The Reindeer People. Megan Lindholm
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу The Reindeer People - Megan Lindholm страница 10
He tried to rein his mind away from the memories, but like an unruly harke new-harnessed to a pulkor, bitterness dragged his thoughts once again through the misery of that time. The family’s string of twenty harkar was reduced to four. Heckram had walked back from the summer pasturage that season, his small feet dragging behind his burdened mother. There was no trading trip south, no shower of bright gifts on his father’s return. His family no longer possessed enough breeding reindeer to slaughter several for winter meat. Instead, his father had fed them on lean rabbit and squirrel and tough wild reindeer, and spent every spare moment stalking the much diminished wild herd to steal calves to bring home. Until the day he had not come back from the hunt. Heckram and his mother had searched the empty hills in vain. No one could say what had become of him. And that had marked the beginning of Heckram’s manhood, come before its time.
He had been tall for his age, his southern blood showing early. His mother’s father had been a tall, pale southerner, and his father’s father, it was said, had hair the color of a summer fox. ‘He’s more southern than herdfolk,’ he had heard the old Capiam say once. And so he sometimes thought of himself still, with unease and wondering.
At twelve, he had stood as tall as most of the men of the herdfolk. It had not made things easier for him. Folk expected a boy with the stature of a man to have the skills and control of one. His clumsiness shamed him often, his inexperience and impetuosity even more frequently. He often felt the lack of a father’s teaching and protection.
The quickness and high spirits of his early years grew into silence and caution. He felt no kinship with the short, stocky boys of the herdfolk. Not even with Joboam, whose ancestry shared some southern blood. Joboam, fully as tall and awkward as Heckram, had a father who matched his height and was pleased with his son’s growth. Growing with the plenty of his mother’s and father’s reindeer, Joboam’s size seemed a credit to their wealth. His tunics were never too short; he was never solemn and anxious. By comparison, Heckram was gaunt as a wolf in hard times, and in his eyes was always the hunger of the wolf. He was a brooding youth, staggering under the burden of his manhood, the intensity of his dilemmas burning in his eyes. The herdfolk compared him with casual, confident Joboam, and in the comparisons he suffered. Failing too often, being less than competent at a man’s skills, made him wary. To keep from losing, he would not compete. Even now, grown and competent, he hunted alone and did not boast of his kills. He was most comfortable when he moved unnoticed, whether he was stalking an animal or moving about the tent village. His solitude and his silences worried his mother.
Tonight her worrying had taken on a new barb. He shook his head grimly, his mouth set. ‘Twenty-four years old, and what do you have?’ she had rebuked him as she mended a mitten by the fire. ‘Where is your wife, your children, my grandchildren? Do you think you can wait forever? Other men your age have three, four children at their hearth. Not yet, you say, and another year slips by. Do you think you have forever? Elsa is patient, perhaps too patient with you. But a woman cannot wait forever. No honorable man would ask it of her. She is a pretty girl, a good herdwoman, all a man could ask. She is strong and clever, a good hunter, too. Do you think no one else sees her worth? You will wait too long, and another will not ask her to wait. And then you will be too old to catch the fancy of the younger girls. You will be alone.’ She shook the mitten at him.
So he had risen, to drag on his heavy tunic. As he had pushed open the door flap, she had demanded, ‘Where are you going? To Elsa?’
‘No. To practice being alone,’ he had retorted, and left. To climb the pingo and think.
Now he regretted his snappishness. It wasn’t like him and would only upset her more. But too many of her words had been nearly true. He had wanted to answer her, but the habit of silence had grown strong. Talking was an effort, especially the painful talk of explanation. She didn’t want to hear his truth. She wanted his agreement; she was so sure it would make him happy. He knew it wouldn’t, but couldn’t tell her why.
His thoughts turned reluctantly to small, dark Elsa. She was all his mother said she was. And more, for in their childhood, they had shared friendship. He knew her. There was gentleness in her, hidden behind her self-sufficient toughness. And a warm ardor she had shared with him more than once, when they were children no longer but not yet grown. And yet…He did not want her to wife. He didn’t want anyone to wife. Not yet. He wished his mother had not been so openly hopeful of a match. Already folk had asked him if he and Elsa would join by the Cataclysm next summer. And Elsa herself blushed whenever he tried to speak to her. When he approached her, her friends drew aside that he might be alone with her. And then he wouldn’t be able to speak at all, for the bright hope in her eyes. He wanted to tell her not to wait, to look elsewhere for a mate. But how did one tell a friend that he didn’t want her for a wife, no matter what his mother had noised about? Soon, he’d have to. Soon. His heart went out to her with fondness and sympathy. He hoped she wouldn’t hate him.
Without conscious thought, he reached inside his shirt and drew out a length of sinew with tiny flaps of skin strung on it. This was the tally of his calves this year, the soft bits of ear cut from each miesse to mark it with his own private mark. It was pitiful. Five tiny flaps, and three of the calves were male, good only to neuter into the load-bearing harke, reindeer oxen, or to slaughter for winter meat. He would leave but one a sarva to service his vaja. His animals multiplied so slowly. Each vaja could bear but one calf a year, and there was no guarantee that it would survive the winter. The mysterious coughing sickness still claimed animals every summer. The diminished wild herds had forced the wolves and wolverines into new cunning and boldness as they preyed on the herdfolk’s domestic animals. Heckram felt a twinge of despair as he wondered how he would protect his beasts from the marauding carnivores, and still find time to steal calves from the wild herd.
His mother’s reindeer had done little better. Her tally string had but eight flaps, and five of the calves had been male. How could she urge him to take Elsa to wife? How did she think they would manage? Heckram reached up a mittened hand to rub at his face, to force the tightened jaw hinge to relax. He eased his heart by looking out over the herd and tents of his people.
The kator had been pitched in a village for the night. All had smelt the snow in the air, and sensed the storm to come. Better to set up the tents now, in the lee of the pingo, and be in shelter when the blast hit, instead of trying to struggle on toward the forest and be caught in the sweep of snow across the plain. Glows and streaks of light escaped from the simple hide tents, and he smelled the smoky fires of dried lichen and dung that warmed them tonight. It was a homey smell. The hobbled strings of harkar scraped away the shallow layer of snow to graze on the lush lichen of the tundra, awaiting the morrow when they would once more be loaded with the possessions of their owners and led on, toward the sheltering forest.
The herd, too, sensed the approaching storm, and had drawn themselves into a moving huddle of beasts. Their gray and brown backs were like a rippling sea in the moonlight as they shifted and stirred. The exhalations of their warm moist breath created a mist that drifted and rose from the herd in a cloud. The cold air carried the softly distinctive sound of their clicking hooves as toe bones flexed against stretched tendons. Their light-tipped tails flicked in an ever-changing pattern. Most of the great sarva had lost their antlers in their fierce autumn battles over the vaja. Gone were the great bulging withers of the bulls, their fatness battled away. In contrast, the neutered harker still carried their proud crowns, and their fur rippled sleekly over their muscles