Behind her, Calli heard the great bear roar.
TWENTY-THREE
Calli had run no more than twenty paces when Ligo began to struggle in her arms. He wanted down; the way she was carrying him, up high off her belly, was awkward and strange. He needed to get away from this woman with her terrified face and strange instructions.
“No, Ligo,” she sobbed. “Please.”
“Down!” he insisted, pushing at her.
There was another roar, louder and more terrible than before, and Calli tripped and fell hard, pushing Ligo from her so she would not land on him. She rolled, gasping, as Ligo leaped to his feet and bolted up the trail in pursuit of Palloc and Dog.
All right. Calli placed her hands over her stomach as she struggled to a standing position. Dog was safe. Ligo was safe.
She turned to face the bear.
The great bear was rolling on the ground, bellowing in rage, slapping at himself with his immense paws. Blinking through her tears, Calli saw, to her amazement, a broken spear shaft sticking from the bear’s belly, and then, higher up, the stub of a second spear, impaled in the bear’s shoulder. Beyond the bear, men were darting out of the trees, running full force at the wounded predator.
The bear, jaws snapping, came to its feet. Its head was low as it charged the hunters, moving terrifyingly fast.
The men, shouting, flung their spears. One hit true, and another, and another. The bear stumbled, its foreleg crumpling under its body and its face digging into the dirt. The shouts turned to cheers as more spears found their mark, and the bear convulsed, dying.
When the men were close enough to pound the bear’s head with clubs, Calli could see who they were. The Kindred, out in force.
Calli started walking toward them, dazed. “Urs,” she croaked.
The men looked up at her approach. Urs broke from the hunt and rushed to her, his arms out, concerned.
“Oh Urs,” she sobbed. She fell into his arms, kissing his face, unable to stop sobbing. “You saved me. You saved me.”
Urs held her tightly, and for a moment it was if they were still lovers—she could feel him responding despite the round weight of her pregnancy. And then he went rigid, gently but firmly pushing her away. She looked up and saw him gazing over her shoulder, so she turned, too.
Palloc and Ligo were approaching. Palloc was watching the two of them embrace, scowling.
And Calli did not care.
“Ligo!” Valid shouted.
“Father!” the little boy answered, running over and tackling his father’s legs.
Valid turned and unexpectedly clasped Calli. “Thank you,” he murmured into her ear. His breath warmed her and then they awkwardly broke apart.
Calli turned and watched Palloc approach, her face cold.
“We have been tracking the bear half the day,” Urs hailed Calli’s husband. “We lost him for a while, but picked up his tracks in the mud by the stream.”
Bear meat was no one’s favorite, but the fur of a bear made a wonderfully warm blanket despite its coarse feel. Men liked to collect bear teeth and claws to absorb some of the predator’s ferocity into themselves. It was a good omen, to kill a great bear.
Calli turned to Palloc. Her eyes were icily furious. “Where is Dog?”
“I put him on a rock, high up, where the bear could not reach him. I was coming back for you, Calli,” Palloc claimed angrily.
“You left him on a rock?”
Urs, glancing at the two of them, backed out of the marital conflict.
“What else could I do? I was coming back for you!” Palloc shouted.
Calli pushed rudely past him and headed up the path. A hundred paces later, she came upon her son, who was, indeed, standing up on a slab of rock higher than a man’s head. Some natural handholds gave clue as to how Palloc managed to get him up there.
Her son was safe. Her anger was gone in a gust—this was her little boy, full of life, and she loved him so much.
“Hello, Mother! Look how tall I am!” Dog called to her.
Year Nineteen
Her brothers were gone. The female wolf puppy understood this less as a loss than as a lack; there were simply no siblings to play with. Losing the entire pack would be something else, a life-changing, probably life-ending, catastrophe. But there was still a pack, still a mother-wolf, and the man, who had always been there. Now, when the puppy played, she played with the man.
She was driven by a joyous sense of fun to wrestle with him, to jump on him and nip at him, but there was also an instinct at work, a purpose to the play. Wolves learned how to fight when they were little, teaching themselves technique. When the little female tumbled on the cave floor with the man, she was getting an education. She learned that the hands that fed her were also effective weapons, with a grip like a pair of jaws. Her defense was to go after the arms, above the man’s grasp, and clamp down with her little teeth and shake her head.
She also learned something else. “Stop! Release!” the man sometimes yelled. There was pain in his voice, a sharpness, and the hand might shove at her with astounding force, sending her rolling away in the dust.
If she were a normal wolf puppy in a normal pack, she would be disciplined by the elders when she put too much aggression into her play, so she learned a similar lesson from this. And, just as a pup would lick her mother’s mouth in utter submission, seeking forgiveness in such situations, the little pup would crawl to the man and lick his face. Then, when he gathered her to his chest and buried his face in her fur, she felt as content as when she curled up next to her mother to sleep.
Year Four
The weather for the migration was clear, dry, and warm. The Kindred stopped often for water from their stream, and moved more slowly than usual, because several women, including Calli and Bellu, were pregnant. Calli was the furthest along, and had been spared the need to carry anything but her unborn child. Whenever Dog complained, his grandmother Coco would scoop him up willingly, even though she was already burdened with dragging the cooking implements they needed.
“You spoil that child,” Albi said sternly. “Dog, get down and walk.”
“Yes, Grandmother,” Dog said obediently. He slid down from Coco’s hip, but when Albi turned her back he stuck out his tongue. Coco had to stifle her laugh.
As always, tension began to rise as they approached the point in their journey where the little Kindred stream joined the big river and the waters flowed into the Cohort Valley. They were half a day’s walk from the juncture, padding slowly and silently, the hunters all armed with spear and club and alert to any danger, when Coco looked over and saw her daughter’s expression.
“Has it started?” Coco asked in low tones. Nix, the hunter closest to her, gave her a sharp glance for risking even this tiny whisper.
Calli nodded. She held up two fingers: two contractions.
As quietly as she could, Coco increased her speed a little, pulling up next to Albi. “Calli’s in labor,” she said in a barely audible voice.
Albi gave her a baleful look. “We cannot stop now,” she hissed back. “Not here. We are almost to the place where rivers meet.”
“No, of course not.”
Calli kept walking. Her waters had not yet come, but the pains seemed to be increasing and coming closer together. With Dog, nearly a day had passed like this, but she was aware of how bad the timing was. There could be no more dangerous place to have a baby.
Coco gave her a drink, and Calli nodded gratefully. A few minutes later, a harsher pain gripped her, so that she inhaled sharply. It held her the way a lion held a struggling deer in its jaws, squeezing her inside.
She bit back her whimper. Her legs turned warm, and she looked down in alarm: her waters had come.
Now the pains redoubled, coming more quickly, nearly toppling her off her feet. She staggered, sweat pouring from her brow, but still she walked, and still she was silent.
Bellu and Ardor came and silently took Coco’s load from her, and Coco put h
er arms around her daughter as another contraction came.
Calli felt it in her back, at the base of her spine, and then throughout her lower body, as if someone had rammed a hot spear into her from behind and was now twisting and jabbing it. The intervals between pain were less. She kept stumbling forward, but she could no longer see or think of anything but what was occurring.
Her vision swimming, she realized someone else was there. Palloc. He was on her other side, supporting her. He had left the hunt to help her. She felt a wave of gratitude that was pushed aside by a contraction so long and hard she could not help the loud gasp that escaped her lips.
They were right at the river juncture, the most dangerous place. Calli could feel the child descending. She knew it would be here soon, and she could no longer support herself. Palloc tried to keep her up, but Coco was sagging on the other side.
“Stop,” Calli mumbled.
She lowered her head, stretching her arms to the ground as if diving into water. Her husband and her mother helped her down gently, and Calli knelt, her knees apart, unable to prevent the whimpers from escaping her lips.
The Kindred acted as a single organism, stopping its march without a command. Under a clear, blue sky, everyone silent, Calli bit her lip until it bled, her eyes crossed, pushing.
Coco saw the baby’s head, bloody and covered with mucus, emerging from between her daughter’s legs. She bent over and tenderly supported the child as its shoulders emerged. The poor thing was crimson faced, and when at last it popped out into the world, Coco saw that she had a new grandson.
The baby cried.
Everyone in the Kindred went rigid at the tiny noise. The hunters raised their spears as if attack were imminent, most of them also clutching a club. The women glanced at each other in alarm. Frowning, Albi strode over to where Calli lay.
“Shhh, baby boy,” Coco murmured. She handed the child to Calli, who was still suffering as the afterbirth was expelled.
The baby, as if sensing what was required of him, stopped squalling. Calli held him to her breast, but he did not seem interested in that. He blinked through bleary eyes in the strong sunshine. Calli smiled up at her husband, and Palloc felt his heart swell at her expression. She was his wife, and they had a new child. He smiled back, feeling full of love.
Ignus, Calli’s father, joined them, panting because he had been ranging well ahead with the stalkers and had only just heard that his daughter was in labor. He held Dog in his arms and the expressions on both their faces was the same: solemn, wide-eyed, even a bit fearful.
“We have a new grandson, Ignus,” Coco whispered proudly.
“His leg,” Albi grunted.
Everyone looked at her, then at the baby. They saw what Albi saw: there was something wrong with the baby’s leg. Below the knee, it was stunted, twisted, with a small, toeless foot. The child was deformed.
Calli held her child, her new baby boy, a satisfied smile on her face. She was still sore, hurting too much to stand or walk, but all of that seemed completely unimportant in view of the little person she cradled in her arms. “You have a brother, Dog,” she said softly. Dog shyly hid his face in Ignus’s shoulder. Ignus, characteristically, had nothing to say.
“The baby is cursed,” Albi hissed.
Coco stared. Calli did not seem to notice.
“The baby is cursed. He brings a curse on all of us. The Kindred,” Albi insisted in hushed tones.
Palloc looked down at his new son. In a flash, he saw what the boy’s life would be. He could never join the hunt. He would be a burden on everyone. During migrations, someone might even have to carry him. People would blame Palloc for the problems the boy would cause.
“He is just a baby,” Coco murmured. “Look at him.”
“I am looking at him,” Albi snapped. “He is a curse on us. We need to throw him in the stream.”
This shocked everyone. Calli shook her head wildly. What?
Albi took in their expressions and her scowling face hardened. “What do you think it means when a baby is born like this? Of course it is a curse. To keep it for even a moment is to invite doom to all of us. Do you realize where we are, how treacherous this place is? Why was he born here, of all places? What more proof is required?”
People nearby were giving them censorious glances for even the bare whispers. Calli wrapped her arms protectively around her baby son, wondering what Albi thought she was doing.
She soon found out. Albi reached down. “Give it to me.”
“No!” Calli protested.
Albi seized the baby’s twisted leg, then let go as if she had touched a hot rock when her hand connected with the deformity. She reached for the other one, fixing Calli with a hard look. “It is for the good of all of us,” she insisted as she pulled on the newborn.
“Quiet!” someone hissed at them.
“You have to let it go. Let me take it,” Albi commanded, pulling harder.
Calli inhaled. “No!” she screamed, as loudly as she had ever screamed anything in her life.
TWENTY-FOUR
Calli’s shrill cry seemed to ring in the air. The Kindred had frozen in shock and were now glancing at one another with bulging eyes. If there was a Cohort attack party nearby, Calli’s shout would bring them running.
Urs was by their side in an instant. “Calli!” he whispered urgently. “You must be quiet!” He crouched down next to her.
“This baby has been born cursed. We must put it out of its misery and save the Kindred,” Albi informed Urs.
He frowned, not comprehending.
“The leg,” Albi spat, clearly communicating she thought Urs a fool.
He glanced at the baby’s leg and winced. “What happened to it?”
“It is just how he was born,” Coco murmured.
“A curse,” Albi insisted. “This is not your business, Hunt Master. This is a women’s council matter.”
Urs considered this. “We must remain perfectly quiet right now,” he finally whispered back.
Calli realized he was accepting Albi’s argument, that he would let her baby die because it did not have anything to do with the hunt.
“I can do it,” Palloc said suddenly.
“All the better,” Albi agreed.
Coco and Calli stared at each other, dumbfounded at the direction of the conversation.
“No,” Ignus objected softly.
It was the first word from Ignus in such a long time that everyone, even his wife, was shocked. For a moment, the mere fact that he had spoken startled them all. Dog turned, his thumb in his mouth, to look at his grandfather as if he, too, was astounded.
Urs stood back up, pointing his finger at Ignus. “It is a council matter. Let them handle it.” He nodded at Palloc.
“Urs,” Calli said urgently, “if anyone tries to take my baby, I will scream so loudly that my voice will echo for days. I will scream and scream until every human, Wolfen and Cohort among them, is summoned to find out what is happening.”
Urs gaped at her, utterly astounded. Albi looked disgusted. Palloc, considering what might happen if she did scream and scream, was frightened.
Calli met her mother’s eyes. “I, too, will scream,” Coco affirmed, nodding at her daughter.
“And I,” Ignus stated calmly.
“You would bring the Valley Cohort to kill us all!” Urs whispered.
“You,” Calli replied in low, even tones, “would let Albi kill my baby.”
“They would not dare scream,” Albi sniffed.
But she did not know Calli the way Urs did. After a long moment, he nodded. “It is, as I said, a council matter,” he concluded, “but not something to be decided as we journey south. When we have set up at winter quarters, when we have had a hunt and are secure, then the women may meet and make a determination. Until then, no action.”
Albi was shaking her head. “You are not the decider, Hunt Master.”
Urs turned on Albi with a ferocity that made the woman take an involuntary step
back. “I have spoken. Calli, can you stand?”
“I can walk, Hunt Master,” she responded proudly.
“Then let us get out of this dangerous place.”
* * *
Silex smelled the camp’s fires and knew they were close to where the main body of Wolfen gathered along the river. Grinning with excitement, the three unmarried men of their group received a nod from their leader and ran ahead.
“It will be good to see everyone,” Silex told Fia. “And good for the men to see some other women.”
Fia glanced back at Brach’s wife, Ros, who was carrying her newborn son—though even while burdened, they all moved at a quick pace, as was the Wolfen way. “I do not know,” Fia answered flippantly. “It has been very entertaining to have so many men fawning over us.”
The four of them laughed, but Silex’s mirth was forced past his uneasiness.
A bend in the river and they were upon the encampment. Silex instinctively raised his spear: something was wrong. The main body of Wolfen, alerted to their approach by Silex’s advance party, had gathered and were standing mutely, staring at him. Silex’s eyes darted left and right, trying to find the cause of their obvious distress. All of the men were clearly out on a hunt—aside from a lone old man there were only women and children in the camp. One of them—his sister Ovi—broke from their ranks and came forward. Her breasts were heavy under her tunic, and she held a sleeping baby. Duro, like Brach, but unlike Silex, had been able to get his wife pregnant.
“Silex,” Ovi greeted simply. They embraced, but it seemed stiff and formal.
“What has happened?” Silex asked quietly. “Why is everyone acting like this?”
Ovi gestured sadly behind her. “This is all there is,” she said.
“I do not know what you mean.”
“I mean there is no one else, Silex. The men of the Wolfen are all dead.”
* * *
The Kindred women and the children spent many days at winter quarters before the hunt returned. The men had come across a great flock of noisy birds chattering by a water hole and had managed to kill armfuls of them until the birds lifted into the sky with a great roar of wings and were gone. When plucked of their feathers, the birds were twice the size of a man’s hand. The men had also seen the signs that meant there were winter mammoths nearby—though elusive and bad-tempered in equal measure, enough spears and the great beasts could be brought down. The challenge was always to get close enough for accuracy and yet avoid being trampled.