Chronicles of Ancient Darkness

by Michelle Paver

  ‘No,’ said Torak.

  Oslak rolled his eyes. He went off to the nearest shelter, and returned with an ashwood spear tipped with a vicious basalt point, and what seemed to be a length of triple-thickness reindeer hide.

  Torak took the spear uncertainly, and watched in puzzlement as Oslak strapped the toughened hide round his right forearm for him. It felt as heavy and unwieldy as a haunch of deer meat. He wondered what he was supposed to do with it.

  Oslak nodded at the bandage on Torak’s other arm, and grimaced. ‘Seems like the odds are against you.’

  Just a bit, thought Torak.

  When he’d suggested a fight, he’d had in mind a wrestling-bout, with maybe some knife-play thrown in: the sort of thing he and Fa used to practise quite often, but just for fun. Clearly, to the Ravens, a fight meant something else. Torak wondered if there were special rules, and whether it would look weak to ask.

  Fin-Kedinn prodded the fire, making sparks fly. Torak watched him through a shimmer of heat haze.

  ‘There’s only one rule,’ said Fin-Kedinn, as if he’d guessed Torak’s thoughts. ‘You can’t use fire. Do you understand?’ His eyes caught and held Torak’s.

  Torak nodded distractedly. Not using fire was the least of his worries. Behind Fin-Kedinn, he could see Hord having his arm-guard strapped on. He had taken off his jerkin. He looked enormous, and frighteningly strong. Torak decided against taking off his own jerkin. No need to emphasise the contrast.

  He untied everything from his belt and laid it in a pile on the ground. Then he wound a length of wovengrass twine round his forehead to keep his hair out of his eyes. His hands were slippery with sweat. He stooped and rubbed them in the dust.

  Someone touched his shoulder, making him jump.

  It was Renn. She was holding out a birch-bark beaker.

  He took it gratefully and drank. To his surprise, it was elderberry juice: tart and strengthening.

  Renn saw his surprise and shrugged. ‘Hord’s had a drink. It’s only fair.’ She pointed to a pail by the fire. ‘There’s water when you need it.’

  Torak handed back the beaker. ‘I don’t think it’ll last that long.’

  She hesitated. ‘Who knows?’

  A hush fell. The watchers formed a ring round the edge of the clearing, with Torak and Hord in the middle, near the fire. There were no formalities. The fight was on.

  Warily, they circled each other.

  For all his size, Hord moved with the grace of a lynx, flexing his knees and repositioning his fingers on knife and spear. His face was taut, but a small smile played about his lips. He loved being the centre of attention.

  Torak didn’t. His heart was hammering against his ribs. Dimly, he could hear the watchers shouting encouragement to Hord, but their voices were muffled, as if he were underwater.

  Hord’s spear lunged for his chest, and he dodged just in time. He felt the sweat start out on his forehead.

  Torak tried the same move, hoping it didn’t look like copying.

  ‘Copying won’t get you very far,’ called Renn.

  Torak’s face burned.

  He and Hord were moving faster now. In places, the ground was slimy with boar’s blood. Torak slipped and nearly went down.

  He knew he couldn’t hope to win by force. He’d have to use his wits. The trouble was, he only knew two fighting tricks, and he hadn’t practised them more than a few times.

  Here goes, he thought recklessly. He jabbed his spear at Hord’s throat. As expected, Hord’s hide-arm rose to block it. Torak tried a quick undercut to the belly, but Hord parried it with alarming ease, and Torak’s spear slid harmlessly off his arm-guard.

  He knew that one, thought Torak. With every move, it was becoming obvious that Hord was a seasoned fighter.

  ‘Come on, Hord,’ yelled a man. ‘Give him a red skin!’

  ‘Give me time,’ Hord called back with a curl of his lip.

  A ripple of laughter.

  Torak tried his second trick. Feigning total incompetence, which wasn’t hard, he hit out wildly, tempting Hord with a glimpse of his unprotected chest. Hord took the bait, but as his spear came in to strike, Torak’s guard-arm swung across to meet it. Hord’s spearpoint sank into the thick hide guard, nearly knocking Torak off his feet, but Torak managed to keep to his plan by twisting his guard-arm sharply upwards. Hord’s spear-shaft snapped in two. The watchers groaned. Hord staggered back without a spear.

  Torak was astonished. He hadn’t expected it to work.

  Hord recovered swiftly. Lunging forwards, he jabbed his knife into Torak’s spear-hand. Torak cried out as the flint bit between finger and thumb. He lost his footing and dropped his spear. Hord lunged again. Torak only just managed to roll away in time and scramble to his feet.

  Now they were both spearless. Both down to knives.

  To gain some breathing space, Torak dodged behind the fire. His chest was heaving, and his wounded hand throbbed. Sweat was pouring down his sides. He bitterly regretted not copying Hord and taking off his jerkin.

  ‘Hurry up, Hord,’ yelled a woman. ‘Finish him off!’

  ‘Come on, Hord!’ shouted a man. ‘Is this what they taught you in the Deep Forest?’

  By now, though, not all shouts were for Hord. There was a smattering of encouragement for Torak, although he guessed it was less genuine support than pleased surprise that he was lasting longer than expected.

  He knew it wouldn’t be much longer. He was tiring rapidly, and he’d run out of tricks. Hord was taking control.

  Sorry, Wolf, he told the cub silently. I don’t think we’re going to get out of this.

  From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Wolf high in the tree. He was wriggling and yowling in a haze of steamy breath. What’s happening? he was asking. Why won’t you come and free me?

  Torak leapt aside to avoid a knife-slash across his throat. Concentrate, he told himself grimly. Forget about Wolf.

  And yet – something was nagging him: something about Wolf. What was it?

  He glanced at Wolf yowling in the tree, his breath steaming . . .

  ‘You can’t use fire,’ Fin-Kedinn had said . . .

  Suddenly Torak’s mind flooded clear and he knew what to do. Jabbing and feinting, he edged sideways, putting the fire between them once more.

  ‘Hiding again?’ taunted Hord.

  Torak jerked his head at the birch-bark water pail. ‘I want a drink. All right?’

  ‘If you must. Boy.’

  Keeping his eyes on Hord, Torak squatted, and cupped water to drink. He did it slowly, to make Hord think he was up to something with the water pail, and to distract attention from the cooking-skin bubbling by the fire.

  It worked. Hord stepped closer to the fire, looming over it to intimidate Torak.

  ‘You want a drink too?’ said Torak, still squatting.

  Hord snorted his contempt.

  Suddenly, Torak lashed out – but at the cooking-skin. Jabbing his knife into the tough hide, he upended it, and sent boiling broth pouring onto the white-hot embers. Hissing clouds of steam billowed into Hord’s face.

  The watchers gasped. Torak seized his chance and jabbed at his opponent’s wrist. Blinded, Hord howled in pain and dropped his knife. Torak kicked it away, then threw himself on Hord, knocking him to the ground.

  As Hord lay winded, Torak straddled his chest and knelt on his arms to pin them down. For one roaring heartbeat his sight misted red, and he knew the urge to kill. He grabbed a handful of dark-red hair and bashed Hord’s head once against the earth.

  Then he felt strong hands on his shoulders, pulling him off. ‘It’s over,’ said Fin-Kedinn behind him.

  Torak struggled in his grip. Hord sprang up and scrambled for his knife. Panting and glaring, they faced each other.

  ‘I said it’s over,’ snapped Fin-Kedinn.

  Chaos erupted among the watchers. They didn’t think it was over at all. ‘He cheated! He used fire!’

  ‘No, he won fairly enough!’

>   ‘Who’s to say? They’ll have to fight it out again!’

  Both Torak and Hord looked appalled at that.

  ‘The boy won,’ said Fin-Kedinn, releasing his grip on Torak.

  Torak shook himself and wiped the sweat from his face as he watched Hord re-sheathing his knife. Hord was furious, though whether with himself or with Torak it was impossible to tell. Dyrati put her hand on his arm but he shook it off angrily, and pushed his way through the others, disappearing into one of the shelters.

  Now that the blood-lust had left him, Torak felt shaky and sick. He sheathed his knife and looked round for his things. Then he saw Fin-Kedinn watching him.

  ‘You broke the rule,’ the Raven Leader said calmly. ‘You used fire.’

  ‘No I didn’t,’ said Torak. He sounded a lot more confident than he felt. ‘I didn’t use fire. I used steam.’

  ‘I would have preferred it,’ said Fin-Kedinn, ‘if you’d used water instead of broth. That was a waste of good food.’

  Torak did not reply.

  Fin-Kedinn studied him, and for a moment there was a gleam of humour in his blue eyes.

  Oslak pushed through to them, with the bag containing Wolf in his arms. ‘Here’s that cub of yours!’ he boomed, tossing the bag at Torak with a force that made him stagger.

  Wolf squirmed and licked Torak’s chin and told him how awful it had been, all at once. Torak wanted to say something comforting, but stopped himself. It would be stupid to slip up now.

  ‘The law’s the law,’ Fin-Kedinn said briskly. ‘You won. You’re free to go.’

  ‘No!’ A girl’s voice rang out, and all heads turned. It was Renn. ‘You can’t let him go!’ she cried, running forward.

  ‘He just has,’ retorted Torak. ‘You heard him. I’m free.’

  Renn spoke to her uncle. ‘We can’t let him go. This is too important. He might be . . .’ she drew Fin-Kedinn aside, whispering urgently.

  Torak couldn’t make out what she was saying, but to his dismay, others drew closer to listen. The Mage scowled and nodded. Even Hord emerged from the shelter, and when he heard what they were saying he gave Torak a strange, wary stare.

  Fin-Kedinn studied Renn thoughtfully. ‘Are you sure about this?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t. We need time to find out.’

  Fin-Kedinn stroked his beard. ‘What makes you suspect –’

  ‘The way he defeated Hord. And I found this in his things.’ She held out her palm, and Torak saw his little grouse-bone whistle. ‘What do you use it for?’ she asked him.

  ‘For calling the cub,’ he replied.

  She blew on it, and Wolf twisted in his arms. A shiver of un-ease ran through the crowd. Renn and Fin-Kedinn exchanged glances. ‘It doesn’t make any noise,’ she said accusingly.

  Torak did not reply. He realised with a jolt that her eyes were not light-blue like her brother’s, but black: black as a peat pool. He wondered if she was a Mage, too.

  She turned to Fin-Kedinn. ‘We can’t let him go till we know for sure.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said the Mage. ‘You know what it says as well as I do. Everyone does.’

  ‘What what says?’ pleaded Torak. ‘Fin-Kedinn, we had a pact! We agreed that if I won the fight, me and Wolf would go free!’

  ‘No,’ said Fin-Kedinn, ‘we agreed that you would live. And so you shall. At least, for now. Oslak, tie him up again.’

  ‘No!’ shouted Torak.

  Renn raised her chin. ‘You said your father was killed by a bear. We know about that bear. Some of us have even seen it.’

  Beside her, Hord shuddered and began to gnaw his thumbnail.

  ‘About a moon ago it came,’ Renn went on quietly. ‘Like a shadow it darkened the Forest, killing wantonly; even killing other hunters. Wolves. A lynx. It was as if – as if it was searching for something.’ She paused. ‘Then thirteen days ago it disappeared. A runner from the Boar Clan tracked it south. We thought it had gone. We gave thanks to our clan guardian.’ She swallowed. ‘Now it’s back. Yesterday our scouts returned from the west. They’d found many kills, right down to the Sea. The Whale Clan told them that three days ago, it took a child.’

  Torak licked his lips. ‘What’s this got to do with me?’

  ‘There’s a Prophecy in our clan,’ said Renn as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘A Shadow attacks the Forest. None can stand against it.’ She broke off, frowning.

  The Mage took up her words. ‘Then comes the Listener. He fights with air, and speaks with silence.’ Her gaze fell on the whistle in Renn’s hand.

  Everyone was silent, watching Torak.

  ‘I’m not your Listener,’ he said.

  ‘We think you might be,’ replied the Mage.

  Torak thought about the Prophecy. The Listener fights with air . . . He had done just that: he had used steam. ‘What – happens to him?’ he asked in a low voice. ‘What happens to the Listener in the Prophecy?’ But he had a terrible feeling that he already knew.

  The silence in the clearing grew more intense. Torak looked from the frightened faces around him to the flint knife at Oslak’s belt. He looked at the glistening carcass of the boar hanging from the tree; at its dark blood trickling into the pail beneath. He felt Fin-Kedinn’s eyes on him, and turned to face the burning blue gaze.

  ‘The Listener,’ quoted Fin-Kedinn, ‘Gives his heart’s blood to the Mountain. And the Shadow is crushed.’

  His heart’s blood.

  Under the tree, the blood dripped softly into the basin.

  Drip, drip, drip.

  TEN

  ‘What are you going to do to me?’ said Torak as Oslak tied his wrists behind his back and then to the roofpost. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘You’ll know soon enough,’ said Oslak. ‘Fin-Kedinn wants it settled by dawn.’

  Dawn, thought Torak.

  Over his shoulder, he watched Oslak tying a reluctant Wolf to the same roofpost on a short rawhide leash.

  His teeth began to chatter. ‘Who decides what happens to me? Why can’t I be there to defend myself? Who are all those people by the fire?’

  ‘Ow!’ exclaimed Oslak, sucking a bitten finger. ‘Fin-Kedinn sent runners to call a clan meet about the bear. Now they’re deciding about you too.’

  Torak peered at the figures hunched about the long-fire: twenty or thirty men and women, their faces starkly lit by the flames. He didn’t give much for his chances.

  Dawn. Somehow, before dawn, he had to get out of here.

  But how? He was sitting in a shelter, tied to a roofpost, without weapons or pack; and even if he got free, the camp was heavily guarded. Now that darkness had fallen, a ring of fires had sprung up around it, and men with spears and birch-bark horns were keeping watch. Fin-Kedinn was taking no chances with the bear.

  Oslak yanked off Torak’s boots and tied his ankles together, then left, taking the boots with him.

  Torak couldn’t hear what they were saying at the clan meet, but at least he could see them, thanks to the odd construction of the Raven shelter. Its reindeer-hide roof sloped sharply down behind him, but in front there was no wall at all: only a cross-beam, which seemed to deflect the smoke from the small fire that crackled just in front, but trapped the warmth inside.

  Straining to make out what was going on, Torak saw people rising one by one to speak. A broad-shouldered man holding an enormous throwing-axe. A woman with long nut-brown hair, one lock at the temple matted with red ochre. A wild-eyed girl whose skull was weirdly plastered with yellow clay to give it the roughness of oak bark.

  He couldn’t see Fin-Kedinn, but a little apart from the others, the Mage crouched in the dust, watching a large glossy raven. The bird stalked fearlessly up and down, uttering the occasional harsh ‘cark!’

  Torak wondered if it was the clan guardian. What was it telling her? How to sacrifice him? Whether to gut him like a salmon, or spit him like a hare? He’d never heard of clans sacrificing people, except long in the past
, in the bad times after the Great Wave. But then, he’d never heard of the Raven Clan either.

  ‘Fin-Kedinn wants it decided by dawn . . . The Listener gives his heart’s blood to the Mountain . . .’

  Had Fa known about the Prophecy? He couldn’t have done. He wouldn’t have sent his own son to his death.

  And yet – he’d made Torak swear to find the Mountain. He’d said, Don’t hate me later.

  Later. When you find out.

  The cub’s rasping tongue on his wrists brought him back to the present. Wolf liked the taste of the rawhide. Torak felt a surge of hope. If Wolf could be made to bite instead of lick . . .

  Even as Torak was wondering how to put that in wolf talk, a man rose from the long-fire and crossed the clearing towards him. It was Hord.

  Frantically, Torak growled at Wolf to stop. He was too hungry to notice, and went on licking.

  Hord wasn’t interested in Wolf, though. He stood by the smaller fire in front of the doorway, gnawing his thumbnail and glaring at Torak. ‘You’re not the Listener,’ he snarled, ‘you can’t be.’

  ‘Tell that to the others,’ retorted Torak.

  ‘We don’t need a boy to help us kill the bear. We can do it ourselves. I can do it. I’ll save the clans.’

  ‘You wouldn’t stand a chance,’ said Torak. He felt Wolf starting to nibble the rawhide with his sharp front teeth, and kept very still so as not to put him off. He prayed that Hord wouldn’t look behind him, and see what Wolf was doing.

  But Hord seemed too agitated to notice. He paced back and forth, then turned on Torak. ‘You’ve seen it, haven’t you? You’ve seen the bear.’

  Torak was startled. ‘Of course I’ve seen it. It killed my father.’

  Hord cast a furtive glance over his shoulder. ‘I’ve seen it too.’

  ‘Where? When?’

  Hord flinched, as if warding off a blow. ‘I was in the south. With the Red Deer Clan. I was learning Magecraft. Saeunn,’ he nodded at the old woman talking to the raven, ‘our Mage, she wanted me to go.’ Again he tore at his thumbnail, which had started to bleed. ‘I was there when the bear was caught. I – I saw it made.’