The boy felt for the pouch with the stones in it. The touch was reassuring. Nothing else was. His first hunt. His heart pounding. It had been agreed that any needed signaling would take the form of a ground squirrel’s whistling, as this would (at most) arouse the hunger of no creature larger than a fox or hawk. Tentatively the boy formed his mouth to make such a signal. But he never made it. The while he had been keeping a sort of sketch of things in his head. Yonder was the sun. The cliff directly behind. The wind, so. To the right must be the horse herd. A little left of straight ahead were, though now not seen, a clump of thick-boled trees. Beyond that, a low hillock of rusty scrub. A brook. A wallow.
• • •
Alarm, alarm rose so swift in his chest that it choked his breath. Something was wrong. Everything was wrong. He had gone the wrong way — or — for he was much too close to the hillock, he could see it now, he could not see the trees, which meant — and then came the whistle, and the whistle was to have come from Tall Roke and Tall Roke should be that way and the whistle was over this way — vertigo took him, he was on both knees and one hand. Earthshake? For the hillock moved and his eyes fled from it and his eyes saw trees walking and someone screamed and screamed — it was not him, then it was him as it was many others, for by now all knew it was the hill-that-moves, the trees-that-walk, all of them could see the serpent snout that rose up huge and hairy and drank the wind, all could see the flash of spear teeth, all could hear the horrid trumpet scream of the mammoni! mammont! mammont! as its tree-huge legs shook the grassy ground in its terrible charge, its trunk sweeping down the grass before it as a scythe, bloody scythe, bloody grass, bloody spears, bloody teeth —
Fear and failing flesh and yet senses still undimmed enough to hear Tall Roke’s voice full strong as he shouted, “Hold to the plan! Axe men to the rear whilst I engage to the front — ” I and not we, he did not trust to any others’ courage to face the huge red mammont from the front, but still had hopes that some might brave the great beast’s hind legs to strike at the lower tendons. Onward the mammont beast had come, fast, fast, but faster yet ran Tall Roke, passing it — so swift he might have escaped, had such been his intent, had he run in another direction — passing it, running backward before it, turning it, darting back and away from it, shouting and feinting his spear at it — “Strike! Strike!” he shouted —
But no one was there to strike. No one was there but Tall Roke. One man. One boy. Who shrieked with all the fury of his unformed voice and cast his stones with all the power of his unformed arms. For one fell moment the mammont wavered, rage-reddened eyes darting from man to boy.
“Ankles! Ankles! Ah! Strike! Ankles!” hoarsely but still hopefully: Tall Roke’s voice. But no one struck. And the one man’s spear hung in the air, it seemed not so much that he had cast it at the mammont as that the mammont had hurled itself upon the airborne spear; it lanced the line of the great face from tusk-socket to eye-socket: the mammont screamed its pain and rage: again the spear hung in the air: and now — and this was so puzzling — Tall Roke himself hung in the air, his fair hair all in a mist about his face — the python trunk seemed to rise slowly, slowly, slowly, and to descend slowly, slowly, and to wrap itself so slowly gently lovingly about the man’s neck.
• • •
There were flowers in the meadow and bees in the air and then there was a dripping comb of honey and he thrust his paws first into the comb and then into his mouth and its taste was of gold and sweet and strong and delightful beyond the taste of any food tasted before and when it was quite quite gone he licked his paws and he licked the grass it had dripped on and then he went scampering off to where the bushes hung heavy with the full ripe berries and he ate his wonder full of them and …
• • •
Three of them returned alive to the village and Tall Roke was found alive (though only barely) where the mammont had tossed and gored him but, unaccountably, not trampled him as it had the others. But he, too, was soon dead. Another’s head was found in the branches of a tree. Something that was probably his body, for it could be nothing else, was smeared nearby.
The horses had vanished.
That the great roan mammont was a rogue, all agreed. Only a rogue would travel alone, and there was no sign at all of any other mammont — or, for that matter, him — any more.
At first no one in the village said anything but, It has happened. Since the starting of the red-rust-sickness of all iron and the increasing wrath of the distant and once indifferent king, since the nains had ceased to visit and the tax exactions had begun to increase, rumors faint as whispers and whispers loud as shouts had been spreading, spreading, spreading. Some great calamity impended. And now it had come. It had happened.
Next in the village they began to ask, How did it happen?
By this time the boy thought he knew. And there was one other who, he thought, also thought he knew. And that meant there was a third who certainly knew.
The name of the second was Corm, a lad perhaps a year or two older, eyes gray rather than the common blue, hair not blond and curling but brown and lank, sallow of skin; his father was one of the three subchiefs of the townlet. If Corm had not given the boy many good words, that was nothing, no one did that; but he had never given any ill ones at all.
The third was a whey-faced, slack-mouthed, slack-limbed shambleton, with an almost perpetual eruption about the mouth at which he ever picked and which generally bled; a liar and bully and boor, yet well connected — that is, connected to families of some small importance who, by talking loud and often and big, made that small seem greater.
It was one of those moments that seem to have been a part of the center of all things, lying in wait from the beginning. No hint of it before. Old Hinna’s grandson standing idly watching. Whey-face shambling along. The boy looking at him. Looking up to see Corm watching Whey-face as well. His eyes meeting Corm’s. Instantly, as though spoken words had passed between them: It was Whey-face who gave that first, wrong whistle, which would have been done right if Tall Roke had done it at the right time if it should have been done at all; it came from where Whey-face was, and only he would have been fool enough, coward enough to have done it, done it in coward-fool hopes of a reassuring return of it: it was that whistle, ill-done, that roused the mammont — in another moment Tall Roke would have seen it and managed to get us all safe away somehow, but —
Still that same second, Whey-face looking up as though called, catching their glance, understanding, flushing, paling, and at once reacting in his coward way — not coward-foolish this time but coward-cunning. Pointing at the boy, shouting at the boy, attracting instantly every eye and mind voicing the unvoiced and making clamor become instant fact: “It was him! He brought the ill-fate, he brought the mammont there! The bear’s bastard with the bear-stink on him! Bear’s bastard! Nain’s get! Made the mammont come! Curse-bringer! Shag-skin! Killed our men and boys! Him! Him! Him!” And, stooping, he snatched up a piece of dried filth, ran and flung it.
Then sticks, then stones. Next would-be arrows, axes, spears. No need to inquire, discuss, reason, weigh — instant, heart-warming hatred was quick, easy. “Bear’s bastard! Curse-bringer! Men killed! Bear-stink!” The mammont was gone, the boy remained. He saw Corm’s mouth open but neither he nor any heard Corm’s word, drowned out in the bull-voiced clamor of all of Whey-face’s kith and kin, believing or not believing, belief beside the point, the point: Ours. Support him. Shout loud. Throw something.
The boy ran. Terror runs swifter than rage follows. Boys can go where big men cannot — holes, hollows, runways, dogpaths, shinny up slender trees and drop over palings. There was Bab-uncle crouching up his slender fire. It was an instant. His grandmother’s hut. A packet thrust into his hands, the bark bag with the small victuals the old man took with him when he hunted herbs. A hide lifted up to show an opening the boy had never seen before. A burrow, wide enough for him. A patch of light. The village palisades behind him. An echoing that might have been
the clamor of the mob. That might have been the beating of his blood. Something clutched in his other hand. He ran. He ran.
Chapter II
“Go, Arnten. Find your father,” the old uncle had said as he lifted the hide-flap. As it fell and all was dark, the boy heard him say, “It is time.” Then nothing but a faint moment of one of the old man’s chantings. Arnten. The word lodged like a grub in a honeycomb cell. Arnten. But there was no sign, yet. A faint thought: it is my name. No time for further thought. Arnten. His name. That and escape. For now, enough. A life. A name.
In the woods, however, nothing was now asking his name. With a knowledge deeper than thought he avoided the hard-trodden dust of the common path and sank into the thicket like a snake. Behind, he heard the clamor and shouting descend into a single sound on a single note and stay there, like the noise of a swarm of bees hovering and mrumming its one dull note forever. Somehow it sounded infinitely more menacing than any cluster of mere words. Presently the humming-mrumming grew louder. Then loud. The ear-pressed earth echoed like a drumhead. The echo filled the ear and air. Suddenly it was gone and he, Arnten, realized that it had gone a time ago and that he was alone and that if any were still seeking him, they were not doing it here.
Slowly he rose up in the thicket like a mist. He gained the path. He snuffed up the breeze. He listened. He was gone.
• • •
A bird sang twit-twit-twit on a branch. A ground squirrel hopped and scampered, scampered and hopped, vanished from view. There was a smell of wetness, of damp earth and the scent of the sweet green breath of plants. Arnten knew that there were times to look up and times to look down and times to look straight ahead. He saw the bush, he saw through the bush and, a long, long way beyond the bush, he saw the boles of several trees but nothing in between. Softly, gently, he pushed the shrubby branches aside. For a moment he paused, holding his breath, listening. There was not, had not been for long, sounds of mob or pack or crowd. There had been no man sounds at all, save for his own. It was improbable that any enemy of his own blood was near. It was not impossible.
But he heard no new noise. Only the faint patter of the ground squirrel. Only the same twit-twit-twit of the bird on the branch.
He slipped past the handful of branches and let them make their own return to their natural positions, only restraining them enough so that they should close without sound. He went on a bit and then he stopped and considered, there in the cool green corridor which for now meant safety. It had been used enough to create a trail, but little enough to allow the bush’s growing to obscure the entrance. Perhaps small and dainty deer slipped along this tunnel through the trees. They would not mind sharing it with him. Or perhaps white tiger, dire wolf, snowy leopard, used it in quest of the same small dainty deer. This thought contracted and shook his limbs in a long shudder. He felt and saw the nap of hair quiver upon his skin and stand up from the fearful flesh.
His mind leaped from thought to thought as a spark of fire leaps from one twig to another. Another boy, conceiving the same thought, might find his mind working thought of danger — beast equals danger — beast equals panic — run for your life, without even realizing the process. But his own mind worked thought of danger — beast equals think about danger — beast. And he stopped and thought.
The thought is not the thing.
And the thought told him that the thing, the great ones among the danger-beasts, were seldom if ever to be found in this part of Thule at this season of the year; they were to be found (or rather, avoided) farther to the north, where men had less thinned out the game on which they chiefly preyed; winter snows, in which the hooved beasts would flounder and be more easily tracked and trapped and killed, might indeed bring the great killers down.
But then again might not.
He felt the drum within his bosom slow its clamor and then its beats receded to their normal slow strokes, below the threshhold of perception. He began to go on, but the trail was narrow and something caught upon a branch and held him. He looked down and saw he was still carrying without awareness the two things hastily taken in his flight from town. The bark bag of food, the bear-token upon its leathern thong. It was this last he now had to disengage. It seemed somehow as natural to hang it around his neck as to loop the grass cord of the food wallet from shoulder to hip. So. He had no weapon but he had food, itself a sort of weapon — was not hunger the chief enemy? He had a potency in the form of the bear carving, a token of whoever his father was — a father contained in a piece of wood on a thong was better than no father at all. Find your father, Arnten. What did he know of how or where? Either his father was or was not a bear. If not, then he knew and could know nothing. If so — then what? Where were bears? Anywhere, manywhere, where there were trees and streams. So. Avoid the grasslands, the great meadows. But he would have done so in any case. There was the game he could not take, there would be the great beasts, the danger-beasts he could not forfend.
Therefore, the forest. A tree creaked. It seemed a Yes.
• • •
When the balls of boiled millet and scraps of dried meat and fish were gone from his bark bag he went a while without and he hungered. Then there were berries and plants his old herb-uncle had shown him. He ate walking and he slept little. He seemed to need less of either. If the path forked and one branch inclined toward the plains of danger, he took the other. If there was still a choice and a question, he held the token in his hands and pointed it between the paths. It moved. Sometimes slowly, slightly. But it moved. It had one day not yet stopped moving when he felt the eyes upon him and looked up. They were great, glowing, amber eyes — intelligent eyes, but far too strange to be the eyes of any man. Nor were they.
The figure was squat of body and shag of skin, with a brown mane of hair upon scalp and broad face. The extraordinarily long arms were folded across the extraordinarily thick chest. A kilt of soft leather girdled the loins. Short were the powerful legs. Over arms, hands and chest and belly the long brown hair grew thickly. The boy found himself looking at his own body and limbs. Instantly, several thoughts — and one of them as an almost instant surprise: I am not afraid! And, another —
“Nay, boy.” The voice was strange in more than being unknown. It had odd tones and echoes, the final vowels nasalized so that almost they sounded as nay’n, boy’n. “Nay, boy. It’s isn’t me nurr any we who’s is fathered ye ‘n given ‘e them warm hairs upon yurr’s skin.” So acutely did the strange one discern his thoughts. And spoke a few words of no understanding, at first, to the boy — whose ear sped back and caught on a word he knew.
“Arn’t.”
He said, “The bear — ”
Something flashed golden in the amber eyes. More strange words. Then — “Ye dow int speak en witchery words — hey’n?” Arnten shook his head. “Nay,” murmured the stranger. Almost, it was Ngayng. He said, “We speak it ever ‘t’the forge. Ye must’s ever speak en ‘t’ th’ Old Tongue t’iron, furr iron ‘t’s a witchery thing. So we speak en it furr habit, ef we dow int think not to — ”
“You said — ‘Arn’t — ’ ”
“Eh. We speak ‘s’en it, too, ‘t the bear, furr the bear dow be a witchery-beast. All creaturr dow die, but the bear dow come alive agains. And the Star Bear dow gived we-folk the first fire.” The glowing eyes fixed his own. The odd voice, strong and strange, but devoid of harm for him, went on. “En all of Thule’s the wurrd gone round, ‘When the wolf dow meet the bear: beware.’ ” There seemed something expectant in his tone, something expectant in his look.
But look and tone alike meant nothing to the boy, who said, as though thinking aloud, “A nain.” The nain stooped his head and his shoulders. And the boy said, “Arnten, I am Arnten.” And this time the nain stooped his entire thick body to the waist.
Then, straightening, he extended an arm so long that its fingers almost touched Arnten’s chest. “We know en what place ‘t is.” The boy’s eyes followed and saw the thick and hairy fingers of the th
ick and hairy hand were pointing not to his body but to the token slung upon it.
“Where? It is here.”
The nain grunted, held up a hand straight from the wrist in the nain sign of negation. “Not this. Th’ other this. Th’ — th’ — ” He struggled to express himself, his manner rather like that of a man seeking a paraphrase for a thing he does not care to name precisely. “Th’ other this. That!”
And he turned and walked away.
Arnten followed.
• • •
After a full seven-days’ walk they came to it. The place was more of a hole or cleft than a cave, but it was dry. Part of the ceiling had fallen in; boulders littered the floor. The nain without hesitating or pausing put his chest against the largest and wound long arms around it. He moved the stone up and over and then back. “Take ‘t up,” he said. “ ‘T’s not furr we to touch.” It, clearly, was not the rock. A moment passed in the dim light before Arnten saw it. For a moment he thought it was a piece of wood. Then, more by intuition than lineal recognition, he knew that what he saw on the ground where the rock had been was a witchery-bundle.
That.
It was perhaps the size of his forearm and, with his forearm, after he had taken it outside in the sunlight, he wiped at the dusty hide covering. It was certainly a witchery-bundle. There were witchery signs upon it, some clear, some dim, some familiar, some unknown. Largest and most deeply etched were the sun and the bear. The bear was almost certainly a replica of the one he wore. Or — was it the other way around? “The sun,” he said.
“Eh’ng,” the nain agreed. “The sun and the bear, they go together. For the sun dies and ‘t comes alive again. And the bear dow die and dow come alive again. The sun give fire and the bear, too. Eh’ng,” he said, after a moment, eyeing the hide-covered bundle, and musing. “How many snow-times? Two hands? Surely two. But three? Surely not three. Bear, he telled a-we, Here dow be my token. Here dow by my,” the nain gestured, “that. Bear telled: ‘Look for it. If you see him, man-child-bearchild — if you see my token on ‘t him; show him where.’ And we say’d him, Eh’ng-ah, Bear.”
Ursus of Ultima Thule Page 2