Penric and the Shaman

VI

Twenty-seven.

Inglis controlled his pained panting, and stropped the knife blade carefully over the shallow cut across his right thigh. When it was well-coated, he set it aside and scrambled around in his fur nest to pull up and tie his trouser strings. He’d found the rest of his clothes in a pile near the hearth; his purse had been unsurprisingly missing. Left boot also there, right boot ruined, cut down the shaft. If it had come off, presumably it could come back on… no. He sighed and abandoned them both.

It took three tries to wallow upright. Arrow sat up and watched with interest. As Inglis hobbled barefoot the short distance across the hut, the dog rose and paced along. Inglis’s hand found its ruff, sturdy but not quite high enough for good support. The wooden door, secured only by a rope latch, creaked wide. He leaned on the jamb and looked around.

The morning sun was blindingly bright on the snow, which was turning slushy in some late teasing thaw, and Inglis’s eyes watered. Blinking, he found that the hut was nearly at the tree line. Dark firs and pines fell away below; he could see over their tops down into the vale. The flat valley floor narrowed here, the last farms straggling up its crooked, attenuating length. A small village clustered around a timber bridge over the barely-a-river.

A few more crude huts clung to the slope near Inglis’s refuge. One was plainly a smokehouse, from the aromatic haze rising through its thatch. A nanny goat with a bell hung from a leather strap around its neck wandered past, ignoring him. From somewhere nearby, he heard women’s voices.

He stared down at Arrow, who gazed back, soulfully attentive. It was worth a try… He caressed the dog’s head, and said, “Fetch me a stick.”

The dog made a cheerful noise in its chest, too deep to be a yip, and bounded away. By the time Inglis had retrieved, cleaned, and sheathed his knife, and determined that no more belongings of his were in the hut, Arrow returned to the doorway, dragging a log as long and thick as a fencepost. He dropped it with a thunk at Inglis’s feet and looked up proudly, toothy grin gaping, tail swishing back and forth like a cudgel.

Inglis was surprised into a rusty laugh. It felt strange in his throat. “I said a stick, not building timber!” Though it would make fine firewood. He ruffled the dog’s head anyway. “Fetch me a thinner stick.”

Eagerness unimpaired, Arrow bounded away again. He returned in a few minutes towing something more sapling-like. Inglis broke off the side branches and tested it. It would do for now. The snow was almost not unpleasant on his swollen, throbbing right foot. The left was out of luck. He wondered if he could beg some coverings for them. Limping slowly, he followed the sound of the voices.

In a three-sided shelter, its open face turned to the sun, he discovered a team of women at work scraping a stretched hide. One of them was the girl Beris. The other two were older. All stopped scraping to look up and stare at Inglis, although, as the dog momentarily abandoned him to snatch a pale scrap and retreat to chew on it, the one with the gray braid spared a dispassionate, “Arrow, you fool dog. You’ll make yourself sick.” Arrow’s tail thumped unrepentantly.

“You got up,” said Beris, bright and a bit wary. “Are you feeling better now?”

Better than what? “A little,” Inglis managed, and, belatedly, “Thank you for your aid.”

The middle woman said, “You were lucky to be found. Another few days, and we’d all have gone down to the valley, even the boys.” She eyed him in curiosity. “Where were you bound?”

He wasn’t sure he could explain his confusion of mind to himself, let alone her, nor how many times he’d switched his goal from Carpagamo to Linkbeck and back. He finally settled on, vaguely, “Up the vale, but I took a wrong turn in the dark.” He extended his empurpled foot. “I was wondering if I might beg some rags to wrap my feet. My boots are impossible.”

She made a grunt and a motion, which her companions seemed to interpret without difficulty, and levered herself up to trudge off. Gingerly, hoping he would be able to stand again without aid, Inglis lowered himself to another sawed-off chunk of tree trunk that they seemed to be using for camp chairs.

Should he try the ‘poor scholar collecting stories’ ploy again? It had brought him this far. Arrow relieved him of his dilemma by making another raid on the skin scraps; the woman with the gray braid made a desultory begone, pest gesture at him, which he eluded.

“That is an extraordinary dog,” Inglis began. Did either of them realize how extraordinary? Two different flavors of blank faces regarded him in return. Beris’s seemed innocent. The elder woman’s might conceal more. Try manners? He attempted a smile at her, and said, “My name is Inglis, by the way.”

“So Beris said.”

“And you are, Mother…?”

“Laaxa.”

Inglis nodded, as though he cared. Her lips quirked, as though she did. “I was told one of the men who helped bring me off the trail had the dog from his uncle, Scuolla. Can you tell me where to find him to speak to?”

Laaxa snorted. “Where to find him, yes. Though I doubt he’ll be speaking to you.” She pointed up the valley. “He was killed in a landslide not two months back, poor old man.”

The blighting of Inglis’s last forlorn hope was as crushingly cold as an avalanche. “Oh.” He sat in silence for a minute, too taken aback to think. He finally tried, “Was he the man who raised dogs? I was told there was such a fellow in this vale. Or did he have Arrow from someone else?” Yes, there might be one more possibility…

“Oh, aye, it was something of his trade. His partner was supposed to have inherited them, but they were together out hunting for meat to feed the beasts. His body they managed to dig out, at least. The dogs were scattered about to whoever would have them, after. So if you’ve come seeking to buy one, you might still have a chance.”

“Did, uh, you know Scuolla well?”

“Only to nod to. He was no kinsman of mine. He kept to himself up the east branch.”

He tried Beris: “Was Savo close to his uncle, do you know?”

She shook her head. “Savo’s mother’s a lot younger than Scuolla. I don’t think they had much to do with each other even before she married and moved to her husband’s farm.”

He wasn’t sure how to ask, Was your neighbor an illicit hedge shaman? without frightening them into silence. “Was Scuolla gossips with anybody?”

Laaxa shrugged. “He drank with Acolyte Gallin, time to time, I think.”

Inglis prodded, “Acolyte Gallin?”

“He’s our Temple-man, down Linkbeck.” Laaxa waved in the general direction of the valley. Indeed, such a small village was unlikely to rate a full-braid learned divine. An acolyte would typically be made to do. “He serves the whole of the Chillbeck upper vale.”

“So he would have conducted Scuolla’s funeral rites?”

“Gallin buries pretty much everyone, in these parts.”

Inglis worded his next question cautiously. “Did you hear any strange rumors about Scuolla’s funeral?”

He’d hit something, because both women gave him sharp, closed looks.

“Wasn’t there,” said Laaxa. “Couldn’t say. You’d have to ask Gallin.”

Shamans came as linked chains—half shackles, half lifelines. A shaman was needed not only to culture a Great Beast, but to conduct its sacrifice into each new candidate at the commencement of his or her service. At the end of that life of service, a shaman was again needed to cleanse the comrade soul, free it of that earthly link—some said, contamination—to go on to the gods. Among the reasons for the revival of the royal shamans of the Weald, it was said, was to sustain such chains, that no soul might go sundered. Among the reasons for keeping the practices discreet and contained was to limit such risks. At his own investiture, Inglis had accepted the hazards blithely. He was anything but blithe now.

If Scuolla had indeed been a hedge shaman, as Inglis now strongly suspected, whoever had conducted his investiture was probably long dead; with luck, readied for his last journey by Scuolla himself. So who had cleansed Scuolla in turn? And might that unknown person help Inglis in his woe? Follow the chain.

In this high country, it was rumored, the old ways were quietly tolerated by the rural Temple hierarchies, so long as their practitioners conceded precedence and authority to the Temple, and quarter-day dues. And if the local Temple folk were not too rigidly virtuous. So was this Acolyte Gallin an enemy of the old ways, or one of the quietly tolerant? And if the latter, had he quietly helped his drinking friend’s soul along by securing the services of another hedge shaman to perform those last rites? Or at the very least known where and how, and by whom, they were brought off?

In which case, the next link in Inglis’s chain must be to find Acolyte Gallin. Unless this new hope should prove yet another illusion, melting away like the others as his hand grasped for it… the despairing thought made him want, not for the first time, to plunge the accursed knife into his own breast, and be done with this struggle. One more try.

Although One foot in front of the other was perhaps no longer a very useful self-exhortation. Inglis twisted around. The toy-like houses were only a couple of miles away, as a rock might plummet. Getting himself down the mountain in his current battered condition would be a much trickier problem.

The middle-aged woman returned, her arms full of what looked to be sheepskin scraps and sticks. One of the scraps turned out to be a simple sheepskin cap, folded over fleece-inward and sewn up one side in a sort of triangle, which she plunked unceremoniously over Inglis’s head. He jerked but did not rise. “Don’t let your ears freeze, lad.” The absurd-looking object made a startlingly swift difference in his comfort.

Two sheepskin booties, equally simple, for his other extremities followed; she knelt to fit them over his feet as though he had been a toddler. Outer boots of woven withy and rawhide looked crude but proved clever. He suspected they would grip the snow, though he doubted they’d stand up to a long march. Neither would he, just now. He swallowed a yelp as she tied the rawhide strips on the right foot. “Aye, you’ve done yourself good, there.”

The scraping finished, the three women undid the hide from its clamps and folded it over. Beris rose to stow it away—in a wooden sledge, tucked up in the corner of the shelter. That was how they transported their high-country produce down to the valley, Inglis supposed. Curing a sledge-load of such hides would keep a village worker busy all winter. Could it also transport a half-crippled man?

They couldn’t want him to linger here, eating their reserves. It was late for losing him in a crevice. Foisting him on the charity of the village temple must surely seem a better plan.

Inglis wriggled his feet in his sheepskin slippers. “I would pay you, ladies, but I’m afraid someone took my purse.”

Beris looked surprised; the middle-aged woman disappointed; Laaxa Graybraid, displeased, but “Hm,” was all she said.

“I suspect he still has it, tucked away somewhere.” Inglis’s memories were too muddled to be sure of identifying the cutpurse by his voice alone, and anyway, whichever of his three rescuers had pocketed it, they had all watched him do so. But there was no way for the thief to spend coins up here, apart from losing them to his friends at dice. “There wasn’t much left in it, but enough, I think, to pay for a ride down to Linkbeck.” He lifted his hand to indicate the sledge. “With no questions asked.” And none answered.

A little silence, while they all took this in.

Laaxa vented a pained sigh. “Those boys. I’ll see what I can do.”

“Thank you, Mother Laaxa.”

Arrow, who had stealthily acquired a belly full of hide scrapings, now proceeded to divert his watchers by vomiting them back up again, in a loud and rhythmic paroxysm.

“Eew,” said Beris.

“Dogs,” sighed the middle-aged woman.

“You going to take that dog?” Laaxa asked Inglis, with a twitch of her gray eyebrows.

“I expect… that will be up to the dog,” Inglis replied carefully.

They stared at Arrow, now sniffing his production with evident fascination. Beris hurried to shoo him off, and toss dirt and snow over the slimy pile before he could eat it again.

“Aye,” said Laaxa, biting her lip. “I expect so.”