Madbond (15 page)

Kor frowned. This was new. “How will you take the food, then?” he asked quietly after a moment.

“In dugouts, perhaps. We will paddle it over to the mouth of the river, portage it upstream. But the canoes are heavy and narrow. If you can loan us your coracles, which hold more, all will go faster.”

“There are no boats to spare!” Istas protested.

Kor was thinking. “You send folk,” he said finally, “and we will help you make boats.”

“But then those who are sent will be gone the longer from the work to be done against next winter. Less will be gathered and laid by.” The man spoke softly, his look worried.

“We need our coracles for fishing,” said Kor, not harshly but firmly. “The fish sustain us and sometimes you. I do not know what other offer to make you or your ruler.”

“Izu will decide. Perhaps we can somehow bargain pack beasts from the Herders, should any of their traders pass our way.” The messenger bowed. “You are very generous. The matter is pressing, and I must go in all haste.”

“Stay for the noon meal, at least.”

“I cannot, Korridun King. But if you will give me what food I can carry in my hand, I will be glad of it.”

Istas sent for bread from the hearth and dried fish from the stores stacked deep in the Hold. The runner loped off to drink lightly from the spring, and the moment the packet of food was in his hand he was on his way again, southward along the mountain flanks, the sweat not yet dry on his body. We all stood and watched him go. He carried not even a blanket for sleeping under.

“He could not spare even a day,” Kor murmured. “Things must be hard with them.”

“We will be hearing from Pajlat,” Istas said in dour tones.

“I do not doubt it.” Kor gave her a crooked smile, which seemed to vex her. She sniffed and marched away.

“What will you give Pajlat?” I asked Kor.

“Oats.”

“Do you always give him what he wants?”

“Not all that he wants—we would be long since starved and dead if I gave him all that he wants! But I always give him something. Better so than that he should come and take what he wants perforce.”

Undeniably better. I had faced the Fanged Horse Folk in battle, and I had no desire ever to do so again. They fought with shriveled human heads hanging from their bearskin riding pelts. Nor was their joy entirely in killing. Sometimes they took captives who were later “set free,” sent stumbling across the rocky steppes “in red boots,” with all the skin flayed from their feet up to their ankles. Alone of all the tribes they kept slaves, and they were so proud, it was said, that sometimes they killed the slaves for no better reason than to boast of their wealth to each other, showing that they did not mind the loss of a slave or two. Sometimes they even killed their horses in like wise, when their warriors vied with each other for honor.

I shook myself, shaking off thoughts of Pajlat, turning my thoughts to Talu. “Give me a leg up?” I asked Kor “My foot is well enough, and I would like to try riding that mare again.”

He eyed me doubtfully. “What if she throws you and you land on it?”

“She will not throw me. If she acts as if she might, I will swing down by her neck. Come on, Kor.”

He complied. Talu was in among the aspens, hunting for mice and voles in the ferns. She had found a rabbit's nest and was busily munching up the hairless morsels therein, so she let us approach without being coy as horses so often are. I threw my cloak over her back and Kor locked his hands to receive my knee, hoisting me up onto her. Talu's head came up with a snort, and I passed a leather thong around her neck, mostly to hold on to—I did not have much hope of guiding Talu.

“Are you sure—”

I never heard the rest of what Kor said. We were off, the mare and I, plunging away from him and down the side of the headland. But for all her snorting and leaping it was a glorious ride. She soon settled into a steady lope along the mountainside, and the jarring of her gait pained my foot only a little. And oh, the spring-green cool smell of the blue pines, the smell and the sound of the freshwater torrents up on the slopes, the call of a falcon carrying far on the air … Up on the high peaks the snowmelt would be starting, the deer sleek-red for spring, the harts in velvet antler, and I longed to be there to see them. It was only after hours, reluctantly, that I coaxed Talu to a stop and turned her back again toward Seal Hold.

After that, though I did not speak of it, I felt an ache other than that of my healing foot, and again I grew restless at night, though in a gentle way. After Winewa had gone off to her sleep I would get up and wander into the forest, the thick, wet, salt-swept coastal forest, spruce and birch all dark green with moss, trunks and dead lower branches dripping with it, dead ancestor logs plumed with ferns and glowing eerie orange with fungi. Sometimes young trees grew out of the bodies of their parents. It was a very different place from the open mountaintop forests I remembered. It troubled me that I did not know the names and customs of half the plants, the flowers. I felt very much the stranger there. Still, forest was forest, and when I was wakeful I went to forest for comfort.

There were tiny white flowers growing amid the rubble under the trees, welcome-spring flowers, and in the darkness they seemed to shine with their own small light, like constellations and scatterings of stars. Perhaps it was moonlight made it seem so, for the moon was nearing the full. Though moonlight scarcely reached into that dense gloom beneath the evergreens.

On the night of the full moon I made excuses to Winewa and went out to keep watch with Kor.

He was openly waiting for me on the sea cliff, amused and defiant. “There are three who might come,” he reported. “Olpash not among them. He is more likely to poison my soup than face me, after blundering into the devourer as he did. But there are others. I have faced them before, and I am tired of it. Let us go someplace where we can talk in peace.”

“Where?” To the forest, I hoped.

“Down over the cliffs, with the seals.” Then he laughed at me, I suppose seeing the look on my face, or perhaps not needing to see it. “No, I am only half serious, Dan. We would not be able to hear there, not with the surf running high. Let us go where you and Talu rode.”

We skirted the great lodge and walked up through the dark forest until we were entirely away from the headland. Like a boy shirking work, Kor was in high spirits. Even the midnight forest, full of the rustlings of owls and martens and the screams of dying mice, seemed friendlier to him than the place he was supposed to be. As for me, I felt yearning grip at my heart again, and I pretended that the crashing of the sea was the sound of wind around the great yellow pines that grow beyond the snowpeaks.

“There is no need for you to stay here forever, Dan,” said Kor quietly and suddenly out of the darkness. “When you are well, you should go. I have seen you looking away toward the mountains.”

I stopped in my tracks, at the same time overjoyed and stricken. “But—how can I go?” I protested, full of shame. “Only a few weeks ago I offered you my lifelong allegiance—”

“And I told you I was no king to you, but a friend. And friends help each other, as I recall.”

Even in the darkness I could feel the pull of the snowpeaks, I knew when my face turned toward them. As most often it did. Nevertheless, if it were only that longing …

“I would not leave you for so slender a reason,” I said. “If it were only to roam on the mountains.”

“But …” Kor prodded.

“But the thought is in me that I must go back to my tribe. To my father and my brothers. Tell them I am alive, and try to find out what mystery has darkened my mind.”

“Ah,” Kor breathed.

“I ought to, I must, if I am to be something more than a madman.” I was half afraid, even of the words, and my voice faltered. The next thought, though, burst from me. “But how am I to leave you here with your precious Olpash and those thrice-accursed devourers and this blasted vigil?”

“For the matter of that,” said Korridun, “if you will let me, I will come with you.”

“What? How? You can't!”

“I can and, Dan willing, I will. Stop yelping and listen.” We had reached a slope of scree, gray-white in the moonlight, and Kor settled himself on one of the larger rocks. “Sit down. In the first place, I have been thinking for some time that I would like to confer with your father.”

“What for?”

He did not answer me at once, but turned and looked up the rock field that tumbled behind him. “Because the whole world is falling to bits, Dannoc,” he said finally.

“Kor—”

“I am serious. See this mighty pile of talus? Each of these stones was once part of the peak, but they have fallen away as if chipped off by a great hammer. All the world is being chipped away like that, bit by bit. I am yet young, but I can see it happening, the salmon less each year, and the doves, and—everything, the white weasels, not once seen since three years ago, and the singing heron, six. There were gannet nesting on the rocks along the coast when I was a boy, and gair fowl, they darkened the cliffs with their numbers. None since. Where have all the wolves gone, and the mountain lions, and the great blue bears? If one of them came right now and stood before me, I would not care if it rent me. I would die happy to have seen any one of them, just in that one dying moment of my life.”

His words filled me with longing, the more so since I remembered a certain dream.

I said, “I have often thought the same, and so has every hunter of our tribe, I dare say. But what can my father tell you of these things that you do not already know?”

“Perhaps nothing.” Korridun's voice grew more grim—it was the king who sat and talked with me, now. “But if it goes on—as I can only believe it will go on—then within a few years there will not be enough fish for the Otter River people or enough forage for the Fanged Horse Folk, and perhaps not enough deer for you. But my people fish the endless sea and live in one place and grow oats. And there will be many others who will want the fish and the oats. But my Holding is small, a toehold between the mountains and the sea.…”

He wanted to make my father his ally, then. A fitting business for a king.

“Perhaps you could talk to Ayol of the Herders, also,” I suggested.

“Perhaps.”

“But can you leave your tribe for so long?”

Kor stretched himself contentedly and grinned. “Not only can I, but it will be by far the best thing for me to do. My counselors are a sullen lot of late. I forced them into open enmity when I revealed that I knew who my masked challengers were. And I am weary unto death of these vigils. And I am—” He lowered his voice. “I am none too willing to face another devourer.”

“It is a wonder you have not found excuse to go wandering before.”

“I have often thought of it! But there was no one to leave behind as regent, no one I could truly trust, until lately.”

I blinked at him. “What has happened lately?”

“What has happened! Dannoc—” He seemed about to mock me, gave a low laugh and let it go. “Istas has learned the meaning of mercy,” he said.

“Mercy,” I murmured, remembering myself as a sullen boy, remembering a father who threw away the lash, wondering why the memory hurt me.

“Yes, mercy. I love my folk, Dan. Sakeema be praised that I learned mercy early, or half of them would be dead, for they are a fractious lot at times.”

The wry affection in his voice made me smile. “When did you learn?”

“When I had Rhudd thrown off the cliff.”

My smile faded, for I heard sorrow. “But what else could you have done?” I protested. “He had planned to kill you. He was a traitor, and a danger to you!”

“What else could I have done? I could have let him live, of course, and perhaps he would have come back into being the decent man he once was. Failing that, I could at least have had the courage to slay him with my own hands.” Kor's voice was shaking and so low I could scarcely hear him. “Mahela knows I wanted to. I dreamed of tortures, I was eaten up with hatred of him for what he had put me through, poor little me! Even then I knew that it was wrong to hate so, and I thought I would have mercy and forgo the tortures. I would merely have him quickly killed. So I sullied the hands of other men with blood that should have been on my own.” His voice grew softer yet. “Olpash was one of those who sent Rhudd to his doom.”

“You think—” Dimly I saw the line of his reasoning, and I was doubtful and amazed.

“Yes, I do think.” He got up to pace. “I know it hardened him. A man who has once killed in cold blood, however justly, will not hesitate so long to kill again. A lawful challenge, a lawful killing, very much like an execution within the law … Perhaps Olpash knows what I have made of him, and hates me for it. My hatred has begotten his. Hatred begets hatred, and blood—”

“Kor,” I interrupted, standing in my turn, “you were young, in danger, nearly helpless. It would have been folly to let an enemy live.”

“Was it folly to let you live?” he retorted.

The words shook me. I hoped not, by all the powers of Sakeema I hoped not, but if ever the madness should come over me again and I should turn on him … For his sake as much as my own I had to find my way back to the beginning of it.

“Your folk thought so,” I whispered.

He came over and laid his hands on my shoulders. “They were wrong, and they know it now,” he said gently. “And I have told you what you have meant to me, Dan.”

So his mercy had given me life. No more than I already knew. No need for tears … At random I walked away from them, and Kor walked beside me. Moonlight on starflowers at our feet. I could walk strongly that night, without much aid of the stick, even on the slopes.

“You understand well enough, for all your protesting,” Kor said quietly after a while. “But Istas never understood. It seemed to her only simple justice to punish where there was wrong. She is the most deft of managers and she is masterly at reaching agreement in the council. She knows the ways of the tribe and she settles quarrels. Everyone loves and respects her. Olpash and the others would be ashamed to contest for power against such a venerable old woman. Also, she knows how to deal with trouble that comes from outside.… But if I had given her power over the tribe even as recently as a few months ago, I would have feared for my people. She did not yet know the meaning of mercy.”