Wolf’s Brother

She felt more than heard the step of the man who approached her from the darkness. Had Heckram followed her, mistaking her leaving the fire for an invitation? Dread of the confrontation rose in her, even as her body betrayed her with a tingle of excitement. She turned to him in the darkness, taking a deep breath to speak. She gasped in surprise instead as hard hands gripped her shoulders and shook her.

“Where have you been?” he demanded gruffly. She pushed away from him, but he seized her wrist in a grip that numbed her hand. Joboam shoved his face close to hers.

“Capiam tells me to watch over you and see that you are cared for. When I tell you to follow, you wander off, so when he comes to my fire to speak to you, I must say I do not know where you are. I lose his confidence. The healer, the najd, and her idiot boy, all are vanished. Capiam thinks you have changed your mind and left us, that the herd will face another summer without a healer. He asks me if I have offended you. Me! And I must leave my fire and my food and come seeking you, going from tent to tent, fire to fire, like a fool, asking if any have seen you!”

Fury tightened his relentless grip on her wrist, and when she pulled at his fingers with her free hand, he captured it, holding both her hands in one of his as he spoke. He made the differences in their sizes obvious by drawing her hands up high. She stood on tiptoe trying to ease the pull, feeling she couldn’t breathe, made speechless by fear as much as by pain. Joboam’s eyes glittered in the dark. Her aching muscles screamed with the stress of being stretched up.

“Kari…invited me…to stay with her…,” she gasped the words. The man was huge. She stifled the fury that rose in her, the desire to kick and scream and fight. As well take on a bear. If this was all he was going to do, she could stand it. She had endured worse from men just like him and survived. But if she screamed and Kerlew came, if he turned his anger on him—

“Kari?” There was puzzlement in his voice, and a sudden easing in the strain on her arms. Tillu took a gasp of air.

“Yes. Kari. She…”

“Get the boy and your things. And the two harkar. Thank Kari, but say you must join me now, so that her father will know I am doing my duty. Do it now.” His voice was an odd mixture of emotions. There was the anger still, and the hard pleasure he took in domination, but a discordant note of uneasiness as well.

He released her wrists abruptly and Tillu almost cried aloud at the relief. She could not keep from rubbing at them, even though she knew he took satisfaction in it. Which was more dangerous for her, to go with him as he commanded, submit to his control, or to defy him and stay with Kari, keep herself and Kerlew out of his reach? She wished she knew. The night was full dark around her, and all choices equally black.

She turned away from him and headed for Kari’s fire. Her heart pounded still, and the night seemed to tilt around her as the uneven turf rose to trip her. She put out a hand to catch herself. But big hands caught her and set her on her feet. She found herself gripping the front of Heckram’s tunic. He didn’t make a sound. He stared at Joboam over her head. She felt the tension in his wide chest, the catch in his breath, smelled the anger that rose in him. This time she would not be able to stop them from fighting.

Kari swooped past them in the darkness, flying into Joboam’s path. He recoiled from her and when she spread her arms wide, he retreated a step. She hung before him like a hide stretched to dry, her garments as black as the night, her face more pale than the moon’s. A light wind stirred her flapping garments, ruffled her black hair. Even Tillu found herself swallowing dryly at the sight. Heckram’s hands on her shoulders tightened. He moved to step forward, and she found herself clutching at his chest, holding him back. A killing energy coursed through him.

For a long succession of moments, Kari swayed before Joboam. He stood his ground, his fists knotted, his gaze fastened on her face in unnamable dread. With a hissing sigh, she finally lowered her arms. It seemed impossible for her to be so suddenly small. But Joboam made no move to push her aside or step around her. She transfixed him.

“Tell my father.” she said, her voice ringing in the night, “that Tillu the healer takes her meal with me. That I have extended the hospitality of his family. And that Tillu shall be with me all day tomorrow as well, for I am to help her gather herbs for healing. Tell him you found her comfortable and well, and did not wish to disturb her. Do you understand?”

There was a subtle lash to her words. She threatened him just as surely as he had threatened Tillu a moment ago. But Kari did not use physical dominance to cow him. There was something else she wielded, something more than her fey appearance and strangely powerful presence. Tillu wondered what it was, and how long it would be before the girl overplayed it and lost. For though Joboam backed wordlessly away from her, he did not hide the hatred in his eyes. He lifted the look as he moved, and before he turned it included Heckram and Tillu. Tillu shivered in its impact and Heckram pulled her closer. The gesture was the final infuriation for Joboam. He made a sound of hate and determination and vanished into the darkness.

For a long moment no one spoke. Then Kari drifted past them, letting her fingers trail lightly across Tillu’s back. “The fish is done,” she said, and left them.

Tillu felt suddenly the ache of her fingers clenched in the leather of Heckram’s tunic. She loosened her fingers, but he still held her close against him. The smell of him, sweat and leather and the reindeer, filled her nostrils. The maleness of it weakened her knees. His tunic was only loosely laced; the thongs pressed against her cheek, and she felt the prickle of the hair on his chest. His big hands moved slowly down her back, pressing her to him and easing the ache of her muscles with their warm touch. She felt numbed to everything but his touch and the sudden safety it meant. She felt her breasts respond to his body warmth and pressure, the nipples tightening with a pleasurable ache. His breath was warm against the top of her head; his lips pressed her hair as his hands gently kneaded the flesh of her back. A moment more, she told herself, and then I shall have to push him away, have to tell him I do not want this. But as she formed the lie he sighed heavily and gently eased away from her. “The others are waiting for us,” he said, his soft voice like far thunder in his chest. “And you must be hungry and tired.”

She found she could not move. She knew that if he pushed her down onto the earth and took her, she would not resist him. She almost wished he would, that he would master and mount her and take his pleasure of her, so that she could break free of his fascination. He was a man, like any other. This brief play of gentleness was a sham, a trick of human males to lure women closer, like the bright plumage of a male bird. It meant nothing. It lasted but a moment, a prelude to the rut. And afterward, he would either avoid her because of her strange son, or take her as casually as he warmed himself at her fire. She waited, knowing what would happen. She would be glad when he betrayed himself, when she could see him clearly again and know him as the man who had sent Elsa into the death-sleep.

“Tillu,” he said slowly. She felt his breath on her hair. “You’re shaking. But you don’t have to be afraid. He doesn’t dare hurt you. Come. You need food and rest.” And then he carefully stepped away from her, to take her hand and lead her back to Kari’s fire.

He had only meant to help her to her feet, but her touch and nearness had made him want her with a fierce heat. His hands had been on her and her musky fragrance had drowned his senses. He had wanted to smooth Joboam’s rough touch from her body. This woman was strong as a good bow was strong, with resilience and stamina. In an instinctive reaction to her silent courage, he had wanted to mate her. A woman like her would not be a responsibility, but a partner. He had gathered her close, forgetting that she might not feel as he did. Then he had felt her stiffen, become aware of her stillness in his arms. Now, as he groped his way around the boulder, he cursed himself for a blundering fool, and worse. What was wrong with him? Couldn’t he be around this woman for a moment without behaving like a sarva in rut? Her hand was quiet in his, she had leaned against him like a wooden thing. He knew he had frightened her just as badly as Joboam had, and in much the same way. Twice now, this gentle healer had seen him on the edge of violence. Twice he had caressed her, with lust, without her invitation. No wonder then, that she shook when he touched her. She still knew little of the herdfolk. His behavior would make her think the men little more than savages.

He glanced back at her as they approached the fire. She looked away, and his heart smote him again. He tried to find a way through his tangled emotions. He should be mourning Elsa still, not feeling wild lust for this woman. Yet it was not just lust. Lust would have been simpler to face, easier to handle than what this woman stirred in him. Since that day in her tent, he had awakened to her. He still suspected she had eased Elsa into death. How else would the stricken woman have reached the sleeping tea and drunk too much of it? Who besides Tillu and he had known of the tea and its potency? But he could not fit that thought with his other feelings about her. Something about her, and Kerlew, made him want to protect them, to give them shelter and food and an easier life. He did not understand the feeling, had never experienced it before. When he had seen Joboam’s rough hands on her tonight, he had wanted to kill the man. To kill like an animal, to rend him like a wolf fighting for its mate. But he was not an animal, and Tillu was not his.

And now she would not even look at him. He released her hand, felt her whisk it from his grasp as his fingers loosened. Well, and how did he expect her to react? A herdwoman would have struck him for his crude advances. A resolve hardened in him as she walked past him to the fire. He would find a way to prove himself to her. He would show her that herdmen were not savages, but knew how to be patient and await a woman’s attention. The resolve settled solidly in his mind. He took a deep breath. His life, which had seemed so still within him since Elsa’s death, suddenly warmed his veins.

Chapter Four

TILLU AWOKE WITH her mind still filled with last night’s events. They had all eaten, consuming the flaky hunks of juicy fish and the soup that Kari had made earlier. Lasse had reluctantly departed for his own shelter, after Kari had instructed him to return in the morning to take charge of her harkar and the ones carrying the healer’s belongings. The others had slept sprawled in careless proximity on the hides within the skin shelter. Kerlew had curled up between Carp and Heckram. Tillu had slept beside the boulder’s flank at the shelter’s back, easing her aching body with its stored warmth. She had been aware of Heckram, scarce an arm’s length away, and glad when Kerlew engaged him in a sleepy conversation for it kept his face turned away from her. Kari had been sitting by the fire, humming softly to herself, when Tillu dozed off. And she had risen first to put on tea and stir the remainder of the fish into a soup. Tillu had opened her heavy eyes to find Kari crouched before her, offering her a hot mug of tea.

The others slept on. In his sleep, Heckram had turned toward her. His cheek was cradled on the crook of his arm and a tousle of hair hung over his forehead. His lips were parted as he slept, and his brow was smooth. At rest his face was youthful, the lines of his smile deeper than the lines that crossed his brow. Tillu tried to look at him impassively. She wondered if any woman could remain impervious to a man who cared for her child.

The solitude of the early morning drew her. She rose, whispering thanks to Kari, who nodded mutely. She sipped the tea as she crouched by the reawakened fire, then rose and left the camp. She needed a few moments alone. She walked, pushing her aching legs to carry her up the hill. The twiggy blueberry bushes scratched her legs and soaked her feet with dew. She paused in a mossy area to look down at the lake. Streamers and tendrils of mist rose from it. The grass and moss sparkled with dew. Tillu ran her hands over the sward and then wiped the chill moisture over her stiff face. It dispelled the last of her sleepiness, and she turned back. The awakening sounds of the camp below reached her ears. She heard a single laugh, and children calling merrily to one another. She sighed. She still ached from yesterday’s walking, and today’s would be just as wearying. She forced herself to hurry.

Lasse had already arrived. His face was scrubbed, his eyes as bright as a squirrel’s. Tillu stood uphill of the camp, watching, as Kari poured a mug of tea for him. He took it from her awkwardly, managing to catch one of her hands between the mug and his hand. For a long moment Kari stood very still, looking only at the mug and their two hands. Lasse stood breathlessly silent, too shy to smile, looking down on the dark head bent before him. But just as Tillu believed that a girl’s heart beat beneath the owl claws on her breasts, Kari jerked her hand free, careless of the scalding tea that sloshed them both. Kari moved away swiftly, stooping to stir the fish stew. Lasse shifted the mug to his free hand and shook the hot tea from his fingers. Neither one of them had made a sound, and now he gazed after her, looking neither puzzled nor rebuffed, but pleased.

“Like trying to tame a wild bird,” Heckram said softly behind her. “He has to be content with his small victories, for now.”

Tillu had started at the deep rumble of his voice so close behind her. Now she stared up at him, embarrassed to be caught spying on the two and more embarrassed at confronting him by daylight. His beard was more than stubble now, the hair growing in more bronze than that on his head. She wanted to stroke it, to see if it were rough or soft. She was staring. She tried to keep her voice steady, her comment casual. “It must demand a great deal of patience. I suspect that if he tried to move too fast, she’d reject him completely.”

“Probably,” Heckram agreed blandly. He lifted a slow hand to her face. Just as she moved to avoid his touch, he plucked a strand of dried grass from her hair. He flicked it away and stood looking down on her. “Herdmen learn patience at an early age.” He looked out over the lake as he held out a hand toward her. For a long moment it hovered empty in the air between them. Then Tillu put hers into it, watched her small fingers wrapped and covered by his large ones. He lifted his other hand to point. “There’s our herd, already moving. Look at the way patches of white flicker through it and then all is grayish-brown again. All the little white tails flashing. And beyond it, like a brown shadow moving over the earth? That’s the wild herd. They’ll be far ahead of us before this day’s out. We may not catch sight of them again until we reach the Cataclysm.”

His hand was dry and warm. His voice was deep, and he spoke so softly she had to strain to hear. He moved his eyes to look at her. On the hillside behind them, a bird called, its note high and clear in the morning air. She wanted to smile at him, but could not. She looked down, feeling foolish.

“We’d better go down and eat, or there won’t be anything left. And there’s a long walk ahead of us today.”

She nodded silently. He closed his fingers on hers, holding them firmly a moment before releasing her. They walked down the hill to the camp, not touching, but together.

All the others were stirring now. Kerlew had taken food for himself and Carp into the shelter. He crouched by the shaman, eating and nodding to Carp. He did not look up as Tillu returned. She wanted to call him to her side, to make him talk to her, but could think of no excuse for it. She greeted Lasse and thanked Kari when she scooped out a serving of fish stew for her. It tasted too strong in the light air of morning, but she ate it anyway. She looked up once from her food, her eyes seeking Heckram, but he sat, bowl in hand, staring into the shelter. His brows were drawn together and his eyes were grave as he watched Kerlew rocking with laughter at something Carp had said. An emotion very like envy washed across his face. In an instant it was gone, and he dipped his head to sip from his bowl again.

The time for rest was suddenly over. Pots were scrubbed out with a wad of grass and packed again onto the patient harkar. The shelter hides were rolled and tied. The harkar were led off down the hillside to be added to Lasse’s string.

“I’d best go see to my beasts,” Heckram admitted with a suddenly guilty look. “I left them with Ristin last night. She’ll have words for me, for having to unload and picket them for me.” He addressed the words to all, but Tillu had the foolish notion that he spoke to her. He looked at Kerlew and asked carefully, “Are you going with me today, Kerlew, or with your mother?”

“Where’s Carp going to be?” Kerlew asked immediately.

To Carp, there was no question. “Come, apprentice, and carry our things. I will ride with Heckram, and you will walk alongside.” The old man stood slowly, and Tillu saw his stiffness. She could make a salve for it; the dampness of the spring nights probably made mornings a torment for him. But…

She wavered in ambivalence. The najd was good to the boy, kind and attentive to him. But he was stealing her son from her, putting his feet on a narrow, dangerous path. Tillu watched them walk away down the hillside, taking comfort that Heckram at least would be close to Kerlew today. But as she noticed three other boys of Kerlew’s age peering from some bushes at them, her heart sank. What did the other children think of this boy who walked always beside the najd, who did not run and play with them, but talked dreamy-eyed to an old man who rode a harke like a baby?

She was startled from her dark mood by Kari’s hand on her arm. “And now you will teach me?” she asked. Her eyes were bright. She had a basket on her arm, and she offered a shoulder pouch to Tillu. Good thing one of them had remembered such necessities. Tillu touched the knife at her belt, and Kari held up hers to show she was prepared. “First, we need to make digging sticks,” Tillu told her, and was rewarded with a joyous smile. Her heart lifted inspite of herself.

The day reminded Tillu of the days when she and her aunt had gathered herbs and roots together. But this time it was Tillu who pointed and explained, and Kari who rubbed the roots clean on the grass and stowed them in her basket. Yet Tillu did not feel like a mother or aunt, but more girlish than she had felt in her childhood. She tried to worry about Kerlew, but found herself remembering that he was safe with Heckram. Then her mind would wander to the way the early sunlight glinted on Heckram’s new beard, and his smile slowly dawned on his solemn face. A curious anticipation touched all her thoughts of him. Spring, she told herself firmly. Sap was running in the trees, and her blood was racing through her veins. A good tonic would take these imaginings away. But she gave no thought to concocting one.

Instead, they gathered the bark and roots of the birch for cough syrup and acne medicine. Strips of willow bark peeled easily from the trees leaving the slick white cambrium exposed. “Later, we will gather the leaves,” Tillu instructed Kari. “Bound on a bleeding wound as a poultice, they stop the flow of blood. But for now we will take the bark, to make a tea for fever, or pound to a poultice for sores. Get a bit of root, too. I’ll show you how to make a colic medicine from it.”

Kari knelt on the forest debris to dig for the root. Tillu continued to peel bark from the branches in long ragged strips. Beyond a thin fringe of trees, the wide blue surface of the lake glinted. Behind them, they could hear the reindeer and folk on the traditional path. The folk did not hurry today. No one minded if a harke paused to nip new buds from a tree, or snatch up a mouthful of moss. Tolerance and good fellowship warmed the air with the spring sun. The adults had stripped back to sleeveless jerkins of light leather and short trousers or skirts. The children were all but naked, their skins soaking up the sun’s warmth. Tillu folded her long strips of bark into a bundle and stuffed them into the shoulder pouch. Already it bulged gratifyingly. They would have to hurry ahead to Lasse and change this pouch for an empty one.

Kari shook the clinging soil from the network of roots. Willow roots were tough, and she had had to use her knife to get this chunk loose. She wadded up the tangle of roots and stuffed it into her basket. She smiled up at Tillu. Dirt smudged the side of her nose and the look of distance and mystery had left her eyes. Her face was shining as she said, “You meant it, then. I thought perhaps you only needed me to help with the gathering. But you will really teach me the healing herbs.” She reached into the hole and dragged up another hank of willow root.

“Of course I will.” A reckless enjoyment of companionship settled on Tillu. “If Carp is to have an apprentice, I see no reason why I shouldn’t.”

Kari dropped the root she was cleaning, and reached up to seize Tillu’s hands in a pinching grip. Startled, Tillu tried to pull free, but Kari did not release her. Her black eyes were wide and shining. “This is true? You are not making a joke of me? You would take me as your apprentice?”

“If it is what you wish,” Tillu replied, confused by her intensity. The young woman let go of Tillu’s hands and sank slowly back on her heels.

“Ah!” she sighed slowly with quiet satisfaction. “We shall see what my father can say to me about marriage when I tell him this. We shall see.” Then, suddenly grabbing at Tillu’s sleeve again, she added urgently, “But not yet! We shall not tell him until we are closer to the Cataclysm. Not until after you have begun to teach me.”

Tillu did not understand Kari’s fierceness. “Yes. All right, I shall not tell anyone that you are my apprentice, until you wish to tell them. But as for teaching you, well, we have begun that already.” Stooping, Tillu took up the cleaned root and put it back into her apprentice’s hands.

Kari looked down on it. When she spoke again, her voice was thoughtful. “It is what you know, Tillu, that lets you be as free as you are. A woman with no man to bind her, no one to fill her with children and weight down her days.” She glanced up suddenly, her bird-bright eyes pinning Tillu’s. “Was that why you became a healer? To be rid of men?”

“No.” The question puzzled Tillu. “I became a healer because it was what the women of my family knew and did. Just as my father tended animals and crops.” She sighed softly. “I never, as a child, imagined I would live so often alone.”

“Then take a man.” Kari’s voice was as careless as if Tillu had spoken of fashioning a new garment for herself. “Heckram would have you, if you let him.”

“Heckram…” Tillu hesitated. “I know so little of him, Kari. And I wonder so many things…”

“He is a good hunter,” Kari told her, as if that were all of a man’s worth. “And a generous man. Even with Elsa, for whom he felt only friendship. When she asked his protection, he gave it to her, and the gifts of joining as well.”

Tillu was silent, staring at her, praying she would go on. Kari smiled slowly. “I hear many things, when folk come to gossip with the herdlord and his wife. And Elsa, too, was not shy of speaking to me. She was as close to a friend as I have ever had…and we shared at least one thing. We both wished to be rid of Joboam.”

Kari rose slowly and began to drift after the moving line of reindeer and folk. Her voice was soft, and Tillu hurried behind her, almost ashamed to be so anxious to hear her words.

“Some have said that Heckram only took Elsa to wife because Joboam wanted her. It is not secret that those two hate one another. So many have said in the herdlord’s tent, saying it was a shame Elsa was given to one who loved her with friendship but not with passion. Some say Joboam would have cared more for her, kept her within and safe…”