by John Hart
Far beyond the vast forest, no nearer now than when he had set out, rose the mountains. He waited for an impulse to guide him onwards, as a grazing herd drifts one way or the other, or a beast of prey slinks this way or that, following no plan, yet ready to bolt or spring when the need arises.
The boy waited. He knew he would go on, but which way? He knew too that the summer warmth was short and the buzz of insects would be cut almost overnight as the long iceland winter covered the land. To be caught in that cold meant death. Strong hunters seldom survived a winter alone. All this the boy knew but it was not on his mind at present as his eyes focussed, alert to the slightest signs of movement, his hearing quickened to catch the least untoward sound, each helping his flared nostrils to sense what might be alive and stirring in the forest below. Out on the open moors he had felt safe; down there he would not.
He gathered his spears, his satchel holding spare flints, scraps of food, the trinkets a boy collects and keeps through his boyhood, and set off to his right.
He had gone a day and a half along the rim with no way down, and no sign of anything to tempt him down, when he saw what seemed like wisps of smoke rising from among trees below. There he settled for the night, comforted that perhaps humans existed down in the woods. He ate berries and bivouacked under briars and bracken above the spot, to be ready to spy further as soon as light broke.
When he awoke all signs of smoke had vanished like morning mist. The conifer canopy stretched away below him. He resumed his way along the cliff top, eating berries as he went, but moving cautiously, the carefree days on the open moors behind him. There was no knowing what the forest might conceal. Any tracker could be tracked. His boy’s spears would be as much defence against hunters as a fawn’s kicks against him.
Yet he felt drawn to find those people, danger or not, after so many days alone. Perhaps they knew the land of ice and mammoths.
It was a while before he found a place that led down to the forest.
The overflow from a tarn had cut a ghyll or chine down which a small beck ran. He scrambled down the incline and followed the stream till it ended at tree-top level before it tumbled over the edge into a pool below. The boy crouched, scrutinising the forest for signs of life, before daring to scale down the remaining part of the cliff. He threw his spears and satchel ahead and climbed down after them, grasping the small trees and tangle of roots that the fall of water had encouraged to grow along its margin.
Once down, his spears and pouch retrieved, he lay under the boughs of a conifer to gather his breath and to listen. There was nothing to hear. Not even the twitter of birds. He drank from the brook and backtracked in the direction of the smoke, the cliff-face now to his left. He was feeling a need for human proximity.
It was cool in the gloom of this forest, the densest he had ever seen. He travelled by instinct, trotting along the pine-needle floor, among these endless trees. There would be little to eat here, few clearings for raspberries, bilberries, little by way of recognisable fungus, and no game that he could sense.
CHAPTER 2
Whenever he saw a hollow or overhang at the foot of the rockface he approached it cautiously, half-hoping to find a hearth, half-fearing he might. But no sign of human habitation appeared in any. Once he disturbed bats and several times old droppings showed that game animals huddled in these natural pens for shelter.
Spoor and signs of bigger beasts along the foot of the cliff made him redouble his alertness. Any breaks in the forest canopy, where sunlight encouraged drifts of raspberry canes and other food plants to thrive, made him especially wary. So when he came to a small clearing where he would need to cross open ground and was approaching with especial stealth, stooping under the sweeping boughs of firs, he saw something that stopped him dead: in the open, its huge head bowed till its shaggy underlip brushed the ground, stood a full-grown bison bull.
It was motionless. Urrell remained still too, under a downswept bough. A rogue bull bison was more than a grown hunter would face single-handedly, let alone a boy. He was about to draw back to make a detour through the forest when a slight movement in the thickets opposite caught his eye. For a while he saw nothing more. Then, as the brushwood stirred again he knew it was being moved by a living creature, and that the creature was a hunter stalking the bison.
With his attention now intent on the far side, Urrell saw not one but several hunters slowly closing in on their prey from behind brushwood screens. The men were invisible. Only their camouflage, as they inched forward, revealed their presence to Urrell, if not to the bison.
Urrell’s excitement rose as he watched. The bison must be wounded or exhausted, having been harried, perhaps, for days.
When they judged they were within range of their quarry, five hunters rose as one man from behind their screens and hurled their javelins at the bison. Urrell glimpsed the points of the weapons, their tips longer and sharper than those his clansmen fashioned. The movement alerted the bison, but too late to avoid the missiles which struck its flank. It bucked and snorted, shrugging its body as it strove to dislodge the spears, its small eyes alight with anger as it turned to confront its tormentors. Three javelins remained embedded. Faced by the bison the hunters withdrew with their brushwood shields, shorter stabbing javelins held ready. Urrell guessed they were enticing the beast to charge, ready to jump aside and drive their javelins deep between its ribs.
The bison appeared to guess this also, feinted a charge, then turned and galloped off down the clearing into the forest. Only then did Urrell notice that its left rear hoof was entangled in a sort of wickerwork box-trap which, for all its bucking and kicking as it fled, the beast could not shake off.
In his excitement Urrell jumped up in sympathy with the hunters – but as quickly quailed back. Too often had he seen the killer lust of hunters injuring hapless creatures that got in their way.
The men picked up their javelins and examined the points. One showed the others the broken tip of his, no doubt embedded in the bison’s side, a good hit after all.
They were clad in leather breechclouts made from pelts of smaller animals, and skin jerkins, much like Urrell’s clansmen. All wore belts hung with pouches and pokes while one, perhaps the leader, wore a baldrick, whereas Urrell’s clansmen out hunting seldom bothered with more than a pouch slung over one shoulder into which they stuffed spare scrapers, cutters and scraps of meat. These men, moreover, were streaked in ochre and white on any bare brown skin, with white zags across their faces. Urrell shivered a little at the sight.
They appeared to be in no hurry to take up the chase. Instead they squatted, emptied food from a satchel and set to. As Urrell watched his stomach gurgled with hunger until he feared they might hear him.
There was nothing to do but wait. Not far beyond the clearing there must be an encampment where Urrell knew he might cadge scraps from the women and any camp-bound old men, as well as rummage for food amid the rubbish strewn around in the abundance of summer’s good hunting. No-one would bother about a scavenging lad while food was so plentiful.
When the hunters had eaten they conferred. The one in the crossbelt scratched a plan or design on a bare patch of ground, which all looked at intently for a while and discussed. Then, as one man, they leapt to their feet, brandished their javelins, jigged round the patch of ground, uttered a single howling whoop that startled Urrell almost into giving away his hideout, and trotted off in single file in pursuit of the bison.
It was some time before Urrell felt safe enough to steal out to the gnawn bones marking the spot of the hunters’ repast. He regnawed every one clean of the least shred of gristle, fat and sinew, his belly quaking for such nourishment after days of raw fungus, handfuls of berries and grubs prised from rotten logs. Then each bone was cracked with stones for marrow and juices to suck dry.
Only after the last splinter had been dealt with did Urrell think to look at the drawing on the ground. It was the outline of a bison, the bison he had witnessed, with spears in its s
ides and a rear hoof caught in that trap-like box.
He was absorbed in this when his heart tripped as he heard a tread and realised that he, in turn, was being intently observed.
CHAPTER 3
Urrell crouched stock-still, eyes locked with the watcher, who appeared to be alone. He too kept still, offering no threat of violence.
They had time to examine each other. The stranger was little above the lad’s height, with shaggy hair and a remarkably intense gaze from yellowish, goat-like eyes. He seemed to understand how hungry the boy was. From a pouch he drew out a sizable chunk of cooked flesh, still on the bone, and held it out invitingly. As the boy did not budge, he beckoned with the other hand. Still the boy dared not shift.
The rank weeds, the fetid smell.
Holding out his offering, the watcher slowly advanced towards Urrell, pausing to instill trust before moving forward again. Urrell saw he was unarmed and limped. It was clear he meant no harm, even meant good. When he was a few paces away he tossed the meat to the lad and squatted to see how it was received, never taking his light eyes off Urrell’s face. He uttered a few words in a strange language, underscored by gestures urging the boy to pick up the food and to eat. It was enough to allay some of Urrell’s wariness, enough for him to pick up the joint and sniff it: venison, cooked right through. He bit. It was delicious. He chewed and tore at it, his hunger overcoming fear. An expression of pleasure and approval on his provider’s features was accompanied by more words, ones conveying a tone of friendly interest. Urrell nodded and grunted.
“It is very good,” he said. “I am very hungry.”
“Good. Then you eat, eat,” said his benefactor in the boy’s own language. He spoke it haltingly, as if recollected from a far past.
So Urrell did as bidden, ravenously, on his hunkers opposite this strange short man who had appeared out of nowhere bearing sustenance and was now squatting a few paces away watching him eat his fill.
That the watcher spoke his language did not surprise the boy much.
He was used to hearing different languages among the women in the camp when they conversed among themselves, or crooned to their infants. They came from distant places, exchanged and traded at moots, or stolen, bringing with them strange ways and words, so that boys like Urrell hanging round the camp picked up smatterings of words, mainly names of things, leaf movements, animal moods, ghostly occurrences, and objects brought from faraway places, passed from hand to hand and held to be valuable or potent due to their very rarity. His red spearhead, now the bear’s, had been one.
“Where you come?”
The boy answered by pointing up and over the cliff he had been following.
“How many days?”
Shy to risk speech with this unusual being and loth to look straight into that yellowish, enquiring gaze, Urrell kept his eyes fastened on his venison haunch-bone and held up one hand, fingers outspread, clenched and outspread twice, to signal how long he had been travelling.
The answer seemed to satisfy his questioner who left him to get on with his meal.
Then: “How you called?”
“Urrell.”
“Ah, Urrell, Urrell,” repeated the stranger, savouring the name, fluting the sound.
As the boy said nothing, the man volunteered: “I, Agaratz.”
By now the bone was picked clean. No excuse remained for staying crouched, so Urrell stood up slowly, unsure of himself, avoiding sudden movements that might look hostile. His spears he left on the ground.
Agaratz also rose. Although he was scarcely taller than Urrell he had a grown man’s breadth of shoulder and a powerful chest, as well as adult hairiness. Indeed he was hairier than any man Urrell had ever known. His head hair grew coarsely down the back of his neck, sprouting from the nape, its rusty colour matching the yellow eyes. Agaratz noticed the boy’s hesitant look. A gleam of playfulness lit the strange eyes, as in a feline’s when chasing and tumbling in play with other kits outside their den. Was it a prelude to a half-playful, half-hurtful gambol? Urrell tensed, ready to retreat or dodge.
Instead, Agaratz turned to show his back in profile, to show the boy that he was crookbacked.
Urrell’s surprise must have shown – he knew that malformed babies were not kept, even if their mothers tried to save them. He had heard their screams as the men of the clan wrested the cripple from its mother, threw it into the air and skewered its falling body on a spear to avert evil befalling the encampment. Again that half-playful gleam played across the yellow eyes as they noticed Urrell’s discomfiture and appeared to prelude a pounce, making the boy feel like the smallest cub confronting the biggest of a litter.
But no pounce came. Instead, Agaratz spoke, forgetting the boy did not understand his native tongue. It was some kind of explanation, perhaps to do with his back, in no way threatening, so Urrell relaxed a little and stared.
“Ah,” went Agaratz, brought up by the boy’s blank look. “Ah-ha, I say that I konkoraz.” Then, to show what he meant, he pointed at his hump.
Urrell nodded, more to show friendliness than comprehension.
It was then that Agaratz did an astonishing thing. Placing his hands on the ground and kicking his legs in the air, he walked about on his palms. Instantly Urrell understood why. One of Agaratz’s legs ended in a club foot, hence his limp. Instead of toes, the foot split into two horny extensions from the callused heel. The lame leg was hairier than the other, thinner, more sinewy. Urrell had never seen anything like it and his face showed his astonishment when Agaratz sprang upright from his handstand.
Impulsively he stepped forward to look closer, then as quickly drew back, alive to danger. Agaratz’s arms could have broken every bone in his body with ease. But there was no menace in Agaratz’s stance, not a hint of danger in the gleaming eyes that seemed to say, ‘Look at my skill and singularity’, with a look that changed to wistfulness no sooner had Urrell shrunk back. It was that look which told Urrell, as no words could, that Agaratz meant no harm. This time he stepped forward and did not step back, but placed his hand on Agaratz’s forearm, a gesture as natural as when he had set off up the course of the waterfall and across the moors.
In his turn Agaratz placed his hand on Urrell’s and they remained motionless for a while in this gesture of friendship.
CHAPTER 4
Agaratz stirred first, to pick up Urrell’s spears. He examined them attentively a few moments before handing them over. The fibre bindings, tested with a thumbnail, seemed to meet his silent approval. Old Mother’s fibres that she had shown Urrell how to ret.
Without a word, Agaratz leading, they set off across the glade into the forest. Under the downswept boughs of the first fir Agaratz stooped and recovered a pouch, several javelins and smaller objects bound in a bundle with thongs. Urrell realised Agaratz had cached these things before coming out to meet him, perhaps to avoid frightening him. It roused in him feelings he could not name, this rare kindness. He felt safe, glad to be trotting behind this being with the rolling gait from the odd foot, the roll of powerful shoulders humped under the russet hair.
Urrell now had time to notice his new companion’s garb. Never had he seen the like for stitching: the man’s trews fitted to below the knees, sewn down each side, the leather supple. Over his back and chest Agaratz wore a seamless jerkin that reached mid-thigh. Small ornaments like quills were stitched to the front. Over this was slung a pouch, also ornamented with quills, coloured to make patterns in white, reddle and black.
He could also see that Agaratz’s javelins were beautifully crafted, finer than anything he had ever seen, the shafts incised with tiny heads of deer, bison and other creatures. The tips, long and wrought in a reddish stone new to Urrell, delighted him. His were poor, boyish things in comparison.
Their route ran parallel with the cliffs in the same direction as Urrell had intended to go in the hope of finding a settlement. Neither spoke, nor did Urrell think to ask where they were going. Despite his club foot Agaratz travelled
with the tireless trot of hunters, barefoot on the springy pine-needle floor of the forest, broken now and again by clearings where a beck ran down the cliff face and created a little glade with light enough for deciduous trees and bushes to grow. At these Agaratz was careful to pause, look and listen before crossing over. What he was wary of he did not say.
They had come to one of these when Agaratz said: “We stop. You hungry?”
“Yes.” He was tired too.
“Good. Look.” So saying, Agaratz pointed with his javelins up the clearing to the cliffs at an overhang at ground level. It looked unexceptional to Urrell. Agaratz made for it and he followed.
Charred wood and ashes in a small hearth near the back wall betokened a hunters’ shelter. It had none of the usual rubbish, bones, broken flints, cast-off shreds of pelts that littered camps, nor their stench, to which Urrell was used.
“Your camp?”
“One my camp.”
“Where is your main camp, your tribe?”
For all response Agaratz waved a hand in the general distance towards which they were travelling. It seemed an inconclusive answer but Urrell dared not question more. Instead he squatted by the dead hearth awaiting what Agaratz might do or offer. His own pouch was bare. Since the venison hours earlier he had eaten only a few bilberries and raspberries grabbed as he trotted behind Agaratz. Food would be welcome in this forest seemingly bereft of game, apart from a few fowl that whirred aloft before they were within range of even a weighted throwing-stick.
“You look, Urrell.”
Agaratz dragged a pine log from the weeds outside and leant it against the inner cave wall. Snags stuck out of it like rungs. Using these, Agaratz climbed to a ledge under the ceiling of the shelter where, invisible from below, were cached provisions: a bundle and a joint of meat. These he tossed to Urrell and followed down his scaling pole.