Гарри Тертлдав - The First Heroes

Mebaw barked his knuckles on a chunk of flagstone and swore mildly. "Well, Grandmother insists that your encounter with the Seaman means that at least some of us will survive. The elders agree with this interpretation. I'd even go so far as to say that you have something to do with our chances."

"Me? I'm nobody special. It's men like Father and Uncle, the bold ones, who accomplish things." "But the Seaman appeared before your mind's eye and did not deny you when you asked, 'Is there nothing we can do?'" Dett laughed bitterly. "Here's what I can do: patch a roof."

"Fine. Maybe that will prevent the rain from soaking my family, and thus we shall not freeze. You have saved perhaps nine people."

"Always joking, brother."

"I am not joking. You may have already helped us prepare for this cold reign of Lord Father Winter, with your clucking over the strange skies. My wife, matching your worries with her own, was especially frugal with our grain this summer. Thanks to her foresight, we will have enough to last till spring. Other wives did the same."

"Jolpibb among them," Dett said, tears welling up in his eyes.

"Ah, but I have spoken with men from other villages on Western Island. Some of them are already starving, and Klevey's culled their flocks the way he did in your dream, right down to the last lamb. Your boy Fummirrul may mourn our losses, but we've still got a decent-sized flock, and promise of more come spring. I went by our pasture yesterday, and that troublesome ram was humping the ewes like a woolly bridegroom on his wedding night. Made me feel proud to be male, he did, and the other ram, the brown one, was having his share of the ladies, too."

Talk of the sheep made Dett feel uneasy. "All the same, it is easier to be frugal when there are fewer mouths to fill. I imagine there is plenty still in Uncle Talloc's storebins, as there is hardly anyone to eat it in his house."

"Hush! Here he comes, his own self, and he looks angry. Greetings, Uncle!"

"Greetings, Nephew Mebaw. I would speak to you a moment, Nephew Dett. A matter of concern between our families." Talloc drew his sealskin cape across his barrel chest—he was built like Dett—and waited for the younger man to slide down from the rooftop.

"Something wrong, Uncle?" Dett asked.

"Your son, Fummirrul, has been spending time in the company of the stranger girl, Gefalal. He has been doing so for many months now."

"If this has been so for many months now, why do you sound annoyed by it?"

"At first, I did not mind. Fummirrul has helped her learn our tongue. Perhaps she learned more from him because he is nearer her own age. I am grateful, for her position in my house has grown in importance since Klevey has taken so many of mine, including wife, daughters, and daughters-in-law. It is good she knows simple words and commands. But he must not come near her any longer."

"Why? Where is the harm? They are but children."

Talloc kicked a loose stone, sending it ricocheting off Mebaw's house. "Because she is now meant for Glinaw, my last remaining boy! I do not want anyone, not even a grandnephew, taking her and planting his seed within her!"

"How absurd, Uncle!" said Dett. Clearly, grief had rattled the older man's wits. "She is still unbloodied, and Fummirrul has not yet sprouted his man's hair, nor had his first dreamtime wetness. He's a boy still, with the slender shoulders of youth and a high voice like those of the shore-birds. As for his manhood . . ."

"I care not that Fummirrul's manhood is as yet unripe. If he stays any longer by Gefalal's side, he will know what to do as soon as it is ripe, and he will desire to do it with her.

"Gefalal could start her courses any time. She is a woman in shape, no longer the ragged stick-child we rescued last spring. Her hips have widened, to prepare for bearing my grandchildren. Her breasts have rounded, the better to nurse my grandchildren." Talloc's breath came a little faster, puffing white in the cold air, and he shifted his feet, as if suddenly uncomfortable. Dett had not seen enough of Gefalal to realize how much the stranger girl's body had changed over the seasons, but clearly Talloc knew it in detail. Dett suspected his uncle's lecture had two goals: to protect Gefalal for Glinaw, or, if Glinaw died, to save her for himself. Glinaw had the same wasting cough that had taken many of the villagers in the last month. And Talloc was still virile, though getting on in years: his wife had died in childbirth not long after Dett's dream.

Dett said, "As you wish, Uncle. I shall speak to the boy, though I am sure you are worrying needlessly." "You would worry, too, had you been as afflicted as I! At least three of your children still breathe! Even those daughters of mine who dwelt with their husbands are gone, and all the grandbabes with them." He choked up, then abruptly walked away.

"Well!" said Mebaw from above. "That was an unpleasant performance."

"He is shaken by grief."

"Shaken by lust, if you ask me. He's just waiting for the stranger girl to ripen, then he'll pluck the fruit. Glinaw doesn't have a chance; he must have breathed plenty of Klevey's fumes." This uncomfortably echoed Dett's own thoughts, but he said nothing out of respect for his uncle's position and sympathy for his losses. It sometimes seemed Mebaw respected nothing. "I must speak to Fummirrul," Dett said. "This news will only make him gloomier, I fear. He enjoys talking with Gefalal."

"Go, then. I can finish this myself."

Dett pondered. "It grows late. He should be putting the sheep back into their enclosure soon. I will wait for him there, if he has not yet returned from the pastures."

He began trudging through the village, noting house after house and remembering those who had died. Icy slush covered the ground; Dett could feel the chill creeping through his boots. As he made his way past the silent fields, he realized he had been avoiding the sheep pen ever since his frightful dream. He knew why: he didn't want to see the place where Klevey had run rampant before his mind's eye. Even now, ascending the rise, he felt uneasy, though the harsh winter landscape differed significantly from the green grasses of his dream. The tiny pink flowers were long gone.

He heard the sheep baaing as he approached, but not the frantic calling he remembered in his dream. Nor, when he looked down, did he see ruin and destruction. The sight, however, was sobering: perhaps a fourth of the flock had died, and some of the remaining beasts were sickly. By some weird twist, all of the animals taken by Klevey thus far had been from the old flock. The new southern sheep, for all their frisky and peculiar ways, seemed in far better health.

Fummirrul, a sleek figure in black from his cap down to his mittens, was in the far corner of the enclosure with one of the new rams and several ewes. It might have been Trouble, but Dett wasn't quite sure. Fummirrul jumped with alarm when his father called his name.

"Why do you start so, my son? Are you up to some mischief?" asked Dett. "I have important news. Your great-uncle Tal—what is that stuff? What are you doing there? Have the wind demons swept all sense from your mind?"

Dett advanced purposefully on his son, who cowered beside the wall. At his feet was a large pile of seaweed, which Trouble and the ewes were munching. "When you told me these animals had a fondness for seaweed and even leaped the wall to get it, I took it as a joke. You children, when mere tots, would often unknowingly place yourselves in danger, trying to get something forbidden to you. So, I thought, it was with these sheep. Being ignorant creatures, they do not know any better. You, the shepherd, like a parent to a wayward child, would teach them the right way to behave.

"Now, in this time of troubles, I find you have abandoned your duty and have given in to the whims of these beasts, supplying them with what they crave. Likely they will all die, thanks to your foolishness! What made you think you could do this?" Dett did not often shout, but he did so now, frightening the sheep and sending a nearby flock of gannets flapping into the sky.