Kerrick approached slowly, almost against his will. Saw that the hunter was big, taller than he was, his flowing beard and hair matted thick with blood. The beating continued yet the man said nothing.
“Stop that,” Kerrick ordered, prodding the fargi with his weapon to get her attention. “Move back.”
“What are you?” the man asked hoarsely, then coughed and spat out a mouthful of blood and fragments of teeth. “Are you a prisoner, leashed like that? Yet you speak to them. Where is your hair? Who are you? Can you talk?”
“I… I am Kerrick.”
“A boy’s name, not a hunter’s name. Yet you are grown…”
“It is I who ask questions. Give me your name.”
“I am Herilak. This is my sammad. Was mine. They are dead, all dead, aren’t they?”
“Some escaped. They are being pursued.”
“A boy’s name.” His voice was gentler. “Come closer, boy who is now a man. Let me see you. They bruised my eyes, you must come close. Yes, I see. Even though all of your hair is gone I can still see that you have a Tanu face.”
Herilak rolled his head back and forth, trying to shake the blood from his eyes. Kerrick reached down and gently wiped them clean. It was like touching himself, the warm skin. Skin like his, flesh like his. Kerrick shivered all over, his hand shook in the grasp of some unknown sensation.
“You were making sounds at them,” Herilak said, “and wriggling about too just as they do. You can speak with them, can’t you?”
“You will answer my questions. It is not you who will do the questioning.”
Herilak ignored this but nodded with understanding. “They want you to do their work. How long have you been with them?”
“I don’t know. Many summers… winters.”
“They have been killing Tanu all of that time, Kerrick. We kill them, but never enough. I saw a boy once, being held by the murgu. Do they have many captives?”
“There are no captives. Just myself…” Kerrick fell silent; a memory long forgotten stirred his thoughts, a bearded face in the trees.
“They captured you, raised you, didn’t they?” Herilak said almost in a whisper. “You can speak with them. We need your help, the Tanu need you now…”
He broke off as he saw what hung about Kerrick’s neck. His voice was choked now as he spoke.
“Turn, boy, turn to the light. Around your neck — is that yours?”
“Mine?” Kerrick said, touching the cool metal of the knife. “I suppose so. It was around my neck, they tell me, when I first came to them.”
Herilak’s voice was distant, as he too dredged in memories of the past. “Skymetal. I was one of those who saw it fall from the sky, searched and found it. I was there when the knives were made, sawn from the metal block with sheets of stone, hammered and drilled. Now — reach into my furs, in the front, that’s right. You have it, pull it out.”
The metal knife was hanging from a thong. Kerrick clutched it, unbelieving. It was the same as his — only twice as large.
“I saw them made. A large one for a hunter, a sammadar, a small one for his son. The son, a boy’s name, Kerrick perhaps, I don’t remember. But the father. One close to me. His name was Amahast. Then I found the skymetal knife again many years later — in the broken bones of his body. The bones of Amahast.”
Kerrick could only listen in frozen, horrified silence as the name was spoken. A name remembered in dreams, forgotten upon awakening.
“Amahast.”
Amahast. The word was like a key unlocking a flood of memories that washed silently over him. Karu, his mastodon, killed beside him. His father, Amahast, killed, the sammad destroyed around him. The memory blurred and merged with that of this sammad lying dead now on all sides. The slaughter, the years, the long years since. Through these memories the hunter’s words slowly penetrated.
“Kill them, Kerrick, kill them as they have killed us all.”
Kerrick turned and fled with Inlènu* stumbling after, away from the hunter and his voice, away from the memories that flooded through him. But these he could not escape. He pushed past the armed fargi to the top of a grassy slope that led down to the sea, dropped to the ground, sat clutching his legs, staring out at the ocean yet not seeing it.
Seeing Amahast, his father, instead. And his sammad. Unclearly at first, but fleshed out in greater detail as memory returned. The memory was still there, buried and long forgotten, but hiding there still. His eyes filled with a child’s tears, tears that he had never shed as a child, that welled out and ran down his cheeks as he saw his sammad being destroyed, slaughtered just as the sammad of Herilak had been destroyed this day. The two scenes blurred in his mind and were one. To survive all those years with the Yilanè all of this he had to forget. He had survived, he had forgotten.
But now he remembered, and in remembering he was two people, the ustuzou who spoke like a Yilanè; the boy who was Tanu.
Boy? He stared at his hands, arched his fingers. He was no longer a boy. In those long years his body had grown. He was a man yet knew nothing of being a man. The realization came that his father, the other hunters, so large in memory — why, he must be their size now.
Springing to his feet, Kerrick roared aloud with defiance and anger. What was he? Who was he? What was happening to him? Through the crash of his emotions he was aware of a movement at his neck, a pulling. He turned about, blinking, to discover that Inlènu* was tugging gently at their connecting lead. Her eyes were wide, her shivering motions expressing worry and fear at his strange actions.
He wanted to kill her, half raised the weapon still clutched in his hand. Marag, he cried, “marag.” But the anger drained away as quickly as it had come and he lowered the weapon shamefacedly. There was no harm in this simple creature, more of a prisoner than he was.
“Be of peace, Inlènu*,” he said. “There is nothing wrong. Be of peace.”
Reassured, Inlènu* sat back on her tail and blinked comfortably in the evening sun. Kerrick looked past her to the glade behind the trees where Herilak waited.
Waited for what? An answer, of course. To a question that Kerrick could not answer, although the question was all too clear.
What was he? Physically he was Tanu, a man with the thoughts of a boy who had never grown as a Tanu. That was clear and obvious when he thought about it. That boy, to stay alive, had become Yilanè. That was obvious too. A Yilanè inside his thoughts, a Tanu for the world to see. That much was clear. What was not clear was what would happen to him next. If he did nothing, his existence would go on very much as it had in the past. His position would remain high, next to the hand of the Eistaa, secure and honored. As a Yilanè.
But was that what he wanted? Was that his future? He had never considered these matters before, had no idea that a conflict such as this might exist. He shrugged his shoulders, struggling to remove an invisible burden. It was too much to consider right now. He needed to puzzle things out slowly. He would do as Vaintè had asked, question the ustuzou. There would be time later to think of these matters; his head was hurting too much now.
When he returned nothing had changed. Herilak was lying bound on the ground, the three fargi standing guard in unquestioning obedience. Kerrick looked down at the hunter, trying to speak, but the words did not come. It was Herilak who broke the silence.
“Do as I said,” he whispered. “Kill the murgu, cut my bonds, escape with me. To the mountains, to the winter snow, the good hunting, the fire in the tent. Come back to your people.”
Though they were whispered the words were echoing in his head like the roll of thunder.
“No!” he shouted aloud. “You will be silent. You will answer my questions only. You will not speak except to answer…”