There was a swift exclamation, and a hand flashed down on him as he flattened back against the earthy root-tangle behind him; and like a wild thing cornered, with nothing in him but a blind instinct to fight for life, he snapped at it, his teeth meeting in a finger. He was shaken off, and in the same instant, as it seemed, the hand was on his shoulder, and he was jerked bodily out from under the tree roots and set on his feet, still kicking and struggling and trying to bite, in the full moonlight. The hand held him at arm’s length in a grip that he could not break though he twisted and squirmed like an otter cub; but the man’s voice when he spoke again was not harsh, despite his bitten finger. There was even something of laughter in it.
‘Softly, softly now! There is no need for such a snarling and snapping!’ Then, as Drem, reassured by something in the voice, ceased his struggling: ‘Why, it is old Cathlan’s grandson!’
Drem stood quite still now, and looked at the man, while three great hounds sat down around them with lolling tongues and eyes shining in the moonlight. The man was slight and dark—dark for one of the Golden People—and had faintly the smell of fox about him; and even in his stillness, as he stood holding Drem at arm’s length, was the swift, leashed power of a wild thing. He was naked save for a fox’s pelt twisted about his loins; and the moon caught the blade of the long hunting-knife thrust into his girdle, and the coils of a great snake of beaten copper that coiled again and again about his left forearm, the head lying level with his elbow, the tail curled downward into a hook that served him instead of a left hand.
‘So it is you who walks the forest tonight, making all the Wild uneasy,’ said Talore the Hunter.
Drem nodded.
‘A small cub, surely a very small cub, to be sleeping out in the forest.’
Drem said fiercely, ‘I have seen nine summers, and I sleep in the forest because I choose.’
‘Surely that is as good a reason as any other,’ said the man, with the laughter deepening in his tone. ‘But now, I think, the time comes to be going home.’
There was a silence among the crowding trees. Then Drem said, ‘Let me be. I will go back in a while and a while.’
‘Na, not in a while and a while,’ Talore said, and he looked down at Drem in the moonlight, with eyes that missed nothing of the small, desperate figure before him. ‘This part of the forest is no place for small cubs, alone. Therefore we go together, you and I; and we go now.’
He released Drem’s shoulder, and stooping with the lithe and lazy swiftness that was in all his movements, caught up from among the brown leaves and white-flowering dead-nettle at his feet his hunting-spear, and a newly flayed badger pelt, which he flung across his shoulder. ‘Come,’ he said, and with an almost soundless whistle to his hounds, turned to the steep slope behind him.
And rebellious and resentful, bewildered by the swiftness with which the unknown terror whose hand he bit had become Talore the Hunter, and by the man’s mastery over him, which was different from anything he had experienced before, Drem came. The Fear was gone from the forest, and the chill freshness of the dawn was in his face as, with the three hounds, he followed at the shadow-silent heels of the hunter, threading the mazy deer-paths that seemed to have turned themselves about to lead in the right direction after all. He felt spent and empty as though he had cried until he had no more tears to cry with; and nothing of last night seemed quite real; it was all dark and confused and had the sick taste of nightmare that remains in the back of one’s mind after one wakes. He wished he could talk about it to Talore. Talore with his copper snake would understand as no one else in Drem’s world could. It would be good to tell Talore. But he knew that if the hunter was to stop in his tracks, and turn, and say, ‘Cub, what Thing was it that you ran from, into the forest?’ the words would never come. So there was no good thinking about it.
The light was growing all around them, wherever the trees fell back a little; moonlight and dawn-light watered together; and as they came down to a narrow brook a willow wren was singing among the alders. They followed upstream a little way, and suddenly Drem knew where he was. He knew this brook, he knew the ancient willow bending far out over the water, where the brook broke up into a chain of pools. Just up yonder through the trees was the track, the ancient track under the scarp of the downs that echoed the Ridgeway along the High Chalk far above. Even as he realized it, they came out on the edge of a clearing, and Talore checked among a tangle of elder bushes with a swift gesture that halted boy and hounds alike.
Ahead of them in the clearing the light was so strong that already the foxgloves were touched with colour; and the low ground-mist of the summer morning lay like gossamer in the hollows among the fern. And peering, breath in check, through the low-hanging elder branches, Drem saw that on the far side of the clearing a herd of roe deer were grazing, their fawns all together at a little distance. One big hind was grazing a little apart from the rest, between them and the elder scrub; and Drem judged that she was well within spear throw, knowing that in the hands of a skilled hunter a light throw-spear could kill at forty or fifty paces. One of the hounds was standing against his leg, and he felt the tremors running through the brute’s body, though no whimper of excitement broke from him, or from the other two. They had come on the herd upwind, and so there was nothing to carry the smell of danger to the deer, and they grazed on undisturbed. Every moment Drem expected to see Talore throw and make his kill; but the moments passed, and when he stole a sideways glance at Talore, the hunter was watching the herd through the white curds of the elder blossom, with a keen, quiet pleasure narrowing his dark eyes, and the throw-spear still at rest in his hand.
A few moments later, he gave a soft whistle. A curious, low note at sound of which the nearest hind raised her head and looked towards the elder tangle, then began, obviously not in the least startled, to drift back to the main herd. One or two others looked up and began to drift also, a hind barked to her fawn, and in a few moments the last of the deer had melted into the trees and the morning mist.
Drem looked again at Talore, puzzled, and spoke for the first time since they had set out on the home trail. ‘You could have killed her—the one this side of the herd.’
‘So. Very easily.’ Talore had been on the point of moving again, but he checked, looking down at the boy.
‘Then—why not?’
‘I have killed once already tonight and have no need to kill again,’ Talore said. ‘There is meat enough in my house-place, and a deer-skin fetches but a small price from the traders.’ And then, seeing Drem still puzzled, ‘Never kill what you cannot use. If you kill for skins, kill for all the skins you need; if for food, fill your belly and the bellies of hound and woman and child at your hearth and set store by, that they may be full another time. But to kill for the sake of killing is the way of the weasel and the fox, and the hunter who kills so angers the Forest Gods. Let you remember that when you are a man and hunt with the Men’s side!’
Drem had not meant to say it, a moment before he would not have thought that he could say it, but the words seemed to burst out past the silence in his throat in a small, hoarse rush that had nothing to do with his will. ‘Most like, when I am a man, I shall not hunt with the Men’s side.’
There was a pause, and a little wind riffled through the elder branches, fetching down a shower of petals. Then Talore said, ‘Who with, then?’
‘The Half People.’
‘And who says so?’
‘The Old One, Cathlan my Grandfather.’
Talore stood leaning on his spear and frowned down at Drem with a suddenly quickened interest. ‘Let you tell me why.’
Drem scowled at him, the old misery aching in his throat, and did not answer; and after a moment Talore flicked the tail of his copper snake at the arm which the boy carried trailing like a bird with a broken wing. ‘Because of that?’
Drem nodded.
‘So. Men call me Talore One-Hand as often as Talore the Hunter, yet no man has ever questioned my right
to the scarlet.’
‘Sabra my mother said that—something of that. But you were a warrior and a—a great one of the Clan before ever you lost a hand to the cattle raiders.’
Talore smiled, his swift, dark smile that raised his lip over the strong dog teeth at the corners of his mouth. ‘The Grandfather again.’
And again Drem nodded, and again Talore leaned on his spear and looked down at him. ‘Listen, cub,’ he said at last. ‘If the thing is worth a fight, fight for it and do not hear the Grandfather too clearly. There are ways—ways round, and ways through, and ways over. If you have not two hands for a bow, then learn to use a throw-spear with such skill that your enemies, and your brothers, forget that it is not from choice.’
Drem looked at him in wonder. How could Talore—even Talore—know about Drustic’s bow? And then he realized that Talore did not know about that bow, but that for him also there had been a bow that he could not draw, and a spear that must take its place. There were things to think about, here. But first there was something more; a question to be asked. Drem looked at the ground while he asked it, because he could not bear to look into Talore’s face. ‘If I did—all those things, and learned to kill a buck at—at sixty paces with a spear; and slew my wolf at the Wolf Slaying—a—a greater, fiercer wolf than most, would there—might it be that someone among the warriors would stand for me with the Grandfather, when the time comes for me to go before the Tribe, after all?’
The silence that followed seemed to him so long that he began to give up his new hope. Then Talore said, ‘When the time comes that your mother weaves scarlet on the loom for you, let you remember this dawn in the forest, and bid the Grandfather send word to me.’
Just for a moment, he could not believe it. Then he looked up, slowly, his eyes suddenly all golden. ‘You?’
‘Who else has so good a right, small brother?’ Talore said.
They looked at each other for a moment, steadily; a look that was the sealing of a bond. Then Talore straightened, shifting his hold on his spear. ‘Come now, it is near daylight, and they will be half mad for you at the home steading. You will know your way, now?’
Drem nodded.
‘So. Then our ways part here. Good hunting, cub.’
And in a little, while the hunter melted in among the trees, going on up the streamside towards the village, Drem struck up through the fringes of the forest on to the swelling flanks of the Chalk.
It was almost broad daylight, the moon pale as a bubble in the shining sky; and the red plough oxen were stirring and stamping in their stalls, when Drem came up the chalk-cut driftway to the gate of the home steading. The thorn tree was drawn aside and the gateway open, and he walked through and across the garth to the house-place, suddenly so weary that he could hardly drag one leg after the other. He heard Drustic’s voice as he came to the door, ‘Na, he is not with Doli. The Gods alone know where he is or what has come to him!’ and saw his brother standing over the Grandfather, who sat hunched in his cloak beside the fire that looked as though it had been kept up all night. He caught the Grandfather’s rumbling answer. ‘The child is bad; always I have said that the child is bad. He has no respect for me his Grandfather! If the Sun Lord so wills it, he will come back when he is hungry enough.’
And then they saw him, both it seemed in the same moment, and also in the same moment old Kea, the mother of all Drustic’s hounds, got up with waving tail, yawning her pleasure, and came to greet him. But Drustic reached him first, in a couple of strides, and caught him by the scruff of the neck and jerked him forward into the fireglow beside the hearth, demanding, ‘Son of blackness, where have you been?’
Drem stood and rubbed his neck and glared. ‘It was a very bright night. I went to catch a fish, but they were all shy.’
The Grandfather snorted, a snort that might mean unbelief or only derision; and Drustic said, ‘And so, because you chance to feel like catching a fish, our mother must seek you all night through the woodshore, and I must trail up along the High Chalk lest you had gone back to Doli and the sheep!’ As he spoke he took down a whip of tanned ox hide that he used for the hounds, and stood drawing the dark leash again and again through his hands. ‘You know what happens to a puppy of the dog pack when he runs off in such a way?’
Drem faced him squarely. He had known that this must happen, and he was ready for it. ‘You thrash him.’
Drustic glanced for an instant, questioningly, at the Grandfather, the lord of the house; but the Grandfather spat into the fire, hunching his blanket farther round his shoulders. ‘Na na, I am too old to be troubled with the training of puppies. The thing is for you to do—and see that you do not hold your hand.’
‘I shall not hold my hand,’ Drustic said roughly. He was clearly very angry, his young, ruddy face dark with his anger. He reached out and fetched Drem a buffet on the side of the head that sent him sprawling across the wood pile by the fire. Drem crouched there, his head ringing from the blow, and waited with shut teeth. He knew that by the end he would be yelping like a puppy, but he would not yelp before he must. He sensed that his brother’s arm had swung up, and waited for the sting of the descending lash across his shoulders.
But it never came. Instead, something small and fierce out of the shadows flung itself on Drustic and bit him, as last night Drem had bitten Talore the Hunter.
Drustic yelped with surprise and pain, and shook his attacker off and cuffed her aside, then raised his whip again. But as he did so, Drem heard his mother’s voice from the doorway, crying with a rush of thankfulness, ‘Ah! You have found him!’ And then, ‘No, Drustic. No!’
Everything was very confused and confusing, but it seemed to Drem that he might be going to escape a beating after all. He got up from where he had been crouching, as his mother came swiftly in, her heavy hair falling loose and her kirtle torn and mired. ‘Cubbling, where have you been? You were with Doli then?’
Drustic was standing, solid and still angry and beginning to be bewildered, sucking his bitten thumb, while Blai crouched snarling silently, and holding her head, among the hounds where his cuff had sent her. He spat blood into the fire. ‘Nay, you were wrong, my mother; he has but now come in, so bold as the King himself in his high Dun, to tell me he went to catch a fish.’ Then, rounding once more on Drem, ‘Get down again. I have not finished with you yet.’
‘No, Drustic,’ their mother said again. ‘You shall not beat him—not this time.’
The Grandfather raised his great grey-gold head and looked at them with eyes that went golden when he was angry or glad, just as Drem’s did, but it was anger now. ‘Woman, this is for the Men’s side. Leave it for the Men’s side’s handling, and tend to your distaff!’
Drem’s mother paid no heed to the old man. ‘Not this time!’ she said again.
‘But why not?’ Drustic demanded, his brows puckered with bewilderment. ‘Am I not to train the cub at all? Why not?’
‘Because I say not, I who gave both of you life!’ their mother said; and she caught the whip from Drustic and flung it into the far shadows. Then she turned to Drem, with her hands held out, and the crooning softness in her voice that came there all too seldom. ‘Baba, cubbling, why did you run off like that? I would have given you more stew—the bowl was not broken—’
Her eyes were searching his face. He thought she guessed that it had not been a rat in the roof; guessed why he had gone; and that was why she would not let Drustic beat him. But she could not be sure, and while she was not sure she could not speak of it to him. He did not want her to speak of it to him. So he stepped back, and stood with his feet apart and his head up, while Drustic shrugged and went to pick up his whip and hang it in its accustomed place. ‘I did not want any more stew. I wished to catch a fish. I went down to the river, into the forest to catch one; but the fish were all shy.’
‘But what did you do by yourself, all alone the long night in the forest? You are torn to pieces, and your kilt in shreds. Aiee, baba, you look as though you were
new come from battle—and you must be so hungry.’
‘I am hungry,’ Drem agreed, ‘and the brambles are sharp in the forest. I crawled into a hole under an oak tree and slept.’ He had not forgotten the Great Fear, but he shut his mind to it. ‘And later I met Talore the Hunter in the forest, and we walked together, and talked, in the way of men!’
His mother was already taking a barley bannock out of the bannock basket that hung from the edge of the loft. ‘Eat now, and you shall have better in a little.’ Then, as she gave the bannock into his hand, ‘Talore the Hunter? And what could there be for you and Talore the Hunter to talk of?’
That was one of the things about Drem’s mother; often she wanted to know too much. He stuck his chest out, swaggering a little, with his mouth already full of bannock. ‘Did I not say that it was man’s talk?’ Then he looked over his shoulder at his angry brother. ‘I am tired of trapping fish. Let you give me one of your old throw-spears—the one with the three nicks in the blade that you never use now.’
III
First Kill
BARLEY HARVEST CAME, but Drem did not go up to Doli and the sheep again. Wheat harvest followed, and they threshed, and then winnowed the grain with an old grey goose wing, and saved the best for seed, and parched the rest to prevent it sprouting, before it went into the skin-lined store pits in the chalk. Samhain came, the feast of in-gathering when the year turns to the dark; the flocks were driven down from the high pastures for branding, and there was all the excitement of the great cattle round-up and the red business of the winter slaughtering. And Drem did not go up, as he had promised, to help with the droving. That way was closed to him; he could not go to Doli and the shepherd kind again . . .
Warrior Scarlet Page 3