Chronicles of Ancient Darkness
Chapter 122 : 'Well it wasn't.'He grabbed her hand. 'Yours is cold, the other wa

'Well it wasn't.'

He grabbed her hand. 'Yours is cold, the other was hot.'

'Of course I'm cold, I'm soaking wet! Where did you go?'

From the Auroch camp came shouts, a scream of pain.

'Tell you later,' said Torak. 'Let's get across while we can.'

Renn was so cold that the Blackwater felt almost warm. The sodden gear on her back weighed her down, and the river was strong. As she reached the midstream, it sucked her under. She kicked to the surface, spluttering and spitting out leaves. Torak and Wolf were ahead and didn't notice.

The south bank was a forbidding tangle of willows, and as she neared it, her spirit quailed. She pictured leaf-faced hunters taking aim. She thought, Out of the cooking-skin and into the fire.

If the others were frightened, they gave no sign. Wolf scrambled up the bank, shook vigorously, and started casting for Thiazzi's scent. Torak waded noiselessly towards the willows.

Watching him scan the trees, Renn s.h.i.+vered. His disguise made him a creature of the Deep Forest: a dark-faced stranger with cold silver eyes.

He flicked her a glance and nodded clear then vanished into the willows. As she struggled to free her leg from a tangle of waterweed, he reached out and pulled her in.

'There's no-one here,' he said. 'I think they've all crossed to attack the camp.'

Hastily they dried themselves with gra.s.s, stuffing more down their boots and inside their clothes, to warm up. Torak cut some horsetail and scrubbed the green stain off their headbands, while Renn tended her poor, soaked bow.

Wolf found the scent and started south, away from the river and into a boggy woodland of alders rising from brown pools. Renn thought of traps and curse sticks and invisible hunters, and said a prayer to the guardian.

It was difficult country. They had to jump from one clump of alders to the next, and edge along fallen tree-trunks squelchy with moss. The water was clogged with frogsp.a.w.n. Renn fell in and came out beslimed.

She tried to convince herself that this was a forest just like the one where she'd grown up. She saw a spruce tree whose fissured trunk was studded with cones jammed in by woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, so they could peck at the seeds. Open Forest woodp.e.c.k.e.rs did that, too. She spotted a pile of leaves near a badger's sett; the badgers had been cleaning up after the winter, and had dragged out their old bedding. All familiar, she told herself.

It didn't work. The trees murmured that she didn't belong. The woodp.e.c.k.e.rs were black.

Torak had found something.

Beneath an ash tree, the earth had been sc.r.a.ped to make a muddy wallow. It was five paces across, far bigger than even an auroch would make. Wolf snuffed it eagerly. Torak pushed his muzzle aside to examine a huge, round hoof-print. 'Some kind of giant auroch?' he said.

Renn nodded. 'Fin-Kedinn says there are creatures here that survived the Great Cold. I think they're called bison.'

He frowned. 'So they're prey?'

'I think so. But sometimes they charge.'

In the distance, an owl hooted. Oo-hu, oo-hu.

Renn caught her breath. In her mind, she saw the dread wooden face of the Eagle Owl Mage.

Torak was thinking the same thing. 'Could they be working together?' he said in a low voice. 'Thiazzi and Eostra?'

Renn hesitated. 'I'm not so sure. He's selfish. He'll want the fire-opal for himself. Besides, Saeunn told me she can't be certain, but she thinks Eostra is in the Mountains.'

'And yet her owl is in the Deep Forest,' said Torak.

Renn was silent. She watched him rise to his feet and look about. She could see from his expression that whether Eostra was here or not, he was undeterred. He would find Thiazzi.

'Torak,' she said. 'What happened at the Auroch camp?

What did you do?'

Briefly, he told her how he'd set the two clans against each other. It was clever, but his ruthlessness shocked her. 'But people might have been killed,' she said.

'That might have happened anyway.'

'Maybe. Or maybe the Forest Horses were only scouting, you don't know.'

'I warned you. I said I'd do whatever it takes to get Thiazzi.'

'Starting fights? Getting people killed?'

Wolf glanced doubtfully from one to the other.

Torak ignored him. 'Last spring,' he said, 'everyone was hunting me. This time, I'm doing the hunting. I swore an oath, Renn. So yes. I am ruthless. And if you can't take that, don't come with me!'

They went on in silence. Renn resolved not to be the first to speak.

The ground climbed steadily, and black spruce gave way to beech. They waded through waist-high nettles and clambered over rotting tree-trunks blistered with poisonous mushrooms. Renn noticed that the trees were taller than in the Open Forest, which would make them harder to climb; and the wood-ants didn't build their nests only on the south side of the trunks, but all around, which would make it easier to get lost.

No sign of people.

And yet . . .

Behind her a branch swayed, as if someone had edged out of sight.

She put her hand to her knife-hilt.

The branch stilled. If it was Forest Horse hunters, she thought, we'd know it by now.

Torak had gone ahead, and was kneeling to talk to Wolf. She ran to catch up. 'I saw something!' she panted.

'And Wolf smelt something,' said Torak. 'He says it smells like the Bright Beast.'

'That means fire.'

'It also means ash. The one who took my hand . . . it felt hot.'

Their eyes met.

'Whatever grabbed my hand,' said Torak. 'It's followed us across the river.'

As the light began to fail, they decided to strike camp under a yew tree.

They'd reached a valley where beavers had dammed a stream to make a narrow lake. Renn saw the beavers' lodge in the middle: a st.u.r.dy pile of branches, some streaked yellow where they'd gnawed off the bark. She guessed it was still occupied, as a few willows remained along the sh.o.r.e. Fin-Kedinn said that beavers liked to eat all the willows before moving on.

Thinking of Fin-Kedinn hurt. She tried to imagine him safely back with the Ravens, busy with the salmon run, but her mind showed him grey-faced, hunched in the canoe. Maybe the worms of sickness were already eating into his marrow. And no Renn to chase them away.

Torak went scouting with Wolf, so to take her mind off Fin-Kedinn, she left her gear under the yew and went to forage. At least the plants were familiar. She gathered handfuls of succulent saxifrage and sharp-tasting sorrel; and as they couldn't have a fire, she dug up spear thistle and silverweed roots, which they could eat raw.

Rip and Rek flew down, fluttering their wings and making famished gurgles, so she tossed them a couple of roots. Over the winter, she'd persuaded them to come when she called, but they would not yet perch on her shoulders, as they did with Torak.

Feeling slightly better, she went to refill the waterskins. The lake was sheened a dusty yellow with pollen, and around it, the trees leaned over to peer at their name-souls in the water. Renn held the skins down deep, to avoid scooping them up. It had never bothered her before, but here . . .

While the skins filled, she watched the ripples smoothing out, and wished Torak would come back and be Torak again: play tug-the-hide with Wolf, tease her about the freckle at the corner of her mouth. For the first time it struck her that his mother's father had been Oak Clan which meant he was kin with Thiazzi. She wished she hadn't thought of that.

The waterskins were full. As she pulled them out, her name-soul stared back at her: an inscrutable, clay-headed Auroch.

A figure appeared behind it.

In one nightmare heartbeat, Renn took in clenched fists and a shock of long, pale hair.

With a cry she spun round.

Nothing. Just a stirring of willows, very close.

She whipped out her knife.

A branch creaked. Claws clattered on bark. She thought of tokoroths scurrying down trees, agile as spiders. She left the waterskins and raced back to camp.

Torak hadn't returned, but the ravens perched high in the yew, cawing in distress. Her gear had been savagely attacked. Her quiver was slashed, its moss padding flung about, and most of her arrows had been snapped. Luckily, she'd hung her bow on the yew, and the attacker had missed it, but her sleeping-sack had been trampled into the dust, her tinder pouch cut to pieces, and her strike-fire smashed under a rock. Malice and rage throbbed in the air like sickness. And over everything lay a scattering of fine grey ash.

Drawing her axe, Renn backed against the yew. 'I'm not scared of you,' she told the shadows. Her voice sounded reedy and unconvincing.

Moments later, Torak and Wolf returned. Wolf raced to snuffle furiously at Renn's things. Torak's jaw dropped.

'I saw something at the lake,' she told him. 'Then this.'

'What did you see?'

'It had pale hair. It looked angry.'

He flinched.

'Do you know what it is?' she said.

'No, I no.' He started searching for tracks, but the light was almost gone, and he didn't find any. 'Either it knows how to cover its tracks,' he said, 'or it doesn't leave any.'

'What do you mean? Torak, what is it?'

He chewed his lip. Then he stood up. 'Whatever it is, we're not sleeping on the ground.'

The yew didn't like being climbed. It choked them in clouds of pollen and tried to evade their grip by shedding bark. Twice, a branch whipped round and tried to throw them off. They were scratched and exhausted by the time they'd settled in its arms.

'The wind's getting up,' said Torak. 'We'd better tie ourselves to the trunk.'

Renn hung their damp, gritty sleeping-sacks to dry, and peered down into the gloom. She saw Wolf silently pacing. She said, 'Let's hope Wolf and the ravens warn us of danger.'

Wolf ran in circles round the yew, bristling with disapproval. He hated it when the taillesses climbed trees. Why did they do this?

Normal wolves do not climb trees. And normal wolves like the Dark, it's their best time, when they run about and play. They do not curl up and sleep for ever.

Wolf hated it here. The Forest felt different. The trees were too alert and the smells were all mixed up. Some of the trees smelt of earth, while the taillesses who lived here smelt of trees. They were angry and scared, and although each pack had quite a big range, they fought; Wolf didn't know why. Worse still, Tall Tailless and the pack-sister had changed their overpelts and even their smells, so that Wolf hardly knew them.

His sleeps were troubled by the scratching of demon claws and the cries of eagle owls, and sometimes when he woke up, he caught the nose-biting scent of the tailless who smelt of the Bright Beast. This tailless worried Wolf a lot, because its mind was broken, so he couldn't sense what it wanted.

The scent of the broken-minded tailless was thick in Wolf's nose as he prowled the yew's roots, but he sensed that the tailless itself was gone. Maybe it also climbed trees. Wolf decided to stay close, in case it came back.

In the Up, the Bright White Eye was half-open, sleepily watching over her many little cubs. Wolf stalked a weasel, but it got away. He caught a moth, but it made him sneeze, so he spat it out. And still the taillesses slept.

Suddenly, Wolf p.r.i.c.ked his ears. Further down the valley, the ravens were cawing. They'd found a roe deer which was Not-Breath, they wanted Wolf to come and rip it open, so that they could feed.

Wolf wondered what to do. He had to stay and guard the taillesses.

But he was hungry.

THIRTEEN.

As night deepened, the other inhabitants of the Forest emerged.

Bats flitted from hollows in the yew. A grey owl settled on the end of Torak's branch, its body swaying, its moonlit eyes fixed on his. He stared back till it flew away.

It was a bl.u.s.tery night and the trees were wide awake.

So was he.

Who or what had attacked Renn's gear? Was it Bale's vengeful spirit, or something else? An ash-baired hunter burning inside. Saeunn's prophecy could mean anything.

Straining at the rope that bound him to the trunk, he twisted round to see if Renn was awake on the other side. She was curled up like a squirrel, fast asleep.

He ached to be on the move. Somewhere in these secret valleys, Thiazzi was hiding; and the trail was getting cold.

Not even Wolf could follow it much longer.

On the ground, branches rustled as something large pushed its way through. Torak couldn't see anything, but as the creature drew nearer, he heard munching and huffing breath. Then a darkness like a walking boulder pa.s.sed beneath him. He glimpsed ma.s.sive, humped shoulders; an enormous head with short, half-moon horns.