Viper's Daughter Page 14

  ‘Where’s Naiginn?’ demanded Torak, gripping Renn’s shoulders so fiercely she winced. ‘Did he hurt you? Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine!’ she lied.

  She saw him notice the marks on her neck, her burnt and bloodied feet. His eyes turned flinty. ‘He did that.’

  ‘I told you I’m all right. There’s blood on your face—’

  ‘Not mine, the mammut’s. Where is he? Where’s Naiginn?’

  ‘I don’t know but he can’t be far, we’ve got to get out of sight! Come on, there’s a thicket down there.’

  A green slope fell steeply to a willow-fringed stream where Renn had been hiding when she’d heard the mammuts. Dusk was gathering under the trees. She watched Torak fling down his weapons and sleeping-sack and take in the marks of power she’d daubed on stones to ward off Naiginn.

  ‘When did you last see him?’ he said brusquely.

  ‘Back near the coast.’ Swiftly she told him how Naiginn had hunted her through the demon breath. ‘I saw something coming. It was a mammut. He shot it with a poisoned arrow, that’s what sent it mad. He can’t be far, but if he was close, Rip and Rek would have warned us.’

  Torak glanced at the ravens wheeling overhead.

  Wolf was prowling the slope above the thicket. He hadn’t come near them, and with a pang Renn realized why. ‘Wolf’s angry with me.’

  Torak drew a waterskin from inside his parka and crouched by the stream to fill it. ‘He doesn’t understand why you left. It’ll take him a while to trust you again.’

  ‘What about you? Do you trust me?’

  ‘…Of course I do.’

  But she’d caught his hesitation. She sat on a boulder and clutched her knees to stop them shaking.

  ‘How did you find me?’ said Torak.

  ‘I heard Wolf howling.’ Plunging her feet in the icy water, she grabbed sedge and rubbed a blister on her heel. It hurt. Good, it was what she deserved. Because of her they were stuck on this horrible island and that mammut had nearly killed Torak—

  ‘Renn, stop it!’ He gripped her hands in his.

  ‘I left you,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘Yes, you did. Twice.’

  ‘I thought I was saving you, but he made it all up!’

  ‘You took my food too, don’t forget that.’ He was almost smiling. ‘I’m not angry with you, I’m angry with him!’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She could see that he believed that. But words aren’t feelings, and she wondered whether deep down in his heart, it was really true.

  They ate some of Shamik’s ptarmigan tongues and a few mushrooms they found upstream. Sunset soon, the sky glowing red.

  Now that Renn had washed the grime off her face it had lost that stretched, hunted look which Torak found unbearable. As he watched her cutting a strip off the hem of her robe so that she could move more freely, he could almost believe that she was the same girl he had loved in the Forest.

  They divided his weapons between them. He gave her his quiver and bow, and kept his slingshot, axe and slingstones. He wanted to give her his knife, but she said she could make one from some black flint and an antler she’d found by the stream.

  ‘You’d better have my boots,’ he said.

  ‘Why should you go barefoot instead of me?’

  ‘Because.’ He was already stuffing them with fern fronds to make them fit. ‘And I won’t be barefoot, Tanugeak gave me salmon-skin socks. I can tie them on with what you’ve cut off your robe.’

  ‘That won’t work.’

  ‘Yes, it will.’ In the end he wore her down and she accepted his boots, although first he brought out his birch-bark cone of pine salve and she smeared some on her feet, while he did her neck and wrists. He was as gentle as he knew how, but she bit her lips in pain. In his mind he grabbed Naiginn by the hair and beat his handsome face to a pulp…

  ‘I’m still hungry,’ said Renn.

  They agreed to save the rest of the ptarmigan tongues, and gathered more mushrooms and some lingonberries they found on the slope. Lingonberries were Wolf’s favourites, but when Renn offered him a handful he gave her a hard stare and trotted away.

  Rip and Rek stalked about hoping for scraps, then flew off to the fallen mammut on the other side of the ridge.

  Renn asked Torak how he’d found the Island and he told her about spirit walking in the sea-eagle, and Marupai and Shamik. ‘We got separated in the fog. If they made it ashore, they’ll be on the other side of the ice mountain.’

  They were silent. Then Torak said what they’d both been thinking. ‘If you heard Wolf howling, so did Naiginn.’

  She nodded. ‘He’ll know you’re on the Island.’

  ‘I think he wanted me here all the time.’ He told her about the waymarkers Naiginn had left for him.

  Again Renn’s face became shadowed. ‘He thinks he can make me do what he wants by threatening to hurt you. That’s what he’s done all along. He’ll do it again.’

  ‘He won’t get the chance.’

  ‘He’s a demon, Torak. My mother put an ice demon in her child. Think what that means! He’s utterly ruthless. And some of his arrows are poisoned.’

  Torak remembered Naiginn’s pale-blue eyes with their frozen black cores. ‘Why didn’t we see it sooner? My scar itching, and yours and Wolf’s. Why couldn’t we tell he’s a demon?’

  ‘My mother wove a masking spell to hide what he is. That’s why he needs me. It’s also a binding spell, it can only be broken in the ice cave where he was born and only by a Mage of his bone kin.’ She was shaking her head. ‘All summer he was watching us in the Forest. He tricked me into believing I wanted to hurt you – and I never sensed it! Fine Mage I turn out to be.’

  ‘You were up against your mother’s spell. She was one of the most powerful Mages who ever lived.’

  Renn wasn’t listening. ‘That moment when he stopped pretending: when I saw what he really is… He hates all living creatures. To him we’re merely things. If we get in his way—’

  ‘He’ll regret it.’

  ‘No, Torak, listen! There’s something you have to know. Marupai isn’t his father. His real father was a Soul-Eater – from the Seal Clan.’

  He looked at her.

  ‘You know what that means,’ she said. ‘Your father’s mother was Seal Clan, so he’s not only my bone kin, he’s yours. If you killed him you’d break one of our oldest laws—’

  ‘I’ve broken other laws.’

  ‘Not this one. Killing your bone kin means being cast out for ever. Not even Fin-Kedinn could speak to you. Not even me.’

  She was right, but he didn’t want to hear it. Springing to his feet, he prowled up and down. ‘I won’t need to kill him,’ he said abruptly. ‘We’ll leave him here on the Island. Winter soon, he won’t last long; not even if he is the best hunter in the Far North.’ An unwelcome thought occurred to him. ‘But how do we get away? My boat was smashed on the coast.’

  ‘We’ll take his. If we get to higher ground I think I can work out where he left it. Although he might guess that’s where we’ll go.’

  ‘Good,’ snarled Torak. ‘How far to his boat?’

  ‘Let’s climb to those boulders upstream and take a look.’

  The ice mountain was closer than Torak had thought. It glared at the crimson sky, stony hills lapping its feet like a black Sea.

  Renn pointed east of the hills to a smoky charcoal plain. ‘That’s the way I came.’

  Torak’s hand tightened on his knife as he thought of Naiginn hunting her across that burning land. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Not yet,’ she said in an altered voice. She was staring back in the direction they’d come.

  Torak saw the rocky bank he’d scrambled up to escape the mammut. The carcass of the great beast lay at the bottom, by the river. To his surprise, the herd had clustered around it, as if standing guard.

  Renn was staring intently at the mammuts. Her face was still, her dark
eyes opaque. Torak knew that look. It meant she was doing what Mages do: reading hidden patterns and signs.

  ‘Renn?’ he said quietly. ‘Why can’t we set off now?’

  She came to herself and met his gaze. In the fierce red light her expression was resolute and defiant. ‘Something I have to do first.’

  The pack-sister had offered Wolf lingonberries but he’d ignored her. Did she think she could abandon Tall Tailless twice, then make it all right with berries?

  She had split up the pack, she had forced them to follow her to this terrible place full of demons. If Wolf’s mate had done that he would have grabbed her muzzle in his jaws, slammed her to the ground and growled till she said sorry.

  But there’d been no muzzle-grabbing between Tall Tailless and his mate and she hadn’t said sorry. They were arguing in tailless talk, Tall Tailless waving his forepaws, the pack-sister stubbornly shaking her head. Wolf left them to it and trotted up the ridge.

  Down by the Fast Wet the long-noses were rumbling as they gathered round the carcass of the fallen one. They sounded sad, and Wolf smelt that the bull had been their brother. They were grieving just as deeply as wolves grieve for their own – but in a different way, stroking the body with tusks and trunks, touching its ears and eyes.

  Wolf saw a dim, shaggy shadow rise from the carcass. It was the Walking Breath of the fallen bull, but it didn’t yet know that it was no longer alive.

  Awkwardly it raised its trunk and touched the cheek of the lead female. She didn’t feel it. Wolf watched her wade into the wet where the bull’s broken tusk lay. Wrapping her trunk around it, she carried the tusk to the carcass and laid it on top. Puzzled, Wolf saw other long-noses piling on willow and sedge.

  The Hot Bright Eye went to sleep, the Dark came, and still the bull’s Walking Breath stayed watching the herd. At last Wolf saw its head droop: it understood. Plodding across the Fast Wet, it glanced back for the final time, then sadly walked away.

  Soon the herd also crossed the Fast Wet, and stood in the sedge and went to sleep. Their grief hung heavy in the air. Their togetherness reminded Wolf of his pack. He felt a howl begin, but he didn’t let it out. His mate and cubs were too far away to hear.

  The ravens were hopping about on the covered-up carcass. Unable to get at it, they cast hopeful glances at Wolf: Come and help! Wolf was hungry, but the long-noses were too close. He’d seen how fast they could move.

  Tall Tailless and the pack-sister came up behind him. Tall Tailless asked Wolf to stay and keep watch, but in a way that told Wolf that he didn’t like what he was about to do. Then to Wolf’s astonishment and alarm, Tall Tailless and the pack-sister began climbing down to the carcass.

  ‘Hurry up!’ whispered Torak, jerking his head at the slumbering herd.

  The night wasn’t dark, but Renn hesitated before the shadowy carcass. The herd had covered it completely, she couldn’t tell which end was which.

  Torak lifted a branch to expose a shaggy leg.

  ‘No,’ she muttered. ‘It has to be the head.’

  ‘Why? And why this mammut? Why can’t we use hair snagged on rocks?’

  ‘Because Naiginn shot this one, that’s why.’

  He moved to the broken-off tusk at the other end of the carcass and raised it with an effort. ‘Head’s under here…’ Renn heard the strain in his voice.

  Uff! warned Wolf from the top of the bank.

  Across the river a mammut stood in the shallows, flapping its ears. Renn couldn’t see its eyes but she felt its stare.

  ‘Hurry!’ whispered Torak, still raising the tusk.

  Ducking underneath, she breathed the sickly-sweet smell of death. Her groping fingers touched a huge rough tongue, a jagged stump of tusk. She found the top of the domed head with its forest of coarse hair, grabbed a handful and hacked with Torak’s knife.

  ‘That’s it, let’s go!’ he hissed.

  ‘I need more!’ She stuffed clumps down her front.

  Chuk-chuk-chuk! echoed the ravens’ warnings. Wolf was barking frantically. The entire herd was awake and splashing towards them.

  Seizing Renn’s arm, Torak ran for the gully. A bellow, terrifyingly close. Torak swung himself up, reached for her wrists and hoisted her to safety.

  Panting, they lay side by side, listening to the mammuts’ agitated rumbling below.

  Torak glanced at Renn. ‘Tell me you got enough hair.’

  They burst into jittery laughter.

  Back at the stream Renn said she had to burn the hair to ash – but Torak said no, fire was too risky.

  ‘Just a few clumps of hair,’ she protested. ‘No one would see that.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said drily. ‘Because burning hair doesn’t make thick smoke you can spot three daywalks away.’ But she didn’t back down, so with a sigh he tossed her his tinder pouch.

  He found a slab of basalt and she woke a spark on it with his strike-fire, then burnt the hair while he scattered the smoke with a bough. After grinding the ash to fine dark powder, she mixed half with earthblood, bloodstone and pine salve. Some of this paste she rubbed on Torak’s forehead and breastbone; he did the same for her. He also smeared a little between Wolf’s ears, where he couldn’t lick it off.

  ‘This is to protect us from demons, yes?’ said Torak.

  ‘Especially Naiginn. He doesn’t like earthblood or bloodstone, but he’s frightened of mammuts. He flinched when ash touched his boots.’

  By now they were both exhausted, but Torak insisted on making Renn a knife by slotting her flint flake in a piece of antler. Having no pine-pitch for glue, he tied the blade in place with sinew from his sewing kit, wetting it first so that it would shrink tight as it dried. He was about to wind more sinew round the handle when Renn held out some strands of mammut hair. ‘Use these.’

  ‘I thought you’d burnt it all.’

  ‘I kept some back. I’ve a feeling I’ll need it.’

  He handed her the finished knife.

  ‘There’s something else,’ she said in a low voice. ‘The riddle. I told you about the island of birds. And you found the forest in the treeless land.’

  ‘Which leaves the third part: Save the past by burning the present.’

  ‘At Waigo I had a vision. I saw the Deep Past: people hunting mammuts till there were none left. The mammuts on this island… They’re the last of their kind. I don’t know what the third part means, but I think “the past” means the mammuts.’

  ‘But – the riddle is about finding what we seek, and I’ve found you, so why—’

  ‘I don’t think this is only about us, Torak. After I left the Forest I saw my mother in a dream. That couldn’t have been one of Naiginn’s tricks.’

  He frowned. ‘I just remembered something. The night Dark told me why you left, we saw the First Tree. It was pointing north. Naiginn couldn’t have done that either. What does it mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. But whatever happens, I’ll be ready.’

  While they were talking, she’d sewn a pouch from the remains of Torak’s headband. He watched her fill it with the rest of the powdered mammut ash, her face stern and determined.

  He said, ‘You think you’re going to need that too.’

  ‘I know I am.’ She handed him back his sewing kit and yawned.

  ‘When did you last sleep?’

  ‘Can’t remember. What about you?’

  ‘Same.’

  They were silent, thinking of Naiginn.

  ‘The mammuts might keep him away,’ said Renn.

  ‘And Wolf will warn us, and Rip and Rek.’

  They found a hollow under some boulders and turned it into a rough shelter with willow branches. Renn dragged in more springy armfuls and laid soft ferns on top, then Torak slit open his sleeping-sack to cover them both.

  By the time he’d crawled in, Renn was whiffling in her sleep. Fitting his body around her, he buried his face in her hair. He could hear Rip and Rek preening in a nearby tree and Wolf snuffing the air. Feeling more at peace than
he had since leaving the Forest, he tightened his arms around Renn.

  He was resolving to stay awake and keep watch when he fell asleep.

  ‘We’ve come too far west,’ panted Renn. ‘I don’t remember this.’

  Like Torak she was wearing her eyeshield, so he couldn’t see her expression, but he heard the apprehension in her voice.

  They’d set off after a brief unrefreshing sleep and had been climbing all day. They could feel the chill breath of the ice mountain, but this charred ravine hid it from view.

  The rocks were treacherous with black ice, and Torak paused to strap on his ‘raven claws’. It began to snow. Soon it was falling thick and fast. Wolf loped ahead and disappeared.

  Torak caught the muted roar of water, which grew suddenly louder as they rounded a spur. The ice mountain towered over them, grey with rubble through the whirling snow. From a gash in its underbelly thundered a murky torrent.

  ‘This feels bad!’ Renn shouted above the roar.

  ‘This stream heads east,’ Torak shouted back. ‘If we follow it we’ll reach the coast. Can you find his boat from there?’

  She wasn’t listening, she was staring at the gash in the mountain’s belly. Around it the ice was jagged and dark as rotten teeth, rocks and pebbles skittering down from above.

  ‘The ice cave where Naiginn was made,’ she yelled. ‘He said there was another way in!’

  ‘You think this is it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Then we can’t be far from the coast!’

  ‘Maybe, but—’ Her face changed. ‘Behind you!’

  A hand wrenched Torak’s arm violently up and over his head. His shoulder cracked, pain exploding, knocking him off his feet. As he struggled to his knees he heard Renn screaming his name. He saw Naiginn dragging her into the ice cave’s rotten jaws.

  The last thing Torak saw before he blacked out were those jaws crashing shut behind them.

  The roof of the tunnel struck Renn a dizzying blow on the temple.

  ‘Told you to duck,’ snarled Naiginn. ‘And this time no tricks.’ Jerking the rope that bound her wrists, he dragged her deeper into the freezing, echoing gloom beneath the ice.