The Dog Master (39 page)

It was starkly cold in the cave, the walls glistening white with ice. He carried the pick with him and grunted when he got to the back of the cave: here the mounds of ice and snow were piled knee-high. He set to work, his exertion sending clouds of smoke from his mouth.

When he dug out the first fish he tore into it with his teeth, crunching the ice, feeling the flesh become slimy as he chewed. He allowed himself just the one, knowing that the cramps would be worse if he ate more, and then pulled out one fish after another, stacking them on the net.

He staggered under the weight of the load, easily enough to feed the entire Kindred.

No one looked at him with more than listless interest when he returned to camp. He found his mother sitting and staring blankly at the communal fire, Coco's head in her lap. Coco's breathing was raspy and labored, and as Mal limped up to them, Coco was wracked with a hoarse, painful-sounding cough.

“Mother,” Mal greeted. He dumped the net down in front of her and Calli looked at it without comprehension. “Food,” he said. He picked up a stick and thrust it through a frozen fish's mouth, holding it out over the fire, where the ice melted off and hit the coals with a sizzle. “Food,” he repeated. “We can eat.”

Calli's eyes cleared. “Mother,” she whispered to Coco. Coco focused dully on Mal. “Food,” Calli said wonderingly. She stood, embraced her son, and then turned to the Kindred. “Mal has brought food! Food! Food!”

The reaction was muted at first: people roused themselves and stared in confusion. Not until the odor of the burning fish meat hit their noses did they react, and then they surged forward, grasping for their own meal.

Urs came to the fire, his eyes wide in disbelief. “Mal has brought food,” Calli informed him, beaming. He was hunt master, so she held the first stick out to him, and he accepted it in wonder. “Mal did it,” Calli repeated. “Mal.”

*   *   *

The assumption was that Mal had taken the net and gone to the frozen lake and somehow caught frozen fish, and he did nothing to dispel the rumor, though when he went out for another load of fish he was trailed by a dozen children and then the secret was out. Still, it was Mal's actions that saved the Kindred, and everyone knew it.

“I do not care what happens to my eyes,” Valid remarked happily at his family fire. “I will eat all the fish the fire boy brings.”

“Odd, though,” his daughter Lyra observed. “He is old enough to be a man, but we call him a boy. He saves the Kindred, and yet he cannot join the hunt.”

“He is a boy because his leg prevents him from being a man,” Valid reasoned. His sons, seventeen-year-old Ligo and ten-year-old Magnus, nodded at the logic.

“I think I will go thank the
boy
for doing more to feed the Kindred than was managed by any
man,
” Lyra retorted.

Valid stared after her as she stomped off. “You let her get away with too much,” Sidee, his wife, remonstrated.

Valid shrugged. “She has always been a little stubborn.”

“Because you allow it,” Sidee insisted. “Tolerance is not a good thing with her.”

Valid shrugged again.

Lyra tracked down Mal fussing with the net. It had become tangled, and he found it impossible to straighten out. “Here,” Lyra offered as she walked up. “Let me.”

Mal willingly handed it over. Lyra frowned at it, then started to work with the weave. “It forms a pattern,” she murmured.

“A pattern?” Mal queried politely.

Lyra was staring at the net without seeing it, thinking of another day, but at his response she raised her head. “Thank you, Mal. You have saved the Kindred,” Lyra told him as her fingers worked with the tangle.

“Well,” Mal grunted, embarrassed.

“And you have lost so much,” Lyra continued, her face softening in sympathy. “Your brother, your grandfather, and now your wife.”

Mal swallowed and nodded.

“I am sorry. You do not deserve such things,” Lyra said. She reached out and touched him on the leg, and he stared as if stunned: his bad leg, she was touching his bad leg, seemingly unconcerned.

*   *   *

Silex had correctly gauged the severity of the winter and had moved the Wolfen south along the river until it flowed into the Cohort Valley, where he turned east. Coincidentally, much of the trek was over the same ground as the Kindred traveled during their migrations, but Silex was not aiming for a specific destination—he was tracking the wolves, listening to their songs at night, hoping they were celebrating a kill.

He sought Denix's eyes with as much urgency as he hunted for food. He wanted to experience that surge of feeling again, the exciting thrill of eye contact. He stared at her over the fire at night, trying to connect. But she would not meet his gaze, nor engage him when he maneuvered close to her for a conversation. Her eyes were down and her responses to his gambits perfunctory, and she made sure they were never a moment alone.

When the snows lashed at the Wolfen they made their way toward a ridge of rocks for shelter and stumbled upon a cave bear, and this kill kept them alive while the storms howled. They burned old mammoth bones plus gnarled, stunted trees that gave off a fragrant smoke.

When they could move again, Silex saw the huge mother-wolf, granddaughter to the first wolf to whom Silex ever paid tribute, in the distance, up a rocky hill. She was alone and staring at him, though she did not react when Silex waved his hands. They had some bear flesh left to offer, but she did not come forward. Instead, she trotted up the hill, then stopped and looked over her shoulder. When it seemed as if she could see Silex watching her, she moved a few more paces uphill, then looked again.

“Brach,” Silex called. “Stop. Everyone!”

Brach yelled for the Wolfen to stop moving. They were all in a ragged line headed downhill, where instinct told them they might find food, but Silex was transfixed by the wolf. He had seen adult wolves tracking prey with juveniles, looking over their shoulders at their young ones to make sure they were paying attention.

“I want us to climb that hill,” Silex announced, pointing.

No one was particularly enthusiastic about the idea, but they did as Silex commanded. It took them nearly half a day, and the mother-wolf vanished from view the moment the Wolfen headed in her direction, but eventually they reached the summit.

On the other side of the hill, a slender stream grew fat at an obstruction, widening into a pond that had not frozen over. From where the Wolfen stood gazing down, it was a thin black line in the snow, leading to a teardrop. And around the pond, a herd of reindeer pawed at the wet ground, seeking fodder.

“She led us to food,” Silex breathed. He turned to look at Denix, to share this wonder. And Denix, of course, looked away.

*   *   *

Palloc had been shadowing Grat and had seen the younger man spying on Mal and Lyra, who were sitting together like lovers. Now Grat's face was full of furious revulsion as he strode angrily away from the couple.

Palloc joined him, matching his pace. “You and I go off and hunt and bring back food, and we are reviled for it,” Palloc observed. “The cripple does the same thing, and he is the hero.”

Grat stopped and stared, looking surprised. The parallels had clearly not occurred to him. Nor to Palloc, actually—his mother had primed him for this conversation with Grat. Her plan made sense: there was a dark violence in the younger hunter, something that Palloc could use to his advantage. He was like a club—
Think of him as a weapon,
Albi had urged. What she did not say was that it was clear that despite his threats, Palloc lacked the courage to kill anybody. He had failed with Urs, he had failed with Calli, and he never even tried with Mal Crus.

“Why do we even need a fire boy?” Palloc continued. “We have a fire maker, and it is the easiest job, one best left to women. We drag him with us on migration, an extra mouth to feed, when we are starving and people are literally dying. He cannot hunt, and anyone could have found those fish. I am sure either one of us probably would have within the day.”

“I was planning to explore the area,” Grat agreed.

“So for that, everyone thanks him. We are publically humiliated by the hunt master and his toady, but the cripple with the cursed leg is celebrated. Does no one understand that if it were not for him, the Blanc Tribe probably would have been fine? That it would not have snowed, that we would have found game on the trail?”

Grat thought about it for a moment. “This is the curse your mother speaks of, then?”

“Exactly. We nearly all perished on the way here, what more proof do you need?”

Grat peered at Palloc. “You are the fire boy's father.”

“He is a curse. His father is the spirit of darkness.” Palloc sneered at Grat's expression. “Oh, do I shock you when I mention spirits? My mother says nothing can be worse than letting the curse remain with us.
That
is what should scare you, not talk of evil.”

“I am not afraid,” Grat responded coolly. “He is a crippled boy. I am a man of the hunt.”

“Then what will you do, man of the hunt?” Palloc mocked.

Grat's lips twisted in contempt. “What will I do? I will rid us of the curse.”

Year Nineteen

Mal removed the loop of leather from the pup's neck and held it out to her. She sniffed it, unimpressed.

“See? I rubbed rouge into it. Now it is red, a red neckband for you. This is your special day, your naming day.”

The pup yawned, scratching at her ear with her left rear leg.

“You are always happy, always joyful, always playing. This was my brother Dog. You are like him in that way. So you are now, ‘She Who Is as Happy and Carefree as My Brother Dog.' And your short name is ‘Brotherly Dog—
Dog Fraternus
. And I will call you Dog. All is good? Dog, your name is Dog. Now, sit still for a moment, Dog.”

Mal fastened the loop back around the pup's neck, tying the long rope to it. “Now we will go outside, Dog. I will unblock the entrance so we may both squeeze through.”

Dog was ecstatic to be outside. Mal kept a firm grasp on her leash, and spoke strongly to his wolf when she pulled too hard. She was perfectly named—when Mal's brother was a boy, he was as tall and skinny as this wolf cub, whose legs seemed ridiculously long.

After some time of steady progress, the left fork of the stream that fed the Kindred became disorganized, splitting into smaller tributaries, independent little creeks. The terrain was now more extreme, with rocks and boulders and cliffs, the brook often choked with deadfall that made passage difficult. What a strange and wonderful place! The stone walls, and the way the creek fought obstacles in its path, frothing a white that flashed in the sun, were all starkly beautiful. When Mal stepped into the ankle-deep water, he was shocked at how much colder it was, as cold as any he had encountered. Why, with summer full of strength, did this stream now flow with the chill of full-on winter?

“You are pulling me farther upstream than I have ever been, Dog. These are the northern wilds—no creed lays any claim to this territory.”

He was conscious of the sun climbing higher. He knew he should turn back soon, but every bend in the creek lured him forward with new sights.

“All of this is mine,” he declared out loud. He spread his hands and lifted his face to the sun. He felt so much joy that moment he wished Lyra were there so he could sing
her
a song!

The sound of falling water, at first a muted, muffled rustling sound, then a louder roar, like a solid rainstorm, drew him forward. The sun still held dominion over the sky, but was beginning its descent toward the horizon. He needed to get back, but he was curious—what could be causing rain on a cloudless day?

What he found left him awestruck. A sheer rock cliff, many men high, was the source of the sound. Capping the rock wall was an immense pile of white ice, ice that reached all the way to the ground and built a small mountain there: ice tongues, as big around as a mammoth, with water cascading down them and splattering the surrounding rocks.

Could this be the birthplace of winter? Did the ice heaped high at the top of this cliff eventually reach to the sky and hand the clouds snow to drop down on the ground?

Dog's nose was to the ground, sniffing at the frigid, wet earth.

The rocks surrounding this astounding area were treacherous, slippery with both water and often a thin covering of ice. The cold here was breathtaking, and soon Mal was shivering despite his garments. He was fascinated, though, his mouth open as he took it all in.

Something halfway up the ice caught his attention, something sticking out of the frozen wall that did not belong. Frowning, Mal stared at it, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

It was an elk leg, thrust at an odd angle out of the ice. The flesh had rotted away, but the bones and hoof were unmistakable.

How did elk bones grow out of the wall? A shiver unrelated to the cold crept up Mal's spine. He knew he should not contemplate such things, but he could not help but regard this as the work of the same evil spirits that caused winter. What other obscene things might sprout from the ice, so defiant of summer that it remained frozen despite the sun?

 

FORTY-SIX

Year Nineteen

Hunting was not good for the Kindred, that winter. Though it was cold, the rains were sparse and the water holes did not attract the usual amount of game. Tay, Vent's widow and mother to three children, was one of a dozen people to have a toe turn black and fall off, but in her case the foot turned a deep crimson and she died of fever. Her infant son soon followed her into death. Mors, Vent's older surviving brother, said he and his wife would care for the two living children. Bellu could not very well do it—she was prostrate with grief, virtually unresponsive when the women's council gathered around her to suggest that the days were finally long enough to head back to their summer quarters.