“Don’t tutor me, black-hair. I am not your whimpering wives to take your lip and like it.”

I would have knocked her flying, but I heard Tathra’s voice call suddenly to me from within the tent.

I put the blow aside, and went past Kotta through the flap.

The tent smelled strong of women, of herbs, and burned charcoal from the brazier. Tathra had been lying on the rugs, but had struggled onto her elbow to look at me. She no longer put on the shireen in my presence, and she was paler than Asua had been when she cried for the life of her daughter.

“All is well, Tuvek,” Tathra said, smiling at me. “It will do me credit, for I thought myself beyond the age.”

I looked at her, her face all shrunken and white, and Chula’s emerald green-blue in the hollow of her throat.

“I will kill him for this.”

She gazed at me in terror and clutched my wrist.

“No, Tuvek. No. It’s good. I am happy. Now he will cleave to me.”

Kotta had entered behind me. She said, “He has a loose tongue, the fine warrior, when he lets his wits off the leash. Do you suppose, boy, I did nothing to help your mother? I have given her drafts, and done other things too, but the fruit is lodged. I can do no more or I shall harm her. This being the case, I must see to it she is vigorous enough to bear. The women know nothing. The first child is often difficult, he makes the way. Thereafter it is better.”

Tathra’s eyes were wild with fear and misery, and she smiled again and told me how happy she was.

2

That night the winter broke. The rain fell in torrents and the lower tunnels were flooded. Then came the sun, pale yellow as bleached brass.

The Moi have it that the summer sun is a golden girl, who blows on a pipe to summon everything living out onto the earth. Suddenly the black-green emptiness of the valleys comes alive with birds and beasts, as if by a spell. And as they go dancing through the grasses, the hungry hunters bring them down. The bird stabs the worm, the big cat breaks the bird’s neck, the man casts his spear into the heart of the cat. That is how the world is. Even the man had better look behind him; the wolf may be near, or another man, or fate, the hungriest hunter of them all.

In the Arrow month, the trek began down from the mountains to the Snake’s Road, and the winter truce ended. Just before the tents were struck, the men’s side of the Dagkta krarls came together in an upper valley, for a spring gathering.

Everyone put on his best for the gathering, and I had caught the sickness. Leggings of dark blue wool and a woolen shirt of scarlet patterned with indigo and white from the looms of my wives. High boots and jacket of deer-hide, the jacket pierced and studded by golden rings. The black bear fur cloak I had taken from the bear myself; it was lined and edged with magenta, with clasps of silver. The knife belt was red velvet, Moi barter, a city thing as were the two iron knives in it.