He dropped to his knees and began probing at the snow beneath him. “Not deep enough,” he muttered and crawled on several yards farther, but the snow was still too shallow.
Then he came to a hilltop that the howling wind had swept clear of snow. If the snow had piled up behind that hill, there’d almost certainly be deep snow beyond that bare hilltop. He quickly scurried on across that grassy knob and immediately sank down to his hips in soft snow. “Now we’re getting someplace,” he muttered. He kicked at the snow around his feet and knees until he’d managed to open a fairly sizeable pit. Then he dropped to his knees and began to scoop out loose snow. As he went deeper, he found that tramping the snow with his leather-clad feet packed it, and packed snow didn’t take up as much room as loose snow did.
He stopped to catch his breath and to think his way through what he was doing. He needed shelter from the wind, and “shelter” meant something very much like one of the lodges of Asmie—except that shelter could be made out of blocks of snow rather than sod. He was going to have to tunnel down a ways and then open up something like a chamber. Then he’d need to block off his tunnel to keep out the bitterly cold air that was driving the snow down the side of Mount Shrak. “I’ll have air to breathe—if I don’t stay there too long, and I can eat snow if I get thirsty.” He was sure that it was going to be a bit dangerous, but the cold was much, much more dangerous.
He burrowed on down until he came to grass and then he followed the grassy slope down a bit farther, packing the snow of his makeshift tunnel with his shoulders and elbows. It wasn’t nearly as cold down here as it had been up on the surface, and he could breathe. “That’s all that matters right now, I think,” he said, and went back to work.
He ended up with a small, dome-shaped chamber with a partially blocked-off tunnel. It was dark and chilly, but he was getting fresh air to breathe, and, though it wasn’t exactly warm there, it wasn’t nearly as cold as it’d been outside in the screaming wind.
Then he remembered something and almost laughed. He untied the leather pouch hanging from his belt and found several thin slabs of smoked bison meat in the pouch. “Food, water, and a sort of warm place to sleep. It doesn’t get much better than that,” he said out loud.
He periodically went up through his tunnel to push away the snow that had accumulated in his tunnel-mouth and to find out if it was still snowing out there.
After about four days, the cold wind apparently decided that Tlantar wasn’t really worth all the time she’d been spending trying to freeze him into a block of solid ice, so she moved on. Tlantar waited for a while, just to be on the safe side, and then he tied his furry winter cloak shut, crawled on out through his tunnel, and waded through the new snow back to Asmie.
When he arrived back home, he was more than a little surprised to find his friends holding a “farewell ceremony for my dear son Tlantar.” It took him a while to convince his father and friends that he was not a ghost coming back to haunt dear old Asmie. He explained several times how he’d managed to survive, and then Dahlaine insisted that he take all the men of Asmie to his hidden hole in the snow and show them exactly how to make one of their own should it ever become necessary. “We lose hundreds of men in Matakan every winter to those deadly blizzards, Tlantar,” Dahlaine said. “You’ve managed to come up with a way to survive. I want you to show every man in Asmie how to do it. Then we’ll bring in men from other tribes, and you’ll teach them as well. I think you’ve stumbled across something that’ll save thousands of lives, Tlantar Two-Hands, and Matans will remember you long after you’ve gone to your grave.”
Tlantar thought that being famous might be sort of nice, but he didn’t care much for the word “grave” that Dahlaine had just dropped on him.
2
When Tlantar was about twenty, his father, Chief Tladan, was killed in a stampede of frightened bison. “He shouldn’t have been out there with us, Tlantar,” a hunter named Tlodal, who’d been a member of the hunting party, asserted. “He’s been slowing down for the past few years—probably because his back was bothering him quite a bit. You might not have noticed it, but it was all he could do to walk when he first got up in the morning. We tried our best to persuade him to stay home, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He loved the hunt, and I guess he thought that his back and legs could get him through one more season.”
Tlantar sighed. “He was always like that,” he said. “He was probably the most stubborn man in all of Matakan.”
“I’m sure that was what made him such a good chief,” Tlodal said, “but it seems to have caught up with him finally. Maybe we should make it a rule that nobody over thirty can go to the hunt.”
“That might get both of us in a lot of trouble, Tlodal,” Tlantar told his friend.
Chieftainship in the tribes of Matakan was usually hereditary, but the men of the tribes always had the final say when the previous chief died, and “Tlantar is too young” began to crop up fairly often after Chief Tladan’s death. There seemed to be a strong odor of ambition floating around in the village of Asmie.
“We’ve talked it over, Tlantar,” Tlerik, one of the elders of the tribe, told him, “and we pretty much agree that things will go more smoothly for you if you have a mate. The men who don’t approve of you keep pointing out the fact that you aren’t mated. You’ll look more stable if you have a mate. A few children would probably help even more, but that usually takes a while.”
“I’ve noticed that, yes,” Tlantar agreed without even a hint of a smile.
“We strongly suggest that you should be mated, Tlantar,” old Tlerik said firmly. “It doesn’t have to involve any towering love or any of that other juvenile foolishness. All you really need is a mate you can get along with fairly well. You’ll be offering her a significant elevation in rank, so I’m sure that many of the women in Asmie would be more than happy to join with you.”
“You’re starting to make it sound like some sort of business arrangement, Tlerik,” Tlantar protested.
Tlerik scratched at his cheek and looked thoughtfully out at the waving grass. “That pretty much describes it, yes. You need to have a mate, and you’re offering a higher rank in payment. Grand passion—or whatever else you might want to call it—really doesn’t play any part in this. A lot of matings start out this way, but after a while, the man and the woman discover that they’re really rather fond of each other. The nice thing about that sort of arrangement is that it’s a lot quieter than the other kind of matings. Passion can be dramatic, but it’s terribly noisy sometimes.”
Tlantar was not particularly pleased by Tlerik the elder’s suggestion. Even as a boy, all of Tlantar’s attention had been focused on the hunt. Other young men of the tribe were greatly interested in unmated young women, but Tlantar had never really had time to even think about such things. Then, too, he’d noticed that mated men were more or less obliged to go home every evening—even when the hunting was very good. As things now stood, Tlantar was free to come home or stay away, and there was nobody in the tribe who might protest.
Then the thought of those of the tribe who objected to his chieftainship came to him unbidden. For the most part, the objectors were not really very good hunters, largely because they were too indolent to spend the necessary time practicing with their spear-throwers. The more he considered his detractors, the more he became convinced that their objections grew out of their hope that they might be chosen by the men of the tribe to occupy the station of chief so they might live a life of ease and comfort that would require no effort and even less thought.
Should it happen that one of those incompetents were to become the chieftain of the tribe, it could very well be a total disaster, and Chief Tladan had spent hours beating his son over the head with “responsibility.”
Tlantar sighed and then drifted around the village of Asmie looking at the young, unmated women. It soon became quite obvious to him that old man Tlerik had forgotten how to keep his mouth shut, because it seemed that every time Tl
antar turned around, there was another grossly overdressed young woman standing there fluttering her eyelashes at him.
Though he probably never would have used that exact word, Tlantar turned and fled. He’d spent much of his life hunting, but being hunted made him go cold all over.
He was several miles off to the west of Asmie when he stopped to catch his breath.
“You idiot!” a shrill voice came from the grass not ten yards away. “I’ve been tracking that hare all morning, and you just frightened him so much that he’ll probably still be running next week.”
“I’m sorry,” Tlantar apologized. “Something just happened in Asmie that upset me quite a bit. I’ll help you chase down that hare, if you’d like.”
“Forget it,” the voice came crisply out of the tall grass. “He’s at least a mile away by now.” The speaker stood up, and Tlantar immediately realized that the person who’d just scolded him was not some half-grown boy. It was a young woman instead, but she wasn’t wearing a dress. Her clothes were made of leather, and they fit her tightly enough to reveal certain attri-butes that definitely identified her as female. She wasn’t very tall, and her braided hair was pale blond.
“Are you from Asmie?” Tlantar asked her. “I’ve lived there all my life, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you there.”
“I don’t go into town very often,” the young woman replied. “There’s nothing there that interests me.”
“Are you saying that you live alone out here in the meadowland?”
“I didn’t say that at all. Where I live is none of your concern.”
“I wasn’t trying to pry or anything,” Tlantar apologized, “but I don’t think I’ve ever encountered a Matan woman who lives alone and spends her time hunting before.”
“There aren’t too many of us,” she admitted, coiling up what appeared to be a sling and tucking it under her belt. “It might seem a bit strange to you, but women do know how to hunt—and to fish as well. Someday, I might even make myself a spear and have a try at a bison.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Tlantar told her. “Bison can be very dangerous if you rub them the wrong way.”
“I didn’t intend to rub them. I’m going to kill them.”
“You might want to think about that just a bit,” Tlantar advised. “I lost my father in a bison stampede a month or so ago. He was getting old, so he couldn’t run very fast anymore.”
“I’m very sorry,” she said. “I lost my father in the same way when I was about eight years old.”
“Are you saying that you’ve lived alone out here since you were only eight?”
“I didn’t come right out and say it,” she replied tartly, “but that’s pretty much the way my life’s been. I can take these meadow hares with my sling and I’ve got a nice sharp fish-spear, so I usually have plenty to eat. Why were you running just now? Is there somebody after you?”
Tlantar made a wry face. “More than one somebody,” he replied. “The tribal elders told me that I should be mated, and somehow word of that leaked out. Now every unmated young lady in Asmie has her eyes on me.”
“You’ve already found the answer to that. Just run away, and stay out in the meadow until the young ladies find somebody else to chase.”
“I wish I could do that,” Tlantar replied, “but I have certain responsibilities in Asmie. There are several lazy incompetents there who’d really like to be the chief. If one of them gets the job, the village won’t even be there after a few years.”
“This is all very interesting,” the young woman said, “but I need something for supper, and you just frightened off my hare, so it’s time for me to go hunting again.”
“What’s your name?” Tlantar asked her.
“Tleri,” she replied.
“I’m called Tlantar Two-Hands.”
“That’s a peculiar sort of name.”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
“That happens quite often, I’ve heard. Parents seem to come up with peculiar names sometimes.” She took her sling out from under her belt. “Maybe we’ll meet again sometime,” she said, and then she abruptly turned and ran on out across the grassland.
For some reason, Tlantar couldn’t seem to get the young huntress Tleri out of his mind. There had been a certain directness about her that was very much unlike the women who lived in Asmie. It had always seemed to Tlantar that the women of Asmie went out of their way to be complex and never once to say anything that got right to the point. Of course, the village women weren’t hunters, and Tleri was. That was also most unusual. The women of Asmie grew beans, and once planting was finished, they didn’t have much to do until harvest time. They talked all the time, but it didn’t seem to Tlantar that they ever said anything that got right to the point. Tleri, on the other hand, hadn’t said anything during their brief encounter that wasn’t right to the point.
The young women of Asmie continued to flutter their eyelashes at Tlantar, and to carefully arrange their schedules so that they could encounter him three or four times a day, but Tlantar generally ignored them. He had other things on his mind now.
Then, a few days later, he came out of his lodge and saw Tleri, still garbed in leather, walking along the narrow path at the center of the village.
“I see that you’ve decided to pay us a visit,” he said with a broad smile.
“Us?” she asked.
“The village is what I meant.”
“No. I just came by to see how my aunt was doing. She wasn’t feeling too well the last time I was here.”
“Aunt?”
“My father’s sister. You probably know her. She’s called Tlara.”
“Oh, yes,” Tlantar said. “I’ve known her since I was just a boy. I hadn’t heard that she’s been sick.”
“It’s a woman’s ailment. We don’t usually talk about those when there are men anywhere in the vicinity. Did you want any details?”
“Ah—no, Tleri, I don’t really think so,” Tlantar replied, feeling more than a little embarrassed.
“Are you blushing, Tlantar?” she asked with a kind of wide-eyed innocence.
Tlantar felt his face flame even brighter.
Tleri laughed with glee. “Did you want to play some more, mighty leader?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” Tlantar replied. “I know when I’ve been beaten.”
“Aren’t you the darling boy?” she said, patting his cheek with one small hand.
Tlantar and Tleri went through the mating ceremony two weeks later, and the entire tribe turned out to watch as Dahlaine joined the pair.
In general, the tribe of Asmie was quite pleased about the joining of Tlantar and Tleri, but Tlantar noticed that several young women and a couple of slightly older men seemed just a bit resentful as the ceremony concluded.
It took the newly joined pair a while to become adjusted to each other. Tlantar had never paid too much attention to the time of day. When the sun was up, it was daytime. When it went down, it was nighttime. Tleri, however, was a bit more precise. She’d taken over the kitchen in Tlantar’s lodge, and she wanted him to be there when the meals were ready, and she didn’t make her discontent a secret.
It wasn’t long after their joining when Tleri conceded that she hadn’t been quite as indifferent as she might have appeared to be during their first few meetings. She’d known exactly who Tlantar was, and their first encounter had been well-planned in advance. “There wasn’t really a hare scampering around out there in the deep grass, Tlantar. I made him up as an excuse for our little talk that day.”
“I’m shocked!” Tlantar lied. “How could you have done such a thing?”
She gave him a sudden, stricken look and saw his broad grin. “You knew that already, didn’t you?” she flared.
“Can you ever forgive me?” he said, trying to conceal his knowing smirk.
“I’ll get you for this, Tlantar.”
“We might want to talk about that a little later,” he said rather blandl
y.
It was late in the following summer when Tleri began to put on quite a bit of weight, and she advised Tlantar that it had nothing to do with how much she’d been eating lately. All in all they were both very pleased that they’d soon become parents.
Strange things began to happen that autumn that Tlantar didn’t fully understand. It seemed that every time the sun came up, Tleri started to vomit. She refused to talk about it, and Tlantar became more and more concerned about his mate’s illness, and he told the elder Tlerik about it.
“It’s nothing to worry about, Chief Tlantar,” Tlerik replied. “All women go through this when they are with child. It’s very common.”
“What causes it?”
“I have no idea, Chief Two-Hands. It’s one of those things that women refuse to talk about.”
“Some kind of secret, you mean?”
“I don’t think I’d call it a secret, My Chief,” Tlerik said with a faint smile. “Women aren’t put together the way we are. Many things happen to them that never happen to us, but I’d say that’s all right. Life wouldn’t be at all pleasant without women, wouldn’t you say?”
Tlantar continued to worry about Tleri’s peculiar illness, but after a while it went away, and things were all right again—except that she now wore a dress instead of her customary leather clothing. Her belly grew larger and larger, and that seemed to embarrass her, for some reason.
By early spring, Tleri’s belly had grown so large that it seemed to Tlantar that it might be easier to jump over her than to walk around her.
Then there came the night when she started screaming, and it wasn’t long after the screaming began that several of the women of the tribe entered Chief Tlantar’s lodge and quite firmly told him to go away.
“But—” he began to object.
Crystal Gorge: Book Three of the Dreamers Page 25