The Reindeer People (10 page)

'Sleep,' Heckram said simply. He glanced about, including Tillu questioningly. She stiffened with wariness, but held up the mended garment. He crossed to take it from her. He nodded slowly over her work as he ran his fingers over the place where the sleeve had been torn. She was suddenly conscious of his tallness, the depth of his chest as he stood over her, blocking the fire's light and warmth. She shrank before him. But, 'Thank you,' he said again and then stepped away, to spread the coat once more over Lasse. Without a glance at Tillu, he lay down not far from his companion. Kerlew was suddenly at his side, offering a sleeping hide from his own bed. The man gave him a grin and a friendly poke of thanks, and settled for sleep.

Tillu rose to bring in wood to bank the fire. Kerlew followed her out into the cold to relieve himself, then brought in an extra armload of fuel.

'I like them,' the boy said suddenly. 'Let's go live with their people. You can be the healer and I can be the shaman.'

'Shush!' Tillu glanced warily at the unstirring men. 'Go to sleep now. We'll talk about that later.'

She arranged the wood with care, thinking of Kerlew's words. Could it be he missed being part of a people as much as she did? A foolish idea. What had folk ever meant to him besides beating and taunts and mockery? Except for Carp. And this man, tonight. But the way a man behaved around a child when he was alone with him and the way he treated him in public were two different things. She remembered a man, several years ago, a man who had seemed to like her. He had courted her with meat and gifts, and then, one night as Kerlew slept, he had offered, with the kindest of smiles, to take the child out and leave him 'where the wolves would find him quickly, so that you and I could have children of our own. The gods never intended one such as he to live this long.' Tillu and Kerlew had left that folk before the sun rose the next day. She and Kerlew had both liked that man, too. She shook her head, felt the sting of fool's tears.

She banked the fire so it would burn long and then retreated to her own pallet. But she could not relax with strangers in her tent, and she lay for a long time, staring at the slow fire and dreaming. She glanced at the sleeping Heckram and found herself speculating. If she had not seen them hunting together, she would never have guessed that he and the boy were of the same people. The boy had a short, broad build. His thick black hair and yellowed skin reminded her of Kerlew's parentage. But Heckram, while he showed signs of kinship in his high cheekbones and dark eyes, also reminded her of the men of her own people. Blood and people had mixed somewhere. She lay still, smelling their unfamiliar odors. There was the smell of blood, sharp and disturbing, from the boy's injury. But beneath that there were the subtler odors of hides tanned by a different method, of the cheese and fish, and of the man himself. Inexplicably, he smelled of reindeer. Not the dead odor of meat and hides, but the subtle wild scent that she picked up when she stalked such game. He smelled of living reindeer as her own father had once smelled of his sheep. It was a puzzle. She meant to stay awake and ponder it, but didn't.

'I'm out of breath,' he explained.

'Me, too,' Heckram agreed, standing still while the boy panted. 'But there's not far to go now.'

The last hill had been a steep one, but now they stood on the final ridge. The barking of the dogs bounced echoes through the hills, and the wood smoke of the talvsit was a distinct tang in the air. The forested slope below them hid the winter camp with its huts of sod and bark, but they were nearly home.

'And just as well, too,' Heckram muttered to himself. Lasse had not asked for any help, but he walked awkwardly, his injured arm held close to his chest. Usually the boy plowed eagerly through the snow ahead of Heckram. Today he had followed in his wake, taking advantage of the trail he broke, and Heckram had consciously slowed his pace. Now relief lightened Heckram's mood. The brief light of the day was already fading. He was glad they had made it home before dark.

'Just as well ... what?' panted the boy.

'Just as well everyone will be busy at their chores when we come in. Bad enough to come back empty-handed. Worse to come back saying, Here's the only meat that was shot, and it's not worth eating.'

Lasse snorted his contempt for the weak joke, and they began to make their way down the hill. They soon intersected one of the many trails that led into the winter encampment, and the going was easier. On the trail the snow was packed, and there were no overhanging branches to duck. They passed a few harkar browsing on the outskirts of the camp. Their ears swiveled toward the men curiously but the deer didn't pause as they nipped the tenderest tips of the naked branches. The rest of the domestic reindeer would be either with the herd grazing up on the hillsides or harnessed to pulkor, journeying south with the traders who sought wool and bronze tools and other supplies.

Elsa was drawing water from the spring as they passed. She straightened with her dripping buckets and called out as she caught sight of them. 'You're back! What kept you? Too much luck, I hope.' Her voice was warm with welcome and relief.

Heckram felt the familiar tightness in his chest, that sense of a duty shirked. It made him brusque. 'Too much luck of the wrong kind. Any news here?'

She shook her head, walking ahead of them as she talked. 'Not much. Wolves got one of Jeffor's vaja last night, so most of the sita has been out hunting today.'

And not you?' Lasse asked. 'Then they won't get much.'

The girl smiled at his compliment. 'Not this time. My mother is not feeling well, so I stayed behind to bring in the water and do the heavier chores. Father went with the hunters.'

'Well, the man who taught you to shoot so well can surely shoot as well himself,' Lasse observed.

Heckram was silent on the subject. He knew that Kuoljok's eyes were starting to fail him. The same thought must have crossed Elsa's mind, for her face saddened for an instant. But she recovered well, easing her heavy buckets to the ground outside her tent, then straightening with a sigh. Then, as she noticed Lasse's odd posture: 'What's happened to you?' she demanded.

'A mishap,' Heckram said and suddenly did not want to say much about it. 'A strange hunter. She must have been taking aim at the same vaja that Lasse and I were stalking. Lasse stood up with his rope at the same instant that she let fly. The arrow took him through the arm. But he'll be all right. She had some skills as a healer. That's why we were out overnight.'

Elsa nodded and spoke to Lasse. 'Your grandmother was worried, but refused to make a fuss over it. She just said that doubtless you'd had better hunting than you expected and were having a hard time getting it home.'

'I wish,' Lasse snorted.

'This strange hunter? Is there another talvsit close by, then? I've bone needles and antler work I'd like to trade. I tried to send some south with the traders, but they said they'd already packed as big a load as their sleds would carry. Still, another village might -'

Heckram shook his head, but Lasse elaborated. 'No. No talvsit at all. Just a woman and her son living in a skin tent alone. And not even much of a tent at that.'

'Outcasts, perhaps?' Elsa asked, her curiosity piqued.

Heckram shrugged. 'I doubt it. They've a foreign look about them, a strange way of cutting their clothes, and their speech is different. One can barely understand them.'

'Still,' Elsa persisted in wondering. 'How do folk come to be alone like that? There must be some evil in their past... like a plague that destroyed the rest of them, or becoming separated during a river crossing,' she hastened to explain at Heckram's puzzled look.

'The boy has the look of something like that. Did you see how he watched us leave this morning, Heckram? More like a black crow in a tree than a child. Like he knew too much of life to be a child, but wasn't concerned by any of it. He watched us go, but I would swear he didn't see us. It seemed a very strange look for a little boy,' Lasse added, shaking his head.

Elsa's eyes brightened with curiosity.

Heckram shrugged uneasily. 'You're imagining things, Lasse. Let's get you home to Stina. She's been worried about you all this time, and my mother as well. As if we were children out playing late.'

'Not too far off the mark, if you ask me,' Elsa commented lightly, then waved a farewell as she ducked into the domed sod hut with her buckets of water.

The winter camp was quiet as they wended their way between sod and bark shelters to Stina's hut. They passed the meat racks and storage huts of their neighbors. Here were the atti, platforms on four tall legs where frozen sides of reindeer meat were resting. They passed njalla, tall racks set high on a single smooth, slippery pole, the best way to guard food against voracious wolverines. A row of reindeer sledges, turned upside down to keep out the snow, looked much like a row of upended boats, with their keels, sterns, ribs, and bulwarks. There were the covered akja for hauling loads, and the half-covered pulkor for driving. Lasse drew energy from the familiar sights of home. But Heckram found he dreaded seeing Stina.

Every winter the herdfolk returned to the talvsit for a few months of rest. The sod and bark huts were patched, or new ones built by younger couples. Fresh birch twigs were cut and spread on the earth floor and covered with a layer of hides. Down from the storage racks came the sledges and winter skis that had rested there all through the summer while the folk were on the wide tundra, and up on the racks went the summer gear that would not be needed until the spring migration began. Their lives made an elliptical orbit between this winter talvsit and their summer camp at the base of the Cataclysm.

Heckram loved the site of their talvsit. He had visited other ones, when he was but a child on the back of one of his father's harkar, but thought none of them were so well placed as his own. Here were deep fresh springs that never failed, steaming in winter as the cold water gushed out of the ground and made contact with the colder air. The forested hills offered plenty of fuel for the fires and ample birches with their tender twigs for flooring and their knurled bark for the carving of utensils. The snow fell deep on the hillsides, but beneath it were tender lichens of the pine fells, no inedible soggy green moss. The herd wandered, but never far from the camp. The watchful herdfolk guarded their beasts as they pawed deep holes in the snow and shoved their hairy muzzles down to feast on the revealed lichen.

The old woman's winter shelter was on the outskirts of the sita, where she and her husband had built it when their life together was new. Heckram lifted the door flap of Stina's hut and motioned Lasse in. He paused outside to stamp the clinging snow from his boots, then gritted his teeth and ducked in to face Lasse's grandmother.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust from the sun-bright snow to the fire-lit dimness of the cosy hut. Flames burned cleanly on the stone hearth, the arran, near the center of the hut. Stina knelt nearby, tethered to the center pole of the hut by her belt weaving. She did not deign to notice their entrance, and both stood, feeling awkward.

She was dressed in worn but brightly colored woven garments decorated with the bright ribbon weaving of her own hands. Her deep black eyes flashed at them once from their deep nests of wrinkles. Then she looked away as if they were of no consequence to her. Her thinning black hair was pulled back from her face in a severely neat roll, and her busy hands never paused in their manipulation of the bright fibers she joined. Neat shanks of dyed fibers and grass rested near her, waiting their turn to be worked into the bright pattern. Everywhere was the work of those same tireless hands, in the cheeses and blood sausages that hung from the rafters, in the cheese molds and salt flask woven from grass fibers, and the traveling baskets with their intricately simple patterns. The water buckets stood brimming with fresh water from the spring. Here a roll of shoe grass hung from a rafter, ready to insulate the laced boots her hands stitched. The carved shoe-grass comb near it had been worked by Lasse's father and was older than the boy. The hut smelled of the birch twigs and clean hides, of the fire's heat and the cheeses. It was a homey, welcoming smell, and Lasse sighed as he sank gratefully by the fire.

Stina knotted a bit of the fibers and slowly unfastened the work from her waist. 'So. You've found your way home, have you? Never mind that someone might have been worrying about you, out hunting two days when you said you'd be back in one.'

The two men looked at each other, and Heckram shrugged at Lasse and whispered, 'You tell her. She's your grandmother.'

But Stina's ears were as keen as ever, and she went on mercilessly, 'Never mind that someone's old grandmother has to fetch her own water, and check her grandson's harke as well as her own. Never mind that she cooked food enough for two last night, and kept it warm far into the night for someone who wasn't coming. Never mind that she must spend an hour looking for the milking scoop that someone had hung up out of sight and reach, and then struggle to milk a vaja that hasn't been trained to stand properly still. Never mind -'

'I got shot.' Lasse's words dropped on the lecture like a load of tree snow on an unsuspecting hunter. 'Heckram, help me get my coat off.'

But before Heckram could move, Stina was there, tugging gently at the sleeve as the tone of her lecture changed abruptly. 'It's just as your mother was saying last night, Heckram, when the poor woman stopped in to see if Lasse had taken supplies for more than one day. Off they go to hunt, with never a care as to whether we'll see them again! Off chasing the wild vaja, when they'd both be better off at home, tending to what they already have, yes, and perhaps looking to a future that is not so far away. Oh, but what does a man care when he worries his mother and gives her a night without rest? Nothing.'

Her tongue stopped for a moment as a tousled Lasse emerged from his coat. She handed the garment to Heckram for him to hang up and knelt by her grandson as if he were a child. 'Well. You may be a bad shot, Heckram, but at least you made a neat job of bandaging it. Here I expected blood and a mess, with a piece of leather strapped over it. But this is as nice a job as I've seen since Kila the midwife went south with the traders and married there, never to come back to those who needed her, never even thinking of her old uncle left alone. But look at your shirt, boy! Now where am I going to get the wool to mend that, and this your father's own shirt, made for him by your mother's little hands. You've bled all over it! She traded the hides of her own reindeer for that wool, she who could scarcely afford to, and worked into the night by the firelight to weave -'

'Heckram didn't shoot me,' Lasse cut in mercilessly. 'It was a stranger, hunting alone and on her own. And she's the one who bandaged me.'

'Well!' Stina rocked back on her heels, to regard him with wounded anger. 'And never a word of this do you tell to your own grandmother! I suppose the whole sita is buzzing with this tale, and I shall have to hear of my grandson's adventure from that gossip Bror. Well, what am I to expect? What am I, just a worthless old woman, fit only to weave and cook and mend and clean and milk and ...' She added sting to her words as with seeming meekness she turned to the fire, to move a simmering pot from its edge. Turning her back on them, she shuffled with exaggerated care to the wooden trunk to take out bowls and spoons.

'You are the first to hear of it,' Heckram declared hastily. 'But for a word or two to Elsa, just enough to be polite. She knows she'll have to get the gist of the tale from you, while Lasse eats and sleeps. No, thank you.' He shook his head to the proffered bowl. 'Now I must leave, so that Lasse can tell you all of it. I've a mother of my own to return to, and no doubt chores to catch up on.'

'Listen to him! As if Ristin would let her home go to wrack and ruin because her son is gone for a night. It isn't so long, young man, since she was bringing in wolf pelts, and you but a brat in the wood komse hanging from her pack saddle, yes, and bawling so that she had to stuff sweet marrow in your greedy little mouth to keep you quiet. But no, now he's a man, and the only one who has ever hunted or worked, I suppose. Well, Lasse, are you going to tell me of this strange woman who shoots my grandson and then mends him? Or must I wait to hear the tale from Ristin?'

Lasse rolled his eyes at Heckram, but he only grinned as he ducked from the hut. He took a deep lungful of the cold air, grateful that Lasse was in competent hands, and that Stina was not angry with him. Evening had fallen swiftly, and the only light in the sita was that which leaked from the huts. He hurried over the familiar paths between the huts, avoiding sleeping dogs curled before their owners' doors, ducking around the looming storage racks. A figure stepped suddenly from the darkness directly into his path, and Heckram halted abruptly to keep from running into him.