Chronicles of Ancient Darkness
Chapter 91 : A Willow man sang of the salmon run to the music of deer-hoof rattles and duck-bone pip

A Willow man sang of the salmon run to the music of deer-hoof rattles and duck-bone pipes.

A Rowan woman created a prowling shadow bear by moving her hands behind a firelit hide.

So it went on through the brief summer night. Torak found himself drawn into the stories: the ancient memories which the clans had told on nights such as this since the Beginning.

It was a while before he noticed that Renn had gone as white as chalk.

Two masked figures were now dancing round the fire: a midge with a long, pointed wooden beak, and an irascible elk. The midge with a Viper woman behind the mask zoomed about, whining and poking with her beak, to delighted squeals from children and laughter from their parents. But Renn had eyes only for the elk. Her mouth was a tense line as she watched it sweep the shadows with its antlers. Torak could see that she was re-living the attack.

By chance, the elk moved to the other side of the fire, and it was the midge who now targeted her. Distractedly she batted it away, but it came whining back, as midges do.

Leave her alone, urged Torak.

Just as the midge zoomed in for another attack, a young man rose, grasped the midge's beak lightly in one hand, and pretended to swat it with the other. He did it with such good humour that the Viper woman played along with him, buzzing away with an aggrieved whine which made everybody laugh.

Renn threw the young man a grateful glance, and he shrugged and sat down again. Then Torak noticed the wavy blue tattoos on his arms: the mark of the Seal Clan. He nearly cried out.

It was Bale. His kinsman.

Bale had put on muscle since the previous summer, and firelight glinted in the beginnings of a beard, but apart from that he hadn't changed. The same long fair hair beaded with sh.e.l.ls and capelin bones, the same intelligent face. The same blue eyes that seemed to hold the light of sun on Sea.

The last time they'd seen each other, they'd talked about hunting together, and Torak had made a joke about a Seal in a Forest. It hurt to think of that now.

Suddenly, a horn boomed into the night.

Ravens exploded from the trees.

Dancers, watchers, all went still.

Leaning on her staff, Saeunn hobbled into the light. 'A Soul-Eater!' she cried. 'A Soul-Eater is come among us!'

Fear rippled through the throng.

'I read it in the bones,' croaked the Raven Mage, circling the fire, searching their faces. 'I see it in the smoke. A Soul-Eater is among us a Soul-Eater to the marrow!'

People clutched their children and gripped amulets and weapons. Fin-Kedinn's features never moved as he watched his Mage seek the evil one.

As Torak hid in the dark beneath the yews, the meaning of what Saeunn had sensed crashed upon him. A Soul-Eater to the marrow . . .

He had carried the mark on his chest for too long. It had gnawed its way into his bones, and he was one of them. He would never be free.

The rite hadn't worked.

TEN.

There was uproar around the long-fire. Dogs barking, a hornet buzz of voices. Mouths turned ugly with fear, eyes became shadowy hollows.

Fin-Kedinn called for calm and the uproar diminished. 'But we've got to go after him now!' shouted Aki. 'If we don't '

'If you go now,' said the Raven Leader, 'you'll be setting off blind. Remember, it's not just an outcast out there. What about the Oak Mage? The Viper Mage. The Eagle Owl Mage. Three Soul-Eaters of enormous power and they could be anywhere. Are you strong enough to fight them alone, Aki? Are any of you?'

Aki made to reply, but his father snarled at him, and Aki cringed as if to ward off a blow.

Torak had seen enough. He fled. What a fool he'd been to believe they would take him back. They would never take him back.

As he ran, the scab on his chest cracked open. He gasped in pain. One twitch and it will draw you, hissed the Viper Mage.

Having retrieved his sleeping-sack, he took a different path to disperse his scent, and now through the trees he glimpsed the Ravens' shelters. They were deserted.

With every moment the danger grew and yet he couldn't drag himself away. He was leaving them for ever, he knew that now, but he had to be close to them one last time. He had to say goodbye.

He found the Raven Leader's shelter and peered in. There was Fin-Kedinn's axe propped against the doorpost; his bow, his fis.h.i.+ng spear. But nothing of Renn's, which was odd.

His axe.

It was beautiful, a blade of polished greenstone mounted on a st.u.r.dy ash handle. It fitted Torak's grip perfectly. As his fingers closed around it, he felt the Raven Leader's strength, his force of will. Torak had lost his own axe in the Far North; Fin-Kedinn had been going to help him make a new one. There was much that Fin-Kedinn had been going to teach him.

His grip tightened. To steal a man's axe is one of the worst things you can do. To steal Fin-Kedinnn's . . .

But he needed it.

Scarcely believing what he was doing, he stuck the axe in his belt and moved on, seeking the shelter where Renn slept. It was madness to stay any longer, but he couldn't leave till he'd found it.

He was astonished to discover that she was now sharing a shelter with Saeunn: he recognized it by its stale, old-woman smell. How Renn would hate that.

It hurt to see her gear, piled untidily in the corner. Her beloved bow hung from a cross-beam. As he touched it, he seemed to hear her voice: mocking, kind. The first day they'd met, when the Ravens were enemies and he had to fight for his life, she had given him a beaker of elderberry juice. 'It's only fair,' she'd said.

On her willow-branch mat lay a new medicine pouch he hadn't seen before; she must have made it when she'd given him hers. He upended it, and among the dried mushrooms and tangles of hair, he was surprised to see the white pebble on which he'd daubed his clan-tattoo last summer. She had kept it all this time.

His hand closed over it. This would tell her better than anything that he was never coming back.

He ran fast and low, heading upstream, keeping to the thickets by the river. He hadn't gone far when he heard slight, furtive sounds of pursuit.

It couldn't be Aki, he would've made more noise. And whoever it was, they were good, moving almost noiselessly, and staying in the shadows.

They were good, but he was better.

The river flowed deep and slow between half-drowned alders. Torak took off his boots and tied them round his neck. Then, balancing quiver, bow and sleeping-sack roll on his head, he waded in. The cold took his breath away, but he gritted his teeth and kept going till he was up to his chest.

Bracing his legs against the current, he waited. He heard the slap and suck of water around the trees. Then stealthy footsteps.

From the bank, someone softly called his name.

He tensed.

'Torak!' Renn whispered again. 'Where are you?'

He made no answer.

Then another voice. 'Kinsman, it's me!'

Torak flinched.

'We're alone, I swear it!' Bale said in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. 'Come out! I mean you no harm! Renn's told me everything. I know you're outcast, but we're still kin! I want to help!'

Torak clenched his jaw. Renn had already risked her life to help him, and it had come to nothing. He couldn't put her or Bale in any more danger.

Like all hunters, Renn and Bale knew how to wait. So did Torak.

At last, he heard Bale sigh. 'Let's go,' he told Renn.

'No!' she protested. Torak heard a stirring of branches as she moved closer and suddenly there she was at the water's edge.

'Torak!' Her voice was recklessly loud. 'I know you're there, I can feel you listening! Please. Please! You've got to let us help you!'

Not answering Bale had been hard, but ignoring Renn was one of the hardest things Torak had ever done. The urge to cry out to give some sign that only she would understand was almost overwhelming. Go back to camp, he begged her. I can't bear it.

Bale put his hand on Renn's shoulder. 'Come on. Either he's not here, or he doesn't want to be found.'

Angrily, she shook him off. But when he started for camp, she followed.

Torak waited till he was sure they were gone, then waded back to dry ground. Frozen, numb, he pulled on his boots. The scab on his chest was open, he felt warmth seeping out. Good. Let it bleed.

He followed the river upstream, running punis.h.i.+ngly fast so that he wouldn't have to think, but at last he had to stop. He slumped against a whitebeam tree at the edge of a clearing. It would be dawn soon. Far in the distance, he heard dogs.

He found that he was still clutching the pebble he'd taken from Renn's medicine pouch. He stared at the dotted lines which he'd used to think were his clan-tattoo, but were now meaningless smudges.

That's the old Torak, he thought.

He realized that for the past half-moon, he'd merely been playing at being outcast, finding any excuse to stay near the Ravens. He'd been like that young elk, bleating for its mother. If it didn't learn to survive on its own, it would get killed. He wasn't going to make the same mistake.

His fist closed over the pebble. Leave it. Leave it all behind.

He tucked the pebble in a cleft of the whitebeam tree and ran.

Mist beaded the bracken and lent the leaves of the whitebeam a frosty glitter. Torak's pebble nestled safe in its smooth brown arms.

A roe buck entered the clearing and began to browse. A robin started to sing. A blackbird awoke. The rising sun burned off the mist.

Suddenly the buck jerked up its head and fled. Robin and blackbird flew off with shrill calls of alarm.

A shadow fell across the whitebeam.

The Forest held its breath.

A green hand reached out and took the pebble from the tree.

ELEVEN.

'He's here,' said Aki. 'I can feel it.'

'Well I can't,' panted the Willow girl, battling the current to keep abreast of him. 'Won't he have headed south instead of east? That's where he came from.'

'Which is why the others have gone south to cut him off,' growled Aki.

'We're too far upstream,' Raut said uneasily. 'We should go back.'

'No,' snapped Aki.

'Then let's put in for a rest,' protested another boy. 'If I paddle much longer, my arms will fall off!'

'Me too,' puffed the girl. 'There was an inlet back there. Let's go.'

A murmur of a.s.sent to which Aki grudgingly agreed and they brought their dugouts about.

Perched in a willow, Torak breathed out. When he was sure it wasn't a bluff, he slipped into the water and waded for the bank.

Wolf was waiting. He watched with interest as Torak stuffed his boots with gra.s.s to warm up his feet; then they headed upstream.

All day the hunters had tracked them: east of Twin Rivers and up the Axehandle. Whenever Torak tried heading south, the second group of hunters drove him back. It was only by staying in the thickets near the river that he'd kept them off the scent.

He was cold, wet, and he hadn't slept since the night before last. He was beginning to miss things. A while back, he'd almost tripped over a boar enjoying a wallow. Why hadn't he seen its tracks? A child of five summers would have spotted them.

Because of Aki, he'd given up all thought of going south. His only hope was to cross the Axehandle and make for the gullies leading off it to the north. It was rough country without much prey, and few people ventured in except for the odd lonely wanderer. That was the point.

The river turned angrier, and he caught the distant roar of rapids. Around mid-morning, Wolf tensed. Then Torak heard it too: paddles slicing the water; dogs panting, keeping level with the dugouts. Aki and his friends hadn't rested for long.

Torak made his way across the willow bog, squelching through hare-gra.s.s, avoiding the pale-green moss which was so delicate that a footprint would remain stamped on it for days. Wolf managed better, his big, slightly webbed paws letting him run lightly over the surface.

To his dismay, Torak saw that his pursuers weren't continuing upriver, but crossing it, as if they'd guessed his plan. In their dugouts they made it with ease. He watched them hoist the boats on their shoulders and climb the bank. They meant to carry them round the rapids and lie in wait for him above.

He had no choice but to go on.