The following days passed in the same way. Each morning Little Chicken obtained directions. By moonlight he brought his owner safely to another village. Conversation was impossible in the masks, and when the journeys ended Rap was too exhausted to try. In any case, his companion refused to stay in the adults’ building once he had given Rap his massage and seen him settled.
Rap talked a little with his hosts, but he had nothing to tell them, and their news was meaningless to him. His questions about Darad brought only angry silence just by asking, he was breaking the rules for guests. He was never refused hospitality or courtesy, but the welcome was grudging, partly because he was not goblin-born, mostly because of Little Chicken. To own trash was a crime. Rap had offended by not giving his defeated opponent the death he deserved and wanted.
Gradually Rap’s fitness improved, aided each evening by the most enormous meals he had ever eaten, much of them fresh meat that was a great luxury to him. Gradually Little Chicken raised the pace, but only slightly, for the villages were set an easy day’s run apart, and greater speed would have brought no advantage.
The daylight was becoming noticeably longer as the sun began its slow return to the northlands and the travelers worked their way south.
About the sixth morning, just as it was time to fasten the masks and leave the lodge, Little Chicken paused and regarded Rap with a glint in his eye.
“Salmon Totem,” he said, “then Eagles, then Elk. Three days?”
“Right.”
“Or sleep in snow, then Elk. Two days?”
Any perceptible hint of a challenge from Little Chicken was unbearable. ”Let’s do that, then.”
The goblin’s angular eyes widened. “And run faster?”
“Fast as you like!”
“Town boy!” Little Chicken laughed, and contemptuously pushed a handful of grease in Rap’s face.
A few hours later, grimly aware of the tearing pain of the faster pace, Rap thought to wonder why his companion had not brought food if there was to be no lodge at the end of the day’s trek. The answer, obviously, was that a goblin could live off the land. They stopped when Little Chicken judged the light too poor for running—he did not know that Rap could see in the dark. He lighted a fire and then made two others. Three small fires were better than one big one, he said, and then he screamed in fury when Rap tried to help by gathering firewood. Needing a bucket to melt snow, the goblin used his backpack, dropping hot rocks in it. While the resulting water was necessary and welcome to Rap, it was the strangest-tasting brew he had ever swallowed.
“I find food!” Little Chicken announced. He pointed scornfully at Fleabag, whom he had completely ignored until that moment. “You keep that here?”
Rap agreed, and did so. He was glad of the company, sitting in the darkly haunted forest, watching the shadows of the densely enclosing conifers dance around his triangle of firelit snow, and trying not to wonder what he would do if Little Chicken failed to return. Fleabag just pawed out a hollow and went to sleep.
But Little Chicken did return, in an astonishingly short time. He came bearing two white rabbits, which he had caught beyond farsight range, so that Rap did not know how he had done it. He could hardly have been quicker had he run to a market for them. He was an expert skinner and a skilled cook, too, damn him! The campsite was in a hollow, half filled by a deep snowdrift, and Rap soon discovered that this was not by chance. As soon as he had eaten, Little Chicken set to work digging out a snow cave there, scooping like a dog, and again indignantly refusing assistance. When it was dug deep enough, he began gathering spruce branches, breaking them off trees made brittle by the fearsome cold. Again Rap tried to help and this time Little Chicken did not shout at him. Instead he demonstrated his vastly greater strength by snapping with apparent ease any bough that Rap had failed to break. Rap gave up in humiliation and returned shivering to the fires.
Finally the cave was lined to Little Chicken’s satisfaction. He backed out and nodded to Rap.
“You first,” he said. “I follow, close door.”
“What about Fleabag? He would keep us warm.”
Little Chicken’s expression should have been invisible in the dark, but Rap knew that he was regarding Fleabag with hostility.
“Won’t come.”
Rap hesitated and then said, “He will for me.”
After a moment’s pause, the goblin said, “Show!” very quietly.
Rap crawled into the cave and summoned the dog without a word. Fleabag awoke, trotted over, and peered into the hole to see what his friend wanted. Then he obediently crept in and lay down alongside Rap, panting foul carrion breath in his face, swishing boughs with his tail.
The cave was a narrow tunnel and it seemed impossible that a third body could find room, but Little Chicken entered by lying on his back and wriggling, using his feet to push snow against the entrance until it was closed to his satisfaction. That was strenuous work and he ended crushed against Rap, puffing as hard as Fleabag. Rap would certainly be warm enough during the night between those two, sheltered from the wind and insulated by snow. There was no light and Little Chicken’s face was too close to be seen properly if there were, but Rap knew the thoughtful expression it bore in the darkness. He waited for the question.
“How you do that?” said a whisper close to his ear.
“I don’t know, Little Chicken. I talk in my head. It works on horses, too, but most of all on Fleabag.”
The goblin stared blankly at nothing for a while and then asked,
“You knock me down in testing?”
Here it came! “Yes. It was not the Gods. It was me.”
Rap was not sure why he had provoked this revelation. He did not think he was boasting. Probably he was clearing his conscience. He sensed the big mouth opening as Little Chicken bared his fangs and for a moment Rap half expected to feel them sink in his throat.
It was a smile. Unaware that he was being observed, Little Chicken was grinning into the darkness. “Good! Town boy won.” After a while he chuckled. “Good foe! Did not know. Know now.”
He said no more. He was still lying there leering at the dark when Rap fell into an exhausted sleep.
Recognizing no rules, the goblin could not resent cheating.
His satisfaction came from learning that he had been beaten by a mortal and not some superhuman freak event . . . or so Rap concluded.
Rap was wrong.
Three fleabags emerged the next morning, into a thick white ice fog. The forest vanished within yards, trees fading away into the pervasive grayness in all directions. Still, bitterly cold, and treacherous, ice fog made all ways seem the same.
“Nice cave,” the goblin said sarcastically. “Stay long time.”
“South is that way. I will lead.”
“Go in circles.”
Rap shook his head. “Not me. South to the river, then upriver to Elk Totem, right?”
His companion shrugged, probably thinking that the exercise would do no harm, and he could always backtrack, or make another cave. So that day it was Rap who led, trotting through a white world striped with gray tree trunks, a silent goblin at his heels. The river appeared where it was supposed to and they followed it upstream. Farsight told Rap where to cross the ice and cut through the forest again, and he brought Little Chicken right to the door.
He was wondering what reaction he would get to this second revelation of supernatural power—awe? Respect? But when the buckskins came off in the firelit lodge, Little Chicken merely smiled with more secret amusement and made no comment.
Rap went to the hearth and was introduced to the rest of his hosts, being given the usual oily embraces. Little Chicken appeared with the inevitable grease bucket.
“I don’t need that any more,” Rap said firmly. “My legs are strong now. No massage.”
He turned his back. He had forgotten that Little Chicken took his duties seriously and was an expert wrestler. Without warning Rap was flat on his face, with the goblin kneeling on him. The audience enjoyed that massage more than Rap did.
Lynx Totem . . . another Eagle Totem . . .
At Beaver Totem they were stormbound for four days while the worst weather of the winter howled like giant wolves around the cabins. So unbearable was the chill of the wind that even Little Chicken dressed in his buckskins to run from cabin to cabin, or to attend to calls of nature. The goblins strung lines between the buildings lest they become lost in the snow and freeze to death within yards of their own doors.