Kro preferred water from a wild creek to that in his canteen, even when the creek was amber brown tea, flavored with tannic acid, steeped with dead bog moss, fallen needles, and last year's leaves. His knees were wet from kneeling beside it, and a pair of bull flies bit his neck, but he swigged deep, his face to the water, drinking noisily uphill like a horse.
While he drank, a sound reached him, a yapping of jackwolves. When he'd finished, he listened, and though his knowledge of them was limited, it seemed to him they must have something treed or at bay.
He'd started this mission feeling a certain urgency, but four days in the forest had eased it. And he was curious. So instead of continuing due north, he angled off easterly toward the yapping. He found them less than a quarter mile off; they had something backed into the hollow base of a large old, fire-scarred roivan. They were so intent, they didn't notice him, and he edged around for a look at their victim.
It was a man!
Kro stepped forward then with a sharp shout, and the small wolves parted, startled, saw him coming toward them, and after a moment's hesitation fled silently.
The man stayed in the hollow base. He had a knife in his hand, its blade bloody, otherwise they'd have had him: dragged him out and torn him up. Kro was sure all the blood on the man's clothes wasn't wolf blood. And the man, he saw now, was elderly, his face blood-smeared.
"You gonna be all right?" Kro asked.
The old man laughed with irony. "I can't walk and they cut my nuts out," he said. "They cut my heel tendons and busted some ribs, too. Other'n that, I'm fine." He crawled from the hollow, gasping and sweating at the pain of it, then collapsed on the side where no ribs were cracked. After a long moment, he opened his eyes again and looked up at the newcomer. Realizing he'd confused the man, he explained. "My problem weren't jackwolves; it's human wolves done this to me." He eyed Kro critically. "Dressed like soldiers, same as you, but they talked like Komarsi."
Kro realized then that he'd spoken with the Smoleni accent he'd cultivated as a logger and trapper. He'd intended to, of course, when he got to Burnt Woods, but hadn't consciously thought to just now. His dialect wasn't perfect, but good enough to pass for someone from another district.
He knew damned well who'd done this—not specific individuals, but they'd been his men, no doubt of it. He knew them, to a large degree understood them, and had tolerated their aberrations, not happily but of necessity. He exhaled gustily. "Well shit! How far to the nearest folks?"
"'Bout six mile." The old man gestured eastward with his head. "There's a hand-plus of farms over there. I got a shack at my daughter's. Her man got called up with the reserves, and killed in the fight at Island Cove. I help her farm." As quickly as he'd said that, his voice changed, as if he'd just seen for the first time the long-term consequences of his mutilation. "Leastwise I used to help her."
Kro made a decision then, and took off his rucksack. "This is gonna hurt like fire," he said, holding the pack up. "But I want you to wear this. Then I'm gonna hoist you on my back and carry you. You'll have to tell me the way."
Oska Niemar eyed him, then nodded stoically. He'd had the notion that this man might be of a piece with the others, in spite of his speech. A submachine gun out in the bush like this, and a big, scar-faced man . . . But he weren't the same. "Put it on me," he said.
Just stretching his arms back while the stranger put the pack on him hurt badly, and when the man rose with him on his back, Oska nearly passed out. Then the stranger started walking. Every step sent pain stabbing through the old man's chest.
It was when he came to a pond surrounded by floating bog, that Kro realized the old man had passed out. He'd asked which way was best to go around, and got no answer. So he chose a way and slogged on, guided by intuition. Things got worse when he came to an old burn, littered with the crisscrossed bones of fire-killed trees, and choked with brush and saplings. He chose a direction and skirted around it. The sun was down when finally he stumbled into a hay field, grown knee-deep again since the first cutting. At the far end of the clearing was a log house and log outbuildings. Kro strode more strongly, now that an end was in sight.
The farmer and his family were eating, but forgot their food when Kro put down his burden at their door. Kro had begun to wonder if he was carrying a corpse, but there still was breath in the unconscious man, and a discernible pulse. The farmer made a stretcher out of two pitchforks and a blanket, and they carried Oska Niemar to his daughter's, a quarter mile away, while the farm wife followed.
The two women stripped and washed the old man. There wasn't much more they could do for him. Then, while the daughter put her two round-eyed children to bed, the farmer took a bottle of turpentine and splashed some on Niemar's wounded crotch as an antiseptic. When they'd put the old man to bed, the farmer and his wife went home again.
Niemar's daughter wiped her hands on her apron. "My name's Seidra. I guess you heard them call me that."
"Mine's Gull. Gull Kro." He looked at her straight. She was a handsome woman, strong, with strong hands and forearms.
"You must be hungry," she said.
Kro chuckled. "More like starved. I've been totin' your dad since midday. I was lost—don't know my way around here—and when he passed out, I got all tangled up with burns and blowdowns. Seemed I best not put him down, otherwise I'd a had to carry him over my shoulder like a sack of grain. And if his ribs are busted, like he thought, that mighta killed him."
She'd already eaten, she and her two children, but she fried up salt pork and boiled two potatoes, sliced some bread, and got butter and buttermilk from the well-house. For gravy, she heated some cold stew. He ate ravenously, and she kept him company with a slice of bread.
"Your dad said your man got killed."
Seidra nodded.
"How you gonna manage?"
"I got cousins here at Wolf Creek, and a nephew that's thirteen. And my husband's uncle will help when he can. And Tissy is nine now, old enough to take on more of the housework."
The talk dwindled then, as if she was sorting out the situation. When Kro had finished eating, she got up. "I'll show you Dad's cabin; you can sleep there. You'll prob'ly want to start for Burnt Woods tomorrow."
Kro nodded. They walked through the twilight, she with an unlit candle. At the door, she lit the candle with a waxed match. The cabin was a single room, with a small, sheet-iron stove. It was orderly, the old man's clothes hanging from wooden pegs. He told himself that if he learned who cut the old man, he'd show him what suffering was all about.
"This is it," she said. "There's roivan bark for kindling, if you want a fire. You got matches?"
"A fire starter," he said.
She nodded, still standing in the middle of the floor. "You been long from home?"
He nodded. She closed the door and began to unbutton her blouse.
"It's been a long time for me, too."