Tsuga's Children (20 page)

Jen and Arn looked at each other, wanting to ask about Tsuga, and if they could find him, whether he might help them find their way back through the mountain. But Amu, Runa and Arel were so quiet, so solemn now, that they didn’t ask.

Soon the thin young man came back, and he and Amu went away from the fire again to talk. When Amu returned he told them Bren had been seen earlier, standing alone near the stone sentry with the rotting boar’s head on it, and no one could make him leave that place. “He may have heard from Andaru,” Amu said.

The hot lake beside them breathed mist, which rose from its surface and slowly moved eastward as it rose and folded in the waning moonlight. It was as if somewhere deep within the lake a great silent fire burned, and the mist was its voluminous smoke.

Along the lakeshore came what looked like a big spider, but then they heard its giggle and it was Ganonoot. “Amu, Amu,” he whined, “Ganonoot is hungry and his tooth is coming loose. What shall he do when it falls out? Then the story will be over, the long story over.” Ganonoot sniffled in self-pity, like a little child.

They gave him food and he sat down by the fire, worrying a piece of smoked fish with his fang and drooling onto his tunic. When he finished the dark meat of the fish he picked a little bone out of his mouth and threw it into the fire, then folded the fish skin and tucked it into his cheek. He wiped his face on his tunic, but they could still see shiny lines of grease deep in the wrinkles of his face. Only then did he seem to notice the children. He smiled so broadly his whole lower face seemed to fold, so that his chin nearly touched his nose.

“Brave Jen, sturdy Arn and delicate Arel!” he said. “But where is Bren, who should be here at Amu’s fire? Without Bren the story will have an unhappy ending!” He looked at Arn, his dark little eyes glittering from the cracks between his many-folded lids. “No, I can’t tell the rest of the story without Bren, so if you want to hear it you must find him, find him, find him!” He giggled as he got his legs under him and glided, in that strange half-shuffling, half-smooth gait of his, off into the night.

“His stories are harmless,” Amu said. “And some even say they are true.” He looked at the half-moon, which just now touched the sharp rim of a mountain. “We must go to the Great Tree and meet Aguma and her party. We will leave our fire burning, and each will get up separately and wait in the darkness for the others. We must go quietly. Arn and I will string our bows. Runa, have your knife unthonged in its sheath. It’s not the free animals we have to fear tonight; there is murder in the world.”

Amu spoke the words slowly, in a low voice. The fire hissed. Runa got up, as if casually, and moved into the darkness that fell over the meadow and the misty lake as the moon slid out of sight.

When they had assembled in the darkness, they walked single file up through the whispering stalks of grass toward the Great Tree. Runa went first, then Arel, then Arn with his small bow strung and a bladed arrow nocked, then Jen, and in the rear Amu, his thick-winged bow strung and a long arrow nocked on the taut string. The stars gave them a gray half-light that their eyes, as the fire faded behind them, could just barely use. They passed a headless sentry stone and soon could feel the presence of the Tree above the ledges.

“Hello,” a voice called softly from the darkness.

“Hello,” Runa answered.

“By the Stag and the Wounded Tree,” the voice called back.

“Amu,” Amu said, and they went on toward the ledges from which the voice had come. They passed the embers of the council fire, avoiding a dark lump that was the severed head of the half-wolf.

Aguma and her party waited for them in front of the Cave of Forgetfulness. They spoke in low voices. Aguma said, “Tsuga believes that the Chigai, or those who favor them, might try to kill you, Amu, or take your family hostage. They saw how you made the people think.”

“Lado?” Amu said. “I can’t believe it. Morl-the-Chigai, maybe …”

“Lado has gone over to them. Did you see his face as he wounded the Tree? And so has Goat Skins, who once had more sense than avarice. There are many gone over.”

“Andaru?” Amu said, his voice controlled and low.

Aguma didn’t answer for a moment. “We don’t know for sure about your brother, Amu.”

“Yes. But you think …”

“We don’t know.”

Jen stepped on something bladdery and soft, and jumped back with a small cry.

“Hush, now,” Aguma said. “What is it?”

They looked closely, to find that it was the headless body of the half-wolf. A man of Aguma’s party picked it up by two legs and heaved it from the stone platform out into the meadow, where it landed with a rustling thud. “The Chigai murder their own,” he said. On the stones a black pool of blood was visible in the starlight.

“Now you must go,” Aguma said. She came forward until she stood over Jen and Arn. “I told Tsuga about you, Jen and Arn, and how you came through the mountain into the world. All he said in answer was, ‘Yes, they have come.’ He did not seem displeased by what I told him, and that is all I have to tell you.”

“Will you come with us, Jen and Arn?” Runa said. “We will be safe in the western mountains, and in seven days we will see Tsuga again.”

Arel said, “Come with us.”

Fannu and Dona were there in the darkness too. Dona said, “Stay with Arel, and we’ll see you in seven days.”

Fannu said, “And we’ll run the ball again.”

The moonless night spread over the dark valley. Around them was the dim grayness of the meadow and the dark woods, and all the strange shapes they would not be sure of in the dark. A chill winter wind had come up, which pierced them at the edges of their clothes. Again without a word between them Jen and Arn knew that they would stay with the warmth of these people they knew.

They climbed the ledges with Amu, Runa and Arel, who put their hands on the Great Tree, whose new wound gleamed. “The Tree will grow over its wound,” Amu said. Jen put her hands on the Tree, one on each side of the ax-wound. She felt the slow movement of the great trunk, the heart-wood flexing deep within to the movements of the wind and even of the earth. Arn did the same, but with him the pale wound caused an unfamiliar sadness, tinged with the possibility of anger. The anger felt strange to him because he knew how young and weak he was compared to the adults whose terrible arguments and passions had caused this wound as well as all the black blood on the stones below. He had seen Bren put his hands on this tree, right here where the tree’s cambium and sap-blood was exposed to the chill air. He thought of Bren. In spite of Bren’s anger and violence, he felt he could trust him as a friend. Where was he now?

Runa went first, and they took a wide circle across the meadow to avoid any of the campfires of the people. Amu told them they would stop just once, in the deep woods, to rest and have something to eat and drink. They must reach the winter camp before dawn.

Runa’s were the best eyes for seeing in the night. She told Jen and Arn how to look, in the darkness of the woods, not directly at what they wanted to see, but just to the side of it, where the eyes perceived more light. Then the looming bole of a tree would come to their eyes in a ghostly shimmer. “In the dark you cannot look at what you want to see,” she said.

After they had walked, as silently as they could, for what seemed hours, Amu softly called for them to stop. By the way the Big Dipper lay across the sky, it was midnight. He took them many yards off the trail into the evergreen woods, where they rested quietly and ate bannock and dried apples, passing the water skin around by feel in the dense darkness. Here only an occasional star winked through the covering branches.

“The Chigai are not good hunters,” Amu said, “and the half-wolves are not dangerous unless their masters are within sight. We must be away from the winter camp before first light.”

With that they rearranged their packs and burdens and continued their journey. Because they had to walk more slowly than they had in daylight, and their caution slowed them, they reached the meadow of the winter camp just before dawn, with the eastern sky lightening behind the sharp mountains. In the open now, they hurried down the slope to the deserted hogans, hoping no unfriendly eyes observed them. Fortunately, with the pale easterly light came a bank of clouds which slowly overcame the sky; in a short time the clouds would temporarily erase the dawn.

They went to the bowyer’s first, for arrows and extra bowstrings. Runa chose a bow and a quiver for herself, and small knives were found for Jen and Arel—short blades as yet unfitted with handles, so that Jen and Arel were busy wrapping the tangs with wet rawhide, which would harden into useful handles. For sheaths, each folded a piece of leather around her blade and tied it with rawhide. Then they went to Amu and Runa’s hogan, where they took the supplies and tools they knew would be needed—awls, a broad-bladed ax, a packbasket for the carrying and gathering of food, a scraper to clean hides of flesh, pots and pans and a crooked knife for carving wood and bone. The packbasket, carried by Amu, was filled with food, though each now carried a small leather water bottle and a rucksack with enough food for two days.

It didn’t take them long. When they emerged from the hogan dark gray snowclouds had covered the sky. The light of the wintry day was beginning to grow in spite of the clouds and the thin snow that now fell.

“Let us hope the snow continues long enough to cover our trail,” Amu said. “Though the half-wolves could follow our scent for half a day in spite of it.”

They passed the high shandeh racks, where the thousands of small splayed fish, offered to the sun, now turned white in the gently falling snow. They were about to pass the outermost hogan, Andaru’s, before taking the western trail, when Amu stopped. “Heh!” he said softly, and they all stopped. Arn’s nocked arrow tapped against his bow as he turned to where Amu looked.

A wisp of blue smoke rose from the hogan’s roof, then rose higher to dissipate in the falling snow. Amu motioned to Arn to come close. “Bren told me you could shoot pretty well,” he whispered. “Could you shoot a man if you had to, or a half-wolf?”

Arn thought. He had shot an innocent toad; he had shot at targets. He knew that even his small arrow could pierce a man or a wolf. “I don’t know,” he said, trembling so much his arrow tapped again against his bow.

Amu merely placed his hand upon Arn’s shoulder and squeezed, as if he approved of Arn’s answer. Then, with a nod to Runa, whose strung bow was armed with a broad-headed arrow, he motioned to Jen and Arel to stay close to the wall of the hogan. With his own arrow half drawn he shouldered away the bearskin door flap and went quickly inside. Soon he came back out. “Someone spent the night here. Maybe Andaru,” he said. “Someone cooked shandeh and corn.”

The snow grew thicker around them until it was a white silence, a white nothing when they looked back toward where the hogans had been. It fell straight down, wide flakes that gave a feeling of warmth as they descended from the white sky and landed silently. “Well, we must go,” Amu said.

They crossed the meadow toward the southwest, on the same trail, now white and silent, that the children had taken on their walk to the bald knob. Soon the trees loomed up before them, tall pines growing heavy with snow, and they passed beneath the sheltering branches into the softwood forest where the fallen needles were brown and quiet. It was like a great room, where they could see down the aisles of trees. But then they heard in the distance a long howl, choked off at the end. It came from ahead of them, from somewhere down the long dim corridors beyond their sight.

They all stopped. Amu said in a low voice, “It might be a wolf. But it might be a half-wolf. We’ll have to leave the trail and circle downwind.” He picked up a handful of dry needles and dust, held them at eye level and let them fall. There was hardly any wind, but the dust and needles seemed to be carried in their falling slightly toward the south. They knew the trail ran east and west, but when they left it for the almost windless twilight of the forest, with the snowclouds above masking the sun, it would be hard to keep on their course.

They hadn’t gone more than a quarter of a mile in an angle to the southwest, when three wolves came running toward them through the dark trunks of the pines. The wolves were silent, leaping forward smoothly, their eyes observant but obviously not seeing Amu and his party. Short thongs were attached to the wolves’ leather collars, proving that they were half-wolves of the Chigai. Then they stopped, sliding forward in a flurry of snow and pine needles. Their eyes opened to the whites in their surprise at seeing five people in their path. They stopped for a second too long, for Amu’s and Runa’s arrows whicked from their bows and two of the half-wolves grew arrows from their gray bodies. One fell to its side with Amu’s feathers at its chest. The other gave a short scream and ran several yards before it fell kicking to its side, the random kicking of death throes. The third half-wolf had disappeared into the trees.

Arn stood with his arrow half drawn. He knew that if he had shot he wouldn’t have aimed, would have in panic simply let his arrow fly in the direction of the half-wolves. He would have missed. But as it was he had been too surprised even to draw his arrow to the full. His bow seemed only a toy, his arrow only a fragile little stick.

Amu put down his packbasket, went forward and with both hands pulled his arrow from the body of the wolf. Runa’s arrow had been broken by the other half-wolfs kicking and thrashing, so she broke off the bladed arrowhead and stripped off the feathers to save them for another arrow. Amu took out his knife and cut the collars free. “It was not their fault they were slaves,” he said. He left the severed collars next to the gray bodies. “No time to skin them now,” he said. “Their masters will be near.” Then he coughed and looked around, surprised. The fletching of an arrow had appeared below his right shoulder blade, the head and shaft protruding from his chest. He went slowly to his knees.

Runa gave a long cry that continued as she turned and drew her arrow to the full. “Lado!” she cried. She had recognized the fletching of the arrow, which was Lado’s. Several men and a half-wolf appeared from close behind the trees and ran toward them. When the men saw that Runa held a drawn bow, they were surprised and tried to run to the side, but her arrow was already in the air. It caught one of the men just above the hip, and he fell. This time Arn had his bow fully drawn. The half-wolf had run right over Jen, knocking her down with its shoulder. For a moment it shied away from Runa and her bow, dancing in place with frantic energy as it clicked its long teeth, wanting to attack. Arn was no more than ten feet from the half-wolf, his arrow drawn. He put the arrowhead upon the hairy gray side with his eye, and his fingers loosened smoothly. He saw the arrow jump from his bow across his left hand, flex in the air and straighten before it disappeared between the half-wolfs gaunt ribs. The half-wolf screamed and turned to bite the arrow’s shaft where it emerged from its side. Arn heard the clash of teeth on wood and the snapping of the arrow. But then he was knocked to the ground, his breath taken from him as it had been before in play. An arm roughly grabbed him up and held him. All around were grunts and screams. A bowstring twanged, and there was another scream much like the half-wolfs. He was pressed cruelly against a man’s body, trying to breathe, when his hand found the hilt of his knife, his fingers from long habit loosening the thong before he drew the small blade and stabbed, stabbed wherever he could through the leather clothes of his captor. With a yell the man dropped him to the ground, where he could try again to breathe.