Looking into her face, he could see the rightness of her wanting. There would be children for them, a boy of his own, with none of Kerlew's subtle differences. Their son would be a good hunter, would be healthy and strong, all a father could ask. A boy to make a man proud, with none of Kerlew's awkwardness and difficulties. He and Elsa would have a good family. Their children would thrive. But ...
'What about Kerlew?'
Elsa frowned, then softened the gesture with a laugh. 'Foolish man. Is your heart so easily touched? He is nothing to us. The boy has a mother to care for him. He will be fine. You must leave them to their own lives, Heckram. If you interfere, you will only make things harder for the boy, make him want things that are beyond him. Let them live their own lives, Heckram. You and I have a life of our own to fill.'
She pulled his hand close, cradled it against her breast. Her smile was full of a tender promise. He found a smile of his own to answer it before he pulled gently free of her.
She pushed off on her skis, moving silently down the bright hillside, and he followed.
But a question followed him, a question merciless as wolves.
What about Kerlew?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
He should have stayed with Elsa. He knew that, knew that the others had expected it of him, and would be shocked that he hadn't. But he couldn't. He had to move, to strain himself and his animal as the pulkor raced over the snow. In the pumping of his heart and lungs, in the flash of snow and black trees that passed, he found an edge of comfort. He was doing something, not standing horrified and stricken. He could pretend to have some control over what was happening. He fled his own pain and anger. And fear. Yes, fear, but not for himself. Fear that if this could happen among the herdfolk, then anything could happen. Anything. The outrage that had bubbled inside him since Bruk's mutilation rose to a boil that overflowed and scalded his soul.
Short hours ago, the night had been a comfortable place, folk gathered around the hearth, the men to play at wolf tablo while the women wove and talked. He and Elsa had gone visiting to her parents' hut. The yellow light of Missa's fire touched everyone, warming colors and softening lines. He and Kuoljok had set up the board on top of the traveling chest. The heavy wooden chest had once been incised with a brightly painted design. Now the patina of frequent moves obscured the pattern, and the colors were faded. Yet in the warm light of the fire, it seemed handsomer for its scars.
As did the parents' faces. Kuoljok's hair was thin and black and unruly, standing out in a halo about his seamed face. His black eyes were deeply set, the whites of them stained with brown as if by running dye. His sallow skin was reddened by the weather and made ivory by the firelight. He pondered his next move, hiding a shrewd smile behind a hand all knuckles and tendons. Heckram's mother, Ristin, was there as well.
She worked at weaving trim for his wedding shirt, stopping often to compare it with the weaving Missa did. The ceremony at the Cataclysm in summer would be the formal one, requiring elaborate garments. The folk of many herds would gather there, and Capiam's herdfolk would be judged by the richness of the pledged couple's attire as much as by their reindeer. Mothers took pride in the weaving of such things.
Both women sat stiffly erect on the floor of birch twigs and hides. Their ribbon looms tethered them to the center pole of the hut. Weaving materials of grass and fiber and strips of fur, bright dyed lengths of wool yarn and leathers, whispered against one another as their busy old fingers danced them together. Small basins held beads of bone and horn and amber to be worked into the design. The two women spoke and laughed over their work, paying it little mind as the intricate patterns flowed from their fingers.
Missa's trim would adorn Elsa's wedding garments of snowy white fur. The furs were lush winter-taken fox. Elsa herself sat with her head bowed over a basin as her fingers squeezed excess color from the fibers she was dyeing. The golden firelight highlighted the scene.
'You'll be too hot,' Heckram pointed out annoyingly as Kuoljok pondered his next move. 'The wedding will be at the height of the summer. No one wears fox fur then.'
'The beauty will be worth a little discomfort,' Missa assured him placidly. 'And Elsa wants the wedding to be in the evening, when the cool wind blows down from the ice packs.'
Heckram grunted his defeat and turned back to his gaming. The dice were made from the toe-knuckle bones of a reindeer calf, while his marker, the pursued wolf, was a larger knuckle bone stained black. Kuoljok tumbled the dice and then smiled as he moved his own markers closer to the fleeing wolf. Heckram picked up the dice and warmed them in his hand, pondering strategy. The smell of freshly carved new wood mingled with the homey smells of the hut. In one corner of the hut stood the beginnings of a traveling chest, chips and curlings of wood littering the area around it. Heckram had been doing the carving, under the watchful eyes of the old man, but both had decided their work had progressed far enough this night and had abandoned it for the game.
Heckram moved his piece grudgingly. Old Kuoljok snickered, cast the dice, and moved quickly. 'That traveling chest could be finished by tomorrow night, if we worked on it tomorrow,' he suggested.
Heckram shook his head slowly as he polished the dice between his hands. 'Lasse and I are going hunting.'
'Again?' Elsa asked in dismay. 'Can't you ever stay at home for two days in a row?'
He closed his eyes a moment, then opened them again, keeping them on the game board. 'Not if you still plan to slaughter two animals for our joining feast at the Cataclysm. If I can drag in a couple of young sarva now, they could be fattened by the time we reach the Cataclysm.'
'Heckram, you sound as if we were starving. One of your animals, one of mine: that's not going to deplete us. New calves will have been born by then. We'll return with as many animals as we started with.'
'I'd like to return with more,' he said softly.
Elsa snorted. 'There's but the two of us to feed. And we've plenty of animals for that.
Why must you always be off hunting more reindeer and furs? We have everything we need.'
The dice in Heckram's hand ground against each other, 'I can remember when my father wore his talley string around his waist, and the ear flaps on it were thick as leaves on a branch. Every year he had furs and amber to trade south, and his tools were bronze, not bone. Every year he traveled south to meet the traders. He always had tales to tell, food to share. Always, we ate well and our tunics were thick.'
'Umm,' Kuoljok agreed softly. 'So we all did, in those days. No one had ever seen the herd so large. The wolves grew fat off the weak ones, but the strong ones were so many that they poured over the land like water. Folk held feasts for no reason, and all the meat racks were heavy. For three, four, maybe five years it was like that. More and more reindeer, every year. When they moved, we felt the thunder of their passage through the earth's bones. It was a time of plenty for all. Then, of course, came the plague. And the herd was smaller than I had ever seen it, and the wolves tore one another in their frenzy to feed off a kill. Heckram, there will always be fat years and lean ones, but I do think neither I nor you will see years as fat as the ones before the plague.'
'The wealth of the herd was the plenty of the folk,' Missa added softly. 'No man can hunt enough to create that level of wealth for himself in these times. Not even the best and most diligent hunter.'
Heckram sat silent, his eyes bowed to the board, and did not speak. A hard determination inside him grew, threatened to split his chest open in a roar of defiance for their placid acceptance of these times, for their dumb contentment in the predictable rounds of their lives. Didn't they want, didn't they wonder? He knit his brows over the game board. His teeth were clenched and he kept his eyes down. The silence in the room passed as Missa and Ristin conferred over their weaving.
'Are you ever going to cast those dice, or are you going to give up the game now?'
Kuoljok asked slyly.
'I'm thinking,' Heckram said, trying to make his voice easy.
'That's it. Take your time. Never be in a hurry to lose,' the old man suggested with a cracked laugh, as Heckram warmed the dice in his hands. Heckram growled, but threw the dice anyway, knowing he had already lost. He moved the wolf conservatively, biding his time. Always biding his time.
'There. That's done.' Elsa rose from her work, shaking her fingers. Heckram let his eyes wander from the board to follow her movements. The firelight touched her hair, illuminating the blue highlights of its deep black. Her
