The Mantooth Part 11

'But how will we eat?' She didn't want him to stop talking.

'We will eat.' Silence. 'I feel more at peace in the Cold World. For there, if a man is strong, he can breathe the free wind unafraid. Only the hardiest predators remain, and among them is respect.'

'What about your people?'

'They will follow the herds, as they always do.'

'Then how do you know what the winter is like? Or will you go with them?'

A hurt, disbelieving look came over him. 'NO.' He felt frustration pushing back at his own will to live. 'These past three Winters I have lived alone.' He looked out, and thought he might know what she was feeling.

'I have known loneliness, too, though perhaps it is another kind.

Your sorrow is for friends and ways that have died. Mine is for companionship that I have never known. Because to my people I am what this world is to you: something beyond their experience. And because of that they fear it, and mistrust..... I would be your friend, Sylviana, but I don't always know how.' She turned, and in the shadows his face looked worn and grim: there was no doubting his pain. She lowered her eyes to the ground.

'I just don't understand,' she said, half in a whisper. 'I don't understand it at all. Why was I brought here and left to go on? Sometimes I think it was just to have one illusion and then another stripped away, till there's nothing left but the struggle to survive and not go crazy. And when the last of my illusions are gone..... What then, Kalus? What's left?' He thought for a moment, deeply, then raised his head and answered.

'Life.' He touched his breast. 'What is here inside us.

Perhaps that is not so much. Or perhaps it is everything.' He turned to face her. 'I cannot always let myself grieve, Sylviana. Can you see that?' She nodded. 'But if you have to cry, I will try to comfort you. . .as you once did for me.'

She felt a wall give way inside her. She didn't answer, but slowly put her head to his chest, silently begging to be held. And finally the tears came. He held her warmly, feeling so many things. At length she drew back, and held his eyes with hers. There was only one way out of this desert. Here and now.

'Kalus..... Will you sleep with me tonight? Not to make love---'

He put a finger to her lips. He knew what she meant. They stayed there by the entrance a while longer, then went together to the bed.

Akar ate solemnly, without pleasure, then returned to the isolated h.e.l.l of his thoughts.

Chapter 12

Morning came softly by the riverbed, with a cool northeastern breeze that rustled the changing willow leaves and sent long waves of golden brown across a gentle sea of gra.s.s: the Savanna. The boy stood silent on the northern bank at the meeting of the shallow, stony stream and the wider, more placid river, breathing deep the autumn air and gazing out over the pearling waters with a look of boundless wonder. For his was the magic of youth among the hill-people: man enough to take in more than the sum of his surroundings, animal enough to feel the bliss of a mind free from distraction.

He had wandered far from his sleeping comrades, just as his friend the estranged one used to do. He found himself thinking of Kalus now, and wondered vaguely, perhaps a bit sadly, if he was still alive. Not that the thought was deep or the pain acute. But it did seem unfortunate that he had to be cast out, when maybe he was not so strange after all. Shama missed him.

Hearing a twig crack behind him, he stiffened. Whirling about, he searched the sloping embankment with startled curiosity. A lone wolf stood at the crest of the hill, not forty yards away. He wondered what it was doing so far from its established hunting grounds. Even as he did so another head appeared, followed by a low, snaking body. The two did not move, but stood rather in ominous silence, peering down at him intently.

But they could not be stalking him. There was no reason.

But then an even larger wolf appeared, standing in dark majesty between the others, a full head taller than either. On closer inspection there could be seen some flaw in him, some change. The head was larger and the ears wider. The snout was shorter and a dark, bristling mane like that of a horse could be seen as he lowered a haunting mask toward the tribesman. Black streaks ran down from it across his haunching shoulders, the yellowish thrust of the upper body yielding gradually to that of an unchanged wolf. And he was strong, unnaturally strong. His slitted eyes were fierce and full of hatred: Shar-hai.

The boy took first one step, and then another, upstream away from them, trying not to show how helpless and afraid he really was. He moved laterally, not wanting to turn his back. They were coming after him now, gaining speed with each crouching step. He started to run, but a loose clump of gra.s.sy mud gave way beneath the weight of his foot, splitting his legs apart beneath him. He fell forward stiffly, landing half in the water and half on the sandy sh.o.r.e.

The three were upon him in an instant. He tried to call out for help, but his terror-filled cries were too feeble to pierce the oncoming wind, and were carried away before they could reach his sleeping comrades, less than half a mile away. He felt a sharp burst of pain at the back of his neck, followed by an icy numbness. Then all sensations blurred and faded. A silent blackness engulfed him, and he was no more.

The two dark wolves, the guard of Shar-hai, stepped back in b.l.o.o.d.y triumph, howling their defiance to the skies. Yet slowly the stir of the kill was dispersed, and the birds in the willows sang untroubled.

Kalus had been awake for almost an hour. He had risen to find the wolf gone, but gave it little thought. Akar had his own life to live as well, and he had not failed to note his companion's dark mood the night before. He could not fully reason its source, but knew that it must be something fairly serious. For the wolves were stoic and infinitely survivable creatures, who rarely let emotion get the best of them. Returning from the smaller enclosure with the four poles and his sword, Kalus thought back to the day of his banishment, and realized for the first time that Akar's gesture of submission in the cave---rolling over in the dirt---had not been a plea for mercy. . .but an act of acceptance. An acceptance of death. He shook his head at the irony, though the word meant nothing to him. He had no regrets.

He sat down on a stone inside the entrance and worked quietly and steadily, peeling long strips of bark from the poles, to use along with the strands of rabbit fur, to bind them together into a frame. Sylviana stirred dreamily beneath the covers of her bed and he smiled, then rose to greet her. Her face was to him as a flower in the desert, or a piece of fruit hanging from the tree when one is very, very thirsty.

His steps were checked halfway by a familiar but unsettling sound: the hollow wail of human breath through a conch-sh.e.l.l.

'What was that?' asked the girl, stretching, now awake. The sound came again, faintly louder.

'I must leave here,' he answered. 'One of my people is in trouble. I will return as soon as I can.'

'Kalus, wait---'

He took his sword from its sheath and left the cave and bounded down the slope toward the ravine, then up again and on to the flat lands beyond.

Akar hesitated outside Kamela's lair, a stone-lipped hole cut into the hillside. This far his progress had gone unchecked. His nose low to the ground, he searched the fern-scattered earth and outlying bramble for unfamiliar scents. He thought it unlikely that she would take another mate, willingly at least, but if he were to have any real chance of freeing her, he had to be certain. He found at first only the day-old scent of an elder female, then traces of an altered musk that turned the blood to poison in his veins.

Suppressing inner violence, he entered the dank and root-lined swell to find her lying ruefully in the dirt, nursing her one remaining cub.

Seeing him her eyes glowed life for moment, then dulled, as if recalling some bitter and irreversible truth. She rose and stood before him, brushing his ear with her snout, then stepped back and addressed him in the ancient and subtle language of the wolves.

'Brother of my husband,' she said quietly. 'I am heartened to see that you live and flourish, but I fear that your time here is wasted. Shar-hai will never allow you to take me. He draws too much pleasure from seeing the house of Shaezar in ruin.'

'Wife of my dead brother,' he replied with equal detachment.

'I am alive but do not flourish. How could I live in peace with the chosen of my heart brought to shame?' He turned away, then gestured toward the cub. 'What of the others?'

'They are dead. The half-breed has killed all males he has not taken to himself, or has need of now.' Bitter silence. 'Why have you come?' He loved her too much.

'I am going to challenge Shar-hai for leadership of the pack. His pride will not let him refuse me. While his attention is drawn, you must flee with the cub to Skither's cave. It is the one place he dare not follow. There you will be safe among friends.'