Madbond (32 page)

And hard as the crags. Folk said they took form from the bones of the mountains themselves. And they could send great shards of mountain down on us, I knew. But an odd sense, something more sure than daring, was growing in me. It was as Kor had said the night we had clasped hands in blood brotherhood: we two together could do anything. Our handbond gave us strength and our swords gave us might. Ventures of any kind held few fears for me.

The Cragsman rose, clambering over the boulders with thick legs the color of granite in shadow, thudding down to bar our way as we rode up to him. As we sat our horses, his head was on a level with ours. I noticed the greenish, lichenlike growth of his hair. I saw his bare, massive chest, gray-blue and mossed with fur, broad as two shields. He stood spraddle-legged and scowling.

“Get down,” he said.

I made no move to dismount. “We want but to pass,” I said evenly.

“Something about you two displeases me. I smell enmity. Get down.”

Kor shrugged and swung down from Sora. More reluctantly, I slid off of Talu. The blue giant scanned us.

“You.” He pointed at Kor. “I challenge you. Fight.”

Kor's mouth came open, more in astonishment than in fear, though the prospect of single combat with a Cragsman was fearsome enough. “But that is absurd!” he protested. “I am of the Seal Kindred! We deal fairly with all. How can you call me your enemy?”

“You wear my people's bane at your belt. Both of you do. Made of my ancestors' bones and of their blood. I see it, I smell it. I will kill one of you, and then I will kill the other. Fight.”

The Cragsman emphasized the challenge with a lift of his knobby club. I got hold of the horses by their bridles, one in each hand, as they reared, lifting me off the ground—my weight constrained them to stay with us yet awhile. Kor sprang back from the Cragsman's blow, not yet drawing his sword.

“I have never done anything to you or your people! Nor do I wish to begin now.”

The Cragsman gave forth a roar that seemed to bend the sky and quake the distant peaks. “Take him, Kor!” I shouted at the same moment. “And do not hold back—strike to kill! Nothing less stops these louts.”

His sword sprang into his hand. The red stone on the pommel blazed like fire.

“I will pulp you with a single blow!” the Cragsman bellowed, swinging—the club was nearly as long as Kor was tall. But Kor stepped deftly under the stroke. A canny fighter, Kor. He had learned to fight with wit when he was a stripling facing far larger challengers in combat, challengers for his kingship. Still, I trembled as I watched. It was as the Cragsman had said: if he landed but a single blow on Korridun, he could kill him.

Kor did not wait for that mischance. He struck even as the club swung. With all his might, with speed beyond any I had ever seen in him, in anyone, he struck, and the weight of the downswinging club, the might of the Cragsman's blow, only aided him. Even as I blinked he had severed the huge hand that wielded the club, and the Cragsman roared again, a terrible roar of agony.

Kor's sword rose again, faster than I could follow, this time to strike at the giant's throat. Almost before the riven hand had struck the ground the blade swished again. But the Cragsman had fallen backward from the shock of that first stroke, and I had been wrong when I had said that nothing less than death would stop these louts of stone. This one scrambled and staggered away, gulping and roaring, “The bane—the bane—my people's bones and blood.…”

Kor stood where he was, staring down at the abandoned hand at his feet, and I came up to stand beside him. A thick, sluggish, yellow-green flow was creeping from the veins of the wrist, and as we watched the stuff changed color, growing at the same time darker and more bright, and hardened into a shining shape as of puddled water. I stooped and picked it up—it flashed in the sun as did our swords, but with a brownsheen glint. Still, it was of the same strange stuff, very smooth, hard and chill—what had Tass called it? Metal. I had never seen such a thing before, or known that the swordstuff came from the Cragsmen. The few times my people had managed to kill one, it had been by sending a rockslide down atop him.

Kor stood woodenly beside me, and, glancing up at him, I saw that he was troubled, though not by the lump of strange stuff in my hand. He seemed scarcely to see it, and I laid it down and stood to peer at him.

“It wasn't me,” he said.

“What wasn't you?”

“Zaneb—she has passions of her own. I was content to send him away. She struck to kill him.”

Stiffly he raised the sword. Bright shards of brownsheen metal fell off the blade, striking the rocky ground with a faint ringing sound.

“Sheathe her,” I said, and he did, and deeply breathed, and looked around him.

So the swords had seen this same sort of combat before—when? And at whose side? For what purpose? To gather blood? To bring back bones of Cragsmen and make weapons of them? There was no time to speak of it.

“Shall we go on?” I asked Kor slowly. “The lot of them might come roaring down on us for revenge.”

“Or they might keep well away from us, if they are truly afraid. Perhaps Alar does not like Cragsmen either.”

I felt my sword stir in its scabbard as he spoke its name, and that decided me.

“To mount, then, and let us ride quickly.”

We rode at the canter when we could, and we rode past dusk and late into the night until moonset, trying to put ourselves in an entirely different place. We rode out of spearpine and into blue pine and spruce. From time to time we heard bellowings far above, among the rocks that pierced the eversnow. They did not comfort us.

With first light the next day we were on our way, pressing the pace all through the day. But by sundown we considered that we had fled far enough. The air was starting to thin, for we had nearly reached the tree line. We would need our strength for what lay before us. And we had heard no more bellowings, nor seen a Cragsman.

We had nothing to eat except foragings, a few nuts, some bundleberries. “What I wouldn't give for a handful of oatmeal,” I complained to Kor. “Or even a stinking fish.”

I meant to make him smile, and partly succeeded. He quirked a wry half-smile at me.

“Our horses eat meat,” I held forth, addressing earth and sky with my plaint. “Would that I could eat grass and leaves!”

“Go stalk us a deer,” he said mildly, “and I will make the fire.”

I took my stand behind the last stunted spruce at the tree line, looking out over the highmountain meadow that stretched to the eversnow. High meadow had always seemed a magical place to me, and never more so than that evening, when the westering sun set it afire, sedges and hummocks of heather and leaves of stunted shrubs blazing red and orange and again red, so rich a red it seemed black in shadow but bright as blood in light. And there was a white mist also, rising out of the redness, and moving in the mist were the tree-shapes of antlers with the velvet fluttering about them—the harts would soon be in rut. I took the stable-stance, arrow nocked and bow at the ready, and waited for one to graze near me.

It did not take long. A splendid stag drifted out of the mist no more than twenty paces from me and stood, head lifted, as if he were admiring the sunset world very much as I had been. For a moment I held fast to my arrow, telling myself that I would wait for a better shot, though in fact I could have killed him cleanly where he stood.… Truth was, his glance seemed so nearly human that my heart misgave me. But my stomach stirred, reminding me of hunger, and I thought of Kor waiting at our campsite, already preparing the cooking fire. I made sure my aim—

Out of the mist bounded a hind, pure white, as white as the mist, and she leaped up to the hart, my quarry, and nuzzled him with her mouth. My bow sagged until my arrow pointed at the ground, and I let it fall limply away, for I felt weak. I had nearly slain an old friend.

“Birc!” I called.

Red hart and white hind gave a startled leap but then stood still, heads high, looking toward the sound of my voice. I walked out of my cover so that they could see me.

“By all the powers, Birc,” I said, my voice shaking, “you should be more careful. I nearly killed you.” I had not at all been expecting to see him, for we had left him two mountains away, near the ill-fated Shappa Pass.

The hart trotted up to me, great antlers riding on its stately head, very beautiful, dark brown eyes gazing into mine and glowing with joy. I reached out a hand in greeting, touched it on the neck, and there stood Birc in his human form, brown hair unruly on his forehead as of old. His shy smile broadened almost into a grin when I threw my arms around him and gave him the embrace of a comrade.

“Birc, well met!”

His face flushed with pleasure, and in his excitement he made little bleating, troating noises, such as the deer speak among themselves. Though he had been one of Kor's people of the Seal Kindred, and they were not a hairy folk, I saw that his naked body was covered with a fine, reddish fur.

“You cannot speak?”

He shook his head. Small spike antlers jutted from his forehead just at the browline, revealed by the stirring of his hair.

“No matter,” I said. “Come see Kor. He will shout for joy.”

The white hind stood by Birc's side, she, the most lovely of hinds, her fearless eyes of a purplish herb green and very human in her dainty head. Her I would not touch. I was afraid of her, for I knew what had happened to Birc through embracing her.

She walked with us back to camp. Kor sat working bow and bore to make a fire. The sticks clattered down forgotten when he saw my companion.

“Birc!” I was right—it was a shout. In two strides Kor had reached him, embracing him with the hard clasp of a king. Birc gave a soft, bleating cry of happiness.

“By our ancestor Sedna, but I am glad to see you well! Sit down, eat with us—oh, blast it to Mahela. Dan, I suppose there is not anything to eat.”

I shook my head. It seemed out of the question now to shoot a deer. But Birc reached over with casual ease and touched the white hind along her level back. For a moment my vision seemed to blur, and then she stood there also in her human form, a maiden with those eerie green eyes, a glorious mane of russet hair and white skin covered with pale fawn-colored fur. My breath tightened at the sight of her, she was so beautiful and so strange. Still standing with his hand on her back, Birc spoke softly into her ear, as deer speak, nuzzling her with his lips. Then she turned and went away upslope, and Birc sat down by our fire-yet-to-be.

Kor went back to his plying of bow and bore. “I suppose I ought to set some snares,” I said without much fervor. Snares took time. A day might go by before a pika or a whistling marmot chose to hang itself in one, and not much more than a mouthful when one did. Meanwhile we were miserable with hunger.

Birc spread his palms at me in a gesture as if to say, Do not worry.

“Just think,” I told him with mock annoyance, “we could be butchering your haunches right now.” I went to my pack to get the lengths of rawhide I needed—

Without the sound of a single footfall the white hind came back to our campsite, she in her womanly form, and with her came a retinue that made me drop snares and forget hunger: half a twelve of other deer women, their beauty such that I stared. They were of a richer fawn brown than she, their manes of glossy hair as red as a red deer's flanks in springtime, their eyes brown or green or yellow-brown, like resin, all depth and glow. And of course they were naked, their breasts brown-tipped, full but not overfull, as dainty as their delicate way of stepping. And the soft swelling beneath their merkins—ai, but I lusted. Their strangeness, the fine fur that covered them, no longer served to put me off. I felt hot and watery with longing.

“Kor,” I said hoarsely, clenching my fists, “do not touch them unless you wish to grow antlers.”

“Speak for yourself, Dan,” he replied with some amusement in his voice. “I feel no desire to touch them.”

He had the fire going at last and was feeding it with pine needle and bits of dry rot and deadwood. I looked down at him in amazement, wondering if he might not be jesting, and saw that he spoke, as usual, merest truth. Quite at ease, he rose to greet the deer maidens, gave them a grave and courtly bow of welcome, then gazed at them much as I had gazed on the white-misted meadow, with the same sort of love. Certainly not with any will to possess.

The deer maidens carried rude baskets of willow and were laying out mats of woven willow. On them they placed what looked like the oat cakes Kor's people called jannock, or perhaps a sort of scone.

“Bread!” I exclaimed, all other desires forgotten for the time, and Kor softly laughed at me.

We sat and ate greedily. The cakes were made of wild seed, I decided after a while, coarsely ground and mixed with honey. Only a starving stomach could have thought them good. That, or the tastes of a bark-stripping deer. There were roots of some sort, also, baking like earthapples near the fire, and a basket of late berries, most of them bitter. I ate them anyway. The viands and Kor's demeanor had served to cool my cock somewhat, and while I ate whatever one of the lovely damsels laid before me, I made sure I never touched any of them, even so much as to brush finger against finger when they offered me food.

When dusk had deepened nearly into nighttime, the white hind and her deer maidens left the roots baking in the embers of our fire, gathered up their willow baskets, and left us as silently as they had come. I looked after them with longing and relief quaintly mingled in me. Birc smiled crookedly at me in what might have been sympathy of a sort and slipped away into twilight like the others. Kor and I were left with fireglow and shadows.

We lay back on our blankets. Somewhere a mallow thrush sang.

“Are you going to be all right?” Kor asked. “Through the night?”

“If not, I will shout.”