Duwan sank immediately into a blissful sleep. The raw stump of his left arm formed a crust, the texture of which changed during the time he was immobile. He was awake more and more, using his conscious periods for meditation, longing for the mobility to climb into the full warmth of Du. No more suckers were detected. The young warriors climbed the sun-heated rocks and all participated in savoring the feast of eggs. Duwan had his share, brought to him by Alning. When it was time he felt his extensions withdrawing of their own accord, freed his feet, and, walking with pride and strength, emerged into the square to see life going on as it had done for generations. His stump drew stares and expressions of sympathy. He saw Alning running toward him and felt the smile come to his face.
"You are well," she said, falling into stride beside him.
"Yes, thank you," he said.
The square was invaded by a leaping, running group of new mobiles. Duwan and Alning halted as the youngsters crowded around, eyes wide as they gazed at the stump of Duwan's left arm.
"Did it hurt?" asked one green-eyed little female.
"Fiercely," Duwan said with a loving smile.
"What will you do now that you are no longer a warrior?" a young male asked.
Duwan frowned, pulled his shortsword from its sheath. "Who says I am no longer a warrior?" He brandished the sword, the well cleaned and oiled blade hissing with the force of his motion.
"You can't pull a bow," the young one said.
"I have this."
"Don't worry," Alning said, as the young ones rushed away in search of new fun. "Your right arm is stronger than both in most warriors." But there was a darkness building inside him. He had, of course, considered the impact of losing his left arm on his life. True, he could not draw a bow. He would be able, he felt, to develop skills using one hand. He had given thought to that, and felt that by holding a shaft from the thin brothers of the hot springs in his teeth he would be able to round arrows, and, perhaps, with a journey to the southern end of the valley where the thin, hard brothers grew taller, a shaft for a spear. A one-armed man could use and throw a spear.
"Duwan," Alning said, her eyes unable to meet his, "nothing has changed."
"Only my left arm," he said blackly.
"Nothing has changed in my regard for you," she said, her heart pounding at her boldness.
His mood became blacker. She was quite rapidly becoming the most beautiful one in the village, and she was the daughter of a warrior. She deserved better than a mate with only one hand. He was silent as they walked onward toward his father's house.
The village square was swept clean. The precisely placed houses lined it, lush and green as the think vines forming the walls drank in the light of the season. The houses, quite naturally, looked a bit scraggly, for the vines had been allowed to separate, to open the ceilings to the warm air and reach tendrils upward for the gift of Du. In one open and airy house a female was singing. A group of hard-skinned ones sat in the light, telling and retelling the stories of old.
"Duwan, you have not spoken," Alning said.
He heard the disappointment in her voice, glanced at her. Her head came to his shoulder. The delicate, multi-fronded pale green of her hair gave off a sweet fragrance. He wanted nothing more than to tell her that he was grateful, that his regard for her was unchanged, but the innocent questions of the young one had opened a chasm of blackness in his mind. A warrior without a hand was only a half-one.
Alning moved quickly from his right side to his left, put her hands on his upper arm. "I don't care," she said. "This doesn't matter." He looked at her and saw a flowering face, a rich shade of yellow telling of her emotion, but there was doubt in him and he knew that her emotion could be pity as well as love. His pride swelled, filling him.
"As you said, Alning," he said, his voice sounding more harsh than he intended, "I have not spoken."
She flushed more, felt his rebuke strongly. He had not spoken. He had never spoken for her. She had been forward, lulled into it by her regard for him and by his near escape from death. She dropped her head, removed her hands from his arm.
Relenting, he said, "You are young."
She found no words. They were approaching the house of Duwan the Elder. Still she could find no words, but she felt the hot tears beginning to form in her eyes and, lest he see, she turned and ran with the abandon of the very young, ran from her shame, ran from his rejection. He raised his right hand as if to stop her, but did not call her back. Alning meant The Beautiful One. And the beautiful one deserved more than a one-handed lifemate. He turned. His mother was in the doorway, arms extended. Feeling quite young himself, he moved into her embrace.
Chapter Two
Only a few had felt that incredibly deadly draining of blood into the maw of a sucker and lived to describe it. Death was not unknown in the valley, but it was rare. A warrior, too daring in his climb, fell from the top of the cliffs, crushing his head on the rocks below. A newly mobile young one fell into a boiling spring. The hardening took some old ones, but all in all death was a memory, a memory of the old days before the Drinkers came to the valley, when war was death. It was to avoid death that Duwan's ancestors had left the Land of Many Brothers and crossed the barrens, losing many to starvation and cold when the long light failed. The valley was a miraculous oasis in the sterile, windswept emptiness. At its head it was no wider than an all-out dash without rest. In length it stretched two days' marching run, narrowing toward the southwestern end. When the wind came from the north, it brought with it the chill and the scent of the eternal ice. A southerly wind smelled of fire, and sometimes carried fine ash, an ash carefully collected to enrich the soil of the young house.
The valley was the Drinkers' only home in a cold, sterile land, land extending endlessly into waterless distances to east and west, and to fire and ice to the north and south.
Duwan, born with a full measure of curiosity, had explored, had felt the deadly cold of the ice, had pushed his horny toes farther east and west than any one in memory, had seen and smelled the eternal fires of the south, knowing the heat through the tough, hardened pads of his feet. He regarded his distant ancestors with respect, for try as he might he had found no path through the eternal fires and had, indeed, been frightened into turning back as the solid earth, itself, quavered and rolled under his feet to the accompaniment of the bellowing of countless thunderous voices and in the near distance new fire had belched from the earth with a heat so great that it seared his skin.
Duwan believed. He knew the often told tales of the great journey by heart, and would, dutifully, pass them on to his young when the time came, but it was still hard to believe that Drinkers had actually made their way through that land of endless fire. On the evening following his recovery he found cause to reinforce his unspoken doubt, for the village minstrel had already composed the Song of Duwan The Drinker, and to say that it departed slightly from the truth was a kindness. As he listened, Duwan first smiled, and then had to hide his laughter, for the song made him so heroic, built his quick thinking actions into such bravery that he wondered anew if such stretching of the truth had not been applied to all the Drinkers' history.