People - People of the Wolf Part 25

"A leader?"

He nodded seriously. "A great leader. That's why I've done what I've done. Talon taught you well out there, didn't she? Oh, I watched you kill the moose. Well done. A perfect throw."

"How?" she asked, suddenly recoiling a step. "I followed you all through the growing of the Long Light. I watched, and I admired. I'll admit, at times I was tempted to ambush you, enjoy the temptations of your body."

" Y-you followed us? All that time you ..."

"But of course. I wouldn't want the woman I cherished to come to any harm .. . not after you loved me so on the march from Mammoth Camp."

She shivered.

"I never hurt you," he reminded her. "I love you more than anything on this earth. Except perhaps our People."

Reeling, she turned and looked away, feeling him close, feeling his arms go around her, warm, protective. His fingers traced the firm line of her jaw, striking fire along her flesh.

"I .. . I'll never love you! Never. You forced me .. . used me for your pleasure like some .. . some .. . You brought me back to Crow Caller, threw me at his feet--humiliated me before the People. No, I ran to escape you."

"I know." He said it so sincerely.

She pushed violently away, fists knotted at her sides. "You know?" she demanded, rage building at her memories. "What do you know? What do you know of Crow Caller's caress, of my despair? How can you know what it felt like that day Talon and I sneaked away from Sheep Whistle's camp?"

"The visions." A mounting sadness grew in his eyes. "I told you, I'd never harm you. But I've seen. Seen your Power, Fox. Not now, not any time soon, but one day, your word will be law. In the vision you'll be the strength of the People and I--"

"And you mock Runs In Light's Dreams?" she cried, shaking her head. "Did he ever have visions of you?"

She fumbled with her dirty fingers, eyes downcast. "No, he Dreamed--"

"I have visions of you. We're tied, you and I. I've seen you changed--made powerful. And it's my duty to force you onto the right path. Help you grow into what you'll need to be."

Bitterly she snapped, "I'll be what I want, not what your twisted imagination would make me!"

He shook his: head slowly, a fragile set to his lips. "As I love you, I would spare you. But I can't. Like me, you have your place. Eventually,we'll be together, powerful, the fate of the People in our hands. Then you'll love me and understand what I've done for you."

Her retort died on her lips at the queer look in his hot eyes. "You're mad."

His odd eyes never left hers. "Maybe. Remember that I've sworn I love you. My wrath is for the Others who would drive us away. For you, I have only tenderness and I cry at the thought of what you will face. When you come to me--"

"I'll never come to you!" she spat. "I'll embrace an Other before I--".

He reeled, brow furrowed. "No! Never say that! You .. . you're mine!

Mine, you hear? Why do you think I fight? That you would fall to the hands of an Other? It's to keep you clean .. . pure for my seed, that together, you and I, the greatest of the People can found a new line of--"

She scuttled backward. "Mad," she whispered as he looked at her, shaking his head. "No," he pleaded. "You don't see it! I do. I see the child in your womb. My child!" A trembling smile touched his lips, eyes growing watery. He reached out a gentle hand to touch her. "I've seen our son!"

"No!" she screamed. On fleet feet, she whirled, leaving the hide sack behind her, bolting over the hill. Only when Green Water grabbed her in strong arms and held her did she finally stop shuddering.

"What?"

"Raven Hunter," she tried to explain, the horror too great. "He's mad, insane."

"Hush, it's all right. He won't bother you." Green Water hugged her again.

Dancing Fox jerked around, looking fearfully over her shoulder, searching, but seeing nothing more than waving sedges, wormwood, and die occasional gra.s.ses of the smooth hillside.

"Why is it always us?" One Who Cries lifted his hands, eyes on a knot of people arguing loudly a dart's throw away. The elders waggled scolding fingers and snapped at the smoldering young men who fingered their darts and shook their stubborn heads. Arguments filled the camp. Raven Hunter's actions had brought it all to a boil.

In the shelters on the terrace, a deep-seated tension had invaded the skin lodges. Women worked hides, eyes veiling worry as their men bickered. The children no longer ran among the dogs laughing and teasing. The stick and running games had fallen silent.

One Who Cries shook his head, studying his dwindling supply of quartzite point blanks. He chose one, looking carefully at the stone, practiced eye seeking any flaw, any irregularity. Stubby teeth sunk in his lower lip, he squinted at the point before rubbing the edge along his grooved sandstone, preparing the platform.

"First Runs In Light and his Dream!" he muttered over the rasping of thestone. "Now Raven Hunter wants to hunt the Others instead of mammoth and caribou! We always have trouble now."

Singing Wolf looked up from where he carved a segment of mammoth ivory, shaping it carefully into an atlatl hook. Laughing Sunshine patched his moccasins nearby, the new life in her belly barely visible.

"It's as Heron said," he muttered. "The world's changing. Nothing's the same anymore."

"Raven Hunter and Runs In Light have split the People right down the middle."

Green Water lifted her chin, thoughtful. "Which half should we go with?

Runs In Light kept us safe--led us to Heron. We can't forget that." With a rounded cobble, she kneaded a mixture of brains and urine into the hide she worked. The caribou fawn skin would make undergarments, soft, warm and light. Already the bulge of a child rounded her abdomen.

From the side, Dancing Fox worked at st.i.tching new fawn skin undergarments together. Her hair swung in a black wave as she listened.

"I think we should have stayed with him," One Who Cries agreed. "I could have missed all this."

"You say that a lot now," Green Water mentioned easily.

"What?"

"We should have ... we should have.. .." She smiled warmly at him,1 enjoying his scowl. "Why do you think," Singing Wolf asked curiously, "that Crow Caller has said nothing?"

One Who Cries shrugged. "It's as if he's waiting for something."

Dancing Fox sniffed loudly.

"You know what Heron said about him. You heard Broken Branch." Laughing Sunshine turned the long boots in her hand. "Says he doesn't Dream. And Heron would know. Maybe he's waiting to see which way the wind's blowing so he can make up a Dream." "Heron believes Runs In Light's Dream," One Who Cries muttered. He nodded to himself as he ran his thumb down the edges of the tool he crafted and picked up his baton.

"But people say she's wicked, a witch," Laughing Sunshine whispered.

"She didn't do anything bad to us. She fed us, kept us alive. No, she's all right. And she Dreams. She really Dreams. Remember the way she called the caribou?"

"Remember the way Runs In Light called the caribou?"

"Yes." One Who Cries whacked his baton along the edge he'd prepared, driving flat thinning flakes from the tool. "Good tool stone up there.

Haven't found anything like it down here."

Dancing Fox crowded closer to watch, absorbed by his work.

"Hey!" Singing Wolf complained. "Quit that! Those flakes of stone go all over the place. Next thing you know, I'll sit down and have one stuck in my b.u.t.t!"One Who Cries looked around in disgust. "Man can't knap out a good point to save his soul around you. But just wait, huh? Soon as I'm finished, you'll want this point. You'll be trying to trade one of your little pictures for it."

"I can't help it if you make the best dart points of all the People.

Especially that new thin one you created. What am I supposed to do? Let my family starve? Besides, these pictures I trade are powerful, give you luck."

"Then quit hollering about the flakes! You can't make a point without--"

"I want that point," Dancing Fox said boldly, studying the stone. "I'll trade two fine fox hides for it. Good hides, the kind for lining parka hoods or insulating mittens." "It's yours." One Who Cries beamed his pleasure at Singing Wolf, who muttered something under his breath and bent to his ivory.

"Make me a detachable fore shaft--and maybe I'll trade you a couple of points," One Who Cries mentioned slyly.

"Detachable darts?" Singing Wolf waved it away. "You're out of your mind."

"Something I thought of after that buffalo almost got me." One Who Cries frowned. "Just think about it, huh?"

"You don't think we should follow Raven Hunter?" Laughing Sunshine asked, steering the conversation back to the matter that worried them all.

Singing Wolf scratched his chin. "Odd things are happening. What if he was right? What if Geyser's people should have turned and fought back? I wish I knew more. I just don't know."

"Fighting isn't our way," One Who Cries protested. "I remember a tale Flies Like A Seagull used to tell. About a long-gone time when we warred with Others. That's why the People came here, to get away from all that.

She said it was better to leave than to have all that raiding. She said people looked over their shoulders all the time and nothing ever got done. There was no time to hunt. That's why Father Sun brought us here.

Gave us rules so we didn't kill each other."

"Maybe Father Sun brought the Others here? You know, sort of a test?"

"Maybe." Singing Wolf paused, looking thoughtfully into the distance.

"Maybe Runs In Light was his way of telling us there's another way."

"Runs In Light! Runs In Light! Enough of him."

"No one died but one little girl. My wife and I lived." Singing Wolf shook his head. "Brought us to Heron. A Dreamer. A real Dreamer. Not someone like Crow Caller."

"Crow Caller," Fox murmured in a low savage voice, closing her eyes.

"What he did to you was wrong," Singing Wolf agreed softly.

"Don't forget that Raven Hunter helped." "And you think he's mad?"She nodded quickly. "Something's tormenting his mind. He says Dreams: But I don't know." One Who Cries sighed, looking at Fox with a thoughtful set to his wide mouth. "Seems like it always comes back to those two brothers, huh? Trouble in both of them."

"At least Runs In Light hasn't suggested you go off to get a dart driven into your belly," Green Water answered with a lifted eyebrow. "A leader should keep the health of the People foremost in his mind. I can't help but believe we'd be better off just avoiding the Others."

"Runs In Light doesn't want us to fight," Laughing Sunshine agreed, "he just wants us to go get eaten by the ghosts in the Big Ice." She pulled the knot tight with her teeth, inspecting the new boots she'd made.

"Raven Hunter comes back tomorrow. Most of the young men are planning on going with him. All ready to stick darts into the Others." Singing Wolf lifted his ivory, scratching furiously with the burin in his hand. "If it had to happen, it's a good time. Lots of meat now. The Renewal's about to break up. Won't have to make the fall hunt for a while yet."

"I'm not going," One Who Cries decided, looking to Green Water, seeing the relief there. "I have a family here. Young one on the way."

Singing Wolf looked at his wife. "Maybe .. . maybe I'll go."

Laughing Sunshine straightened, a horrified look in her eyes. "No, not you."

"I want to see. Maybe someone like me ought to be there. As a witness to what happens."

"No," she whispered again, reaching out to take his hand.

Singing Wolf looked soberly into his wife's eyes. "Maybe it's time I started doing what Broken Branch and Heron said. That's why we keep elders around. To make us learn. And I need to know, to see both sides.

Someone with sense should come back and tell the People what really happened. I don't trust Raven Hunter."

He looked up at One Who Cries as a long silence lengthened. "If I don't come back, will you pray my soul to the Blessed Star People?"

Laughing Sunshine clamped her jaw tightly, looking away in dread.

"We'll pray you to the Blessed Star People." One Who Cries nodded, gravity in his eyes. "But, look, there's no good in--"

"You'll take Laughing Sunshine? Make her a wife along with Green Water?

Raise my child?"

One Who Cries bit off his next protest, nodded, and exhaled. "I will.

You and I, we've been together a long time, eh? Hunted mammoth, saved each other's lives. I'll do this thing for you as you would for me. I'll take Laughing Sunshine as my wife. Your child will be as my own blood."

Singing Wolf looked down at his hands. "Maybe I can learn the truth of these brothers. One must be right."

Laughing Sunshine chewed her lip, eyes bright with worry. Dancing Foxmoved to grip her hand, squeezing it rea.s.suringly.

"And maybe," Sunshine moaned, "find out if Heron was right about you."

Chapter 31.

Singing Wolf crouched warily in the gray morning mist, looking over the rim of the rocky terrace at the camp of the Others spread across the sandy plain below. A broad river skirted the lodges, its soft roar loud in the predawn silence. He turned slightly, glancing at Raven Hunter. A keen light filled the warrior's eyes. He stabbed his dart at the waking Others as if they would magically fall over. Two children up before the adults--flitted around the lodges, laughter p.r.i.c.king the cold breeze.

A haunting hollowness throbbed in Singing Wolf's chest. They'd kill children ?

Below, a tall man ducked out of the lodge, yawning to the horizon. The east glimmered in waves of red and orange.

"Ready?" Raven Hunter whispered, bracing himself to leap, to charge tiown the bluff. Young men nodded impulsively, wetting dry lips. Singing Wolf's heart shriveled.