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—
THE 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.
But the horrors were not over yet.
Anubyl stormed out of Jalinan’s tent, still fastening his belt. “Quiet!” he bellowed. “Bury him quietly, with no—You! Woman! Come here!”
He was glaring at my mother, who was some distance from the tents, heading the way Indarth had gone and carrying a bundle wrapped in a blanket. She jumped nervously, then came scurrying back.
Once—as in my ancient memory of her with the angel—she had seemed tall and slender, smooth of skin and merry of spirit. Now she was plump and shorter even than I, a squat figure in a patterned wool dress, her youth and beauty eroded away by the bearing of eleven children. A lifetime of constant sun had crumbled her face, and the hair below her kerchief was silvered.
Anubyl strode forward and waited for her by the dying fire, folding his arms. She stopped in front of him with her eyes downcast.
“Tip it out and let’s see!”
She shook the blanket. A cascade of smoked meat and a few roots fell at her master’s feet; a knife, also, a water bag, and tinder. He reached out with both hands and ripped the gown from her. He threw her to the ground. Then he took a long stick from the firewood pile and laid it across her back. Before the blood had even started to ooze from the first welt, he struck her again.