“Strange,” she muttered. “Can’t see him properly.”
“I’m hungry,” Rap repeated, barely hearing the words himself. ”That’s all. I mean no harm.”
He moved a hand, to see if it would pass through the apparition, and his fingers touched buckskin—he whipped them away. The old hag had noticed. Her eyes seemed to narrow and focus more securely on him. “You! Faun! Why can’t I foresee you?”
Rap shook his head, confused. “I’m hungry,” he whispered again.
“Hungry? You?” She cackled in sudden mad merriment, and Rap cringed, expecting all the sleepers to leap up; but no one stirred.
The crone’s laughter stopped abruptly. “My sweeting!” Her voice was quiet again, like wind on hay. “You must not hurt!”
“Hurt who?”
“Death Bird. He is the promised one.”
Rap could not remember the name. None of the boys was called that, he was sure, and he did not think he had overheard “Death Bird” in their conversation. He shook his head.
The little hag worked her mouth, as if chewing, then hummed for a moment, and finally began to croon again. “When summer came to Uthol’s valley . . . Remember, faun—he is precious.” And she was gone.
Someone turned over by the near fire and mumbled for a moment in sleep.
Rap waited until his heart stopped beating like hailstones, then struggled shakily to his feet. Apparently none of the sleepers had heard the mad old woman, not even her snatches of song. That seemed very improbable! He began making his way back to the door, his whole body quivering violently in reaction. But he could almost convince himself that he had merely seen—and heard and touched—a hallucination brought on by starvation.
He slipped outside swiftly lest a cold draft awaken any sleepers, then hurried back through the black agony of the night, mentally forcing the dogs’ attention away from his precious bundle. When he reached the boys’ dormitory, he could feel pain in his mouth at the thought of food, but he laid the frozen lump near the embers and managed to restrain himself until it was almost half thawed, praying that the hiss and crackle would not awaken Little Chicken or any of the others. He scorched his fingers retrieving the disgusting, delicious mess of raw and charred fish, and crawled under his rug to gorge on it, and he ate every bit except a few bones, which he burned.
Then he slept.
Every night thereafter, he returned to the larder and stole food, for there was nowhere he could hide a supply from both dogs and men. He was not detected, and he did not see the cryptic delusion of the little old woman again. He did not go near the garbage tip, to Little Chicken’s great disgust and mystification.
The other boys were forbidden to speak to Rap, even to tell him what the testing would involve. It could not be physical strength, because he was bigger than either Cheep-Cheep or Fledgling Down, yet he was obviously Little Chicken’s preferred opponent. He supposed it must be some forest skill, like archery. The only thing he would not expect was fairness. Nor did he intend to stay around to find out.
He spent most his time planning his escape, but every idea he could think of was either impossible or was at once made so, almost as if the goblins could read his thoughts. Darad had taken Rap’s mukluks. High Raven had confiscated Andor’s and kept them in clear view beside his sleeping place, so footwear would have to wait for last. Rap had to make a long search with farsight before he located his parka and fur trousers, only to learn that they had been disassembled and stitched together as a rug, again for the chief’s personal glory.
That news was terrifying, as if a captive in a dungeon had learned that the key to his cell had been melted down. It threw a depression over him such as he had never known. His nightly prowls had shown him that buckskins were much inferior to furs. Within minutes his teeth would be chattering. He was no goblin, able to survive in the forest without furs. He was imprisoned by invisible bars of pure cold.
Dancer and Crazy had been placed in the stable with the goblins’ stock, and he could see no problem in stealing them when he was ready to make a break—until the fifth day, when two men saddled them up and rode them away. They did not return. Rap, therefore, would be forced to steal one of the stunted goblin ponies and would not have the advantage of a better mount in the inevitable chase.
He had abandoned his early idea that half the men were away on a raiding party. There were no other men. Darad had explained what happened to half the adolescent males in the tribe, and Rap had reluctantly come to believe that Little Chicken’s grisly jokes were not mere sadistic humor—they were real plans. The loser would be dismembered by the winner.
Unfortunately, his escape was going to be certain suicide. With the aid of his farsight he could likely steal the mukluks and a pony of sorts, but not the clothes he needed. He would freeze to death in buckskins, unless he was recaptured first. Nevertheless, freezing seemed like a more enjoyable death than the procedures Little Chicken kept devising, so to the forest he must go.
He left it too late. A wicked wind sprang up at sunset on the day he had planned for his departure, and he glumly decided to wait for the next night, although that would be his last chance before the testing. And either Little Chicken had been lying, or had made a mistake, or else Rap had miscounted, but he awoke to find the boys excitedly dressing themselves in their buckskins, which he had not seen them do before. He could detect frantic activity in the women’s but and the married quarters, and soon he saw other goblins streaming in from all points of the compass, bringing their womenfolk and their children along on horseback to watch the fun. Obviously this was the day of the testing. He still did not know what was expected of him, except to die bravely.
And slowly, of course.
2
The wan polar day gleamed hesitantly through a white ice fog, a mere watery glow on the southern horizon, casting no shadows, and barely brighter than good moonlight. Wind was lifting wisps of snow and trailing them along the ground. The feasting had been going on in the main but for several hours and the only persons not included were Rap, Little Chicken, and some of the most ancient women, who arrived at the boys’ cabin with bags of equipment to prepare the contestants. They began by sitting them on stools and smearing them both with bear grease. They dressed Little Chicken’s hair in the usual slimy rope, but Rap’s tangled mop frustrated them. He did not recognize any of them as the woman he had seen in the night.
The crones toiled in silence, ignoring Rap’s questions, but Little Chicken chattered in great spirits. He sat on his stool as the women worked on him, gloating at Rap and rehearsing all the vilest torments he could think of.
“You make good show, Flat Nose!” he begged. “You die long!”
All Rap could do was try his clucking noise, and today even that failed to ruffle Little Chicken. “Death Bird!” he insisted, and grinned happily.
Oh, Gods!
Rap reeled back on his stool, choking down a cry of despair.
He is precious? Even if his hunger had made him hallucinate a vision of a goblin sorceress, how could it have put that name on its lips? Had the apparition been real, after all? Was he doomed to fight a champion guarded by sorcery?
Then he remembered that Little Chicken had mentioned his new name earlier, the first time they had spoken. Rap had forgotten it, that was all. So this was merely another instance of Rap’s mind playing tricks on him. There had been no old woman. Obviously she had been nothing but a figment of his tormented brain.
And Rap had evidently concealed his momentary horror, because Little Chicken had not noticed it. “Clover Scent!” he added, and sighed with pleasure.
Any Change of subject was welcome. “Clover Scent?” Rap asked shakily.
“Also today I marry Clover Scent! I give her bits of you for wedding present.”
Rap did not ask which bits, and the prospect put his companion back on his grisly litany again. Rap scanned with farsight and detected a very young girl being groomed in the single women’s hut.
But now the contestants were almost ready. The old hags produced thick fur mitts for them; then fur shoes of a type Rap had not seen before. They seemed impractical garments, cut low on the ankle, useless in snow, but they were enough to tell him what the testing would involve and why he, a nongoblin, was preferred to the smaller Cheep-Cheep and Fledgling Down.