The Steel Remains (23 page)

Poltar waited until he'd gone, watched from the yurt's entrance as the man moved away through the firelit bustle of the camp, then pulled the hangings tight and went back to Ergund. He found the clanmaster's brother getting to his feet.

“Where are you going?”

“Look, it's… I shouldn't have come. Grela talked me into it, she said you'd know what to do.”

“Yes. She's right. I do.”

“Well,” Ergund grimaced. “I mean, it was just a dream, right?”

“Was it?”

“It
felt
like a dream.”

The shaman trod closer. “But?”

“But I…” Ergund shook his head. It was like watching a buffalo only halfway stunned by some incompetent butcher. “When I woke up, there was grass matted on the bottom of my feet. Still damp. Like I'd really been out there.”

“You
were
really out there, Ergund.”

“In this cold?” The herdsman snorted, common sense shouldering through the press of arcane fear. “In bare feet? Come on, I'd have fucking frostbite by now. My toes'd be turning black.”

Poltar crowded him back to his seat, stood over him. Kept his voice low and hypnotic.

“The dream world is not this world, Ergund. It echoes this place, but it is an otherness, another aspect. It has its own seasons, its own natural laws. You
did
walk there; the grass on your feet is a sign. It's the Dwellers’ way of showing you that what you dreamed is real. It's a warning to take this seriously. Your wife was right to send you to me. This is a path we must walk together.”

“But, I mean, this thing, the upright wolf. It might have been a demon, sent to trick me. Sent to sow discord in the clan.”

Poltar nodded as if giving it consideration.

“That's a good point. But demons do not have the power to cross the expressed will of the Dwellers. If it was a demon that drew you out there and spoke to you, then it did so with the Sky Home's blessing.”

And inwardly, he recalled something his father had once said, in an
unguarded moment as they sat out at vigil together one spring night. Poltar's mother had passed away the previous winter from the coughing fever, and Olgan had changed with her passing in ways the young Poltar was still trying to fathom.

Common men make a distinction between gods and demons, Poltar, but it's ignorance to talk that way. When the powers do our will, we worship them as gods; when they thwart and frustrate us, we hate and fear them as demons. They are the same creatures, the same twisted unhuman things. The shamans path is negotiation, nothing more. We tend the relationship with the powers so they bring us more benefit than ruin. We can do no more.

And quickly, glancing guiltily up from his brooding,
Never speak of this to anyone. Men are not ready to hear this truth— though sometimes I think women may be. Sometimes, I think…

But he lapsed into brooding silence again, staring at the fire and listening to the ceaseless wind off the steppe. And he never spoke of the matter again.

“You really think,” said Ergund uncertainly, “that the Sky Home has taken against my brother?”

Poltar seated himself with care. He leaned forward. Spoke softly. “What do
you
think, Ergund? What does your conscience tell you?”

“I… Grela says …” Ergund stared down at his hands, and his expression suddenly turned harsh. “Fuck it, he doesn't
behave
like a clanmaster anymore. You know, coming here, I passed that little slut Sula on her way to his yurt again. I mean, she's what, fifteen? What's he doing with a girl like that?”

“I don't think you need a shaman to answer that,” Poltar said drily.

Ergund didn't appear to hear him. “It's not even like it'll last. This is going to end up just like that half- Voronak bitch that threw herself at him last year. Couple of months, he'll get bored and drop her. If there's a child, he'll use his mastery privileges to claw settlement for it out of the clan herds, and then he'll move on to whichever big- titted slut next widens her eyes at him across a feasting board.”

He stopped, appeared to rein himself in. He got up and tried to move about in the alcove. He threw out the blade of one open palm.

“Look, if that's how Egar wants to piss his time away, I won't gainsay him. A man pitches his yurt where he will, and then he has to lie in it. I'm not some fucking southern priest, trying to nitpick every ball-scratching moment of every other man's life. But this isn't just about Egar and how he lives. I mean, it's fucking Greasing Night, for Urann's sake, it's a ceremony. He should be out there with his people, showing himself, setting an example. Showing the children how to do their faces for the cold. Inspecting the masks. Not…”

“Getting greased in private between the legs?”

It got a weak laugh out of Ergund. “That's right. Taking Greasing Night all the wrong way, isn't he?”

“He is neglecting his duties, yes.” More seriously now. “Not all men are born to lead, there is no shame in that. But those who are not must accept the fact, and cede to those who can carry the responsibility better.”

Ergund's eyes darted to the shaman's face, and then away.

“I don't want it,” he said quickly. “I'm not, this isn't—”

“I know, I know.” Soothing now. “You have always been content to tend your herds and your family, Ergund.”
And be driven and harried by that nagging, malcontent bitch of a wife.
“To raise your voice in council only where necessary and otherwise stay out of such matters. You are a man who understands his strengths, the paths the powers have laid out for him. But don't you see, that is what makes you the perfect intermediary for those powers.”

A hard stare. “No, I don't see that at all.”

“Look.” Poltar tried to quell a rising sense of moment, of destiny that must be handled with painstaking care. “Suppose one of your brothers had come to me with this, Alrag, say, or Gant. Then, I would have to question whether this dream were true or—”

“My brothers don't lie!”

“Right, of course. You misunderstand me. I say true in the sense of
meaningful.
Truly sent by the Dwellers. Alrag is an honorable man, of course. But it's no secret he's always wanted the clan mastery for himself. And Gant, like you, questions Egar's suitability to lead, but he is not circumspect like you. He speaks openly of these things. The word in camp is that he is simply jealous.”

“Ungoverned women's tongues,” said Ergund bitterly.

“Perhaps. But the fact remains that both Gant and Alrag might well dream such a dream because it speaks to their own personal desires. With you, I know that's not true. You want no more than what is best for the Skaranak. Through such vessels, the Dwellers speak best.”

Ergund sat, head down. Perhaps he was dealing with the weight of Poltar's words, perhaps simply with the unwelcome idea that a steppe wolf really had gotten up on its hind legs and walked out of the darkness to find him. When he finally spoke, his voice shook slightly.

“So what do we do?”

“For the moment, nothing.” Poltar kept his tone carefully neutral. “If this is the Dwellers’ will, as it seems it is, then there will be other signs. There are rites I can perform for guidance, but they take time to prepare. Have you spoken to anyone else about this?”

“Only Grela.”

“Good.” It wasn't— you could trust Grela about as far as you could herd campfire smoke. But Poltar knew she had little enough love for Egar. “Then let's keep it that way. We'll talk again, after the ceremonies. But for now, let all three of us be servants of the Sky Home with our silence.”

LATER, WHEN THE CHILDREN HAD FACED DOWN YNPRPRAL WITH THEIR
grinning, freshly greased firelit faces and their pummeling barrages of half- delighted, half- terrified shouting and their running about at their parents’ urging, when they'd chased the ice demon from his flapping, haunting circuits of the great bonfire and back out into the cold dark he belonged to, when all that was done and the Skaranak had settled to their customary drinking and singing and tale telling and staring owlishly into the spit- crackle warmth of the flames …

… then Poltar crouched out in the windswept chill of the steppe, staying later away from the camp than he could remember himself doing for a dozen or more years, biting back his shivers and hugging himself beneath his father's wolf- skin cloak, muttering under his steaming breath and waiting …

Out of the darkness and bending grasses and the wind and the cold, she came walking. Bandlight broke through cloud and touched her.

Grinning, tongue lolling, all sharp white puncturing fangs and eyes, balancing back on legs never made for walking upright, wrapped head-to- foot in wolf the way she had in Ishlin- ichan wrapped herself in whore.

She did not speak. The wind howled on her behalf.

He rose, the chill in his bones and on his face forgotten, and he went to her like a man to the marriage bed.

ingren was installed in the western lounge when Ringil got in, pacing noisily up and down and barking at someone whose responses were much softer. They'd left the door ajar, which seemed invitation enough to eavesdrop. Ringil hovered for a moment in the corridor outside, listening to his father's gruff tones and a low, diffident voice that he made as that of his oldest brother, Gingren Junior. A cold memory gusted through him at the sound.

A long corridor…

He was about to slip away when Gingren, showing a quite remarkable sixth sense, looked up and caught him there.

“Ringil!” he bellowed. “Just the man. Get in here, will you!”

Ringil sighed. He took a couple of steps inside the room and stood there, barely over the threshold.

“Yes, Father.”

Gingren and Gingren Junior exchanged a glance. Ringil's brother
was sprawled on a couch by the window, rigged for the street in boots and court sword, clearly on a visit from his own family home over in Linardin. It was the first time Ringil had seen him in nearly seven years, and changes weren't flattering. He'd put on weight and grown a beard that didn't really suit him.

“We were just talking about you.”

“That's nice.”

His father cleared his throat. “Yes, well, Ging's been saying, we can probably nip this idiocy in the bud. Kaad doesn't want it any more than we do, looks like Iscon just went overboard on his own account. It's not the right time for the notable families of Trelayne to be squabbling over trivia like this.”

“The Kaads are a notable family now, are they?”

Gingren Junior chortled, then shut up abruptly as his father glared at him.

“You know what I mean.”

“Not really, no.” Ringil looked at his elder brother, and Gingren Junior looked away. “You come to offer yourself as a second, Ging?”

An awkward silence.

“I didn't think so.”

His brother flushed. “Gil, it's not like that.”

“No?”

“What your brother is trying to say is that there is no need for seconds, or any other element of this ridiculous charade. Iscon Kaad will not fight, and neither will you. We will resolve this with intelligence.”

“Yeah? What if I don't want to?”

Gingren made a noise in his throat. “I'm getting tired of this attitude, Ringil. Why would you
want
to fight?”

Ringil shrugged. “I don't know. It's your family name he insulted coming here the way he did. Threatening steel on the premises.”

Gingren Junior bristled forward in his seat. “It's your family, too.”

“Good. We're agreed then.”

“No, we are
not fucking agreed!”
Gingren yelled. “You cannot just fucking
cut
your way through everything with that cursed sword of yours, Ringil. That's not how we do things here in the city. Not anymore.”

Ringil examined his nails. “Well, I've been away.”

“Yeah.” His father clenched a fist at his hip. “Maybe you should have fucking stayed away.”

“Hey— blame your gracious lady wife.”

Ging came to his feet. “Don't you dare talk about Mother like that!”

“Oh,
shut
up.” Ringil closed his eyes briefly in exasperation. “Look, I'm fucking sick of this. Are you in on this Etterkal thing as well, Ging? You keen to stop me looking for our cousin Sherin, too, in case it puts too many lucrative backstreet deals in the lamplight? Upsets too many of our scummy new harbor- end friends?”

“Sherin always was a stupid little tart,” said Ging bluntly. “We all told her not to marry Bilgrest.”

“Stupid little tart or not, your honored mother wants her back.”

“I told you—”

Ringil grinned wolfishly “Shame she had to work her way down all three brothers before she found one with the balls to do what she asked.”

Gingren Junior surged forward. Ringil went to meet him. He was still shaken up from the events at the gate, would welcome the chance to hit something.

“Ging! Ringil!”

At the sound of their father's voice, both brothers stopped, arm's reach apart in the center of the lounge, gazes locked. Ringil watched his brother's furious face, distantly aware that there was nothing in his own expression to match, nothing there at all but a faint smile and the blank promise of violence.