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They started walking along the river that was a tributary to the major waterway near the settlement, and began clambering over rocks at a place where the walls narrowed in. Working their way out of the gorge around a precipitous ledge, they came upon a group of young men shouting words of insult or encouragement to two of them who were fighting. Druwez was among the spectators.
“What’s going on here?” Tarneg said, wading into their midst and pulling the fighters apart. One was bleeding from the mouth, the other had an eye that was swelling shut.
“They’re just having a … competition,” someone said.
“Yes, they’re … uh … practicing … for the wrestling games.”
“This is no competition,” Tarneg said. “This is a fight.”
“No, honest, we weren’t fighting,” the boy with the puffy eye said, “just playing around a little.”
“You call black eyes and broken teeth playing around? If you were just practicing, you wouldn’t have to come here to this out-of-the-way place where no one would see you. No, this was planned.-I think you’d better tell me what’s going on.”
No one volunteered an answer, but there was a lot of shuffling of feet.
“What about the rest of you?” Tarneg said, eying the other youths. “What are all of you doing here? Including you, Druwez. What do you think Mother and Barzec are going to do when they find out you were here, encouraging a fight? I think you’d better tell me what’s going on here”
Still no one would say.
“I think we’d better take you back and let the Councils decide what to do with you. The Sisters will find some way to let you work off your urge to fight, and make a good example of you, besides. Maybe they’ll even ban all of you from mammoth hunts.”
“Don’t tell on them, Tarneg,” Druwez pleaded. “Dalen was only trying to stop them.”
“Stop them? Maybe you should tell me what this fight is about,” Tarneg said.
“I think I know,” Danug said. Everyone turned to look at the tall young man. “It’s because of the raid.”
“What raid?” Tarneg said. This was sounding serious.
“Some people were talking about making a raid on a Sungaea Camp,” Danug explained.
“You know raiding has been banned. The Councils have been trying to negotiate a friendship fire and establish trading with the Sungaea. I hate to think of the trouble a raid would cause,” Tarneg said. “Whose idea was this raid?”
“I don’t know,” Danug said. “One day everyone was talking about it. Someone discovered a Sungaea Camp a few days’ away. The plan was to say they were going hunting, and instead go and wreck their Camp, steal their food, and chase them away. I told them I wasn’t interested, and I thought they were stupid to do it. They would just make trouble for themselves and everyone else. Besides, we stopped at a Sungaea Camp on our way here. A brother and sister had just died. Maybe it isn’t the same Camp, but they probably all are feeling bad about it. I didn’t think it was right to raid them.”
“Danug can do that,” Druwez said. “No one’s going to call him a coward, because no one wants to fight him. But when Dalen said he wasn’t going on any raid, either, then a whole bunch of them started saying he was afraid of a fight. That’s when he said he’d show them he wasn’t afraid to fight anyone. We said we’d come with him so they wouldn’t gang up on him.”
“Which one of you is Dalen?” Tarneg said. The boy with the broken tooth and bleeding mouth stepped forward. “Who are you?” he said to the other one, whose eye was already turning black and blue. He refused to answer.
“They call him Cluve. He’s Chaleg’s nephew,” Druwez volunteered.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Cluve said sullenly. “You’re going to put all the blame on me just because Druwez is your brother.”
“No, I wasn’t going to put blame on anyone. I’m going to let the Council of Brothers decide. You can all expect to get a summons from them, including my brother. Now, I think you’d better clean yourselves up. If you go back to the Meeting looking like that, everyone will know you were fighting, and no one would be able to keep it from the Sisters. I don’t have to tell you what will happen to you if they find out you were fighting about a raid.”
The young men hurried to leave before Tarneg changed his mind, but they left in two groups, one with Cluve, the other with Dalen. Tarneg made a point of noticing who went with whom. Then the three of them continued back to the Meeting.
“There’s something I’d be interested in knowing, if you don’t mind,” Jondalar said. “Why would you let the Council of Brothers decide what to do with these young men? Would they really keep it from the Council of Sisters?”
“The Sisters have no tolerance for fighting, and won’t listen to any excuses, but many of the Brothers went on raids when they were young men, or were in a fight or two, just to make a little excitement. Didn’t you ever fight someone when you weren’t supposed to, Jondalar?”
“Well, yes, I guess I did. And got caught, too.”
“The Brothers are more lenient, especially toward the one who was fighting in a good cause, even though Dalen should have told someone about the raid rather than fighting to show them he wasn’t afraid. It seems easier for a man to condone that sort of thing. The Sisters say fighting always leads to more fighting, and that may be true, but CI uve was right about one thing,” Tarneg said. “Druwez is my brother. He wasn’t really encouraging the fight, he was trying to help out his friend. I hate to see him get into trouble for that.”
“Did you ever fight anyone, Tarneg?” Danug asked.
The future headman looked at his younger cousin for a moment, then nodded. “Once or twice, but not too many men want to challenge me. Like you, I’m bigger than most. Sometimes those competitions are more fight than anyone admits to, though.”
