He was in time to see Laintal Ay despatch another phagor. Two more ran from the shelter of a horizontal denniss. Both galloped away on one kaidaw, heading for the cliff. White birds followed with sweeping wings, screeching towards the echoes that returned to them from the wilderness.
Dathka came over and clutched Aoz Roon’s shoulder without speaking. They regarded each other and then smiled. Aoz Roon revealed his white teeth, despite his pain. Dathka kept his lips together.
Laintal Ay came up, exulting. ‘I killed it. It died!’ he said. ‘Their bowels are in their chest, their lungs in their bellies…’
Kicking the phagor body aside, Aoz Roon went to lean against a tree stump. He breathed out strongly through mouth and nostrils to rid himself of the sick milky stench of the enemy. His hands trembled.
‘Call Eline Tal,’ he said.
‘I killed it, Aoz Roon!’ Laintal Ay repeated, pointing back at the body lying in the snow.
‘Fetch Eline Tal,’ Aoz Roon ordered.
Dathka went over to where the two stags still struggled, heads down, antlers locked, scuffling the snow to mud with their hoofs. He took out his knife and cut their throats like an old hand. The animals stood and bled yellow blood until they could stand no longer, whereupon they collapsed and died, still locked together.
‘The strap between the antlers — that’s an old fuggie trick to catch game,’ Aoz Roon said. ‘When I saw it, I knew they were about…’
Eline Tal ran up with Faralin Ferd and Tanth Ein. They pushed the younger men away and supported Aoz Roon. ‘You’re meant to kill these vermin, not cuddle them,’ Eline Tal said.
The rest of the herd had long since fled. The brothers had killed three hinds between them and were triumphant. The other hunters arrived to see what had gone wrong. Five carcasses was not a bad kill; Oldorando could eat when they got home. The phagor carcasses would be left where they were to rot. Nobody wanted their skins.
Laintal Ay and Dathka held the decoy hinds while Eline Tal and the others examined Aoz Roon. The latter threw off their detaining hands with a curse.
‘Let’s scumb off,’ he said, clutching his side with a look of pain. ‘Where there were four of the vermin there may be others.’
Lumping the dead hinds onto the backs of the decoys, dragging the stags, they commenced the trek home.
But Nahkri was angry with Aoz Roon.
‘Those rotten stags are starved. Their meat will taste like leather.’
Aoz Roon said nothing.
‘Only vultures eat stag in preference to hind,’ Klils said.
‘Keep quiet, Klils,’ Laintal Ay shouted. ‘Can’t you see that Aoz Roon is hurt? Go and practise swinging an axe.’
Aoz Roon kept his gaze down at the ground, saying nothing — which angered the elder brother still more. The eternal landscape stood silent about them.
When at last they got within sight of Oldorando and its sheltering hot springs, the tower lookouts blew their horns. The lookouts were men too old or sick to hunt. Nahkri had given them an easier task — but if their horns did not sound the moment the hunting party appeared in the distance, he stopped their ration of rathel. The horns were a signal for the young women to stop work and come out beyond the barricades to meet their men. Many were fearful lest there had been a death — widowhood would entail menial jobs, bare subsistence, early death. This time, they counted heads and rejoiced. All the hunters were returning. This night, there would be celebrations. Some of them might conceive.
Eline Tal, Tanth Ein, and Faralin Ferd called out to their own women, employing endearments and abuse in equal measure. Aoz Roon limped on alone, saying no word, though he looked up under his dark brows to see if Shay Tal was there. She was not.
No women greeted Dathka either. He made his youthful face long and hard as he pressed through the welcoming gaggle, for he had hoped Shay Tal’s unobtrusive friend Vry might have shown herself. Aoz Roon secretly despised Dathka because no women ran up to clasp his arm, although he was himself in the same situation.
Under those dark brows, he watched a hunter catch the hand of Dol Sakil, the midwife’s daughter. He watched his own daughter, Oyre, run to grasp the hand of Laintal Ay; he reckoned to himself that they would suit each other well enough, and that there might be advantage from the match.
Of course the girl was headstrong, whereas Laintal Ay was rather soft. She would lead him a dance before consenting to be his woman. Oyre was like the precious Shay Tal in that respect — difficult, pretty, and with a mind of her own.
He limped through the wide gates, head down, still nursing his side. Nahkri and Klils were walking nearby, fending off their screeching women. They both threw him a threatening look. ‘Keep your place, Aoz Roon,’ Nahkri said.
He looked away, hunching a shoulder against them.
‘I wielded the axe once and, by Wutra, I’ll wield it again,’ he growled.
The world trembled before his sight. He gulped down a mug of rathel and water, but still sickness rose in him. He climbed to the lair he shared with his companions, indifferent for once how the game he had helped kill was stripped. Once in his room, he collapsed. But he would not suffer the slave woman to cut open his clothes or examine his wounds. He rested and hugged his ribs. After an hour, he went out alone and sought Shay Tal.
Since it was near a sunset, she was taking crusts of bread down to the Voral to feed the geese. The river was wide. It had unfrozen during the day, revealing black water fringed by shelves of white ice across which geese came honking. When they were both young, it was always frozen from bank to bank.
She said, ‘You hunters go so far away, yet I saw game on the other side of the river this morning. Hoxneys and wild horses, I believe.’
Dark and moody, Aoz Roon looked down upon her and grasped her arm. ‘You’ve always a contrary idea, Shay Tal. Do you think you know better than the hunters? Why didn’t you come out at the sound of the horn?’
‘I was busy.’ She took her arm away and started to crumble the barley crusts as the geese surrounded her. Aoz Roon kicked out at them and grasped her arm again.
‘I killed a fuggy today. I’m strong. It hurt me but I killed the dirty thing. All hunters look up to me, and all maidens. But it’s you I want, Shay Tal. Why don’t you want me?’
She turned a face with stabbing eyes up to his, not angry, but containedly angry. ‘I do want you, but you would break my arm if I went against you — and we should always be arguing. You never speak softly to me. You can laugh and you can scowl, but you can’t coo. There!’
‘I’m not the sort to coo. Nor would I break your lovely arm. I would give you real things to think about.’
She answered nothing, but fed the birds. Batalix buried itself in snow, casting gold into strands of her hair which were loose. In the crisp dead scene, all that moved was the black rift of water.
After standing awkwardly regarding her, shifting his weight from one foot to another, he said, ‘What were you so busy at earlier?’
Not returning his gaze, she said intensely, ‘You heard my words on the doleful day when we buried Loilanun. I was speaking mainly to you. Here we live in this farmyard. I want to know what goes on in the world beyond it. I want to learn things. I need your assistance, but you are not quite the man to give it. So I teach the other women when there’s time, because that’s a way of teaching myself.’