“We’re not evil. We’re just starting over.”
“He knows that, Noah.” Vyck walked up to the pair with Ker on one hip and Hundred on the other. “Tek understands us.”
“Hardt’s gone already?”
Noah would have answered the guardesman, but Vyck intercepted the response by handing his sister over to him and charging, as usual, directly into what she wanted to talk about. “You never mentioned he’d killed someone.”
“It was just a dTelfur. And we’re only assuming she’s dead.”
“Assuming?”
“She had his spear in her chest.”
“His spear?”
“Yes. Are you okay?”
“You know,” her tone changed completely, “our separatist ways here in Stray are supported by the very origins of Kaveg. Our forebears made every effort to leave their pasts behind. They too were starting over. You could draw a parallel for Gaetana between the development of our small community and the great hike just over a hundred years ago which brought all of us here to Kaveg. Give her some excuse for the kimoet.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you he’d killed someone, Vyck.”
“It would have been helpful to know.” She shifted Ker in her arms and dismissed the man. “Go talk with Gaetana.”
To Noah’s surprise, Getek obediently said his goodbyes and went off to find the messenger. To his further surprise, Vyck wasn’t done conversing. He was used to her behavior when a thought had gotten into her head and expected to be dismissed or forgotten, but she put a hand on his arm and led him over to a blanket spread on the ground near the edge of the clearing. He set the fussy Hundred down and looked on as Vyck sat herself and lay sleepy Ker in her lap. When she was comfortable and settled she questioned him.
“Where did Hardt go?”
“He’s asleep in your bed.”
“For another quarter moon do you think?”
Noah settled himself on the blanket and took Hundred into his lap, “If the festival lasts that long, yes.”
“It won’t. No one is happy with this Gaetana.”
“He did warn us about the names thing, Getek did, before he sent Talee up to Voferen Kahago with the message.” Noah wanted Vyck to like Getek. “Talee called herself Jaydee the whole time she was in the capital, you know. With my mother’s permission of course. Mom doesn’t care who knows where we are. But Getek has earned some serious credit with the shale by refusing to tell our names. Did you see? Even Kilalee came out for the ceremony.”
“Her bond Trin is still here.”
“He’ll go home when the tempo picks up tomorrow.”
“Will the tempo pick up tomorrow?”
“Getek ordered Talee to lead the kimoet’s messenger out of the shale and see her safely on her way back north by sunup.”
“Ah, then there’ll be reason to celebrate. And Hardt will sleep on.”
“Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe he’ll go hunting.”
“Noah, he’s changed since the kyirghon hunt. He seemed so interested in the guarde and I was happy that he was spending time around other people. But since their hike, after the baby kyirghon and his fight with that cat and the dragon, he’s been distant. And I mean apart from the eight days of slumber. Has he spoken to you?”
“Not much. He told me not to listen to the tale the others are telling about the dTelfur, but wouldn’t call me his own version.”
“He hasn’t said as much to me.”
“Well I pry. You don’t.”
Vyck smiled. “True enough.”
Noah shifted Hundred off his lap and pulled the Ring of Honor from his pouch. “He threw this away.”
She stared at the silver band for a moment, sad and thoughtful lines wrinkling her brow. It was cool under her fingers when she reached out, but she didn’t take it from him. “Keep it, Noah. I may ask you for it later. Now go away. Calien and Firth are coming to take up that corner of the blanket.”
So he put the Ring back in his pouch and never told anyone else about it.
Time went on. Talee took Gaetana and went on with her to Voferen Kahago. Still, the festival lasted only two days and Hardt did not return. Nor did he sleep. Nor would he hunt. As life returned to normal around him, he looked for new ways to live. He would skin and tan and salt the kill Vyck brought in, but he wouldn’t pick up his own weapons. Vyck didn’t ask him to. When the dying time crept up on the shale, Hardt searched out the farmers and helped them with harvest. They gave him a portion of the crop to repay him for his work, but he never took much. There was no need. He and Vyck could survive well through the dead season with their own garden’s harvest and the salted meats stored in the rock shack and now with the gifts that had begun coming again since the festival.
The visitors and gifts had slowed down after Jaydee spread the word that they were unwelcomed by Vyck and Hardt, but Hardt’s appearance at the festival had invited a whole new stream of unwelcome well wishers. Many settlers who had moved from the west, scared away by the dragons’ constant presence overhead or the actual destruction of their homes felt a special need to thank Hardt. These westers came by with tokens and with tales. They wanted to tell Hardt why they were so pleased with him. Those who had heard of his eight suns sleep wanted to ease his conscience with their experiences. He shouldn’t blame himself for not killing the dragon too, they would tell him, it was a miracle he’d even gotten away alive. He ran from these intruders with no excuse.
At training he was revered and set apart. The new providents, set free to find their own training in the position all sought him out to learn his hunting and fighting skills until Getek put a stop to it. Hardt denied them all summarily in any case. He tried to ignore the fuss surrounding him and spoke to no one about the hike. Instead he focused on his new training as a healer.
Gaerel, with no prompting from Vyck, respected Hardt’s pain. Hardt had killed someone, even if it was only a dTelfur, and Gaerel knew death better than any. He pushed Hardt’s training to give him a break from his own tangled thoughts. Getek too, acting on Vyck’s concern for the boy, assigned him an overload of training and work, even asking him to join Ker’s long lessons in reading and writing. But as much as the healer and the guarde tried, they couldn’t protect the boy from his own thoughts.
His anonymity had been lost. Wherever Hardt went he would be faced with someone’s ignorant gratitude for the blood on his hands. Still he told no one the truth. He never disputed the official account; dTelfur weren’t human and dragons were dumb carnivores killing at the whim of their masters. He tried to forget her face and her voice, her fear and anger. He would have slept but where before sleep had been empty blackness, now his dreams were filled with the dragon’s grateful voice and the beautiful dTelfur’s words, “Ighay dTserra. Ighay iorden. Ouhar?”
He saw these images as he bathed in the willow creek cove late in the season, washing the dirt of the day from his hands and feet and the sweat from his body. The morning had been spent patrolling the southern extent of the shale with the third front. During the afternoon and evening he’d worked with Trin bringing in the final crops of the harvest. One of their many barn kiddens had licked the salt from his arms with its sandpaper tongue, but still the stench of his clammy skin would fill the cottage if he tried to sleep without a dip in the river.
In summer the heat would dry his clothes as quickly as his skin. But he took his clothes off to bathe now that the nights were cold and he shivered in the cool water, blessedly forgetting everything for just an instant. Then his skin bumpled and the scar down his right arm ached. A part of him wished he had allowed Vyck to help it heal properly. And a part of him knew that just as he had helped Kalina and Gaerel use magical nature to heal Calien he was thwarting nature now. Hair growing beside the scratch curled over darkly, shading it a little. No hair grew on the uneven scabs and the skin around remained red and unhappy. Near his wrist there was a soft purple space where he’d once again scratched away the healing layers.
His
shoulder had healed quickly by contrast. It allowed full range of motion and, flexing, he could barely feel where the muscle had been torn. He thought once again of the snakecat and the kyirghon as he poured water over the shoulder. Would everything have turned out differently if he’d been aware? If only he had killed the kyirghon, he might never have killed the woman. He might have met the woman. She might have understood him. She might have introduced him to the dragon and taught him to beg their forgiveness.
The thoughts bothered him and he hurried to put on his clothes and get home.
“Tirce, what are you doing?”
Vyck’s voice carried far through the trees, her rarely heard anger propelling it with uncommon force. Hardt hurried the last several greg to their homestead and then paused before he was seen by Vyck, Tirce, and Firca all standing around the half-dismantled summer hearth. Tirce and Firca were hefting a stone between them. Tirce was speaking but Hardt couldn’t understand her words as the two set their heavy stone on the hearth.
“First of all,” Vyck had regained control of her volume but her voice was shaking under the effort. “The hearth was not broken. We are taking it down for winter. Secondly, I asked you not to come by anymore.”
“Vyck, we understand that you’re reclusive but you shouldn’t stand in Hardt’s way.” Tirce’s honey sweet tones sent shivers down Hardt’s spine. “I’m sure he appreciates our recognition of his glorious heroism. He could be elected lord of Stray when we build the castle.”
“He murdered someone.”
Hardt’s heart leaped into his throat. He barely heard Firca’s disdainful reply over its heavy beating.
“It was just a dTelfur. It’s not like it was a human being.”
“They are intelligent people. They have done nothing to hurt us.”
Tirce sputtered hotly. “They have killed our people, destroyed our homes.”
“So you say.” Vyck picked up the women’s offering of fish where it sat on the table, her hand shaking as fiercely as her voice. “But they’ve done nothing to us, Hardt-and-I us. And he killed one of them. He’s a murderer. And your reminders are not appreciated.” Now the shaking left her voice. It dropped an octave and hit its mark directly, cold and quiet. “Go away.”
Tirce took the wrapped fish from where Vyck held it out like poison. She and Firca walked delicately past the cottage, very nearly backing away from Vyck, and disappeared off into the east. Hardt stayed where he was hidden. He breathed as quietly as he knew how watching Vyck stride back toward the western trees to gather the tie of rabbits and a small gutpig she must have dropped when she first saw Tirce and Firca
He stood there frozen while she untangled the beasts, slit their throats and hung them over the blooding pit. She went round the far side of the house then and Hardt considered backing up and running off anywhere else, but before he’d made up his mind, she returned with two cups. These she set on the table with a basket of hoskas grabbed from the doorway as she passed.
He still stood there until, after sitting and taking a sip from one cup, she called out to him.
“I’m still a hunter, Hardt. I know you’re there.”
He spoke from where he stood barely able to use his voice, “Should I go?”
“I was hoping you’d come share a meal with me and enjoy our temporary privacy.”
“But you hate me.”
“What?” Vyck stood and faced him, her casual demeanor abandoned.
He forced the pressure in his chest back down and breathed the tears back into his eyes. “You know I’m a murderer.”
“According to the facts I’ve gotten from everyone but you. I only say you’re a ‘murderer’ because I see that’s how you feel. But Hardt, I don’t hate you.”
“Why not?”
“I know you. And because I know you, I trust you didn’t mean to kill her.”
Hardt crept out of his leafless bower and stood just in the open, his hands hanging limp at his sides, relieved to finally say it. “I did though. I heard her, I threw, and my aim was true. Straight through the heart. She never attacked me. It wasn’t self defense at all.”
“Of course it wasn’t. I’ve known that all along. You don’t spear someone out of self defense. But if you were startled…”
“I wasn’t startled.” He interrupted her and took a few forestalling steps towards her. “I’d been still all night letting prey escape but it was getting on towards morning and I had to bring back an excuse for my absence. I hadn’t heard her approach, not a sound, but then she made an error, the slightest of noises, or maybe she was going to speak to me…” he trailed off. His eyes went blank, remembering. “She did speak to me. After. Before the dragon came to save her.”
“You think she saw you before she made the noise?” Vyck leapt on the one new fact she thought could redeem him.
“She must have. I’d been there all night and I wasn’t concealed.”
“Then she knew it was not your fault.”
“How not my fault?”
“If she got so close without your hearing, she must be a hunter. If she is a hunter, she knows you don’t sneak up on another hunter.”
“You believe it’s her fault I killed her?”
“No. You threw the spear not knowing what you were going to hit. That mistake belongs most horribly to you. I’m saying, as a hunter, I’m sure she doesn’t blame you.”
“We’ll never know.”
He was fading back into his listless, unreachable self and Vyck grasped blindly for words that might keep him alert and talking. “Unless you ask.”
“What?”
“She wasn’t dead when the dragon flew off with her, was she?” The tale the guarde called was that she had his spear in her chest and was screaming.
“No.”
“Then she may have spoken with someone in her village.”
The possibility engaged him. She could see his mind turning it over and let him quietly think. When he spoke again, it was from a distance, but his eyes met hers. “She may have spoken with the dragon.”
“With the dragon?”
“Yes. The dragon spoke to me too. After I lifted the woman up to it. It turned, risking itself as the others came into distance and began throwing their stones and spears and brands. It turned and said ‘Thank you.’”
“It said ‘thank you’?” Vyck was incredulous.
“It said ‘Nan-ye.’”
“Hardt, why did you give the dTelfur woman to the dragon?”
“So the dragon would go away. It wouldn’t leave without her and she was so scared that it would be killed. The only answer was to help it get the woman. It was as gentle as it could be, but still it caught me with its claw.”
“And then it thanked you.” So much more had happened in that forest than anyone knew and Vyck was overwhelmed with what Hardt had been keeping inside. “Hardt, you were brave and heroic. You risked your own life to give that dragon its friend. And you gave that woman her final wish; you saved her dragon’s life.”
He was still gone though, not hearing her, trapped in his own horror-filled memories, but talking. “She was the most incredible woman I’ve ever seen. Her eyes looked into mine and it was like I’d known her forever. ‘Ighay dTserra, ighay iorden. Ouhar?’ I killed her. How can I live?”
His grief was not lessening as she had hoped it would once he began talking. Nothing she could say or do would pull him back from his despair. She wanted to hold him, cradle him to her and rock him until everything was alright again. But he had a shield around himself. He even held his hands out in front of him, unconsciously warding off her touch. She felt helpless, struggling to find a way he could forgive himself. Tirce had said Hardt was being considered for lordship of the shale. How could he ever pay another’s bloodprice, if he couldn’t pay his own?
As a child, she had watched many times as the elders in her village meted out punishments for the wrongs people enacted against each other. For heinous crimes, they adapted the old law and applied it
to the offender. According to the old law, the lords of the land must offer reparation to an injured lander as if they were themselves responsible. This practice was commonly referred to according to the reparation for violent offenses, in which cases the lord must offer to pay a bloodprice, her own flesh and blood in equal measure. Hardt was the offender in a violent crime.
“You must measure the spills and pay her bloodprice.”
His eyes cleared and caught hers. “Who do I pay?”
“You can’t pay her, but you must pay.” She considered the dilemma. “If you accept, I will act as the elders and decide your payment.”
“You couldn’t be impartial.”
“Well I would have to give you a lighter punishment than you are giving yourself. I don’t believe your crime is unmitigated.”
Another voice suddenly spoke up from beside the house. “He can’t be rewarded for saving the dragon when he wouldn’t have had to save it if he hadn’t killed the woman.”
Getek crossed the lawn to them, holding a cup. He set it down and pulled three chairs from the table. He arranged them facing each other and gestured for the other two to take them. “Sit.”
They did so tentatively and he continued.
“I can impartially name a payment.”
“How much of our conversation have you overheard?” Vyck tried to remember everything that had been said.
“I have heard much I should have listened to earlier.” He took a chair and leaned back to take his cup from the table. “Hearing you now, I have no choice but to believe that you were helping the dragon, not fighting it and I will have to rethink my entire understanding of the dragons if they really can speak. I have relied too heavily on others’ accounts and the guilt of my assumptions lies heavy on my soul. But Hardt, you cannot know that the dTelfur woman was not hunting you. It is not likely, beautiful as she may have been, that she was sneaking up on you to say hello.”
“I can’t imagine she meant me harm.”
“Humans can’t imagine much.” Vyck stood and took Hardt his cup of water. “Our senses are fallible. You thought you heard an animal because no other possibility entered your imagination. The front believe the dragon set the fire because they couldn’t imagine their brands had done it.”
Hardt's Tale: A Mobious' Quest Novel Page 9