West of January Read Online Free PDF Page A

I was small and did not appreciate my danger. Talana’s son Arrint was larger than I was, so I assumed that he must go next, after Indarth. Then, once, while bathing in the pond, I glanced down at my groin. There have been few events in my long life that frightened me more than seeing that sheen of golden fuzz. Hastily I checked my armpits. So far they were innocent, but I had enough sense of time to know that they must soon follow. Now terror stalked me, also; thereafter I was much less interested in childish behavior such as splashing around in water. That was the second landmark.
    The third was the arrival of my father’s sixth woman, and this was important to me because I was conscripted to play a part. It gave me a glimpse of men’s affairs and a hint of what seemingly lay in store for me.
    My father rode into camp and dismounted, but he did not unsaddle his horse, merely dropping the reins and striding across to the weaving place. The women scrambled hastily to their feet.
    “Hanthar?” he said.
    “She is sleeping, sir.”
    “Wake her. Get her ready.” He was not a man to waste words. The family buzzed with excitement and bewilderment.
    I was eating—small as I was, I had an appetite second to none. My father glanced around and his eyes settled on me, who was suddenly no longer hungry. I wondered if my pagne was decently in place and doing its job.
    “Knobil!”
    “Yes, sir?”
    “You will come also. To help me.” Then he added an unusually long speech: “You will be coming back, so don’t worry.”
    Help him? That was unprecedented. I suppose I swelled with pride and flashed arrogant glances at the others. I can see now that he had chosen me because I seemed younger than my true age, and therefore relatively harmless. Fortunately for my self-esteem, I did not know that then.
    There were no emotional farewells—or if there were, they were made within the tents. My father rode. Hanthar walked on one side of him in her new gown, bearing a bundle on her back. I strutted proudly on the other, full of contempt for her foolish silent tears.
    It was a long outing and it seemed very pointless, for we were retracing our last move. Our own woollies’ dung lay everywhere. But when my father unslung his bow and strung it, and thereafter kept it to hand, my self-assurance wavered. Then, after a wearisome trek beneath the merciless sun, we crested a ridge and saw our objective on the next hill—two woollies and two people.
    My father reined in his horse. “Go to him, Knobil. Tell him if he wishes to trade, he is welcome. Else he must depart.”
    I did not fully understand, but I ran.
    The newcomers waited for me, turning their woollies so that they did not approach closer. I ran so hard that I had almost no breath to speak when I came up to them, but by then I had realized that I was facing a boy little older than myself and a girl very much like Hanthar. Probably I then knew what was going to happen, but I would not have understood why, for no one had ever lectured me on the incest taboo.
    I gasped out my message. The boy seemed as nervous as I was, but he nodded. “I come to trade,” he said.
    There was a moment’s pause, for neither of us knew what should happen next; then I turned and started running back. I saw my father and his daughter start down the slope toward me. He had left his horse and weapons on the ridge top. The boy and girl came behind me, and all five of us met in the marshy hollow.
    My father must have seemed like a very terrible hairy giant to the lad, who was quivering like the grass dancing in the wind. He quickly gabbled out a speech, obviously well rehearsed and probably taken word for word from that father-son lecture that I was never to hear.
    “I offer my sister Jalinan, a woman unspoiled, well trained, and of good stock, suitably furnished.”
    My father waited and then prompted, “Show me.”
    The boy nudged his sister angrily and pointed at her bundle, lying now at her feet. She