Chapter Thirteen: Breaking Ice

Ottavar rested his hands on his thighs and leaned forward slightly. Facing him in the small tent, Radovin slumped, his face a blank, hopeless mask. By daylight his features were his own chimeric blend of youth and maturity, though it was no longer possible to miss the uncanny resemblance to those departed. He looked too ready to join them.

"Radovin, I need to know what is troubling you," Ottavar said quietly. "The meeting starts this afternoon. You're not worried about that, are you, standing up and speaking in front of the Council? There's nothing the Bulls can do to you. You're with us now, you're under the protection of the White Horse band. Anyone who threatens you will answer to all of us, to all of The People."

"No. I'm not afraid of them."

"That's good. All you have to do is tell the Council what you have told us, the truth as well as you know it."

Radovin's face showed nothing. He might have been a stick of firewood.

Ottavar chewed his lip, desperation writhing in his stomach. Please, help me find the answer to this riddle. "I need to know about you, what you know, what you can do," he said. I need to know you, he thought, and I'll do whatever it takes to break through. He didn't have time to search for a lost spirit, not today; but he would go at it all drum, chant, and face-paint if he had to.

"I know that you've studied hard for several years now. You must be more than ready for the Black Circle, ah?" He saw a subtle tensing, a readiness for something unpleasant. A negative reaction to a positive statement--it told him something he already knew. Others had studied a much shorter time under Ivergan; it had left a bad taste in their mouths. Just being around the man had given him the pip. Tayrolin, now well advanced in the Red Circle, had nearly forsaken his calling. Radovin would be accustomed to being jerked around and put down, told that he would never get anything right. Physical abuse would have reinforced the habit of not revealing his thoughts.

Or did he think he'd be rejected now because of who had trained him? Ottavar thought he had better make that clear.

"Listen, I don't want you to be afraid to tell me anything. I am not going to condemn what you say or think or feel. No one will punish you for speaking, not here. I don't care where or how you've learned what you know, if it's useful and you do it well and to good purpose. Do you understand? If you ask a question, I will answer it. Any question. If I know the answer.

"I am asking you these things because I need to know more about where you stood with the Bull band, and your...apprenticeship. It will give more power to our arguments if I understand the circumstances, know what was going on. We know some of it, but I need to hear your side of the story."

Radovin's head drooped lower. He obviously had no desire to discuss anything. He wasn't going to get away with it. Ottavar prodded from a different angle--more personal, aiming for the heart. "You weren't born to the Bull band." Radovin's head wagged slightly sideways.

"You were adopted, ah?" Another negative headshake, and a lowering of the brows. Good, prod harder. Never mind if it hurts both ways. "Rado, your mother--was her name...Solera?"

"Yes," Radovin's whole body tensed with the sharp whisper. So did Ottavar's.

"I knew her. Not for very long. It was just before...." Ottavar let out a long breath full of useless regrets and what-ifs. "We were...very close. Just that one summer. When I heard that she had died, I was torn. I never thought to ask if there was anyone left behind. I was young...." Hardly older than you are now, and everything was so important then. He saw Radovin's jaw muscles work and his throat struggle to swallow.

Solera's son, abandoned in a cruel trap because no one who might have cared knew. Ottavar could only guess at what it was like to lose everyone, then to live as a pariah during the most difficult years of a boy's life. "Rado, I'm sorry." His own throat was tight. Damn. He didn't want to go all soggy. Kayotar always said he got too involved too fast.

"Who was your father?"

"I don't know."

"Was he...from another band, other people?"

"I don't know. I don't know who he was. I was called the son of Raven." A tear splattered on Radovin's hand.

Ottavar took another deep breath. At least he had gotten some reaction, besides his own, and justified his dream. The rest..."son of Raven" only meant that he had no acknowledged father, he had belonged to the whole band.

Now to get another wedge in before the ice could freeze over again.

"Rado, I want to work with you, help you to finish what you have started. You may consider yourself my apprentice from now on. You must be initiated too, be acknowledged in the Circles. Then you'll have some status to cover your ass with. I'm going to talk to Hacaben about this, and Balekara, at least."

"No." The word came out quick and harsh, laden with suppressed emotion.

"No? What do you mean, 'no'?" Slow down, Ottavar told himself, don't push too fast, don't scare him back when he's so close to coming out. He filled his lungs and let the air out slowly, sending his frustration and impatience with it.

When Radovin didn't move, he reached out to lift the drooping head. There was no resistance to his light touch. Radovin's eyes remained veiled. "Look at me, ah?" Eyelids twitched. One last tear followed a damp trail down Radovin's cheek. Jaw muscles tightened in a silent struggle under Ottavar's fingertips.

"You belong with those who have dedicated their lives to serving the good of all. You have power and skill and knowledge, you are too valuable to waste. I want to bring you into the Circles--"

Radovin's eyes shot a fleeting ray of unguarded pain. "No!" He wrenched away, folding over, arms clamped around himself. "No! No. Let me be. Please. That's over. It's too late. I can't."

The sudden, fierce breakout sent a shock through Ottavar. He reached out with both hands, but Radovin twisted away from his grasp.

"Hai! Listen to me. You are needed by your people."

"I have no people. I have nothing. It's all over. Please...I can't."

"Rado...." Ottavar shifted over to the opposite side of the tent and put his arms loosely around the sobbing youth. "You have us, you have the White Horse band. Rado, we want you to stay, to join the band if you will. You don't have to be alone any more. Why do you say you can't? Tell me, please."

"I can't. I'm dead. I broke my vow. I can't. Please--just--let me go. I'll talk--to the Council. Then-- it's over."

An icy pang hit Ottavar's guts. What vow could make him speak of being dead! "Rado, please listen to me, ah? I don't want to hurt you. But I must know. Tell me how it came to be. I need to know everything I can, anything I might use to convince the Council. Anything might help. You were treated badly, they need to know that."

That was no lie. He fully intended to use Ivergan's abuse of a young person as a weapon in the fight against Bodisar's villainy. More immediately, Radovin needed a purpose, a reason to live. An intense battle was going on inside him. He might fight harder on the side of life if he felt he was helping someone else. Ottavar let his arms draw in a little closer. The contact seemed to help.

"Tell me, all of it, please. If you don't want me to speak of it to anyone else, so be it. Anything you tell me is known only to myself and the Good Ones; you know that, ah? But you must tell me, if you want to help. What was this oath that you've broken? When did you give it?"

One very deep breath came out with a shudder, and Radovin began to straighten up. Ottavar leaned back, giving him space to move.

Radovin's head rose. His eyes met Ottavar's in a tentative plea for understanding. "I'm sorry," he whispered, following with a loud sniff.

"Don't be. I know this isn't easy for you. Tell me now, please. When did you swear this oath upon your life?"

"At the beginning, when he said...he would let me...study with him."

Vahé! At the beginning? "What did you swear? What was the oath?"

"What, why do you ask?"

"Because I need to know."

"But--you know, it's...." Radovin looked puzzled. "All shamans have to.... He said...I couldn't unless--he wouldn't take me until I swore."

"Wouldn't take you?" That was not the way it was done. A vow of dedication was normally made when the aspirant was ready for the first initiation, that of the Black Circle, after some years of study and work. Many novices were older than Radovin when they began; some had grown children of their own. Some never felt the calling strongly enough to fully dedicate themselves. Ottavar frowned at the youthful face. Four years ago, five.... "How old were you?"

"It was the winter after my tenth summer."

"But that's too young for making vows--didn't anyone stand up with you?"

Radovin held up his hands; empty, helpless. Words poured out of him now in a stumbling flood. "No. It was just him and me. I had no one. My mother died, and our uncle. They--nobody wanted me around, I was bad luck, he said so, and--and--I--I was hungry!" His eyes cut straight to Ottavar's heart.

"Mutamari!" Ottavar was appalled. A child shouldn't have to make any kind of deal for food and shelter, what was the world coming to? "You swore the full Oath of Dedication then?"

"Yes. I wanted to be Dedicated, since--I was little. Like--my Grandpapa. I--I promised Mama. I wanted..." Radovin's head hung and his throat and jaw muscles worked hard; "...so much."

"That was...the vow you broke?"

"Yes."

Ottavar cringed inwardly. The vow that bound a shaman to his people and to the will of the Good Ones was a very grave thing. He hoped that there was--if not a misunderstanding, at least a possibility of re-interpreting the infringement in the light of circumstance. Surely, a child's oath, given under duress! Even deities were known to forgive if approached properly.

Yet breaking the Oath of Dedication didn't fit his impression of Radovin. There was something very out of place here, besides the unorthodox demand for a vow before beginning an apprenticeship.

"Are you sure? In what way did you break it, what...exactly...did you...do?"

"The part about...being true to my m-master, obeying him no matter what. On my life. I swore on my life. I'm dead since I ran off."

Ottavar's world reeled. "What? No! That's not right!"

"I am not lying! I would never lie to you!"

"No, no, I don't say you're lying!" Ottavar's hands went to Radovin's shoulders and their eyes met in a desperate reach for communication. Oh, my dear Mother of all good spirits! He felt as if he'd been slammed in the chest by a charging bison. "Rado, he had no right to do that, to make you swear personal loyalty to him, on your life--no! That's no part of the Oath of Dedication, it can't bind you." At least I don't think so. Bogu blast it, I'm no nitpicker. Hacaben is better at that sort of thing. But it was wrong!

"Ah!" Ottavar shook himself to chase off the buzzing thoughts. "Tell me, do you remember all of it?"

Radovin stared at him for a moment. Moving clouds of emotion shadowed the landscape of his face; a wonderful contrast to his former apathy.

"Yeah. I remember. Every word. First I swore to keep my heart open to the Good Ones and follow the Way. Then, the second part...."

"Second part?" Ottavar frowned.

Radovin gaped at him for half a breath. Then his eyes widened and his voice cracked in a suppressed scream of outrage. "The crap-eating, ball-less miscarriage of a maggot lied to me from the start!"

Ottavar nodded. The true oath of dedication had been completed before the horrible sham. A vow sworn to the High Powers outweighed any promise to a mere mortal. Nor could it be corrupted, if given with pure intent. That made some kind of sense. He took a deep breath and tried to relax his tense neck and back.

A cleansing would be in order, surely--Radovin would need to separate himself from the taint of ill-usage and deception--and perhaps a re-dedication. It was not a matter of life and death after all, unless you were that profoundly emotional teenager who had staked his entire existence on it.

Radovin had straightened, shoulders spreading. Now he drooped. His intense eyes glittered with tears, anger drowning in self-reproach.

"I was ready to go," he said, his voice down to a whisper once more. "I was going to do it myself, when you didn't...need me any more." He held his hands up in front of his chest, fingers curled like a dead birds claws.

"Rado...." Ottavar clutched Radovin's hands between his as if they were some captive small animal. "Don't ever think such things. You are with us now. You will consider yourself my apprentice from now on."

Radovin blinked hard. "I am...am I? You--really mean that?"

"Yes, yes, Rado, we all want you to stay."

"But--wha--what if I bring bad luck?"

"Have you brought us any yet? I haven't seen it. You were there to help Jerevan when he fell; you brought him home safe--was that bad luck? Not for Jero! Was it bad luck for you? It brought you to us. We've had incredibly good hunting since you came to us, finding game closer by and sooner than we could have hoped. We're eating well--what kind of bad luck is that? Any bad luck you had was left behind when you left the Bull band."

"I can stay? Be your apprentice, learn from you?"

"Yes." Ottavar smiled, though his eyes leaked a couple of final tears. "I'll be your sponsor, anyway. You can go where you will, anyone should be glad to have you, if you don't want to stay with us. I don't think you need much more training, just a chance to put what you know to use."

"I--can I stay with you? With your band? Really?" Radovin's eyes still pled for confirmation.

Those mother-defiling Bull band butt-worms! He thinks that we'd use him and dump him. "Yes, yes, of course you can, we want to--" Ottavar craned his neck to look outside. "Ah! Lovo's back already. Come on." There was still time enough to do it now. In fact, they must get it done before the meeting. The sooner the better. To the Underworld with fiddly preparation. The band was in accord over it, and if the spirits spoke so clearly, they must be ready too.

He scrambled up and out of the tent, pulling Radovin with him by the hand. "Lovo! Hai, we have to talk to you right now," he called as he practically dragged his bewildered new colleague along.

"In the sight of our Mother the Earth and our Father the Sun, we accept Radovin, son of Tevina and Davoner, into our band. The spirit of the White Horse protects and guides him." Ottavar jabbed the tip of a thin, sharp ivory awl into Radovin's arm as he spoke. A bead of rich red welled out. He held a small piece of absorbent leather to it. Radovin stood stone-still between Davoner and Tevina, hardly daring to breathe.

"His blood joins with ours, our spirits welcome his." A motley chorus of voices echoed Ottavar. He turned and held out the scrap of hide with Radovin's blood on it, now mingled with a few drops of Tevina's and Davoner's, along with a dab each from Lovaduc and Sherilana.

Lovaduc took it reverently, holding it high for all to see. "Our life comes from the Mother of All Spirits. We thank Her for it." As the whole band repeated his thanks, the headman slowly revolved until he faced the hearth again. "We give our spirits into Her keeping, we send this mingled blood to Her through Her messengers, Fire, Smoke, and Wind. May She look upon us with mercy and bless us with kindness. Ayah! The Spirit of the White Horse is our witness and our guide. In his name we accept Radovin. Ayah!"

"So may it be," Ottavar intoned, and the whole band echoed his words.

Lovaduc dropped the bit of leather into the fire in the outdoor cooking hearth. The band chanted while the flames consumed it, stamping their feet on the ground and slapping their hands against their bodies in a steady rhythm.

When the blood-daubed scrap had vanished into the ashes, Lovaduc raised his hands. Silence fell; he broke it with a clap. "Radovin, you are born anew to our band. From this day you are the son of Tevina and Davoner; brother of Bazenaber, Ottavar, and Jesumi. We welcome you." He held his hands out to Radovin, who needed a little nudge--provided by Davoner--to break out of his entranced state.

Radovin stared up with blurred eyes at the grinning man whose hands engulfed his. His own mouth was locked in some kind of hanging-open smile. This is really happening to me, he told himself. Believe it. Woh! Then Jesumi snatched him away in a hug. She relinquished him to her mother--his mother now too!--and grabbed Ottavar to squeeze the breath out of.

Warm arms enfolded Radovin over and over. He returned each embrace with feverish ardor, his spirit leaping in a manic upswing. He could not have dreamed this.

Tucali bounced excitedly up and down, released from her grandmother's grasp now that the formal rite was over. "Rado, Rado!" she called, holding her arms out wide, a hug waiting to happen.

"Hai, Tookie." Turning to her in a rare moment between embraces, Radovin swept her off her feet and held her close. Her arms wrapped around his neck and her cheek rubbed against his. He laughed when he set her down again; her face was all smeared with his red paint.

"You need a bath," he said, poking Tucali's nose. His finger left a black smudge. "Ah! Ayah! I am Radovin of the White Horse band! I am! Ayei! I am! Waooo!" He jumped into the air spinning, and all but ran smack into Ottavar when he landed. Teetering on the balls of his feet, Radovin tried to apologize for his clumsiness, but the ridiculous grin on the shaman's face stopped the words. He grinned helplessly back.

"You have a family now," Ottavar said, his hands on Radovin's shoulders, "it feels good, ah?"

Radovin nodded, too full of emotion to speak. Ah! For this man he would do anything. Ivergan had bound him with a false oath, lured him on with lies, confined him with painful punishment. The man had stolen his very life, and Ottavar had given it back. He belonged to Ottavar and to the White Horse band, heart, liver, and soul.

Whistles, leg slapping, and hoots came from neighboring camps. Lovaduc waved cheerily to both Greatbuck and Hare onlookers. They waved back, grinning. "Now they've got something to rattle about." He turned back to look over his own band, smeared and smutched with paint, and all laughing over the mess. "We're off to the pool again," Lovaduc proclaimed through his own laughter.

Adults stared and children ran out for a closer look at the paint-daubed band striding brazenly through the campground. Radovin walked close beside Ottavar. He fizzed inside, a waterskin filled with fermenting hucha. His jaw muscles were starting to feel funny from the crazy grin stuck to his face. He didn't care--he was alive, it was good to feel anything.

The band crossed the stream at the ford just above the laundry area. No one else was using the pool at the moment. Leaving breechclouts and wiping-hides on the bank, they waded in, splashing and laughing.

Radovin paused to gaze across the placid, murky water. The tops of the nearest tents were visible over the gentle rise beyond. At the point where the downward slope to the water began, the brown hump of the sweat lodge stood out from trampled grass. Men who had participated in the burial occupied it now--the gravediggers and those who had prepared and borne the corpse. They would be coming out soon to rinse off in the pool. That was why Lovaduc had brought them over to this side, he supposed, to avoid intrusion.

Ivergan was dead. Ivergan was dead and Radovin was no longer doomed by a desperate oath. It was as if the sun had risen twice in one day, like coming out of one of those too-real nightmares that leave you shaking in the dark, to find that everything is all right after all. The rest of his life lay before him, full of possibility. Believe it.

A hand on his shoulder made him start. He turned his head to see Ottavar. The shaman was a mess, hair straggling into his smiling, smudged face, nothing left of his hastily painted symbols but formless smears all over his chest and arms. "Eh, let's get clean."

Radovin smiled sheepishly and they waded together into water barely up to their knees. "You wash my back and I'll do yours," Ottavar said, dropping to his knees. Radovin knelt behind him in the sandy mud and happily complied.

While Radovin tended to his back, Ottavar rubbed handfuls of silt on face, arms and chest. He paused to ask, "What, um...did you do yesterday--I mean, what did Ivergan see?"

"I, uh, I made him see what you said. Blood on his hands. That's all. I didn't know he was going to be struck down. Or how...what...." Radovin frowned at his own hands.

"No one did. There's a lot of loose talk about it, but--well, never mind that. The Seeing was well done. Sumi told me she and Tiwa saw the blood, and so did a lot of others. I don't know many who could do that, and without any setting up. You have both power and control. There was something else, though, or someone else, I thought. I...felt something."

Which something else? His unseen helper, or...that other? "I don't know what--who--I don't know."

"It was some protective spirit, I thought. You have a guide...." Ottavar cocked his head to give him a questioning look out of the corner of an eye.

"Yeah...Raven. But...it was different...." No use trying to reach beyond what he had seen at the time.

"Raven speaks to you?"

"Uh-huh."

Ottavar's muddy face turned fully toward him. "How did you come to know him?"

"I had dreams."

"When did they start?"

"Um...I was in my sixth summer, I think...."

Ottavar nodded thoughtfully. "He has helped you, taught you things?"

"Sometimes, yeah." Radovin hesitated. A good whipping had taught him to keep quiet about what he learned in dreams. But he didn't want to hold anything back from Ottavar. "He showed me how to do it right, Raven did, the Seeing. I never did it before, though, not really. And...he told me other things. In dreams, and--" He couldn't help it, Raven did as he liked. Ottavar raised his arm. Radovin shrank inside, but the hand came to rest gently on his shoulder.

Ottavar smiled. "That is good. You have been chosen by one of the oldest and wisest of spirits."

Radovin ducked his head low. Tears threatened to burst forth again--he was not accustomed to praise and approval. "I dunno what was there, though, yesterday--or who...."

"Ah, that's all right. You did well, I'm not saying otherwise. I just wondered.... Och! There was too much going on too fast. It's done."

The hand on Radovin's shoulder clasped tighter for a moment. He looked up. Ottavar still gazed steadily at him. The man smiled once more, with a touch of sadness in his eyes, and then let go. Radovin watched him bend to splash his face.

He pulled himself out of his motionless reverie and scooped sand to scrub his own face and hair. There was, as Ottavar said, too much going on. Ottavar finished wallowing and rubbed sandy mud onto Radovin's back. They took their turn for a final rinse in the shallows where clear water entered the muddied pool.

As they dried off, several naked men came out of the sweat lodge. They filed down to the water and waded in, paying little attention to the light-hearted group on the opposite side. Radovin recognized the Bull band hunters; steady, older men. They would have been chosen for the burial detail by the headman. Ivergan had no close relatives or truly close friends, except Bodisar, but the headman would avoid getting near a corpse at any cost--an odd attitude for a murderer, even one who had two faces for everything. He didn't know the younger man leading them; tattoos on face and chest marked him as a shaman.

Radovin's question fled from his tongue when his mouth opened, but Ottavar gave him an encouraging look. He motioned with one hand toward the shaman in the water. "Who is, um...."

"That's Tayrolin," Ottavar replied. "Red Circle, Bison band. You'll meet him later on. You'll get to know all the initiates and novices now. Pah! you have been missing out on a lot."

Radovin re-tied the thong holding his breechclout, though it wasn't really loose. It was an excuse to turn his face away. The sympathy in Ottavar's voice and eyes threatened once more to stir up the self-pity he despised.

Ottavar seemed to mistake the avoidance for shyness, not that he was far off the mark. "Hai, you have to get to know them some time. They're a good bunch, you'll like them. You'll party all night with 'em when the Fire Festival gets going."

"And you'll show him how, ah?" Bazenaber came up beside them.

"Vahé! I have my dignity to uphold these days," Ottavar said. Then he winked. "But I can get him started."

"Hai, Rado, he'll turn you into a carousing wastrel like himself yet," Bazenaber said, smiling warmly at both of them.

Radovin blinked at the two brothers--his brothers. He had never had real brothers before. Or a father. He glanced at Davoner, already headed up the path away from the pool. How odd to be reborn when he was old enough to be considered a man. He felt enough like a child, awkward, unaccustomed to interacting with adults who accepted him as a peer.

It would take some getting used to, being a real person again, but he had a whole new life to do it in. His smile returned. Yeah. Radovin of the White Horse band. Ottavar's apprentice--and his brother! The ground beneath his bare feet and the wind on his skin felt brand new. He smiled all the way back to the camp, nodding at what his brothers said, and even got out a word or two of his own.