Oath Breaker

by Michelle Paver; Geoff Taylor

  From the neck, he scanned the Crag. Something wasn't right, but he couldn't work out what. Storing that for later, he moved forward. Fa used to say that to track your quarry, you must think yourself into its spirit. This took on a dreadful meaning now. Torak had to see Bale alive on the Crag. He had to see the faceless killer.

  The killer must have been strong to have overcome

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  Bale, but that was all Torak knew. He had to make the Crag tell him the rest.

  It wasn't long before he found the first sign. He crouched, squinting sideways in the low morning light. A boot print, very faint. And there: the suggestion of another. An older man walks on his heels, a young man on his toes. Bale had walked lightly onto the Crag.

  Step by step, Torak followed him. He forgot the voice of the Sea and the salt wind in his face. He lost himself in the search.

  The sense of being watched brought him back. He stopped. His heart began to pound. What if Bale's killer were still hiding in the rowans? Whipping out his knife, he spun around.

  "Torak, it's me!" cried Renn.

  With a harsh exhalation, he lowered his knife."Neverdo that again!"

  "I thought you'd heard me!"

  "What are you doing here?"

  "Same as you!" She was angry because he'd frightened her, but she recovered fast. "He didn't fall. His fingernails ..." They stared at each other. Torak wondered if he, too, wore that bleak, stretched look.

  "How did it happen?" she said. "I thought you were with him."

  "No."

  She met his eyes. He glanced away. "You go first,"

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  she said in an altered voice. "You're the best tracker."

  With his head down, he resumed his search, and Renn followed. She rarely spoke when he was tracking; she said he went into a kind of trance which she didn't like to break. He was grateful for that now. Sometimes, she saw too much with those dark eyes; and he couldn't tell her about his quarrel with Bale. He was too ashamed.

  He hadn't gone far when he found more signs. A crumb of lichen scraped by a running boot; and behind the altar, a lobe of stonecrop ground to a green smear. Snagged in a crack, a strand of reindeer hair. Torak's skin crawled. Bale wore seal hide. This had belonged to his killer. An image began to take shape, like a hunter emerging from mist. A big, heavy man clad in reindeer hide.

  At once a name sprang to mind, but Torak pushed it aside. Don't guess. Keep your mind open. Find proof.

  He pictured Bale leaving his hiding-place in the rowans, running toward the figure kneeling by the altar. The killer rose. They circled each other, moving closer and closer to the cliff edge.

  At one point, the lip of the Crag was cracked, and in the soil that the wind had blown in, a juniper clung to life. It had been half yanked out by the roots, and was still oozing tree-blood. Torak saw Bale desperately clutching a branch, his free hand clawing mud. He had fought so hard to live. And the killer had stamped on his fingers.

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  A red mist descended over Torak's sight. Sweat broke out on his palms. When he caught the killer, he would ...

  "Whoever it was," said Renn shakily, "he must have been hugely strong to have beaten B--" She jammed her knuckle in her mouth. For the next five summers, it would be forbidden to speak Bale's name, or else his spirit might return to haunt the living.

  "Look there," said Torak. He picked up a tiny speck of dried spruce-blood. "And this." He drew aside a branch to reveal a handprint.

  Renn breathed in with a hiss.

  Bale's murderer had leaned on one hand to watch his victim fall. That hand had only three fingers.

  Torak shut his eyes. He was back in the caves of the Far North, facing the Soul-Eater. Wolf sprang to his defense, leaping at the attacker, snapping off two fingers. "So now we know," said Renn in a cold voice.

  They stared at each other, both remembering cruel green eyes in a face as hard as cracked earth.

  Torak's fist closed over the spruce-blood. "Thiazzi," he said.

  THREE

  The Oak Mage had made no attempt to cover his tracks. He'd found his way down the steep north flank of the Crag to a small pebble beach, picked up his skinboat, and paddled away.

  Torak and Renn tracked him to where the trail ended in the Sea. "From where I was," said Torak, "I might have seen him." "Why were you camping out here?" said Renn. "I--I needed to be alone." She gave him a penetrating stare, but didn't ask why. That was worse. Maybe she'd guessed that he'd made a

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  terrible mistake; so terrible that she couldn't bring herself to talk of it.

  "He might be anywhere by now," she said, turning back to the waves. "He could've made for the Kelp Island, or one of the smaller ones. Or gone back to the Forest." "And he's got a head start," said Torak. "Let's go."

  To return to the Seal camp, they had to climb all the way to the Crag again. The altar still looked subtly wrong. It was Renn who noticed why. "The carvings. The tip of the altar is lying across that elk's head. That can't be right."

  "It's been moved." Torak was appalled that he hadn't seen it sooner. The scrape marks were as plain as a raven on an ice floe. He pictured the Oak Mage--the strongest man in the Forest--putting his shoulder to the altar to shift it, then moving it back but leaving it just out of true.

  Under the tip of the altar, Torak found what Thiazzi had uncovered: a small hollow hacked from the surface of the Crag. It was empty.

  "He found what he was after," said Torak.

  Neither of them voiced their fear. But among the rowans on the neck, Torak found proof: the remains of a little pouch of dehaired seal hide. The crumbling hide still bore the faint imprint of something hard, about the size of a sloe, which had nestled inside.

  Torak's blood thudded in his ears. Renn's voice

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  reached him from a great distance. "He found it, Torak. Thiazzi has the fire-opal."

  "Tell no one," said Fin-Kedinn. "Not that he was murdered, or who did it, or why."

  Torak agreed at once, but Renn was aghast. "Not even his father?"

  "No one," said the Raven Leader.

  They squatted by the stream at the south end of the bay, daubing each other's faces with clay mourning marks. The roar of the waterfall drowned their voices. There was no danger of being overheard by the Seal women downstream who were preparing the funeral feast, or by the men readying Bale's skinboat for the Death Journey. The Seals worked in silence to avoid offending the dead boy's souls. Torak thought they seemed like people in a dream.

  All day they had worked, and he had helped. Now dusk was falling, and every shelter, every skinboat, every last rack of cod had been moved to this end of the bay, farthest from the Crag. To the north, only the shelter Bale had shared with his father remained. It had been doused in seal oil and set ablaze. Torak could see it: a red eye glaring at him in the gathering dark.

  "But that's wrong"protested Renn.

  "It's necessary." Her uncle caught her gaze and held it. "Think, Renn. If his father knew, he'd seek revenge."

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  "Yes, and so?" she retorted.

  "He wouldn't be alone," said Fin-Kedinn. "The whole clan would want to avenge one of their own."

  "So?" repeated Renn.

  "I know Thiazzi," said Fin-Kedinn. "He won't hide in the islands, he'll head back to the Forest, where his power is greatest. The quickest route takes him past the trading meet on the coast..."

  "And if the Seals came after him," put in Torak, "he'd set them against the other clans and get away."

  The Raven Leader nodded. "That's why we say nothing. The Sea clans and the Forest clans have never been on easy terms. Thiazzi would use that. That's his strength, he fosters hate. Promise me, both of you. Tell no one."

  "I promise," said Torak. He didn't want the Seals going after Thiazzi. Revenge must be his and his alone.

  Reluctantly, Renn gave her word. "But his father's bound to find out," she said. "He must have seen what we saw. The--the blood under h
is nails."

  "No," said Fin-Kedinn. "I saw to it." With the gray bars across his brow and down his cheeks, he looked remote and forbidding. "Come," he said, rising to his feet. "It's time we joined the others."

  On the shore, the Seals had set a ring of kelp torches: a leaping orange beneath the dark-blue sky. Within this, they had laid Bale in his skinboat. Greasy black smoke stung Torak's eyes, and he breathed the stink of burning seal oil. He felt the mourning marks stiffening on his skin. He thought, Bale's funeral rites. This can't be.

  First, Bale's father stepped toward the boat and gently covered the body with his sleeping-sack. He had lost both his sons to the Soul-Eaters, and his face was distant, as if he weren't experiencing any of this. As if, thought Torak, he was at the bottom of the Sea.

  After him, every member of the clan added a gift for the Death Journey. Asrif gave a food bowl, Detlan a set of fish-hooks, while his little sister--who'd been very keen on Bale--managed to keep from crying for long enough to put in a small stone lamp. Others gave clothes, dried whale meat or cod, seal nets, spears, rope. Fin-Kedinn gave a harpoon, Renn her three best arrows. Torak gave his pike-jaw amulet, for hunting luck.

  Standing to one side, he watched the men raise the skinboat on their shoulders and carry it down to the shallows. There they lashed two heavy stones to prow and stern, and Bale's father got into his own skinboat and began towing his son out to Sea.

  The others trudged back for the silent feast, but Torak remained, watching the skinboats dwindle to specks. When they were out of sight of land, Bale's father would take his spear and gash the funeral boat, sending his son down to the Sea Mother. The fishes would eat Bale's

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  flesh, as in life he had eaten theirs; and when his shelter was ashes and the ashes had blown away, all trace of him would be gone, like a ripple on the Sea. But he'll come back, thought Torak. He was born here. This was his home. He'll be lonely at Sea.

  Fin-Kedinn was speaking his name. "Torak. Come. You must join the feast."

  "I can't," he said without turning around.

  "You must."

  "I can't! I have to go after Thiazzi."

  "Torak, it's dark," said Renn at her uncle's side, "and there's no moon, you can't leave now. We'll set off first thing in the morning."

  "You must honor your kinsman," Fin-Kedinn said severely.

  Torak turned on him. "My kinsman? That's what we've got to call him, isn't it? My kinsman. The Seal Clan boy. For five whole summers, till we've forgotten his name." "We'll never forget," said Fin-Kedinn. "But it's better this way. You know that."

  "Bale," said Torak, very distinctly. "His name. Was Bale."

  Renn gasped.

  Fin-Kedinn watched him narrowly.

  "Bale," said Torak again. "Bale. Bale. Bale!"

  Shouldering past them, he ran the length of the bay,

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  only stopping when he reached the smoldering ruins of Bale's shelter.

  "Bale!"he shouted at the cold Sea. And if that summoned Bale's vengeful spirit to haunt him, then let it. It washisfault that Bale lay at the bottom of the Sea. If he hadn't quarreled, Bale would not have been alone on the Crag. They would have faced the Oak Mage together, and Bale would still be alive.

  His fault. "Torak!" Renn stood on the other side of the fire, her pale face shimmering in the heat. "Stop naming him! You'll draw his spirit!" "Let it come!" he flung back. "It's only what I deserve!" "You didn't kill him, Torak."

  "But it wasmy fault!How do I bear it?"

  To that she had no answer.

  "Fin-Kedinn's right!" he cried. "The Seals can't avenge Bale; that's formeto do!"

  "Don't keep naming him--"

  "Vengeance ismine!"he shouted. Drawing his knife and taking his medicine horn from its pouch, he raised them to the sky. "I swear to you, Bale. I swear to you on this knife and this horn and on my three souls--I will hunt the Oak Mage and I will kill him. Iwillavenge you!"

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  FOUR

  Wolf stands in the Bright Soft Cold at the foot of the Mountain, gazing up at Darkfur. She is many lopes above him, gazing down. He catches her scent, he hears the wind whispering through her beautiful black fur. He lashes his tail and whines.

  Darkfur wags her tail and whines back. But this is the Thunderer's Mountain. Wolf can't go up, and she can't come down.

  All through the Long Cold he has missed her, even when he was hunting with Tall Tailless and the pack-sister, or playing hunt-the-lemming; especially then, because Darkfur is so good at it. Of all the wolves in the

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  Mountain pack, Wolf misses her the most. They are one breath, one bone. He feels this in his fur.

  Darkfur goes down on her forepaws and barks.Come! The hunt is good, the pack is strong!

  Wolf's tail droops.

  Her bark becomes impatient.

  I cannot!he tells her.

  With a leap, she is bounding down the Mountain. The Bright Soft Cold flies from her paws as she races toward him, and Wolf's heart flies with it. Joyfully he lopes toward her, running so fast that he ...

  Wolf woke up.

  He was out of the Now that he went to in his sleeps, and back in the other now, lying at the edge of the Great Wet. Alone. He missed Darkfur. He missed Tall Tailless and the pack-sister. He even missed the ravens, a bit.Whydid Tall Tailless leave him and go off in the floating hides?

  Wolf hated it here. The sharp earth bit his pads, and the fish-birds attacked if he got too close to their nests. For a while, he'd explored the Dens of the taillesses along the Great Wet, and the Fast Wet that ran into it, but now he was bored.

  The taillesses didn't hunt, they just stood around yipping and yowling and staring at stones. They seemed to think that some stones mattered more than others, although they all smelled the same to Wolf; and when the

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  taillesses gave each other stones, they quarreled. When a normal wolf gives a present--a bone or an interesting stick--he does it because he likes the other wolf, not because he's cross.

  The Dark came, and the taillesses settled down for their endless sleep. Wolf heaved himself up and went to nose around the Dens. Scornfully evading the dogs, he ate some fishes hanging from sticks, and a delicious hunk of fish-dog fat. Then he found an over-paw outside a Den and ate that, too. When the Light came, he trotted into the Forest, trod down some bracken to make a comfortable sleeping-patch, and had a nap.

  The smell woke him instantly.

  His claws tightened. His hackles rose. He knew that smell. It made him remember bad things. It made the tip of his tail hurt.

  The scent trail was strong, and it led up-Wet. With a growl, Wolf leaped to his feet and raced after it.

  "I told you," said the Sea-eagle hunter, tying up a bundle of roe buck antlers. "I saw a big man coming ashore. That's it."

  "Where did he go?" said Torak. He was relentless. Renn, cradling a cup of hot birch-blood in her hands, wondered how much more the Sea-eagle would take. "I don'tknow!" snapped the hunter. "I was busy, I wanted to trade!"

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  "I think he went upriver," said the hunter's mate. "Upriver," repeated Torak.

  "That could mean anywhere," said Renn. But already Torak was heading for the Raven camp and the deer-hide canoes.

  It was the second night after Bale's funeral rites, and after an exhausting crossing, they'd reached the trading meet on the coast. Fog shrouded the camps along the shore and the mouth of the Elk River. Willow, Sea-eagle, Kelp, Raven, Cormorant, Viper: all had come to barter horn and antler for seal hide and flint Sea eggs. FinKedinn had gone to return their borrowed skinboats to the Whale Clan, and the ravens were roosting in a pine tree. There was no sign of Wolf.

  Renn ran to catch up with Torak, who was shouldering through the throng, earning irritable glances, which he ignored. "Torak, wait!" Glancing around to make sure they weren't overhead, she said in a low voice, "Have you thought that this could be a trap? The Soul-Eaters have set traps for you before."
/>   "I don't care," said Torak.

  "But think! Somewhere out there are Thiazzi and Eostra: the two remaining Soul-Eaters, and the most powerful of all."

  "I don'tcare!He killed my kinsman. I'm going to kill him. Anddon'ttell me to get some sleep and we'll start in the morning."

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  "I wasn't going to," she replied, nettled. "I was going to say I'll fetch some supplies."

  "No time. He's already got two days' lead."

  "And it'll be more," she retorted, "if we have to keep stopping to hunt!"

  When she reached the shelter she shared with Saeunn, the sight of its familiar, lumpy reindeer hides brought her to a halt. Less than a moon ago, she'd left it and run down to the skinboats, eager to have Fin-Kedinn and Torak to herself, and to see Bale again.

  She shut her eyes. In disbelief, she had stared at his broken body. The blind blue gaze. The gray sludge on the rocks. Those are his thoughts, she'd told herself. His thoughts soaking into the lichen.

  Night and day, she saw it. She didn't know if Torak did, too, because if he talked at all, it was about finding Thiazzi. He didn't seem to have anything left for grief. Fog trickled down her neck, and she shivered. She was tired and stiff from the crossing, and hollow with grief, andlonely.She hadn't known she could be so lonely among people she loved.

  Around her, hunters appeared and disappeared in the murk. She thought of Thiazzi gloating over the fire-opal. A man who took pleasure in others' pain. Who lived only to rule.

  The Raven Mage huddled in her corner beneath a musty elk pelt. Over the winter, she had shrunk in upon 36

  herself till she reminded Renn of an empty waterskin. She rarely hobbled farther than the midden, and when the clan moved camp, they carried her on a litter. Renn wondered what kept that shriveled heart beating, and for how much longer. Already, Saeunn's breath carried a whiff of the Raven bone-grounds. Trying not to wake her, Renn gathered her gear and crammed supplies into auroch-gut bags. Baked hazelnuts, smoked horse meat, meal of pounded silverweed root; dried lingonberries for Wolf.

  The elk pelt stirred. Renn's heart sank.