mortal danger, Tassida had deserted me, my god also—or I had deserted him—the entire dryland world cowered under Mahela’s heavy hand, and what was one meddling demon-thrall of a brother that he should thwart me or give me pause? I would kill him and leave his body for my mare, should she muster strength to come that way. I would feed his head to the wolf. With a roar like that of a wounded Cragsman I was on my feet, letting baggage and bow fall to the stony ground, charging him—Alar flew to my hand, the yellow stone on her pommel blazing with my wrath, blazing the color of thunderbolts. Heedless of the arrow in Ytan’s hand, heedless of my own starved, uncertain strength or the steep and treacherous rock under my feet, I charged him, lunging like a bear up the crag where he stood.
Astonished or unnerved, he stood as rigid as the granite peaks, staring, and did not set arrow to bowstring and shoot me as he could have done. In another moment it was too late for that, I was nearly on him. He dropped bow and bolts—they rattled down the sheer flank of the crag—and snatched up a lance, a man-long pole of spear-pine with a sharp flint tip. He could not have chosen a better weapon. As long as he held it leveled at me, I could not come near enough to him to open him up with the sword, rage though I might.
“Bowels of Sakeema!” I cursed. “Bloody, stinking balls of Sakeema!” For in my anger at my god I no longer forebore to curse by Sakeema’s name. I struck mighty blows at Ytan’s spear, broke off the knifelike tip, hacked at the shaft to no avail—it was of springy, well-cured pine and would not splinter for me. Ytan thrust, his teeth set in a mirthless grin, a warrior’s grin, like the snarl of a spotted wild dog. His jagged, broken spear-head was yet plentifully sharp enough to tear my innards out—I gave way, and he stepped forward and thrust again. He was driving me back toward the shoulder of the crag. One more backward step, and I would be toppling, and at his mercy when I landed. He would be able to put an arrow into me at his leisure. And his grin broadened, for he knew it.
The wolf leaped at him from the side.
It had been climbing toward a higher vantage, I think, to attack him from above and bear him down with the force of its leap and his weight, as it had done before. But seeing me in danger of being dead within the next few heartbeats, it leaped from the side and somewhat below him, growling like distant thunder, jaws agape and seeking for a grip on his arm or thigh, white teeth gleaming—
He dodged and met the wolf’s throat with his booted foot, sending it over the edge of the crag with a single hard kick. I heard a sound as if a branch had snapped, and a deep-chested shriek, and then silence.
I leaped in my turn. The lance had wavered, and even had it not I think no lance could have stopped me any longer, for I was insane with anger and sorrow. Ytan’s spearpoint left a red trail on my belly—I struck the weapon aside and rushed him. He gasped and tried to put the length of the spear shaft between us again, scrambling back and circling the narrow clearing atop the crag, and all the time my sword hunted him, hungry for his blood. And I was bellowing and roaring a cry of rage without words, for there were no words to tell the wrongs he had done me, the griefs I would avenge. The matter of the wolf was only his most recent evil. He had looked on Tassida with leering eyes and plotted to dishonor her. He had helped to kill my mother, he had schemed with my father to kill me, he had tried himself to kill me more times than I had fingers on one hand—
He could not escape me for all his dodging and circling. Alar pursued him like a vengeful eagle. Nor was there any quick way off the crag, that he could flee me. His death was at hand, and I could tell he knew it, for his face was pale, he panted, he had ceased to show his teeth in a warrior’s grin. He tried to parry my blows with the shaft of his spear—Alar cut him lightly in the shoulder, the head. She was like a wildcat that day, cruel, taunting her prey. Or I was … was I cruel? I would not after all take long about killing him. Backing away from me, Ytan stumbled, fell hard to the stone on which we stood, and his hacked and ruined spear clattered away from him. Out of his belt he snatched a short knife of flint, a pitiful weapon, not even as fearsome as the blackstone one Tass had broken for him. In a final act of defiance he raised it, and I stood over him, sword lifted to strike the death blow. Alar hovered in air like a hawk stooping—
I could not kill him.
He was my brother, my shadowed double.
He was evil, and in a twisted way more dear to me than self. Had I not turned my back on Sakeema?
All my bloodthirst and my vengeful wrath left me in a moment, so that I stood weak and shaking and as pale as Ytan, and Alar bore my shaking arm down with her weight, hung heavy at my side, her light gone out. Ytan was … courageous in evil. Ytan was … a creature of Sakeema? What I saw before me was only shell, for Mahela’s fell servant held in thrall what was more truly Ytan … but it did not matter. He could not be merely killed. He had somehow to be redeemed. I had somehow to be redeemed.
“Ytan,” I whispered. “My brother.”
And seeing what had happened, he grinned again, baring his teeth in a killer’s snarl. Then he rose lightly to his feet and raised his stone knife to stab me. I stood planted like a tree, in a trance of disbelief, though I knew he was demon-possessed and deadly—but for a moment I had thought of him only as my brother, and all my love for him was in my voice, and I could not believe he was coming at me to kill me—and even then I could not lift my sword against him. Nor did I move to flee him until it should have been too late, until the knife was plunging at my heart—
A clashing, thundering sound, and a roaring, and with what must have been the last of her strength Talu came lurching and scrabbling across the rocks, charging Ytan.
He jerked round to face her, so that his knife missed my chest and merely grazed my shoulder. In the next heartbeat Talu was rearing over him, striking with her deadly forehooves, ready to bury her fangs in his back. Downward swing of her heavy head—fangs struck just below his shoulder blades, and Ytan howled in agony. But he was no laggard in battle, Ytan. With his puny stone blade he sliced the mare’s throat open to the bone, and Talu thudded to the stone. Staggering, blood streaming, Ytan fled over the lip of the crag and out of my sight, and I let him go, standing very still and staring at the mutilated body of my ill-tempered fanged mare.
She had let her head rest against me, a few days before, and had not harmed me. Was it for affection, or merely because she was starved and weary? Had she attacked Ytan to save me, or to feed her own hunger? Had she loved me at all, in her own way? Did it matter? I had loved her, for all that she was wild as a wolf.…
The wolf.
Talu was dead. Later I would mourn her, but I could not help her. Hastily, half climbing, half sliding down the crag, I went to look for the one who might yet be living.
The wolf lay at the foot of the rock, whining and shivering, with one foreleg bent at an odd angle. “Broken,” I said aloud.
It looked back at me with dark eyes narrowed in pain.
“We must tend it, wild brother.” It was hard for me to think, dismayed as I was by the events of the day, so I thought aloud. “No sticks, up here above the tree line … my arrows, yes, we will use them.” I went and found them, chose four, and I walked back. But the wolf growled at me as I approached.
“I know it hurts, wild brother.” I sat and took the blackstone tips off the arrows, cutting the sinew bindings with my hunting knife. Then I pulled the rawhide lacings from my boots—they would do to tie the sticks with. “But if we can splint it, you will be able to hobble on it until it is healed, you might yet live. There is plenty of meat for you up above.” My throat tightened at that, but it was fitting that Talu’s flesh should feed the wolf, as
her death had been warlike and fitting for a fanged mare. “Steady, now.”
I reached to straighten the injured foreleg. But before I could touch it the wolf snarled at me most savagely and snapped in clear warning. Letting my hands stop where they were, I gave it a level look, meeting its troubled eyes. More fear than fierceness in those eyes.
“Little brother,” I said evenly, “Sakeema knows I am a stubborn dolt, and Mahela knows likewise, and it is of no use for you to argue with your teeth. You helped me when I needed you worst, and I will help you, even if you rend me for it. So much has gone wrong.…” I shook my head in a sort of muted vehemence, determined to save the wolf at whatever risk. It was the only comrade my journey had left to me. Perhaps the only wild creature left in the dryland world.
Again I moved my hands toward it, toward the injured limb, and the wolf snarled mightily, and snapped, and shrank away from me as far as it could move, but did not tear me open as it threatened to do. For the first time my fingers touched the graysheen fur—
Swirl as of wind-driven haze before my eyes, so that I blinked, wondering briefly if Ytan had hurt me more than I knew … and then all sensible thoughts left me. For under my hand lay Tassida, crouching as the wolf had crouched, naked and trembling and injured, with her wolfskin riding pelt huddled around her shoulders.
“Tass!”
“Dan,” she said to me in a voice scarcely louder than a whisper, “I am so ashamed.”
“Tass,” I repeated stupidly. It should not have astonished me so. Birc had turned to a deer, and I myself had been a seal for a season in order to swim with Kor to Mahela’s undersea realm, so why then should Tass not be a wolf? But seeing her there before me, so suddenly, so eerily, when all hope of ever seeing her again had nearly left me—it stunned me. And what was she saying, something of shame?
“I saw how Talu was failing, I knew you needed Calimir, and he was not far away, he is never far away from me. Yet I am so frightened—I couldn’t—make the change—”
Godbond Page 15