“The Eistaa sends for one by the name of Kerrick,” the fargi said, moving slowly along the river bank. She had been wounded by some sharp object and a large bandage covered her lower arm. There was blood on her side and streaked down her leg.
“Wash yourself clean,” Kerrick ordered, then gave a tug on his lead and Inlènu* lumbered to her feet. The hèsotsan had finished the bit of meat and he smoothed its mouth shut as they walked; it had tiny, sharp teeth and could give a nasty little bite if this were not done.
They followed the river bank, then turned away from it when they came to a well-trampled path. More wounded fargi passed them going in the opposite direction. Some of them had stopped; others were sprawled on the ground, too weak to go any further. They passed one of them that had died on the way, eyes wide and mouth gaping. The fighting must have been fierce.
Then Kerrick saw his first dead Tanu. They were heaped together, men and women, children’s tiny corpses tossed aside. Beyond them a mastodon, dead among the broken poles, its load burst and scattered.
Kerrick was numb, with an emotion — or lack of emotion — that left him stumbling along in silence. These were ustuzou, they needed killing. These were Tanu — why were they dead? These were the loathsome ustuzou that had slaughtered the Yilanè males and the young on the beaches. But what did he really care or know about that? He had never even been close to the beaches.
A fargi, the spear that had killed it still through her body, lay in bloody embrace over the body of the hunter who had wielded it. The fargi was Yilanè and he, Kerrick, he was Yilanè as well.
But, no, he was Tanu. Was he Tanu too?
The question could not be answered, but could not be forgotten as well. Yet he must forget it then and remember that he had been a boy — but that boy was dead. In order to live he must live as a Yilanè. He was Yilanè, not dirty ustuzou.
A fargi pulled at his arm and he stumbled after her. Through the column of death; dead Tanu, mastodons, Yilanè. It could not bear looking at. They came to a group of armed fargi who moved aside so that Kerrick could pass. Vaintè stood there, every movement of her body expressing unconcealed anger. When she saw Kerrick she pointed soundlessly at the object on the ground before her. It was an animal’s skin, badly tanned and mottled, limp and shapeless except for the head that had been stuffed.
Kerrick recoiled in horror. Not an animal — a Yilanè, and one that he recognized. Sokain, the surveyor who had been killed by the ustuzou. Killed, skinned, and brought here.
“See this.” Every motion of Vaintè’s body, each sound she spoke, exuded hatred and a relentless anger. “See what these animals have done to one of such intelligence and grace. I want to know more of this matter, which one of them was responsible, how many were involved, where we can find them. You will question the ustuzou we hold captive over there. We had to club it into submission. It may be the pack leader. Make it bleed, make it tell you what it knows before I kill it. Be quick. I will want to know when I return. A few of them fled destruction but Stallan leads her hunters and follows and will pull them down.”
There was a glade here surrounded by high trees. The Tanu lay on the ground, arms and legs bound, while a fargi beat the creature with its own spear. “Make it suffer — but do not kill it,” Vaintè ordered, then turned away as a messenger hurried up.
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.