‘Better than no calf at all,’ Heckram rumbled.
‘Or only an antler to show for it,’ Lasse suggested wryly, and they both laughed companionably. It had been last winter. Lasse had stalked a vaja and her calf. He had thrown his lasso well and true, and the bone runner had slid smoothly as the loop of woven sinew had settled around the vaja’s antler. But it had been late in the year, and with a sudden jerk the vaja and her calf had been free and fleeing through the woods, leaving Lasse with but an antler caught in the loop of his lasso. He had taken it back to the village and worked it into a needle case for his grandmother. The incident had become a joke among the herdfolk. But Heckram had admired the boy’s pragmatism and went out of his way to befriend him.
‘It’s foolish to try and decide it now,’ Heckram conceded. ‘Better to wait until the vaja and her calf are before us, and then see which is more likely to work.’
‘Snow,’ observed Lasse.
It had begun to fall, tiny crystalized flakes that sparkled in the moonlight. In the dry cold, the flakes were like icy dust. It did not cling, nor dampen them as it settled on their shoulders and hats. A gust of wind stirred it, and the icy bits stung Heckram’s face. He turned aside from it. ‘Time to go back to the sita,’ he suggested, tossing his head at the tent village.
‘Sitor.’ Lasse suggested the plural with an edge of mockery in his voice. Puzzled, Heckram looked at the tents again.
He saw what the boy meant. In a sense there were two villages below, not one. The division was subtle, but obvious once he looked for it. Closest to the base of the pingo, in the most sheltered area, was the tent of Capiam, the herdlord. Beyond it were the tents of the elders and his favored advisers. Beyond them, the tents of those wealthy with reindeer: perhaps a score of them. In a migratory caravan, such as the herdfolk were now, it was customary for each household to have two or more rajds. Each rajd was a string of neutered reindeer, usually about seven. Those tents nearest the pingo boasted three or more strings each, and some of them as many as five.
Then there was another village, pitched beyond the rajds of the first one. The tents of this village were clustered more closely together. More light gleamed from the seams of the worn tents, and fewer animals were picketed between them. His mother’s tent was there, with the rajd of seven harkar they shared. Lasse’s tent was beside it, and Elsa’s not far from that. The poorer folk of the herd had drawn together in their own separate village, just as the wealthy had set themselves apart from them. It was a cold thing to feel, and but one more sign of a trend that Heckram despised.
‘Did Joboam apologize?’ he suddenly asked the boy.
Lasse gave a disdainful grunt and turned to spit into the snow.
‘Did he?’ Heckram pressed.
‘No. Not that I’d have stood about to listen to it if he did. I’ve no use for anything he says.’
‘He should be made to apologize, publicly.’ Heckram’s deep voice was soft, his words hard as polished flint. ‘If Capiam were all that a herdlord is supposed to be, he’d have seen to that. And made him pay, too, for the insult.’
‘Let him call me what he likes.’ Lasse stooped to crack a stone from its icy bed and shy it down the frozen crust of the pingo. ‘Those who know me know I’m not a thief. And who cares what the others think?’
‘I do. And you should. It’s not just you, it’s your family he’s insulted. Isn’t your grandmother upset?’
Lasse sighed and turned away from Heckram. ‘Let’s get back down to the sita before the wind really comes up.’
Heckram reached out to put a hand on Lasse’s shoulder. It made the demand of friendship as it shook the boy’s stiffened shoulders. ‘What is it?’
The boy’s voice came thickly. ‘She heard that Joboam had accused me of stealing milk from reinder that were not mine. A stupid accusation! Is a vaja going to stand still while a stranger milks it? Only a fool could believe that. And my grandmother is no fool, even if she thought that I would steal. But she is proud, in the old way, and she was angry. So she chose to show her pride and anger in the old way, to shame him with a gift. She sent three cheeses to his tent. “He will see these,” she said, “and he will know what I think. I think that if Joboam is so poor a man that he worries about the milk of a reindeer, then we should give him cheeses to ease him through his hard times. When folk see the cheeses from my molds, they will know we have shamed him.” She still lives in the old days.’
Heckram winced for his friend. The cheeses alone were a gift the family could ill afford. But, worse than that, Lasse’s grandmother did not understand how deep the changes in the herdfolk went. The cheeses she had sent as an insult to one who accused her grandson would be seen as an effort to pay back a theft. She had as much as admitted Lasse’s guilt to the rest of the herdfolk. The older people would know the meaning of her gesture. But it was the younger ones that Lasse had to contend with every day. In her pride and anger, she had shamed him deeply.
‘It is as you say,’ Heckram said with false heartiness. ‘Those who know you know the truth. And those who remember the old ways will understand that your grandmother knows you are not a thief. Who cares for the rest of them?’
For a long moment Lasse was silent, and a wind laden with ice crystals rushed between them. ‘There’s a good fire in my tent,’ he said at last. ‘How about a game of tablo? You owe me a chance to beat you.’
Heckram managed a grin. ‘This time, I’ll be the Wolf,’ he offered. He put a mittened hand on the youth’s shoulder and they started down the pingo.
The sun had not risen. Nor would it, for the next twenty days or so. Yet there was not absolute blackness, but a diffused grayness of moon and stars and white snow shining. It was a shadowless light that filtered through the outstretched branches of the trees and rested coldly on the snowy ground. Tillu moved through the dimness, a shadowy figure that left crumbling footprints in the powdery snow. The cold had turned the snow to dust and crystals. At least it no longer clung to her boots and leggings, to melt and sog her clothing against her. Now there was only the absolute of water turned to dust, of cold so intense it made the hairs inside her nose prickle and her eyelashes stick together momentarily whenever she blinked her eyes.
She was carrying a dead hare. She gripped it by its hind legs, letting its skinny body swing. Ordinarily, she would have tied her kill to her belt with the thongs at her hip, to have her hands free to shoot if she saw other game. But her fingers had been too numb to manage the laces, so she carried the dead animal in one mittened hand. She had drawn her other hand and arm out of her sleeve and into her coat. Her arm hugged her chest, her hand in her armpit for whatever warmth it might find there. If she saw game, she wouldn’t be able to shoot, but it didn’t worry her. She was too cold to worry, and too tired to believe she’d see any game within the range of her crude bow.
The dead hare slipped from her fingers. She heard it hit the snow and she stopped, to look down at it dumbly. She had to move her whole head to see it, for she had tied the drawstring of her hood so tightly that the opening was just enough for her to see straight in front of her. She breathed shallowly through the long fur that edged her hood, feeling the frost form and melt with every breath. After a long pause, she pushed her warmed arm back down her sleeve and out into her mitten. Then she wriggled and tugged until the other arm with its numbed hand was inside the tunic with her body. Stooping, she picked up the hare and trudged on again.
On days like these, she regretted leaving Benu’s folk. Among them, she had not had to hunt for her meat. Her skills as a healer had fed them both and kept warm clothing on their backs. Now she was alone again, dependent entirely on herself. She had never been a skilled hunter. She had grown up among