The Flint Lord

by Richard Herley

  * * *

  Three days later the rain had gone. The wind had veered to the north, bringing clear sunshine and the first real chill of the winter. At sea the waves were muddy and discoloured, crested with foam. White gannets rolled with the swell and followed the coastline west, disappearing in deep troughs, occasionally flapping higher, gliding above a horizon of rough water.

  Inland the trees had been stripped of their leaves. The hues of autumn had become drab; the forest canopy was now a skein of empty branches. The rivers ran cold and dark, full of rain. A keen wind blew through the hawthorns on scrubland where old fires had destroyed the trees. Straggling flocks of winter thrushes descended on the bushes to eat the berries: redwings and fieldfares, still travelling southwards in the face of the coming season.

  The path into the Shode Valley, after crossing the scrubland, descended between the trunks of beeches and oaks. Along this path had come most of the three hundred people, in nine tribes, who had been arriving over the past weeks.

  The camp lay in undulating countryside eighty miles from the coast. This was a region of dense woodland and marshes with open pools full of game. Three rivers turned south among the hills and emptied into marshes where the three valleys merged. In the western valley, two miles above the confluence, the river was swift and at a hardening of the rock became the waterfall from which one of the tribes had taken its name.

  The Shoden, the Waterfall tribe, held first place among the people who used the camp each year. The camp had been in use for many generations: nobody knew how many. It was situated on sloping ground a mile above the waterfall, in a clearing beside the river. A few trees had been left standing, and these served to define the boundaries which divided the camp into areas for each tribe. Yet at first glance no such segregation could be seen: the children ran about as they wished, the heaps of firewood and the cooking areas were communal, and the shelters seemed to be sited at random.

  The soil in the clearing was relatively soft and easily dug to make pit dwellings. To make a thick and largely impervious roof, bundles of reed were thatched on a hazel framework, waterproofed with layers of holly and yew. An opening at one corner allowed access to the interior, which was insulated with bracken and lined with furs. The opening served to ventilate the pit. It remained open in all but the worst weather; with people inside, a pit quickly became warm.

  There were about eighty such dwellings in the waterfall camp, some cleaned out and used year after year, others abandoned and used as middens, others dug afresh. No cooking was permitted inside. All food brought to the camp was to be shared at the fire, which burned continuously through the winter and was flanked by awnings to keep off the rain and snow.

  Klay, the chief’s son, was sitting in the sunshine by the fire, with a bone needle making repairs to a boar-net. He was wearing a disagreeable look: he disliked such tasks. He was the son of Shode, leader of the Waterfall tribe. Eventually, when Shode died or stepped down, Klay would take his name and become chief in turn.

  Not everyone welcomed the prospect. Something in Klay’s character made him unpopular. He was twenty-four, at the peak of his physical strength, and just entering that state in which the older men could tell him little more about the forest and hunting. His eyes were burning and intense, his jawline hard and bunched. He liked action, sudden decisions, violence in the chase and, although he knew well enough that net-mending was important, it irked him to sit still and listen to the gabble of the old women. To make things worse his wife and two small daughters were at his side.

  There was to be no hunting today. Other men and their families were cutting shafts for new arrows, holding them up to judge them true, selecting goose, quail or swan quills for the flights and flint chips for the heads, or making bindings with twine and fish glue. Others were trimming stakes for use in fences to drive game, or with the women were helping to twist rope from untidy bundles of lime-bark fibre. Shode said that it was essential to keep ahead with such work. Later on, depending on the severity of the weather, food would become scarce and poorly kept equipment might cost hardship or worse.

  Shode was seated near his son, working too, discussing with Klay the change in the weather and the effect it would have in the coming days. As chief of the leading tribe of the camp, Shode controlled all hunting, allotting to each tribe its share of opportunity. Often two or more tribes hunted together, but everything had to be agreed by Shode. He was calm and quietly spoken. His hair had turned grey. In his movements could be seen the control and coordination that thirty years of the hunting life had brought. Even among the others, Shode was still a strong man. Although in his middle forties and not quite as fast as the younger men, he could run as far, work as hard, and go without sleep for as long as any. He rarely insisted on taking every privilege that was his due, but when he made a ruling his word was final. He had become chief not by inheritance, but by challenge, twenty years before. Since then there had been scarcely a threat to his leadership, and none at all in recent years. He was acknowledged the wisest man in the tribe; the best to lead the Shoden and give unity to all the tribes of the winter camp.

  Behind him the breeze hissed in the trees and poured clean air through the valley. The sky was perfectly blue; the late morning sun still held a trace of warmth.

  Shode was joined by a bulky, bearlike man, the leader of the Bubeck or Beaver tribe.

  “We’ll try Yote Wood again tomorrow,” Shode said to Klay. “The pigs will have taken themselves in there by now.” He turned to Bubeck. “Are you with us again tomorrow?”

  “We are.”

  Bubeck was almost a giant, a head taller than Klay, and supremely ugly. In his boyhood he had been caught by a brush fire and horribly burnt: his face was a scarred mask, his left eye pulled outward and down. His left ear had gone, and what remained of his hair and beard grew in feeble tufts.

  The Bubecks and the Shoden often hunted together. Like most of the tribes that used the camp, they were of the same lineage, tracing their descent from that part of the Sun’s creation ruled by the spirit Water. Even in summer the two tribes had sometimes travelled together. They were closer to each other than the others of the spirit – the Ospreys, Dragonflies, Otters and the rest.

  Bubeck was also related to Shode by marriage. Despite his appearance he had taken as wife the most desirable woman in the tribe. The chief and the chief alone had this right, taking if he wished the wife of another man; for Bubeck was leader because no one dared to challenge him. In the winter camp he was second only to Shode. He had been a part of Klay’s earliest life. From Bubeck, his “uncle”, Klay had learned how to shoot, how to make a trap, how to wait in silence, how to read a trail, how to follow like a shadow for mile upon mile. With Shode and Bubeck and the boys of his own age Klay had killed his first roebuck and skinned it, and had been shown how to use every part of the animal, to waste nothing.

  From those early years Klay had spent his time with another child, a boy two years older, the son of the man who had then been chief of the Waterfall tribe. Tagart – the other child – remembered little of his father’s death. A broken leg, gangrene, his mother weeping. The outcome was what Tagart’s father might have wished: his friend defeated the others and took the name Shode to become the new leader of the tribe.

  Tagart continued to learn in company with Klay, to be taught by the elders, and by Shode in particular. Yet even as a child of six, Tagart sensed that everything had changed. It was now Klay who was to inherit the name of Shode; Klay who received the best instruction; Klay for whom the leading beast was reserved; Klay who was expected to excel in all things. Eventually Tagart left the Shoden and married into the Owls, a tribe of the Air spirit. From then on he saw Shode and Bubeck and Klay only occasionally: the Air tribes wintered at another camp, in the east.

  Klay looked up from his work, squinting. On the far side of the river his father’s name had been called. A column of people was arriving, preceded by Edrin and Wone, two men from the Shoden who had been
posted to watch the bank path and the bridge of logs, fixed in place like stepping-stones, which joined it to the camp.

  Edrin raised his voice again. “Shode! Shode! A new tribe!”

  Shode stood up and shielded his eyes against the sun. “Who are they?”

  “The Visars!”

  When Klay reached the river he was among a jostling crowd welcoming the newcomers, taking loads, helping to carry the heavy packs and frames, the bundles of furs and skins and shelter-poles. In a line the Visars came over the bridge, stepping one by one on firm ground to be greeted and divested of their loads.

  It took a while for them all to cross – the Visars were a large tribe, of more than forty people. Towards the back of the line a stretcher was brought across, on which Fodich of the Dragonflies had eased himself up so that he could see. Word was sent to his woman, and almost at once he was reunited with his family.

  Over the heads of the crowd Klay looked at the remaining people on the far bank, where Edrin was waiting to be the last on the bridge. Beside Edrin, in easy conversation, he saw a face he knew.

  Tagart was carrying a heavily laden frame, his thumbs tucked in the straps. Somewhere on his walk with the Visars he had found, or someone had found for him, purple knapweed flowers to tie in his hair. His walk with the Visars. The Visars. Not the Owls.

  Klay was suddenly apprehensive. His eyes searched for the necklet of bones which he knew all members of the Owl tribe wore. Tagart no longer had one. That meant he was no longer in the Owl tribe; nor was he wearing any emblem of the Visars.

  A girl preceded Tagart on the logs, a girl with purple flowers in her hair, and all else fled from Klay’s thoughts.

  * * *

  Her name was Segle. She was seventeen and very beautiful. Later Klay learned that she was one of the Terns, a tribe now dead. She had been imprisoned at Valdoe and made to work in the slaves’ quarters. Tagart had helped her to escape. Now she was his wife.

  After dark they were sitting together by the fire as Tagart again told the story of their escape and their subsequent wanderings. He described the things they had seen and heard at Valdoe, and the way they had found Fodich.

  Fodich was still very weak, but he had been brought to the fire to repeat what he had told Tagart and Visar. It was something to do with the Flint Lord and rumours at the fort. The talk barely registered with Klay; he was watching Segle. Once she looked his way, once only, and again he told himself that she had sensed it too. He knew what she wanted. He knew what they both wanted. He had never spoken to her, never seen her before today, but were it not for Tagart, not for his own woman and family, he would get up and go to her now and take her down to his dwelling.

  Klay remembered that he was the chief’s son. The talk seemed to be important. It would be as well to pay more attention.

  “The snows are a month away,” Shode said. “We must have time to confirm what you say. Much as I trust you, Visar, and Tagart and Fodich too, we must not act rashly.”

  “Mild words,” said Bubeck. “Mistaken words. The Flint Lord has never dared to move his men in winter before. Why should he do so now? Has he gone mad?”

  “It is possible,” Fodich said. “Some say he has been visited by demons. Others say the farmers’ gods have deserted them. Their fields are failing and the villages are going hungry.”

  “We’ve seen no sign of it,” Bubeck said. “Do you want us to risk the winter just because of a rumour in the slave pens?”

  “I repeat only what I have heard,” Fodich said.

  “The drought was bad this year,” Shode said. “We saw ruined crops.”

  “And my wife will testify that the Flint Lord has already begun killing us,” Tagart said. He was becoming heated. “Didn’t he murder her whole tribe? What more do you want? You won’t be happy till the soldiers are here.”

  Shode held up his hand. Tagart, newly welcomed into the tribe, was losing his sense of respect for Bubeck, a chief.

  Shode said, “This is what we will do. We must know how many soldiers the Flint Lord has assembled.” He turned to Chenk, leader of the Kingfisher tribe. “I want you to lead a scouting party. Each tribe will give the man with the best eyes and the fastest legs. Leave in the morning; go to the Flint Lord’s landing-place, to Valdoe and all his other works. If you see the truth of what Visar and Fodich have said, the elders will convene and we can decide what to do.”

  Tagart begged to be allowed to go with the scouts. Shode refused. “From this tribe I give Wone.”

  The other chiefs began to nominate their scouts.

  Klay sat studying every detail of Segle’s face. She was sitting in profile, her eyes downcast. She seemed to turn too frequently and attentively to Tagart. Klay watched her tiny movements and her self-conscious gestures, missing nothing; her shins were bare to the firelight.

  “Please, Shode,” Tagart said. “Let me go. I’ve been inside the Trundle. I know the other forts too, and the mines, and the landing-place.”

  Bubeck said, “Slavery has rotted your brains.”

  It was then that Segle stole her glance at Klay.

  He knew at once that she had been expecting him to be looking elsewhere, at Bubeck or Tagart. She was momentarily caught out: her feelings lay revealed. She wanted what Klay wanted. Her glance faltered and she looked away.

  Tagart was standing with fists clenched. Bubeck had insulted him in front of the whole camp.

  But Bubeck was a chief, this was the day Tagart had been brought back into the Waterfall tribe, and Bubeck was Shode’s ally. Tagart sat down.

  Bubeck, sprawling on his couch of skins, held Tagart’s eye for a derisive moment before he turned to Klay and grinned.

  But Klay did not see. He saw only Segle, at her place by the fire.

  4

  Bugling and whooping, nine swans flew southward along the valley, white against the grey sky above the water. Yellowed reeds stood swaying in the ripples and, in the centre of the mere, flocks of waterfowl showed as dark patches.

  The morning was intensely cold. It was three days before the winter solstice – over three weeks since Tagart had returned to the Shoden. In that time there had already been snow flurries and twinkling nights of frost. Now a sleeting north wind was blowing, numbing the face and fingers and finding a way through every layer of clothing.

  Tagart and Klay were crouching inside a makeshift hide of bundled reeds, watching the flooded land where, since dawn, the clapnets had waited. All morning mallard and teal had been flighting above the osiers and islands. Some had joined the coots and wigeon on the floods, grazing by the water or sleeping with heads on backs, white eyelids closed, shedding occasional feathers that the wind snared among grass-stems and dead thistles. The wildfowl slept lightly. Once a falcon appeared in the sky, drifting west, showing no interest, yet the ducks left the ground in a storm of wings and circled for a long time before returning. As they came back in pairs and parties they redistributed themselves and some chanced to come nearer to the nets.

  The work was made more tedious by the cold. The catch today would be consumed as part of the solstice feast, a celebration to mark the start of the new year. Most of the hunters had gone some miles down the valley to try for a specially large boar, but Tagart had opted to work the duck traps, and he had asked Klay to join him.

  The trigger-cords from the nets entered the hide and lay across a branch, ready for use. In the cramped space the reeds smelled musty. Tagart put his face to the slit and peeped out. More wigeon had ventured out of the water. The grazing birds were now all round the nets; three or four were even inside.

  “Not much longer,” he whispered to Klay.

  Klay grunted. Tagart regarded him for a moment before turning back to the slit.

  Klay’s manner had not escaped Tagart’s notice. The reason for it was not hard to guess. In Tagart, Klay perceived a rival. Until Tagart’s arrival, it seemed, Klay had seen no threat to his future. There had been no other likely successor to the name of Shode, from with
in the tribe at least. But Tagart was Klay’s equal in strength and skill, and in a challenge these qualities would be put to the test.

  The scouts had still not returned from Valdoe. They should have been back within a fortnight at the most; yet Shode seemed content to wait. “We’ll give them two more days,” he had said that morning. Tagart thought they might have been captured. He could not understand Shode’s attitude. In time, the matter would cause trouble with Visar and the other chiefs, many of whom shared the views of Tagart and Fodich. Bubeck, though, did not share these views. He openly ridiculed them. Shode was non-committal: Klay had been influenced by Bubeck.

  Discord over such an issue might precipitate a challenge for leadership of the camp, and thus of the Shoden too. But, whatever happened about Valdoe, Klay would know that when the day came, perhaps years from now, when Shode died or became too old, he could no longer be so sure of succeeding his father.

  In the past, with Tagart in another tribe, Klay had always been friendly. Now he was resentful; and his manner towards Segle too was peculiar.

  And Bubeck had been hostile from the moment of Tagart’s arrival. He had no son himself: Klay was his favourite. Probably he hoped that, after Shode’s death, the two tribes would merge and that he would become the chief, working through Klay.

  Tagart sat looking out across the bleak marshes of the valley. Soon the meres would be solid. In some years even the rivers froze. Such times were rare, every ten or twenty winters, often following a hot summer: and last summer had been the hottest anyone could remember. The old men were already saying that a cold winter was on its way.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t, not sure how best to frame his words.

  Out on the floods the duck were still feeding. The cloudy day made their plumage dull, blending with the grass and the thistles. Beyond them the water of the mere was blown into tiny waves; the wind flicked droplets from their peaks and drove them on the shore. The nets had almost filled with birds.