The Caves of Perigord

by Martin Walker

  “The sacrifice is accepted,” called the birdman.

  Who had devised this unprecedented ritual? The chief hunter and fisher and the Keeper of the Bulls must have arranged it, even rehearsed it, among them. The Keeper of the Horses dragged his eyes back to the rock outcrop whence the eagle had appeared and saw a flash of movement. Human, he was sure. It would be simple enough to catch an eagle by digging a man-sized hole, covering it with brushwood, and placing a lure on top. A dead rabbit or bird would do. And then as the eagle stooped, the hunter in his hole could quickly draw tight the looped thong that would imprison the eagle’s talons. He had seen it done. And it was no great trick to release the bird at a certain, well-timed moment. A trick, but a clever one, he thought.

  But what was its purpose, this carefully planned ritual? It had been as dramatic as it was curious, even moving in its way, he thought. But it made him uncomfortable, as though the river of the tribe’s life in which he took such comfort had suddenly been diverted into a different path, its flow broken and disturbed by the plunging splash of a great stone. He shivered. Still, it must be over now and the hunt could begin.

  All around him, the men were stamping their feet and cheering. The boys were dancing with excitement, strutting and thrusting their feeble spears forward as if facing a real enemy. He glanced again at his fellow Keepers, caught the watery old eye of the Keeper of the Bison, who shook his head slightly, leaned forward and spat. At least not everyone was caught up in the madness. He looked again at the cheering men, all their eyes aflame, and turned to the Keeper of the Bulls, who stood with his arms outstretched above the fire, his eagle’s head almost ghostly in the smoke.

  “Let the great hunt commence,” he chanted.

  They came upon the herd while the sun was still climbing in the sky. The band of men was stretched out now, the two best hunters scouting far off ahead and out of sight. The older men were trailing badly, the boys all clumped together at the front of the line but with sense enough to be silent. The sign the scouts had left was a forked stick, thrust into the ground, with three twigs placed in the shape of an arrow to point the way. The chief hunter picked up his pace from the steady lope he had maintained since they left the village, sprinting uphill to the next ridge, and then dropping to squirm forward and keep his body from suddenly appearing on the skyline. He came back to the main body, and in another unusual feature of this strange day, went up to the Keeper of the Bulls, as if telling him alone where the herd was placed and where the beaters should go. The Keeper of the Bulls nodded his approval.

  The Keeper of the Horses knew this place. He had hunted here before as a young man. There was a river valley ahead of them, and some distance to the left a steep drop to the water. He watched the hunters take the boys off to the right to form the line of beaters. The hunters would anchor each flank of the line, and then race forward to make the line into a curve, using their bows against the reindeer on the sides of the herd, less to try for a kill than to drive the herd in the desired direction.

  With the rest of the grown men, the Keeper of the Horses began loping toward the riverbank, to set the jaws of the trap that would force the game over the drop. This was the real test of the chief hunter’s skill, less to find the herd than to coordinate the movements of so many boys and men so that they would all be in the right place at the best time. Chief hunters who closed the tribe upon an empty trap did not last long. There were always keen young hunters eager to take over. The Keeper of the Horses found himself hoping that the trap might be empty this time. The tribe would miss a feast, might even go hungry awhile, but another chief hunter might not be so ready to fall in with the strange new rituals of the bull’s skull.

  There was still no sign of the herd when the men reached the cliff above the drop to the river. This was a good place. On this nearer side where they approached, thick trees gave way to a jumble of rocks before the cliff edge. The herd would avoid the trees and the rocks could be held by just a handful of men. The rest of them ran swiftly along the cliff edge, looking for the place to set their fence. Every man carried three poles, each one almost as tall as a man and lashed together at one end with sinew. They spread out the other end of the poles to form a tripod, and then placed each tripod perhaps ten yards apart, from the cliff edge up toward the direction from which the herd would come. They lashed skins to each tripod, to make it look like a solid shape, a small teepee, flimsy but appearing solid enough to dupe the reindeer. Each man then sat behind his tripod, waiting for the time. Some of them tossed blades of grass into the air, testing that the breeze still came toward them. The Keeper of the Horses ambled across to the cliff edge and looked into the drop. It was the height of three or four men. It would serve.

  “So we are now all worshipers of the bull,” grunted a voice behind him. He turned. It was the Keeper of the Bison, looking ancient and leathery. He had done well to keep up with the pace of the hunt.

  “Worship?” he replied. “I respect all men, and pay due tribute to each man’s skill. I honor all beasts, those we hunt and eat and those we watch with caution from afar and those we no longer see in these lands. I bow to the sun for its warmth, to snow for its cold, and to the river for its water. And to the Mother for the gift of life that lies in a woman’s belly. Just as our people have always done.”

  “And I fear lightning and the great sounds of battle in the skies before a storm,” said the old man. “I have lived too long to devote myself to a single beast, or to bow before a single man.”

  “Our Keeper of the Bulls seems to have persuaded many of our people-otherwise. The chief hunter first among them.”

  “Chief hunters don’t last long,” the old man spat. “But what does our Keeper of the Bulls want?”

  The Keeper of the Horses shrugged, and looked back away from the river. The herd should be coming soon, although he could as yet hear no drumming of hooves, no high-pitched cries from the beaters.

  “You must stop him,” said the old man patiently. “Already, we are changing as a people. We are becoming worshipers of the bull, led by the Keeper of the Bulls. Do you see what he is doing?”

  As the Keeper of the Horses nodded, he heard the first piping cry from the far-off beaters, and then the tremor beneath his feet. The herd was coming. “We will talk of this again, old friend,” he said. “Back to our posts.”

  Deer felt exultant, the thrill of the hunt upon him, until he reached the great cloud of dust that was all that he could now see. The hunters had led them at a fast run for as long as it took the sun to move a hand’s width across the sky. One of the advance scouts was waiting for them, leaning on a rock just below the skyline, and he trotted quickly to meet them. The hunters conferred and then fanned out to either flank, and begun the slow walk toward the herd. The scout led the boys, using his bow as a guide to slow them so that the hunters could move ahead and become the points of the great curve that was advancing on the herd. He led them up to just below the ridge, halted them as he looked over again, and then waved the two points of the horn forward. His arms outstretched above his head, the bow clutched between them, he held the impatient boys for as long as a man could hold his breath, and then turned with a great cry and led the rush over the ridge and down toward the startled herd.

  There were more than a man could count, a great gray mass that turned as one to stare at the sudden shock of shrieking boys, and then raced away. As the movement began, the great mass broke up; Deer saw individual reindeer trotting back and forth along the rear of the herd, as if steering them on. He saw bigger reindeer edge out to the side of the herd, as if taking guard on the vulnerable flanks. But still the mass moved, gathering speed, not panicked yet, but moving just slightly faster than the running boys.

  It had seemed easy to yell and shriek as he ran, as if his lungs contained all the breath in the world, until they reached the dust the herd had left behind them. Dust in his eyes and mouth, fresh dung beneath his feet. Suddenly Deer could see nothing, choked as he tried to sh
out, stumbled as his foot slipped in some moist mess. Disoriented, he kept running, glancing to either side to see if he was still in line, and found two smaller boys edging toward him, as if for company. As long as he was in the dust, he must be behind the herd, running in the right track. He hawked the dust from his throat, and whooped feebly, hardly a sound at all to match the drumming of the hooves. He choked again, bent and picked a pebble to suck to get some moisture to his tongue, and carried on running, the boys at his side now.

  Suddenly a crazed reindeer with an arrow in its belly appeared before him, panicked into running the wrong way. He pointed his spear, but ran to one side. It darted past him, blood splashing into the dust. Some always broke free. On again. How much farther? He had seen the cliff and the distant hills beyond the river when they rose above the ridge. No distance at all. They must be almost at the funnel the men would have formed.

  Another beast came at him, an arrow in its eye. It was almost upon him. He darted to the side, bowling over one of the boys, but the rough flank of the reindeer slammed his chest, sending him spinning into the dust. A sudden cry of human pain, and he saw the other boy tumbling beneath the beast’s hooves, as it stamped and trampled to free itself from this sudden obstruction.

  Deer picked himself up, helped to his feet the boy he had knocked over, cuffed him away from the sight of the trampled youth, and ran on. It was the firmest rule. The line of the beaters must always drive on. It must never flag, never turn aside to help a wounded friend, and never allow gaps to appear through which the herd might escape. Deer ran on, the dust thicker, the haunches of the herd suddenly looming close as the narrowing funnel slowed them. Now he could hear the cries of the men on both sides. Now was the crucial moment. Leaping forward, he jabbed his spear into the haunches ahead of him, great gray bulk after brownish mass, jabbing to keep them moving, to keep up the momentum and panic that would finally take the beasts over the cliff to their deaths.

  This was the most dangerous time. Crowded together, their pace slowing as the pressure of beasts increased, this was the moment when the reindeer would be forced against the flimsy barriers of men and the skin-covered tripods. Some of them would find this was little enough barrier and burst through the line. Others would flee to the rear. This was when men and boys started to die, as the hunted took revenge on the hunters. This was the moment when safety lay only in the relentless jabbing of the spear, and the trust that the boy beside you would be jabbing too, holding the line with the discipline that was the mark of man against the beast.

  His chest aching from the slamming of the escaped reindeer, his throat dry and his vision blurred, Deer knew that his breath was coming in raw and grating sobs. But he could smell the sudden taint of blood amid the dung, and staggered as his foot almost tripped over the fallen body of a young beast. If they were trampling their young, the panic was complete. Jab again, and again.

  Suddenly they broke. The herd found space and ran forward. Enough of their leaders had fallen down the cliff to make a ramp of their own dead and broken bodies. Slipping and sliding, skidding and scampering, the rest of the herd rolled and heaved and fought their way across the still-warm corpses. He saw rumps pause and tauten, as the remaining beasts nerved themselves for the only escape. And then he was at the cliff edge, bellows of pain and exhaustion coming from below him, as what seemed like a living, crawling mat of beasts squirmed down to the river. Some were already swimming across.

  Deer sank to his knees, exhausted, his chest sucking great gulps of dusty air as he coughed and bent, dimly aware of other boys doing the same beside him. His breath easing, he looked along the line of beaters, seeing gaps here and there in the line of tripods. There would be dead men after this hunt, and one stricken boy that he knew of. Clutching his spear, he began to haul himself to his feet. And failed. The shaft was slick with blood. It ran thickly down his arm. It was splashed all up his legs. His chest and belly were a thick paste of blood and sweat.

  He felt a great push in his back. The hunters were driving the boys down into the still heaving mass below. He lost his balance at the cliff edge, and half-stumbled over, trying to turn so that he could keep his trunk on the cliff rim. But the hundreds of reindeer had kicked away whatever edge there might have been, and Deer slid on his stomach down the slope for only the briefest drop, before his leg slipped into the writhing warmth between two beasts. Terrified of his leg being crushed, he squirmed and hauled himself onto a heaving back and realized that his spear had broken. He still had the flint point, so he drove it like a dagger into the space between the shoulders, just below the hump at the base of the neck. A great tremor came from beneath him, but the beast stayed upright. He leaned forward, grabbed an antler with one hand, and rose to his knees on the back of his kill. Now he had leverage and struck down, now to a neck to his right, now to his left, now into the haunch of a beast that was trying to kick and push itself out of the mass. His own beast was still at last and suddenly seemed to lurch down. He dove across to another, grabbed an antler as it tried to buck him off, and drove his weapon down into the neck. Again.

  He dove for the plunging back ahead, colliding with another boy who was trying to mount the same beast, and they both rolled off to the side, and suddenly there were no more backs to cling to, only a shallow, lumpy, living slope down which he sprawled and fell, an antler scoring its way along his side. And then he splashed into the water of the river, the coldness a shock until he got his head into the air and realized that it was a soup thick with blood. As helpless as the reindeer that cannoned into him, sending him back beneath the surface, he felt an intense communion with the beasts. They were him and he was them. Deer. Reindeer. Morsels in a soup of death.

  He was floating. Too tired to swim. His eyes full of water and tears. He bumped gently against a dead beast, looked and saw the killing ground upstream. He pushed off from the reindeer’s haunch and struck out for the shore one-handed. His broken spear was still fixed in his hand. Stones underfoot. The shallows. He staggered out to the shore. No cliff here. Just a shallow climb up a rolling stretch of grass and shrubs to the men milling at the cliff edge. One foot before the other. And again. His head bowed, he suddenly focused on his legs. Clean of blood and dung. The river had cleansed him. His chest was bruised, and there was a long scrape down his side, with pinpricks of blood just welling.

  The Keeper of the Horses emerged from the crowd of men and stood before him. His hand and arm dripping with blood, he placed it flat on Deer’s chest, and then traced two bloody circles around Deer’s nipples. With his other hand he scraped blood from his arm, and daubed a waving line on Deer’s belly. So, he was acknowledged as a man now. It felt as if it were happening to someone else.

  “We should call you Deer Rider,” he said. “You did well.”

  Deer looked at him without comprehension. Now he would have to go back to the river to wash himself clean again. He did not want Moon to see him like this.

  “The old man died,” said the Keeper of the Horses. “Some beasts broke through and crushed him.”

  Deer looked down. A crumpled body, pitifully small, one thin white leg twisted askew at the knee. A skin had been placed over the crushed skull. His nursemaiding days were over. Too spent to say anything, he bowed his head. He’d miss the old man.

  “We will need another Keeper,” said Moon’s father. “Think of that.”

  Deer lifted his head, and then shook off the man’s hand. He lurched toward what was left of the Keeper of the Bison, and lifted the skin. The eyes were open. Gently, Deer smoothed the eyelids down, and then straightened again. He looked back along the sloping stretch of ground that the beaters had covered through the dust. Grimly, he set his teeth and plodded back through the bloodied earth and between trampled young deer to find the broken brown body of the boy who had run beside him. The chest was crushed and the youth had no face. Now Deer’s tears flowed thickly. When he felt Moon’s father’s hand on his shoulder, he turned and half fell against the man’s c
hest, sobbing like a child as two strong and reeking arms came around him. And he felt the sticky blood on his breast and belly bind the two of them together, more closely than he had ever hoped to lie with this man’s daughter.

  CHAPTER 9

  Perigord, 1944

  A thin frost was forming as McPhee and Manners crept along the riverbank. There were four young Frenchmen in a ragged line between them, coming along for the experience. Manners had a filthy headache, after handling the crude “808” British version of the plastic explosive. It stank and gave off pungent fumes when he had soaked it in warm water to make it malleable. But it was powerful. Less than a pound would be enough to blow the railway points apart. He had a dozen charges in his rucksack, each sewn crudely into a cloth bag.

  At the rail junctions of le Buisson the east-west line to Bordeaux crossed the north-south line from Agen to Perigueux and up to Limoges and Paris. It was a small station, with a German patrol coming around four times each night to check on the small permanent guard of three of the Vichy paramilitary, the Milice. Just to establish that had taken three nights of surveillance, to the frustration of the French, who had thought the simple arrival of the Jedburgh team would trigger an instant orgy of demolitions and mayhem. They had to be taught that nine-tenths of guerrilla war was patience and observation. McPhee had two hand grenades for the Milice hut, and the Frenchmen had Stens. Francois was with another small squad about three miles back at a sharp bend in the road to Belves, the route the patrolling German lorry would take.

  The night was bright with stars, but no moon. McPhee insisted on wearing his uniform, just as he insisted each day on shaving the sides of his scalp with ever-blunter razor blades. The skin above his ears was nicked with tiny cuts, but his bizarre Mohican tuft survived. Manners had taken Hilaire’s advice and was wearing dark blue French overalls and an old leather jacket. He was freezing and he was hungry, and the spring water up in the hills had given him the runs, and his head throbbed. He was about as miserable as he could ever remember being, but it was not the cold that made his hands tremble until he tucked them under the straps of his rucksack. He stepped through a thin sheen of ice and into a puddle. At least his boots were almost new.