Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Page 43

  Torak shivered.

  He heard Renn’s footsteps crunching through the snow, and called to her. ‘You made an offering. So did I.’

  When she didn’t answer, he added, ‘Sorry I snapped at you. It’s just . . . Well. Sorry.’

  Still no answer.

  He heard her crunch towards the shelter – then circle behind it.

  He sat up. ‘Renn?’

  The footsteps stopped.

  His heart began to pound. It wasn’t Renn.

  As quietly as he could, he wriggled out of his sleeping-sack, pulled on his boots, and reached for his axe.

  The footsteps came closer. Whoever it was stood only an arm’s length away, separated by a flimsy wall of spruce.

  For a moment there was silence. Then – very loud in the stillness – Torak heard wet, bubbling breath.

  His skin prickled. He thought of the victims of last summer’s sickness. The murderous light in their eyes; the slime catching in their throats . . .

  He thought of Renn, alone by the river. He crawled towards the mouth of the shelter.

  Clouds covered the moon, and the night was black. He caught a whiff of carrion. Heard again that bubbling breath.

  ‘Who are you?’ he called into the dark.

  The breathing stopped. The stillness was absolute. The stillness of something waiting in the dark.

  Torak scrambled out of the shelter and stood, clutching his axe with both hands. Smoke stung his eyes, but for a heartbeat he glimpsed a huge form melting into the shadows.

  A cry rang out behind him – and he spun round to see Renn staggering through the trees. ‘By the river!’ she panted. ‘It stank, it was horrible!’

  ‘It was here,’ he told her. ‘It came close. I heard it.’

  Back to back, they stared into the Forest. Whatever it was, it had gone, leaving only a whiff of carrion and a dread memory of bubbling breath.

  Sleep was now impossible. They fed the fire, then sat up together, waiting for dawn.

  ‘What do you think it was?’ said Renn.

  Torak shook his head. ‘But I know one thing. If we’d had Wolf with us, it would never have got that close.’

  They stared into the fire. With Wolf gone, they hadn’t only lost a friend. They’d lost someone to keep them from harm.

  THREE

  They heard nothing more that night, but in the morning they found tracks. Huge, man-like – but without any toes.

  The tracks were nothing like the booted feet of the men who’d captured Wolf, but they headed the same way.

  ‘Now there are three of them,’ said Renn.

  Torak didn’t reply. They had no choice but to follow.

  The sky was heavy with snow, and the Forest was full of shadows. With each step they dreaded seeing a figure lurching towards them. Demon? Soul-Eater? Or one of the Hidden People, whose backs are hollow as rotten trees . . .

  The wind picked up. Torak watched the snow drifting across the tracks, and thought of Wolf. ‘If this wind keeps up, the trail won’t last much longer.’

  Renn craned her neck to follow the flight of a raven. ‘If only we could see what it can.’

  Torak gave the bird a thoughtful stare.

  They began their descent into the next valley through a silent birchwood. ‘Look,’ said Torak. ‘Your otter’s been here before us.’ He pointed to a line of webbed prints and a long, smooth furrow in the snow. The otter had bounded down the slope, then slid on its belly, as otters love to do.

  Renn smiled, and for a moment, they pictured a happy otter taking a snow-slide.

  But the otter had never reached the frozen lake at the bottom of the hill. In the lee of a boulder twenty paces above the shore, Torak found a scattering of fish-scales and a shred of rawhide. ‘They trapped it,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ said Renn. ‘An otter’s a hunter . . .’

  Torak shook his head. It didn’t make sense.

  Suddenly, Renn tensed. ‘Hide!’ she whispered, pulling him behind the boulder.

  Through the trees, Torak caught movement on the lake. A creature snuffling, swaying, searching for something. It was very tall, with a shaggy pelt and a trailing, matted mane. Torak smelt carrion, and heard a wet bubbling of breath. Then it turned, and he saw a filthy one-eyed face as rough as bark. He gasped.

  ‘It can’t be!’ whispered Renn.

  They stared at one another. ‘The Walker!’

  The autumn before last, their paths had crossed with this terrifying, mad old man. They’d been lucky to escape with their lives.

  ‘What’s he doing so far from his valley?’ breathed Torak as they shrank further behind the boulder.

  ‘And how do we get past without being seen?’ hissed Renn.

  ‘Maybe – we don’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Maybe he saw who took Wolf!’

  ‘Have you forgotten,’ she said in a furious whisper, ‘that he nearly killed us? That he threw my quiver in the stream, and threatened to snap my bow?’ It was unclear which she considered worse: threatening them, or her bow.

  ‘But he didn’t, did he?’ countered Torak. ‘He let us go.

  And Renn. What if he saw something?’

  ‘So you’re just going to ask him, are you? Torak, he’s mad! Whatever he says, we couldn’t believe him!’

  Torak opened his mouth to reply . . .

  . . . and around them the snow exploded.

  ‘Give it back!’ roared the Walker, brandishing his green slate knife. ‘She took his fire! She tricked him! The Walker wants it back!’

  ‘The Walker has tricked the tricksters!’ he bellowed, pinning them against the boulder. ‘Now they must give it back!’

  His mane was a tangle of beard-moss, his scrawny limbs as gnarled as roots. Loops of green slime swung like creepers from his shattered nose and his rotten, toothless mouth.

  He’d left his cape on the ice to fool them, and was naked but for a hide loincloth stiff with filth, foot-bindings of mouldy wovenbark, and a rancid jerkin made from the skin of a red deer, which he’d ripped from the carcass, and then forgotten to clean. The tail, legs and hooves swung wildly as he waved his knife in their faces.

  ‘She took it!’ he shouted, spattering them with slime. ‘She tricked him!’

  ‘I – I didn’t take anything,’ stammered Renn, hiding her bow behind her back.

  ‘Don’t you remember us?’ said Torak. ‘We never stole anything!’

  ‘Not she!’ snarled the Walker. ‘She!’ Quick as an eel, a grimy hand flashed out and seized Torak by the hair. His head was twisted back, his weapons tossed in the snow. ‘The sideways one,’ breathed the Walker, blasting him with an eye-watering stink. ‘Her fault that Narik is lost!’

  ‘But we didn’t do anything!’ pleaded Renn. ‘Let him go!’

  ‘Axe!’ spat the Walker, fixing her with his bloodshot eye. ‘Knife! Arrows! Bow! In the snow, quick quick quick!’

  Renn did as she was told.

  The Walker pressed his knife against Torak’s windpipe, cutting off his air. ‘She gives him her fire,’ he snarled, ‘or he slits the wolf boy’s throat! And he’ll do it, oh yes!’

  Black spots darted before Torak’s eyes. ‘Renn –’ he gasped, ‘strike-fire –’

  ‘Take it!’ cried Renn, fumbling at her tinder pouch.

  Deftly the old man caught the stone, and threw Torak to the ground. ‘The Walker has fire!’ he exulted. ‘Beautiful fire! Now he can find Narik!’

  That would have been the time to run. Torak knew it, and so did Renn. Neither of them moved.

  ‘The sideways one,’ panted Torak, rubbing his throat.

  ‘Who is she?’ said Renn.

  The old man turned on her, and she dodged a flailing hoof. ‘But the Walker is mad,’ he sneered, ‘so who can believe him?’

  Seizing one of the deer legs, he sucked at the festering hide. ‘The sideways one,’ he mumbled. ‘Not alone, oh no, oh no. Twisted legs and flying thoughts.’ He hawked and spat, narrowly missing T
orak. ‘Big as as a tree, crushing the little creatures, the slitherers and scurriers too weak to fight back.’ A spasm of pain twisted his ruined features. ‘Worst,’ he whispered, ‘the Masked One. Cruellest of the cruel.’

  Renn threw Torak a horrified look.

  ‘But the Walker follows,’ hissed the old man. ‘Oh yes, oh yes, he listens in the cold!’

  ‘Where are they going?’ said Torak. ‘Is Wolf still alive?’

  ‘The Walker knows nothing of wolves! They seek the empty lands! The Far North!’ He clawed the crusted tattoos on his throat. ‘First you’re cold, then you’re not. Then you’re hot, then you die.’ His eye lit on Torak and he grinned. ‘They are going to open the Door!’

  Torak swallowed. ‘What door? Where?’

  The old man cried out, and beat his forehead with his fists. ‘But where is Narik? They keep him and keep him, and Narik is lost!’ He turned and blundered off towards the lake.

  Torak and Renn exchanged glances – then snatched up their weapons, and raced after him.

  Out on the ice, the Walker retrieved his shaggy cape, and resumed his snuffling search. One of his foot-bindings came loose and blew away.

  Torak brought it back – and recoiled. The old man’s foot was a blackened, frostbitten, toeless stump. ‘What happened?’

  The Walker shrugged. ‘What always happens if you lose your fire. It bit his toes, so he cut them off.’

  ‘What bit them?’ said Renn.

  ‘It! It!’ He beat at the wind with his fists.

  Suddenly his face changed, and for a moment Torak saw the man he’d been before the accident that had taken his eye and his wits. ‘It can never rest, the wind, or it would cease to be. That’s why it’s angry. That’s why it bit the Walker’s toes.’ He cackled. ‘Ach, they tasted bad! Not even the Walker could eat them! He had to spit them out and leave them for the foxes!’

  Torak’s gorge rose. Renn clamped both hands over her mouth.

  ‘So now the Walker keeps falling over. But still he searches for his Narik.’ He ground his knuckle into his empty eye socket.

  Narik, thought Torak. The mouse who’d been the old man’s beloved companion. ‘Did they take Narik too?’ he said, determined to keep him talking.

  The Walker shook his head sadly. ‘Sometimes Narik goes away. He always comes back, in new fur. But not this time.’

  ‘New fur?’ queried Renn.

  ‘Yes, yes!’ the Walker said tetchily. ‘Lemming. Vole. Mouse. Doesn’t matter what, still the same Narik!’

  ‘Oh,’ said Renn. ‘I see. New fur.’

  ‘Only this time,’ said the Walker, his mouth ragged with grief, ‘Narik never came back!’ He staggered away across the ice, howling for his fosterling.

  Almost with reluctance, they left him, and made their way into the woods on the other side of the lake.

  ‘He’ll be better now that he has fire,’ Renn said quietly.

  ‘No he won’t,’ said Torak. ‘Not without Narik.’

  She sighed. ‘Narik’s dead. An owl probably ate him for nightmeal.’

  ‘Another Narik, then.’

  ‘He’ll find one.’ She tried to smile. ‘One with new fur.’

  ‘How? How can he track a mouse, with only one eye?’

  ‘Come on. We’d better get going.’

  Torak hesitated. The sun was getting low, the trail fast disappearing beneath windblown snow. And yet – he felt for the Walker. This stinking, angry, mad old man had found one spark of warmth in his life: his Narik, his fosterling. Now that spark was lost.

  Before Renn could protest, Torak dropped his gear and ran back to the lake.

  The old man didn’t glance up, and Torak didn’t speak to him. He put down his head and began looking for signs.

  It didn’t take long to find a lemming burrow. He spotted weasel tracks, and followed them to a clump of willow on the shore. There he crouched, listening for the small scratchings that told him where the lemmings were burrowing.

  With its many knife-prick entrance holes, their winter shelter reminded him of an extremely small badger’s sett. Peering at the snow, he found one hole rimed with tiny ice-arrows of frozen breath. That meant the occupant was at home.

  He marked the spot with two crossed willow twigs, and ran to fetch the old man. ‘Walker,’ he said gently.

  The old man swung round.

  ‘Narik. He’s over there.’

  The Walker squinted at him. Then he followed Torak back to the crossed sticks.

  As Torak watched, he knelt and began clearing the snow with feather-light gentleness, stooping to blow away the final flakes.

  There, curled in its burrow on a neat bed of dried grass, lay a lemming about the size of Torak’s palm: a soft, heaving ball of black and orange fur.

  ‘Narik,’ breathed the Walker.

  The lemming woke with a start, sprang to its feet, and gave a fearsome hiss to frighten off the intruder.

  The Walker grinned, and extended his big, grimy hand.

  The lemming fluffed up its fur and hissed again.

  The Walker didn’t move.

  The lemming sat down and scratched its ear vigorously with its hind paw. Then it waddled meekly onto the leathery palm, curled up, and went back to sleep.

  Torak left them without a word.

  Back on the shore, Renn handed him his weapons and pack. ‘That was a good thing you did,’ she said.

  Torak shrugged. Then he grinned. ‘Narik’s grown a bit since we saw him. Now he’s a lemming.’

  She laughed.

  They hadn’t gone far when they heard the crunch of snow, and the Walker’s angry muttering.

  ‘Oh, no!’ said Renn.

  ‘But I helped him!’ said Torak.

  ‘Giving?’ roared the Walker. In one hand he brandished his knife; the other clutched Narik to his chest. ‘Do they think they can just give, and wander off? Do they think the Walker has forgotten the old ways?’

  ‘Walker, we’re sorry,’ said Torak, ‘but –’

  ‘A gift looks for a return! That is the way of things! Now the Walker must give back!’

  Torak and Renn wondered what was coming next.

  ‘Black ice,’ wheezed the Walker, ‘white bears, red blood! They seek the eye of the viper!’

  Torak caught his breath. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Oh, he’ll find out,’ said the Walker, ‘the foxes will tell him.’

  Suddenly he bent like a wind-snapped tree, and the look he gave Torak was wise, and fraught with such pain that it pierced Torak’s souls. ‘To enter the eye,’ he breathed, ‘is to enter the dark! You may find your way out again, Wolf boy; but once you’ve gone in, you’ll never be whole. It’ll keep a part of you down there. Down in the dark.’

  FOUR

  The Dark crept over the Forest, but Wolf didn’t even notice. He was caught in a Dark of his own: of rage and pain and fear.

  The tip of his tail ached where it had been stamped on in the fight, and his forepaw hurt from the bite of the big cold claw. He couldn’t move at all, because he was squashed onto a strange, sliding tree, which the taillesses were dragging over the Bright Soft Cold. He couldn’t even move to lick his wounds. He was flattened beneath a tangled deerhide that was pressing down on him hard. It was unlike any hide he’d ever encountered. It had lots of holes in it, but somehow it managed to be stronger than an auroch’s leg-bone.

  The growls inside him were fighting to get free, but more hide was tangled round his muzzle, so he couldn’t let them out. That was the worst of it: that he couldn’t growl or snap or howl. It hurt to hear Tall Tailless howling for him, and not be able to howl back.

  Sharp and small inside his head, Wolf saw Tall Tailless and the female, running after him. They were coming. Wolf knew that as surely as he knew his own scent. Tall Tailless was his pack-brother, and a wolf never abandons his pack-brother.

  But would Tall Tailless be able to find him? He was clever, but he wasn’t at all good at finding, because he wasn’t a n
ormal wolf. Oh, he smelt of wolf (as well as lots of other things besides), and he talked like a wolf, even if he couldn’t hit the highest yips. And he had the light silver eyes, and the spirit of a wolf. But he moved slowly on his hind legs, and was very bad at catching scents.

  Suddenly the sliding tree shuddered to a halt. Wolf heard the harsh bark of tailless talk; then the crunch of the Bright Soft Cold as they began to dig their Den.

  Behind him on the tree, the otter woke up, and started a piteous mewing. On and on she went, until Wolf wanted to shake her in his jaws to make her stop.

  He heard a tailless approaching from behind. He was too squashed to turn and see, but he caught the smell of fish. The otter stopped mewing, and started making scrunching noises. That was a relief.

  A few lopes ahead, the Bright Beast-that-Bites-Hot snarled into life. Wolf watched the taillesses gather round it.

  They bewildered him. Until now, he’d thought he knew their kind. At least, he knew the pack that Tall Tailless ran with, the pack that smelt of ravens. But these – these were bad.

  Why had they attacked him? Taillesses are not the enemies of wolves. The enemies of wolves are bears and lynxes, who sneak into Dens to kill wolf cubs. Not taillesses.

  Of course, Wolf had met some bad ones before now; and even the good ones sometimes growled and waved their forepaws when he got too close to their meat. But to attack without warning? No true wolf would do this.

  Straining ears and eyes and nose, Wolf watched the bad pack crouch round the Bright Beast. He swivelled his squashed ears to listen, and sniffed, trying to sort their tangled smells.

  The slender female smelt of fresh leaves, but her tongue was black and pointed as a viper’s, and her sideways smile was as empty as a carcass pecked by ravens.

  The other female, the big one with the twisted hind legs, was clever, but Wolf sensed that she was unsure of her place in the pack, and unsure of herself. On her overpelt lay a patch of stinking fur. It was the fur of the strange prey which had lured him into the trap.

  The last in the pack was a huge male with long, pale fur on his head and muzzle, and breath that reeked of spruce-blood. He was the worst, because he liked to hurt. He’d laughed as he’d trodden on Wolf’s tail, and cut his pad with the big cold claw.