Time of the Eagle

  I went back to the man and knelt beside him. As my eyes got used to the darkness I saw the shape of him more clearly. He was shivering, though when I held my palm close to his chest I could feel his fever-heat. In the shadows not far from my hand gleamed the bone handle of his knife, the smaller handle of my own beside it, and I wondered if I could remove mine from the sheath without his knowing.

  “Your people,” he said suddenly, opening his eyes, making me draw back. “They have horses?”

  Briefly I thought of lying, decided against it. I shook my head.

  “Then we’ll stay here till sunrise,” he said. “Sleep, Shinali woman.”

  I lay down as far from him as possible.

  “Close,” he said. “I’m cold.” He pulled on the leash and I moved closer to him, feeling the pressure of his hand on the leather near my throat. In the close atmosphere of our shared hollow, the stink of his blood and stale sweat washed over me in waves, and I almost retched. Also, I could smell the lion’s tail still tied to his belt. Though I knew my curiosity might displease him, I asked him why he had been tracking the lion.

  He sighed then, and was silent. I felt pain in him and a huge, overwhelming sorrow.

  “The lion killed my wife,” he said, after a long time. “She went down to the river with the children, carrying water jars. It attacked one of the children, and . . . My wife, she saved the child. Several were injured, but only she died. Six days I tracked the lion, across the plains and in the mountains. It killed my horse one night when I was sleeping in a cave, guarded by fire. I followed it on foot after that, then I killed it.”

  I said, very low, “My father, he died to save some people, too. We say that such a person is honored in the realms of the All-father, and that the All-father loves them a high lot because their love was more to them than life. You and your wife, you had children?”

  “Three,” he said. “If they still live.” He scarce could speak for pain, and I understood the terrible need that drove him to go home.

  I slept and had strange dreams of fiery fields, battles, lions, and a huge eagle overshadowing all. When I woke the sun was creeping through the treetops, flicking down spears of light upon the man still asleep. When I sat up the leash slipped through his fingers onto the ground between us. The other end of the noose was still tied about his wrist, and his knife lay loosely in his hand. Slowly I removed the knife, all the while watching his face. His eyelids did not flicker. In utter quiet I cut the leather thong binding me to him. For a while I crouched there, still holding his knife, torn between the urge to flee and the strange certainty that all this was within the All-father’s plan for me. In the end I replaced the handle of the knife across his upturned palm, then sat down near him and removed the remains of the noose from about my neck.

  The man moaned in his sleep. In the morning light I saw that his skin was gray. Around the exposed bone on his leg the tissues were swollen and going black, and pus ran freely down to his foot. The wound was covered with dust, and flies were already busy about it, and about the scratches on his chest. Maggots writhed in some of the wounds, and revulsion and pity went through me. He was breathing painfully, fitfully, his skin slick with sweat, and I knew the poison had spread into his blood. I knew I must try to heal him, and do it now.

  I lay down again, facing him with my head close to his. He was still on his back, and I lifted my hand and laid it lightly on his brow, feeling the heat of him and the strange raised lines of his tattoos. He did not move. Closing my eyes I shut out all but my knowing of him, of his agony and fever-heat and grief. Slowly, so attuned to him that even my breathing matched his, I overlaid with light the poisonous force that ran through all his wounds. Into his limbs and torso and head I sent the light, and then deeper, into his veins and heart and through all his pain, through his unspeakable weariness and grief and fear, healing him, making him strong again.

  With sudden violence he moved, rolling across me and pressing something cold against my throat. “What were you doing, Shinali woman?” he hissed.

  I could not speak at first. I was confused, crushed by the weight of him, my spirit still wandering in the deep places of healing. Then he asked his question again, and I realized that it was the blade of his knife across my neck. Sweat dripped off his chin onto my face, and I could smell his breath.

  I managed to say, “Healing you.”

  He must have noticed that the noose was no longer around my neck, and that the leather tied about his own wrist had been sliced clean through, for he sat up and leaned back, staring at me in astonishment. Then he laughed and shook his head, and struggled to his feet. Staggering, he went and looked between the trees at the grasslands.

  I lay still awhile, disconnecting my forces from his, gathering back my strength. In the kind of healing my mother and I did, we gave a high lot of our soul force to the sick. I suspect, too, that we took some of their pain into ourselves while we healed, in exchange for our wellness, for I often ached after such healing, and felt feverish. This time I felt very weak, and it was a while before I was able to go and stand beside the man. The grasslands remained empty, with no sign of my people come to look for me.

  “Your healing,” he said, his eyes still on the land, “is it munakshi?”

  “I’m not knowing that word, munakshi,” I replied.

  “It means magic,” he said. “It means a person who is different from others, or a curse, or a powerful good, or a strange thing past understanding. You, I think, are munakshi. Tell me, why didn’t you escape when you had the chance?”

  “Because without help you will die. You said you made fire. Do you still have flints?”

  He felt inside his coat and withdrew a small package. “Yes,” he said. “Why?”

  “If your foot gets worse it will have to be cut off. The skin all around the wound, it’s dying and will die a little more each day until your whole leg is dead. If I can heat my knife, I’ll cut away the bad flesh and stop the poison.”

  “You have a crone’s worth of knowing, in that half-ripe head.”

  “My mother is a healer. She’s teaching me.”

  “Are you a good learner?”

  “Wait, and find out,” I said.

  Smiling to himself, the man put the flints back inside his coat, then placed his arm about my shoulders. “There’s a lake in the hills, half a morning’s walk away,” he said. “We’ll drink there and rest, then I’ll think about letting you slice off bits of me.”

  We began walking, and it was pleasant there in the forest shade, though the ground was uneven and walking was very hard for the man. But he was greatly restored after the night’s sleep and the healing I had given him, and we walked more quickly than yesterday. I, too, felt refreshed, though I was hungry, and longed for a drink.

  “What is your name, Shinali woman?” he asked after we had been walking for a while.

  “Avala,” I said.

  He stopped walking, took his arm from across my shoulders, and faced me.

  “I am Ramakoda, eldest son of the Igaal chieftain, Mudiwar, of the Tribe of the Elk,” he said. “I swear to you, Avala of the Shinali, that when I have been home, and know what has become of my children, and regained my strength, then I will take you back to your own people.”

  He made a strange sign toward the sky, then, though it must have pained him, he bent and lifted up a handful of soil. He pressed the soil to his brow, to his lips and heart, then let it trickle onto the ground near his feet. “This I swear,” he said, “by Tathra, god of the sun, and Shimit, goddess of the earth.”

  Then he put his arm about my shoulders again, and we went on.

  By the time we reached the lake, Ramakoda was almost past knowing where he was; the poison in his blood was taking hold, and he shook with fever and could barely stand. I lowered him into the shallows and helped him drink, then washed his face and head and splashed water over his dust-caked wounds. Then I dragged him to a shaded place under the trees, where the ground was flat and the
grass was clean, and where I could do my healing. Without a word he gave me the packet of flints and my knife, and collapsed. But I could see his eyes open a little, watching me, and I said, “If you wish, I can stop the pain while I cut away the badness.”

  “More munakshi?” he asked.

  When I nodded, he added, “I’m not knowing if our priestess would be pleased. But she’s not here to curse you. For myself, I don’t care. Heart’s truth, I’m about finished.”

  On the stony shore by the lake I made a fire. For binding cloths I cut long strips from my hem and washed them, then spread them on clean stones to dry. I searched under the trees for healing herbs and found a plant I knew. I pounded its long leaves between stones, then put them near the binding cloths. Then I washed my knife in the river and heated the blade in the flames. If hot enough, it would seal the bleeding flesh as I cut, and make the healing clean and quick.

  Though he seemed already unaware, I put my hand under his neck, on the top bones of his back, found the ways of his pain, and closed them. Then I got the knife and did my work.

  All through the healing he did not wake. I was binding up his leg when he spoke my name, and I looked up to see his eyes wide open and full of alarm.

  “Have peace. You will soon be able to move again,” I said. “The numbness will go. To stop the pain, I had to stop all your feeling. It will come back soon enough.”

  “When will you begin the cutting?” he asked.

  “I have finished,” I said. “I am binding you up, now. When you can sit I’ll be able to bind up the cuts on your chest. They too are clean, and have stopped bleeding.”

  “Finished?” he repeated, not believing me. He tried to lift his head to look down at the wounds but could not yet move. Fear and astonishment flashed across his face.

  I went to the lake, came back with my hem wet, and pressed the cloth against his parched lips. “You can drink properly as soon as you’re able to move a little, and to swallow,” I said. “I’ll give you some leaves to chew then, as well, which will help clean out the last of the poison.”

  “I can feel the ground under my head,” he told me, the look of fear giving way to wonder. “I can hear and speak and see, but from the neck down I can’t feel, can’t move. I’m in a mighty bad position, Shinali woman.”

  “You would be if there were enemies about,” I said, and placed the binding cloths across his chest, to keep flies from the mended wounds. Then I went to wash his knife in the lake. I passed the blade a few times through the fire to cleanse it completely, then returned it to the leather sheath at his side. I burned the few bloodied cloths in the embers, checked the bindings on his leg, and sat down by him to rest, my fingertips pressed lightly into a hollow of his neck to feel the pulsing of his blood. “Already your heart works more easily,” I told him, “now that the breeding place of the poison is gone. Time to come, your leg will heal well. You may always have a limp, though.”

  “I would rather limp on the earth than not move on it at all,” he said. “I’m owing you much, Avala. Not just for the healing with the knife, but for the stopping of pain. It’s a wondrous way of healing you Shinali have.”

  “Some of the healing is Navoran,” I explained. “My father was Navoran, and a great healer, one of the best in their Empire. My mother, too, is a healer. I am twice blessed.”

  “A Navoran father!” he said. “That explains the blue eyes. Curious I was, about those. How is it that a Navoran high in honor came to marry a woman of the Shinali?”

  “They met when he went onto our Shinali land,” I said. “It was in the last season my people lived on their own land, before they were imprisoned in the fort. My father’s name was Gabriel. He went on our land one day and met my mother. She was collecting fire sticks. She invited him back to the Shinali house, and into her heart. When my people were prisoners in the fort, for making the Navoran soldiers angry, he was with them. He was like no one else. My mother’s face, it still shines when she talks of him, though he died before I was born.”

  “You’re a strange mix, half-breed,” he said, with the ghost of a smile, and closed his eyes.

  5

  The sun was at its height when we staggered out of the forest and I saw a stretch of grassland with a river on the far side. Near the river were dark patches that I knew were the tents of the Igaal camp. A vast camp it was, with many dwellings spread along the riverbank. The sky to the left of the dwellings was black with birds.

  Seeing his home, Ramakoda gave a low cry and almost fell. I struggled to hold him upright and felt an awful grief in him. We went on, and with every step my astonishment grew at the size of the Igaal camp. “Your people are a very great nation,” I said after a while, afraid and awed.

  Ramakoda grunted and shook his head, a smile briefly crossing his face. “Not my nation, Avala,” he said. “Just one tribe of it. A small tribe, compared with some.”

  Although he leaned now on a stout stick as well as on me, his wounds were bleeding freely under their bindings, and he was close to collapse. Suddenly he signaled me to stop, waving his hand toward his home. I noticed four horses approaching us from the camp, three of them bearing riders. We stopped, and I wanted Ramakoda to sit and rest while we waited, but he insisted on standing to greet his people. He moved apart from me a little and leaned only on his stick. I wished his arm was across my shoulders still, for I felt separated and alone, and fear gnawed at me while I waited for my enemies.

  At last the horses stopped in front of us, and the three men dismounted. I realized that the fourth horse had been brought for Ramakoda. I studied the men as they greeted him. The oldest of them was gray haired, with a wide necklace of animal teeth. The riders were all fiercely tattooed across their foreheads and down their noses, though the old man’s markings were the most elaborate, and in the center of the tattoos on his brow was a symbol of an elk. Each man wore a coat of light leather that reached almost to his knees. The coats were not laced up as our Shinali garments were, but crossed over in the front and held closed with wide belts. Their shoes were of animal skin, very finely stitched. The gray-haired man limped to Ramakoda and placed his hands on his shoulders. He touched his forehead to Ramakoda’s in greeting, then drew back a little and looked at him. They both had tears in their eyes.

  “You are in time for many funerals, my son,” said the old man. “We were attacked by Navoran soldiers, and there was a hard battle. Many were wounded. But in the end the soldiers won, and took a great number of us for slaves.” His voice was cracked and broken, and he could barely speak for emotion. Ramakoda just looked at him, and the old father told him that nine and twenty had died in the battle, and he spoke several names. Ramakoda made no response. Then the old man said, “And those taken in captivity are forty and two. They are Chetobuh, Nambur, Olikodi, Tanju—”

  Ramakoda gave a low cry, and fell into his father’s arms. The other two riders stepped forward, and somehow the three of them got Ramakoda onto a horse. He was still conscious, though he slumped forward over the horse’s neck, his breath ragged and agonized. I thought that, in his anguish and grief, he had forgotten me; but he said, “The Shinali woman, she was healer and helper to me. She is nazdar.”

  I had no knowing of the last word he said, but I supposed it had a meaning good for me, since one of the men reached down and hauled me up onto his horse in front of him. I had not been on a horse before, and I leaned forward over the animal’s neck and clung to its mane, terribly afraid of falling. Yet we went slowly, for Ramakoda was near to fainting, and his father rode close by him, talking to him to keep him aware.

  Then we reached the camp, and the man I was with gripped my arm and swung me down from the horse. Staying close to Ramakoda, I looked at the enemy people who had gathered about us, silent, staring, their tattooed faces streaked with tears. Behind them were tents beyond numbering, stretching for many arrow flights beside the river. Beyond them, out on the level grasslands, were a large herd of goats and many horses. On a flat piece o
f ground by the riverbank the carrion birds flapped and screamed as they fought over chunks of flesh on the stones. I realized what flesh it was, and horror swept over me.

  Ramakoda’s father said something to an old woman, and she came and led me away to one of the tents. At the door she told me to remove my shoes, then we went in. It was cool inside, for there was no central fire, and the tent was deserted. I was led across soft carpets to a place near the back wall, where the old woman rolled out bedding for me, and indicated that I was to lie down and rest. She went away, and I sat on the bed and looked about me at the tent walls, at woven hangings strange and wonderful, with jagged patterns that wove about one another, and colors bold like blood and wheat and raven’s wings. Carved wooden chests stood about the floor, and there were graceful urns and cross-legged stools with tasseled cushions, iron-wrought lamps, and other pieces of furniture astonishing to me. Astonishing, too, was the size of the tent, for the walls rose straight up and were many sided, and the roof was a separate piece rising to two peaks where the great poles stood. The whole place was wonderful, rich, and colorful beyond anything we Shinali had. A musky fragrance hung about the tent, pleasant but unknown to me.

  The old woman came back and gave me a bowl of warm broth. She crouched down by me while I drank it, and we watched each other warily. I saw that she had a tiny tattoo on her brow just above her nose, and wore her hair pulled tightly back and knotted on the back of her head, in a way unfamiliar to me. Her hands were calloused from hard work.

  “My name is Avala,” I said, attempting friendliness. “I’m a healer.”