Karluk · Bearclaw Territory, Frost Fang Highlands
1715
Karluk came down from the ridgeline traps at midday with three martens over his shoulder and old snow slushing under his boots. It was his first spring among the Bearclaws. The thaw had not yet reached the high ground. But the days were lengthening and somewhere below the camp a stream he had not heard all winter was running again.
Senna was working a hide stretched across the frame outside their tent, humming something with no tune to it. The sun did little for the air. It did a great deal for her mood. She heard him before she saw him. Senna had a way of laughing that caught her by surprise as much as anyone. Since his first night in camp Karluk had been deciding it was his favorite sound in the world. Her cheerful smile was his favorite sight.
They got married during winter, six months after Borgün let him stay. She was Borgün’s daughter. The ceremony took less than an hour and involved a great deal of the tribe getting louder than it needed to. Karluk enjoyed it more than he expected. For six years he had thought of himself as a man built for one purpose. He imagined a wife would be something like a debt: another person to protect, and another way for the world to hurt him. He was right about that last part. What he had not understood was that it would be worth it.
“Three marten,” he said, holding them up. “Borgün will want the good one for trade.”
“He always wants the good one.” She said it before he finished.
She set down the scraper and wiped her hands on a rag stiff with old fat. Then she looked him over with the fond suspicion she had shown him since the second week after they met. Her nails were always stained dark from the hides. Both palms were thick with calluses. Her round face went high in color whenever she worked or laughed and fine lines were starting at the corners of her eyes. She wore her hair braided and pinned up out of the way.
“You look like you’ve had a good morning.”
“The traps were full and nothing tried to kill me. It was ordinary.”
“For you, that’s a good one.” She came to him without hurrying. “You come back from ordinary mornings as if you’ve gotten away with something.”
He had no answer. He was nine the last time a morning felt like this and he knew how that one ended. More than once this winter he caught himself thinking about what he would carry if they had to run and how fast. He was ashamed enough of the habit to keep it to himself. She knew anyway.
“I’ll be up on the ridgeline again before dark,” he told her. “Borgün wants the northern line checked before the thaw brings anything down off it.”
“Then go. I’ll have food when you’re back.” She kissed him and was back at the hide before he finished settling his bow on his shoulder.
He came home after dark to a camp that was too quiet. This was Borgün’s own camp, the largest of the Bearclaw camps. It was the only one Karluk had ever slept in and he knew its sounds. Men argued beside the common fire long after there was anything left to argue about. Somewhere among the tents, a child would always be fighting bedtime. Tonight, conversations stopped before he reached them. People turned away when he walked by.
His tent was empty. The hide was still half worked on its frame and the scraper lay beneath it in the mud with its handle gone dark. There were strange boot prints outside the entrance, but Karluk barely looked at them once he saw the crossbar. Someone had cut a mark into the wood, three parallel strokes with a fourth slashed across them.
His hands went still. The bedding inside smelled of smoke and of the hides Senna worked but the warmth was gone from the tent. She had been gone a long time. While he was up on the ridge checking traps, someone walked into the life he was only just beginning to trust.
He knew that mark from as far back as he could remember. It was displayed on the door of his childhood longhouse and carved into his father’s sword hilt. Fourteen years had passed. His old tribe had found him and they had come for Senna.
They came out of the trees early in the afternoon, not long after he left. Most of the camp’s men were away at the spring work. Few of those who saw the raiders could tell him much. Karluk’s tent sat near the treeline. An eleven-year-old boy named Bersi had hidden among the trees and watched. He told Karluk what he saw, though he kept stopping to apologize.
“Four of them. Maybe five.” His teeth knocked together between the words. “They were in the trees yesterday too and I thought they were ours.”
Karluk crouched in front of him. “Did you see their faces?”
“One. He was older. He had a scar down here.” The boy drew a finger from his temple to his jaw.
“He was laughing. Not at her. He looked at your tent like it was funny you had one.”
For a moment Karluk heard nothing but the hide frame creaking in the wind.
“I should have called someone,” the boy said.
“You stayed where they couldn’t see you.”
“I hid.”
“Yes.” Karluk waited until the boy looked at him. “And now you can tell me what happened. You did well.”
The boy’s mouth trembled. He was still waiting to be blamed.
“Go to your mother,” Karluk said. “There’s nothing more you need to do.”
Karluk went to the chieftain. Borgün heard him out without interrupting. His riders had gone out within the hour and lost the trail at dusk in the thaw. He stood beside the fire with his hands at his sides. Only when Karluk finished did one of them close on the edge of his cloak.
“They took her alive,” he said.
Karluk did not answer.
“If they wanted her dead, they could have left her where she stood. Taking her costs them time and slows their horses. They want you to follow.”
“I know what they want.”
“Then remember that it’s Kelgrim’s mark on the crossbar. He won’t have been the one cutting it.”
Borgün’s eyes stayed on Karluk’s face. “A chieftain who sends this kind of message sits somewhere warm while other men carry it.”
Karluk had already reached the same conclusion. Hearing it said aloud did nothing to loosen the knot under his ribs.
“You mean to leave tonight,” Borgün said.
“Before sunrise. With or without your permission.”
“You’ll have it.”
The answer came so quickly that Karluk looked up.
“But you’ll take men who know the ground. And when they tell you something, you’ll listen.”
“I know how to follow a trail.”
“I know. I’m less sure you know when to stop.”
Borgün stepped closer. The firelight found the strain around his mouth. “Bring my daughter home, Karluk. I would prefer she didn’t have to bury her husband when she gets here.”
Four men volunteered before Borgün finished asking. Two were younger hunters from the party the Uhrs ambushed on the day Karluk arrived. One was the tracker whose leg Karluk had bound, long since sound on it. The other had carried the far end of the tracker’s litter. Neither spoke of the debt. They gathered their weapons quickly. Rulf came as well, another man from that party. He was the oldest of them, a hunter with gray in his beard and little patience for anything he considered avoidable.
The fourth was Yassa. He was broad through the shoulders and about Karluk’s age, with a temper that rose fast and a grin that usually got there first. For months he found reasons to work wherever Karluk happened to be, and he made no effort to hide how much he enjoyed watching Karluk win. Among the Bearclaws he was easy to pick out. His skin stayed fair where the weather browned everyone else. Freckles were scattered across his nose and the tops of his shoulders. They darkened every summer and never quite faded in winter. His sandy hair hung to his collar unevenly. Karluk once asked who cut it.
“I did.” Yassa looked offended.
“That explains it.”
Yassa laughed hard enough to draw a look from two nearby hunters. His broad face was unremarkable until he smiled. Then it seemed that very little in the world could trouble him for long. Karluk liked him within a week. Most people did.
Tracking took two days. Karluk fought the urge to go faster. One careless turn could lose the trail. In the dark, haste might carry them straight past the men they were hunting. His legs were not convinced.
At dusk Rulf caught his arm before he could start down a gully where the snow hid the bottom. “You’ll break an ankle in there.”
“The tracks go through it.”
“And they’ll still go through it when we can see.”
Karluk pulled his arm free then stopped himself from taking the next step.
Rulf watched. “Running us blind through a river gully won’t keep her alive.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. But I know I’d rather reach her with men who can still fight.”
The words were blunt enough to hurt and Karluk suspected that was why Rulf chose them. He stood with his hands opening and closing at his sides. “I know.”
“Then set a pace that won’t get us killed or at least one that leaves us the energy to fight.”
Rulf turned toward the safer ground without waiting to see whether he followed. After a moment, Karluk did.
They camped without a fire. Cold seeped through the blankets almost as soon as they lay down. The ground held what little warmth a man gave it for perhaps an hour then drew it back out through his bones. Karluk could not sleep. Yassa settled beside him for the first watch with a strip of dried meat between his teeth. For a while they said nothing. Wind picked at the bare branches above the hollow and the damp smell of the earth rose up from under their blankets.
“You haven’t eaten,” Yassa said. He never learned to lower his voice. Even his whisper carried across the hollow.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Nobody’s hungry the night before. You eat anyway or the cold eats you.” He tore the meat in half and held out a piece.
Karluk looked at it.
“If I have to carry you tomorrow, I’ll complain the whole way.”
“You could leave me.”
“And explain that to Senna?”
Karluk took the meat. It was hard enough to make his jaw ache yet he chewed it because refusing would have meant more talking.
Yassa watched him with quiet satisfaction. “Can I ask you something?”
“Ask.”
“Something you might take badly.”
“Then choose your words.”
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Yassa considered this advice for less time than it deserved. “Why did you marry her?”
Karluk turned his head.
“That was badly chosen,” Yassa admitted.
“Yes.”
“I’ve been trying to ask it since we left. You’d been here six months. I know men who’ve spent longer deciding whether to buy a horse.”
“Senna isn’t a horse.”
“I had noticed.”
Yassa rubbed a hand along his jaw. “You walked in with a bow and nobody to speak for you. Before the year was out, you had a place at Borgün’s fire and his daughter for a wife. Some men think you meant to have both from the start.”
“Do you?”
“No. I’ve said so often enough that I’d be grateful if you didn’t make a fool of me.”
The answer cost him something. Karluk heard it under the attempt at lightness. He turned the rest of the meat between his fingers. “I spent six years alone before I came here.”
Yassa waited.
“I stayed in wilderness nobody wanted. I wasn’t passing through it. After a while, I stopped thinking about leaving.”
“Because you liked it?”
“Because I’d learned how to live there.”
Karluk looked toward the trees where the wind kept moving branches he could barely see. “You get good at being alone. There’s less to miss once you’ve gotten used to it.”
He had not meant to say this much. Now that he was talking, stopping seemed harder. “Another winter or two, and I might have never come back.”
“And Senna?”
“She laughed.”
Yassa glanced at him.
“Someone said something by the fire while she was handing out bowls of hot broth. I don’t remember what. She laughed before she could stop herself and I heard her from across the camp. Then I saw her cheerful smile again.”
Now the distance between that fire and this cold hollow felt more than he could stand. “I’d forgotten I could want a life with someone in it. Right then I knew I liked her.”
Yassa lowered his eyes to the meat in his hand.
Karluk let the silence stand. “So,” he said at last, “it was less a plan and more the fear I’d lose the chance.”
“That’s better than the answer I’ve been giving.”
“What answer?”
“That you have good taste and very little patience.”
Karluk’s mouth moved in spite of him.
“I’ll keep using it,” Yassa said. “It takes less explaining.”
When Karluk finally lay down, he could no longer feel the outer edges of his feet. Before dawn, frost gathered more thickly on their side of the hollow than on the grass beyond it. He put it down to the shade and pulled the blanket closer.
On the second morning they found clear prints where the trail ran over soft ground. Four horses. One had carried more weight than the others. They were heading southeast into country Karluk had not entered since he was a boy. The wind had scoured the snow off the crests here and left the gray rock bare. He recognized the ridges before he found the paths between them and by evening, he knew where the raiders were going.
A hollow lay between two ridges. It was screened from every approach except the slope above it. His old tribe had used it for as long as he could remember. As a child he played among its rocks without once thinking how useful they would be.
They reached the upper slope in the last hour before dawn. The raiders’ woodsmoke came up the slope to meet them. Karluk crawled forward on his belly until he could see the fire. Six men. Four had taken her. He counted again. The other two must have been waiting here.
One sentry stood at the northern lip of the hollow while the second walked a slow circuit beyond the firelight. Karluk watched the second man long enough to learn where the rocks would hide his fall. The other four sat close to the coals. Someone fed the fire a short length of wood and the glow spread across the stone beside Senna. She sat upright, her hands bound in front of her. They had not gagged her. They did not expect anyone close enough to hear.
Karluk lay flat against the frozen ground and watched the hollow below. One of the men said something to Senna. She turned her head. Even at this distance, Karluk could tell from the set of her shoulders. She was angry.
Relief struck him hard enough to hollow out his chest. He pressed one palm into the earth and breathed through it. Not yet. He could not afford relief yet.
“She’s been listening,” he whispered.
Rulf followed his gaze. “Then let’s get her home so she can tell us.”
Karluk nodded. “The north sentry is mine. Take the other when he passes behind that rock.”
Rulf studied the ground, then began easing back from the ridge.
Karluk turned to the others. “Come down on the fire once the sentries are gone. Yassa, take the longer slope and keep yourself between them and her.”
“And if one runs?” asked one of the younger hunters.
“Let him.”
The man stared at him.
“We came for Senna.”
The northern sentry never saw the bow. Karluk’s arrow took him in the throat at forty yards. He jerked back against the rock. His hands rose toward the shaft and found it too late.
Across the hollow, Rulf caught the other sentry from behind. A hand closed over the man’s mouth. The knife went in under his ribs and Rulf held him until he could lay him down without a sound. Karluk was already moving.
A man at the fire looked up. Karluk loosed again and caught him high in the shoulder as he reached for his sword. Then the slope steepened under his boots and carried him down toward the fire. He dropped the bow.
For two days Karluk followed another man’s pace. All of that ended the moment he saw Senna. Karluk planned to circle the fire. Instead, he went straight through it.
A raider was still getting up when Karluk hit him shoulder-first. They went down together across the edge of the fire. Coals scattered under them, and one of the coals caught Karluk’s sleeve. The man grabbed his collar and heaved him sideways. Karluk landed hard on one elbow and split his lip against his teeth so that blood ran into his mouth.
He drove his forehead into the man’s nose and heard it break. The grip on his collar loosened and he forced his knife up between them. The blade went in under the ribs. He struck again when the man tried to roll him, then held him down until he stopped struggling.
Someone shouted. It was not Senna. He got to his feet as a swordsman closed in. The first swing came low and Karluk drove his left forearm inside the swing against the man’s wrist, but the edge caught him first. Blood ran down his arm.
He stayed close. The swordsman tried to step back for another stroke. Karluk caught his wrist and wrenched the blade outward before the man could recover. His knife slashed the side of the man’s throat. He let the body fall.
The last unwounded raider had a spear and the sense to keep his distance. His first thrust drove Karluk back a step. The next forced him toward the coals. He worked the spear without hurry and herded Karluk where he wanted him.
Senna called Karluk’s name. The spearman’s eyes flicked toward her. It lasted an instant. It was enough for Karluk to step in before the next thrust.
He struck the point aside with his left hand. The edge cut his palm open, but his fingers closed on the wood behind the blade. The pain nearly opened them again. He pulled before it could.
The spearman stumbled toward him unwilling to let go of his weapon. Karluk met him with a knee under the ribs. As the man folded, Karluk dropped his knife and brought his right hand onto the shaft. He wrenched the spear free. The man tried to resist, and Karluk swung the butt down against the back of his skull. The raider went down and did not get up.
Karluk stood over him with blood running from his left hand. No one else was coming. Beside the fire, the man with the arrow in his shoulder knelt between the two younger hunters. Both held their blades close enough that he no longer reached for his sword. A scar ran from his temple to his jaw. He was talking fast but neither hunter seemed interested in anything he said.
The whole fight lasted less than a minute. Karluk had killed four men. The cuff of his sleeve was still smoldering where the coal had caught it and he crushed it out against his thigh. He could not remember hearing the others arrive. Yassa came down off the longer slope with his sword raised, then slowed as he reached the fire. His eyes went from the bodies to Karluk.
“Ancestors. I ran the whole way!”
Karluk was still trying to draw a full breath.
“You could have left me something,” Yassa said.
It was said lightly enough to pass for a joke. Karluk gave a short, winded laugh and touched Yassa’s shoulder as he went by. Something in Yassa’s voice did not quite belong to the words. Karluk heard it and did not bother to wonder why.
He went to Senna first. His knife lay where he had dropped it. He picked it up with his right hand and knelt in front of her. His fingers began to shake. They had not shaken on the bowstring. He stared at them, angry at this small betrayal. Then Senna laid her bound hands across his knee.
“Under there,” she said. “There’s room.”
He slipped the blade beneath the cord and cut away from her wrists.
“I told them you’d come.” She was talking before the last of the rope fell.
“I told them, and they laughed.”
Karluk looked up and she caught his arms. Then she saw the blood and turned his left wrist over.
Her face changed. “You’re cut!”
“I caught the spear.”
“By the wrong end it seems.”
“There wasn’t much time to choose.”
She gave him a sharp look. Whatever she meant to say died when her eyes reached his split lip. They were both silent. Then her fingers tightened carefully around the part of his arm that was not cut.
“One of them laughed more than the others,” she said.
“The scarred man?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes went past him. “Is he still alive?”
“For now.”
“Good.”
She said it at once. Karluk felt an ugly satisfaction in hearing it and he made no effort to excuse either of them. He tore a clean strip from the cloth inside his coat. Senna took it from him and began binding his palm.
“Kelgrim sent them,” she said. “They talked about him as if he’d already won something.”
“He thinks he has.”
“They said you’d been getting above yourself. That he meant to remind you what you are.”
Karluk watched her pull the cloth tight. “And what am I?”
“They didn’t say.”
She tied off the binding with a hard little tug. “I don’t think they know.”
He reached for her with his good arm. She came against him so fiercely that the breath went out of his chest. For a long while he felt nothing but her weight and her breathing against him. He pressed his face into her hair and held on until she began to hold him less tightly.
They questioned the scarred man for most of an hour. Rulf asked where Kelgrim was camped. The prisoner gave the place readily and described the approaches without being asked, down to the names of the men who kept watch. When Karluk asked how many could fight, he answered and went on offering more with every glance at the bodies by the fire. Karluk listened to all of it.
The sun was on the upper ridge by the time the man ran out of things to offer. His eyes settled on Karluk’s bound hand. “I’ve told you what I know.”
“Yes.”
“You can ask again. I haven’t lied.”
Karluk believed him. Fear made the man conscientious. It changed nothing.
The prisoner had seen the face of every man Karluk brought. He could lead others back along the path they took. Karluk set those facts in order and found they were enough. He also remembered the boy’s finger tracing a scar down his own frightened face. The laughter would have been enough too.
Karluk drew his knife. The man began to plead and Karluk killed him with one stroke. That troubled him more than he expected. This was the fifth man he had killed since dawn. He wiped the blade clean before he put it away.
Once they reached familiar ground, they sent one of the hunters ahead. Word seemed to have spread faster than one man could carry it. When Karluk and Senna walked into Borgün’s camp, people were waiting well outside the tents. Senna had dried dirt caked on the hem of her clothes and raw marks showed where the ropes had wounded her wrists. When someone reached for her, she shook her head and kept walking. Eyes followed them. He knew the faces of men he traded with. Younger hunters who barely spoke to him in his first weeks stood watching with attention.
Borgün met them at the common fire. He looked at Karluk’s bandaged hand then at the blood soaked through the cloth around his forearm. Senna stepped forward and he forgot what to say. He caught her by the shoulders. The chieftain simply studied his daughter’s face.
“I can stand,” she told him.
“I see.”
“You’re holding me as though I can’t.”
Borgün pulled her against him. “Bear with an old man.”
She went still then put her arms around him. Karluk looked toward the fire. Someone threw on fresh wood and sparks climbed through the smoke. He did not know how badly he wanted to hear the ordinary noise of this camp until it started up around him again. When Borgün let her go, Senna came back to Karluk’s side and took his right hand.
The chieftain noticed. “When you first stood here,” he said, “you told me what you were worth. I remember wondering how much of it was talk.”
“And now?”
“Now I have three young men asking whether you’ll lead the next northern patrol.”
Karluk glanced toward the hunters. “I’ve never asked to lead one.”
“I know. It has made answering them inconvenient.”
There was humor in Borgün’s voice but he was watching Karluk too closely for the humor to be all he meant.
“I went to bring her home.”
“I know why you went.” Borgün held his eyes. “They’ve seen that. And the men who followed you came back. They’ll remember it the next time they need someone to follow.”
He looked toward the waiting hunters. “A man doesn’t always get asked before that begins.” He left Karluk by the fire without waiting for an answer.
Senna’s hand stayed in his. He went out to bring back the life he wanted and he came home with men already getting ready to hand him theirs. He knew what they saw well enough to be uneasy. Somewhere beyond the southeastern ridges, Kelgrim was waiting for news that would not come the way he expected. Karluk would have to decide what to do about him, and soon.