Michelle Paver - [Chronicles of Ancient Darkness 01] Page 6

  Sorry, Wolf, he told the cub silently. I don’t think we’re going to get out of this.

  From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Wolf high in the tree. He was wriggling and yowling in a haze of steamy breath. What’s happening? he was asking. Why won’t you come and free me?

  Torak leapt aside to avoid a knife-slash across his throat. Concentrate, he told himself grimly. Forget about Wolf.

  And yet - something was nagging him: something about Wolf. What was it?

  He glanced at Wolf yowling in the tree, his breath steaming ...

  ‘You can’t use fire,’ Fin-Kedinn had said ...

  Suddenly Torak’s mind flooded clear and he knew what to do. Jabbing and feinting, he edged sideways, putting the fire between them once more.

  ‘Hiding again?’ taunted Hord.

  Torak jerked his head at the birch-bark water pail. ‘I want a drink. All right?’

  ‘If you must. Boy.’

  Keeping his eyes on Hord, Torak squatted, and cupped water to drink. He did it slowly, to make Hord think he was up to something with the water pail, and to distract attention from the cooking-skin bubbling by the fire.

  It worked. Hord stepped closer to the fire, looming over it to intimidate Torak.

  ‘You want a drink too?’ said Torak, still squatting.

  Suddenly, Torak lashed out - but at the cooking-skin. Jabbing his knife into the tough hide, he upended it, and sent boiling broth pouring onto the white-hot embers. Hissing clouds of steam billowed into Hord’s face.

  The watchers gasped. Torak seized his chance and jabbed at his opponent’s wrist. Blinded, Hord howled in pain and dropped his knife. Torak kicked it away, then threw himself on Hord, knocking him to the ground.

  As Hord lay winded, Torak straddled his chest and knelt on his arms to pin them down. For one roaring heartbeat his sight misted red, and he knew the urge to kill. He grabbed a handful of dark-red hair and bashed Hord’s head once against the earth.

  Then he felt strong hands on his shoulders, pulling him off. ‘It’s over,’ said Fin-Kedinn behind him.

  Torak struggled in his grip. Hord sprang up and scrambled for his knife. Panting and glaring, they faced each other.

  ‘I said it’s over,’ snapped Fin-Kedinn.

  Chaos erupted among the watchers. They didn’t think it was over at all. ‘He cheated! He used fire!’

  ‘No, he won fairly enough!’

  ‘Who’s to say? They’ll have to fight it out again!’

  Both Torak and Hord looked appalled at that.

  The boy won,’ said Fin-Kedinn, releasing his grip on Torak.

  Torak shook himself and wiped the sweat from his face as he watched Hord re-sheathing his knife. Hord was furious, though whether with himself or with Torak it was impossible to tell. Dyrati put her hand on his arm but he shook it off angrily, and pushed his way through the others, disappearing into one of the shelters.

  Now that the blood-lust had left him, Torak felt shaky and sick. He sheathed his knife and looked round for his things. Then he saw Fin-Kedinn watching him.

  ‘You broke the rule,’ the Raven Leader said calmly. ‘You used fire.’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ said Torak. He sounded a lot more confident than he felt. ‘I didn’t use fire. I used steam.’

  ‘I would have preferred it,’ said Fin-Kedinn, ‘if you’d used water instead of broth. That was a waste of good food.’

  Torak did not reply.

  Fin-Kedinn studied him, and for a moment there was a gleam of humour in his blue eyes.

  Oslak pushed through to them, with the bag containing Wolf in his arms. ‘Here’s that cub of yours!’ he boomed, tossing the bag at Torak with a force that made him stagger.

  Wolf squirmed and licked Torak’s chin and told him how awful it had been, all at once. Torak wanted to say something comforting, but stopped himself. It would be stupid to slip up now.

  ‘The law’s the law,’ Fin-Kedinn said briskly. ‘You won. You’re free to go.’

  ‘No!’ A girl’s voice rang out, and all heads turned. It was Renn. ‘You can’t let him go!’ she cried, running forward.

  ‘He just has,’ retorted Torak. ‘You heard him. I’m free.’

  Renn spoke to her uncle. ‘We can’t let him go. This is too important. He might be…’ she drew Fin-Kedinn aside, whispering urgently.

  Torak couldn’t make out what she was saying, but to his dismay, others drew closer to listen. The Mage scowled and nodded. Even Hord emerged from the shelter, and when he heard what they were saying he gave Torak a strange, wary stare.

  Finn-Kedinn studied Renn thoughtfully. ‘Are you sure about this?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t. We need time to find out.’

  Fin-Kedinn stroked his beard. ‘What makes you suspect -’

  The way he defeated Hord. And I found this in his things.’ She held out her palm, and Torak saw his little grouse-bone whistle. ‘What do you use it for?’ she asked him.

  ‘For calling the cub,’ he replied.

  She blew on it, and Wolf twisted in his arms. A shiver of un-ease ran through the crowd. Renn and Fin-Kedinn exchanged glances. ‘It doesn’t make any noise,’ she said accusingly.

  Torak did not reply. He realized with a jolt that her eyes were not light-blue like her brother’s, but black: black as a peat pool. He wondered if she was a Mage, too.

  She turned to Fin-Kedinn. ‘We can’t let him go till we know for sure.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said the Mage. ‘You know what it says as well as I do. Everyone does.’

  ‘What what says?’ pleaded Torak. ‘Fin-Kedinn, we had a pact! We agreed that if I won the fight, me and Wolf would go free!’

  ‘No,’ said Fin-Kedinn, ‘we agreed that you would live. And so you shall. At least, for now. Oslak, tie him up again.’

  ‘No!’ shouted Torak.

  Renn raised her chin. ‘You said your father was killed by a bear. We know about that bear. Some of us have even seen it.’

  Beside her, Hord shuddered and began to gnaw his thumbnail.

  ‘About a moon ago it came,’ Renn went on quietly. ‘Like a shadow it darkened the Forest, killing wantonly; even killing other hunters. Wolves. A lynx. It was as if - as if it was searching for something.’ She paused. Then thirteen days ago it disappeared. A runner from the Boar Clan tracked it south. We thought it had gone. We gave thanks to our clan guardian.’ She swallowed. ‘Now it’s back. Yesterday our scouts returned from the west. They’d found many kills, right down to the Sea. The Whale Clan told them that three days ago, it took a child.’

  Torak licked his lips. ‘What’s this got to do with me?’

  There’s a Prophecy in our clan,’ said Renn as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘A Shadow attacks the Forest. None can stand against it.’ She broke off, frowning.

  The Mage took up her words. ‘Then comes the Listener. He fights with air, and speaks with silence.’ Her gaze fell on the whistle in Renn’s hand.

  Everyone was silent, watching Torak.

  ‘I’m not your Listener,’ he said.

  ‘We think you might be,’ replied the Mage.

  Torak thought about the Prophecy. The Listener fights with air... He had done just that: he had used steam. ‘What - happens to him?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘What happens to the Listener in the Prophecy? But he had a terrible feeling that he already knew.

  The silence in the clearing grew more intense. Torak looked from the frightened faces around him to the flint knife at Oslak’s belt. He looked at the glistening carcass of the boar hanging from the tree; at its dark blood trickling into the pail beneath. He felt Fin-Kedinn’s eyes on him, and turned to face the burning blue gaze.

  ‘The Listener,’ quoted Fin-Kedinn, ‘Give
s his heart’s blood to the Mountain. And the Shadow is crushed.’

  His heart’s blood.

  Under the tree, the blood dripped softly into the basin.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  ‘What are you going to do to me?’ said Torak as Oslak tied his wrists behind his back and then to the roof post. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘You’ll know soon enough,’ said Oslak. ‘Fin-Kedinn wants it settled by dawn.’

  Dawn, thought Torak.

  Over his shoulder, he watched Oslak tying a reluctant Wolf to the same roof post on a short rawhide leash.

  His teeth began to chatter. ‘Who decides what happens to me? Why can’t I be there to defend myself? Who are all those people by the fire?’

  ‘Ow!’ exclaimed Oslak, sucking a bitten finger. ‘Fin-Kedinn sent runners to call a clan meet about the bear. Now they’re deciding about you too.’

  Torak peered at the figures hunched about the long-fire: twenty or thirty men and women, their faces starkly lit by the flames. He didn’t give much for his chances.

  Dawn. Somehow, before dawn, he had to get out of here.

  But how? He was sitting in a shelter, tied to a roof post, without weapons or pack; and even if he got free, the camp was heavily guarded. Now that darkness had fallen, a ring of fires had sprung up around it, and men with spears and birch-bark horns were keeping watch. Fin-Kedinn was taking no chances with the bear.

  Oslak yanked off Torak’s boots and tied his ankles together, then left, taking the boots with him.

  Torak couldn’t hear what they were saying at the clan meet, but at least he could see them, thanks to the odd construction of the Raven shelter. Its reindeer-hide roof sloped sharply down behind him, but in front there was no wall at all: only a cross-beam, which seemed to deflect the smoke from the small fire that crackled just in front, but trapped the warmth inside.

  Straining to make out what was going on, Torak saw people rising one by one to speak. A broad-shouldered man holding an enormous throwing-axe. A woman with long nut-brown hair, one lock at the temple matted with red ochre. A wild-eyed girl whose skull was weirdly plastered with yellow clay to give it the roughness of oak bark.

  He couldn’t see Fin-Kedinn, but a little apart from the others, the Mage crouched in the dust, watching a large glossy raven. T he bird stalked fearlessly up and down, uttering the occasional harsh ‘cark!’

  Torak wondered if it was the clan guardian. What was it telling her? How to sacrifice him? Whether to gut him like a salmon, or spit him like a hare? He’d never heard of clans sacrificing people, except long in the past, in the bad times after the Great Wave. But then, he’d never heard of the Raven Clan either.

  ‘Fin-Kedinn wants it decided by dawn ... The Listener gives his heart’s blood to the Mountain ...’

  Had Fa known about the Prophecy? He couldn’t have done. He wouldn’t have sent his own son to his death.

  And yet - he’d made Torak swear to find the Mountain. He’d said, Don’t hate me later. Later. When you find out.

  The cub’s rasping tongue on his wrists brought him back to the present. Wolf liked the taste of the rawhide. Torak felt a surge of hope. If Wolf could be made to bite instead of lick...

  Even as Torak was wondering how to put that in wolf talk, a man rose from the long-fire and crossed the clearing towards him. It was Hord.

  Frantically, Torak growled at Wolf to stop. He was too hungry to notice, and went on licking.

  Hord wasn’t interested in Wolf, though. He stood by the smaller fire in front of the doorway, gnawing his thumbnail and glaring at Torak. ‘You’re not the Listener,’ he snarled, ‘you can’t be.’

  ‘Tell that to the others,’ retorted Torak.

  ‘We don’t need a boy to help us kill the bear. We can do it ourselves. I can do it. I’ll save the clans.’

  ‘You wouldn’t stand a chance,’ said Torak. He felt Wolf starting to nibble the rawhide with his sharp front teeth, and kept very still so as not to put him off. He prayed that Hord wouldn’t look behind him, and see what Wolf was doing.

  But Hord seemed too agitated to notice. He paced back and forth, then turned on Torak. ‘You’ve seen it, haven’t you? You’ve seen the bear.’

  Torak was startled. ‘Of course I’ve seen it. It killed my father.’

  Hord cast a furtive glance over his shoulder. ‘I’ve seen it too.’

  ‘Where? When?’

  Hord flinched, as if warding off a blow. ‘I was in the south. With the Red Deer Clan. I was learning Magecraft. Saeunn,’ he nodded at the old woman talking to the raven, ‘our Mage, she wanted me to go.’ Again he tore at his thumbnail, which had started to bleed. ‘I was there when the bear was caught. I - I saw it made.’

  Torak stared at him. ‘Made? What do you mean?’

  But Hord had gone.

  Middle-night passed, the dying moon rose, and still the clan meet went on. Still Wolf licked and nibbled at the rawhide. But Oslak had tied the knots securely, and Wolf couldn’t seem to get his jaws around them. Don’t stop, Torak begged him silently. Please don’t stop.

  He was too scared to be hungry, but- he felt bruised and stiff from the fight with Hord, and his shoulders ached from being tied up for so long. Even if Wolf managed to gnaw through the bindings, he wasn’t sure that he’d have the strength to run away, or slip through the guards.

  He kept thinking about what Hard had said. ‘I saw it made ...’

  There was something else, too. Hord had been with the Red Deer Clan, and Torak’s mother had been Red Deer.

  He’d never known her, she’d died when he was little; but if the Ravens were friendly with her clan, then maybe he could persuade them to let him go ...

  Outside, boots scuffed the dust. Quick. They mustn’t catch Wolf at his wrists.

  Torak just had time for a swift warning ‘Uff!’ – which luckily Wolf obeyed - before Renn appeared in the doorway, chewing a leg of roast hare.

  Her sharp eyes took in Wolf sitting innocently behind him, then fixed on Torak -who stared back, willing her not to come any closer.

  He jerked his head at the clan meet and asked if any Wolf Clan were present.

  She shook her head. ‘Not many Wolf Clan left these days. So you’re not going to be rescued, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  Torak did not reply. He’d just pulled at the rope around his wrists, and felt it give a little. It was beginning to stretch, as rawhide does when it gets wet. If only Renn would go away.

  She stayed exactly where she was. ‘No Wolf Clan,’ she said with her mouth full, ‘but plenty of others. Yellow Clayhead over there is from the Auroch Clan. They’re Deep Forest people; they pray a lot. That’s how they think we should deal with the bear, by praying to the World Spirit. The man with the axe is Boar Clan. He wants to make a fire-wall to drive the bear towards the Sea. The woman with the earth blood in her hair is Red Deer. Not sure what she thinks. With them it’s hard to tell.’

  Torak wondered why she was talking so much. What did she want?

  Whatever it was, he decided to go along with it, to keep her attention away from Wolf. He said, ‘My mother was Red Deer. Maybe that woman over there is my bone kin. Maybe-’

  ‘She says not. She’s not going to help you.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Your clan are friendly with the Red Deer, aren’t they? Your brother said he learnt Magecraft with them.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘He - he told me he saw the bear “made”. What did he mean?’

  She gave him her narrow, mistrustful stare.

  ‘I need to know,’ said Torak. ‘It killed my father.’

  Renn studied the hare’s leg. ‘Hord was fostered with them. You know about fostering, don’t you?’ Her voice held a touch of scorn. ‘It’s when you stay with anoth
er clan for a while; to make friends, and maybe find a mate.’

  ‘I’ve heard of it,’ said Torak. Behind him, he felt Wolf snuffling at his wrists again. He tried to bat him away with his fingers, but it didn’t work. Not now, he thought. Please not now.

  ‘He was with them for nine moons,’ said Renn, taking another bite. They’re the best at Magecraft in the Forest. That’s why he went.’ Her mouth curled humorlessly. ‘Hord likes to be the best.’ Then she frowned. ‘What’s that cub doing?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Torak said too quickly. To Wolf he said in a stilted voice, ‘Go away. Go away.’

  Wolf, of course, ignored him.

  Torak turned back to Renn. ‘What happened next?’

  Another look. ‘Why are you asking?’

  ‘Why are you talking to me?’

  Her face closed. She was as good at keeping things back as Fin-Kedinn.

  Thoughtfully she picked a shred of hare from between her teeth. ‘Hord hadn’t been with the Red Deer long,’ she said, ‘when a stranger came to their camp. A wanderer from the Willow Clan, crippled by a hunting accident. Or so he said. The Red Deer took him in. But he –’ she hesitated; and suddenly looked younger and much less confident. ‘He betrayed them. He wasn’t just a wanderer, he knew Magecraft. He made a secret place in the woods, and conjured a demon. Trapped it in the body of a bear.’ She paused. ‘Hord found out. By then it was too late.’

  Beyond the shelter, the shadows seemed to have deepened. Out in the Forest, a fox screamed.

  ‘Why?’ said Torak. ‘Why did he do it, this -wanderer?’

  Renn shook her head. ‘Who knows? Maybe to have a creature to do his bidding? But it went wrong.’ The firelight glinted in her dark eyes. ‘Once the demon got inside the bear, it was too strong. It broke free. Killed three people before the Red Deer could drive it away. By then the crippled wanderer had disappeared.’

  Torak was silent. The only sounds were the trees whispering in the night breeze, and the rasp of Wolf’s tongue as he licked the rawhide.

  Wolf accidentally caught Torak’s skin in his teeth. Without thinking, Torak turned and gave him a sharp· warning growl.