Laintal Ay and Dathka held the decoy hinds while Eline Tal and the others examined Aoz Roon. The latter threw off their detaining hands with a curse.
“Let’s scumb off,” he said, clutching his side with a look of pain. “Where there were four of the vermin there may be others.”
Lumping the dead hinds onto the backs of the decoys, dragging the stags, they commenced the trek home.
But Nahkri was angry with Aoz Roon.
“Those rotten stags are starved. Their meat will taste like leather.”
Aoz Roon said nothing.
“Only vultures eat stag in preference to hind,” Klils said.
“Keep quiet, Klils,” Laintal Ay shouted, “Can’t you see that Aoz Roon is hurt? Go and practise swinging an axe.”
Aoz Roon kept his gaze down at the ground, saying nothing—which angered the elder brother still more. The eternal landscape stood silent about them.
When at last they got within sight of Oldorando and its sheltering hot springs, the tower lookouts blew their horns. The lookouts were men too old or sick to hunt. Nahkri had given them an easier task—but if their horns did not sound the moment the hunting party appeared in the distance, he stopped their ration of rathel. The horns were a signal for the young women to stop work and come out beyond the barricades to meet their men. Many were fearful lest there had been a death—widowhood would entail menial jobs, bare subsistence, early death. This time, they counted heads and rejoiced. All the hunters were returning. This night, there would be celebrations. Some of them might conceive.
Eline Tal, Tanth Ein, and Faralin Ferd called out to their own women, employing endearments and abuse in equal measure. Aoz Roon limped on alone, saying no word, though he looked up under his dark brows to see if Shay Tal was there. She was not.
No women greeted Dathka either. He made his youthful face long and hard as he pressed through the welcoming gaggle, for he had hoped Shay Tal’s unobtrusive friend Vry might have shown herself. Aoz Roon secretly despised Dathka because no women ran up to clasp his arm, although he was himself in the same situation.
Under those dark brows, he watched a hunter catch the hand of Dol Sakil, the midwife’s daughter. He watched his own daughter, Oyre, run to grasp the hand of Laintal Ay; he reckoned to himself that they would suit each other well enough, and that there might be advantage from the match.
Of course the girl was headstrong, whereas Laintal Ay was rather soft. She would lead him a dance before consenting to be his woman. Oyre was like the precious Shay Tal in that respect—difficult, pretty, and with a mind of her own.
He limped through the wide gates, head down, still nursing his side. Nahkri and Klils were walking nearby, fending off their screeching women. They both threw him a threatening look. “Keep your place, Aoz Roon,” Nahkri said.
He looked away, hunching a shoulder against them.
“I wielded the axe once and, by Wutra, I’ll wield it again,” he growled.
The world trembled before his sight. He gulped down a mug of rathel and water, but still sickness rose in him. He climbed to the lair he shared with his companions, indifferent for once how the game he had helped kill was stripped. Once in his room, he collapsed. But he would not suffer the slave woman to cut open his clothes or examine his wounds. He rested and hugged his ribs. After an hour, he went out alone and sought Shay Tal.
Since it was near a sunset, she was taking crusts of bread down to the Voral to feed the geese. The river was wide. It had unfrozen during the day, revealing black water fringed by shelves of white ice across which geese came honking. When they were both young, it was always frozen from bank to bank.
She said, “You hunters go so far away, yet I saw game on the other side of the river this morning. Hoxneys, and wild horses, I believe.”
Dark and moody, Aoz Roon looked down upon her and grasped her arm. “You’ve always a contrary idea, Shay Tal. Do you think you know better than the hunters? Why didn’t you come out at the sound of the horn?”