The Dark Horse

by Marcus Sedgwick

  He tried to sound more confident than he felt. Would the Dark Horse ever give up? If they would follow the Storn once, why would they ever stop? But at least it was a plan; it was a chance of survival for the tribe.

  There was still no sign of any of the others, of his mother. Sigurd shook himself.

  “Right,” he said. “We leave. Now!”

  And there were no arguments.

  They got their few possessions together and followed Mouse out of the camp.

  Sigurd thought Mouse might refuse to leave the caves, or at least find it hard to do so, but he was wrong.

  She led them away from her old home and didn’t look back.

  29

  Sigurd brought up the rear, leading the horse by its leather bridle. Horse and boy surveyed the group in front of them— the last of the Storn, for all they knew. All were quiet.

  Mouse had taken command of their situation and was leading them to safety, toward the gully that would take them to the forests inland. And Sigurd admitted to himself that he did not mind. To be Lawspeaker was hard enough; to be Lawspeaker at a time of war, even harder. With only a touch of guilt he gladly let Mouse help them for a while. It was her plan and a good one—once inside the trees they would stand a much better chance of getting right away from the Dark Horse. Random, bloody images from the attack flashed like a sword through his memory again. He shuddered.

  “Come on,” called Mouse from the front. “Quickly! Don’t lag behind!”

  She was right. The Storn had straggled out into a line. Now gaps were appearing.

  “Come on,” she said again, more urgently. For the first time in a long time she looked to Sigurd for support. “Tell them, Sigurd.”

  Sigurd shook himself.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, we must hurry now. Our only chance is to make it to the woods!”

  They moved on again and made better progress toward the top of the gully that Detlef and Mouse had seen. The landscape round them had changed. They could no longer see the sea. That itself was unusual for the Storn, whose lives were dominated by the sight and sound and smell of the ocean, whose lives up until a few days ago had depended on it.

  They were walking over rolling ground high up behind the hills where the caves were. After an hour or so the landscape began to change. The ground grew into hills around them, until the slopes had become unclimbable rock faces on either side of them. Almost without realizing it, they were in the gully. Something about it was oppressive, intimidating.

  “Mouse,” called Sigurd. “How long is the journey to the forests from here?”

  She didn’t look round from her position at the front.

  “Mouse!” he called again, an edge in his voice this time.

  “A bird’s flight,” she called back, but without looking round.

  One or two of the others looked at Sigurd, unspoken questions on their lips.

  He nodded.

  “Then we had better hurry,” he said.

  30

  As we entered the gully I felt a shadow closing in. A warning to my soul. But I did not heed it, and it was not long before we found ourselves deep in the throat of the mountains.

  With each step the hills on either side of us grew higher and more impassable.

  We could only go forward or back.

  We could only hope that the Dark Horse did not have our trail. Mouse still led the way. Behind her walked Thorbjorn, my father’s closest ally, still serving the Storn well by carrying more than his share. I was still at the back, leading the horse, which made light of the load on its back.

  The horse! I should have heeded it, too, though by then it was too late.

  We had been in the gully for an hour when suddenly the beast spooked. It snorted loudly and threw its head in the air, trying to pull the bridle from my hands. Nostrils flaring, it let out a loud whinny.

  Then it stopped dead and refused to move at all.

  I tugged hard at its bridle, but there was no way I could move it against its will.

  “Mouse!” I called to the front. “Can you . . . ?”

  But she was already coming back down the line.

  She didn’t look at me but calmly took the horse’s bridle and pulled its head down to hers. I swear that she spoke to it. I swear that she whispered in its ear and that it then moved on happily.

  She took it up to the front of the line, but no sooner had they got there than it stopped again and reared into the air, standing high on its back legs. It let out the loudest call I ever heard it make, and then it sank back to the ground.

  And in the silence that followed, as we stood, spooked ourselves by now, there came an answer to the horse’s call. The cry of another horse came to us.

  I have told you this story, this whole story, of Mouse and me, as best I can. At times my memory has failed me, and I have not been able to remember everything that I should have. But I remember every single moment of what happened that day. It is burned into my memory, branded there by pain.

  I remember it all, but I cannot talk about it with ease.

  The Dark Horse came upon us.

  Without further warning than that horse’s cry, they came sweeping up the gully in front of us. Out of nowhere they were there—their terrible black cloaks swinging from their shoulders as they galloped toward us.

  We stood frozen, unable to do anything. We prepared to die. Suddenly there came a terrible shriek from the oncoming horsemen.

  I knew what it meant, for it was answered from behind. We whirled around and saw the other half of the Dark Horse coming at us from behind. They had us trapped, just as they had when they destroyed Storn.

  As they approached I drew Fire-fresh from my side. I was still at the back. Hemm was beside me with a spear.

  I looked desperately to the front, to Mouse, and realized the horsemen would get there first. I started to run toward her.

  The first horseman was almost there. I would not make it, but Thorbjorn stepped forward, in front of Mouse, sword in hand.

  The horseman met him, and as Thorbjorn raised his arm to strike he received a spear through his chest. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  And then.

  And then.

  And then, this is the part I struggle to tell you.

  The horseman reached Mouse.

  She put her arms out in front of her, raised them slightly above her head. And the horseman leaned down in his saddle and grabbed her outstretched arms and swung her up into the saddle in front of him.

  Everything stopped. The horsemen surrounded us, but no more blows were struck. They all gazed at Mouse, who with the help of the rider stood on the horse’s back.

  And then the Dark Horse let out the loudest shout of all.

  “Kara!” they cried as one. “Kara! Kara! Kara!”

  And Mouse stood on the horse, waving at them. She was smiling.

  “Kara! Kara! Kara!”

  31

  Sigurd sat by himself in one of the cages, Hemm in another next to him. Two more were hunched up in a third; all the others sat silently in their own little prisons in ones and twos. The cages were small boxes made of posts lashed together with leather ropes. They were tiny, and it was impossible to sit up straight in them, let alone stand.

  The only one missing was Thorbjorn, whose body still lay up in the gully where he had fallen.

  Wrong. There was one other missing. Mouse.

  Betrayed.

  The Storn were too shocked to speak. Too shocked even to wonder why they had not been killed already. The Dark Horse had spared no one during their first attack, but no one even cared to think why this time should be any different.

  They had been led into the gully. By Mouse, who had known just where she was taking them. And they had walked right into the trap.

  Sigurd stared out of his cage at the world around him, with his heart broken and mind bent in equal measure.

  Once the Storn had been captured, their hands had been tied and they had been slung across
the backs of the horses. The whole journey had become a waking nightmare for Sigurd. He was still struggling to take in what had happened. He hadn’t seen Mouse since she had stood on the back of the horse. The Dark Horse had called out—they had called out for Mouse, that was clear, but what had they called her? Kara? Sigurd struggled to make sense of it but could not.

  The Dark Horse had taken them on down through the gully. After a long time they had finally reached its end.

  There, just beyond a small patch of heath, lay the woods for which they had been heading.

  The forest had been their chance to survive, but as the horse on which he was being carried turned and came to a halt, Sigurd saw something on the open ground in front of the trees.

  The Dark Horse’s encampment. A dozen—maybe more—huge, round domed tents covered the ground. Each was taller than two men at its center and was perhaps fifty paces round. Horses stood tethered amongst the tents; people came and went. Smoke came from the vent in the center of each tent’s roof, and for some strange reason there were fires burning on the grass outside the camp, too.

  Sigurd had felt a tear roll down his face as he bounced and bumped the last few yards on the horse’s back.

  Then he and the others had been dragged roughly from their mounts and thrown into the small wooden cages, where they had passed the rest of the day. The cages stood a little away from the outermost of the tents, and from there the last of the Storn had been able to watch the Dark Horse going about their business. For the first time Sigurd could see that they were just people, not monsters. All the Storn had seen of them until then were galloping horses and flashing swords, but now he could watch the whole tribe. He saw their women carrying supplies, food and wood and water, to and fro. They were making preparations for a feast. He saw the men, still terrifyingly huge but engaged in mundane tasks. Chopping wood, tending horses.

  Then he saw Mouse standing in front of his cage.

  She had approached quietly while he had been staring at the tents in front of him.

  She looked at him. The others looked away, though someone spat at her through the bars of his cage. Sigurd felt the same way, except he wanted to do worse than that. Stuck inside his cage, he could do nothing but glare at her.

  “Try and understand,” Mouse said, looking at him steadily. Her voice was calm, and cool.

  Sigurd nearly laughed at her. His mind was twisting under the pressure to understand what had happened to them.

  “Understand!” he yelled at Mouse. “Understand?”

  In a few short days the Storn had been reduced to a handful of prisoners in cages. Ragnald had come and brought death to his father and to Sif ’s. Then the Dark Horse had come to finish the job.

  “What have you done to us?” cried Sigurd. “We are your family! They came and destroyed us once! Then you finish us!”

  “No, Sigurd,” said Mouse. “You finished yourselves. You are useless. The Storn have nothing. No skills, no fight, no warriors, no one to use magic. You are nothing, you have come to nothing.”

  Sigurd fought again to understand. Again he could not.

  “But why?” he cried. “Why? How can you betray us? We are your family! I am your brother.”

  “No,” said Mouse. “You are not my brother. You are not my family.”

  She waved an arm at the encampment behind her. “This is my family.”

  32

  Slowly Sigurd began to understand.

  “This is my family. My true family. Where I was born. Where I lived before I lived with the wolves.”

  That was what Mouse told him.

  Then one of the Dark Horse came to fetch her. He towered above her. Clearly he did not like the idea of her talking to the captives, but when he spoke to her, it was with respect, as if she was the more powerful.

  “Come,” he said. “Come away now. There is much to be done. Ketil wants to talk to you.”

  He shot a look at Sigurd that made his stomach sicken with fear.

  Mouse looked up at the warrior.

  “Yes, Ulf,” she said. “Tell Ketil I am coming.”

  The warrior, Ulf, nodded and left.

  “I must go now, Sigurd,” she said.

  “What about us?” shouted Hemm.

  Some of the others shouted abuse at her.

  She turned to go.

  “What about us?” cried Sigurd. “How can you do this to us?”

  “You are not dead,” said Mouse, but that was all.

  “Princess!” called Ulf from the edge of the tents. He had seen that Mouse was still talking to Sigurd.

  “Ulf !” she called back, and walked away.

  Princess? thought Sigurd. Princess?

  How could she be their princess? This was Mouse. This was his sister. Or had been for a few short years. And now he was to accept that she had betrayed them, had led them to their end, in hutches.

  “Sigurd,” said Hemm from the cage next to his. “Sigurd!”

  Sigurd ignored him.

  “Sigurd Olafsson!” called Hemm again.

  Sigurd looked up.

  “What are we going to do?” Hemm asked.

  Sigurd shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Is that it?” Hemm shouted. “You lead us to our death, and then . . . and then what?”

  “I didn’t lead you. . . .”

  “No, it was that treacherous bitch! Your sister!”

  Sigurd looked away. He let his head rest against the bars of the cage and wished for it all to end.

  “It seems she is still a wolf after all! There is no good in her, though we tried to make her one of us!”

  And though he said nothing, Sigurd could not help agreeing.

  33

  It was getting dark. Sigurd hadn’t spoken a word since Mouse had left. He sat hunched up in his cage, listening to one of his people sobbing. He had failed them all, not just the few left rotting in the cages, but the others, too. Thorbjorn. The others who had died in the first attack. Even Sif had deserved better. He thought about his mother, and he cried more silent tears.

  Sigurd had failed them all, but what was worse was that he had given up. All that filled his mind was Mouse and what she had done.

  He saw someone coming over to them from the tents. The tallest horseman he had seen so far. He strode over to the cages and walked up and down, looking at each in turn.

  “Who is Sigurd?” he said when he had studied them all.

  No one said anything, but the man seemed to have worked it out himself.

  He came over and stood in front of Sigurd’s cage.

  “You are Sigurd, called Lawspeaker?” he asked. His accent was thick and strange, but Sigurd understood him well enough.

  “I am Sigurd Olafsson, Lawspeaker of the Storn,” said Sigurd with as much courage as he could muster.

  “Very well,” said the man, “I am Ketil, and these are my people. We are happy today because our long search is over. We have been reunited with our princess, Kara. Tonight we will celebrate. But there is something first.”

  Sigurd detected a threatening note in Ketil’s voice.

  “Kara has asked that we spare your lives. I have accepted her wishes, since she is our princess.”

  “Then what will happen to us?” asked Hemm.

  “Do your people normally insult their Lawspeaker in this way?” Ketil asked Sigurd.

  Sigurd looked at Hemm.

  “He has a right to speak,” said Sigurd. “He wants to know what will happen to us. And I do, too.”

  “You belong to us now. In return for your lives you will serve us, until you die.”

  “Be your slaves?” asked Sigurd. He stared at Ketil for a long time, but the man did not so much as twitch. “And if we refuse?”

  “Then you will be put to death.”

  The Storn held their breath. They watched their boy leader intently. Their fate hung by a thread.

  “So, you will be ours,” Ketil said, and turned to leave, a smirk on his face.

 
; “No,” said Sigurd.

  Ketil stopped and looked at Sigurd.

  “No?” he said.

  But Sigurd ignored him. He turned to his people.

  “People of Storn, listen to me, your Lawspeaker, for the last time. I have led you badly. I could not protect you from the famine, nor from these people. We have been scattered and destroyed, and the tribe may soon be extinct. But I would rather it was extinct than that it survived, half alive, as slaves to these killers.”

  Ketil watched with interest as he spoke but made no effort to stop him.

  “And so, hear my last words as Lawspeaker. I end my life as Lawspeaker. I end the life of the tribe. The Storn are no more, but they will never be slaves. You are free to choose your own destiny, but I for one will go to my death proudly.”

  He stopped and stared at his kin. They looked at him with a mixture of fear and wonder on their faces. There was absolute silence, and then someone spoke.

  “I go with you, Lawspeaker.”

  Detlef, the Song-giver’s son.

  “I go with Sigurd,” he said again. “My father is gone, his music is dead. I want nothing more. Let the tribe die with pride.”

  Silent looks passed between the Storn.

  And then they all pointed at Sigurd.

  “We go with our Lawspeaker,” they said.

  34

  Strange.

  For in that moment, the moment in which I believed that all was lost, that there was nothing left—no hope, nor fear, nor joy, nor pain—something came to me.

  Pride. And as each of my people decided to die, with me, our pride grew stronger. And as it grew stronger it became something else—it became strength. And as Ketil cursed us all and strode away it became something even greater—power.

  I realized I had been wrong. There was hope after all.

  Ketil walked back to the tents, and as he did so Detlef began to sing one of his father’s favorite songs. It was a joyful song we all knew well, and we joined in, and though we still faced death, I believe it was at that moment that we were reborn.