They withdrew, taking care to brush away their tracks. It seemed to Torak that a tension had leached from the darkness.
Wolf padded toward the curse stick and sat gazing up at the bloody hand. Without warning, he seized it in his jaws, worried it to make sure it was dead, and trotted off to eat it in peace. Soon afterward, they heard a flurry in the undergrowth and an irritable growl; then Rip and Rek flew off, each bearing a finger in their beaks.
Torak unclenched his fists. "I think it worked."
"Maybe," said Renn.
They went to fetch their gear.
"We'll go in after moonset," said Torak.
Renn didn't reply, but he knew what she was thinking.
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They still had no plan for getting past any watching Aurochs.
Above him in the spruce tree, the woodpecker nestlings called tirelessly for food. Torak saw that their parents had been clever, pecking the hole under a bracket mushroom, which made a roof to keep off the rain, and choosing a hollow tree riddled with more holes, so they'd have lots of escape routes if a marten attacked. He remembered Fin-Kedinn's lessons on concealment.The first rule is to learn from other creatures.
The male woodpecker flew in with nightmeal for his children, spotted Torak, and sped to another tree some distance away, where he perched, calling loudly,Kik-kik-kik! Not that tree, this one!
"I think," said Torak, "I've got an idea."
The moon had set; the wind had dropped. The trees stood breathless. Waiting.
Torak knelt beside Wolf and told him in wolf talk that they needed to hide from everyone, but were still hunting the Bitten One. He wasn't sure if he got it across. Rising to his feet, he nodded at Renn. She nodded back. Keeping off the trail, they started upriver. They passed the curse stick. They drew level with the great stone jaws. A squirrel scampered up a tree. A roe buck fled,
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flashing its white rump.
Good, thought Torak. Maybe the Aurochs aren't so close.
Maybe.
Renn walked beside him, silent as a shadow. Wolf's paws made no sound.
The spruce trees waited for them, their arms dripping with dark clots of moss.
Torak paused. He thought of the Oak Mage. He thought of Bale. He took a breath and entered the Deep Forest. 89
TEN
Wolf's hackles rose. Torak glanced at Renn to make sure that she'd seen. She had. Bitten One,said Wolf.Near?said Torak.Many lopes. Torak bent close to Renn. "He's picked up Thiazzi's trail," he whispered, "but he's far away." "And still no Aurochs?" He shook his head.
She was puzzled. So was he. They'd been creeping between the shadowy trees forever, following the river
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upstream, but staying well back from its banks. So far, no sign of Aurochs.
The trees, though ... Roots snagged Torak's boots. Twig fingers brushed his face. It was warmer in the Deep Forest. The air smelled greener, more alive. Bats flitted overhead, and the undergrowth stirred with secret rustlings. Moss dripped from every branch and log and boulder--as if, thought Torak, a great green tide had drowned the Forest and then receded. And behind it all, he felt the immense, watching presence of the trees.
Wolf turned aside and ran to an ash tree. Rising on his hind legs, he put both forepaws on the trunk and sniffed a low-hanging branch.Odd,he told Torak with a twitch of his whiskers.
Torak touched the branch. His fingers came away slimy, smelling strangely of earth.
Renn pointed to the branch.What is it?
He shook his head, wiping his hand on his leggings and wishing he hadn't touched it. Deep Forest clans were known for their skill with poisons. They reached a grove of murmuring alders. As they entered, the trees fell silent, as if they didn't want to be overheard.
Wolf halted and snuffed the air.
Bitten One. Over the Wet.
Torak was still taking that in when Wolf lowered his head.
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Den.
Beyond the alders, Torak glimpsed shadows moving in blackness. Bulky shapes that might be shelters.
"Camp!" Renn breathed in his ear.
"And Wolf says Thiazzi isacrossthe river, in Forest Horse territory."
"We have to go back," she urged, "cross downstream."
That risked confusing Wolf and losing Thiazzi's trail, but they had no choice. They started to backtrack.
At least, they tried, but Torak got the sense that they'd lost their way. The gurgle of the river seemed fainter, and he caught the sharp, unmistakable scent of crow garlic, which they hadn't encountered on the way in.
He strained to pierce the gloom. A dock leaf skewered on a twig glimmered in starlight. A whisper of air cooled his cheek as an owl or a bat swept past. That leaf.
He stopped so abruptly that Renn walked into him.
"What is it?" "Not sure.Don'tmove."
That twig could not have speared the leaf by chance. It pierced the leaf blade like a needle, straight down its length, to the right of the midrib. It had to be a signal. To the right of the midrib.
He glanced to his right, saw only a dim lattice of branches.
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There.
Ahead, to the right, a sapling had been bent back and secured by a deft arrangement of crossed sticks. Mounted at its tip was a vicious spike. From the crossed sticks, near-invisible, a rope stretched across his path at chest height. Another step and he would have sprung the trap, releasing the sapling and sending the spike plunging into his side.
Torak licked his lips. They tasted chalky from the disguise. He showed Renn the trap. Her hand went to her shoulder, where her clan-creature feathers had been. They had to push through junipers to get around the trap, which had been cunningly set between the thorny bushes, to drive its victim toward it. When they were through, Renn hissed, "This isn't the way we came."
"I know. And it was sheer luck I spotted that trap." He didn't need to say it: How many more lay in wait?
Wolf turned his head toward the river, and they followed his gaze. Had that shadow just moved?
A moment later, starlight glinted on a spearhead.
The Auroch hunter was maybe twenty paces away, walking upstream. Torak and Renn sank into the bracken--slowly, so as not to attract attention by sudden movement. Torak's mind raced. Upriver lay the Auroch camp. Downriver, the way back to the Open Forest, and maybe more lethal traps. On the riverbank, at least one Auroch hunter was keeping watch.
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Renn voiced his thoughts. "We'll have to try your plan right here."
"Could you make the shots?"
"I think so. If we climb a tree." He nodded.
Renn found a tall lime that looked easier to climb than the others, as it had an odd snake of thickened bark rippling down its trunk. "Lightning-struck," she murmured, "but it survived. Maybe that'll bring us luck."
We'll need it, thought Torak. His plan was simple, and if it worked, their decoys would draw the Aurochs north, away from the Blackwater, allowing them to slip across. Ifit worked. He was losing faith fast.
Linking his hands, he boosted Renn into the tree. Then he knelt and told Wolf to stay close, to come back in the Light--and be alert for traps. Wolf's breath warmed his face as his muzzle brushed his eyelids.Stay safe, pack-brother,he told Torak.
He was so trusting. And Torak was leading him into terrible danger.
On impulse, Torak took his medicine horn from its pouch, shook out a little earthblood, and daubed it on Wolf's forehead, where he couldn't lick if off.Stay safe, packbrother,he said. Putting his hand on the lime's rough bark, he begged the Forest to protect Wolf.
The lightning scar was thicker than his wrist, and he
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climbed it like a rope. He felt the tree sensing their presence. He asked it not to give them away. Below him, Wolf's silver eyes glowed. Then he vanished into the dark.
Huddled in a fork made by three great limbs, Torak and Renn kept their sleeping-sacks rolled, relying on their reindeer-hide clothes to s
tay warm. "We'll wait here till morning," whispered Torak. "Less chance of being seen." And less chance of escape if theywereseen, but neither of them mentioned that. Renn pointed to a tall spruce north of the Aurochs' camp. Its upper branches spiked the stars; they should catch the rising sun. From her quiver she drew one of the arrows she'd prepared.
As she took aim, her face tensed with concentration. Her disguise made her alien: as if, thought Torak, she'd become Deep Forest.
Her bow creaked. She lowered it again. The night was too quiet. The Aurochs might hear the twang.
At last a gust of wind woke the trees. She took aim and let fly. The arrow struck the spruce, and its burden swung free on the cord tied to the shaft. Renn nocked another arrow and hit another tree, farther east; then another and another, each time waiting for the breeze to cover the sound.
Now they had to wait till dawn, and hope the plan worked.
They didn't have another.
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***
In the darkness, firelight flared.
Renn gripped Torak's arm. The Auroch camp was much closer than they'd thought.
High in the lime tree, they watched tall figures moving with the silent purposefulness of ants. Several gathered around a tree in the center of camp, smearing something dark on its lower branches. Two more knelt to waken another fire.
Torak was mystified. Why waken one from scratch when you could take a burning branch from the first? And they weren't using strike-fires. One man spun a stick between his palms, drilling it into a piece of wood which he held down on the ground with one foot, while he kept the drill straight by means of a crossbar clamped between his teeth. It worked. Smoke curled. The second man fed the flames beard-moss, then kindling. When the fire was fully awake, everyone knelt and touched their foreheads to the ground.
More Aurochs emerged from the Forest. Torak counted five, seven, ten. Each man--and they were all men--bore an axe, a bow, two knives, and a shield: a narrow, armlength wedge of wood, whose pointed end he thrust into the earth, before drawing off his netting hood to reveal a caked head and bizarrely ridged and furrowed face.
Torak broke out in a cold sweat. Gaup was right. 96 These people were different. And yet they were setting spits over the fires, and soon he smelled the delicious, familiar smell of roasting wood grouse, weirdly at odds with the silent camp. "Why don't they speak?" he whispered.
"I think it's to make them more treelike," breathed Renn. "That's what Deep Forest people want above all: to be like the trees."
"I can see more shields down there than men."
She nodded and held up three fingers. Three hunters still out there, stalking the Forest. They'd been right to climb the lime.
They took turns staying awake. A thin rain pattered into Torak's dreams, and the Forest became a dark, soughing sea where night birds flitted like fishes. From far away came theoo-hu, oo-huof an eagle owl.
Renn was shaking his shoulder. "Dawn soon."
He blinked, kneading cramp from his calf. The day was blustery, with a dry south wind. Chaffinches and warblers were already in full voice, the wood pigeons just beginning.
"I hope Rip and Rek are still asleep," muttered Renn. "The last thing we need is a raven greeting."
Torak tried to smile. He thought it less and less likely that their plan would work. Even if it did, they'd have only a brief chance to swim the Blackwater; and then they'd be in Forest Horse territory. And all the
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time, Thiazzi was getting away.
Gray light seeped into camp, and Torak made out humped shelters around the central beech.
He peered at it. It couldn't be. Those lower branches werered.It wasn't the morning sun; the branches themselves--bark, twigs, leaves--had been daubed all over with earthblood. Why, he thought, would anyone paint an entire branch red?
No time to wonder. The sun was rising. Soon they must be on the move.
To the north, something glittered in the tall spruce tree. And there, farther east. Renn flashed him an edgy grin. So far, the plan was working. The flint flakes they'd tied to her arrowshafts shimmered and clinked in the wind.
The Aurochs had seen them. Men were pointing, running for weapons and shields.
Swiftly, Torak and Renn climbed down to earth. Wolf appeared, his fur wet with dew. They headed for the river.
Willows overhung the Blackwater, holding in the night. There was no sign of Aurochs. Torak prayed that they'd all been drawn by the decoys. Yanking off their boots and tying them to their sleeping-sack rolls, they made their way down the bank and into the reeds, moving cautiously, so as not to startle any water birds into betraying them. The shallows were choked with leafy
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saplings felled by a flood farther upstream.
"Good cover," murmured Renn.
They risked strained smiles. Maybe this was going to work.
Bracing themselves for the cold, they waded into the river. Torak's feet sank into a freezing slime of dead leaves, and he saw Renn's stained lips tighten in disgust. He grabbed a floating sapling for cover. She did the same. They swam after Wolf, who was already halfway across.
The Blackwater wasn't as sleepy as it looked. It was a struggle to resist its stealthy underwater pull.
Suddenly Wolf veered, and came swimmingtowardthem, his ears pinned back in alarm.
"What'sthat?" whispered Renn.
Torak's belly turned over. Those logs in midstream: They were floatingupriver.And some of them had eyes.
One raised its head. Torak saw a fierce green face tattooed with leaves. A brown headband. Long hair braided with horsetails.
A Forest Horse raiding party. Heading straight for them.
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ELEVEN
"Get underwater, head back to the bank," Torak told Renn just before he dived. He couldn't find the breathing tube in his belt. Too bad--he'd hold his breath. He only hoped Renn had heard him.
She had. She surfaced soon after he did in the same patch of reeds, and they waited, gritting their teeth to stop them chattering. The Forest Horses hadn't seen them. The green men lay on their bellies, paddling silently with their hands, knives clamped between charcoal-blackened teeth. Not far from Torak, Wolf hauled himself onto the bank and shook himself noisily.
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Eyes flicked sideways in leaf-tattooed faces, then back again. A lone wolf was no concern of theirs.
The reeds gave good cover, allowing Torak and Renn to crawl up the bank and get their bearings. Torak was shocked. The treacherous Blackwater had carried them nearerthe camp, not farther away.
Soaked and shivering, he wondered what to do. Any moment now, the Aurochs would realize they'd been tricked and head back to the river, spreading out to hunt the unknown intruders. He and Renn would be trapped between them and the Forest Horses.
Unless he could steer both sides away from them.
"Head downriver," he told Renn in a whisper. "Wait for me past that bend, I'll meet you there."
Her eyes widened. "Where are you going?"
"No time to explain! Watch out for traps!"
Telling Wolf to stay with the pack-sister, he started toward the Auroch camp. When he was as close as he dared, he crouched and whipped two arrows from his quiver. Then he took out his medicine horn and quickly smeared the arrowshafts with earthblood. He had no idea what those red branches meant to the Aurochs, but they were easy to spot, which was all that mattered.
Still crouching, he nocked the first arrow to his bow and waited.
He glimpsed a Forest Horse hunter coming ashore:
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stealthily, keeping upright so that the water ran noiselessly down his body rather than pattering on leaves.
Torak took aim. He wasn't as good a shot as Renn, but he didn't need to be. His arrow thudded into a holly a good distance away.
The tattooed head turned to follow it.
From the corner of his eye, Torak saw an Auroch hunter making for the river. His belly tightened. They were fas
ter than he'd thought. He loosed his second red arrow and hit another tree.
Without waiting to see the response, he fled, running fast and low to where Renn was waiting. If his trick worked, both sides would make for those mysterious red arrows, and then ...
Shouts behind him, a clash of spears. He felt a spurt of savage joy. The Aurochs were fighting the Forest Horses, leaving him and Renn to cross the river and hunt Thiazzi.
Renn's shadowy figure beckoned from a dense stand of spruce, and he grabbed her hand. Her grasp was hot as ash as she led him through the gloom to the hidingplace she'd found: the hollow ruin of an enormous oak.
Panting, he collapsed against the tree, and as her fingers slipped from his, he gave a shaky laugh. "That was tooclose!"
No reply. He was alone in the tree.
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Twenty paces away, Wolf emerged from a clump of willows, followed by Renn, dripping wet and furious. "Where," she whispered, "in the name of the Spirit have you been?"
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TWELVE
Who wasthat?" hissed Torak. "Who was who?" demanded Renn. His disappearence had shaken her badly, and she was struggling not to show it. "Someone took my hand. I thought it was you."
"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 yougo?" From the Auroch camp came shouts, a scream of pain. 104 "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 cookingskin 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 toward the willows.
Watching him scan the trees, Renn shivered. 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.
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