The beasts’ threnody gushed up again, the spears rattled.
Seel lifted his arms, and a carmine sun and a white moon staggered on his crow’s sleeves.
“Death,” sang Seel. “In your dark tent our men are standing. Relent, Death, relent. Return to us our men, return to us the son of our chief.” Then, raising his voice, he flung himself at the four points of the world, north, south, east, and west, from any of which the answer might arrive, which is why they allow four nights before they seek it, one darkness for each. “Tuvek,” the seer squealed, “come back among your folk, come back from the black tent, the bone-grove, to the warm hearth. Death may give you horses and hounds, but you have horses and hounds in the land of life. Death may give you women, but they bear no fruit and you have women of flesh and blood who shall. All Death can offer, you possess. Tuvek, come back among your folk.”
“Say no more,” I said, stepping out into the raw red light. “I am here.”
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Only in legend does the dead man reply to the call, generally ghastly to behold, and without his head or some such thing. On the living earth nobody comes; it is just a piece of the chanting to crave and entreat. Although they bark for it, they do not expect the bone.
For a space long enough for me to repeat my words ten times over, they made not a sound. Their eyes crawled up me like flies. Then a woman fell over in a fit-though even the women drink a good deal before a dead-watch, and I think it was the beer more than the ghost that undid her. At this Seel changed his stance. Leaping upward as though his drawers had caught alight, he whirled at me, beating his arms, squawking, “Away, Undead, away, away! Back to the Shadow Region!”
I was not certain if he truly believed himself confronted by a phantom, but this was such a reversal of his former plaint that I leaned on a tree and laughed.
Seel’s eyes rolled. He snatched some more of his magical fire powder and tossed it between us. He conjured me to vanish, and I stubbornly would not, but simply stood laughing at him till my ribs pained me.
Presently he left off these antics, drawing back to where Ettook was, and making motions at me from there.
Ettook’s face was now a picture, as might be imagined. The healthy, cheery countenance with which he had mourned my demise had given way to a flushed livid whiteness. He knew me a live creature directly, his curse come back to him. He opened his swollen lips to utter some exquisite idiocy, but there was suddenly a lot of screaming that saved him the trouble,
Chula, my first wife, cast herself against me. She threw her arms about my waist, and clutched me as if she were drowning. Some city man’s knife had slit the shirt along my right side, and she fastened her mouth there, and sucked at my skin as if she could get sustenance from me. I tried to pry her loose but she clung like a leech.
“Don’t eat me, woman,” I said. “I’m mortal, never fear.” The three little bears had not rushed after her. They were huddled together, still crying in alarm at their ghoul-daddy shouldered up from hell. “Look after your brood,” I said to Chula, and pushed her off me at last. Her eyes glared in the shireen, swirling with hurt, anger, triumph, and sex. Then
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they went past me, and fixed on the shapes of woman and horse behind me. I said, “I have brought you a gift from my battle. An Eshkir slave.”
Everyone murmured, and Chula froze like a post.
Meantime Ettook had recovered himself slightly; my wife’s passion had given him the leisure.
“So my son fought the city raiders.”
“Yes, my chief. Fought and killed.”
It was a mark of my scorn for him that I did not mean to humiliate him in front of his subjects. Besides, enough men knew how he had praised me before I set out from the spring gathering, for such chat always finds legs.
Ettook said hollowly some phrase about how welcome I was, and how worthy of preserved existence. He asked me where our Dagkta warriors were, for surely they had returned to the krarl with me? He was trusting I had boasted and they were lost after all. But his luck was out, for even the few who had perished in the prison pit had not been his men.
I was wondering where the five had gone, and wishing I had kept them by me, but I had no need to be anxious. They had only been waiting, with a sense of theater to equal mine, for just such a prompting as Ettook’s query. Pent-up high spirits and pride in their return had made them wild, for all five were as young as I. They galloped into the watch-square, whooping and calling in a huge surge of stolen horses, scattering the women and the fire, and setting the babies bawling.
The warriors went on riding in circles for a minute or so, islands of the broken fire sparking on their grins, and on their hands full of looted knives, and the coats of their city mounts.
Piecemeal, the noise and confusion shrank back into the sputter and flicker of the checkered light.
I said, loud enough for everyone to hear me, “With these braves and eighteen more I took the city raiders’ camp. We slew them to a man, and kept only one prisoner, the woman here, who is my share of the spoil.”
The five riders hooted and cheered me, keeping me hero; maybe it was lucky.
I turned and went to Demizdor. She might have been blind and deaf for all the heed she seemed to take of anything. I wished I could see her face to know her thought.
“Get down,” I said. “Now you are here, you will walk like
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the other women. I have shown them you belong to me, so you are safe.”
She dismounted without a word. I said, seeing Chula’s eyes stuck on her still like beetles to a log, “I am giving you to my wives, Golden-hair. They will perhaps put you in the porridge pot and eat you.”
When she stood by me, the crown of her head came just beneath my collarbone. I wanted to pick her up and take her away with me, running through the fire to some secret place. But instead, I told her to walk behind me. She obeyed, like any slave, and the need in me to see her face was like an itch I could not scratch.
So I went to my mother’s tent, leaving the rest of them about the fire, only telling Chula, as I passed, to see to my horses in the pines, and to getting me some food.
I was at least sensible that I should not go rampaging in on Tathra when she thought me a corpse; that much I did right. In fact, I had had an inclination to seek Kotta first, and have her carry the tidings before me, but her tent, when I came on it, was full of wailing and groans, some woman’s sickness she was busy with and would not leave for me. So I must manage everything by myself.
When we reached my mother’s tent, I tethered the horse and left Demizdor beside it, telling her not to stray or the warriors would think her fair game, after all. I was beginning not to like her docility, and the task before me made me uneasy besides.
I went into the tent very softly.
There was a brazier burning by the bed place, no greater light than that. For a moment I did not find Tathra, then I discovered where she sat, in the shadow of the tall Eshkiri loom. There was a cloth on the loom, black and white, the cloth a tribal woman constructed to wrap her dead in, when she had his body. But she was not weaving, and the cloth was barely started on.
She kept as motionless as the night. Black as night, too, with her hair and robe, and her face hidden by the shireen. Yet there was something in her attitude that was as naked as her face was not. Her eyes were shut. She did not weep, but she looked finished and withered as a branch burned in the fire. Her loud crying was inside. Whatever my victory, this I had done, and I was not happy at it.
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“Ettook’s wife,” I said, speaking very low, and addressing her as a stranger would do it, trying to come to her gradually. She never stirred. “Ettook’s wife, there is a better tale than you have been hearing.”