Megan Lindholm by Wolf's Brother

Author:Wolf's Brother
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-12-16T14:29:03+00:00

‘It’s late. We’ll have to hurry and hope we catch the end of the caravan. I’ve a feeling I’ve called enough attention to myself lately.’

‘Capiam said as much when I was healing Ketla this morning. He said …’ She paused, ashamed to repeat the hard words.

‘The thing about my father,’ Heckram filled in calmly. ‘Again. I’ve heard it before, and the first few times it stung. Sometimes I think he resents a man he cannot control. At other times, I realize that in my own way I am a danger to his authority.’

‘I think he would rather you lusted after his power as Joboam does, instead of ignoring it,’ Tillu observed.

She did not walk blindly among the herdfolk, he reflected. Would it please Capiam to know how easily this woman read him? He watched her as she dressed and pulled the hair back from her face. For a brief instant he remembered the silkiness of her hair across his face, different from the coarser tresses of the herd women. More like his own. Absently he touched his hair and watched her as she gathered the straying harkar. Was this the woman who, days ago, had looked so shaken at the prospect of leading one harke? He watched her speak coaxingly to one, and grip the next by the coarse hair of its lower jaw: She would make a fine herdswoman. The thought displeased him. He didn’t want her to merge with the herdfolk and lose her foreign ways. She was not curd to be packed into a cheese mold and shaped like a hundred others. He pulled his boots on and rose to help her.

They formed up the rajd and left the little glen. Shadows were lengthening across it. It was a different place from the sun-filled hollow where they had paused earlier. Tillu strayed away, gathering sorrel, roots and all. He knew from his mother that it made a refreshing tea. But, ‘What’s that for?’ he called as she dragged several ranunculus plants from the earth. Tillu cut the roots free of the greenery and flowers and wrapped them in moss before adding them to her pouch.

‘For nosebleed,’ she told him. ‘And some use the root to blister the skin. They say it soothes the muscles beneath. But I think …’ She paused a long time, and then said softly, ‘I miss Kari. She wanted to know so much. I felt as if I knew more, because I was sharing it with her. I don’t understand why Capiam won’t let her be a healer.’

‘You said it yourself, earlier,’ Heckram answered. ‘It would make her less vulnerable to his authority.

Others would be listening to her, following her advice. He likes control.’

Tillu said nothing more, but followed silently as he led the rajd on the winding path between boulders and gullies. Here a shelf of earth had been thrust up, there a wash of water had left bare a swatch of gravel down its face. He hurried the animals as the shadows lengthened and the warmth of the day slipped away.

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