bore it up in both arms, wincing as the weight pressed back against slash wounds on chest and upper arms. He came forward one numb step at a time to present Runi to his parents.
Narma broke down crying and fell on her son’s exposed face, so it was hard for Egar to keep the body in his arms. He tried not to stagger. Jural turned his face away, hid his tears in the darkness so he would not be shamed before the clan.
It was at times like this that the Dragonbane wished heartily he’d never fucking returned from the south or assumed the mantle of clanmaster.
“He died a warrior’s death.”
He intoned the ritual words, cursing inwardly at the idiocy of it all. A sixteen-year-old boy, for fuck’s sake. If he’d had the time to become a warrior, maybe he’d have lived through the raid. “He will be honored with the name of clan defender forever in our hearts.” He hesitated and mumbled, almost inaudibly, “I’m sorry, Narma.”
Her wailing went up a notch. It was that moment that Poltar the shaman chose to assert his own formalized role.
“Woman, be still. Will the Dwellers look with favor on a warrior so beset with female noisemaking? Even now he looks down on you from the Sky Road to his forefathers, and is shamed before them by this hubbub. Get away and light candles for him, as a woman should.”
What happened next was by no means clear in anybody’s mind afterward, least of all Egar’s own.
Narma, it seemed, was not going to relinquish her hold on Runi’s corpse. Poltar stepped closer and tried to persuade her by main force. There was a brief scuffle, an escalation of weeping, and the flat cracking sound of a palm against a face. Runi tumbled from Egar’s arms and hit the earth with a dull thud, headfirst. Narma started screaming at the shaman and Poltar hit her openhanded. She collapsed over her son like a badly tied bundle of firewood. Egar pivoted, guilt and undispelled rage surging for release, and decked the shaman with every ounce of strength left in his right arm. Poltar flew fully five feet backward from the end of the Dragonbane’s fist and hit the ground on his back.
There was a breath-choked pause while everyone caught up.
One of the acolytes took a step toward Egar and then thought better of it as he saw the look on the Dragonbane’s bloodied face. The other three hurried to Poltar’s side and helped him to sit up. The crowd murmured uneasily, a word slithering on the edge of being pronounced. The shaman spat blood and said it for them.
“Sacrilege!”
“Oh, give it a rest.” Egar, drawling but a lot less unconcerned than he made out. Because Poltar was about to be a fucking problem.
If there was one force on the steppes that the Majak acknowledged equal to their own general toughness, it was the shifty, lightning-blast power of the Sky Dwellers. The Dwellers were not like the southerners’ God in His meticulous, archive-keeping imperialism. They were jealous, fickle, and unpredictably violent, and had no time for such clerkish, inclusive ways—they sent storms or plagues at random to remind the Majak of their place in the scheme of things, set men against each other for amusement, and then played dice with one another to decide who would live or die. In short, they acted not unlike the leisured and powerful among men, and the shaman was their only empowered messenger under the sky. To offend the shaman was to offend the Dwellers, and those who offended, it was understood, would sooner or later pay a heavy price.
Now the oldest acolyte took it up, brandishing his summoning stick at the assembled Skaranak.
“Sacrilege! Sacrilege has been done! Who will atone?”
“You’ll fucking atone if you don’t shut up.” Egar strode toward the speaker, determined to nip this in the bud. The acolyte stood his ground, eyes wide with fear and insane faith.
“Urann the Gray will—”
Egar grabbed him by the throat. “I said shut up. Where was Urann the Gray when I needed him out there? Where was Urann when this boy needed his help?” He cast a glance around at the frightened faces in the torchlight, and for the first time in his life he felt an overpowering contempt for his own people. His voice rang louder. ‘Where is fucking Urann every time we need him, heh? Where was he, Garath, when the runners took your brother? When the wolves stole your