When she returned with the water she also brought some smoked meat on a basketwork tray, bending to place them both beside him. With her hands full she could not cover her face and he looked closely at her when she bent down. His eyes caught hers and she turned away as quickly as she could, her fists clenched waiting for the laughter that never came. Armun could not understand this. She looked on in puzzled silence as he chewed hungrily at the meat. If she could have known what he was thinking she would not have believed it.
No, Kerrick thought, I haven’t seen her before. I wonder why? I would certainly have remembered her. I wonder if she knows what her voice sounds like? I had better not tell her, she would only get angry being compared to a marag. But her voice does have Yilanè sounds to it. Not only that, her mouth is in some ways Yilanè. Perhaps the way the upper lip is separated. A familiar face. Inlènu*’s face had looked a bit like that, but wider of course, and fatter.
Armun sat behind Kerrick and wondered. The pain must be tearing at him or he would have laughed by now, or asked questions about her face. The boys had always been curious, never letting her alone. Once five of them had seized her among the trees when she had been by herself. She had fought and kicked but they had held her down. Poked at her lip and nose and laughed until they had her in tears. There was no pain, just a great shame. She was so different from the other girls. They hadn’t even pulled up her clothes to look at her the way they did with the other young girls when they caught them alone. Just poked at her face. She had been just like a funny animal to them. Her thoughts were so far away and so bitter that it was a moment before she realized that Kerrick had rolled onto his side and was looking back at her. She quickly pulled her hair across her face.
“That is why I did not recognize you,” he said with satisfaction. “You pull your hair like that all the time, I’ve seen you do it.”
She tensed, waiting for the laughter. Instead he grunted as he struggled to a sitting position, then wrapped the furs around him again because the morning was damp and foggy. “Are you Ulfadan’s daughter? I’ve seen you at his fire.”
“No. My father and mother are dead. Merrith lets me help her.”
“The marag landed on Ulfadan, knocked him to the ground. We speared it but it was too late. His neck was broken. It was a big one. One swipe with the tail broke my leg. We should have had more death-sticks with us. It was the only thing that stopped the ugly thing.”
He couldn’t blame himself. In fact it was his order that every hunting party have a hunter with a death-stick to prevent something like this happening. But one wasn’t enough among the trees. From now on hunting parties would have at least two hèsotsan with them.
But all thoughts of hunting and murgu were banished in an instant when Armun came close. Her hair brushed his face as she bent to pick up the empty water bowl; he could smell the sweet woman smell of her. He had never been this close to a girl before and the excitement of it stirred him. Unbid, the memory appeared, Vaintè above him, close to him. It was unwanted, disgusting, and he pushed all thoughts of that away.
But the memory lingered, tantalizing, for the feelings he had felt then had been very much like those he was experiencing now; the same excitement. When Armun bent again to pick up the tray he put his hand on her bare arm. It was warm, not cool. Soft.
Armun stopped, trembling, feeling his hand on her flesh, not knowing what to do. Without thinking she turned to look at him, his face close to hers. He did not laugh or turn away. Then the voices outside, coming closer, penetrated the silence.
“How is Kerrick?” It was Herilak who spoke.
“I go there now,” Fraken answered.
The strange moment ended. Kerrick dropped his hand and Armun hurried away with the tray. Fraken pushed his way into the tent, his old eyes blinking in the darkness, Herilak close behind him. Fraken pulled at the leather straps that held Kerrick’s leg tight to the wooden frame and nodded happily.
“All as it should be. The leg will heal straight. If these straps hurt you must pad them with dry grass. I go now to sing about Ulfadan.”
Kerrick would have liked to have been there when the old man sang. The more hunters who chanted the happier Ulfadan’s tharm would be. When the singing was finished Ulfadan’s empty body would be wrapped in soft leather and tied high in a tree to dry in the wind. The body did not matter any more, once the tharm of the hunter had gone. Still, it would not have been proper to leave it where the carrion eaters could find it.
“I would be with you,” Kerrick said.
“It is understood,” Herilak said. “But it would not do to hurt the leg any more.”
When they had gone Armun came from the rear of the tent, but still stood hesitatingly to one side. When he turned towards her she reached quickly for her hair — then let her hand drop because there was still no laughter in his face when he looked at her. It had happened and she did not question it. But she was still unaccustomed to being stared at.
“I heard you when you talked about being captured by the murgu.” She spoke quickly, trying to hide her confusion. “Weren’t you frightened, alone like that?”
“Frightened? In the beginning, I suppose I was. But I wasn’t alone, they had also captured this girl, I forget her name. But they killed her.” The memory was still just as clear, the emotion just as strong. The murgu with the girl’s blood on it turning towards him. Vaintè. “Yes, I was afraid, very afraid. I should have kept quiet, but I talked to the murgu. I would have been killed as well if I hadn’t talked to the one who held me. I did, I was that afraid. But I should not have talked.”
“Why should you have kept quiet if talking saved your life?”
Why indeed? He was no hunter then, brave in the face of death. He had just been a child, the sole survivor of his sammad. There had been no shame in speaking out, he realized now. It had saved his life, brought him here, brought him here to Armun who understood.
“No reason, no reason at all,” he said, smiling up at her. “I think that was when I stopped being afraid. Once they could talk to me they wanted me alive. At times they even needed me.”
“I think that you were as brave as a hunter, even though you were just a boy.”
These words disarmed him, he didn’t know why. For some reason he felt close to tears and had to turn away from her. Tears, now, he a hunter? Without reason? Good reason perhaps, they were the unshed tears of that little boy alone among the murgu. Well, that was well past, he was no longer little, no longer a boy. He looked back at Armun and without intending to reached out and took her hand. She did not pull away.
Kerrick was confused by what he felt now, for he did not know what it meant, could relate the powerful and unknown emotions within him only to what had happened those times alone with Vaintè, when she had seized him. He did not want to think about Vaintè now, or anything else Yilanè. Unknowingly his hand closed, hard, hurting her, but she did not pull away. A warmth swept over him as though from an unseen sun. Something important was happening to him, but he did not know what it was.
Not so Armun. She knew. She had listened often enough when the young women had talked, listened also to the older women who had children, when they told about their experiences, what went on in the night, in the tents when they were alone with a hunter. She knew what was happening now and welcomed it, opened herself to the sensations that overwhelmed her. More so because she had always had little hope, even less expectation. If only it were night now and they were alone! The women had been explicit, graphic about what was done. But it was day, not night. Yet it was so quiet. And she was too close to him now. When she pulled gently Kerrick opened his hand and she moved away. Rose and turned away from the look in his eyes.