“They could do nothing, for we ourselves had done nothing,” Aryuk went on. “I told them they should go home and care for their women and children. This has been a hard summer. Fish, shellfish, small game, everything was scant. We went hungry because we must spend time getting things and traveling for the Mammoth Slayers. Others suffered too, but the new hooks and spears helped. They are not much use here, where schools of fish and the seal that prey on them seldom pass by.” Shoal water in the estuary, currents, something like that, Tamberly guessed. “We must make ready for winter. If we worked any more for the Mammoth Slayers, we would starve.”
Aryuk raised his head. His eyes met hers. Dignity descended upon them. “Perhaps we can give them more next summer than we did in this,” he finished. “Say to them that I alone decided.”
“I will.” She wet her lips. “No, I will do better than that. Fear not. They are not as—as—” Tula had no word meaning “cruel” or “merciless.” It wouldn’t be fair to the Cloud People anyway. “They are not as fierce as you think.”
Knuckles whitened above the hand ax. “They take whatever they want. They kill whoever stands against them.”
“There was a fight, true. Do the We never kill one another?”
His stare became wind-bleak. “Two more among Us have died at their hands since then.” I didn’t know that! Corwin doesn’t bother to inquire. “And you speak for the Mammoth Slayers. Well, you have heard what I have to say.”
“No, I, I only … only am trying to … make you happier.” Give you heart to last out the winter. In spring, for whatever reason, the invaders will pull up stakes. But I’m not allowed to predict that. And you doubtless wouldn’t believe me if I did. “Aryuk, I will see to it that the Cloud People are content. They will want no more from Alder River before the snow is off the ground again.”
He stayed wary. “Can you be sure? Even you?”
“I can. They will heed me. Did Tall Man not make them give you back Daraku?”
Abruptly an old man stood there under the darkening sky. “That was no use. She died on the way home. The child that so many of them put into her, it took her away with it.”
“What? Oh, no, no.” Tamberly realized she had moaned in English. “Why did you not let Tall Man know?”
“He was never there when I was, afterward,” said the flat voice. “I saw him twice, but not nearby, and he did not seek me. Why should I go to him, then, if I dared? Can he call back the dead? Can you?”
She remembered her own father, whom she could gladden with a phone call and overjoy by stepping across his threshold. “I think you would like me to leave you alone,” she said as emptily.
“No, come inside,” where the rest crouch in murk, in fear and stifled, stifling rage. “I am ashamed at how little food we can offer, but come inside.”
What can I do, what can I say? If I’d grown up alongside Manse, or in some earlier era, I’d have known what, young though I am. But where-when I hail from, they send printed sympathy cards and talk about the grief process. “I … I should not. I must not, today. You need … to think about me, till you understand I am your friend … always. Then we can be together. First think about me. I will watch over you. I will care for you.”
Am I wise or weak?
“I love you,” she blurted. “All of you. Here.” She reached in her pocket and pulled out the chocolate bars. They fell at his feet. Somehow she smiled before she turned and left him. He didn’t protest, merely stood where he was and looked after her. I guess I am doing the right thing.
A flaw of wind whirled down to rattle skinny boughs. She hastened her steps upward. Aryuk shouldn’t see her cry.
IV
The council, the grown men and old women of the tribe, crowded the house where they met; but the sacred fire could not burn outdoors when a storm bade fair to blow for days. The booming and snarling of air came through thick walls as an undertone. Flames on the hearthstones guttered low. They picked out of darkness, waveringly, the crone who squatted to tend them. Otherwise the long room was filled with gloom and smoke and the smells of leather-clad bodies packed together. It was hot. When the fire jumped high for a second, sweat glistened on the faces of Red Wolf, Sun Hair, Answerer, and others in the innermost circle around it.
The same light shimmered along the steel that Tamberly drew and raised high. “You have heard, you have understood, you know,” she intoned. On solemn occasions the Cloud People used a repetitive style that to her sounded almost Biblical. “For that which I ask, if you will grant me my wish, I give to you this knife. Take it of me, Red Wolf; try it; make known if it be good.”
The man received it. The sternness of his features had melted away. She thought of a child on Christmas morning. Silence gripped the assembly until their breath seemed as loud as the gale, heavy as surf. Nonetheless he tested its heft and balance with skilled care. Stooping, he picked up a stick. His first attempt to slice it was awkward. Flint and obsidian take edges as keen as any metal, but they won’t cut seasoned wood, being too fragile, and you can’t properly whittle with them. He was also unaccustomed to the shape, the handle. With a little coaching, though, he got the knack fast.
“This comes alive as I hold it,” he whispered raptly.
“It has many uses,” Tamberly said. “I will show them to you, and the way of caring for the blade.” When a stone grew blunt, you chipped it afresh, till it got too small. Sharpening steel properly is an art, but she felt sure he’d master it. “This is if you will grant me my wish, O People.”
Red Wolf looked about. “Is such our will?” he inquired sonorously. “That I take the knife on behalf of us all, and for our return gift we forgive the tribute that the family of the Vole man Aryuk should have brought?”
A buzz of assent ran among shadows. Answerer’s harsh voice cut through. “No, here is a bad thing.”
Damn! Tamberly thought, dismayed. I’d expected the whole business would be pro forma. What ails that wretch?
The talk rose to a soft hubbub and died out. Eyeballs gleamed. Red Wolf gave the shaman a hard stare. “We have beheld what the Bright Stone can do,” he said slowly. “You have beheld. Is this not worth many loads of wood or fish, many skins of otter and hare?”
The wrinkled countenance writhed. “Why do the tall pale strangers favor the Vole People? What secrets are between them?”
Anger flared in Tamberly. “All know that I dwelt with them before you entered this land,” she snapped. “They are my friends. Do you not stand by your own friends, O Cloud People?”
“Then are you friends to us?” Answerer shrilled.
“If you will let me be!”
Red Wolf lowered his arm between the two. “Enough,” he said. “Shall we squabble over a single moon’s share from a single family, like gulls over a carcass? Do you fear the Vole folk, Answerer?”
Shrewd! Tamberly cheered. The shaman could only glare and reply sullenly, “We know not what witchcraft they command, what sly tricks are theirs.” She remembered Manse Everard remarking once that societies frequently attribute abnormal powers to those whom they lord it over—early Scandinavians to the Finns, medieval Christians to the Jews, white Americans to the blacks….
Red Wolf’s tone went dry. “I have heard of none. Has anyone?” And he lifted the knife over his head. A natural-born leader for sure. Standing there like that, Lordy, but he’s handsome.
Neither debate nor vote followed. That was not the way of the Wanayimo, and would have been unnecessary in any case. While they depended on their shaman for intercession with the supernatural and for spells against sickness, they gave him no more homage than was reasonable, and indeed looked somewhat askance at him: a man celibate, sedentary, peculiar. Tamberly sometimes recalled Catholic acquaintances, respectful toward their priests but not slavish and not uncommonly in disagreement.