Ettook was getting old now, grizzled and gray, but still tough and glad to make war. He had a great belly from his drinking: he needed a boost to get him in the saddle, and more often than not. the small horses dropped lifeless under him after a day’s ride. Age did not hinder his other riding. He had taken no new wife, but he had a couple of sluts he went to more often now than to Tathra. I was aware this
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frightened her, imagining he would cast her off. She took pains to bring him back. In the summer and winter truces Moi traders came frequently right into the krarl, to stand outside Tathra’s tent with their curious barter from the ancient cities: perfumes, ointments, even drugs to stoke the blood. Now and then her pale hand, heavy with the rings and bracelets of Ettook’s previous lust, would part the flap and signal this or that she would have.
I wished to say to her, “Let him go, and good riddance. I have my own tent, my own wealth, I can keep you safe.” But somehow the words would not come. It embarrassed me to speak of his rutting with her. Besides, she was nervous for me, too, as Ettook’s heir.
I began to consider Ettook’s death, when I should get his chiefdom, such as it was. I was dimly surprised I had not really pondered it before. But the title and the krarl seemed of such small worth, I had hardly dreamed of wanting or coveting it. As it was, my cogitations were desultory and ran in circles. The krarl feared me in battle, but did not like me. Given an excuse, they might finish the out-tribe upstart, and happy to do it. I should have to be so extraordinarily cunning in removing Ettook-who they liked well enough, seeing he was exactly of their species-that I was not certain I might ever achieve anything. Occasionally, over the years, since my boy’s fight on the slope with the four braves, I had felt his own hatred of me scorch my back like a hot wind. Being slow and stupid and intent on enjoyment rather than thought, he too had got no workable plan to be shot of me. He would need cunning, as I did, for I was ostensibly a good son to him, courteous always, throwing my decision in with his at the pacts and little councils that sometimes took place krarl with krarl, rendering him gifts from my spoils. No, he could not just strike me down before them all. Doubtless he had been hoping the battles would see to it for him, for I was like a madman then, but my luck held.
The winter of that, my nineteenth year, was bad, the worst I remembered. The snow fell like a curtain days on end, then froze like white iron. The mountain wolves ran in thin, sooty packs. They would come in the camps at night, through weak places in the stockade, regardless of spears and fires, drooling at the scent of men. There was no other game. The truces were broken, too. In the month of Gray Dog,
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fifty Skoiana raided Ettook’s krarl at black of night. They got a herd of goats and some horses-we had begun to eat the horses by then-and pushed a way with them over the knife backed ridges, and were three valleys distant before dawn. Ettook gave me twenty men and some followed from neighboring Dagkta krarls the Skoiana had visited, and we tracked them down. We had a fight in a narrow gully where the spines of mountains clawed up on three sides, bottling us all in with each other. The white ground was soon red, and next morning there were forty or so red heads staked up along the Dagkta camping line, each with its Skoiana tattoos to warn off any others of like mind.
The Moi sometimes robbed us too, but mostly they got by on barter. That winter silver necklets and iron city daggers went for a leg of goat flesh or half a horse’s liver. We heard something of their friends also, the city men, tales of riders on the passes even in thick snow, aglint with jewels, starved as the tribes were, but whether after meat or slaves or simply mad, no one knew.
Neither did the weather break in Black Dog, as it generally did. Nor in the month of the Whip when the big winds and first rains should come. A few old men began to say there had been a winter like this when they were warriors, and that it was a year of catastrophe and disappointment. But old men will ever spin this wheel. The summers were always hotter and the winters colder in the days of their strength, and the air thick with epic dramas and portents.
The priests, Seel too, went up to some cave in the mountain and stayed there three days, howling and beating gongs, and great good it did us.
There was no hunting to be had it seemed from one end of the valley-chain to the other. Children were falling down and dying, and the tribes were exposing any new female born among the tents. Asua birthed her fourth girl at this unlucky time. Weak as she was, my wife beat with her fists on me when I took the baby from its basket.
“Peace,” I said. “It is the law. Your brats die anyway.”
“This one will live,” she cried. “I swear she will live. She will grow fair and bring you honor by marriage-oh, Tuvek, never take her from me!”
I looked at her face, running with tears and sallow as curd. She had been pretty once, but bearing and death and sorrow
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and hunger had altered that. I felt sorry for her, poor thing, she had nothing else. The child would die anyway, as I had said, and besides, be damned to their laws; I was my own master.
“Well, then,” I said, “keep it.”
Two days later, the winds came flashing along the mountains, but no rain. Gusts blew the ice and heaped it against everything that stood. Presently, great avalanches began over on the huge slopes to the north; you heard their thunder day and night.
One morning the blizzard eased, and I shot a couple of scrawny hares foraging among the trees. Their ribs showed as men’s ribs were showing, but I was glad enough for what I could get.
I meant to leave a hare at Tathra’s tent. Ettook’s gifts of food to her were leaner than they had been since he had his two whores to keep plump now as well. But when I came there, she was absent. As usual, there was some woman skulking about nearby, tending a fire pit.
“Where is my mother?”
“She has gone to Kotta,” said the woman.
I was uneasy at this, for though Kotta and my mother were often together, the women only went to Kotta’s tent when they were in need of help, or ill.
I gave the woman the hares to skin and clean, and told her what she might expect if she stole any part of them, then made my way through the tunnels to Kotta’s place.
I did not walk straight in, you never knew what women’s business might be afoot in there, but stood outside and called her name.
“A moment, warrior,” Kotta said.
I heard the muffled sounds of a woman vomiting, and my belly wrenched into a knot of snakes.
Shortly, the figure of the blind healer went out of the back of the tent, dark against the white light of the snow. She saw to something there, then came around the tent to me.
“Is it Tathra you have with you?” I asked her.
Her blue, blind, seeing eyes looked into mine like two flints.
“It is Tathra.”
“Is she sick?”
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“No. Not sick. She is carrying another son for Ettook.”
The shock of her words hit me like a fist. I knew all the stories-how Kotta kept Tathra free of pregnancy with certain skills, how it would kill Tathra if she bore again, as it had nearly killed her before. I said, “Your magic potions failed her then? Are you trying different sorcery to be rid of it?”
“What?” she said, harder than I. “Do you suppose Kotta fool enough to tamper with the chief’s seed?”
“Don’t anger me, woman. I know what you’ve been at. Do you think I want her to bear this child? It will kill her, will it not? She’s no girl, and almost died of me. So abort her. The red pig has sons enough.”
“I hear you watch your tongue with the braves,” she said. “You should watch it now. Maybe I will tell Ettook how his heir speaks of him.”
“Tell him. But first, lose her that burden, or we shall have further words.”