The Flint Lord

by Richard Herley

  The men were running now, leaping through the undergrowth, trying to keep up with the boar as it crashed first one way then another, guided by the hurdles on its headlong passage through the woods, gaining speed, its snout held low; they glimpsed its yellow tusks, the hackles of coarse bristle on its back; and it vanished in a holly thicket, the glossy foliage slapping back to hide the place of entry.

  This was the first drive of the day, under a sky that looked full of snow. Tagart was near the middle of the line. They had managed to keep the boar well inside the funnel. The holly thicket was one of a number of such sanctuaries along the course where a quarry might go to ground – unavoidable hazards which the siting of the hurdles had kept to a minimum.

  “Careful now! He might break anywhere!”

  “If he comes at you just let him go!”

  The boar was much too big for them to take chances. They had not seen it properly yet, not in the open, but it stood fully three feet high at the shoulder. If it chose to come out of the thicket where it had gone in, if it chose to run back down the funnel – as some old and wily boars might – then it would be far too heavy and dangerous to stop.

  “There he is!”

  Tagart cried, “He’s coming this way!”

  For an instant the boar, head down, was tearing through the brambles directly towards him. It had emerged from the holly at a gallop, close to the place where it had entered, almost as if it had sensed a weak link in the line of men, a gap between Orick and Tagart on his left. But Tagart was moving sideways, closing the gap. The boar came nearer: twenty paces, ten, and, with two sudden steps, jolted to a halt.

  It took breath, eyeing Tagart. The eyes were dark, nearly black, with rims of white showing at the bottom, bloodshot and rheumy. The pig was looking at Tagart. And then it turned its head and was running again, away from Tagart and the others, more desperately than before.

  It skirted the thicket and plunged along its ordained path towards the corridor of stakes.

  “Keep him straight! Keep him straight!”

  The final screen was behind; the funnel walls were narrowing. The terror-stricken boar was running too fast to take the curve of stakes and its flank barged into the left wall, but it kept on, goaded by the yelling and screaming and suddenly the stakes opened and there was freedom and it was fooled, meshed in a tangle of netting that brought it in a slithering crash to the ground.

  Men were ready with spears. Klay thrust first. The blade snapped and he shouted an oath. He drew back; Grisden stepped forward. The boar rolled its eyes, blood dribbling from its jaws, and with a convulsive spasm got to its feet. Grisden raised his arms and stabbed, badly, goring the flank, unleashing a paroxysm of thrashing and bucking and squealing. Shode gave an angry cry and jumped forward to finish it, to end its pain; but then, impossibly, the netting was somehow coming apart as the boar wrenched its head from side to side and one foreleg was free. The other foreleg came free and the netting was being dragged behind it like an old skin. The boar twisted sideways and ran straight into Shode. The right tusk jabbed upwards and pierced his groin. Tagart saw the boar give a frenzied jerk of its head. Shode was flung down and dragged along the ground.

  Other spears were plunged into the boar from behind. In a moment it was dead.

  Shode was shouting, shouting through all the woods with unhuman cries, a beast in slaughter. The trees, the sky, the ground – everything seemed to Tagart unreal, from some other world where emergency waited to break through. And it had broken through. What had happened so swiftly and easily could not be grasped, could not be believed.

  Klay fell to his knees beside his father.

  Among others, Bubeck and Edrin jumped the line of stakes, shouting orders. They pulled the carcase of the boar aside and cut away Shode’s clothing.

  “Hold him still!” Bubeck growled.

  They stared, aghast.

  “Better take him back.”

  6

  The solstice symbolized rebirth. It was the first day of the new year. On the morning of the Creation, after the Sun had vanquished the Ice God and exiled him in the far north, the four spirits were born, released from the Sun’s dazzling body in an endless stream, each separate, each remaining a part of the Sun. The spirits were a family. Together they made Light, the essence of the Sun, returning to him, coming forth. The father of the family, Fire, warlike and proud, was sent north and charged by the Sun with keeping the Ice God a prisoner. The daughter, Water, peaceful and passive, was given the south. The son was Air, whose domain was the east; and their mother, Earth, dwelt in the west.

  The Moon had betrayed the Ice God and ingratiated herself with the Sun, who made her his acolyte. To her were entrusted the seasons, and each winter, when the Ice God tried to win her back, her allegiance was put to the test. At the solstice she renounced him and turned back to the Sun. It was the Moon whose slender fingers had taken the Sun’s needles and sewn the threads of light he had provided: from light, from the four spirits, in greater or lesser proportions, everything was made, and, having been made, assigned its place in the world. Thus the eagle was a blend of Air and Fire, and was traditionally governed by those spirits; the bison belonged to Earth, the otter to Water.

  The creation of man was more complicated. His body was composed of all the spirits, but his soul was imperfect, lacking one or more of the elements that would allow him to achieve perfection or Light. He spent his life trying to repair the deficiency. If he lacked Fire, he would go to live in the north, and the totem of his tribe would be chosen from one of Fire’s creatures.

  There were four spirit groups, each with its winter camp in a different part of the country. Sometimes these camps split up, changed sites, fell into disuse, and then there might be five, six, or even more.

  Each spirit group was led by one tribe, known as the First. Alone among all the tribes, the Firsts took their names not from a creature but from the direct manifestation of each spirit: Crase, Lightning; Shode, Waterfall; Sare, Cloud; Omber, Mountain. Their totems – lizard, salmon, peregrine, ox – were secondary symbols which nonetheless possessed great power, for each was the purest totem of the spirit.

  Most tribes belonged to two spirit groups. Their summer hunting grounds, though never precisely defined, were usually kept to and each tribe had its customary territory and rights. The Dragonflies mainly wintered in the north, at the Lightning camp; but because the dragonfly was a creature of Water as well as Fire the tribe sometimes used the Waterfall camp instead. Occasionally, finding themselves in autumn in the west or east – perhaps deliberately, for most marriages outside the tribe were arranged in winter – they might stay as guests in the camp of another First, just as the Wolves, the Bisons, and the Martens were this year wintering in the Waterfall camp.

  * * *

  Shode died from his wounds at nightfall. The loss of blood was too great, the damage too horrible for any hope of recovery. Yet the priests chanted through the hours of waiting and sprinkled mineral earths on the fire, causing many-coloured sparks to rise into the grey afternoon. They made prayer to the Sun, to the Moon, and to the four spirits. To Water they addressed a continuous and dreamlike hymn: as chief of the Water First, Shode was the embodiment of the spirit among the nomads. There would be no rest until another had been found to take his place.

  Even as they had carried Shode back to camp the speculation had begun. With such injuries they knew he was already finished. It was time for a new chief to take over. Klay’s time had come.

  Below ground, the Waterfall priest, Phale, spoke his prayers while Shode’s woman held her husband’s head in her lap. He had lost consciousness.

  Shortly before dark there was a cry from the river. Chenk and his scouting party had returned. Nine men had left the camp three weeks ago; only seven crossed the bridging logs to be greeted with the news about Shode.

  Chenk took the remaining chiefs, eight including himself, and gathered them under the awnings at one edge of the cooking area. He was exhausted,
filthy, dispirited; the scouts had covered the distance from Valdoe in two days. Normally it took at least twice as long to traverse, on overgrown paths, eighty miles of forest and marsh.

  “Fodich is right,” Chenk said.

  He described how the scouts had divided in order to survey all parts of the Flint Lord’s domain. “We saw ships landing, soldiers moving from fort to fort, supplies coming from the villages. You’ve never seen such things. Wone and Trander are missing. They must have been taken by the soldiers.” He explained that Wone and Trander had been sent to Apuldram to watch the landing-place. All the scouts had been due to rendezvous on the way back; when Wone and Trander had failed to appear, Chenk himself had gone to Apuldram to find them. “There’s no cover. To get close to the worksheds they must have risked being seen. We waited two days for them; we even questioned a field slave on the outskirts of Valdoe Village, but he could tell us nothing. Then we came back.”

  Four of the chiefs – Osprey, Dragonfly, Heron and Kingfisher, Chenk himself, agreed that there should be an immediate convocation of the elders, not only of this, but of the other winter camps. The remaining chiefs were divided. Bubeck and Marten were still sceptical; Bison and Wolf wanted to leave the decision to Shode or his successor.

  Their argument was interrupted by the arrival of Phale, the priest, tall and sharp-faced, his beard and hair almost wholly white. He was leader of the elders in Shode’s absence.

  “Come at once,” he told the chiefs.

  Klay appeared at the top of the ladder from Shode’s dwelling. He stood looking round the camp for a moment before stepping forward. People began rising to their feet; the compound fell silent.

  “My father is dead.”

  Phale pushed his way forward. “A new chief must arise!” In his right hand he was holding aloft a long staff, a carved mace intricate with flowing patterns which culminated in a leaping salmon, symbol of aspiration and the Waterfall tribe.

  At his elbow, Tagart felt someone stir. It was Yulin, Klay’s wife. Segle had become separated from him in the crowd.

  “Who is there with strength?” Phale cried. “Who is there with strength to carry the Mace?”

  Klay responded. “As my father’s issue I put myself forward by choice of the spirits. Render the Mace to my charge!”

  Klay’s woman was standing on tiptoes, speaking into Tagart’s ear. “He wants your wife,” she said. “They have already known each other. If he is chief he’ll take her. You will be abandoned, and so will my children, and so will I.”

  Phale turned to the assembly. “Does any man stand against Klay?”

  “You will be cast out,” Yulin hissed. “You will be tribeless. It’s true. I saw them in the woods.”

  Tagart could not absorb what she was saying. He could not think.

  “… in the woods,” she whispered again.

  Murmurs were rising around him. A name was being repeated over and over again. Edrin, Edrin, Edrin.

  “No!” Klay shouted. He shot out an accusing arm. “It was he who killed my father! It was Edrin, Edrin and Tagart, and Berge. They brought the old netting on purpose! It was Tagart! Tagart and Edrin!”

  Edrin came forward. “I challenge his fitness to lead.”

  “Yes! We want Edrin as chief!”

  “Klay is unworthy!”

  “He cannot lead us!”

  Phale raised the Mace for silence. “Klay, will you defer to Edrin? Or will you accept the challenge?”

  “Do I have any choice?” He wiped froth from the edge of his mouth. “It was a plot by Edrin and Tagart to kill him!”

  “That’s enough.”

  “Murderers! Murderers!”

  Phale restrained him with the Mace. “Enough, I say!”

  Tagart perceived that Edrin was the choice of the majority, of all who opposed Klay. But he also perceived that Edrin was too old to challenge a man like Klay. Edrin would have better fieldcraft, no more, and in the forest, especially in winter, that was not enough. Klay would win and become chief. And if what Yulin had said were true, he would take Segle and drive Tagart out. Tagart would have to leave his blood tribe and his ancestors and never return. He would have to leave Segle, leave her with Klay …

  “Edrin is old and weak,” Yulin said into Tagart’s ear. “Only you are strong enough to challenge my husband.”

  Earlier Tagart had seen the arrival of the scouts and he had already heard rumours of what they had found. At the back of his mind was something larger and far more important than Klay and Segle or his own life.

  Yulin was still speaking, in a low, insistent voice. Tagart sought Segle’s face in the crowd but couldn’t find it.

  A huge man was moving through the crowd, pushing people out of the way. “Let me through,” Bubeck said. “Let me through.” He reached the fire and addressed Phale.

  “I too challenge Klay’s fitness to lead.”

  There was uproar.

  The Shoden objected, because Bubeck was outside the tribe; they said he could not compete.

  “No so,” said Phale. “The Beavers are of our spirit. Their chief, and the chief of any tribe of the spirit, may challenge. This is lawful.”

  Bubeck grunted. “The Shoden have become too few,” he said. “They need fresh blood. Our blood. Our tribes will merge. The Bubecks and the Shoden will become one, a great tribe, the first tribe of the spirit!”

  Tagart saw that Klay did not seem perturbed by Bubeck’s challenge. Edrin would stand no chance at all. Not against two.

  Tagart heard his own voice, as though it were not his own; the words he uttered were squeezed from him by the press of people, by the firelight and the night, by Klay and Edrin and Bubeck, by Yulin, by the long hours of torment waiting for Shode to die. They were uttered for Segle, anguished and desperate words, but most of all they were uttered through the memory of Fodich lying in the mud, through terror: of Valdoe, and the carnage that would surely come if the Flint Lord remained unopposed.

  Tagart faced Phale and the whole assembly.

  “I too challenge,” he said. “I challenge Klay’s fitness to lead!”

  * * *

  The laws of challenge had their origin in the mists beyond memory. Their object was simple: to find the best man to be chief. In the process no one was to be killed, unless by misadventure, for no face was lost by defeat and a fair surrender was held to be honourable. In this way valuable men were not wasted, and the man who was cleverest, strongest and luckiest would succeed.

  As leader of the tribal elders, Phale broke the Mace into five pieces. The uppermost fragment with its salmon emblem was retained by him. The other fragments, one for each contestant, were given to Klay, Edrin, Bubeck and Tagart. Contestants were allowed their choice of clothing, a pouch, and, through some tradition whose purpose was obscure, a coil of spear-binding twine eleven paces in length. They had no food, no weapons, no fire-making kits.

  The challengers were then to be banished from the camp, in accordance with the laws. The one who came back with all the pieces of the Mace, to match the emblem and make it whole, would be recognized as the new chief.

  If a man sought or accepted the help of another, or if he destroyed or lost his fragment before it could be taken, or if he returned to camp before his part in the contest was resolved, then that man would be tried by the elders. If found guilty, he would be executed and all his family cast out, left to wander without tribe or ancestors, without hope of the afterlife. In winter such expulsion meant certain death.

  There were no other rules. Nothing mattered except that one man should demonstrate his superiority by finding, and having found, taking – by violence, stealth, or persuasion – each and every fragment of Mace.

  The four men were separated, searched by the elders, blindfolded, and sent out secretly, each in a different direction, chosen by lot. Because they were four, each had been assigned a cardinal point. Tagart had drawn North; he had then been conducted to the edge of the camp. Only then had the blindfold been removed, so
that he would not know the directions the others had taken.

  No stars showed: under the trees everything was dark. Tagart made his way uphill, towards the burnt-out heath where he had decided to wait till daybreak.

  Brambles snatched at his leggings. Branches broke under the heavy soles of his boots. He was leaving a plain and easy trail, but that could not be helped. At night, the others would be doing the same.

  He had already shaped the outline of a strategy which depended upon no one but himself. That was the only way to succeed – if he tried to be too subtle, he knew he would become confused and failure would inescapably follow.

  It would be easy to hide among the trees, to wait, to let the others fight each other first and thus reduce the odds. But he had neither food nor fire, and what if they too were planning to hide? What then?

  He knew he had to start at once, and the man to start with was Edrin. Edrin was past his best, and, though he was not to be underestimated, he would be the easiest of the three.

  Tagart was afraid. Klay and Bubeck were working together, and he would have to take them both at once. They could not risk his return to camp, his testimony that Klay had been helped. So they would kill him in the woods and hide his body. And afterwards Klay would take Segle and become leader of the Shoden. Disaster would come to the tribe and all the tribes of the south, for, whoever won the contest, only Tagart recognized the threat from Valdoe.

  He tried to push such thoughts aside; and thoughts of Segle too, but she was with him constantly, a dull, bewildering ache. He refused to let himself believe what Klay’s woman had whispered, refused to connect it with what Edrin had so maliciously said or with what he knew in his own heart.

  There was no time for her now.

  * * *

  At first light Altheme was standing alone at her window, looking south. She kept her eyes above the tent-filled enclosure and the spiked wooden walls of the fort, above the rough steepness of Valdoe Hill falling to bleak marshland and the sea.

  It was the day of Goele, the winter solstice, a feast, and not yet sunrise, but Gehan had been up and working for three hours, leaving Altheme to listen to the sounds from the adjoining chamber.