Madbond (11 page)

Most of the tribe was there, pressed back against the walls, leaving a sort of clearing, an arena, under the reed-thatched roof. But I saw no children there, and I was glad of it. These were at their centers a gentle folk. I hoped Kor would not be there either, but he was, awaiting us at a place before the hearth that was marked with red ocher spilled on the ground. After a moment I understood. It was the place where Rowalt had fallen. I had been brought there for my doom.

Like a puppy, I thought. Taken back to have my nose rubbed in my misdeed. Nothing seemed very real, and the thought made me smile. Kor saw the smile, but I think he could not bring himself to answer it. He looked ashen, as if he himself were to undergo a slow execution, and I could tell nothing from his eyes when I stopped before him.

“Dan,” he said to me, but loudly enough so that the others could hear, “I tell you again, there is no need for this.”

I did not answer. Madman and murderer though I might be, I yet had my pride, and if I had done wrong I would pay with my own blood. I met his gaze and did not speak. For the sake of my honor I had decided to be a mute, so that I would not cry out. Though more willful, it ought to be no harder than forgetting my own name.…

Korridun sighed and stepped back, yielding me up to Istas. There was a breath and a murmur from the waiting crowd, then utter silence.

Istas advanced on me with a knife of jagged blackstone. How droll it was, truly—she was a stumpy little woman with a hump on her back, she stood fully a head and a half shorter than I, and I was going to let her kill me. Droll—but her face was so full of malice, it frightened me. She held the knife up a finger's span before my face. I refused to blink. Swiftly she moved it—

And cut off the long yellow-brown braid of my hair, tugging hard at it as she did so, trying to bring water to my eyes, notching the rim of my ear with the knife. Then she took off the other. I should have felt relieved, perhaps, but it was not so. I was stricken, chilled with fear. It had not occurred to me, somehow, that she would know me so well, that she would take my hair. She took away my self, my manhood, when she did that—she might as well have cut off my cock and had it done with! Perhaps that would be next.… She threw my braids down in the dirt of the floor and stamped and spat on them. Then, to humiliate me, she flogged me.

It was not so bad, merely a willow whip. I had taken worse from the Fanged Horse Folk in combat—they fight with deadly long heavy whips made of bisonhide, and they can flick out an eye with the end—but that was fighting, and this was punishment, and therefore harder to bear. It was Istas's malice that made the difference. I hardened my will against her, standing still, making no outcry.

Nor, I noted, did the people shout out to goad Istas on as she gifted me with the shirt of red laces. They stood as still and soundless as I. They were not bloodthirsty, Korridun's folk.

When she had flogged me enough so that the blood ran, Istas took up her knife again and stood before me, leering up at me.

“Now,” she said, “listen well, for I am going to tell you exactly what I intend to do to you.”

It would have been easier, of course, not knowing, and that was why she told me, in detail. She fairly ground out the words of the telling, as if she were grinding out millet meal, food of her hatred. The substance of her plan was that she would disembowel me, as I had done to Rowalt. But before that, she told me, there were many ways of inflicting pain. There was my cock to be attended to. And my eyes. And many members more … She sickened me, I admit it. She was cruel, hateful, keen and cruel. I wanted to look at Kor for comfort, did not dare for fear that he had no comfort to give me. I stared over the old woman's head at a silent crowd instead and squared my shoulders, straightening myself to receive the blandishments of Istas's esteem.

It must have enraged her, my stance. She broke off her recitation and stamped hard with her booted foot on mine that was bare. I felt the small bones break, even heard them snap, so deep was the silence in that place, and my muteness deserted me all in a moment. I gave a croak of pain, and pain brought me to my knees—I could not stand on the broken foot. Not knowing what I was doing, like a falling child I clutched at her skirt for support. She flung away my hand. Her sharp blackstone knife was at my gut. Odd, she had forgotten her lengthy plan, she was going to open me there and then—

Her face loomed within a handspan of my own, the look on it all at once wild, crazed, grieved, frightened—that anguished look shook me as her hatred had not. I felt her knife shaking, sawing into me, just below my ribs. Then with a terrible cry she sliced it downward, cutting through the skin clear to my crotch, but only the skin.… She flung the knife away to one side and hid her creased old face in her hands.

From somewhere close at hand Kor came over—but not to me. He bent over Istas, placing his touch on her shoulders, which rose and fell with her sobbing breaths. For a moment she lowered her hands to face him, and I saw in her look a terrible sorrow. I no longer cared to stare at her.

“It is as you said,” she cried to Kor. “The hating has made of me a thing more fell than Mahela.”

I felt someone take hold of me. It was Birc, of all people, helping me up, slinging my left arm across his shoulders. I leaned on him, and I was not ashamed that I was trembling. Another one of the twelve came and supported me on the right.

“Are you satisfied of your bloodright against Dannoc?” Kor asked Istas, quietly, but clearly enough for the assembled Seal Kindred to hear.

“I am satisfied. I am sickened.”

I do not remember how I went back to Seal Hold. They told me later that I hobbled there, but I think that once in my chamber I fainted.

When I awoke some time later, I found myself slippery with seal grease and swaddled in lambswool bandaging from my neck to my thighs, and my foot was tightly wrapped. Birc was sitting by me, unarmed and, by the looks of him, uncomfortable.

“Hungry?” he asked me abruptly, the first time he had spoken to me. He, or any of the others except Kor, Istas, Olpash, and the little girl Alu.

His gruffness was not because he disliked me, I decided, but because he was shy. He was a boyish youth with an awkward look about him, eyes often downcast, brown hair out of control over his forehead.

In fact, I was not hungry. I felt sick and weak. But food might help, I decided, and I nodded.

Birc went out for a moment and spoke with someone. Shortly afterward there was a stir in the passageway and half a dozen women and maidens crowded into the chamber, each bearing a portion of a feast: bread, heavy pottery bowls of food, the basin, towel, and ewer for washing with.

“Great Sakeema,” I protested, “I am not hungry enough for all this.”

Then, as they laid a cloth and set the things on the uneven floor, I saw what was in the bowls.

“Red meat!” I exclaimed.

The maidens smiled and laughed, and one of the women nodded. “Istas thought it would please you and give you strength. She sent out everyone she could spare with spears and arrows and snares.”

Istas!

“She is troubled, but more like herself now,” the woman added, “and we are glad of it.”

The three maidens whose names I knew, Lumai, Lomasi and Winewa, came and helped me sit up, settling themselves behind me to support me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Birc backed up against the far wall, eyeing them and grinning sheepishly.

I made up my mind that I was going to eat every morsel of the meat, even though it was only tough old winter rabbit. The soup was good, and shaky though I was I spilled only a little. The women nodded and smiled at every bite I took. I gorged myself to please them. It was hard work, being an invalid—no sooner had they left than Birc had to help me to my cuckpot, both of us swearing softly with embarrassment. Then no sooner had I slept a small while than the maidens were back, the three of them, with water, tallow soap, and several of the long clam shells, sharper than knives, such as their men used to scrape the beard from their faces.

“What, more torments?” I jested. “I don't need to be shaved.” Men of my tribe grew very little beard, less even than the Seal did. The Fanged Horse men, on the other hand, were bearded worse than mountain antelope—

“Istas wants us to do something about your hair,” Lomasi said.

I felt my smile fade, and I raised one hand to feel the hacked stubble of my hair where the braids had hung. An odd lightness about my head, as if I were now unrooted, a leaf in the wind, a drifting thing. Perhaps I knew even then that in a sense I would never be a Red Hart again. A fell stroke, what Istas had done to me—my face grew so somber that the maidens knelt beside me.

“She wants us to cut it like that of a clanfellow, Dannoc,” Lumai said softly.

An honor I could scarcely refuse. And though I scarcely knew it, I bade farewell to a Red Hart's selfhood that day. I let the young women take me in hand, and they washed my head and trimmed what was left of my hair fur-fashion, so that I resembled a Seal tribesman. Their soft touch cheered me, and I talked with them as they worked. One of the maidens in particular, Winewa, had wise, sleepy eyes, and I think she knew what I was thinking. Though I was in no condition.

The next day, when I felt stronger, Istas came with the women who brought the food.

I grew grave when I saw her, not because I bore a grudge or was afraid of her, but because I did not know what to say to her. She herself brought the bowl to me, full of good dark stew. Her eyes, as the women had said, were troubled.

“You will walk again on that foot,” she said curtly, “or I will give you mine. I bound it up myself.”

Her tone so astonished me that I smiled. “Am I under your orders, then, to get better?”

“Yes, you young fool. You wanted to die!” I heard anger, accusation, but as much grief as anger. “You were willing to stand there and let me torture you, mutilate you—”

“You have not mutilated me!” I hoped not.

“Your ears.”

I reached up and felt at the notched rims, then shrugged. “The hair will grow over them.”

“Bah.” She grimaced, more annoyed now than passionate. “So you would have let me kill you. All for the sake of a crime you cannot recall … It is not natural.”

“Dannoc is very brave,” one of the other women interposed gently.

“It was more than courage. It was despair.” Istas faced me quietly, her anger spent for the time. “My lad Rad Korridun was right. Something terrible has happened to you, and it has made a madman of you.”

I looked away from her. “Sakeema help me if I ever remember what it was,” I muttered.

“Remember, go ahead and remember! I remember everything, and it is not so fearsome. And in my way I was as mad as you.”

What a woman. Blunt and hard as the seaside stones.

“If a storm wind had toppled Rowalt into the sea,” she mused, “or if a wave had come up and taken him, would I then had hated the sea, taken a knife to it, hurled myself against it? That would have been madness, and it was just as mad to hate you. When you slew Rowalt you no more knew what you were doing than storm, sea, or wildfire.”

I shivered for a moment. The thought of such storm troubled me. If ever it came on me again, might I not hurt someone I—cared for …?

“I am not mad now,” I muttered, fighting down fear.

“Are you not? If you still wish to die, you are.”

The barking words, the dour face of her! Suddenly happy and more than a little perverse, I grinned. “No, I no longer want to die, Istas,” I retorted. “I got over such nonsense the moment you pressed your knife to my gut.”

She did not cringe at the words. “So I cured us both at a stroke,” she said dryly.

“Yes. And as I heal, so must you, Istas.”

“I am tending to it,” she snapped. And she sat by me sternly to see that I ate what she had brought me.

That night as I lay drowsing, not quite asleep, as if by some signal Birc left me and Winewa came in to me. That was her courtesy, I knew, and no one else's. Women of the tribes bedded as they saw fit until they chose a lifelove. I felt both ardent and honored, though I did not think I was able—but she was deft and tender, keeping away from the wounds and delighting the rest of me very much. Talu had not hurt me after all, nor had Istas, for my cock raised his head happily, and presently Winewa eased on top of me—I did not have to move. Her breasts were small and firm, the nipples brown, her buttocks round and firm, just as I had imagined them. And ah, she took me expertly. Bliss … I had never been bedded so softly, lying as still as if in a dream, first my mouth to her breasts and later my hands—her breasts were warm, and I remembered the warmth of them when I awoke in the morning.

Chapter Eight

So taken up was I with the many who came to see me, with relief at being no longer shunned, with delight in Winewa, with dreaming of her, that it was not until the third day that I started to feel uneasy about Korridun. Though I had been wondering for two.

“Why has Kor not been to see me?” I asked Birc.

His thoughtful look told me that he had been wondering the same. “Perhaps it is that—there are others to care for you now.…”

“Would you tell him I asked, when you see him?”

He told him at the noon meal. But the rest of that day went by and I saw nothing of Kor. When the following day was half spent in like wise, I asked Birc to find me a stick.

“It is time I was up and about, anyway.”

“If you hurt that foot,” he warned, “Istas will have your head.”

“She wanted parts of me badly enough before, and refrained. Can you find me something to walk with?”

He returned some time later with a piece of spearpine by way of a staff, and he helped me wrap on my lappet and leggings. No harm in that, for most of the wounds were on the upper part of me, and they had scabbed up so nicely that we had taken off the bandaging the day before, the maidens and I. It did not occur to me to cover the ugliness of the wounds with a tunic. I had gone bare-chested since I was born. I pulled a boot onto my right foot, and Birc helped me up and watched me crutch my way out, my left foot held well up off the floor.