Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Page 64

Tall Tailless pulled off his beaver-hide overpaws and climbed on in his bare pads. Wolf had often seen him do this, but he still found it disturbing. And Tall Tailless had such strange paws! The toes of his hindpaws were stubby and useless, while his front toes were very long and good at gripping. Wolf watched in admiration as his pack-brother used them to grab juniper branches and haul himself up the slope.

  Suddenly, Tall Tailless disappeared.

  Wolf’s pelt tightened with alarm.

  Then he saw that his pack-brother had found a Den. It was hidden behind the junipers, and it smelt of pine marten and hawk. Wolf gave a disapproving bark. Not here! During the Great Cold, he’d been trapped by the bad taillesses in a Den like this one.

  Tall Tailless stayed on all fours, panting. If he’d had a tail, it would have drooped. If only he didn’t need so many rests!

  Then Wolf remembered when he was a cub, and needed lots of rests himself, and Tall Tailless had carried him in his forepaws.

  Feeling bad, Wolf rubbed against his pack-brother and licked his ear. Tall Tailless was shaking. Wolf smelt pain and anger, chewed up with loneliness and fear.

  Why was this happening? Wolf didn’t understand. Many lopes away, the dogs were angry because they couldn’t find the scent. Where! Where! they yapped. The wind carried the smell of their anger, and that of the young male tailless from the pack which smelt of boar. But why were they hunting Tall Tailless? And why had he left the raven pack? Sometimes a young wolf leaves his pack to start one of his own, but this didn’t feel like that. This felt wrong.

  The lead wolf of the raven pack had spoken harshly in tailless talk. He’d taken his great claw and torn the wolf fur from Tall Tailless’ overpelt: the wolf fur that had been part of Tall Tailless since Wolf first knew him. The lead wolf had done this terrible thing – but underneath, Wolf had sensed his biting sorrow.

  The pack-sister puzzled Wolf even more. She hadn’t tried to stop the pack leader, and she hadn’t come with Tall Tailless.

  What did it mean?

  Down in the valley, the dogs were casting for the scent. His pack-brother couldn’t hear them yet, but Wolf’s fur prickled.

  What is it? Tall Tailless asked with his eyes.

  Wolf glanced at the beloved, furless face. Tall Tailless couldn’t lope much further. Wolf had to make sure that the dogs didn’t find him.

  Grunt-whining softly, he nudged his pack-brother under the chin. I’m sorry, I must leave. Don’t follow. Then he was out of the Den, racing down the slope.

  He flew over the rocks and splashed through the Fast Wet, thrusting it aside with his big paws. Scrambling up the bank, he shook himself dry and set off again. It was good to run freely, without waiting for Tall Tailless, and he felt no fear of the dogs. Compared to a wolf, dogs are like cubs.

  As he ran, he noticed things in the Forest which troubled him. A viper gliding up-Wet with her head held high. An owl feather caught in bracken. An oak tree whispering secrets to its vast and ancient pack. It reminded him of the bad taillesses who’d kept him tied up in the tiny stone Den.

  ‘Where! Where!’ yelped the dogs.

  Wolf forgot the bad taillesses and slowed to a walk.

  He reached the valley bottom, and a tangle of scent trails. Through the trees, he saw the young male from the boar pack, clutching a great claw in his forepaw and stinking of blood-hunger. In the other paw he held a scrap of silver hide which smelt of fish-dog and Tall Tailless. Wolf recognized this as a scrap of Tall Tailless’ old overpelt.

  One of the dogs sniffed the silver pelt to remind herself of the scent.

  Now Wolf understood. The pelt was helping the dogs find his pack-brother. He must take it. Then they would chase him, and he would lead them away from Tall Tailless.

  Wolf’s claws tightened with excitement. He felt the power in his shoulders and haunches, and knew with a fierce joy that he could lope faster than the fastest dog.

  Placing his pads with care, he crept forwards.

  FIVE

  Asmell of earth and decay clogged Torak’s nostrils. The cramped little cave reminded him of the Raven bone-grounds.

  Don’t think about that. Think about staying alive.

  The clamour of dogs had faded. Whatever Wolf had done, it seemed to have worked; but Torak wished he would return. He told himself that Wolf would find him when he was ready.

  Forcing his stiff legs to move, he crawled out and started up the slope. The rocks were slippery with rain. He kept his boots off till his feet grew numb.

  His plan had been to set a false trail north from the Raven camp, then double back and make for the valleys to the south, where he’d lived with Fa. Instead, Aki had forced him into a huge loop up and down the Green River. He was now somewhere on Broken Ridge, not far from where he’d found the red deer antlers.

  His sides ached, and on his forehead the new tattoo throbbed. He found a willow tree, muttered a quick apology, and peeled off a slip of bast. Having chewed it, he smeared the stinging pulp on the wound; then cut a strip of buckskin from his jerkin and tied it round as a headband. It would keep the medicine in place, and hide the outcast tattoo.

  With a jolt, he remembered that he’d used the same medicine on the night Fa was killed. For a moment, it seemed as if everything that had happened since – finding Wolf, meeting Renn and Fin-Kedinn – as if none of that had been real. Here he was alone again, and on the run.

  Before him the ground fell away into dense woods of oak, beech and pine. He caught the distant glint of the Axehandle. Many canoes plied its course, especially during the salmon run. He must stay well back from its banks.

  Keeping to deep cover, he began the descent through willowherb and waist-high bracken. He was light-headed with hunger, but he had no food, no axe, and only three arrows. Somehow he had to eat before he got too weak to run. Somehow he had to find a hidden valley where he could survive on his own. Somehow he had to get rid of the mark of the Soul-Eater and force the clans to take him back . . .

  The task was too huge. He’d never do it.

  Then he remembered something Fin-Kedinn had said the previous moon, when they were gathering bark to make a fishing net. It had been a bitter day like this one, and Torak had stared at the slimy willow wands piled at his feet, wondering how he was ever going to turn them into a net.

  ‘Don’t think about the net,’ Fin-Kedinn had told him. ‘Take a single willow wand and strip it. You can do that, can’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’ He’d learnt how to strip a stick before he was old enough to hold a knife.

  ‘Then do it,’ said the Raven Leader. ‘Step by step. One branch at a time. Don’t think about the net.’

  Now, as Torak felt the rain soaking his buckskins, he nodded. Step by step. Food. Shelter. Yes. Leave the rest till tomorrow.

  He found an elk trail which stayed concealed as it wound east along the valley flank. The rain stopped. The sun came out.

  As he went, he became aware that although the Ravens were lost to him, the Forest was not. ‘Forest,’ he said softly. ‘I’ve always honoured you. Help me survive.’

  The Forest shook the raindrops from its boughs, and told him to look around.

  By the trail he saw a sturdy birch tree with leaves still pleated from the bud. It would give him a quick, strengthening drink. Why hadn’t he thought of that before?

  Asking the tree’s permission, he used his knife to cut a shallow hole in the bark at the base of the trunk. Tree-blood oozed. He stuck a hollow elder stem in the wound to funnel the drips, and tied on a birch-bark cone with honeysuckle, to catch them.

  While the cone was filling, he found a digging stick and dug up some crow garlic. Sticking one bulb in a fork of the birch for the clan guardian, he ate the rest. They made his eyes water, but they warmed him up a bit.

  After that he found some comfrey roots – very acrid and sticky – and, in a boggy hollow, the best of all: a clump of spotted orchid. The roots were so starchy it was like eating glue, but they were the most nourishi
ng food in the Forest, if you couldn’t get meat.

  By now, the cone was brimming. After thanking the tree’s spirit and pressing the bark over the wound to heal it, he drained the cone. The birch-blood tasted cool and dizzyingly sweet. The strength of the Forest became his.

  Food made him feel a little better.

  I can do this, he told himself. I can make dogwood arrows and harden the tips in a fire. I can make willowherb snares, and catch fish with bramble-thorn hooks. The Forest will help me.

  Mid-afternoon was wearing on as he neared the valley bottom, where he had to wade through piles of last autumn’s leaves. His confidence waned. His legs wouldn’t carry him much further.

  With no axe, building a shelter would be hard; but again, the Forest helped. He found a storm-toppled beech which had fallen onto a boulder. It gave him the perfect frame. All he had to do was pile branches on either side and leafmould on top of that. It was well placed, too: on the edge of a willow thicket where he could hide if he had to.

  The air was turning sharp, but he couldn’t risk a fire, so for warmth, he stuffed grass down his jerkin, boots and leggings. It was scratchy, and it tickled when beetles and spiders scuttled out, but it would stop him freezing.

  Like a badger, he dragged armfuls of leaves into the shelter and snuggled under them, relishing the woody tang. After a prayer of thanks to the Forest, he shut his eyes. He was exhausted.

  He was also wide awake.

  Thoughts he’d been avoiding for a night and a day took hold. Like a burr in a wolf’s fur, they wouldn’t let go.

  Outcast. Clanless.

  How could he be clanless?

  He thought of the garlic he’d put in the tree as an offering for the clan guardian. But if he had no clan, he had no guardian. No guardian. That made him feel breathless. How could anyone survive without a guardian?

  His fingers touched the scar that cut through his ‘clan-tattoo’. He couldn’t remember getting it; scars weren’t something you bothered about, everyone had them. He had one on his forearm from the night the bear attacked, and another on his calf from the boar’s tusk. Renn had one on her hand from a tokoroth bite, and on her foot from stamping on a flint shard when she was three. Fin-Kedinn had lots from hunting accidents and fights when he was young, and the big, puckered scar on his thigh from the bear.

  Scowling, Torak burrowed deeper into the leaves. Don’t think about the Ravens. Think about Fa, and why he never told you. Think about your mother, and why she declared you clanless.

  A gust of wind stirred the willows, and they moaned. In the distance, Torak heard the tuneless bellowing of an abandoned elk. In early summer, the Forest rang with their miserable cries. Their mothers, unable to look after last summer’s young as well as a newborn calf, abruptly rejected the older ones, driving them away with savage kicks. For a moon or so, the young elk blundered about, seeking comfort from any large creature they met, until they were killed by hunters, or learned to fend for themselves.

  I want my mother, bellowed the elk.

  Torak squeezed his eyes shut.

  He knew so little about his mother, and yet the thought of her had always been with him: a kernel of warmth, even through the bleakest times. He had loved her almost without thinking. He had believed that she had loved him. But to have declared him clanless . . .

  It felt as if she’d abandoned him.

  Where do I go now? he thought. Where do I belong?

  Another gust, and the willows replied. You belong here. In the Forest.

  Listening to them, he fell into sleep.

  With a jolt, he fell out of it.

  Voices. Above him on the slope.

  He lay rigid, heart pounding.

  Then he thought, if they were hunting, they wouldn’t be talking.

  Crawling out as quietly as he could, he shouldered his quiver and bow and dismantled his shelter, sweeping the area around it with crushed garlic leaves to mask his scent. He crept into the willows. Shadows were lengthening, but the first stars weren’t yet out. He hadn’t slept long.

  The voices came nearer, then stopped fifty paces above him. Through the branches, he spotted a Viper hunting party on the elk trail he’d used earlier. No dogs. That was something. And he’d swept the trail clear of tracks. Hadn’t he?

  It wasn’t only Viper Clan. A party of Ravens seemed to have met them on the trail. He saw Thull, Sialot, Fin-Kedinn. Renn.

  It gave him a sick feeling to be peering at them like a stranger; to be unable to go to them.

  He watched the younger Viper men wait respectfully for Fin-Kedinn to speak, then preen themselves as he admired their roe buck kill. He saw two Viper children shyly eyeing Renn, who pretended not to notice as she polished her bow with a handful of crushed hazelnuts.

  Their voices reached him. They were talking about Aki.

  ‘His wretched dogs nearly ruined our hunt!’ complained a Viper man. ‘If this goes on . . . ’

  ‘It won’t,’ said Fin-Kedinn. ‘Aki won’t catch Torak.’

  ‘Still,’ said the Viper. ‘Those dogs are frightening the prey. The sooner the outcast is out of our range, the better.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll be long gone by now,’ said Fin-Kedinn, his voice carrying in the still evening air. ‘He wouldn’t be such a fool as to stay around here, not with the clan meet coming up.’

  The clan meet. Torak had forgotten all about the great gathering of the clans which took place every three summers, and which this summer would be held at the mouth of the Whitewater, not two daywalks from where he hid.

  The hunters said their farewells and parted, the Vipers heading south for their camp on the Widewater, the Ravens west.

  Don’t go, Torak silently begged Fin-Kedinn. He felt hollow as he watched the broad-shouldered figure moving off into the trees with Renn. He watched till his eyes ached.

  Long after they’d gone, he remained in the willows, while night deepened around him.

  A twig cracked.

  He froze.

  Another twig. Loud. Deliberate.

  ‘It’s me!’ whispered Renn. ‘Where are you?’

  Torak shut his eyes. He couldn’t answer her. He’d only put her in danger.

  ‘Torak!’ Now she sounded angry as well as scared. ‘I know you’re in there! You left a scrap of chewed bast on the trail. It was all I could do to pick it up before the others spotted it!’

  He hated staying silent.

  ‘Oh, all right then!’ she breathed. ‘Maybe this will change your mind!’ More rustling. ‘I’ve brought what you’ll need for getting rid of the Soul-Eater tattoo. That’s why I’m here, to tell you how to do it.’ Another pause. ‘If you don’t come out right now, I won’t!’

  SIX

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ whispered Torak as he yanked Renn into the thicket. ‘If anyone saw you!’

  ‘They didn’t,’ she replied with more confidence than she felt. ‘I’ve brought you some food and a sleeping-sack, but I didn’t manage to steal an axe, so you’ll – ’

  ‘Renn. No. You can’t get mixed up in this!’

  ‘I already am. Have a salmon cake.’

  When he didn’t move, she added, ‘Well if you don’t want it, I’ll have to leave it for anyone to find!’

  That worked, and he snatched it from her, demolishing it with fierce concentration. As she crouched beside him in the sour-smelling gloom, she wondered when he’d last eaten.

  ‘There’s lots more salmon cakes,’ she told him. ‘And blood sausage and dried auroch tongue, and a bag of hazelnuts. Should be enough for half a moon, if you’re careful.’

  She was talking too much, she knew that. But he looked so different. That headband made him seem older; and there was a tautness in his face. He kept glancing about, as if at any moment a hunter might leap from the shadows.

  This, she thought, is what it is to be prey.

  Out loud, she asked where Wolf was, and Torak told her that he’d gone to lure Aki off the scent. Then he asked how she’d got
away from Fin-Kedinn, and she told him about turning back to “check some snares”, then picking up the supplies she’d hidden earlier, along with a woodpigeon which she would take to camp as proof of the “snares”. She didn’t mention the tightness in her chest as she’d deceived Fin-Kedinn, or the pain in his eyes when he’d realized what she was doing.

  ‘He guessed I was here, didn’t he?’ said Torak. ‘What he said about the clan meet. He was warning me.’

  ‘I think so. Maybe.’

  She passed him another salmon cake, and ate a couple of hazelnuts to keep him company. Then she said, ‘I’ve been trying to understand how all this happened. Those red deer antlers, with Aki’s mark rubbed out. Someone did that. Someone wanted you cast out.’

  He glanced at her. ‘The Soul-Eaters.’

  She nodded. ‘They’ll have come south by now. And they know you’re a spirit walker. They want your power.’

  ‘They want the last piece of the fire-opal, too.’

  ‘Wherever that is.’

  In the deep blue night, young owls called to each other as they glided between the trees, and bats flitted over the bracken with a swift, light crackling of wings.

  Torak wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘Renn,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For all this. For not telling you about the mark. If only I’d told you. It just – it never seemed the right time.’

  Her throat closed. ‘I know how that can be. It’s never easy to tell things. Secrets, I mean.’

  ‘Well. I’m sorry.’

  They finished eating, then Torak strapped the sleeping-sack to his back and shouldered his quiver and bow, and Renn re-packed the food pouch and placed a morsel of salmon cake in a willow for the clan guardian. As soon as she’d done it, she wished she’d waited till later, so that Torak hadn’t seen. He told her he didn’t mind, but she could see that he did.

  ‘It’s strange,’ he said. ‘All my life I’ve been doing that. And I haven’t got a guardian.’

  ‘It’s still an offering. For the Forest.’

  ‘I suppose.’ He paused. ‘But how is it possible, Renn? How can I not have a clan?’