The Shaman Read online

  “It is well!” Ohaern grinned, then gestured to his men. “These are my clan-mates—Glabur, Sotro, Vlanad ...”

  Each nodded as he was introduced. In spite of himself, Lucoyo found himself smiling as he returned the nods—and concentrated intently on each hunter’s name and face, memorizing; if these men were to be his allies, he would need to know upon whose name to call—and if they turned and betrayed him, he would need to know upon whose face to visit revenge.

  “Welcome among us.” Ohaern clapped him on the shoulder. “Now let us see if these dogs of the Byleo kennel carried anything worth reiving.”

  They turned to the looting, what little there was. Lucoyo limped along, keeping a sharp eye out for arrows or anything else worth stealing—but there were only journey rations and the excellent Kuruite bronze knives, almost long enough to be short swords. Ohaern gave Lucoyo two of them because, he said, “There is easily one for each of us, and several more besides. You slew more of these men than any of us, friend, so you shall have an extra knife.”

  “But I suffered less risk,” Lucoyo protested, and was amazed to hear himself say anything to lessen his own position.

  “That is true,” Ohaern said judiciously, “but if you had been discovered, where could you have run to? One cast of a Kuruite spear would have finished you.”

  A chill seized Lucoyo’s bowels as he realized the big hunter was right.

  Then, wonder of wonders, the hunters turned to burying the enemy dead! “Why do you do them such honor?” Lucoyo demanded.

  “Because it is an offense to Lomallin to leave a dead man unburied,” Glabur explained, “and in hopes that a weight of earth and stone will keep their ghosts from roaming.”

  Lucoyo watched the digging in disbelief. “What if one of them were still alive?”

  “Oh, have no fear of that,” Glabur said grimly. “We shall make very sure they are not.”

  When they were done, Ohaern shouldered his pack again and called, “We march!”

  They did, but he slowed his pace to match Lucoyo’s limping—the half-elf was mortified that even the hunters who were wounded could still move faster than he. “Why did you not ask me to help with the digging?” he demanded.

  “Because I could see that you are not yet recovered from your last wounds,” Ohaern replied.

  Lucoyo looked up, astonished—not by Ohaern’s having noticed the limp and the easy tiring, but by his consideration.

  “No doubt that is why you fired from hiding,” Ohaern said generously.

  Lucoyo’s eyes narrowed. “That,” he admitted, “and a wish to kill as many enemies with as little danger as possible.”

  Ohaern laughed, clapping him on the back—but he remembered to pull his punch at the last minute, and the slap landed lightly. “I cannot argue with that, since it saved our lives. Indeed, not one of my men is dead, thanks to you.”

  The other men grinned their appreciation, and Lucoyo felt a surge of unreasoning anger. Did not the naive fools realize he had come within a hair’s breadth of shooting them? “You would not have been so thankful if my shafts had gone astray,” he said acidly.

  Ohaern laughed out loud, and so did his fellows. Lucoyo decided, right there and then, that he was going to make them lose their tempers, each one of them, individually and collectively, before they reached their destination. Then, if they still wanted him along, he might begin to trust them. “Where are you bound?”

  “To Byleo,” Ohaern said offhandedly. “We have a quarrel to settle with the soldiers of Kuru.”

  Lucoyo stared. And they called him twisted! “Have you taken your brain to the shaman lately? It does not seem to be working well.”

  “Really?” Ohaern looked down at him, a grin hovering at the corners of his mouth. “Why do you say that?”

  Behind him, Lucoyo heard Glabur whisper to another Biri, “I have not seen Ohaern smile this fortnight. The half-elf is a tonic for him.”

  Lucoyo felt anger rise again and determined that if he was a tonic, they would not like his taste—at least, his taste in pranks. “What makes me say that? Oh, merely the fact that you are going a long distance, with a great deal of effort, to seek a death that you might just as easily have found at home!”

  “You think the Kuruite soldiers are unbeatable, then?” Ohaern asked politely.

  “When there are five hundred of them to your twenty,” Lucoyo said, “yes.”

  “Come, friend Lucoyo!” Glabur stepped up beside him. “Have you never stolen anything from an enemy?”

  Lucoyo turned on him, face burning. “And what if I have? If it is an enemy, there is only honor in it, not shame!” He did not tell them that the enemies had been within his own clan.

  “Exactly,” Glabur agreed. “And if the thing you steal is something they stole from you, the honor is greater.”

  Lucoyo looked up at him in silence for a moment, then gave a short nod and said, “Even so. What do you go to steal?”

  “A sage,” Ohaern told him, “a teacher who had given us great aid, saved our lives, and taught us much—even the forging of iron.”

  Lucoyo looked up shrewdly. “Was his name Manalo?”

  “Why, yes.” Ohaern looked startled. “Do you know him, then?”

  “Somewhat. He taught our clan, too.” But not enough, Lucoyo added silently. Manalo had been the only man who ever spoke kindly to him, without trying to intimidate him the next minute or enlist his aid so that he would take the blame for a rule-breaking. Lucoyo had felt himself drawn to the man very strongly, though he tried to fight the feeling by playing prank upon prank, and jibing, and striving to find a question Manalo could not answer. The sage had borne it all with a good grace and seemed to persevere in liking him in spite of it all. Yes, he had tried to teach Lucoyo’s clan his own easy tolerance and kindliness—but the teacher is not to blame if the students reject his teaching. “What has he to do with Byleo?”

  “They have locked him up in their prison,” Ohaern said, “for he will not worship Ulahane. My wife died because he could not come to save her.” The sadness, the darkness, suddenly settled about him again, like a mantle.

  The contrast was so great that it shocked Lucoyo, and he felt a quite uncharacteristic urge to banish that gloom from the big man’s face. “Oh, well, then.” He turned away nonchalantly. “Of course, if you only go to steal, then I am your man!”

  “Are you really?” Almost against his will, Ohaern smiled again, ever so lightly. “Are you the master thief, then?”

  “Quite the master,” Lucoyo said airily, “and if it is only a matter of sneaking past their guardsmen and breaking into their prison, I am quite willing to take that much risk.”

  “Well, there may be need to do more than sneak, when it comes to their guardsmen,” Glabur said, and Ohaern agreed. “We cannot risk one raising the alarm. It may be necessary to take one out here and there—perhaps even to kill.”

  Lucoyo looked up at him with a fox’s grin. “Oh,” he said, “I think I can accept that.” After all, he really didn’t care who he killed—anyone would do, as long as he was human—or elfin. He would be just as glad to make Byleo the butt of his revenge as his own tribesmen.

  No, his own tribesmen would be better—much better. But any other human being would be acceptable after that—except, possibly, for these hunters. He would delay judgment on them.

  Of course, he would try them first. When they pitched camp an hour or so later, Lucoyo volunteered to gather kindling, while others set out to hunt. There were few trees on this side of the river, and they all clustered by the water—the flow marked the end of Ohaern’s forest country and the beginning of Lucoyo’s grasslands—but Lucoyo found sticks enough to start a fire, and some thick enough to keep it going.

  He also found a stand of curious fanlike plants with cones that he knew well.

  He brought them all back to the campsite and started laying the fire to roast the pig the hunters brought back. Then he stacked the larger sticks to the side, hiding
the cones in them.

  “Well done, Lucoyo!” Dalvan knelt beside him, opening the greenwood box that hung at his belt and emptying the living coal out into the pile of kindling. Lucoyo watched with interest and saw the box was lined with clay, hardened and blackened from the heat. His folk always carried along a smoldering pot, but when they journeyed from place to place, they went as a clan, not by ones and twos. He realized he could learn much from these hunters ...

  And they from him.

  When the pig was roasted and the carcass taken from the spit, Lucoyo said, “I will stoke the fire.”

  The Biriae looked up, agreeably surprised. “Well, thank you, Lucoyo!”

  “None can say the ha—the stranger does not do his share of the work.”

  “Stranger? No more! Let us call him ... the archer!”

  Lucoyo almost felt guilty as he set a few sticks on the fire— with the cones among them. But he steeled himself with the thought that these Biriae’s goodwill must be tested—never mind that he wasn’t really acting as a friend should.

  He went back to his place, gnawing on a bone and listening to the talk. Glabur was in the middle of a tale about a huge boar and a sharp spear when—

  The fire exploded.

  Loud reports rang out, and sticks and flaming coals flew everywhere. Dalvan shouted with pain and brushed a burning stick from him as he jumped up. The others were already on their feet, yards away from the fire and still moving, calling to one another, “What was it?”

  “A spirit!”

  “The wrath of Ulahane!”

  “A fire demon!”

  Ohaern was as surprised as any of them, but as he leaped back, his hand was on his dagger, his left up to guard, and the expression on his face neither angry nor frightened, but only very alert. While the others looked at the fire, he looked at the trees around, then at them, and noticed that Lucoyo was silent, though moving just as fast as any of the band. He caught the halfling’s eye, and Lucoyo’s face went blank with innocence.

  Ohaern laughed.

  The other Biriae looked up at Ohaern in surprise, then followed his gaze to Lucoyo, then looked at one another with sheepish grins as they all began to laugh, too. “It was a famous joke,” Glabur told Lucoyo, “or will be. What was it? Resinous wood? But here there are no pines.”

  “No,” Lucoyo admitted. “Cones.”

  “Cones?” Glabur stared in surprise. “What kind of cone makes a noise like that?”

  “We call it ‘the podium,’ “ Lucoyo told them. “It is a low branching plant with a few cones at the top. Crickets sit on them to play their tunes, looking like chieftains standing up high to address their people.”

  “ ‘Lucoyo’s podium’ it shall be to us from this day forth,” Ohaern averred.

  “You will have to show it to us before we will truly know it,” Glabur said. “We have never seen it before.”

  Lucoyo frowned. “Why, how is that?”

  “It must be a thing of the grasslands,” Ohaern said. “And you really must show it to us, Lucoyo—we might find a use for such a thing as that.”

  “Use?” Lucoyo asked, disbelieving. “What use could it have other than to play a prank?”

  “Well, it was a humorous prank indeed,” said Glabur, shaking his head. “I have not jumped so high since an aurochs tried to gore my shins!” He chuckled, shaking his head.

  “It was indeed.” Dalvan chuckled, too. “But can we go back to our meal now, archer? With no more alarms?”

  “I promise.” Lucoyo held up a hand. “For this meal, anyway.”

  “Oho!” Glabur cried. “Watch out, my lads! We have a prankster among us!”

  They laughed and averred that they would be careful as they sat down to eat.

  Lucoyo could scarcely believe his ears. They were actually laughing! And no one seemed to be angry with him—at least, after the initial shock. He took his place in the circle slowly and tentatively, unable to believe that people could be capable of such simple goodness.

  There had to be a reason for it. They had to have a motive.

  Lucoyo determined that he would find that motive. He would test these people very thoroughly before he would begin to trust them.

  But they will turn away from you, that nasty voice whispered inside him. They may be friends, real friends, and you will make enemies of them by your tricks.

  Lucoyo realized that, and had to admit that perhaps the ill-will among his clan-mates had not been entirely due to their villainy. Nonetheless, he had to test these new friends. It was stupid, he knew, but the urge to revenge his hurts on anything human was too strong for him still; he would confine it to attacks that could be construed as jokes—heavy-handed, perhaps, but jokes nonetheless.

  Lucoyo tried them, well and truly. He put dried burrs in Glabur’s leggings; he put riverbank clay in Ohaern’s boots. He put a cricket in Dalvan’s coal box, and when Dalvan opened it and cried out in alarm, Lucoyo laughed with delight and produced the coal, live and hot in a makeshift box of his own. He was careful never to do any real damage—and was always amazed that, after the initial shout of anger, the hunter would look up in surprise as his clan-mates began to laugh, then would grin sheepishly and begin to laugh himself.

  Of course, Lucoyo hadn’t stopped to think that they might play pranks on him. He didn’t even think of it when he shoved his foot into his boot and felt something cold and supple move against his foot. He yelped and yanked the boot off, dumping the little snake out, then beat the sole furiously to knock out anything else that might be there—and suddenly realized that the whole band was laughing. He looked up, astonished and enraged, leaping to his feet with words of denunciation on his lips—then remembered the sheepish grins and grudging laughter of his victims. Indignation shot through him, pushing out the rage—he would be hanged if one of these crude hunters would show more tolerance than he himself! He forced the grin, then managed to hack a laugh—and found that the second came easier than the first, and the third even more easily, and by the fourth he was really laughing.

  Ohaern clapped him on the back and cried, “There’s a man for you! He can swallow it as well as he serves it!”

  Lucoyo laughed even louder, realizing that now it was he who had been tested—and had passed the test. But he resolved to reserve a very special tidbit of humor for the big barbarian.

  Of course, he jibed at them constantly, calling Glabur “ox-high” due to his epic leap, and Dalvan “coal-carrier.” They responded in kind, calling him “arrowhead” and “limpet,” to which he replied that all should be as limpid as he, and answered their chorus of groans by saying that he could walk as quickly with a bad leg as Racol could with a good one, which of course led to a race, and when he lost, Lucoyo could always protest that he would win the rematch when his leg recovered. Ohaern pointed out that perhaps he should not have picked out the fastest runner among the Biriae, but Lucoyo answered that there was no honor in challenging any but the best. “True,”

  Ohaern answered, suddenly somber. “It is therefore that we go against Byleo.”

  Lucoyo was shocked to find himself alarmed at the leader’s gloom and determined once more to banish it. “No,” he said. “It is therefore that Byleo sent troops against the Biriae.”

  Ohaern stared, astonished, then joined in the chorus of laughter and slapped Lucoyo on the back again. He forgot to be gentle this time, but he caught the half-elf before he hit the ground.

  So, what with one thing and another, Lucoyo was feeling quite a part of the band, and very much the honorary Biri, by the time they came to the river.

  Chapter 6

  Lucoyo looked out over the River Segway and could barely see the opposite shore. “How do we cross?”

  “We do not.” Ohaern nodded at Glabur and Dalvan, who had taken huge leather bundles out of their packs—indeed, the packs could have held very little else. They unfolded the leather, while other men prowled the small stand of trees on the banks, cutting down saplings and pruning limbs off
larger trees. As Lucoyo watched in astonishment, they bent the saplings, lashed them together, bound others around the top, then stretched the leather over them.

  “Skin baskets!” the half-elf cried. “Huge skin baskets! But what is their purpose?”

  “They are boats,” Ohaern said, grinning. “We shall ride them on the water.”

  Lucoyo stared up at him, appalled, then whipped about to stare at the water, swiveled to gape at the boats, then the river again. Finally, he backed away, shaking his head. “No, never! They will turn over! The water-spirits shall drag us under! We shall all drown!”

  Several of the Biriae laughed aloud, and Lucoyo swung about, staring, then turned to Ohaern, glowering. “It is a prank! It is all a ruse, to see me tremble!”

  “It is not a ruse,” Ohaern told him, grinning, “but your panic is amusing—the more so since each of us felt it the first time we rode in a coracle. No, you shall not drown, Lucoyo— and if you keep your seat, making no sudden movements, neither shall we capsize. We shall ride all the way to Byleo in these boats, or nearly—and you shall find the trip less tiring and far quicker than it would have been otherwise.”

  He spoke truly. Lucoyo managed to keep up a brave front— though he was jelly inside—as he took his place in the center of one of the boats. Four other men climbed in beside him and pushed off from the shore with their staves—slotted spear shafts into which they had bound broad wooden blades. With these paddles they guided the rocking boat out into the middle of the river.

  Lucoyo was terrified. He had seen bodies of water this size before, had even bathed in them, near the shore, but had never been in a boat of any kind, not even a raft. He sat rigid, eyes huge, expecting any minute that the boat would roll over, that he would feel the bloated hands of drowned men in his hair, that he would be dragged down to the bottom, to become like them ...

  But the boats did not capsize, and after a while Lucoyo became used to the rocking, and realized that the coracle would roll only so far in one direction, then just so far in another— provided his companions plied their paddles well. But they did, and he began to loosen a little, becoming accustomed to the rocking, no longer feeling it was dangerous. By sunset he had almost relaxed, and when they stepped ashore to camp for the night, he was surprised to find that solid ground felt unnatural.