Megan Lindholm - The Reindeer People

Joboam snorted. 'Don't be a fool, woman. Let him have the boy. I see no problem with that. But he may be surprised when he announces to Capiam that he will be our najd.'

Tillu waved a hand at Joboam, in an angry gesture of dismissal, heedless of the moss it spilled.

'So now you tell Tillu what to do with her son, as well as advise the herdlord about najds,' Heckram observed, 'I wonder if she knows how you "discipline" Kerlew when she is absent?'

Joboam turned to him. Color rose in his face, but his words were calm, 'I wonder what would happen if I hit you on that slash.' Looks as if your whole face would break open.'

'I wonder if you have the courage to try?' Heckram met his gaze. 'Here I am, Joboam.

There's nothing hampering you.'

'Shut up, the both of you!' Tillu whirled on them suddenly, anger flaring. 'Do you think I have nothing better to do than mend your stupid heads after you've broken them? Make me extra work, Joboam, and Capiam will hear of it. Yes, and of other things, too.' Her dark eyes snapped from Heckram to Joboam. Joboam's eyes narrowed at her threat. 'Now. Joboam, you may tell the herdlord what I have told you several times already. That I am not decided to go. You may even tell him that your daily visits here have reminded me of all the reasons that I have for avoiding people. And Heckram. If you want me to clean up that gash, then go to the tent. But if you stand here and fight, I shall do no healing for either of you. And I shall tell Capiam you interfered with my gathering of supplies.'

She turned, clutching the moss to her chest as if it were a child. She walked to her tent without looking back. Heckram saw her shudder once, as if she held back a sob or a cough. He turned to look at Joboam through narrowed eyes.

Joboam snorted. 'Let her stamp and shake her head now. She'll learn the harness soon enough.' The look he sent after her was proprietary. Heckram's anger went one notch tighter.

'Aren't you still wondering about my face?' he asked softly.

Joboam turned aside from him. 'You'll keep,' he said casually. 'News won't. Since you haven't informed the Herdlord Capiam of the troubles you have dragged home, I will.

A najd. Even a simpleton knows the problems that can create. And you had to bring him here. Still, if he takes the healer's son with him when he goes, that may solve a problem. For me.' Joboam's voice had become speculative. He began to walk back toward the talvsit.

'Joboam!' Heckram called. The man stopped.

'Stay away from Kerlew. Not because he's the najd's apprentice. Because I say so.

And one more thing. If you won't fight me now, be ready to later. A time will come.'

'That it will,' Joboam agreed. He started to walk away, but Heckram's voice stopped him again. 'Be sure to give Capiam all the healer's message. I'll be stopping by his tent this evening to be sure it was delivered correctly.'

Before Joboam could walk away from him, Heckram turned and walked toward Tillu's hut.

It was dark and stuffy inside the tent after the bright coolness of the spring afternoon. The earth floor had softened with the warmer weather. It gave beneath Heckram's heavier tread. Moisture, unlocked from frost, damped the furnishings of the tent, giving them a musty smell. Tillu should take everything outside into the early sun to air. The herdfolk always aired their possessions before packing for the migration.

Heckram wondered if Tillu were really coming with them, but couldn't muster the courage to ask. He stood awkwardly inside the door flap, feeling an intruder. Tillu hadn't spoken, hadn't even acknowledged him with a nod. She crouched, stirring herbs into a pot of water beside her hearth. Something in her physical attitude was familiar; her back bowed like a shield, chin tucked into her chest as if she awaited the next blow.

Recognition hit him. She, too, tried to go on with her life as she struggled with an insolvable problem.

He looked around, trying to think of some neutral comment. Her poverty had given way to meager comfort. There were more hides on the pallets, and dried meat and fish hung from the tent supports beside utensils of wood and bone. Her dealings with the herdfolk were prospering. The thought recalled the last time he had seen her. The day after Elsa died. They had had little to say to one another amid the hubbub of grief. And just as little now. The things he shared with this woman were not the things that drew folk together. He wished suddenly he hadn't come. She was ignoring him, crouching with her back to him, stirring something in a pot. He wondered if he could simply back our of the tent and return to his own hut.

As if she had heard his thoughts, Tillu spoke. 'Leave the tent flap up. The light is better that way.' She glanced over her shoulder at him, irritable. 'Sit down on the pallet.

You're too tall for me to work on that slash if you stand.'

Without a word, he looped the door string around its support. A narrow triangle of light spilled into the tent and across one pallet. He went to it and sat, silent. Not talking seemed easier.

She lifted the steaming pot and set it on the floor by his feet. As silent as he, she took a handful of white moss from a basket near the fireside. Her capable fingers picked through it quickly, discarding bits of twigs, a pellet of rabbit dung, the skeleton of a leaf.

He watched her. The rising steam from the pot had a pleasant fragrance, like the forest in true spring, when the rising warmth from the leaf mould smelled of generations of pine and alder. He relaxed, until Tillu knelt suddenly before him. It put her face on the same level as his. She dunked the moss into the water and let it soak as she studied his face.

It was an uncomfortable arrangement for Heckram. He had no place to put his eyes and he didn't know what to do with his hands. He folded his arms across his chest, then, feeling foolish, let them fall to his sides. Her face was close to his as she examined the cut. Her mouth was impassive, and when he did look into her eyes, she didn't notice. The injury had all her attention. He started slightly when she took his chin in a firm, cool grip and turned his face toward the light. Her fingertips rasped lightly against his chin. She kept her hand there, holding him steady, as she moved her head to study the injury. He stared at her frankly, noting the fineness of her hair, the way it pulled free of its binding and strayed around her cheeks. Her nose was narrow and more prominent than was thought attractive among the herdfolk. Much like his own.

Her cheeks were not broad and flat, but were molded back over high cheekbones. Her dark eyes were sharp and bright as they peered at him. Like a vixen, turning her head and cocking her ears as she watched and waited at a vole's burrow.

'What happened?' she demanded suddenly.

It took him a moment to reply, 'I scratched my face on a tree branch.'

'Oh?' She turned his chin again. 'It looks like an animal scratch. Not as bad as a bear swipe, not as big, but similar.'

'I stood up inside a branch shelter that Lasse and I had built, and scratched my face on a snag.'

She didn't agree with him. 'Then it shouldn't have become infected like this. But even a mild swipe from a predator usually becomes infected. Like this.'

'It was a branch,' Heckram repeated irritably.

'Mmm. It's close to the eye. You should have come sooner. Now it's going to hurt.'

With no more warning than that, she scooped a handful of moss from the warmed water and held it firmly against his face. The heat accented the pulsing pain of the wound. He set his teeth and held himself still. Sweat sprang out all over him.

'I can hold it there,' he offered after a moment.

'I've got it,' she replied, it will take a little while. It has to open. Sit still.'