Now he longed to sleep, but he didn’t dare let down his guard, not with Samant in this perilous state and the Ersanis gathered outside the death hut, muttering darkly to each other. No telling what they might do if they thought a stranger was interfering with the directives of their ancestral spirits. Burn the hut down with the two Marksmen inside it, maybe.
But the death hut was too precious for the Ersanis to burn. It was where they laid their dying kin to feed the spirits of their ancestors. That was the only reason Rustan hadn’t moved Samant yet. It was currently the safest place for them in the entire village.
Samant’s breathing came shallow and uneven. Rustan closed his eyes and prayed that his breath would not stop. Samant was the Master of Meditation; at one time, many years ago, he had even taught Barkav. It was his skill, perhaps, that had kept him alive in the last ten days of utter isolation, without food or water, fever devouring his flesh and his katari buried in the soil beneath the entrance of the hut. An offering to the spirits, the Ersanis had told Rustan. Had been forced to tell him. He’d been surprised at their resistance, at the intensity of the Inner Speech he’d been compelled to use to get their compliance.
He could hear their thoughts: it wasn’t fair, depriving the spirits of what was rightfully theirs. The old Marksman was sick, he was meant to die. Another day or two and he would have died. Not their fault. Not anybody’s fault. And then that young one had to come along, digging up the blade offering, entering the death hut. No one was supposed to enter the death hut and live.
Right when Rustan captured that thought, and sensed the approach of the six terrified men who had been ordered to attack him, an alien smell hit his nostrils—a strong, musky odor, like that of a wolf. Rustan’s eyes flew open and he leaped to his feet, heart thudding.
It was a wolf. No, not an ordinary wolf. A wyr-wolf. It sat on its haunches just inside the door of the hut, a massive, gray-furred beast exuding an aura of power, regarding him out of pale yellow eyes. Though he should have been frightened, it was awe and wonder that swept through Rustan. It was the first time he had ever seen a wyr-wolf, although, like every Marksman, he had heard many stories about them.
And then the men burst inside the hut, moving through the wyr-wolf as if it did not exist.
Stunned as he was, Rustan had ample time to withdraw his katari. He could have killed the first with a quick thrust, spun around to stab the second, used the Inner Speech to immobilize the rest, and dispatched them one by one. It would have taken a lot out of him, but he could have done it.
Yet he didn’t. He had read the men’s intentions as soon as they entered. Stay your hand, a quiet voice told him, even though it went against his training, against his own instinct for self-preservation.
He was never sure, later on, whose voice it was. The wyr-wolf, who had by now vanished from the hut, if indeed it had ever been there? Or the blade that smoldered against his side? Or was it a voice from within, born of his own guilt?
It took every ounce of self-control he possessed, but Rustan stayed his hand. He let the men grapple him to the ground and tie his hands and feet. The katari they could not touch—it burned the hands of those who tried to take it, right through the scabbard.
The men dragged Rustan out of the hut into the afternoon sun and rolled him to the feet of the waiting shaman. Men and women cheered and gathered more closely around them. Rustan spat dirt and squashed his misgivings. He had done right, and if he was going to be lynched by a mob gone out of control, then so be it.
“We have no quarrel with you, Marksman,” said the shaman, a thin, bony man in a sheepskin robe. “But if you interfere with our rites, it will bring ruin on us all. The elder must die peacefully and be absorbed into our spirit world. If you object, then you must join him.”
“I saw a wyr-wolf,” Rustan blurted out. “In your death hut. Your men walked right through it.”
It had only been a hunch, but the effect on the shaman was remarkable. His face went pale and the staff dropped from his hand. He turned to talk with some of the older men and women behind him—elders of the village council, Rustan guessed. One ancient woman stepped up to him.
“Tell us exactly what you saw, Marksman,” she rasped.
Rustan described the huge beast, its thick gray fur, the intelligent eyes, the steady gaze. He told them how his six attackers had walked through it, and how it had then vanished from sight.
When he had finished, the woman exhaled. “He has seen the spirit of Varka, the wyr-wolf,” she announced.
There were murmurs and cries from the listening crowd. The shaman spoke a word of command, and one of the young men who had dragged Rustan out bent to untie him.
Rustan got to his feet and rubbed his wrists with relief. He wasn’t about to be lynched after all. “Who is Varka?” he asked the shaman.
“Our oldest ancestor,” said the shaman. “Varka the wyr-wolf fled the poisonous aftermath of the Great War and found refuge in Herat. He married Ersani, the youngest daughter of the Herati headwoman, and founded our clan.”
“How do you know of him?” asked Rustan. “The war ended over eight centuries ago.”
“We have dozens of ancient manuscripts, locked in trunks and buried in cellars, that tell this story,” said the shaman. “Most are in a script we do not understand, but some of them have been translated by our predecessors. Very few of us now have the gift of learning.”
“If your manuscripts are that old, you possess a treasure trove indeed,” said Rustan. “I could request the Maji-khan to send an elder to help you copy and catalog them.”
An expression of horror crossed the old man’s face. “Never! Strangers are forbidden to touch those sacred pages. They will crumble to dust and our heritage will be destroyed.”
Rustan sighed. Another superstition. “You can send some of your children to schools in Herat,” he said. “Perhaps, as they grow in years and learning, this task could be entrusted to them.”
“Perhaps,” said the shaman, noncommittal.
Rustan knew it was unlikely that the Ersanis would ever send their children to the town of Herat, but at least he had planted the idea in the shaman’s head.
“What happened to Varka and Ersani?” he asked. “Why did they leave Herat?”
“Jealousy,” replied the shaman. “Varka was too powerful, too strong. Ersani’s siblings grew afraid of him, and poisoned their mother’s ears against him. She banished Varka and Ersani from Herat. They made their way here, to till the land and start a family. To start a new clan.” A glow of pride lit his wrinkled face. “We have wyr-wolf blood in our veins.”
A likely story, Rustan thought. But he remembered the wyr-wolf he had seen in the death hut, and kept quiet.