Distik faltered there a moment, the blood plopping crimson as beads on the white snow. Then he hurled himself on me like a wolf.
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His weight told; we both went plunging over, and rolled downhill after his knife. The hard rock under the ice slammed me in the back, and Distik punched as me hard as he could in the crotch. I had been rather too clever and not expected this of him, as he had not expected much of me. For a second the pain winded me and my sight blacked out, but I had enough of my senses left to kick the ground away, and keep us going on down the incline. While in motion he could not obtain much purchase on me or try to repossess his blade.
The pain in my loins was subsiding to a drumlike ache that made me nearly vomit, and my eyes were full of sparks. He had me by the hair, long as his own; I think he was getting ready to break my neck once we should slow sufficiently; he was past caring who or what I was. With his other arm he had both of mine pinned fast to my sides. I had lost the two knives, I guess when he punched me. I remembered how he had crashed heavily on the left knee and caught it between mine as we fell, squeezing till I heard the bones grind. Distik grunted and his hand slackened on my hair. I went under it and had him by the throat. My teeth met through the skin, and his blood ran in my mouth. I was fighting mad by this time, and the salt of it gladdened me.
He tried to shake me off, and loosened his other arm around me, grabbing to wrench my head back. Just then we tumbled into a soft mound of snow. I released his throat and hit him on the side of the jaw with all my might, and felt teeth snap under the blow. He bellowed, on his side in the snow mound, and I sprang from him and fell back deadweight on his ribs. The breath went from him in a bloody gust, and he curled together on himself, crowing for it, and done.
I stood up, shivering with hate-lust and triumph, and stared along the slope toward the cave.
It was to be an hour of surprises. I had not anticipated what I saw.
Three of them were coming down to me, making set brutal faces, metal ready in thenhands, as they would go to finish off a bear in a trap.
I thought, This is too obvious. Ettook can’t let them take me three to a boy; it shows too much how badly he wants me broken. But Ettook never stirred and the braves came on.
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I glanced around quickly, trying to see a knife, Distik’s or mine, in the snow, but there was nothing.
I should have been anxious, but I was too eager to fight; the last bout had sharpened my appetite for it.
Distik had continued lying prone and gasping. I hauled him onto his back and he threshed about, attempting to ward me off. Around his neck hung a great ivory tooth, long as my hand, and perfect save where the hole was pierced for the thong to go through. He found it in some back cave years before and wore it for luck. Seeing his luck had deserted him, it was almost fitting I should rip it off his neck, and perhaps he agreed for he did not offer to stop me. In my grasp the tooth looked nearly as good as a dagger.
The warriors were biding their time approaching me, for the slope was slippery from our fall, and someone had maneuvered ahead of the rest. I saw his squinty eye and recognized Fid’s father, Jork. Then I took the slope at a run, going up to meet him.
I went fast, too fast to lose my footing, and slammed into him and plunged Distik’s monster-tooth in his neck where the big vein is. The blood jetted over us both; he reeled sideways with a choked cry and collapsed, dragging my weapon with him. Something happened inside me at that, like tough tissue splitting open. A white light sliced through my head. It was like a voice singing to me: Now the beast is out of the cage.
I had come up with the last two warriors. I barely noticed who they were. The left-hand man lunged in at me and cut me in the flank, and next moment I ducked and caught at him and was bursting up in a whirl of blood and snow and cloaks, with him held over my head the length of my arms, like an offering to the sky.
He was a big man and I was only a boy. I had always been tall and well-grown and very strong, yet I had never known my strength, and neither had they. It was no bother to me to hold him high and kicking and bawling there, or to swing around with him and cast him off into the other one and watch them go hurtling down together to where Distik lay.
I was meaning to follow them, perhaps to kill them with their own knives, but as sudden as it lit, the white light in my head went out. I stood there in a somber daze getting back
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my sanity after the fight. And when I raised my eyes to the slope, I ascertained that this time nobody else was coming.
The warriors were very silent, as well they might be.
Seel had prudently combined with the shadows, but Ettook remained by the fire where I had seen him last, and his face was a greenish-white, though he grinned as he jumped down and strode toward me.
“Am I proved, my chief?” I called out to him, loud enough for all of them.
Ettook turned in midstride, shaking his arms at the men.
“Is he proved warrior?” he shouted. “Proved-yes, more a brave than any of my fighters, this, my son Tuvek.”
The warriors began to stamp and clack their spears on the rock of the mountain under the cave to show their approval and consent, but not a face matched the noise. Their looks were better suited to a burying, or Sihharn Night when they mount guard against the spirits of the Black Place.
However, Ettook came up to me and clapped me on the shoulder.
I immediately kneeled before him in the snow. I could master as much diplomacy as he.
“If I am a warrior, the strength of my arm is for your service alone, my chief and my father,” I said. And he dug his fingers in my hair as any father might, proud of a loved son who had done him honor. I wondered what price he set on this act of his, showing his liking of me after what had gone before. And not for the first time, I wished I had a friend, a single man I could trust my back to.
Ettook took his hand off my bowed head, and I rose.
“The blind woman must bind your hurt,” he said, jolly as a grinning death’s-head. “First blood from your own people. That’s something. I only let so many come at you because I knew you could beat them.” I barely kept from laughing myself at that. “The seer shall make the warrior-marks on you freshly,” he said.
“No,” I said, “that carrion has put his hands on me too often. I must be the Unmarked Warrior of the krarl.” We were still speaking loudly for the benefit of the crowd, even some shireem were stealing out now, and a woman had begun mewing for dead Jork; not Seel-Na, I noted. I glared at the warriors and said “Let my deeds speak for me. When I go to battle I shall paint the tribe’s colors on my skin, and if any
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man takes exception, let him tell me so; he shall be answered, as I have answered here.”
The woman crying made my spine crawl. I had been thinking of my life and not Jork’s death when I slew him. I went to her and lifted her up and hit her in the face, not very hard.
“Don’t wail for him in front of me,” I said, and she shut her mouth. “I will pay you Blood-Price for him,” and I turned to Ettook.
“Yes,” he said, “I will see Tuvek gives the Blood-Price for your man. But my son shall also come to my tent and pick out treasure for himself.”
When I went to my mother’s tent, the news was there ahead of me.
Her face was whiter than Ettook’s, and she, too, was smiling, but hers was a smile of victory, though old fear and a confused eternal rancor were mixed in it. When I stooped under the doormouth, she rose and almost ran at me, then stopped, holding herself back. I went to her and put my arm around her, and then she wept.