“Thank you, warrior,” she said. “You honor me. But do not tell me now, for I am only a fool of a woman who is too stupid to understand in her grief.”
I had disguised my voice too well, I saw. I hooked aside the flap of the tent so some of the light from outside should enter, for the sky had cleared and the risen moon was shining bright.
“Your son lives,” I said to her. “That is the news.”
At this she woke. Her lids lifted, and I turned a little, letting the moon describe me, bit by bit.
“Tuvek,” she said. Her tone was cold and empty enough that it frightened me.
“Yes, Mother,” I answered. “I’m flesh, not ghost. Come and touch me to be sure.”
She got up, stiff as an old woman, and began to walk to me with slow deliberate steps. I dared not go to her, she seemed so full of disbelief and terror; she was almost terrible herself.
But about four paces from me, she must have sensed, as an animal senses it, the warmth from my body, the scent of something living. She gave a muffled sound and stopped as if the earth had hold of her feet. And then her eyes went away from my face, by me, into the moonlight dark beyond the tent, almost as Chula’s had done, except that my mother’s eyes widened and became stony as though the sight had gone out of them, and she dropped down on the ground.
I spun around with my heart in my mouth, but nothing was there, just my horse and Demizdor, who could barely be seen against the brilliant sky, only the sheen of her silver mask and her unbound hair bleached by the moon to the pallor of snow.
I gathered Tathra up and put her on her bed. As I set her there, she stirred. She clasped my hand and muttered, “Did I dream it?”
I was leaning close; she could not see the doorway. I said, “Yes. Whatever horror you saw, you dreamed, for I saw nothing. I made you ill by coming in too quickly. I will go for Kotta.”
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“No,” she said, “it was the Eshkir woman, with her white hair. She must have died in the wild valleys those twenty years ago, and be envious of your life. Throw away the lynx mask, Tuvek, or she will harm you through it.”
Then I understood. Something in me shivered, but I laughed and told her of Demizdor. I supposed Tathra would be reassured, shed tears and get better, but her eyes were dry and her hand was like ice when she took it out of mine.
“The city women are not women,” she said. “They think themselves goddesses. They eat the soul of a man to get his strength.”
“We shall see about that,” I said.
Just then Kotta came into the tent on her own. Of course some woman could have told her the news, and she had used her head in regard to Tathra. The healer paid no special attention to me, as if dead warriors rising were a common event among the krarls; she merely courteously bade me go, so I left and was glad to. I had had enough of the fears and conjurings of women. It was not the greeting I had wished for.
Outside, Demizdor still stood against the shining night sky, and yet as dumb as the moon. For a second I entertained the notion she had been witch-sending Tathra, but cursed myself for a fool, and put the scare aside.
Unspeaking, I went to my tent. Unspeaking, she followed.
5
The fire was already roasting meat for me.
Moka and Asua were preparing the food and did not run at me, but seemed glad enough that I was back. A widow’s lot is seldom sweet, and they were good women in their way, I now acknowledged, ready to please me, and be satisfied with pleasing me. Some of the men’s side was there too, my marriage kin, Doki and Finnuk, and all Moka’s brothers, even
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Urm Crook Leg. They had supplied meat and the grain for the loaves, and the beer, as they told me instantly. I thanked them, and promised them rewards later from my loot-chests, which no doubt they had been at already, thinking me crowpie.
Chula, meantime, stalked about the roasting joints, ordering this or that done and doing little herself.
I drank a cup of beer with my kindred to content them, though they would be roaring drunk presently, and I flat sober. Then I took Demizdor across to the hen-tent, where my women lay when not with me and the babies were nursed, and called Chula from her bullying.
“Here is the slave I spoke of,” I said to her. Chula’s eyes narrowed. “Take her in and give her tribal garb. She has some jewels under her furs, they are mine. But you may keep the silver mask for yourself, if you wish. See she wears the shireen instead.”
“My husband is generous,” Chula said, greedy and suspicious at once. “After that, what?”
“Whatever you like. The slave is yours; put her to work.”
“Has my husband no interest in the matter?”
“None,” I said, for Demizdor’s benefit.
”Then why not give her to a warrior, to my father, Finnuk, perhaps, in return for his portions of meat to me when you were away?”
“I shan’t waste a woman on your father,” I said. “He’s past his prime for that kind of dance. Don’t be hasty, my loving wife. You will find her useful to take some of the load of work off your own bowed shoulders. If she’s lazy,, beat her, but not enough to mark her, and never let her out to catch children in her belly. In the future I may be able to trade her to my advantage, so take care.”
“But I may beat her,” she said smartly, “if she is disobedient.”
“As you see fit.”
Demizdor never opened her mouth that I knew, but I had not imagined she would. Chula came forward to her like a cat stealing up on a bird, then grabbed her by the arm and thrust her inside the hen-tent. I tried to think this funny, but the aftertaste was sour.
Ettook never visited my welcoming feast, though several
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men were there who did not much like me, yet considered it expedient.
Later, I gifted Finnuk and the rest, and they took the presents, simpering like maids at a posy, though I could see they would like a city horse apiece as well. Only Urm grumbled, and said he had already had a present from me, and showed his crippled leg.
When the fire tired into crimson, the warriors rolled home. A mound of dogs lay in among the meat bones, and the sleepless city horses shifted their feet along the picket line.
Chula was in my tent. When I had tied the flap, she sprang on me like a panther, winding me with her limbs and her red hair. She went at me as if she would get three more sons in one night.
She took the edge off my appetite, but nothing else. It was another I needed under me.
Somewhere near dawn, Chula woke me. She stood in the indigo dimness of the tent, and she had put on Demizdor’s dress of scales and the bodice of emeralds, which was too narrow for Chula at the waist and too large for her at the breast, and she was wearing as well as the deer-mask, and her ruddy mane tangled behind. It was such a parody, I lay and stared at it without a word.
“Is this how she looked,” said Chula, “when you had her?”
“Did she tell you so?”
“No need,” she answered, my astute wife, Finnuk’s daughter. “I have seen her naked. You could never have let her be, my lusty husband.”
I thought of Demizdor in the women’s tent; I thought of her too long. When Chula came creeping to me again, I did not want her.
PART III
White Lynx 1
To fall suddenly sick when you have never been ill is a hard lesson. If it teaches anything, it teaches you that you must not trust to the things you know, that it is better to build on shifting sand than the rock which may confound you on the day it shatters.
To fall sick, or to love. There is not much difference when you are unwilling, or untutored, in the fact. For near twenty years you rage about the earth, blinded in one eye, the eye of the heart. Then the eye is torn open.
I had given her to my wives, my Eshkiri slave. I had imagined they would rend her with their claws and she would run to me as her savior. I had never met pride in a woman before, not true pride, or, if I had, I had not known it.