Brother Wind (61 page)

“You think you could run from such a people, Seal Hunter?” Raven asked.

But Kayugh’s voice rose above Raven’s: “Samiq, think only of this fight, of these knives.”

Then a voice came from the ikyan, a voice Samiq knew. Hard Rock. “Die now. Die quickly, Whale Killer,” Hard Rock said, using Samiq’s Whale Hunter name. “My revenge will not come so easily as Raven’s. You will wish for the quick cut of the knife if you wait to die by my hand.”

Kayugh’s voice came again: “Samiq!”

But the warning came late, and before Samiq could raise his own knives, Raven’s blade had slashed Samiq’s right arm, and his left-hand knife was at Samiq’s neck.

Samiq gathered his strength, thrust the man away before he could cut again, then, with his own left hand, caught Raven across the chest, but it was a shallow cut that drew little blood.

Both men circled; and Raven began to chant, something in words Samiq did not understand.

Another voice came, a woman’s voice, loud, from the First Men ulas: “Raven, you won the last fight by my power, by the power of my carvings.” Kiin came and stood beside one of the beach fires, her sons in her arms. The fire lit her face, the faces of her sons. “Raven,” she called, “this time my power stands on the side of Samiq, my husband, father to Shuku and Takha.”

Samiq saw the surprise on Raven’s face and knew that Raven had thought Takha was dead, that Shuku was with the River People.

Others from Samiq’s village came, women and children, each carrying carvings, and they set the carvings at Kiin’s feet, a circle of animals and men, a circle of spirits caught in ivory, in wood. And in the shadows of the fire each carving seemed to move.

Samiq watched his wife, and fear drained his strength as she stood with both sons. Why show Raven what he would gain in this fight, why give him more to fight for? But then Kiin looked at Samiq, her eyes bold, and he understood that this was Kiin’s strength—her sons, her carvings. She gave that strength to him. Kiin would not show Raven Shuku and Takha if she thought Raven would win.

The pain of Samiq’s wounds was suddenly gone. “You are dead,” he said to Raven and lunged forward. Raven stepped aside, raising his left arm to cut as Samiq moved by, but Samiq spun and turned, plunging Small Knife’s short blade into Raven’s neck.

Samiq jumped away and stood, the fingers of his right hand still gripping the baleen-wrapped handle of Amgigh’s knife.

Samiq held up the knife and called out, “Kiin does not belong to you, Raven. Her power is her own. If you want such power, you must find it in your own prayers, in your own visions.”

Then Raven turned, picked up his feather cloak, and pushed past the men of his village, past Ice Hunter and his sons, and went to his ik. Ice Hunter walked toward him, but Raven waved him away, then dragged the ik out into the water. Raven climbed in and picked up his paddle, then moved with the ik into darkness.

“See, Raven,” said Samiq in a quiet voice. “Even a tiny blade is greater than you are.”

Waxtal watched as Raven’s ik slipped between the ikyan of the Whale Hunters. Hard Rock called to the man. Raven turned but then slumped into the bottom of his ik, and Waxtal saw that his eyes were fixed and staring, the eyes of a man already dead.

Large wet flakes of snow began to fall from the dark sky. At first Waxtal thought they were ash, like the ash that had fallen the night Aka and Okmok erupted. But then the snow was on his face, cold, wet. A bird swooped down into Raven’s ik and flew out again. “A raven,” he heard the carved tusk murmur. But what raven flew at night over water?

Waxtal set his paddle to follow the shaman’s drifting ik. Raven no longer needed his cloak, his amulet. Why not take them? They should belong to another shaman, someone who would use their power wisely.

But then Hard Rock called out: “You have fought one, now fight another.”

Waxtal waited to hear Samiq’s answer, but Samiq said nothing.

The sky was beginning to lighten, and even though the fires had burned down to coals, Waxtal could see the beach more clearly. Kiin stood beside Samiq, her twin sons in her arms. Samiq’s Whale Hunter wife was also there with her baby and with Small Knife.

Hard Rock moved into shallow water, then, gesturing for his hunters to follow, he beached his ikyak. Waxtal waited. Why get close to the fighting when his own power was in prayer, in the calling of spirits?

He reached into his ik, pulled out the animal skin Raven had given him. “The man was a fool to give me this much of his power,” Waxtal said to his tusks. “Now I have the power I earned by my carving, and the power I bought in trade from Raven.”

Waxtal waited for the carved tusk to speak, but whatever answer it gave was lost in the loud anger of Hard Rock’s voice as he called to Ice Hunter and his sons, “What will you do, Walrus men? Will you fight for the honor of your people, or shall I fight?”

“My people do not measure their honor by men killed, or the power of knives over flesh,” Ice Hunter answered. “I will not fight, but my sons are grown. Each must speak for himself.”

Ice Hunter’s sons turned their backs on Samiq, stood by their ikyan at the edge of the water. “We have no argument with this man or his wife,” the son with the scar said.

“Then I will fight him myself,” said Hard Rock.

Samiq stepped away from his wives, went forward to meet Hard Rock. But Kayugh, coming from the shadows, pushed ahead of him. “My son did not curse your village,” Kayugh said. “Would he have called the mountains’ anger to his own people as well as yours? Do not forget our village was destroyed as well.”

“You, Kayugh, did you lose all your hunters? Did your children die? Your women?”

“We lived because we chose to leave our island. You did not make that choice. Now you blame another for what has happened to you.”

“I blame a man who brought a curse to us, and I will kill that man.”

“You will fight me before you fight my son.”

Hard Rock laughed, and during his laughter Samiq stepped forward to stand beside his father. “I will fight him,” Samiq said in a quiet voice, words spoken only to Kayugh.

“You are tired,” Kayugh said.

“I will fight. If I die, I die.”

Kayugh lowered his head, waited for long moments, but finally stepped away.

“One knife?” Hard Rock asked.

Samiq held up Amgigh’s obsidian blade. “One knife,” Samiq said.

Then again Samiq was circling with knife blade held forward, but from the sides of his eyes, he saw someone move, saw someone come into the circle of scuffed sand. He turned his head, thinking another of the Whale Hunters had come to help Hard Rock in the kill, but then he saw that it was Small Knife, and his heart twisted in fear for the boy.

“It is my fight. Stay away!” Samiq called to him.

“I will do nothing unless he does,” Small Knife said, and pointed his spear at a man who stood behind one of the beach fires. It was Crooked Bird. He held spear and spear thrower lifted in his right hand.

“Hard Rock, you must have your hunters fight your battles?” Samiq asked.

Then Ice Hunter and his sons, men of the Walrus, were beside Small Knife, weapons ready. “No curse is broken by cheating,” Ice Hunter called out.

Dying Seal came forward. He laid his weapons at his feet. “We came only to end the curse on our people,” he said, “not to bring that curse to others.”

“Crooked Bird, you are a fool,” Hard Rock called out. “I am strong enough to take him. Why doubt?”

“There is no curse. There should be no fight,” Kayugh said.

But Hard Rock answered, “Seal Hunter, you have not seen my island. We die still, even though the mountains’ anger has lifted. How can you say there is no curse?”

“And if there is a curse,” Kayugh answered, “how do you know it is because of my son?”

“We had no problems before he came.”

“You had a different chief then, a man who respected the spirits. Perhaps the curse is something you yourself brought to your people.”

Hard Rock threw down his knife. Samiq watched as the man walked away, as he went to Crooked Bird, spoke to the man in hard, yelling words. Samiq turned his back, joined Kayugh and Small Knife, Ice Hunter and Dying Seal.

In his weariness, Samiq said nothing, only stood, trying to keep his legs and arms steady against the shaking spirits that had entered his body. So when Small Knife’s quiet groan mingled into the words of those beside him, Samiq did not even turn toward his son. But seeing the horror come suddenly into Kayugh’s eyes, Samiq understood and caught his son as he fell, a spear in Small Knife’s back.

Small Knife’s weight carried Samiq to his knees, and he cradled the boy across his lap, speaking words and promises he could never keep, until he realized that the boy’s spirit had already left, pushed from his body as soon as the spear hit.

Samiq looked back at Hard Rock, at Crooked Bird. Hard Rock stood with spear thrower in hand, and Crooked Bird was saying, “Your spear took Small Knife. Samiq still lives.”

Ice Hunter threw his spear. It took Crooked Bird in the throat. Another spear flew, and both Crooked Bird and Hard Rock were on the ground, lying in their own blood. Samiq looked up, saw that Dying Seal had thrown the second spear.

For a moment no one moved, then Samiq lowered his head to Small Knife’s body, and his sorrow came out in long, choking sobs.

W
AXTAL WATCHED FROM HIS IKYAK
as Small Knife fell, waited without breathing for Hard Rock’s second throw, but instead two spears came, one and another, and Waxtal knew that Hard Rock and Crooked Bird were dead. So now who could say what the Walrus men and the Whale Hunters would do? They had come because Waxtal had persuaded them to come, but now with both the Walrus shaman and the Whale Hunters’ alananasika dead, would they say he, Waxtal, was to blame? Would they try to kill him in revenge?

Waxtal’s heart beat so quickly that it made his hands shake, and he could barely paddle his ikyak. Still he managed to turn the craft. He headed toward the mouth of the Traders’ Bay, paddling quickly until he was out again on the sea.

The voice came to him, the carved tusk speaking. “There are many ways a man can die,” said the tusk. “You are in danger. Do as I tell you, Waxtal.”

Strength came into Waxtal’s arms; power again filled his chest, and he knew that he was stronger than Samiq, than the man who held a dead boy in his arms and wept like a woman.

So Waxtal turned his ikyak as the tusk told him, turned it toward the Walrus village, kept it close to shore, and that night, when it was time again to sleep, the tusk directed him to a safe beach.

Kukutux and the Whale Hunter women sang mourning songs as they followed Ice Hunter and his sons back to the Walrus village. Kukutux knew she must tell Many Babies of Hard Rock’s death. Women must tell women, and who could expect Hard Rock’s other wives to do so? Their sorrow was too great.

She also mourned Hard Rock. The man had tried to do what he thought was best for his people. And Crooked Bird—though he was always one to do things in wrong ways—was a man who had lived each day, feeling the sun, the cold, the wind, seeing stars on clear nights and hearing the voice of the grass, the words spoken by the sea.

Kukutux sighed and thrust her paddle into the water. They had wrapped the men’s bodies and tied them across the tops of ikyan, Hard Rock on Dying Seal’s ikyak, Crooked Bird on Wind Chaser’s. They would do their mourning in the Walrus village. They would find a place for burial and honor their dead.

Ice Hunter had said they could spend the winter with the Walrus People. Since Raven was dead, some of the women could live in his lodge, and Walrus families would make room for the others.

They were out of the Traders’ Bay and into the sea, their boats sped by a wind pushing strong from the west, when Kukutux realized that Waxtal was not with them. She shrugged her shoulders and did not let herself worry. He would know they had returned to the Walrus village. She would wait for him there. Better that he was not with them now; better that she did not have to listen to his anger, to his whining.

Samiq had survived Raven’s knife, had killed the man whose spirit powers were supposed to be so great. He had survived Crooked Bird’s spear. Perhaps the man was not evil but good. Perhaps the evil was in something or someone else. But who could expect Waxtal to see such a thing when Waxtal wanted what belonged to Samiq?

Ten days they traveled, in snow and wind and ice. On the tenth day, toward the night, they came to the Walrus village. It was a village of mourning—lodges burned, hunters, women, and children dead.

For the first time, Kukutux saw the strange old women, those two sisters, Grandmother and Aunt, and she listened as they spoke to Ice Hunter, as they spoke in voices cut with sorrow.

Ice Hunter told the Whale Hunters, in their First Men language, about the raid made by the River People, the killing brought by Raven’s lies. And together, the people mourned.

S
MOKE DRIFTED UP
into the gray sky from the six First Men ulas. Snow covered the beach and hills. The sixth ulaq was new—built a little apart from the others.

It must be Dying Seal’s, Kukutux thought, for his wife and many children. She sat forward in her place in the women’s ik so she could see the ikyak racks. Had Waxtal, perhaps afraid to go to the Walrus village, returned here to the Seal Hunters? But no, she did not see his ikyak, and there was little chance that he was out with the hunters. He would be eating or sleeping, expecting others to do his share of the work. She took a long breath and dipped her paddle into the water, helped Ice Hunter’s wife direct the ik toward shore.

Eight Walrus men had come with Ice Hunter: his sons White Fox and Bird Sings, and six other hunters. Many women came, both Walrus and Whale Hunter, and all the remaining Whale Hunter men. Some, Kukutux knew, planned to return to the Whale Hunter island next spring, but others, like Dying Seal, said they would stay as hunters in the First Men village here on the Traders’ Beach.

In the ik with Kukutux were Ice Hunter’s wife, and She Cries’ stepdaughter, the widow Pogy, and the two Walrus women, Grandmother and Aunt. The two old women sat in the middle of the ik, fur seal skins in their laps. During the days traveling from the Walrus village, they had been rubbing oil into the scraped sides of the pelts.