The Shield of Time

by Poul Anderson

  ’The Mammoth Slayers are angry,” she warned. “I told them I would find out what the trouble is. Do you mean to go soon? I fear a storm is about to strike.”

  The shaggy head drooped. “We cannot go. We have nothing to bring.”

  She tautened. “Why?”

  “At the fall gathering I told everybody that I did not think we would,” Aryuk said in the rambling Tula fashion, but with none of the Tula liveliness. “Ulungu is a true friend. After he and his sons had made their own last trip, they came to see if they could help us. That was when I learned you had joined the Tall Man.”

  Oh, God, how betrayed you must have felt.

  “They could do nothing, for we ourselves had done nothing,” Aryuk went on. “I told them they should go home and care for their women and children. This has been a hard summer. Fish, shellfish, small game, everything was scant. We went hungry because we must spend time getting things and traveling for the Mammoth Slayers. Others suffered too, but the new hooks and spears helped. They are not much use here, where schools of fish and the seal that prey on them seldom pass by.” Shoal water in the estuary, currents, something like that, Tamberly guessed. “We must make ready for winter. If we worked any more for the Mammoth Slayers, we would starve.”

  Aryuk raised his head. His eyes met hers. Dignity descended upon them. “Perhaps we can give them more next summer than we did in this,” he finished. “Say to them that I alone decided.”

  “I will.” She wet her lips. “No, I will do better than that. Fear not. They are not as—as—” Tula had no word meaning “cruel” or “merciless.” It wouldn’t be fair to the Cloud People anyway. “They are not as fierce as you think.”

  Knuckles whitened above the hand ax. “They take whatever they want. They kill whoever stands against them.”

  “There was a fight, true. Do the We never kill one another?”

  His stare became wind-bleak. “Two more among Us have died at their hands since then.” I didn’t know that! Corwin doesn’t bother to inquire. “And you speak for the Mammoth Slayers. Well, you have heard what I have to say.”

  “No, I, I only … only am trying to … make you happier.” Give you heart to last out the winter. In spring, for whatever reason, the invaders will pull up stakes. But I’m not allowed to predict that. And you doubtless wouldn’t believe me if I did. “Aryuk, I will see to it that the Cloud People are content. They will want no more from Alder River before the snow is off the ground again.”

  He stayed wary. “Can you be sure? Even you?”

  “I can. They will heed me. Did Tall Man not make them give you back Daraku?”

  Abruptly an old man stood there under the darkening sky. “That was no use. She died on the way home. The child that so many of them put into her, it took her away with it.”

  “What? Oh, no, no.” Tamberly realized she had moaned in English. “Why did you not let Tall Man know?”

  “He was never there when I was, afterward,” said the flat voice. “I saw him twice, but not nearby, and he did not seek me. Why should I go to him, then, if I dared? Can he call back the dead? Can you?”

  She remembered her own father, whom she could gladden with a phone call and overjoy by stepping across his threshold. “I think you would like me to leave you alone,” she said as emptily.

  “No, come inside,” where the rest crouch in murk, in fear and stifled, stifling rage. “I am ashamed at how little food we can offer, but come inside.”

  What can I do, what can I say? If I’d grown up alongside Manse, or in some earlier era, I’d have known what, young though I am. But where-when I hail from, they send printed sympathy cards and talk about the grief process. “I … I should not. I must not, today. You need … to think about me, till you understand I am your friend … always. Then we can be together. First think about me. I will watch over you. I will care for you.”

  Am I wise or weak?

  “I love you,” she blurted. “All of you. Here.” She reached in her pocket and pulled out the chocolate bars. They fell at his feet. Somehow she smiled before she turned and left him. He didn’t protest, merely stood where he was and looked after her. I guess I am doing the right thing.

  A flaw of wind whirled down to rattle skinny boughs. She hastened her steps upward. Aryuk shouldn’t see her cry.

  IV

  The council, the grown men and old women of the tribe, crowded the house where they met; but the sacred fire could not burn outdoors when a storm bade fair to blow for days. The booming and snarling of air came through thick walls as an undertone. Flames on the hearthstones guttered low. They picked out of darkness, waveringly, the crone who squatted to tend them. Otherwise the long room was filled with gloom and smoke and the smells of leather-clad bodies packed together. It was hot. When the fire jumped high for a second, sweat glistened on the faces of Red Wolf, Sun Hair, Answerer, and others in the innermost circle around it.

  The same light shimmered along the steel that Tamberly drew and raised high. “You have heard, you have understood, you know,” she intoned. On solemn occasions the Cloud People used a repetitive style that to her sounded almost Biblical. “For that which I ask, if you will grant me my wish, I give to you this knife. Take it of me, Red Wolf; try it; make known if it be good.”

  The man received it. The sternness of his features had melted away. She thought of a child on Christmas morning. Silence gripped the assembly until their breath seemed as loud as the gale, heavy as surf. Nonetheless he tested its heft and balance with skilled care. Stooping, he picked up a stick. His first attempt to slice it was awkward. Flint and obsidian take edges as keen as any metal, but they won’t cut seasoned wood, being too fragile, and you can’t properly whittle with them. He was also unaccustomed to the shape, the handle. With a little coaching, though, he got the knack fast.

  “This comes alive as I hold it,” he whispered raptly.

  “It has many uses,” Tamberly said. “I will show them to you, and the way of caring for the blade.” When a stone grew blunt, you chipped it afresh, till it got too small. Sharpening steel properly is an art, but she felt sure he’d master it. “This is if you will grant me my wish, O People.”

  Red Wolf looked about. “Is such our will?” he inquired sonorously. “That I take the knife on behalf of us all, and for our return gift we forgive the tribute that the family of the Vole man Aryuk should have brought?”

  A buzz of assent ran among shadows. Answerer’s harsh voice cut through. “No, here is a bad thing.”

  Damn! Tamberly thought, dismayed. I’d expected the whole business would be pro forma. What ails that wretch?

  The talk rose to a soft hubbub and died out. Eyeballs gleamed. Red Wolf gave the shaman a hard stare. “We have beheld what the Bright Stone can do,” he said slowly. “You have beheld. Is this not worth many loads of wood or fish, many skins of otter and hare?”

  The wrinkled countenance writhed. “Why do the tall pale strangers favor the Vole People? What secrets are between them?”

  Anger flared in Tamberly. “All know that I dwelt with them before you entered this land,” she snapped. “They are my friends. Do you not stand by your own friends, O Cloud People?”

  “Then are you friends to us?” Answerer shrilled.

  “If you will let me be!”

  Red Wolf lowered his arm between the two. “Enough,” he said. “Shall we squabble over a single moon’s share from a single family, like gulls over a carcass? Do you fear the Vole folk, Answerer?”

  Shrewd! Tamberly cheered. The shaman could only glare and reply sullenly, “We know not what witchcraft they command, what sly tricks are theirs.” She remembered Manse Everard remarking once that societies frequently attribute abnormal powers to those whom they lord it over—early Scandinavians to the Finns, medieval Christians to the Jews, white Americans to the blacks….

  Red Wolf’s tone went dry. “I have heard of none. Has anyone?” And he lifted the knife over his head. A natural-born leader for sure. Standing there
like that, Lordy, but he’s handsome.

  Neither debate nor vote followed. That was not the way of the Wanayimo, and would have been unnecessary in any case. While they depended on their shaman for intercession with the supernatural and for spells against sickness, they gave him no more homage than was reasonable, and indeed looked somewhat askance at him: a man celibate, sedentary, peculiar. Tamberly sometimes recalled Catholic acquaintances, respectful toward their priests but not slavish and not uncommonly in disagreement.

  Acceptance of her proposal went like a quiet billow, more felt than uttered. Answerer sat down cross-legged, drew a buckskin cloak over his head, and sulked. Men gathered around Red Wolf to marvel at the thing they had gotten. Tamberly was free to leave.

  Corwin joined her at the exit. He had stood silent in the background, as beseemed an outsider present by courtesy. Dim though the light was, she saw the dourness upon him. “Come to my dome,” he ordered. She bridled, then mentally shrugged. She’d rather expected something like this.

  The door was hingeless but closely fitted into the entrance, a composite of sticks, withes, hide, and moss. Corwin freed it. Wind tried to snatch it from him. He wrestled it back into place when he and Tamberly had passed through. They raised their hoods, closed their jackets, and set off toward their camp. Air raved, bit, slammed, clawed. The snow that it drove was a white blindness. He needed a hand-held, compasslike direction indicator.

  When they regained shelter, both were a little numb for a few minutes. The storm racketed, the dome fabric shivered. Objects clustered inside seemed fragile, weightless.

  Neither sat down. When Corwin spoke, they stood as in confrontation. “Well,” he said, “evidently I was right. The Patrol should have kept you home where you belong.”

  Tamberly had been preparing herself. Not insolent, not insubordinate, but firm. He does rank me, but he is not my boss. And Manse has told me the Patrol values independence, provided it goes along with competence. “What have I done wrong … sir?” she asked as gently as was possible in the noise.

  “You know quite well,” Corwin rapped. “Unwarrantable interference.”

  “I don’t believe it was, sir. Nothing that could affect events any more than we already do by being here.” And that’s taken care of. We have “always” been this small part of prehistory.

  “Then why didn’t you confer with me in advance?”

  Because you’d have forbidden it, of course, and I couldn’t buck that. “I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. No such intention, honest.” Ha! “I took for granted—well, what harm? We interact with these people. We talk, socialize, accompany them, use them for guides and reward them with little objects from uptime. Don’t we? I did more among the Tulat than I did today, by a long shot, and headquarters never objected. What’s a single knife? They can’t make any like it. It’ll break or wear out or rust away or be lost in a couple of generations at most, and nobody will remember it much longer.”

  “You, a new and junior agent—” Corwin drew breath. A touch less coldly, he proceeded: “Yes, you too are given considerable discretion. That can’t be helped. But your motives. You had no sound reason for doing what you did, only a childish sentimentalism. We can’t allow that sort of attitude, Tamberly. We dare not.”

  I couldn’t stand by and let Aryuk, Tseshu, their kids and grandkids be brutalized or killed. I …didn’t want Red Wolf involved in an atrocity. “I don’t know of any regulation forbidding us to do a kindness when we safely can.” She shaped a smile. “I can’t believe you’ve never been kind to somebody you cared about.”

  He stood impassive for a space. It broke in a smile of his own. “Touché! I concede.” Gravely: “You did take more upon yourself than you should have. I won’t pursue the matter, but consider this a lesson, a warning.”

  Genial again: “And now that that’s out of the way, let’s re-establish diplomatic relations, shall we? Sit down. I’ll make coffee, we’ll have a spot of brandy on the side, and it’s been far too long since we shared a meal.”

  “I’ve mostly been in the field,” she reminded him.

  “Yes, yes. However, we are weatherbound now, for days to come.”

  “I figure I’ll skip uptime to when this has cleared.”

  “Hm, really, my dear, your zeal is admirable, but heed the voice of experience. Occasional rest, recreation, outright loafing is highly advisable. All work and no play, you know.”

  Yeah, she thought. I know what kind of R & R you have in mind. She didn’t resent it. A natural notion under these circumstances; and probably he imagined it was a compliment. No, thanks. What’s the most tactful way out of here?

  V

  The least of the houses, scarcely more than a hut, was Answerer’s: for the shaman dwelt alone, save for whatever demons he kept at his beck. Often, though, a man or woman of the tribe sought to him.

  He and Running Fox sat at the fire. More light than it gave straggled through the hole in the roof and the smoke swirling up. Clear weather, almost warm, had followed the great wind. Magical objects seemed to stir in shadows. They were few, a drum, a whistle, engraved bones, dried herbs. Everyday possessions were meager too. His strength and life lay mainly in the spirit world.

  He squinted at his visitor. They had exchanged some careful, meaningful words. “You also have your reasons for unease,” he said.

  Running Fox’s sharp visage drew into a scowl. “I have,” he replied. “What quarry do the two tall strangers stalk among us?”

  “Who knows?” Answerer breathed. “I have sought visions about them. None came.”

  “Have they cast spells against yours?”

  “I fear that may be so.”

  “How could they?”

  “We are far from the graves of our ancestors. Later we left our dead behind as we trekked onward. Thus far in this place there are very few to help us.”

  “Snowstrider’s ghost is surely strong.”

  “One man’s. Against how many of the Vole men’s?”

  Running Fox bit his lip. “True. A musk ox or bison is stronger than any wolf, but a wolf pack can bring down any bull.” He pondered before he asked, “Yet—do the Vole People tend graves and stay friends with their dead, like us? Do their ghosts linger at all?”

  “We do not know,” Answerer said.

  Both men shivered. A mystery is more daunting than the starkest truth.

  “Tall Man and Sun Hair command mighty spells and powers,” Running Fox said at last. “They call themselves our friends.”

  “How much longer will they abide here?” Answerer retorted. “And would they really help us in dire need? Might they even be lulling us while they prepare our destruction?”

  Running Fox smiled sourly. “Just by being on hand, they threaten your standing.”

  “Enough!” snapped the shaman. “You feel yourself menaced.”

  The hunter looked downward. “Well … Red Wolf and most others … honor them more than I think is wise.”

  “And Red Wolf heeds you less than he did aforetime.”

  “Enough!” Running Fox barked a laugh. “What would you do about it if you could?”

  “If we learned more, and got a hold on them—”

  Running Fox signed for caution. “One would be crazy rash to go straight against them. But they do care about the Vole People. At least, Sun Hair does.”

  “So I was thinking. And what secrets, what powers, do she and they share?”

  “By themselves the hairy ones are naught. They are indeed like voles, which a fox kills in a single bite. If we took them by surprise, unbeknownst to Tall Man and Sun Hair—”

  “Can such a deed be hidden from those two?”

  “I have seen both of them surprised when something unawaited happened, a ptarmigan breaking cover, river ice suddenly cracking underfoot, that kind of ordinary thing. They are not aware of all that is in the world … any more than you are.”

  “Still, you are a daring man.”

  “But not a stupid one,”
said Running Fox, turning impatient. “How many days have we been sounding each other out, you and I?”

  “It is time we spoke openly,” Answerer agreed. “You think to go there, I daresay to that very Aryuk whom she holds especially dear, and wring the truth out of him.”

  “I need a companion.”

  “I am not a man of weapons.”

  “I can do that work. You, for your part, understand spells, demons, ghosts.” Running Fox peered at the shaman. “But can you make the journey?”

  Answerer’s response came stiff. “I am no weakling.” He was in fact wiry and, while missing several teeth and seeing poorly, could walk long distances or run quite fast.

  “I should have asked, do you wish to make the journey?” Running Fox amended.

  Mollified, Answerer signed assent. “We will have a freeze in the next day or two,” he forecast. “This softened snow will become like stone, easy to move upon.”

  Eagerness leaped behind Running Fox’s eyes, but he kept his face blank and spoke thoughtfully. “Best we leave by dark. I will say I want to go scouting by myself for a while, to learn this territory better and to think.” Folk would believe that of him.

  “I will say I want to raise spirits in my house, and must not be disturbed for days and nights until I am ready to come forth,” Answerer decided.

  “At that time you may indeed have mighty tidings.”

  “And you may win much honor.”

  “I do this for the Cloud People.”

  “For all the Cloud People,” Answerer said, “now and always.”

  VI

  Like a hawk upon a lemming, there the invaders were. A shout pierced Aryuk’s winter drowse. He groped through its heaviness. Another cry tore it from him. That was the call of a woman and small children in fear.