'Shall I ask Lasse if he will help?' Ristin asked softly.
'Not yet,' Heckram replied. 'Later. After he can no longer tell the hind tendons were cut before the animal died. I want no word of complaint from us or on our behalf.
Perhaps someone will be cocky enough to betray himself.'
'You suspect Joboam.' It was a statement, not a query. 'Are you going to tell Elsa?'
'No.'
'You mean later.'
'I mean no. These are supposed to be happy days for her. I won't have our betrothal degraded by worry and fear. Besides, wouldn't it spoil the effect of my slaughtering a harke if she knew I had to?' He gave his mother a wolfish grin. 'Let me keep credit for the act in the eyes of my wife-to-be.'
'Heckram, it's a poor way to start out, with secrets and hidden worries.'
'Don't scold me about it, for I didn't choose it.'
'Hmph.' His mother rose from crouching beside him. 'I'll bring the skinning knives.
Doesn't look very fat, does he?'
'Not as fat as he was two months ago. But better than anything else I've got set by.
Better than a wild reindeer. Poor Bruk.'
A note in his voice turned Ristin back to him. 'Heckram. If you aren't going to seek justice before Capiam, then you must let it go. There is no other way; not among our people. Such is our tradition.'
'New traditions are starting up everywhere, Ristin. Hamstringing the bridegroom's best harke before his betrothal feast, harassing a woman with your attentions because her family is not as wealthy as yours ... I may start a few traditions of my own.'
Ristin looked her contempt for the idea. 'Are you a man, or a little boy? So do children speak, threatening one another, rolling and tussling in the dirt as if that would prove who is wrong or right. Are you from some forest tribe, where they kill their own folk, and maim one another in their brawlings? No! We are herdfolk. Men do not kill men! If someone becomes so degraded that we cannot let him live among us, we drive him away, and that is punishment enough. Act like a savage, and you shame me, and your father's memory. And you will be the one driven away from the herdfolk.'
Heckram only stared at the fallen harke, silent but unrepentant of his words. Ristin sensed the depth of his anger and came to stand beside him. She spoke more gently.
'You never told me how Joboam reacted when you told him that Elsa was promised to you.'
'There was nothing to tell. I didn't confront him to shame him, though now I wish I had. I thought it better to treat the matter as if nothing were amiss. For the sake of Elsa's pride, more than his. I waited for a time that seemed fitting. A group of hunters had just returned, Joboam among them. They were standing about, comparing kills for the day. I walked up to them and said, 'I have fared better than any of you at the hunt today, for Elsa has set a date for our betrothal feast.' Some of them wished me joy. Amma, joker that he is, wondered aloud if I were the hunter or the prey. Some said nothing, but turned away to speak of other matters. Joboam glared at me, then turned aside. There was nothing said.'
'It's like him, to slink about like a heel-biting dog. You've a bad enemy there, Heckram. One who has the ear of the herdlord.'
Heckram grunted. 'Well, if he has the herdlord's ear, let him have Capiam's daughter as well. I've heard she's not happy with the mate she'll take this summer by the Cataclysm. So let her have Joboam instead.'
'You shouldn't listen to such gossip. Kari but pretends reluctance, to be seen as more maidenly. As I recall, there was talk of pairing her with Joboam, several years ago. But nothing came of it.'
'I shouldn't listen to gossip? Listen to you. If you must tell it, at least get it right.'
Heckram had drawn his blade of polished flint, the legacy of his father. He began a careful incision at the animal's anus, working carefully up the belly to avoid puncturing the gut sac and spilling bile and waste on the meat inside. 'Joboam wouldn't have her.
He made his excuses pretty ones, but that's what it came down to. Pirtsi only took her to get a place at Capiam's side. The girl is feckless as a late-born calf, and fey besides.
She's always either weeping or moping. Pretty as she is, who'd want to share a hearth with that?'
'And Pirtsi is such a man as should make any woman's heart leap?' Ristin asked sarcastically. 'When he isn't strutting like a marsh-bird in spring, he's rutting with any woman foolish enough to accept him. It cannot make Kari proud to hear such things of the man she will join this spring.'
'I thought she was but pretending maidenly reluctance?' Heckram asked. His incision inched up Bruk's hairy belly. He pulled the knife free, wiped clinging hair and blood from it against his pant leg, and then eased it back into its groove. 'They'll make a fine pair, no doubt. She can weep when he comes near her, and mope when he does not.'
Ristin rose slowly, her knee joints crackling. 'I'll bring the knives,' she repeated, ignoring his comments. But as she went she called back over her shoulder, 'Unless one knows a person's sorrows, one can't sympathize. But one shouldn't assume that misery is groundless, either.'
The hide pulled up, parting from the meat as the integuments beneath it gave way with a ripping sound. Occasionally the knife licked in, to slice across a stubborn bit. But skinning the animal was more a matter of pulling the hide free than of cutting it off.
'See? You keep the tension steady and slice along under the skin as you need to. That way you get a hide without holes, and no big chunks of meat stuck to it that have to be scraped off later. See? You only use the knife where you have to. When you get to the tail ... Kerlew!'
The boy's head jerked around and he pulled his bloody fingers quickly from the dead calf's mouth. 'What?' he asked his mother, shifting nervously.
'Why aren't you paying attention? You need to learn how to skin an animal, so you can hunt and prepare your own meat. What were you doing, anyway?'
'Nothing,' the boy answered guiltily. 'Here, I'll do it now.'
He drew his own blade, the one Heckram had given him. Rising, he took a firm grip on the loosened flap of hide and tugged it upward. The membranous layer that held the hide to the meat stretched tight. It was transparent stuff, bubbly and clear as froth to look at, but sticky and clinging to bare hands. As the boy pulled harder, some parted with a ripping sound. The inside of the hide was creamy white and slick-looking. The meat was covered with thinly transparent integument, the functional lines of muscle bared to curious eyes. The naked animal was purple and white and deep red. The hide clung at a stubborn place. Kerlew reached down with his blade and, with a slashing stab, ripped a gaping hole in the hide.
The boy froze, staring at the damage. Tillu expelled a long sigh, it's all right,' she forced herself to say. 'You're learning. Next time, make your knife follow the curve of the animal's body. Cut close to the meat, not the skin. Keep trying. But don't pull on the hide at the weak spot now, or it will rip further. Go to a different place and work from there.'
The warm smell of the fresh kill filled the air. Tillu had already rolled the gut sac clear of the body. Watching Kerlew's knifework, she was glad she hadn't allowed him to help with that part. One puncture of the gut sac could impart a rank flavor to the whole animal. Once the hide was off, she would butcher the calf into manageable pieces, and then they could lug it home.
She gritted her teeth as she watched Kerlew skinning. He pierced the precious hide again, but she kept silent. She watched it peeling back from the calf, creamy white where she had worked, marred with slices and gobs of red meat where Kerlew's knife cut through flesh instead of joining tissue. Scraping the hide would be a real task. But the boy had to learn. And he didn't learn as other children did, by watching and absorbing. Kerlew could watch her brew herbal tea a thousand times. Yet the first time she had told him to prepare a tea, he had dropped the leaves into cold water and then put it over a fire, instead of letting the water boil and then putting in the herbs to steep.
He tried. Tillu knew he tried and wished it were enough. But it wasn't. A man could die of cold trying to light a fire, starve to death trying to kill a rabbit. Kerlew had to do better than just try. Only days ago, when he had returned from his hunt with Heckram, she had been filled with hope. Her son, her Kerlew, had hunted and made a successful kill. But like his single triumph with the fire, it was an isolated incident, a single success in a row of
