ICE BURIAL: The Oldest Human Murder Mystery (The Mother People Series Book 3) (40 page)

The
Leader
’s
body resisted;
G
urd
pulled harder
. A
nd then it came. Part of it came, the top half, the head and the upper body
and
some of
one leg
… The
rest of him
was still down there, trapped….
No one could stay alive like that, no one…

Gurd
screamed, a
ghastly
strangled sound that went on and on and on
until it died in his
scarred
throat and he could scream no more. Almost senseless now, he
staggered back across the covering of debris
until he reached
safer
land,
still holding the grisly burden in his arms.
On and on he walked, uncaring of fatigue, wanting only
to keep moving.
If he stopped
walking
he
would
know…
He did not want to know, did not want to think…

Exhaustion finally brought him to a halt. Dropping to his knees, he cradled the Leader
’s
broken body in his arms
. For a long moment he looked down at it tenderly, his head bent low in an unconscious gesture of mourning. Hot tears of grief rolled down his cheeks.

He wiped them savagely away and
stared up at the mountain where the people still slep
t. The tenderness vanished from his eyes and his face twisted into a
grimace
of
pure
hatred
. They had done this; they
had killed the Leader
, his beloved Leader.
He would get his revenge, he vowed, shaking his fist with fierce concentration. He
would kill them
,
all of them, even the ones he did not know.
One at a time, he would kill them until they were gone.

The faces of the man who had seen him and the woman who walked with him came into his mind,
and the man who had taken the girl that belonged to the Leader. R
age
surged into
Gurd
, rage
so strong his throat burned with it
. H
e would kill them first
, and after that, the old woman
whose face was burned into his memory,
and any others around her.
He had wanted to kill
all of them
for a long time, but Korg had always stopped him.
Triumph
shot through his rage, made it strong and hard.
Korg
could not stop him
now. Nothing could stop him
now.

The triumph grew
as
another thought came into his mind. H
e would get others to help him if that was necessary. The people in that village behind the mountain
were terrified of him; they had never seen him but still they were terrified.
He would make them do his bidding, would do whatever was necessary to force them to help him kill the people who had killed the Leader
.

Gurd stood, his
scarred face a mask of determination.
For th
at
purpose, he would
make the greatest sacrifice of all. He would show
his face. He would show it to all
the villagers
.
Even the children would see his face. No one wanted to look as he did, but he would make sure they understood that
they would
look like him
if they did not obey
. He
would do to the
ir faces
,
every one
of them, what had been done to hi
s
if they did not
did not help him to do what must be done
.

Gurd’s
mouth
contorted
into a
savage
grimace
that passed for a smile.
Soon, very soon, the
people who had killed his
adored
Leader would
all
be dead.

CHAPTER
TWENTY

Durak and Pila smiled at each other as they watched the baby wave his tiny fists in the air, tracking them with his eyes while he made gurgling noises. “
I shall call him Noran,” she decided. “That has a clever sound, and he is
a very
smart
baby
to watch his hands like that.
” She looked down on the baby proudly. “
One day he will be a good tracker of animals.”

“First he must learn to use his legs too,” Durak joked, and she laughed. He loved to hear her laugh. It was a warm burbling sound, like that of a bird chirping lustily in the bushes. He had not heard the laugh at all at first, but once Pila had told him what she could remember of what had happened to her, she had seemed to relax, as if some of the pain at least had gone with the words.

“I think someone hit me on the head and carried me away,” she had said, and her tone was so matter-of-fact that Durak winced. “I do not remember that. When I woke I saw two men. One was the Leader, though I did not know that then. He smelled strongly of mead. The other had hidden his face, but it was the man with the hood we saw, though I do not know who the two women were. He had raped me and I think the Leader had too, though I cannot be sure of that. I knew only that I was very sore. Korg came then and he was angry with them,
extremely
angry.

“I do not remember much after that. I think
t
he
man
hit me very hard because I could not move or even think. I did not know where I was, who I was, anything at all. When I was a little better I realized that I was in Niva’s village, that Korg must have brought me there. They gave me many potions, too, and perhaps that made it even harder to remember. Later, I heard the
women say that
the Great Spirit
must have come
to me, though I did not know what th
ey
meant.
For a long time I did not realize there was a child
growing
in my belly either. When I did know, I tried to stop taking the potions lest the child be affected. I
spit them out
when
no one was watching, but some went down my throat anyway.

“I also knew that it was not a spirit that had made the child. It was a man – one of them,” she added dryly, but only
a
hint of bitterness
crept into her voice.

“The potion they gave me before they took the child was very strong
, so
I did not know what had happened until later. They made certain I drank that one
,” she added in the same emotionless tone.

She smiled faintly. “The old woman gave me a potion then too, and that made it worse. But she was only trying to be kind. She was always kind, and I was sorry when I heard she had died. Still, I remember almost nothing of that time.”

“That is the only way I can think of it,” she added suddenly. “If I tell the story as if I had only watched and did not feel what I felt, I can manage. I have learned to think of it that way, for the baby’s sake.”

She looked down at the ground and smiled determinedly. “I cannot let them harm me further by letting them affect all my life,” she said. “I have found you now and I am all right, even if I cannot remember all that I should. I must be all right because if I am not, the child will not be all right either.”

Durak listened and wondered at her courage. Pila sounded exactly like the Teran he had once known. Even if she did not know she had once been called by that name, she was still that person. Once when she was very young and had scraped her leg badly, Larak had to cut into the flesh to get out pieces of dirt, he recalled. Teran had watched impassively, without making a noise, though the pain must have been quite bad. And after her mother and
Zena
’s had died, Teran had wept profusely in private and then gone on with her tasks stoically, not as cheerful
ly as usual, but without
a fuss. The process had been harder for
Zena
, he remembered, but Teran’s steady presence had helped her.

“But if you were that weak, how did you manage to get away – and get all the way to the place where I found you?” he asked, aware for the first time how much that effort must have cost her. No wonder she had been near collapse.

“I do not know,” she answered thoughtfully. “I knew I had to leave, that I was in the wrong place and must find the right one. That is all I knew. And so I
left
.
” She shuddered. “
I do not know, though, what would have happened to me, to
my child
, if we had not found you.”

“I left because of the shell, too,” she added abruptly. “I had forgotten. The girl Brulet had a beautiful shell and she often
let me
look at
it
. She was very fond of that shell, though I do not know how she came by it. When I saw the shell I knew
I had once been in a place where shells like that were found. I did not know where the place was, but it helped me to realize that I
did not belong in the village and that I had to find the place where I did belong.”

Durak smiled. “We – the Mother People - often find shells and bring them back when we go to the sea for the ceremonies,” he told her. “
Zena
may have given that one to Brulet
.”

“One day, perhaps I too will go to that sea,” Pila answered hopefully.

“I am sure you will,” Durak agreed fervently. Pila still did not remember much,
and he tried to prod her memory gently by telling her the story of how Zena’s twin sister, who was called Teran, had disappeared.

“Zena left Teran for a short time to fetch a basket for the berries they were picking, and when she returned, her sister was gone. Her people looked everywhere for her but no one has ever found a trace of her,” he explained, watching Pila’s face carefully. For a moment he thought he saw a flicker of recognition when he spoke of berries. It vanished quickly, and then she only looked confused.

Contrite, Durak spoke of the Goddess instead. That, Pila did remember.
Each time
he
talked about
the Mother, Pila looked as if a huge hole in her life were being filled, not just with words and memories, but with an essence that brought her great serenity. Even her lack of memory did not seem to trouble her as much as it might have without the sense of peace the Mother brought her. Her memory would come back, Pila assured him, when the Mother will
ed
it. She would wait.

Durak envied her that acceptance. He was happier than he
had ever been before,
but the imagines still tormented him sometimes, mostly when he got too close to Pila. He had not spoken of them to her, unable to find the words, though he had told her the rest of Rofina’s story. Pila had listened with a
different
kind of
sym
pathy
than others.
She did not exclaim that what had been done to Rofina was horrible or tell him to stop thinking about it or to try to feel happy; instead, she simply suggested something they could do together after he had talked, and the doing of it had made him feel better.
So had the telling.

He rose and put a new log on the fire. At first, they had been chilled by gusts of cold air
that came through cracks in the walls
on windy days
, threatening
to blow out the fire
. Pila had solved that problem by
gather
ing
any materials she could find, old piles of leaves, clumps of mud and bits of wood, to stuff into the cracks
.
Food had been more difficult, but together they had managed to bring down two deer, and these had lasted a long time, frozen in a pit they had dug just outside the hut before the ground hardened.

The earth would not stay frozen much longer, he reflected, if the rains were any indication. It had rained
hard
for days now. The streams were so full they charged down the hills like rivers, and the lake was overflowing. Durak did not think he ever remembered so many days of steady, drenching rain. Yesterday, they had heard loud cracking noises, followed by muffled crashes to the west and south. There must have been a landslide or an avalanche over there, he realized, and he hoped the people in Runor’s village and the other villages beyond the pass were all right. There was no way to know until they could travel, and that would not be for some time, if the rain
s persisted.
The streams were impassable.

Since he could do nothing, Durak put the matter from his mind, for the moment at least. Besides, people usually knew enough not to build their villages where avalanches and landslides were likely to fall, and the crashing had almost stopped now. He wished the rain would stop as well, although he would miss the steady drumming on the roof that lulled them to sleep at night. A
nd at
least the rain meant spring
and summer were
on the way.

When
the streams were less full and the mud less deep, he
c
ould take Pila and the baby to his village, Durak
thought, if she thought she was ready to go. He was not sure, and he was even less sure
about himself. He felt a strange reluctance to leave this place, afraid that his newfound happiness might disappear
.
He and Pila were like brother and sister, he reflected, content in each other’s presence and able to talk to each other about all their thoughts without restraint. He would be completely happy, he thought, but for the fact that Pila still did not remember who she was and that he cared so much for her but he could never…

Durak thrust that thought away. That was not Pila’s problem.

She glanced at him suddenly and then dropped her eyes. He had the impression that she had been about to speak but had not. Then, for no apparent reason, tension grew between them. Durak frowned, wondering what had happened. Had he said something wrong and had not known it? But he had not said anything.

Pila spoke, and he heard the tension in her voice. So she had felt it too. “Will you ever find another mate after Rofina?” she asked unexpectedly.

Durak stiffened. “I do not know,” he replied carefully. “I…
I…
” A spasm of uncontrollable emotion
paralyzed
his lips and
he
could not go
on.

“I have felt there is something more,” Pila said gently. “Not just grief because of what happened to Rofina, but something else that hurts you, or that you do not wish to speak of. But I think you must, you know. It is the only way.”

She watched him closely, not wanting to pry but wanting
badly
to help him as he had helped her. She had seen this involuntary spasm before, as if Durak were in the grip of an emotion he could not control. It seemed to come each time she got close to him, she thought, struggling to understand. Often, she had wanted to hug him or take him in her arms but had not, sensing a kind of reserve in him that kept her away. Was it she who repelled him, Pila wondered, or was it just closeness of any kind?

The last, she thought. He cared for her; she was almost certain it was true. Many times she had felt that he wanted her but was afraid.

For a long time Durak was silent, then he suddenly put his face in his hands and mumbled through his fingers, as if ashamed.

“There is something else,
”
he admitted
, “
but it is not your problem, only mine. I have never spoken of it. Not to speak is better.”

“No,” Pila insisted stubbornly. “It is not better. A wound cannot heal unless it is cleansed, brought into the light where it cannot fester. That is what you did for me. You brought my wounds into the light, made me speak of them, see them more clearly and let them heal. You did that for me and I would like to do that for you.”

“You cannot.” Durak muttered helplessly. “At least, I do not think…” He tried to look at her but could not. Worse things had happened to her than had ever happened to him, he thought miserably, but still she was stronger. He must be very weak.

Pila took his face into her own hands and looked at him, saw the spasm of emotion come again. Durak flinched away from her. Deliberately, she placed the baby, who was sleeping now, into the cradle they had made for him, and put her arms around Durak. He stiffened and then, to his horror, he began to weep.

“Ah,” she said, her voice once again matter-of-fact. “I thought perhaps that was it. You have never touched me except to help me walk or tend my ankle, do you realize that?”

“I dare not touch you,” he murmured, so low she could barely hear. “It does not… does not work…
Every time I do
the images come again, that is the only time I cannot control them, if I get too… And then I cannot see anything else, feel anything else…”

“The images,” Pila repeated softly, remembering what Durak had told her about Rofina, how she had begged with her eyes, her body. No wonder. Every time he got close to her, or anyone, he saw those images again and then he could not respond.