The Dog Master (38 page)

“Mal, I had no idea of this!” Lyra exclaimed. “I am so … I do not know what you say. Are you truly in love?”

Mal reflected on the irony of this question coming from this girl. “Yes, Lyra, that part is true,” Mal said gravely, looking directly into Lyra's eyes. “I am in love. I am surprised you do not know this.”

A slow surprise built on Lyra's face. She glanced away from the intensity of Mal's gaze. “Oh,” she replied softly.

Mal wondered if she were thinking of his leg. They sat in silence for a long, awkward moment, Mal nearly choking on his self-loathing. He was behaving so foolishly, humiliating himself in front of Lyra.

After a moment, Lyra turned back to him. “Would you like to see my secret place?” she asked.

 

FORTY-FOUR

Lyra took Mal far downstream, into an area where large boulders lay partially buried in soil and grasses. She asked Mal to make a torch, which he was able to do expertly, using the smoldering peat from the horn he carried. The little fire was comforting—the day had grown even colder, as cold as Mal could ever remember being at summer quarters. Then she led him to a small hole at the base of one of the rocks. “It is hard to slide in, but it is a much bigger cave than it looks,” she advised him.

Mal could see that she had scooped a lot of the earth away from the hole, but it would still be a tight fit for him.

Lyra went first, and Mal handed her the torch before backing into the cramped space. At one point the rock ceiling was pressing down on him, holding him to the ground, and he felt a rising fear that he might get stuck. But then he wriggled free.

They were inside a cave so large that their torch could not penetrate all the way to the back. One wall was light-colored stone, and Lyra motioned toward it with a shy expression on her face. “See?”

Mal frowned, trying to make sense of what looked like a series of dark marks on the rock. Some of the marks were red, rubbed into the stone with rouge.

“See? Look, it is a bear. And here, these are reindeer,” Lyra explained, stroking the marks with her finger.

Then, just like that, Mal saw that she was right. It was as if a herd of reindeer were there on the rock, except they were flat, and it was just their outlines. Mal gasped, his mind reeling. “How is this possible? There are animals in the stone!”

“I pressed them into the rock with charcoal and rouge.”

“You did this? But how could you make animals?” Mal was dumbfounded.

“I dragged charcoal across the surface and bent the resulting marks into the shapes of animals. Do you like them?”

“I could never have imagined anything like this.” Mal was not entirely sure how he felt about it—the marks made him dizzy.

“This is what I do. It makes me happy.”

“It is the most amazing thing I have ever seen,” he told her sincerely.

Lyra gave a light laugh of delight. “You are the only one who knows, Mal.”

He regarded her in the flickering light. He should tell her, right now, that he loved her, but he did not. The words made it all the way to his lips, but there they died, the way the heat from his torch flickered and then faded before it warmed their skin.

They were on the path back to camp when Grat emerged from the trees. “Where have you been?” he demanded bruskly.

Mal blinked at the harsh tone. “Why, has something happened?”

Grat ignored him. “You should not wander this far without a hunter,” he lectured Lyra. “These are dangerous times.”

“I was with her,” Mal pointed out.

“What were you doing, anyway?” Grat asked, still not looking at Mal.

“We were walking,” Lyra replied slowly, her voice sounding angry. “Why?”

“Your father asked me to make sure you do not come to harm.”

“My father? No he did not,” Lyra said.

Grat shook his head. “It was on the hunt,” he insisted. “You would not know of such things.” He gave a condescending glance at Mal. “Neither would you, obviously.”

“I do not believe it,” Mal challenged.

Grat's eyes narrowed.

“Perhaps you misunderstood my father,” Lyra interrupted, putting a cautionary hand on Mal's shoulder.

“Members of the hunt are prohibited from fighting,” Grat stated pointedly. He stared at Mal. “But not you.”

“What is that?” Lyra interrupted suddenly. She gestured into the trees, which were vanishing into a grey-white cloud. A windlike tumult was quickly upon them.

Snow.

*   *   *

The Kindred left summer quarters in a panic. Never before had this happened—no one, even those most concerned about how long Bellu was tarrying—thought it would
snow
.

The blizzard continued unabated for days. Soon every step was a struggle, the wind whipping their faces. The hunters took turns walking up front, breaking down the calf-high snow so that the rest of the Kindred could step in their tracks. It was exhausting.

Hardy was the first to die. They were laboring on a day with particularly vicious winds. Then a thin, reedy scream whipped past, a wail that seemed to have no direction. Everyone halted, backs to the storm, glancing around for the source of the raw keening.

Calli and Coco found Droi on her knees in the snow, holding her husband's head. His ruined face was frozen in the odd sneer left by the lion, his rheumy eyes clouded and dull. The women sought to comfort Droi, but she thrashed away from them.

Urs came back to see what the commotion was about. “Oh no,” he said sadly. He exchanged a look with Calli, then turned to Droi. “We must keep moving, or we will all perish,” he told her gently, pulling her up.

“Could we not make camp and wait out the storm?” Calli suggested.

Urs shook his head. “This is not a storm, this is
winter.
If we do not get south, we will die on the trail.”

They did not bury Hardy—there was no time for such niceties. Coco and Calli gazed down at him and then at each other. The wind whipped away any feelings either of them might have shared.

Calli was despondent. Now she had lost two fathers—yet what she mourned most was the missed opportunity. Why had she spoken so seldom to either one of them when they were alive? Her reason—that they had not ever spoken much to
her
—seemed a thin excuse, now.

Urs was right: winter had arrived. The next day was thankfully clear but bitterly cold. They squinted in the stark sunshine bouncing off the snow, which was unbroken as far as they could see. Not a prey animal in sight.

Calli felt the hunger seep into her, made worse with the cold. She could not stop shivering. They were taking frequent breaks now, and Mal was busy making fires whenever they halted. No one said it, but they were grateful for his help. Bellu, nominally in charge of the fires, had completely abdicated, and sat staring into the flames whenever Mal lit some wood.

“We need meat,” Urs declared urgently. No one answered him—they all knew this to be true. If they came across tracks, Urs had vowed to pursue them and find the animals that had made them—but so far the snow was undisturbed.

“We should never have left this late,” Albi remarked. No one answered her, either.

The next morning, Droi was slow to wake up, and fell so far behind the main group she was lost from sight. Finally Albi waited for her to catch up.

“You need to move faster, my sister,” Albi observed.

“I am trying,” Droi protested weakly.

“What is it you are carrying?” Albi asked, pointing at the ball of elk hide hanging from a strap around Droi's shoulders.

“It was Hardy's,” Droi explained. She stopped, putting her hands on her knees, while the pouch swung from her shoulders.

Albi watched the motion of the pouch, fascinated. “What is in it?”

Droi shrugged.

Albi turned and looked at the Kindred, now so far ahead she could no longer identify the people in the rear. “I remember that Hardy always liked to carry a bit of cooked, dried meat to chew on,” she mentioned casually. “Is that what you have, there?”

“It is all that I have left of my husband's. There are a few items, some bear teeth, things like that.”

“Plus, perhaps, some food,” Albi insisted.

Droi stood. “We should keep moving.” She determinedly pushed past Albi.

“Droi,” Albi murmured.

Droi turned and the walking stick caught her full on the side of the head. With a cry, Droi fell into the knee-high snow. Splayed facedown, she struggled to find purchase to push herself back up. Albi stepped forward and put her knees on Droi's shoulders and her palms on the back of Droi's head. Albi bore down, keeping her sister's face in the snow, while Droi weakly bucked and turned, trying to get her off.

Albi waited. After several minutes, Droi lay still, but Albi continued to hold her down. Finally she released her sister's head. Albi found the pouch and rooted around in it, grinning in triumph when she located the hard piece of meat, only slightly moldy. She shoveled it into her mouth, using snow to add moisture so she could swallow it more easily.

*   *   *

The Kindred were still a day out from the Blanc camp, and they were starving. Eyes dull and gait reduced to a stumble, almost no one spoke.

They grieved their dead. Two days after the Kindred noticed that Droi was gone, Coco came to Calli to say that Sopho, the oldest woman in the Kindred, had not awakened. Then Ador, Bellu's mother, fell down, could not get up, and was carried by her sons for a day and a half, until she breathed her last. Worse were the children—three who had not yet been named were gone, as well as a boy of six summers whose formal name had ironically referred to long life.

The snow, melting, heavy, and wet, was untracked all the way to the horizon. Sun bounced off it and stabbed their eyes until they were all weeping from the glare. No game, no insects, no worms. Their hopes lay with the Blanc Tribe. The pale-eyed people would feed the Kindred, who would trade all they had—even Urs's treasured lion skin—for food.

Despite the lack of wind, they could not smell the fires of the Blanc Tribe on the still air, and the morning the Kindred stumbled into camp they found out why: they were gone.

The silence was eerie, even menacing. Where were the happy people who always ran to greet them, calling in friendship, offering fish and fowl? All that remained was black mud throughout the settlement, mud wet with snowmelt and riddled with a hundred footprints.

It was all so wrong that the Kindred instinctively huddled together around Urs, though it was a stalker—Grat—who figured out what they were seeing. “Blood,” he asserted. “See? It is all blood.”

Urs did see. Splattered everywhere was old blood, in pools and smears. “Something happened to them.”

Calli put a hand to her mouth. “What is it? What are you saying? Why did they leave?”

“I do not think they left,” Urs replied grimly.

Mal pointed to the churned up earth. “See how the smaller footprints are here, behind the larger ones? This is where the men stood to protect their children. This is where they fought and bled. And there is the direction the children ran.” Mal pointed toward the lake, a hundred paces away, looking starkly blue and beautiful under the cloudless sky. He limped over to the footprints. “Here the feet are placed far apart. These other men were chasing the children.” He squinted at the lake, then turned back to look at Urs, who was nodding. “Cohort,” Mal finished. “The Cohort came.”

Calli stared at her son. “The Cohort were
here
?”

“Why are you even talking?” Grat demanded contemptuously.

“He is right,” Urs replied.

“But there are no scavenger tracks,” Palloc pointed out. “If what you are saying is true, we would see their prints. Otherwise the bodies would still be here.”

“Not if the Cohort took them,” Urs replied. “As they took Dog, the day you were hiding in a tree.”

Palloc flushed.

“What do we do?” Valid asked.

“We cannot go on today. We will stay here for a bit. Perhaps the weather will be warmer tomorrow,” Urs answered heavily. His shoulders slumped in defeat.

Calli fell to her knees and wept. They had been such good folk, open-hearted and welcoming to all who traveled through—why would anyone do this?

“Stay here? Stay
here
?” Bellu cried in a panicked voice. “What if they come back? Urs, what if they come back for
us
?”

“I do not know but we can go no farther today,” Urs mumbled exhaustedly.

So hungry he was dizzy from it, Mal built a communal fire, then set some outlying fires for the families. He was remembering Ema, her smile, and her kisses. She was to be his wife. It had been arranged.

He tried to mourn for the girl with the missing arm, but in truth he could scarcely remember much about her.

Though the sun was as high in the sky as it would get that day, people were already curling up as if for the night, staring at nothing. The fires seemed to bring up the scent of blood—it was sickening, and yet it called to their empty stomachs, drawing out the ache and making it all anyone could think about.

Mal saw Palloc tossing aside one of the Blanc Tribe's nets, and he went to get it, remembering the two girls carrying it as they went to the ice cave, the day of the kiss. No one in the Kindred had ever had use for such a thing, and Mal looked at it curiously, seeing how each strand was tied to several other strands.

The net reminded him of something, a memory that came to him after a moment.

The ice cave.

 

FORTY-FIVE

Mal looked around. The way people were settling in, it was apparent no one wanted to move, and yet if they did not, if they stayed here, they would all starve.

Unless there was food in the ice cave.

He told no one where he was going, taking only the net and a smoldering horn for fire. At the mouth of the cave, he found the dead grasses piled neatly, and used them to fashion his torch.