The men and women hugged each other in celebration, and the festive mood kept them at the communal fire, feasting together even though every hunter brought home a portion for his own family. Calli ate so quickly she felt sick, but the sight of her mother and Dog chewing their meals made her heart lift. They were going to survive this.
Most of the women bolted down their bird meat and experienced similar problems to Calli’s, many of them lying near the fire, holding their bellies and squinting their eyes at the cramping pain. The men had taken meals on the hunt, but from the sympathy in their eyes, the wives knew they, too, had been similarly afflicted. It was a lesson difficult to remember: gorging on meat after a prolonged period of involuntary fasting inevitably caused problems, but they rarely could stop themselves.
Albi was one of the first women to make a run to the bushes to relieve herself. When she returned, she regarded the women sprawled on the ground with utter contempt.
“Tomorrow,” she said evenly, “the women’s council meets.”
She turned and stared directly at Calli.
“Tomorrow,” Albi repeated. “Tomorrow.”
But when tomorrow came, they did not hold council, because Ignus was dead.
* * *
Silex was trying to make sense of it: all the Wolfen men dead?
The women sobbed, some clutching their children, pouring out their grief as if they had been saving it for Silex’s arrival. It was instant chaos.
Silex acted decisively—if there was danger nearby, he needed to know, but he would get nothing coherent out of these people while they were so emotional. He brought out the food that his group had with him, directing Ovi and some others to cook it, and for all to sit at the fire.
The smell of cooking calmed them, and the surviving Wolfen ravenously tore into the meat. They had eaten very little recently. It was Ovi who explained what had happened, her expression dark and sad. “Four of them went to hunt downriver. They did not return. After several days, Duro became convinced it was the Cohort. He assembled the rest of the men, even the boys, and they went out to drive the Cohort away, to kill enough of them that they would retreat into their valley and never again come onto the land of the wolf. And we waited for them to come back. We ran out of meat, and we ate all of our dried berries. When Duro did not return, we sent Denix.”
Silex remembered Denix as a spindly little girl. She was now perhaps thirteen years old, still boyish, but with a long thin body catching up to her gawky arms and feet. Denix looked too fragile and thin to send on such a dangerous mission.
Denix looked at Silex with solemn eyes.
“What did you find, Denix?” Silex asked softly, dreading the answer.
“Their trail went downriver, but not as far as the valley,” Denix replied, choking back tears. “I found Duro lying on some rocks. His head, at the back, was crushed, and his limbs were no longer attached. He had been savaged, his body scattered. And there were wolf tracks.”
Silex understood why this was so upsetting. “Denix,” he said kindly, “you were very brave, and the Wolfen are proud of you. The wolf tracks do not mean that Duro was attacked by our benefactors. We have not fallen out of favor with the wolf. Brach will tell you; we just yesterday paid tribute to the female with the handprint on her head. No, those tracks mean that Duro was very brave, and after fighting the Cohort, he was rewarded and became a wolf himself. His human body, no longer of use to him, was ripped apart by scavengers. You have not been out hunting to see this, but it happens to all animals. Carrion eaters find them all.”
Denix was nodding, but her eyes were glassy.
“You saw something else,” Silex prompted intuitively.
“Men with fire-black on their faces,” Denix whispered. “I hid in the grasses as they came close by, and then when they were not looking I ran away.”
“The Cohort,” Silex said heavily. He had everyone’s rapt attention. “Denix, how close were you to the Cohort Valley?”
“Not far. A day’s run.”
Perhaps, thought Silex, this was not as bad as it seemed. “The Cohort have not come north in a long time, and it would seem that they were not far out of their territory when they encountered our men.”
“The men? Duro took our boys,” one woman wailed.
“So what do we do, Silex?” Fia asked, loudly enough to direct everyone’s attention back to their leader.
Silex looked at the circle of his people, all of them waiting for his reply with desperate hope in their eyes. There were now just six adult men, one of them too old to hunt. They had gone from having too many men who needed wives to being a tribe of nearly all women and children. It would be difficult to muster a hunt and leave the females protected if the Cohort had decided to resume raiding the northern creeds.
They could not survive. They did not have enough men.
His eyes met Denix’s. She, like everyone else, expected him to solve this. And Denix, he realized, was essential to the solution.
“Denix,” he summoned, evincing more confidence than he felt. “Come forward.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The last words Coco spoke to her husband were, Ignus, will you come to our fire soon?
She had much more she planned to say to him. She wanted to tell him how proud she was to have him as her husband, and that she was sorry she had acted so coldly to him for so long. She knew that her abrupt manner with Ignus came from her hurt over his obvious preference to be left alone, instead of craving wife and family. She met his rejection with some of her own, until so many days of silence went by in their marriage it was as if the words between them were smothered with snow. But on the migration south he had stood up for his wife and daughter and grandsons. She wanted to tell him she loved him.
Her imagined conversation made her happy, and she was looking forward to it. When the hunt returned with their bounty of fat birds, she worked hard to catch his eyes as she prepared the communal meal, but as usual her husband was occupied with his inner thoughts and did not seem to notice her glances.
All is good, she decided. This was the man the council had chosen for her. If he needed his solitude, she would allow it and not pretend it was something being done to her.
“Ignus, will you come to our fire soon?”
Ignus met her eyes for a brief moment, nodding once.
All is good.
He went to the men’s side and sat by the fire and ate cooked bird meat. Everyone was accustomed to his laconic way—they gave him room and conversed as if he were not there. No one noticed when Ignus put a hand to his throat.
“The hunt should waste no spears for birds in the air, nor as they float,” Valid was saying. “They must be taken on the ground like normal prey.”
“The Blanc Tribe hunts birds in water,” Palloc argued.
Valid blinked at him. “Yes, well, as spear master, I am directing my spearmen to hunt only those birds on the ground, where the Kindred has dominance.”
Ignus lunged forward onto his knees and one hand. His face was swollen and visibly red, and his other hand was clawing at his throat. He made a soft sound, like a bark.
“Ignus?” Valid asked, concerned.
“Pick him up!” Urs commanded. “Get him out where Sopho can help him. Mors! Go get Sopho!”
They dragged Ignus out from the men’s side to the communal fire. Sopho, the healer, came as quickly as she could. Ignus was on his back, drool flowing out of the corner of his mouth. The sounds from his throat were barely audible.
When Sopho bent to him, Ignus dropped his hand heavily. His face was blue tinged, his lips puffy, his eyes sightless.
Sopho looked up at Urs and shook her head.
It was Palloc who brought Coco to Ignus’s side. Calli and the baby were both asleep and he elected to allow them to remain that way.
Coco knelt by her husband. His face was so contorted it did not really even look like him. She took his hand, still warm, and held it.
Urs lowered himself to his knees
and the rest of the hunt followed, silent and respectful. “We are sorry, Coco. His throat closed on his food,” he told her.
She looked up at Urs, her eyes full of tears. “There was so much,” Coco wept, “that I was planning to tell him.”
* * *
Albi spent the three days after Ignus was buried with her mouth set in a bitter line, aggravated by the delay. Finally, she could tolerate no more mourning. “The council meets,” Albi announced.
When men called the hunt for formal council, they summoned one another with grave portent. The hunt master looked to his spear master and stalk master, who then went to the spearmen and the stalkers, no one joining the circle without the ritual invitation. Once seated, they spoke little, remaining silent until the hunt master began speaking, and then only responding when specifically asked to.
When the women’s council met they generally began to drift over to their side of the camp in small collections of two or three, sitting down and chatting easily with one another. To the men, it sounded as if they were all speaking at once. It made them very uneasy, when the women’s council met.
Coco and Calli sat defiantly together, the newborn sleeping silently in Calli’s arms. Dog was technically no longer welcome at these meetings, as he had been named and was now a full member of the Kindred, but he was a favorite of the women and was laughed at indulgently as he showed off his somersaults in the center of the gathering. Calli knew she should make him leave, but she said nothing, letting it sink in on the women that what they were about to discuss was the fate of this charming boy’s brother.
Coco turned to Calli. “Other than condolences, mostly they are talking about how warm and dry it is and wondering why we came so early to winter quarters. Albi has not managed to stir ugly passions against the baby.”
Calli nodded. “But that does not mean they are turning against the council mother. They simply do not want to talk about my child. They hate that the topic has even come up.”
Coco gave her daughter an appraising look. As was often the case, Calli was demonstrating a special wisdom. Mists and shadows.
“Still,” Calli continued, “she will need to walk carefully with that stick, because if she is seen using it too harshly against us, with Ignus’s death so fresh, any woman who has ever lost a husband or a father will be offended.”
Coco nodded, her expression doubtful.
“Soon the rains will come,” Albi pronounced from her place in the circle, speaking more loudly than anyone else. Several women glanced at her, absorbing the statement. Good, they needed the rains.
“And we will have weddings, of course,” Albi added. Another good thing. The women exchanged appreciative looks—this meeting was not as unpleasant as they had expected. “We speak for Renne, who has no parents, but who would be a good match for your son Nix, do you think, Ador?”
Ador blinked in surprise. “Well, yes,” she said after a moment. Everyone was smiling, now, and Renne was blushing with pleasure.
“May we continue to be favored with fertile couples, good weather, strong hunts, and safe journeys between winter and summer,” Albi continued.
This brought nods from everyone except Calli, who was watching Albi with narrowed eyes. Here it comes.
Albi now stood, leaning on her heavy stick. “But every blessing can be offset. Just as the great good warms us and lights the day, there is another force that wishes to see the Kindred starve, to be afflicted with disease, and to be taken by the Cohort. Where there is blessing, there can also be curse.”
The women shifted uncomfortably at how closely Albi had come to directly referencing the great evil that brought the night, something the Kindred never did. Albi waited until the ripple of movement had stilled. She put a lugubrious expression on her face. “Nothing could pain me more than to know that my own grandson, born not many days ago, brings just such a curse to the Kindred. Why, his birth happened at precisely the moment to cause us the most danger of discovery by the Cohort! And his leg is like a festering wound that brings fever and death. We are afflicted, and we must rip out the tooth.” She pointed at several of the women in turn. “And who speaks up for the child? Ignus, who then chokes to death on his words!”
There was a gasp as the truth of this hit home.
“We have a duty. I am heartbroken to pronounce it. But I must,” Albi claimed. “The curse must be taken to a watering hole and submerged until it can no longer threaten our lives.”
Calli’s heart sank as she saw that the women were looking into each other’s eyes, but not at hers. Bellu glanced up at her and then quickly away—even her best friend had been persuaded.
Albi’s expression turned into a smirk as she turned toward Calli, inviting rebuttal. “A curse, you say,” Calli replied loudly, still seated. “And yet despite the fact that we have come to winter quarters when the days are still long, earlier than ever before, the men found birds to feed us. The time of greatest danger, you say, and yet the only threat we suffered was when you came to me with the ridiculous notion that a newborn should be thrown in the river, so that the hunt master had to come and threaten you with death to get you to stay quiet!”
This was confirmation of a rumor that had been flying around, and the women reacted with startled expressions.
“You bring my father’s death to the council. A tragedy, but you bend it until you find meaning, the way a wet elk hide, twisted in the hands, will eventually be wrung of drops of water. Did he not choke on our abundance? Is he the first man to die from eating too eagerly? Are we to believe that every person who finds a small bone stuck in the throat is cursed? Yes, it is true, he joined the chorus of hunters who threatened you with spears if you would not stop talking at the river juncture.”
“Oh, that is not—” Albi began angrily.
“The Kindred,” Calli shouted, leaping to her feet and overriding the council mother, “has never put to death one of its own! Not even you, Albi, when your arguing could have brought the Cohort down upon us. Yes, the hunters wanted to kill you, but they ultimately stayed their hands. The Kindred,” she continued, pointing a finger at Albi, “has a long-standing tradition that until a child has been named during the third summer of his life, he is attached to the breast of his mother and is hers and hers alone. You, Council Mother, would have us defy the way of the Kindred, all to extinguish a curse that you say has led us to such misfortune, though the only evident hardship I can see is that you have brought us to winter quarters too early!”
No one had ever spoken to Albi this way in council, and there was a long, stunned silence.
“She is right, sister,” Droi spoke. She turned to Sopho, who was sitting next to her. “Sopho and I are the oldest women in the tribe, and we cannot recall the council ever interfering with a living mother’s choices for a child who had not yet been named. Why, remember Mors, your oldest boy, Ador? He would not stop biting the other children, but the council gave you leave to find your own measures to stop him, which you did, and now he is stalk master. This is how it has always been.”
Sopho was nodding. “Yes, this is true,” she murmured. “And my own father died when he tried to swallow a fat piece of elk meat too large for his throat. He was a good man, a spear master, who loved his family. He was not cursed.”
The council mother, her eyes slits, drew in a breath, but she hesitated before speaking, taking in the women’s faces in a quick survey of opinion. Calli was clever—faced with a difficult decision, the women would always choose inaction if they could. There would be no forcing this issue now, not with Sopho weeping into her hands over her gluttonous father. “Very well,” Albi proclaimed smoothly. “It is of course true that as council mother, I simply speak for us—I do not decide for us. It is evident to me that the women’s council’s will is that no decision be made concerning the cursed child until his third summer, when he is named, joins the Kindred, and might then do the greatest damage to us.”
The tiny infant in Calli’s eyes stirred, blinking blear
ily at the world. She stared back down at her son, smiling.
She had three years.
TWENTY-SIX
Year Nineteen
The wolf puppy knew nothing but the cave. The smells wafting down the crevice were tantalizing and mysterious, but she had forgotten any connection between them and her brief experience frolicking with her brothers outside in the vast world. She knew the cave and her mother and the man.
The man was not here—he had vanished up into the sky, taking his scent with him as he climbed up the shaft.
She was hungry. The last time she had fed, she had tasted blood on the teat and her mother had punished her savagely, turning and snapping at her so that she broke away and ran to the man, leaping into his lap, seeking reassurance.
“You have teeth now, little girl,” the man said. “It hurts her too much. And I am sorry to say I have just finished the last of the food from my pouch.”
The puppy liked it when the man made his sounds, and she playfully pounced on his hands, chewing his fingers.
“Sharp teeth,” he said, snatching his hand away. The puppy watched him alertly, wondering what game they were playing now.
“A lion has a far-ranging territory. We have been hiding in here many days. I cannot imagine it is still lingering out there, waiting for me to emerge. But I need food, and now you need food, too.”
And that was when the man stood, pushing her from his lap. He made some more sounds, but eventually he left.
Alone with her mother, the puppy whimpered. She could smell the milk, and it drew her forward, until the mother-wolf snarled and growled in warning.