That summer I took a wife. Now that I was a man and out of the boys’ tent, I had some need of one to see to my gear. I knew Tathra did not like this. She foresaw girls of the krarl she thought I should value more than her, but presently she and they came to understand there would be no great changes.
Chula’s father Finnuk stepped in the painted tent in the marriage month and said she was big with my child and would I acknowledge her. Soon Ettook called for me, and the girl was brought. She looked much altered from the last time we had had dealings, her eyes cast down and the lids painted green, and her shireen embroidered with butterflies of blue silk. Finnuk had loaded her with the family jewels to show me the dowry I could expect, gold and silver and one large emerald of which they were justly proud.
“See,” he said, tapping her ripe belly, “this is your planting, Tuvek Nar-Ettook.”
“Is it?” I said. “How am I to know that?”
“Chula was unbroken till she lay down for you last fall of leaf.”
“I don’t deny I had her, but maybe others have been visiting since then.”
At that her eyes flashed up, fierce as the emerald, though not as green. I had never seen her unveiled, but there are ways of telling something about a woman’s face, even through cloth, and she looked fair enough in the tribal fashion. Her body was pleasing, and her teeth excellent, as I had reason to remember.
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“Kotta says the child is from one sowing,” declared Finnuk. “She is fertile, a good field, my daughter.”
“Perhaps it will turn out a girl,” I said. “If she’s a breeder of girls, I don’t want her.” But I was coming around to it. The flash of her eyes had stirred me up a little, as the downcast lids had not. “Take her back in your tent,” I said. “If it’s mine, she’ll bear before the month is run. If she’s made me a son, I’ll have her.” I nearly laughed at the look in her eyes then. I could foresee wild times if we wed. “I’m surprised she’s willing,” I remarked. “She lost a tooth in my shoulder on the previous occasion.”
About sixteen days before the month was done, she dropped her child, and it was indeed a boy. No doubting the father either, for its tuft of hair was black.
A priest of another Dagkta krarl joined us, for Seel would not since there was bad blood openly between us. I imagine he meant to shame me, but he failed. After the fighting ends, the summer truce holds the tribes together again, and there were plenty of other holy men to choose from over the hill. It needs only a few words spoken inside a ring of fire to make a woman a warrior’s property.
In my tent, she put things to rights, got out a silver cup I had on a raid, and brought me beer in it for the bride-drink, like a dutiful wife. She had left the child with her mother for our marriage couching. I was fifteen then and Chula two years older, but I stood taller than she, and men would take me for nineteen or more if they did not know my birth-night. When I drew off her shireen, I saw she was pretty and well acquainted with a mirror. Her father had been soft with her, no doubt. She had brought the emerald as part of her dowry, and gold bells were clipped on the ends of her hair, chinking. She kept her glance on the floor very meekly. She had not really looked at me beyond that one memorable look in Ettook’s tent.
“Well,” I said, “what is it to be this time?”
“I am your first wife,” she said, “and I have borne you a son.”
“Perhaps you will not be my only wife to do that,” I said.
“Perhaps,” she said, “but I was your first woman, and that can never be altered.”
Then she stared at me, hard and bright, and wrapped her-
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self around me tight as grass. I was surprised at her insistence.
Afterward she did not want to let me go. It was a busy night.
Later, I heard she had been boasting of me, the way the women did. She was arrogant, too, of the child, who was a fine, healthy, bawling, kicking brat. I felt no vast interest in him myself, despite my warrior’s ranting in the painted tent. Ettook’s un-love had not taught me a particular worth in sons. In any case, I got the boy as a weed will grow.
There was not much to do in the summer beyond the hunting. The fruit swelled thick on the trees, and rogue orchards and fields, resown by the winds, spilled across the sloping land. None of these things provided man’s work, only tasks of agriculture for the women and children.
There were ruined places north of the pasturing, old towns with broken roofs of pink tile, arid broad streets choked by young trees. Each season the hungry forest reclaimed a little more. Here and there thin towers would pierce above the rest, looking high enough to stir the clouds. It made me wonder who could have built them. On the bald green hills the white stones ran like a giant’s fencing, but they did not look so tall to me as once, for every year they had sunk I had been growing.
Half the tribes avoided the towns. The Hinga and the Drogoi claimed you would die if you went that way by night, and the dark-haired krarls, Tathra’s people, never ventured this far to the east. In my infancy, Tathra had told me of fallen palaces where dragons were guarding treasures and ghosts rattling spears-tales any child will relish. But I had often hunted there since, alone with my dogs at moonrise, and met nothing bad except for a boar or two who offered some trouble for their meat. And once I glimpsed a big cat, as white as milk, which made me think of the dream in the fever, and the silver lynx-mask. I had taken plenty of plunder sincei then, but nothing finer than that. Even Chula’s emerald I valued less.
I would still go to my mother’s tent. I would take her a choice portion of my hunting, and sit to watch her at her loom. Yet there had come a sort of silence over us, dark as the veil she wore now always in my presence. I considered my marriage was to blame, but in my heart I knew it was the
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Silver lynx that pushed between us, though she would not speak of it. At length this took away my patience, and after that we were less easy even than before.
On Sihharn Night, when the men of the red krarls mount the ghost guard and the women of the krarls crowd together for their own watch, Chula was sitting among the torches with the child at her breast, brooding that I had recently found another I liked as well, for she had thought she might tether me like a steer. All the women share Sihharn, and Tathra sat spinning by Kotta. Soon Chula rose and, carrying the boy at his drink, she crossed to Tathra and spoke to her. I do not know what words Chula used, but the substance of them was that I would rather lie on my mother than on my wife, and had done so many times.
The women were always ready to make Tathra’s road a stony one. Their ears must have pricked up gladly. Kotta said something to the effect that Chula’s sour mood would sour her milk too. But Tathra stood and went away to her own tent without a word.
There are always tongues happy to tell any news. When I heard what had happened it was in the morning. I went directly to the fall where the women fetched water. Chula was there, and thirty or more shireens, which was good for I meant them to see. I walked up to her and struck her flat on the ground so the water pot was smashed. The women screamed and cowered away, but Chula was too scared to scream.
“Speak once more to my mother as you did at Sihharn,” I said, “and you will be silent thereafter, for I’ll break your neck.”
Then I reached forward-she anticipated my coming and squealed-and wrenched the blue-green gem off its chain. I shook it in Chula’s face.
“This shall be your apology.”
She knew better than to argue, though her eyes were starting from her head with fright and fury.
I sought Tathra next, but Ettook was there; I could hear him grunting at his games. This sent me nearly mad with rage. I got my spears and my dogs and went off alone to the forest tracks to hunt the rage down, and anything else I could find.