Deerskin - Robin McKinley

She tried to comfort herself by thinking that she did not know how fierce the winter was in the farmlands; that it had begun easily meant nothing. Vaguely she remembered stories of being snowed in, mending harness, stitching elaborate pillows or wedding-dresses, whittling new pegs or pins or toys for children or grandchildren, going outdoors only long enough to feed the beasts. Were those stories of ordinary winter, or of extraordinary storms? She did not know. Nor, if she did climb down the mountains again, did she know where she might go; she could not spend all winter in anyone's barn. She could not think of returning to the yellow city ... and there her brain stalled, and threw her back once again to thinking of how to feed her own beasts on this mountaintop.

Some days the wind howled and the snow blew so that it was a struggle to go outdoors even long enough for necessary purposes. Lissar did not remember that there had been many days like that the winter before; nor had the snow against the wall of the hut facing the prevailing wind reached the eaves, as it had this year, and drifted over the roof till it melted in the warm circle the chimney made.

One afternoon when they had returned from a long, cold, fruitless hunt, and were all shoving at each other to get nearest the fire (there was a slight odor of singed hair), Ash suddenly left the rest of them and went to stand by the door. Several of the others turned to watch her, as they automatically watched their leader. Ob and Harefoot caught it, whatever it was; and then the rest of them did, and quickly there were seven dogs standing tensely facing the door.

There was no window in that wall, and neither Lissar's hearing nor smell was sensitive enough to pick up what the dogs were responding to. Ash rose to her hind legs and placed her forepaws, in perfect silence, against the door. The long slow exhalation of her breath carried with it the tiniest of whines; so faint was it that Lissar only knew it was there because she knew Ash. She made her way through the throng and set her hand on the latch. Ash composedly lifted her paws away from the door, balancing a moment on her hind feet as if going on two legs were as natural for her as it was for Lissar; and then she dropped to all fours again.

Lissar would have closed the door again if she could, but Ash was off at once, streaking through the gap before the door was fully open. "No!" Lissar cried; but Ash, always obedient, this time did not listen to her; silent but for the crisp sharp sound of her paws breaking through the snow between her great bounds, she ran for the enormous beast standing on the far side of the clearing the hut stood at the opposite edge of.

The puppies, alarmed and confused by Lissar's cry and Ash's extraordinary disobedience, and perhaps by the size of their would-be prey, hesitated, while Lissar, hardly knowing what she did, groped for the bag of throwing-stones that hung just inside the threshold, and then laid her hand as well on a long ash cudgel.

Then she started across the clearing herself, gracelessly crashing through the snow, listening to her own sobbing breath.

The old buck toro that paused at the edge of the trees and turned to face the dog that charged him, ears back and teeth exposed in a snarl, was as tall at the shoulder as Lissar stood; his antlers spread farther than the branches of a well-grown tree. He had not attained his considerable age by accident, and he did not turn and run when he saw Ash, nor even when he saw Lissar and six more tall dogs break after her. He turned instead toward the most immediate threat, lowered his head a little, and waited.

But Ash was no fool either, and had all the respect possible for the points of the great toro's horns. She sheered off at the last moment, dashing in for a glancing nip at the shoulder, and darting away again. Lissar gave some terrified recognition to the dangerous beauty of her fleethound even in snow to her shoulders.

It may yet be all right, she thought, floundering through the same snow. He will lumber off among the trees where we cannot possibly come at him: "Ash, it is not worth it!" she said aloud, but she had not enough breath to shout; we will all be very hungry by spring, but we are not starving yet, I will spend all my days on my snow-shoes after this, there will be enough rabbits- "Ash!" she said again.

But Ash merely ran round the toro, keeping him occupied, giving him no chance to retreat among the trees. She swept in once more, bit him on the flank; the hoof lashed out, but missed; a thin trickle of blood made its way through the thick hair.

This was not a proper hunt. A pack of fleethounds ran down their prey; at speed they made their killing leaps, and the prey's speed was used against it. A cornered beast was always dangerous, and in such situations the hunting-party or -master was expected to put an arrow or a spear where it would do the most good-and save the dogs.

Ash made her third leap, flashing past the antlers' guard and seizing the toro's nose. It was beautifully done; but the toro was standing still, braced, his feet spread against just such an eventuality; and he was very strong.

He roared with the pain in his nose, but he also snapped his neck up and back, barely staggering under the weight of the big dog. Ash hung on; but while she managed to twist aside as he tried to fling her up and over onto his sharp horns, as the force of his swing and her writhe aside brought her through the arc and back toward the earth again, he shifted his weight and struck out with one front foot.

It raked her down one side and across her belly; and the bright blood flowed.

This was no mere trickle, as on the taro's flank, but a great hot gush.

"Ash!" Lissar said again, but this time it was a groan. It had still been bare moments since Lissar had opened the door of the hut and Ash had bolted out; Lissar had not quite crossed the clearing, though she could smell the heavy rank odor of the toro-and now the sharp tang of fresh blood. Ash's blood.

"Help her, damn you!" Lissar screamed, and Ob charged by her, made his leap, and tore a ragged chunk out of the creature's neck; its blood now stained the snow as well, from its nose and flank and now running down its shoulder, and Ash's weight made the deadly antlers less of a threat; but Ash's blood ran the faster. The toro bellowed again and made to throw its head a second time; and Ash was built for running, not for gripping with her jaws, and her hold was slackening as her heart's blood pumped out through the gash in her belly. . . .

Lissar, scarcely thinking what she did, ducked under the highflung head, and the body of her dog; and as one foreleg lifted free of the snow as the creature swung its weight to its other side, Lissar took the ashwood cudgel in her hands and gave as violent a blow as she could, just below the knee of the weight-bearing leg. Vaguely she was aware that the thing had stumbled as the other dogs made their leaps; the toro kicked violently with a rear leg, and there was a yelp; Ash, silent, still hung on.

The leg Lissar struck broke with a loud crack, and the creature fell, full-length, in the snow. In a moment it was up again on three legs, bellowing now with rage as well as pain; but Ash lay in the snow. The toro turned on her as nearest, and would have savaged her with its antlers, but Lissar got there first, in spite of the snow, in spite of having to flee being crushed when the toro fell, in spite of how the snow held her as one's limbs are held in a nightmare; weeping, she brought her cudgel down across the creature's wounded nose, careless of the antlers, shielding her dog; and the toro shrieked, and fell to its knees as its broken leg failed to hold it. At that moment Ferntongue and then Harefoot, with two slashing strokes, hamstrung it, and it rolled, groaning, across the bloody snow, the knife-sharp hoofs still dangerous; Lissar leaped over, and buried her small hunting knife in the soft spot at the base of the jaw, where the head joins the neck; heedless, she grasped the base of one antler, to give herself purchase, and ripped; and the toro's blood fountained out, and it died.

THIRTY-THREE

THE BLOOD'S RUSH WAS STILL MEASURED BY THE RHYTHM OF A beating heart as Lissar turned to Ash. She sank down beside her, shivering uncontrollably with cold and shock. Ash's eye was half open, and her tongue trailed in the snow. But the eye opened a little farther as Lissar knelt beside her, and her ear tried to flatten in greeting.

She had fallen on her wounded side, so Lissar could see only the ugly end of it, curving under her belly. "Ash," she said. "Oh, Ash, I cannot bear it. . ." She thought she might kneel there in the snow till the end of time, but there was a questioning look in Ash's one visible eye, and so, still shuddering, Lissar reached out to stroke the sleek, shining fur on her throat, and down across her shoulder; and then she staggered to her own feet.

She went back to the hut, seized a blanket off the bed, and returned to the battlefield. As delicately as she could she rolled Ash onto the blanket; the dog made no sound, but she was limp in Lissar's hands, and Lissar was clumsy, for her eyes were blinded by tears.

Slowly she sledded her sad burden back across the snow to the hut, ignoring both the toro's corpse and the six other dogs, who, their heads and tails hanging, crept after her. She eased Ash up over the step and the threshold, and skated her across the floor to settle her, still on the now blood-sodden blanket, in front of the fire. It seemed an age since they had left the hut together, and that the fire was still burning high and the hut was warm surprised her. The puppies followed her in and lay down, anxiously, as soon as they were across the threshold, unhappily, submissively, and tightly together, no sprawling, no ease. Lissar had just the presence of mind to count that all six had been able to return without assistance, and then she shut the door.

And returned to Ash. The cut across her ribs was nasty, but not immediately dangerous, and the ribs appeared unbroken. But where the hoof had sunk into the soft belly.... Lissar, feeling sick, bent her head till her face nearly touched Ash's flank, and sniffed; there was no odor but blood, and a lingering rankness from the toro. Could such a blow have missed all the organs? For the first time Lissar felt the faintest stirring of hope.... Then she looked again at Ash's outflung head and the eye, glazing over with agony, and at all the blood ... at least she must stop the bleeding.

"Ash, I shall have to use needle and thread," Lissar said aloud; she barely recognized her own voice, for it sounded calm and reasonable, as if it belonged to someone who knew what to do and could do it. She took out the little roll of leather where she kept her few bits of sewing gear, which she had last used to make harnesses for the dogs for the trek up the mountain; and she threaded her needle with steady hands. Like her voice, they seemed to have no connection with the rest of her, for she was still having trouble remembering to breathe, and her knees were rubbery, and her thighs painful with cramp.

The bleeding, she thought, had slowed, which she feared might be a bad sign rather than a good one, but she knelt so that the fire might give her as much light as possible, said, "Ash, I am sorry," and set the needle into the flesh, a little below the last rib, where the wound went deep.

Ash's head came up off the blanket with the speed of a striking snake's, and there was white visible all the way around her dark eye; but her jaws clashed on empty air, for she had not aimed for Lissar, who was easily in her reach. Lissar clamped her own jaws together, drew the thread quickly through the first stitch, tied it and bit it off; and then repeated the procedure. Ash twitched and her sigh was a moan; six stitches Lissar made, and knew the wound needed more, but knew also that Ash was already at the end of her strength.

She poured a little water down Ash's throat, and believed that not all of it ran out again. Then she wiped her as clean as she could, and put more blankets over her, and sat at her head, her hand just behind Ash's ear, listening to her breathing, willing her to go on breathing....

Dark came, which she might not have cared for, except that the fire was dying, and Ash must be kept warm. The puppies followed her outdoors to relieve themselves while she carried wood; and she had regained enough of her awareness of the world to notice that two of them were limping, Harefoot badly, hopping on three legs. When they went indoors again, she finally remembered that she had a lamp to light, and by its glow she examined the puppies. Pur merely had a long shallow slash across one flank and upper thigh; Harefoot's leg was broken. She panted; anxious and in pain, while Lissar felt the break as delicately as she could, and tried to engage some emotion beyond numbness at the discovery that it was a simple break and that it should not be beyond her small knowledge, gained by assisting Jobe and Hela, to set it effectively.

She did so, her hands as little a part of the rest of her as they had been when she held the needle at Ash's belly; and at the end she said, "Harefoot, you're a good dog," and a little unexpected warmth crept out of its hiding place and moved into her voice. Harefoot looked pleased, and dared to put her head on Lissar's knee and look up at her adoringly; and all the other dogs were a little reassured and crept forward, away from the door, toward the fire. Ash still breathed; and Lissar, and six other dogs, lay down around her, to keep her warm, and to remind her of their presence, and of how much they needed her; Lissar blew out the lamp, to save her small store of fuel, and all but she fell asleep as dusk darkened to night.

The next few days were a nightmare version of the first days with the puppies, almost nine months ago. Lissar did not sleep; she dozed, sometimes, curled around her charge, achingly sensitive to any signal Ash might make. For while nine months before she had worked as hard as she knew how, and feared, every time she woke from an unscheduled nap, to find one of her small charges fallen into the sleep no one wakes from, it was not the same. If Ash died, a part of Lissar would die with her; a part she knew she could not spare.