'Only with fools who charge into me in the dark. You're late back from the hunt, I hear. I thought perhaps I'd seen the last of you. But here you are again, no doubt with a fine kill.'
'No doubt,' Heckram said lightly. 'But you're far from your hut this night, Joboam.
Looking for something?'
'Perhaps. Capiam likes to know what goes on in all parts of the talvsit. He knows it is easier to stop trouble before it starts. So, on his behalf, I take an evening stroll, to make sure all is well. Surely you don't object?'
'Why should I? If the dogs run about between the huts by day, why shouldn't Joboam by night?'
'I'm sure Capiam will find your jest very amusing when I report it to him.'
'If he's half the man his father was, he'll find it more than that,' Heckram replied recklessly and pushed past Joboam on the narrow path, not quite touching him. He strode on, his shoulders tightened, wondering if Joboam would jump him from behind.
But all remained silent behind him as he walked on.
He pushed his seething anger down, telling himself he really had no reason to be incensed. So Joboam walked among the huts by night, checking to be sure all was well.
What was there to be concerned about in that? Only his superior attitude as he deigned to walk among the humbler huts. The man was assuming authority to himself. Capiam, as the leader of the herdfolk, should not have to ask others to be sure the sita was secure at night. Had he not legs of his own to walk among his own people? But no, ever since the older Capiam had died last winter, his son had taken himself seriously, acting more like some barbarian tribe chief than the leader of the sita. His spare time was spent in his own hut with his wife and son. If Capiam had to send someone to patrol between the huts at night, then why not send his boy, Rolke? Let him start learning to act like the son of the herdlord, instead of crouching by his mother's hearth all day. She was as wealthy as Capiam himself. She did little sewing or weaving or hunting anymore. Stina had once wondered aloud what the woman did all day, other than berating their daughter, Kari, for her laziness. Yet she herself looked as heavy as a pregnant vaja, while the girl looked starved as an orphaned miesse. Heckram shook his head in distaste. Capiam seemed proud of his wife's girth, as if she were a harke fattening for a winter feast.
'I'd never share a hearth with a woman like that,' Heckram vowed heartily, and was surprised to hear himself speak. What kind of woman, then, would he share a hearth with? That was the next question, and one he'd already banished from home conversations. He detoured to his meat rack with its scanty stores. Climbing up, he took out his knife to carve a generous chunk of meat from one of the haunches there and to lift down a blood sausage as well. He was hungry after the day's effort with no rations to sustain him. So he would eat now, leaving his rack barer than ever, and hope for better luck tomorrow. And what kind of woman, he wondered, would sit at hearth with a man with an empty meat rack? He dashed the thought from his mind with a shake of his head and lifted the door flap of the hut he shared with his mother.
The fire on the arran was nearly out. Ristin knelt by it, feeding it bits of twigs to coax the coals back to flame. For an instant she looked small as a child to Heckram. It was the shadows diminishing her. Not that she was a large person. She had the short, stocky build that most of the herdfolk shared. At times, Heckram felt like a lumbering elk in a herd of reindeer. So had his grandfather been, a big man from the south who came north to trade and never left. Even his hair was pale, Ristin would say, light as the flash of a reindeer's tail. Short and dark herself, she showed no sign of her mixed blood. Only in her son had it come to bloom. She still wore her warm furs, and her bright wool hat covered her hair and cheeks. Her mittens hung from strings at her wrists, baring her hands.
'Just leaving?' he asked, coming in quietly.
Ristin made a startled noise and dropped the piece of wood she held. 'Oh, it's you.
Well, I'm glad you're finally back. No, just coming in. I've been hunting today, but without much luck.'
'Oh. For wolves or sons?'
Ristin shrugged lightly. 'A little of both. I was worried about you, and a new pelt would be nice. So I took my bow down and went out. Why, does that surprise you?'
'Not from a woman who was hunting wolves when I was a brat in a komse with a mouthful of marrow to keep me quiet.'
Ristin laughed quietly. 'Sounds as if you've been talking to Stina. She was worried about Lasse. I'm glad to see it was without cause.'
'Not quite.'
'Oh?' Ristin had been shrugging out of her coat, but she paused, peering out the neck hole like an owl from a tree.
'Nothing serious, but it could have been. A strange hunter, hunting alone, aimed at a vaja and got Lasse instead. Not seriously!' he added hastily as Ristin's face went grave.
'But it might have been. Luckily she was skilled as a healer. She bound up his arm, and gave us shelter for the night in her tent. I ... I said I'd pay for her healing. I'm not sure that she understood me, for she speaks our language poorly. And I know that if Lasse knew of it, he would say it was his debt.'
'But you feel responsible for his injury?' Ristin guessed.
'Somewhat.' Heckram scratched at his ear and the day's growth of stubble on his chin.
'Could you have prevented it?' Ristin pressed.
'No. Probably not. But he is only a boy, in some ways, and Stina trusts me with him. I don't like to have that trust betrayed, even accidentally.' He paused and cleared his throat. 'But that isn't the only reason I want to pay the healer for her work. There was something about her and her son.' He stared into the fire as he shrugged off his outer garments. 'Mother, do you remember the year, several years after the plague, when we lost the two calves at the river crossing, and you decided we couldn't slaughter any of our animals for winter meat?'
Ristin slowly put her coat on its peg, shaking the garment out to air it well. She sank down by the fire to loosen the laces on her boots. Her eyes were distant as she pulled them off and drew out the handfuls of shoe grass that insulated them. She fluffed it out and set it by the fire to dry.
'Do you remember that winter?' Heckram pressed.
She turned to him. 'How would one forget such a time? Your father was gone, we had no fattened autumn reindeer meat, no blood sausage, no marrow bones. Only hare and ptarmigan and fish from the summer catch. The wild reindeer were still decimated from the plague, and what there were of them, the wolves hunted better than I. It was a hard time for us all.'
Heckram shook out his tunic and hung it to air. He turned to her, his face grave. 'Her son eats like I did then. He watches food cook like he's afraid it will leap out of the pot and run away. Their tent is not sewn well, the hides they sleep under are thin. Worse, the knife she has looks like something I might have made back then. I do not think she is the hunter you are, either. Other than winging Lasse, the only meat she had shot was a thin hare.'
'It is not as if we are wealthy ourselves,' Ristin began slowly.
'I know, but —'
'Don't interrupt. But there is much cluttering this place that another might put to better use. I do not know why I keep mittens that are too small for you now. And how many bows can I use at one time ... though if her bow was good enough to down Lasse, perhaps that is something she does not need.'
Heckram chuckled softly. 'I admit I did not notice the condition of her bow. It was the boy I looked at.' As he spoke, he took down the tablo board and turned it over to show its scarred back. Setting the meat atop it, he began to carve it into slices that would cook quickly. He was hungry tonight, hungrier somehow for having met the boy and the healer. 'They were so strange. I wanted to talk to her, to ask her where they had come from and why. She has a look of far places to her and acts as if she doesn't really know how to provide for herself. I am sure she has tales to tell, and I wanted to hear them. But she didn't want to talk. I think she understood more of my words than she let on. But she was fearful, as if talking to me might leave her open to harm. And the boy ...
He was all eyes, and so quiet, staring all the time.'
'Hunger can do that to a boy.' Ristin paused, remembering. 'And being alone can make a woman that cautious. But Heckram ...'
'Yes?'
'The worst of those days, for me, was the pity of those around us. We had the village to help us, and some were kind. I cannot count how many times you were fed by Lasse's father at his tent. Some mornings there was
