CRO-MAGNON (30 page)

The thin cry of a newborn sounded. Through a haze of pain, she heard Wim say, “Boy. Look good.”

“
Thank Ki,” she murmured, and fainted.

After reviving her, Wim raised her up and held the
baban
to her sweat-wreathed face. Through a shifting haze Leya saw that, despite the hard birth, the child appeared hale. But she had lost blood, and now continued to do so. Even in her exhausted apathy, she realized she had been gravely damaged. Feeling herself about to faint again, she flopped back and lay in a trance, barely aware of her surroundings.

As soon as the afterbirth descended, she mustered enough energy to remind Wim to apply a poultice of cattail pollen boiled with juniper twigs and berries from the store of medicines to stem the bleeding, and to apply the goo from the base of the cattail leaf as an antiseptic. Before slumping into a stupor, she heard Wim issuing orders to Gar and Puk.

For what seemed days, she was racked by nausea, vomiting, and cramps. She roused only when Wim fed her the astringent tea or held the
baban
to her breast to feed, and even then she was not fully conscious.

Just as she began to recover, she contracted a fever. For many more days she lay in a flushed trance, images of Mungo, Caw, and Gar flitting through her fractured dreams. Once, she imagined she saw Caw striding toward her and Gar moving into his path.

The fever worsened until she lay unable to move, in a netherworld of weakness and burning heat. Was this it, then? To die among these primitive but kind people?

Time passed. She did not know how much, only that she was still alive. Once she thought she felt the
baban
suckle. Otherwise, she lay in a stupor.

One day she heard a soft whine and felt something cold and wet. She opened her eyes to find Fel nudging her nose. Wreathed in cold sweat, she realized the fever had broken.

A voice said, “Welcome back Leya,” and she turned her head to see Wim crouching beside her.

The old woman held out a bundle of furs, and happiness swept Leya as she accepted the
baban
.

“
How long?”

“
Half a moon,” Wim said.

Half a moon! Leya knew something must be badly wrong. She looked around and spotted the other women watching from the hearth. Em and Jym were smiling, but Kam’s haggard face was noncommittal. Things were not going well with the leader’s mate, Leya sensed.

But with a child to care for, there was no time for peripheral issues. She remembered Wim telling her that she had given birth to a boy, and now she inspected him for defects. He was definitely a hybrid, she saw, possessing the front-to-rear elongated head and projecting face of the clan, but the vertical forehead and sharp chin of her own people.

He seemed robust and healthy, that was the important thing.

She sat up and held him to a nipple, and he began to suck. She decided to name him Brann, after her
mator
Alys’s
fator
in her northern home tribe.

Wim sat watching her nurse the baban. Several times the old woman seemed on the verge of speaking, but held her tongue.

Finally Leya said, “What is it, Wim?”

“
When birth, big shoulders not go through. Wim cut.
Tot
come.”

“
I remember. Thank you, Wim”

“
Before birth, Gar and Puk long time scrape cattail leaves for what you call ‘balm.’ After, I do everything you teach. Pack cavity with sphagnum. Smear goo on cut. But still feel hot. Give medicine tea. But slit not heal.”

“
Well, it’s better now,” Leya said, running her free hand over her mound.

She sensed that Wim had more to say, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it.

“
And Brann seems fine.”

The creases bracketing the old woman’s’ mouth deepened. “Yesterday I finger seed things. Feel hardness between there and canal.”

A chill invaded Leya’s mind. “Hardness.” Exploring herself, she looked up. “I feel it, on each side.”

The old woman nodded, her mouth a straight line in her wrinkled face. “Scars inside.”

Leya was afraid she knew what her friend—for Wim had certainly proved to be that—was getting at.

“
You’re telling me my seed is blocked. That I will not have more tots.”

“
You know medicine,” the crone said. “But Wim birth many tots.”

In her few lucid moments during the fever, Leya had feared as much. After almost dying in childbirth, she didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad.

And what of the future? In view of Caw’s obvious disdain for her and his enmity toward Fel, she doubted she could remain indefinitely with the clan.

She gazed at Brann, still sucking greedily. At least he seemed healthy. But she feared that his mixed blood boded a difficult future. She felt Fel nudge her shoulder. Wrapping her free arm around the young wolf, she blinked away a tear.

What fate would befall her little family? How could she fashion a life?

#

A score of days later, the crisis arrived. Before dawn, Caw sneaked up on the sleeping Leya and attempted to spear Fel. The ever-alert wolf evaded the thrust, snarled, and launched at Caw’s throat. Gar, who had been sleeping nearby, snatched the three-quarter-grown animal out of the air, thereby saving Caw’s life.

And ultimately, Fel’s.

Still clutching the wolf, Gar extended his free arm in symbolic protection of Leya. With a grunt and a murderous look at the three of them, Caw turned and walked to the fire. For the rest of the day, Leya noticed that that Gar stayed close, summoning Puk to watch her whenever he had to do a chore.

The next day dawned chilly and overcast. After the morning meal of grilled deer meat, Bor held a meeting around the central hearth the men squatting on their haunches, a custom Leya knew was designed to lessen any aggression.

“
Leya be trouble,” he began, and there was a nodding of heads. “At first I think outlander woman make good mate. Bring new blood.”

“
We trade with other clans,” Ull said. “Never trade for Shortface woman.”

“
That right,” Caw said. “Shortface bad.” He glanced toward the children, huddled together at the rear of the cave. “We use Nim for trade.”

Leya noted that he ignored the fact that he had tried to take the young girl for his own.

“
No trade this season,” Bor said. “Shortface take other clan’s hunting ground. River bring woman.”

A murmur swept the group, sounding mostly negative to Leya’s ears. Bor glanced to where she crouched at the rear of the cave near the children, nursing Brann.

“
Bor think why not keep her?” He spread his sinewy arms. “Now . . .”

“
No good,” Caw said, retracting his lips over his missing g front tooth. “Make bad feelings.”

Leya knew he was enjoying this opportunity to weaken the leader’s position, even though he was the one making the trouble. There was a stir among the squatting men and, she thought again, an air of assent. She felt a chill beyond that of the raw wind that howled up the ravine.

“
Agree.” Bor’s sober glance took in the scowling Caw before sweeping the other men. “Can not have trouble.”

Wim, who had stayed at Leya’s side since the latest incident, walked to the fire and faced each of the squatting men in turn, concluding with the scowling Caw.

“
Half-Shortface kid be fault this man,” she said.

Leya felt grateful for the support but surprised by Wim’s temerity, because she’d supposed the men made all the decisions. Perhaps the crone’s age imparted stature.

Kam, not to be outdone, now spoke. “No fault of any one. Outlander be trouble.”

Leya remembered that the more often Wim, Em, Jym, and even young Nim and the other children, consulted her for her skills, the more distant Kam had grown. She guessed the leader’s mate was afraid of losing face, particularly as Bor’s position seemed to be eroding, and she knew that neither she nor Wim would find help in that quarter.

Wim seemed undaunted. “Leya big help to clan. Teach much.”

“
How much help if she tear apart clan?” Kam’s voice sounded truculent. “Shortface woman make bad things happen.”

“
No mixed kid in camp,” Caw said, pointing at the child in Leya’s arms. “Half-breed poison our blood.”

“
Your own son,” Wim said.

“
Shortface!” Caw pointed at Fel, sitting beside Leya with his ears pricked. “And wolf dangerous.”

“
Only to you,” Wim said, and again Leya was amazed at the old woman’s audacity. “And only when Caw try hurt Leya.”

Caw picked up his stone-tipped spear, eliciting a low growl from the wolf.

“
See? Wolf be wild.” He brandished the spear, drawing a snarl. “Woman and half-breed kid go, or Caw kill.”

Gar looked at him and Caw stared back. “This time no stop me,” he said, and Leya knew he meant there would be a fight to the death, perhaps involving the entire clan.

“
Go where?” Wim said. She gestured at the cloudy sky. “Shortfaces far away in winter camp. Let Leya stay till spring.”

Leya knew the men kept track of the yearly cycle of the People, since the gradual expansion of the latter’s hunting grounds was forcing the clan ever deeper into marginal territory.

“
She go now,” Caw said.

Gar started to stand, but Bor waved him down. He glanced at Leya huddled at the rear of the cave clutching Brann, Wim on one side and Fel on the other. Leya saw him hesitate as if weighing options.

Caw peered at the other men, and Leya knew he was gauging their temper. As in her own tribe, she realized, the leader’s word constituted law only if a majority backed him. The others stared back, and Leya saw that even the children were watching closely. Caw, Ull, and Odd were scowling. Gar and Puk looked blank.

Bor eased his stance to favor his stiff knee. “Caw and Kam right,” he said. “Leya go.”

No one spoke in opposition, as he clearly had a majority.

“
Lions and tigers use trail,” Wim said. “Last moon you and Odd see spoor of knife-tooth tiger two days west.”

“
Shortface go,” Caw repeated.

“
You send her to her death.” Wim pointed to Brann, snuggled at Leya’s breast. “With
tot
to carry and only young wolf to protect her, she not see Shortface camp,” she said, a lengthy pronouncement for a clan member.

Leya glanced down at the hybrid
baban
suckling at her breast.
And even if I did make it
, she thought,
what would be my reception?
Would Sugn, as shaman, welcome a mixed-breed
baban?

But that didn’t matter, because she would never get that far.

“
Tomorrow,” Bor said, making it official. He looked not unkindly at Leya. “You have one day be ready.”

Leya surrendered to the inevitable. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Wim glance at her two sons and raise her scraggly brows.

Puk hesitated, glancing at his mate. His lumpy nose crinkling, Gar rose to his feet in the fluid manner typical of his people. “I bring Leya to Shortface camp,” he said.

Chapter 13

A cold morning breeze ruffled the gunmetal surface of the lake, turning Ian Calder’s face stiff. Zinchenko pulled the cord three times before the outboard sputtered. He opened the throttle and the aluminum boat surged from shore, cutting a swath through the ripples. Calder, facing rearward, thought the Russian’s usually stolid face looked troubled.

“
Is everything all right, Fedor?”

“
Nyet.”

Calder glanced at Blaine and back. “Does it concern Caitlin and me?”

“
Da
.” The engine faltered and Zinchenko fiddled with the choke and throttle. The beat smoothed but the bearded Russian did not look up.

“
What is it, Fedor?”

“
You say generator in trailer go in and out. Check power, find something in wall . . . wall . . .”

“
Socket?”

“
Da
.” The camp master glanced over the stern toward the flag marking the dive site and made an adjustment to their course. “How you say . . . bug.”

Calder felt torn between relief that Zinchenko was not under Salomon’s thumb and dismay that the industrialist would know what he and Blaine had said in the trailer. At first they had tried to be careful. But when Teague did not confront them, they had inadvertently relaxed.

He returned the Russian’s somber gaze. “A listening device?”

Zinchenko nodded. “Microphone slits, line connection, radio stub.”

Calder nodded. It sounded as if the device worked off the trailer’s power, and broadcast to a tape recorder.

“
What’d you do?”

“
Break wire, leave thing.”