West of January (4 page)

Having no sense of time, I could not comprehend the difference between growing older and growing bigger. I was small and did not appreciate my danger. Talana’s son Arrint was larger than I was, so I assumed that he must go next, after Indarth. Then, once, while bathing in the pond, I glanced down at my groin. There have been few events in my long life that frightened me more than seeing that sheen of golden fuzz. Hastily I checked my armpits. So far they were innocent, but I had enough sense of time to know that they must soon follow. Now terror stalked me, also; thereafter I was much less interested in childish behavior such as splashing around in water. That was the second landmark.

The third was the arrival of my father’s sixth woman, and this was important to me because I was conscripted to play a part. It gave me a glimpse of men’s affairs and a hint of what seemingly lay in store for me.

My father rode into camp and dismounted, but he did not unsaddle his horse, merely dropping the reins and striding across to the weaving place. The women scrambled hastily to their feet.

“Hanthar?” he said.

“She is sleeping, sir.”

“Wake her. Get her ready.” He was not a man to waste words. The family buzzed with excitement and bewilderment.

I was eating—small as I was, I had an appetite second to none. My father glanced around and his eyes settled on me, who was suddenly no longer hungry. I wondered if my pagne was decently in place and doing its job.

“Knobil!”

“Yes, sir?”

“You will come also. To help me.” Then he added an unusually long speech: “You will be coming back, so don’t worry.”

Help him? That was unprecedented. I suppose I swelled with pride and flashed arrogant glances at the others. I can see now that he had chosen me because I seemed younger than my true age, and therefore relatively harmless. Fortunately for my self-esteem, I did not know that then.

There were no emotional farewells—or if there were, they were made within the tents. My father rode. Hanthar walked on one side of him in her new gown, bearing a bundle on her back. I strutted proudly on the other, full of contempt for her foolish silent tears.

It was a long outing and it seemed very pointless, for we were retracing our last move. Our own woollies’ dung lay everywhere. But when my father unslung his bow and strung it, and thereafter kept it to hand, my self-assurance wavered. Then, after a wearisome trek beneath the merciless sun, we crested a ridge and saw our objective on the next hill—two woollies and two people.

My father reined in his horse. “Go to him, Knobil. Tell him if he wishes to trade, he is welcome. Else he must depart.”

I did not fully understand, but I ran.

The newcomers waited for me, turning their woollies so that they did not approach closer. I ran so hard that I had almost no breath to speak when I came up to them, but by then I had realized that I was facing a boy little older than myself and a girl very much like Hanthar. Probably I then knew what was going to happen, but I would not have understood why, for no one had ever lectured me on the incest taboo.

I gasped out my message. The boy seemed as nervous as I was, but he nodded. “I come to trade,” he said.

There was a moment’s pause, for neither of us knew what should happen next; then I turned and started running back. I saw my father and his daughter start down the slope toward me. He had left his horse and weapons on the ridge top. The boy and girl came behind me, and all five of us met in the marshy hollow.

My father must have seemed like a very terrible hairy giant to the lad, who was quivering like the grass dancing in the wind. He quickly gabbled out a speech, obviously well rehearsed and probably taken word for word from that father-son lecture that I was never to hear.

“I offer my sister Jalinan, a woman unspoiled, well trained, and of good stock, suitably furnished.”

My father waited and then prompted, “Show me.”

The boy nudged his sister angrily and pointed at her bundle, lying now at her feet. She knelt to unfasten it.

I had never heard my father’s voice softer. “Not that. Her.”

Blushing furiously at his error, the boy ordered his sister to strip, trying to help her with inexpert hands. Solemnly my father inspected the trade goods. I suppose he was establishing that the girl was a virgin and had not been a victim of incest. I do not recall what emotions she was showing. I probably did not care, and I was certainly not looking at her face.

He rose. “She is as you state.” That sounded like a set speech also. “In trade I offer my daughter, Hanthar, who is likewise unspoiled, well trained, and of good stock, suitably furnished.”

I had forgotten how to breathe while this was taking place in that little hollow. Marsh worms could have eaten off my toes and I would not have noticed. Now my sister had to remove her clothing also. The boy inspected her briefly, but even then I doubted that he knew what he was looking for. He straightened up, redder than ever and obviously at a loss. Probably his instruction had not gone as far as this.

A small smile escaped from within my father’s beard at that point, one of the very few I can ever remember seeing there. He offered a hand. The boy flinched and then shook it as if he had never shaken hands before. The girls were hastily dressing.

“Go with this man and serve him well,” my father said, giving Hanthar a gentle push. He beckoned to Jalinan. When she stooped to raise her bundle, he told her softly to leave it. “Two woollies are not enough,” he said. “I shall send out two more.”

“Sir…you are most generous.” The lad seemed thunderstruck.

“I should not want my daughter to starve,” my father said, almost as if that were an admission of weakness.

Hanthar carried the two bundles off, following the boy. My father watched until they were halfway up the hill before turning away himself. He would have been taking a last, sentimental look at his departing chick, or perhaps he was guarding against treachery.

By the time we reached the camp, the women had already erected a sixth tent. My father said only, “This is Jalinan,” and handed her over to Amby.

He sent Indarth off with two woollies and then attended to his horse, ignoring the large band of curious onlookers. We boys all wanted to know what would happen next.

What happened next was not very informative. The women had prepared a large and steaming dish of food. I expect Amby had also prepared and instructed Jalinan, who was waiting within the new tent. My father took the dish and entered. The flap closed, shutting out our eyes, if not our imaginations. A couple of my half-brothers claimed to have caught a glimpse of the new woman with no clothes on. I, of course, could brag about my earlier comprehensive overview.

Eventually we lost interest, as boys will, and wandered away to bathe, for whatever was happening seemed to be taking a very long time. I expect it was done gently. He was a kindly man, and patient.

That, then, was the third of my four landmarks. Now I knew the ending of the ceremony that began when a boy was ordered to raise his arms. How much time elapsed before the fourth landmark, I cannot say. Not a long time, I think, but long enough for little Jalinan to be accepted as just one more of the women and to start to swell into a woman’s normal shape.

It happened with no warning. Once again I was by the fire and eating—I have already confessed the appetite I had in my youth. I think I was the first to notice the stranger walking boldly into camp. He was young, with only a shadow of a beard; tall, but slender as a dead tree. I remember my astonishment at the thinness and length of his legs. His ragged pagne reached barely to his knees. He had a bulky bundle under one arm and a bow on his shoulder, a much longer bow than my father used. And he carried a sword in his free hand.

The women shrilled in terror and then fell silent as the stranger approached the fire. They rose hesitantly to their feet. We children followed. I remember staring around wildly for my father to defend us, while at the same time wondering if this armed intruder could possibly be an angel.

The youth stopped and looked us over. “Who is senior?” he demanded.

Aunt Amby stumbled forward and sank to her knees.

The newcomer threw down his bundle before her. It fell open. The wrapping was my father’s breeches, and the bloody, hairy thing inside it was his head.

—3—

T
HE STRANGER WAS VERY NERVOUS
and therefore dangerous, although at the time I understood only the danger.

The rest of the women followed Amby to the ground, prostrating themselves, and of course we children copied them at once. The babes and toddlers did not understand, and the rest of us were too shocked to make a sound. Thus there was silence in the sunlight, broken only by a crackle from the smoky fire and a listless flapping of wind in a loose awning somewhere. I crouched on the grass, staring at my shadow before my nose, trembling uncontrollably. A pair of large, bare, dirty feet walked by me as the newcomer inspected his catch. Eventually I risked an upward glance and saw that other heads were rising also.

He was very tall and very thin, but his feet and hands were large, his shoulders broad. I was never to learn where he had come from, or how. He had apparently been sent out as a true loner, without woman or woollie, for he did not send any of us to retrieve a herd. Perhaps he had lost them to another; he never saw a need to tell us his history. He must have survived for some time on his own—time enough to grow that haze of beard around his mouth, time for his hair to reach down to his shoulders. Unless his father had taught him more archery than mine ever taught me, this loner would have needed time to learn that also. He must have lived off the land—which explained those conspicuous ribs and the crazy sunken eyes.

“You!” he snapped. “What’s your name?”

I shriveled small with terror. “Knobil, sir.”

“Go and fetch the herders. All of them.”

I was running before I was fully upright, racing over the dusty grass between the tents, off toward the distant woollies, making the horses shy and jerk at their tethers as I passed them, hearing my own heart thud and soon my own gasping breath.

By the time I led the herders in, small ones at the rear, larger and faster ones at the front, the newcomer had ordered each woman to sit before her tent with her brood around her. Sleepers had been wakened, and the entire family assembled for the scrutiny of its new owner.

He studied us with a fierce smile on his thin face, his ribs heaving periodically with deep breaths of satisfaction. He still had his bow and quiver on his shoulder, and he held my father’s sword, naked and caked with dry blood. Now he could see that his coup was not going to be contested, so his nervousness was fading. He must have been savoring a great sense of achievement, for at one stroke he had transformed himself from impoverished waif to man of wealth.

I huddled as close to my mother as I could, but her smaller children were thick around her. I probably looked—and certainly felt—as terrified as Indarth, on her other side. It was then that I first wondered how our father had come by his start in life and if he had murdered for it. Amby must have known, but I never had the courage to ask her.

“I am Anubyl,” the stranger said. “You belong to me now.”

Heads nodded.

He stepped first to Aunt Amby and demanded her name. He looked over her children, then moved to Aunt Ulith. When he reached us, his eyes narrowed. He told Indarth to stand, then to lift his arms.

“You,” he said, “will leave.” He pointed across the empty ridges. “That way.”

Indarth licked his lips, nodded, and started to move. After a few steps he stopped. “Who goes with me?”

“No one.”

White showed all around my brother’s eyes, but somewhere he found the courage to argue. “How many woollies can I take?”

“None. Go!”

Indarth’s face seemed to crumple. “That’s not fair!” he shouted.

The giant skeletal youth thrust the point of his sword into the ground, so that it stood close to hand. He pulled the bow from his shoulder. He took an arrow from the quiver. Indarth fled, and the rest of us watched in silence. Anubyl notched the arrow, drew the bow, and waited.

Some way beyond the camp, Indarth stopped and turned. At once Anubyl lobbed the arrow at him. Had my brother not been running again before it reached him, he would have been squarely hit. But Anubyl could have killed him easily, had he wanted. As I said, our new owner was a good archer.

I was small. He did not pay me much heed. He frowned at Arrint but let him stay, probably because two loners in the neighborhood might combine against him. I could guess that Arrint would follow as soon as Indarth had vanished into the wilderness or was known to be dead. Arrint’s face showed that he believed this also.

The rest of the changeover went smoothly. Anubyl inspected all of his people and his two remaining horses—the mare my father had been riding had bolted and never returned. He sent herders back out to tend the woollies, then settled down in the eating place without a word. The women rushed to bring food, which he crammed into his mouth as if he were famished. He ate everything they had ready. They prepared more, and he ate that also. I had never seen a man so gorge himself, and I don’t think I ever have since. We others huddled where we were, shocked and silent.

Finally our new master rose and stretched and belched loudly. He glanced over at the women and selected Jalinan with a nod. She headed for her tent.

Amby fell to her knees again before this lanky, terrible boy. “Sir…may we hold the rites?”

Anubyl reluctantly agreed—carrion in the neighborhood would attract predators. He pointed. “That way.” Then he followed Jalinan.

Some of us older herders accompanied Amby and Ulith when they went in search of my father’s body. It lay surprisingly close to camp, so Anubyl was a good stalker as well as a good archer. The evidence was clear. He had lain in wait behind a boulder. My father had not had time to string his bow. He had charged on horseback, drawing his sword, and there were marks to show where he had been dragged until his boot came off in a stirrup. One arrow had sufficed, and it still protruded from his chest. We lifted the huge headless corpse onto a rug. We dragged it back to the tents, wailing as herdfolk do at funerals.