She laughed, just one syllable of it and, lifting her veil a little, spit. She stood, big and rough, with her head back.
“Don’t tutor me, black-hair. I am not your whimpering wives to take your lip and like it.”
I would have knocked her flying, but I heard Tathra’s voice call suddenly to me from within the tent. . I put the blow aside, and went past Kotta through the flap.
The tent smelled strong of women, of herbs, and burned charcoal from the brazier. Tathra had been lying on the rugs, but had struggled onto her elbow to look at me. She no longer put on the shireen in my presence, and she was paler than Asua had been when she cried for the life of her daughter.
“All is well, Tuvek,” Tathra said, smiling at me. “It will do me credit, for I thought myself beyond the age.”
I looked at her, her face all shrunken and white, and Chula’s emerald green-blue in the hollow of her throat.
“I will kill him for this.”
She gazed at me in terror and clutched my wrist.
“No, Tuvek. No. It’s good. I am happy. Now he will cleave to me.”
Kotta had entered behind me. She said, “He has a loose tongue, the fine warrior, when he lets his wits off the leash. Do you suppose, boy, I did nothing to help your mother? I have given her drafts, and done other things too, but the fruit is lodged. I can do no more or I shall harm her. This being
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the case, I must see to it she is vigorous enough to bear. The women know nothing. The first child is often difficult, he makes the way. Thereafter it is better.”
Tathra’s eyes were wild with fear and misery, and she smiled again and told me how happy she was.
2
That night the winter broke. The rain fell in torrents and the lower tunnels were flooded. Then came the sun, pale yellow as bleached brass.
The Moi have it that the summer sun is a golden girl, who blows on a pipe to summon everything living out onto the earth. Suddenly the black-green emptiness of the valleys comes alive with birds and beasts, as if by a spell. And as they go dancing through the grasses, the hungry hunters bring them down. The bird stabs the worm, the big cat breaks the bird’s neck, the man casts his spear into the heart of the cat. That is how the world is. Even the man had better look behind him; the wolf may be near, or another man, or fate, the hungriest hunter of them all.
In the Arrow month, the trek began down from the mountains to the Snake’s Road, and the winter truce ended. Just before the tents were struck, the men’s side of the Dagkta krarls came together in an upper valley, for a spring gathering.
Everyone put on his best for the gathering, and I had caught the sickness. Leggings of dark blue wool and a woolen shirt of scarlet patterned with indigo and white from the looms of my wives. High boots and jacket of deer-hide, the jacket pierced and studded by golden rings. The black bear fur cloak I had taken from the bear myself; it was lined and edged with magenta, with clasps of silver. The knife belt was red velvet, Moi barter, a city thing as were the two iron knives in it.
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I let Moka shave my face with the bronze razor, for she had a steady hand.
She was already swelling big, another duet of boys probably. The sight of it gnawed on me, reminding me of Tathra. Feeling my powerlessness in that quarter, I had tried to put it from my mind.
I had few enough horses to choose from in my pen; we had eaten most of them in the lean winter. I mounted up and soon rode off with my wives’ kin, as was traditional, for marriage was a bond on the man’s side too. I knew I could trust Asua’s Doki, and Finnuck-Chula’s father-as little as any, and Moka’s eldest brother was Urm, the man I had thrown in my proving fight as a warrior. I had broken his leg and it had never healed straight, so he had no great cause to bless my name.
We reached the valley of the gathering at noon, when the sun stood like a golden shield directly above the columns of black pines at the track’s summit.
The chiefs of the krarls would cursorily meet here, clasp hands, exchange tokens. Families would pay off Blood-Prices, and fresh feuds begin. Presently the warriors would get drunk and stab each other in the guts as they were making water up against the trees.
Down by the fires the chiefs’ sons were finding their usual preliminary ways to vie and compete, breaking stallions bareback, hurling spears in a mark, or simply matching cup for cup till they fell prone, or got out knives and fell dead. I did not join the drinking, not being able to hold more than a cupful down. But my pride led me into the other things. Each year they hooted for me to try my bow or spear or this horse or that horse, praying to their demons the while that I should make a fool of myself, but I disappointed and beat them every time. They would never learn. Soon I had won off them a set of fine peeled white-wood arrows with scarlet fletches, ten bronze rings, and someone’s wolfskin cloak.
There was nothing in the land or in my mind to tell me how my life should alter through that day, to warn me of the hunter with his shaft aimed at my back.
There was a rill of white water up the slope, where I took my horse to water him, near sunfall. While he was drinking, I stood among the trees, looking first down on the valley,
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which had become a dish of smoke from the fires, then out over the ridge to the mountain wilderness, west and north.
The pines, like the posts of a dark loom, were weaving the deepening sunset between them. It was the sort of light to catch the heart, red, dying light, yet pure as crystal. The mountains stood upon it in clots of shadow and crests of flame, each like a huge crumbling coal on the hearth of the sun.
Then there came a flash, for all the world like a spark out of that hearth. Then another, and again.
I stared where these sparks were jumping, and I saw that some of the mountain shadows had come alive and were moving in from the west in a jagged surging.
I put my hand between my face and the sun’s face. So I made out horsemen riding from the west, sixty, seventy, eighty of them, and the sparks were springing from the gems they wore, and the gems on the bridles of their tall horses. The gems and the horses spurred my brain, and countless stories came back to me.
I left my mount to his drink. Disconcerted, he turned to watch me run down the slope toward the valley of the gathering.
I found my father Ettook quickly enough, among a stand of thorn trees. He had got in a betting game of throw-bones, had just lost a gold nugget, and was roaring at the injustice and drinking like a drain. They were all drunk, but Ettook made them appear sober. Nearby, a thin deer carcass creaked above a fire, spitting its stinking grease on them.
“My chief,” I said, “I must speak with you.”
He nodded at me, his face congealed in merriment, and his eyes cloudy with dislike and beer.
“My son Tuvek,” he said. “Behold, my fine son by my fine black-haired mare, my woman who makes me boys, who even now is making me another fine Tuvek in her belly.” He shook his beerskin, and they guffawed, saluting his virility in various ways.
“My father,” I said, “take some water to clear your brain. Something is happening. You had better be sensible for it.”
This was not the manner in which to give him my tidings. I was too riled to care.
He erupted from the game of throw-bones, spilling the beer down his shirt, his yellow teeth clamped together. For six
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months his brow had been level with my shoulder, which did not suit him. He swung his sweaty paw at me, and caught me a blow in the face. I did not bother to avoid it, though I could have done so; he was slow as treacle. It never even rocked me-the red pig was simply padding now, no muscle-but my own hand was answering on a reflex. I should have pulped his nose if I had let myself finish.
I got myself still, and said, “My chief, there are riders coming up on the valley. I doubt if they approach in peace, whoever they are, but from their ornaments I think they may be city raiders.”