Soldier’s Boy arose the next morning before Likari did. He brimmed with sudden purpose, as if the night’s sleep had infused him with life and meaning. Moving quietly, he went to an unused corner of the lodge where a bench had once stood. The moss had eaten it. He peeled back a thick layer of it to bare the splintery fragments of the old bench. Then, making many trips, he transferred Lisana’s treasure to this new hiding place. When he was finished, he rolled the moss layer over it again. Only keen eyes looking for such a hidden cache would have noticed it.
He left the lodge and walked down a short slope to where he had remembered a stream. It was still there, but it had changed. Once it had run swift and clear. Now it meandered widely over an area thick with reeds and ferns. With his hands he scooped a deeper place, let the silt swirl and clear, and then cupped handfuls of water to drink and then rub over his face. He shook his hands clear of the cold, shining drops and then turned and looked up the rise to Lisana’s lodge. For a time, he was silent. Then he spoke aloud.
“There is a lot to do in a very little time. Winter approaches. I will need a stout door, window coverings, a firewood supply, oil for her lamp, bedding, clothing for myself, and a store of food. Yet the key to all those things, Nevare, is not the hard work that you immediately think about. No. The key to those things is that I must eat and grow as fat as I can, and I have only a few days in which to do it. And only one small boy to help me provide for myself. We’re going to winter here rather than at the kin-clan’s village. That will not please Olikea, I think, but I do not care. She thinks only to use me as her key to power and status in her kin-clan. Her ambition is too small. I will not be the Great One of her kin-clan. I will be the Great One of the People, the Great One of all the Great Ones. But before I confront Kinrove, I must look like a man full of power and capable of wielding it.”
I do not know which was more startling, to have him address me so plainly or to have him make me a party to his plans. Did he think I would help him? Or did he think me incapable of opposing him? Either way, I might well prove him wrong. But for now, he exuded an air of well-being that was at odds with the burning hunger that seethed through him. He drew in a deep breath.
“Likari! Awaken. I have chores for you!”
It took a moment or two before the small boy stood in the doorway. He looked around for Soldier’s Boy, rubbing his eyes sleepily.
“Two tasks for the day. Gather enough wood for three nights. No, four. When we come back, we will not want to have to do that task before we sleep. And when that is done, find food. Any and every sort of thing that you can gather that a man can eat. Fish, meat, roots, berries, greens, nuts, fruit of any kind. If you see it and you know it can be eaten, gather it and bring it back to the lodge.”
“Yes, Great One.” The boy managed to utter the words before he was ambushed by an enormous yawn. He knuckled his eyes again and then without another murmur went off down the faded path in a purposeful trot.
Where there is water there is almost always food. It may not be food of a sort that one regards with relish, but it can be eaten. Soldier’s Boy ate it. He found a grass with a fat, oniony bulb on the end and pulled and ate them by the dozen. I was heartily sick of the flavor before he was; or perhaps he no longer cared what anything tasted like. He was bent on quantity, not quality, in his consumption. He moved upstream and found ragged and yellowing water lily leaves decaying on top of a small pond. Snails clung to them. He popped them loose of the vegetation and ate them, crunching down shells and all. I would have felt nauseated if the stomach were my property, but my squeamishness meant nothing to him.
Uphill of the stream a tangle of wild roses in a dappled patch of sunlight were heavy with yellow and red rosehips. These at least were tangy and sweet. Some were as big as the end of my thumb, with a thick layer of soft flesh over the packet of somewhat fuzzy seeds in the middle. I would have eaten only the flesh, but he put them into his mouth by the handful and ground up seeds, pulp, and all before he swallowed. When the patch had been stripped of fruit, he moved on.
So the morning passed. He knew the foods of the forest and moved like a grazing animal. By midmorning, I found myself wondering why man had ever stopped being a forager and hunter and become a farmer. Without any previous investment of toil, there was abundance here. Only when he had wearied of fruit, roots, and vegetation did he return to the stream bank. He drank heavily of the cold, fresh water, and then judiciously gathered a handful of likely stones.
For the next two hours, he employed the sling. He brought down a squirrel, and then two rabbits. He also found a bee tree, the inhabitants moving more slowly in the cool weather, yet still quick to buzz and swarm when he deliberately thudded a stone against the hollow trunk. Mentally he marked its location, and I knew he would return after a few freezes had subdued the swarm for him.
The squirrel and rabbit carcasses he carried in his hands hampered any further hunting or gathering, so he returned to the lodge. Before he settled down to gut and skin them, he saw ample evidence that Likari had been busy. There was a clumsily woven but effective bag made from vine. The boy had lined it with big leaves and used it to bring home a trove of gleaming-shelled nuts, superficially similar to the chestnuts I had enjoyed at the carnival in Old Thares. Four fish hung from a piece of hooked willow threaded through their gills. He had also gathered wild parsnip and garlic and a tuber that was yellow inside when I snapped one in half. I immediately envisioned a savory stew, and shared Soldier’s Boy’s regret that we had no suitable cooking pot.
He skinned the rabbits and squirrels, pegged out the hides, and inspected the hare skin from the day before. He took it from its pegs, kneaded it between his hands to take some of the stiffness from it and then staked it out again. As he stretched the hide he realized he was lucky that no scavengers had come to carry it off in the night. Would he be so lucky again?
He hung the fish and the fresh meat higher in the crook of a tree, and then urinated at the base of it, a clear sign to any other forest residents that he was claiming ownership of the area. He fed the hearth fire a few sticks of wood to keep the coals alive. Feeding a fire was much easier than starting one again. Then he returned to his foraging.
He filled his belly that afternoon, but did not stop eating. Everything that was edible, he ate. Mushrooms in a clump growing in the shade, and then young fat bracket fungi that grew like shelves on the stumps of dying trees he ate. He found fallen cones and sat on the ground amid the prickly things to shake out the plump seeds and eat them. He ate them, and continued to eat, past sufficiency to repleteness and on. The man stuffed himself and took satisfaction in the distending of his belly.
Thrice, he found foods that he knew would amplify his magic. The first was a sort of giant celery. It stung and then numbed his mouth as he ate it, but that did not deter him. Usually, a Great One ate this mixed in with other foods to mask its bitterness, but he had no time for such niceties now. He ate until his gorge rose in protest at the bitterness, and then moved on, but made a note to remember where it grew. Later, he would return to harvest the fat white roots.
He pulled down from a tree trunk a half-dead vine that had climbed up it to reach the sun’s light. The vine was stiff, the leaves gone brown and curling, but seed heads remained where the flowers had once been. Those were his prize. He ate them, cracking the seeds between his teeth and spitting out the shells. Their flavor was rich and brown and sweet. Colors seemed brighter after he had consumed them and the scents of the forest stronger. Indeed, he followed his nose to his next treasure, a windfall of ripened fruit. The tree had shed most of it. It was dark purple with a stone like a plum, but a flavor that was very different. Those on the ground were half fermented. Wasps, bees, and a few late butterflies clustered on the ones that had split open. A few fruit had landed well and were sound if withered at the stem end. These Soldier’s Boy ate with delight, and then he shook the tree to bring down a hail of fresh ones. When he had eaten as many as he could stomach at that time, he gathered an armful more and carried them home cradled against him.
He walked slowly back to the lodge as the sun crept down the sky. The sun would set to the west, behind the mountains. He knew that once the peaks had devoured the orb, night would sweep in like a curtain falling. Yet he did not hurry. He hoarded the food inside him and the magic it nourished. He felt full and almost sleepy. He decided that when he reached the lodge, he would nap, then rise, cook all the meat and fish, and feast again.
The boy was already there. He had more fish with him, not strung on a stick, but an armful of them. They weren’t gleaming, speckled trout such as he’d left that morning. These fish—five big ones—were so heavy that his back bent back and his stomach jutted with the strain of holding them. They were not as pretty as trout. Their skins were tattered, their blunt noses buffeted. Teeth showed in their long snouts. “They come each year,” he told me. “Waves of them, coming up the river, fighting their way against the water. And then they get tired, and they go in the shallows. They are very easy to catch there. Many of them die and rot on the banks of the river. Gulls and eagles come to get them. These ones had come far upstream, into the shade of the forest. I got them easily. There were many more. Shall I bring more tomorrow?”
“I think we shall both go tomorrow,” Soldier’s Boy told him happily. It was all coming back to him, along with Lisana’s anticipation and keen pleasure in this season. The season of the fish runs was a time of plentiful food for everyone. There would be fish to bake in the fire, fish for soup, and lots of fish to smoke in strips for winter food. Fish to dry and grind into fish meal that could be stored in pots and would last until spring. He felt a surge of the purest, childlike contentment in the world, a feeling that had eluded me so long that I almost didn’t recognize it.
“Tonight, we feast!” he told the boy. “And tomorrow, we fish, and we feast again!”
“This is a very good time,” the boy replied. He stuck out his little belly. “I shall grow fat as a waddling bear.”
Soldier’s Boy ran a critical eye over the child. He was thin right now, unacceptably thin for the feeder of a Great One. “Yes, you shall! I want you to eat well, and oil your hair and skin with the fat from our catches. I want you to show everyone at the Trading Place that we are prosperous and cherished by the magic.”
Likari grinned. “I think I can manage that.”
“Good!” Soldier’s Boy’s enthusiasm was genuine. “Build up the fire and prepare the coals for cooking. Tonight, we feast!”
While the boy did that, he planned to rest. But as he turned to enter the lodge, an unexpected guest arrived. He came down through the tree cover in a clattering of black and white feathers. The croaker bird landed heavily on the ground and waddled toward them, both cautious and curious.
The boy paid no attention to the scavenger bird, merely giving the creature a glance, and then went back to loading up his arms with firewood. Such birds were common visitors to any camp or village. They preferred dead meat, and the longer it had been dead, the more they relished it. But they would eat almost anything that humans did not. For one to arrive at the lodge, attracted by the smell of the rabbits or fish, was scarcely surprising.
But Soldier’s Boy stared at it with a mixture of resentment and hostility. When the bird’s gaze met his, I felt a shiver go through him. Something more than a carrion bird looked at him out of those eyes. “Go away,” Soldier’s Boy said in a low voice. “You have no call upon me. I owe you nothing.”
Can a bird smile? This one bobbed his head, reminding me of a man convulsed with laughter. He opened his beak wide. Perhaps he just tasted the air, but perhaps he mocked Soldier’s Boy. The bright red interior of his mouth flashed like a beacon.
“Nothing, Nevare? You owe me a death. Or a life. However you prefer to see it.” He lifted a clawed foot and swiped at his beak. “Which do you think is the better offering to a god you have offended? A death? Or a life?”
Orandula’s voice, deep and rich with an undercurrent of mockery, rang clear inside my head. I heard it. I knew that Soldier’s Boy heard it, too. This, at least, was a dread we shared. Fear drove his defiance more than courage.
“I don’t serve you. You are not my god. And I owe you nothing.”
The bird hopped closer, just two hops, in that effortless way of moving that only birds can do. He cocked his head and regarded me closely. “An amusing concept, that. The idea that men can choose which gods have power over them. Do you think that if you choose not to believe in me, I have no power over you? Do you think you can choose to have debts or not to have them?”
Soldier’s Boy strode suddenly forward. He picked up one of Likari’s fish and held it out to the bird. “Here. This is dead, and it’s much bigger than the bird that was freed from your sacrifice. Take it and be gone.” He flung it disdainfully at the god-bird’s feet. The croaker bird fluffed his feathers and hopped back from the dead thing. Soldier’s Boy stood, his body stiff with fear and anger. The bird looked at the dead fish. Hop, hop. Turned his head to point an eye down at it. Then darted his beak down to rip a shred of it free.
“Fresh. But still good. I’ll take it. But you know, it does not discharge your debt. This is not a death or a life. It’s only a fish. And you have not yet answered my question.” He stabbed his beak down again, tore off another scrap of flesh and, with a quick jerk-toss of his head, caught it in his mouth and swallowed it. “Which would you rather owe me, little Great Man? A life or a death?”
“I owe you nothing!” Soldier’s Boy repeated angrily. “I took nothing from you.”
“You were there. The bird was released from me.”
“That wasn’t me!” Soldier’s Boy exploded. I do not think he was even aware of how Likari was regarding him. At the edge of Soldier’s Boy’s field of vision, the boy crouched in the door and regarded him with wide eyes as the Great Man continued his debate with a carrion bird. The boy stepped back inside the door, as if frightened.
The bird didn’t even seem to be looking at Soldier’s Boy as he bent his head and busily tore another strip of flesh from the fish. He’d bared the gut sack. He plunged his beak in and probed busily before coming up with a dark string of gut. He snapped it up with relish. “Not you, eh? Then who, Great Man? Who freed the sacrifice?”
“Nevare did it! Nevare Burvelle.”
The bird opened his beak, and squawked a wild laughter from his wide red mouth. His wings stuck out to the side and he bounced as he squawked. Perhaps, to someone else, it would have sounded only like a croaker bird croaking. When he finally finished, he stabbed and tore another piece of fish free. Then he looked at Soldier’s Boy with one bright eye and asked, “Aren’t you Nevare Burvelle?”
“No.”
The bird cocked his head the other way.
“Nevare. Speak up for yourself. Don’t you owe me a sacrifice, to replace the one you took?”
Miraculously and suddenly, the body and the voice were mine. Shock tingled all through my skin. I swallowed and drew a deep, freeing breath.
“Answer me, Nevare,” the bird-god commanded.
“I serve the good god. Not you. And I didn’t mean to have anything to do with you. All I did was free a bird,” I said. My heart soared. Despite the threat to me, I had the body again. I clenched and unclenched my hands, marveling that I could.
“Serve who you like,” the bird replied callously. “It does nothing about the debt you owe me. Do you really think that serving one god will protect you from the demands of another? Do you honestly believe that we derive our powers because you believe in us? What sort of an impotent god would that be? ‘Believe in me so I can be a god!’ Is that what gods should say to men? How about, ‘Believe it or not, I can control your world’?” He turned his head and looked at me out of the other eye.
As swiftly as my control of the body had come, it went. Soldier’s Boy gave a sudden gasp as if he had been holding his breath.
“What do you want from me?” he demanded of the god in a low growl. I felt the anger that seethed through him, that for even a moment, his control had been lost.
“Oh, this is tedious,” the bird replied. He put his head down and for some moments worried flesh from the fish carcass, snapping it up in lumps. He was silent for so long that I thought he had gone back to being a bird rather than a god. Then he spoke again. “There is nothing amusing in having to repeat myself. For the last time, Nevare Burvelle and whoever else is sharing that skin you walk in: you owe me. This is your last chance to amuse me by taking the choice into your own hands. What will you give me? A death or a life?”
Soldier’s Boy stared, transfixed, at the croaker and I shared his gaze. I had no answer and I dreaded that Soldier’s Boy might speak for me.
We were saved or perhaps condemned in the next moment. Likari spoke from the door of the lodge. “Great One, the fire is ready for cooking.” His voice shook slightly.
Soldier’s Boy made no response.
And in the next instant, Likari darted at Orandula, waving a stick of firewood at the bird-god and shouting, “Go on! Shoo! Stop stealing our fish, you old robber bird!”
To my surprise, the croaker bird snatched up the fish and took flight. He lifted his wings wide and flapped them heavily, scarcely keeping ahead of the small boy pursuing him with the stick. It would have been laughable, if the bird had been only a bird.
Once the bird had gained a safe perch, he set the fish down on the branch and put one possessive foot firmly on top of it. He crouched low over it, peering down at the boy with his wings half opened. “The boy!” he croaked. “Yes, the boy. You could give him to me to discharge the debt. What do you say, Nevare, not-Nevare? Which do I get? His life? Or his death?”
Horror chilled me and my other self seemed likewise shocked to stillness. And again Likari reacted before either of us, sending the piece of firewood spinning up. It clacked loudly against the bird’s perch. “Go away!” he shouted at it. “You are bothering the Great Man and I am his feeder! Go away!”
“My turn to choose!” the bird cawed. Then he caught the fish up in his beak. He lifted off the branch, made one swooping pass through our midst, causing Likari to duck like a mouse before an owl’s dive, and then, beating his wings swiftly, the bird vanished into the darkening forest.
“There. I scared him away!” Likari announced. He spoke with a boy’s bravado, but his voice shook slightly.
Soldier’s Boy was hoarse as he asked, “Frightened of a bird, Likari?”
“No. But I could tell you did not like him. And I thought to myself, ‘It is my duty as a feeder to make sure that no one and nothing disturbs the Great Man.’ And so I came to chase him off for you. And to tell you that the coals are ready for cooking the meat.”
“You are a very fine feeder indeed,” Soldier’s Boy told him, and the sincerity in his voice could not be mistaken. “And I thank you for driving the bird away. He was bothering me.”
The boy’s chest swelled. “If he returns, I shall kill him for you. But for now, we should cook our food. The coals are ready.”
“Then let us cook,” Soldier’s Boy agreed. I thought perhaps he would tell Likari more or at least warn the boy to be wary of croaker birds, but he did not. He helped the boy carry the meat and fish into the lodge. They cooked the meat on spits over the fire and baked the fish on the hearthstones beside it. They cracked and ate nuts companionably while the cooking meat filled the lodge with wonderful smells. They both ate heavily, with Likari trying to defer to Soldier’s Boy and Soldier’s Boy insisting that the lad should eat heartily and “get a belly to be proud of.” He set an example for the boy, stuffing himself until I was amazed he could force another bite down. They ate the meat right down to the bones. These the boy carried a short distance from the lodge and dumped. Afterward, they both walked down to the stream and washed before Likari filled up their water skin again.
The night was deep and cool around them. Through the thick evergreen canopy, a few stars were visible. The light that spilled from the lodge’s windows and door barely reached to the stream. They walked back carefully in the gloom. “I need to build a door for the lodge. And get some coverings for the windows before the winter rains come in earnest.”
“Tomorrow?” the boy asked in dismay.
“Oh, no. Tomorrow is for fishing. And eating. There will be no other chores but those until we go to join Olikea at the Trading Place. Making the lodge ready for winter can wait until we come back.” I caught a faint thought from the edge of his mind. If he were successful, if he impressed them sufficiently, he wouldn’t have to bother with such things. Other people would feel honored to worry about them for him.
They walked companionably back to the lodge, threading their way through darkness to golden light. Around them, the night sounds of insects, small and large frogs, and crickets orchestrated a curtain of sound around them. The sounds meant that all was well: only a sudden cessation of them would speak of danger and small things gone into hiding. Soldier’s Boy and Likari both knew that; they were steeped in such knowledge, as comfortable as any animal in the forest that night. It bothered me that Soldier’s Boy could so seemingly put the threat to Likari out of his mind.
Thinking about it would not make the threat any less.
I felt that thought pushed at me from him and grudgingly accepted it. He didn’t like it that Orandula had threatened the boy. He was simply more capable of setting such a threat aside until a time when he could do something about it. All my worry had never solved anything.
They went to bed and the boy soon fell asleep against Soldier’s Boy’s back. It was not as chill tonight, but the mosquitoes hummed with an energy that promised rain before morning. The boy went right to sleep, but Soldier’s Boy lay still and silent. After a time, I sensed him sinking down into something that was not sleep. It was similar to a state I recalled from the days when my father had starved me. His body temperature dropped, his heartbeat slowed. I could feel something happening but I couldn’t tell what it was. After a few moments, stung by curiosity, I pushed at his dimmed awareness. “What are you doing?” I demanded.
His response was slow and guarded. “Storing magic.”
“You’re making yourself fat again.”
“That would be how you would see it. I would see it as marshaling my reserves. Wasn’t that a concept you learned in the Academy? To prepare your reserves so that you would be ready for any contingency?”
His response silenced me. I drew back from him. He didn’t care. He’d set a reaction into motion; I could feel every bit of the food he’d eaten today being stored away inside him. I had thought it would take him a long time to become fat again, but now I saw that he was willfully working toward that goal. I could feel the slackened folds of his flesh refilling. He’d sunk back into a stillness deeper than sleep, a state of complete rest that freed his body to concentrate on conserving all the food he had taken in.
His body. My body? No, at this point, it was definitely his body, functioning as he prompted it to do. I thought of using his suspension to try to slip away in a dream-walk. But I could not think of where I would go or what I would accomplish by doing it. If he ever became aware of my excursions, I feared he would find a way to cage me more firmly. So, regretfully, I decided that I would not waste my opportunities in casual walks. I would go out only when I had a destination and specific information to convey. The moment I decided that, I felt lonelier but I knew it was my wisest course of action.
Some time in the night, he passed into a true sleep, and I with him. In the morning, he rose again, refreshed and well pleased with himself. He ran his hands over his belly and thighs, rejoicing to find that the skin had tightened as it filled again. He had not been awake long before Likari came staggering and yawning from bed to join him. Soldier’s Boy ran a critical eye over the lad.
“You’re growing, so it is hard to put flesh on you. But today we will try. Come. Show me your fish stream.”
He followed the boy some distance from the lodge, to where a swift-flowing stream cut its way through the forest. The shady banks of the watercourse were steep. At first Soldier’s Boy could not see any fish; then his eyes adjusted, and he saw that there were plenty of them. Most of them hung finning in the water beneath the undercut banks of the stream.
Likari had dropped to his belly. Like a lizard, he wriggled up to the stream’s edge and lay there, being careful not to cast a shadow or make any sound that might alarm the fish below. Then, in a single movement, he thrust his arm into the stream, scooped it under a fish and flung it flopping onto the bank beside him. The creature looked to be the veteran of a long and difficult journey. His skin hung in tatters, and some predator had taken a bite out of his back. But he still flopped mightily and could have managed to throw himself back into the stream if Soldier’s Boy had not picked him up by the tail and slammed his head firmly against a nearby tree trunk. By the time that swiftly brutal execution had been done, there was another fish flopping on the bank. It received the same treatment as its fellow.
So the morning went, save for an interval when Soldier’s Boy left Likari to slay his own fish. He moved well back from the stream and gathered wood and twigs. He was stingy with the magic; it took him three tries before he called up a spark large enough to kindle the dry wood. Once it was going, he fed it until it was a useful size. Soon there were fish cooking over it.
All day long, the man and boy caught, killed, and ate fish. It seemed a monotonous meal to me, but I sensed that Soldier’s Boy was not interested in taste right now. He enjoyed what he ate, but not in the sensuous way that I had employed his keen senses. He was too focused on consuming quantity to pause for long considerations of flavor and tenderness and the note of smoke that the fire put into the fresh fish.
When evening began to fall, they still had more fish than they’d been able to eat. They walked home slowly, carrying the surplus catch. Some they cooked and ate that night. Soldier’s Boy put a sturdy green branch through the gill slits of the others and hung them up in a row suspended over the hearth fire in the lodge. Before they went to sleep, he had Likari gather green alder branches. These they heaped over the diminished fire, making a fine smoke that flowed up and past the fish. Then they went to bed.
This was the pattern of the next two days. Soldier’s Boy’s belly and thighs and arms filled out at a rate I would have thought impossible if I had not witnessed it. Even Likari managed to gain a small paunch, though the little boy was far too active to flesh out quickly.
On the morning of the fourth day, when Likari awoke, he found Soldier’s Boy already standing outside the lodge, contemplating the new day.
“Come,” he said. “It’s time for us to go to the Trading Place.”