Megan Lindholm - Wolf's Brother

The big man came on, running in a flat charge, teeth bared wolverine white. Kerlew rose to meet him, stood like a reed in a storm's path. The bone knife flashed before Joboam's eyes, Kerlew snarling like a wolf, and then the boy was falling backwards, stumbling over Capiam's body, sprawling full length upon the hides. Knife in hand, Joboam fell upon him, and a sharp scream rose above the yells of the crowd. Men surged forward to drag their herdlord from the melee, while women with babes in arms pushed their way back, away from the danger. Heckram plowed a path through them, seized the back of Joboam's collar and dragged him up and off the boy. Blood ran from Joboam's forearm, the only score the boy had made. Kerlew lay still on the earth, red streaming down his chest. Screams rose.

The knife Joboam lifted to Heckram was bronze and red.

Heckram howled his wrath, set free the killing frenzy he had so long contained. He fell on Joboam without caution or thought, his knife plunging in for Joboam's belly.

Joboam's hard forearm swept the wild blow aside, and Heckram felt Joboam's blade skitter across his tunic and then burn down his ribs. He roared with the pain and made a grab for Joboam's wrist, but his swollen fingers failed him. Joboam pulled free of his grip easily and drew back for another stab, his blade snagging for a moment in Heckram's shirt. Heckram seized the front of Joboam's shirt, jerked him close. Hot pain and trickling warmth down his side let Heckram know how well the blade had scored him. He could not get a breath, but independent of him, his knife fist thudded against Joboam's back. The bronze blade, gift of his father, met the thick leather, sank fractionally, met Joboam's shoulder blade. Joboam butted him suddenly, his forehead smashing Heckram's lips and nose and making the day sparkle blackly. His two-fingered grip on Joboam's shirt weakened, while some cool part of his mind noticed Joboam draw his knife back for a killing blow. He twisted his body aside, felt a blow meant to sink into his belly rip along his hip instead. His own blade snapped as its ancient brittleness yielded to forces beyond its tempering.

He staggered back from Joboam, saw a panorama of folk spin past as the hot blood seared his leg. He should have known Joboam would be better at this game, more savage, more experienced. Better as he had always been better, stronger as he had always been stronger. Tillu's scream rose above the others, her hands reaching wildly toward her fallen son and the struggling men as Stina and Ristin clutched her and mingled their cries with hers. He glimpsed the broken haft in his own hand, oddly distant, and then felt the world explode against his jaw. He knew he was falling from the suddenly peculiar angle of Joboam's legs, from the traveling chest that leaped up against his forehead. It took forever to roll onto his back. The world spun around him, full of cries and searing pain. Joboam had felled him with his knife hilt and fist, was coming now with his knife's point. Heckram pushed against the skins that cushioned the earth, rose, but too slowly. Kerlew lay near him, blood leaking from his chest. With a sudden clarity Heckram knew he would not be the first person Joboam had killed with his hands. The thought brought with it a peculiar strength, and he surged full to his feet, crouched weaponless to grapple with him.

A small man suddenly leaped from the gaping, circled folk, screaming 'No!' and flinging himself into Joboam's path. Joboam brushed him away, the small man tumbled back before the push of that muscled arm, struck one of the tent supports, and suddenly became Lasse sprawling at the edge of the circled folk. His eyes met Heckram's as he stood swaying stupidly and waiting for Joboam to kill him. 'The bone knife!' Lasse screamed. 'By your foot!'

He looked down dully to see Elsa's knife, his knife, Kerlew's knife lying on the hides where it had tumbled from the boy's lax hand. Joboam was coming, his bronze knife low, his mouth wide with teeth and madness. He stooped for it as Joboam collided with him, felt Joboam's knife momentarily stopped by his leather jerkin, then biting through into his flesh. Heckram cried out wordlessly at the new agony, felt the bronze knife within him, felt the bone knife under his hand. He gripped it as he fell. With a terrible wrench, he felt Joboam's bronze knife leave his body.

The blood that followed it was the river of his life; his thoughts seemed to flow out with it. 'No!' he cried, as much to forbid the loss as from the pain. The world narrowed around him as blackness closed in from all sides. He felt the familiar hilt in his hand, felt Elsa's carving under his fingers. He was looking up at people spinning past him, their faces white, their mouths red and open in horror. The circle of his vision grew smaller and yellowed and Joboam suddenly filled it. He held a knife that dripped red, Kerlew's blood, his blood, Elsa's blood, and as the knife came down, Heckram saw only the yellowness around him. The light that surrounded Joboam was like the yellow glow of a wolf's eyes by night. Joboam was in the Wolfs eyes. Heckram cried out aloud at the sight and strove to surge up, to follow the bone knife that leaped suddenly in his grip.

But there was too much pain, and his blood was ebbing out of him in pulses. Joboam's blade descended. All sound stopped.

Tillu screamed wordlessly, in pain and fury. She lunged forward, but Ristin and Stina gripped her with the force of hysteria, and she could not break their hold. Their screams mingled with hers, the cries of people who witness the unthinkable, men fighting like beasts and beloved blood spilling. The noise and the crowd around her had snared her, she could not escape their grip. She could only watch Joboam as he finished killing all she loved, all who loved her. She wanted to be unconscious, to be dead, but her eyes went on seeing.

She took a deep breath, willing it all to stop, to be a hideous dream, but it went on.

She had to watch Joboam's knife leap in, saw Heckram twist his belly away from the danger only to take the blow along his hip. The blood, impossibly red, leaped out as if anxious to leave his body, and then Joboam's fist connected with the angle of his jaw with a terrible cracking sound. A small part of Tillu noted how Joboam used the butt of his knife to strike, and within her the healer was nodding, saying to herself, yes, even so was Elsa's jaw broken, only she was smaller, so it was torn loose entirely, and with just such a blow was her skull dented in.

Tillu stopped screaming, could make no sound at all. The pack noise of the herdfolk around her swelled up, filling her ears unbearably as she suddenly knew she must watch Heckram die as Kerlew had just died. Joboam was killing with savage efficiency now, with skill born of practice, and the shock was so great, the law broken so implacably, that no one could remember how to intervene. Joboam was an avalanche, a river in flood time, a killing force impossible to avert.

Heckram had fallen, the broken knife haft still gripped in his hand. 'Oh, please, please, no!' Tillu cried out, her voice high and thin as a child's, and if in answer to that plea, Heckram scrabbled once more to his feet. He crouched, weaponless, looking more like a man getting ready to wrestle a calf down than a man facing a killer. Joboam, almost unscathed save for Kerlew's cut down his forearm, moved in. His lips were drawn back in a mirthless sneer. She was not the only one who saw the difference between the two men's attitudes. She heard someone call Heckram's name, in a voice deep with pain, and another cry out without words.

Then, impossibly, someone did act, someone leaped in as no one else had dared, small, unarmed, Lasse flung himself into the cleared area that had once been Capiam's home, to stand before Joboam. 'No!' he roared, in a voice filled with fury and pain, and met Joboam's advance, only to be brushed aside with shocking ease. No one had ever suspected the true strength in Joboam's thick arms. Lasse went flying as if batted by an angry bear, struck one of the tent supports and slid down it to lie half-stunned on the floor.