The Reindeer People (28 page)

Heckram couldn't remember what had happened next. He thought he had been bundled away by his mother, carried off hurriedly to their tent and tucked into his blankets, closed off from the terrible omen of the split kobdas. The herdfolk had been swallowed in their own curse. So he had heard whispered the next day. At the next deep lake they passed, the najd had slit the throat of a fine, fat vaja. He had opened her belly and filled the hollow within with stones, and caused the body to be sunk deep in the lake. The offering should have helped. But three days later the najd himself was discovered crouched by his arran inside his tent, staring into the dead ashes on the stones. The murky smoke of sacred herbs had been thick inside the skin tent. Ranged before him were the bits of bone, feather, and stone from his shaman's pouch. No one else could read what his castings had told him on his last journey into the spirit world. The najd was dead.

'Maybe one of the other herders brought a drum. Maybe they're trying to signal us,' Lasse suggested softly.

Heckram gave a doubting snort. 'No one else followed us up this canyon. The others stayed in the lower hills, closer to the stream. And no one would drum to call us. They'd whistle.'

'I know,' Lasse admitted and fell silent again. Heckram could feel the tension in the back that pressed against his. He didn't blame the boy. His own muscles were stretched tight, ready to knot in their tension. The drum thudded on and on in its unhurried rhythm, the sound carrying hollowly through the night and the blowing wet snow. Steadily it tapped on, but its very regularity seemed to mean it was building to something, to some ominous change. Every tap of the thrumming drumhead drew his muscles a notch tighter. He strained his eyes into the darkness until points of light danced before him. He still saw nothing. Most eerie of all, the reindeer dozed placidly.

The snow fell more thickly, swirling into the rough shelter to cling to his eyelashes. They melted on his lashes and shattered his vision with prismatic distortions. He could see nothing clearly, but the things he could almost see were not of the daylight world. The hair prickled up on the back of his neck, the flesh on his body crawled, as the remnants of ancient hackles rose in hostility and fear. He dared not speak to Lasse, but took comfort from the solid warmth pressed against his back.

The hide of the world had been peeled back and he looked on its mysterious inner workings. Lights and shapes and shadows surrounded the little camp and peered at him. That brief flurry of silent snow that stirred the branches of a small birch might have been a white owl, but for the way it disintegrated into snowflakes after peering at him. From the corner of one eye he spotted the white brush of a snow fox, only to have it dematerialize into a fall of snow from a branch.

The drum thudded on monotonously, and Heckram's heart matched its beat. His head jerked as his eyes twitched from one vision to the next, each creature disappearing just as he almost recognized it. He heard sharp panting breath behind him, thought it was Lasse's, and in that instant missed the warm press against his back.

'Lasse!' he cried, springing to his feet so that he stood up through the dry branches that had formed their shelter. A stub on a dead branch raked down his cheek, tearing the flesh, and he felt the warm blood run. He gasped with the pain and clapped his hand to it as he stared wildly about. He could see no sign of the boy. Enraged with fear, he ripped the crude shelter open, flinging and kicking the branches aside. He watched as the falling snow began to coat their sleeping skins and gear bags. Lasse was gone, and he was alone with the muffling snow and the deafening drumming that now rose one notch in rhythm and pitch. It drove him to a frenzy, and he roared wordlessly at the night, at the cloaking snow and the unseen drummer.

He sprang clear of the collapsed shelter, feeling its poles and branches tumble as he leaped away. He scanned the snow about the camp for tracks of the fleeing boy, but the falling snow had already masked them. 'Lasse!' he roared, pushing the sound from this throat with all his strength. But the covering snow bore the sound to the ground and buried it while the steady drum throbs marched over his cry. There was no reply.

'Lasse!' he cried again, and his voice broke on the word. He thought he spotted a shadowy movement by the blasted stump, and he walked toward it. Nothing. But there, again, in the blackness under that pine something shifted. A dozen steps took him close enough to see that the shadows were empty. 'Lasse?' he called again, more softly. Whatever it was slunk deeper into the shadows.

Fear such as he had never known assailed him. He knew it was luring him on, deeper into the woods, and yet he knew he would follow it because there was no safety in returning to the tumbled shelter. His bow was back there, buried under scattered boughs and drifting snow, as was his great knife, and had he been hunting any beast of flesh he would have returned for them. But the drum had transformed the night. He no longer moved in a world ordered by logic, in which the hunter armed himself and went after his prey. The reality of the forest had shifted, and he knew he moved in the spirit world, where man was seldom the hunter. He walked forward blindly, following whatever summoned him, entering a tunnel of swirling snow. The drumming followed.

The night was a small place, bounded by falling snow and tree trunks. He followed something he never saw, but felt as a darker place that moved ahead of him, blocking the swirling snow and lighter trunks of the birches from his vision. Occasionally he glimpsed other things on the periphery, pale shapes that altered for an instant the pattern of the constantly swirling snow. He refused to let them distract him. He no longer called for Lasse, for he knew it was not Lasse he followed. Wherever Lasse was, he could not help him, nor could Lasse aid Heckram. On these journeys, a man was alone.

He came at last to a clearing. He could not see its boundaries, but as he stepped away from the last trees, he saw no more trunks, no more swoop of needled branches to block his vision. There was only the eternally swirling white around him and, far above, the muffled silver of a full moon behind the clouds. He stumbled forward, his feet and legs heavy with the clinging damp snow. He was not cold, but panting with effort, and sweat ran salty and stinging into his eyes and the cut on his face. He scooped a handful of cold snow, held it against the wound. The white flakes increased suddenly, rushing into his face, blinding him with their light. He closed his eyes, then flung up an arm before his face to ward off their cold touch.

When he let his arm fall again, the snow and the drum had ceased. Around him the night was black and silver. The round moon dangled heavy in a black and starry sky over an endless clearing of smooth white snow. There was no boundary to the plain on which he stood; it was vast as the tundra. Briefly, he wondered about the trees he had passed; then, as he took in the scene more completely, he did not dare to look back for them, forgot them completely.

In the center of his vision, dominating the endless plain before him, was the seite. He recognized it and knew it, though he had never seen it as he saw it now, coated thick with the snows of winter. Gray and black it reared up before him, its rough irregular surface almost suggesting a living creature, but never baring enough detail to make it clear which one. White snow clung lacily to the uneven planes of its face. Red as blood were the symbols someone had painted on it. He knew them from the drumhead of the kobdas before it had split, recognized their awesome significance. He took a step forward, and his keen nose knew then that they were painted in blood, fresh warm blood that scented the clean cold night with its strength.

The Wolf atop the seite sat up. So huge he was, Heckram did not understand how he had not seen him before. So huge he was that no wolf could he be, but only Wolf. A light wind ruffled his coat, and the silver tips of his guard hairs sparkled in the moonlight. Mighty thewed shoulders rippled beneath his lush hide. His small ears were pricked sharp, swiveled toward the man. His nose was black, and his nostrils flared thrice as he took in Heckram's scent. Wolf was silent and still, staring at Heckram with eyes that were now red, now green, now yellow. Heckram returned his gaze, silent and still as Wolf himself.

Wolf stood suddenly, looming over Heckram. Slowly he stretched, his chest dipping down behind his outstretched forelegs in a movement that could have been a greeting. He rose from his stretch, then leaped, higher and farther than any mortal wolf could, to land with silent lightness before Heckram. Heckram did not move. The rules of the day world did not apply here. One did not flee or challenge Wolf. Eye to eye he stood with the enormous creature. Hot, rank breath puffed against his face. The yellow eyes measured him as Heckram stood firm in their glare. Slowly, a great gray paw lifted from the ground. Wolf held it before Heckram's face, let him study the black claws on the wide-spread foot. He did not flinch. The great paw touched his face. He felt the roughness of the toe pads, the strength and weight of the huge beast behind it, the drag of the dull nails down his cheek. Then Wolf turned from him, leaped once more to sit atop the seite. He looked down on Heckram.

Something ran on his face, dripped from his chin. Slowly he drew his hand free of his mitten and lifted it to his cheek. The wound stung as he placed his hand against it. Then he lifted his hand free, saw the blackness of his blood on his palm and fingers. Silently he stepped forward, to press his bloody hand against the seite's cold surface. He felt the seite press back against his flesh, felt it suck the warm blood from his hand and take it deep within itself. When at last he drew his hand back from the stony surface, the handprint that remained was not red, but white as snow. He looked up at Wolf, smiling, and Wolf looked down at him and parted his jaws, showing his red tongue and white teeth as he laughed joyously. It was done. The bargain was sealed.

The snow fell again, suddenly and solidly, in a sheet that coated Heckram's face and filled his mouth and nose, making him sputter for air. He heard the drum muttering again. The wind pushed against him, and he staggered blindly through the snowstorm. He opened his eyes a crack, and the wind drove icy flakes into them. He reached to wipe the snow from his face and felt the brush of branches as they dragged against his sleeve. He clawed the snow from his eyes frantically and stood for a long moment in disorientation. The black night was silent around him, the snowfall long over. But where was he? A huge whitened stump loomed up immediately before him. This was what had snagged at his sleeve. Then from behind him he caught the familiar click and shift of the herd's movements by night. He turned.

Their animals were spread out on the slope below him. The stump behind him was the same one that had tricked him earlier. The crude shelter he and Lasse had built was but a dozen steps away from him. It was as they had built it, and within it he could make out the shape of Lasse burrowed into his sleeping skins. He staggered toward it, confused and strangely grateful.

A lump rose in his throat. Lasse was safe, and he himself was returned alive from that other place. How had the world seemed such a bitter place earlier this night, when it was the only place where one might know the sweetness of life? The heart-thumping euphoria of survival washed over him.

He was within arm's reach of the shelter before he noticed the man who sat by the door. He was perfectly still, his hooded head bowed over his bent knees. His attire of white fox skin had merged him with the drifted snow he crouched in. Heckram stopped still. His dream was too recent and the man too motionless. What might look out at him from that hood?

'Who are you?' he demanded in a low voice. He swallowed the quaver at the end of his words.

The man turned his face up. The clouded eyes fixed unerringly on Heckram's, chilling him to his soul and beyond. The old man smiled, and the gaps between his teeth were black and bottomless in the moonlight. 'Carp I am,' he said in a soft voice. 'An old man whose long journey is nearly at an end. You would be one of the herdfolk of Capiam's tribe?'

Heckram nodded briefly, reassured by the man's mention of the herdlord, but still not liking the circumstances. 'I am.'

'And your name is ...' the old man pressed.

'Heckram,' he conceded. 'My companion is Lasse.'

'Heckram,' the old man repeated in a voice well pleased. 'Ah, Heckram. You wouldn't have a bit of meat about your camp for an old man to gnaw on, would you? Or anything at all? I have come far seeking your folk, and am both weary and hungry.'

'I'll see what I can find,' Heckram muttered. He felt naked as he stooped to crawl past the old man into the shelter. Something about the seamed old face and murky eyes made him feel vulnerable to the darker side of the night. He didn't want ever to be alone with that old man. He took care to nudge Lasse awake in passing. Inside his gear bag he found strips of jerky and a rind of frozen cheese. Lasse grunted complainingly as Heckram carefully crawled back over him to the old man.

'I was asleep, you gut-bag,' Lasse muttered grumpily.

'We've got a guest,' Heckram informed him.

'I know. He arrived right after you decided to go off into the woods. But he would hardly speak a word to me; said he was waiting for you, and I should get some sleep. If he doesn't mind if I sleep, why should you? And what took you so long, anyway? Too much cheese?'

Heckram let the conversation die. It was something he might sort out with Lasse later, in private, or perhaps not at all. While he was very curious to know what Lasse had experienced that night, he was not at all eager to share his moments with Wolf with anyone. They had become, inexplicably, precious and private. Terror could be a form of intimacy. He considered for an instant, as he handed the food to the old man, that Lasse might be guarding a similar treasure.