Warrior Scarlet

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Drem felt a hot flick of pain in his side, as though old Kylan’s bull’s-hide whip had flicked him there. He laughed, and drove in for closer fighting, momentarily pressing the other back. He saw Cuneda’s face, the lips drawn back and nostrils flaring. Cuneda was losing his temper, as yesterday he had lost it with the pony mare; all the better, for with temper gone, judgement went too.

  For a few moments the thing had the swiftness of a battle between wild cats rather than a dog fight, before both sprang back out of touch, and the wary circling began once more.

  The end came suddenly; and by chance rather than his enemy’s skill, very nearly in disaster for Drem. He saw again the warning flicker, just in time, and again side-sprang clear of the other boy’s stroke, but even as he did so, he heard a shout behind him, and something crashed snarling into the back of his legs, and he went down sprawling over two hounds locked together, the one with jaws fast in the other’s throat.

  Cuneda was on him in the same instant. He saw the flash of the descending blade, and twisted wildly, flinging up his arm. There could be no parrying the blow. He took it on his dagger arm instead of in the breast, and the keen blade, landing square, sheared through the pony-hide straps and laid his dagger arm open from wrist to elbow, and in the same instant he stabbed upward and felt the blow go home in the other boy’s shoulder.

  The King, on his painted stool, bent his head to listen to something that it seemed his blind harper had to say; then nodding briefly, rose to his feet, and stood hands on hips, surveying the scene.

  Drem knew nothing of that. But as Cuneda grunted and lurched sideways, and he got to his feet panting, he heard the King’s voice raised above the splurge of other voices. ‘Finish! It is enough! The fight was good and it is over!’ And just at first he did not understand. But he saw a flicker of a new kind in Cuneda’s eyes, as the other boy scrambled up, clutching his shoulder; a flicker of relief.

  For a moment Drem and his enemy, no more his enemy now, stood and looked at each other, while the uproar of the Men’s side rose about them. Of the two victorious hounds, one was being dragged off by his master, and the other, bleeding from a score of wounds, stood licking his muzzle over the body of his foe. The fourth dog writhed horribly on the stained ground with his throat torn open. One of the warriors bent and put the poor brute out of its agony with a thrust of his dagger.

  Drem turned and walked back to meet his own kind, stiff-legged still, swaggering his shoulders as he went. But the blood from his gashed forearm was trickling over his hand, and it was hard to hold the dagger. Whitethroat, tearing free of the hands on his collar, had come leaping to meet him, with bushy tail flying. They were all about him now; Vortrix had an arm across his shoulders. ‘My heart is glad!’ Vortrix said. ‘It was a good hunting.’ And then old hairy Kylan of the Boys’ House was there, and one of the priest kind with linen strips and evil-smelling, black salve.

  Meanwhile the King stood with his Chiefs about him, swinging a little on his wide-planted heels, the golden mead cup again in his hand. ‘Nay,’ he said, in answer to the grumbling protest of an old Chieftain, that the fight should have been allowed to find its own end. ‘We have had our sport: why should the Tribe lose a warrior, maybe two?’

  ‘Aye, but see,’ said another Chieftain. ‘The matter of the dagger is not yet wiped clean, for look you, a dog of Bragon’s clan and a dog of Dumnorix’s have won their fight, and you called off the boys with their fighting not yet finished. Therefore the thing stands equal and unfinished still.’

  ‘You speak truth, Findabair,’ said the King, and there was a small and rather grim smile in the shadow of his young golden beard. ‘The matter of the dagger is not yet finished. Therefore we will make an end of it now . . . It is in my mind that surely it is not fitting that a strong magic such as this grey dagger seems to be, should lie in the hands of a Clan Chieftain—even so great a Clan Chieftain as you, Bragon my brother—while the King carries only a bronze dagger such as all men have in their belts. Therefore doubtless it has been in the mind of Bragon the Chieftain to give the grey dagger into the hands of the King.’

  Bragon swallowed thickly, and turned as red as a withy when the sap rises. ‘The King—surely the King jests.’

  ‘Na, the King left jesting behind him on his father’s death-pyre,’ said the big golden man, smiling still, and he held out his hand.

  Bragon, now almost purple, took the little grey dagger from his belt, and pressed it to his forehead, then gave it into the outstretched hand.

  The King took his own dagger rich with inlaid silver and red amber from his belt, saying, ‘So. Now let you take this in exchange, that the gift of a knife may not break the friendship between the King and his Chieftain.’ And so the thing was robbed of its sting.

  Dumnorix flung up his big russet head and laughed, and the laughter was caught up by the Chieftains and the warriors around him, until even the red face of Bragon cracked into an unwilling grin. The King’s dagger was a fine one, after all. And on the outskirts of the throng, Cathlan the Old gave a deep appreciative chuckle, and said to Talore who stood beside him: ‘Sa, sa, the young bull has an old head on his shoulders. Behold, he has turned aside the trouble that there might have been between the Clans; and he has the grey dagger for himself.’

  Talore showed the dog teeth at the corners of his mouth, in that swift, dark smile of his. ‘Surely the young bull is a wise one—or has a wise counsellor in that blind harper of his. It is in my mind that it was wisdom to call off the fight when he did, that Bragon’s boy should not be put to shame by a one-armed fighter—a thing which also might have bred trouble between the Clans at a later time.’

  The Grandfather peered up at him under his thick, grey-gold brows. ‘You think it would have ended so?’

  ‘After that shoulder blow, I—think that it would have ended so,’ said Talore the Hunter. ‘He is a born fighter, that hound cub of yours.’

  Drem heard the laughter of the Men’s side, though he did not know what it was about. The small gash in his side had been salved, and his forearm tightly bound with linen strips to stop the bleeding and bring the edges of the wound together; and his own kind were thronging about him; and he was very thirsty. ‘I am thirsty,’ he said. And it was Luga who brought him a pot of barley beer, and held it for him to drink, because his arm was so stiff in the tight binding that he could scarcely bend it. And looking at Luga’s dark face over the tilting rim of the pot, he thought suddenly: ‘I know you; you’re a troublemaker, always one to pick a quarrel and bear a grudge; but you’re one of the Brotherhood still, and let any threat come against the Brotherhood from the outside, and you’ll stand with the rest of us until the threat is beaten back.’ Nothing was changed between himself and Luga, they would be hackles-up with each other tomorrow as they had been yesterday. But today they grinned at each other across the beer pot as Luga set it down empty.

  The firelight was in Drem’s eyes, and the taste of triumph in his mouth was hot and sweet as wild honey. He had made a good fight with his enemy, Whitethroat was safe, and he had held and strengthened his place among his spear brothers; now, surely, nothing but his Wolf Slaying was between him and his Warrior Scarlet.

  And his Wolf Slaying would be before the spring came again.

  IX

  The Black Pebble

  DREM WALKED PROUDLY among his fellows of the Boys’ House in the moons that followed, while the long gash on his forearm healed and faded to a pinkish line that would be silvery by and by, and autumn gave place to winter, and the mid-winter fires blazed on the crest of the Hill of Gathering. And when the year turned towards spring and the wolves left the winter pack to mate, it was time for the Wolf Slaying to begin.

  For two winters, Drem had watched the boys in their third year go out to the Wolf Slaying; and now the time had come for him and Vortrix and the rest of them. The time that, he realized now, had lain like a kind of darkening gulf across his path ever since he entered the Boys’ House, making everythi
ng on the far side of it seem fiercely bright and at the same time remote. That was the same for all of them, he knew; they did not speak of it, but it was in their eyes as gaze caught gaze, every time they drew the sacred lots.

  Since the choice of the Tribe’s warriors must lie with the Sun Lord, the boys drew pebbles out of a narrow-mouthed jar—one black pebble and the rest white—to determine each time who should have the next hunting. And after each Wolf Slaying, one pebble was cast away, so that there were always so many pebbles in the pot as there were boys with their Wolf Slaying yet before them; one black pebble, and the rest white.

  And in the dawn after each lot drawing, the hunting would begin. There were no hounds with the Wolf Slayers, but the whole of the little brotherhood would set out together as a hunting band; and together they would track down the beast and bring it to bay. Only the actual kill must be left to the one of them who had drawn the black pebble. For at the last, the thing must be fought out in single combat between the hunter and his wolf, matched together by the Sun Lord, so that from that time forward there was room for only one of them in the world of the living.

  The time of Wolf Slaying went by slowly, and the white pebbles dwindled in the narrow-mouthed jar; and one white pebble was smeared with red ochre before it was cast away. That was for Gault who had missed his spear thrust and would never play the fool again. They made his death fire as it had been made for the old King; but this was a small fire, for a boy who had never come to the Warrior Scarlet.

  Vortrix drew the black pebble and killed his wolf; Luga also, and Tuan and fat Maelgan, while still Drem drew only white pebbles, and waited for his turn to come. Spring came early that year, and the curlews were calling over the upland country and the first blackthorn foaming on the forest fringe, when Urian and he drew the last two pebbles from the jar. Once again, Drem drew the white pebble. And after Urian had slain his wolf, the weather turned wild and wet, so that for many days on end the white rain drove lashing before the spring gales across the roof of the Boys’ House, and there was little to do but crouch over the smoking fire and go out to try one’s weapons and come in half drowned and deaf with the wind, to crouch over the fire again; waiting, waiting, no hope of a wolf in this weather, while the days went by. Drem scarcely ate in those days of waiting; he grew gaunt as a famine wolf himself, and tense as an over-strung bow, so that even Vortrix scarcely dared to speak to him.

  Then one evening the wind died, and the sun set wetly yellow over behind the Hill of Gathering, and the rain drifted away, leaving the world sodden and gale-weary. ‘Give it two days,’ old Kylan said. ‘Two days, and the game trails will be alive and fit for following again.’

  Drem looked up from beside the fire, where he sat burnishing his wolf spear. ‘Give it two days, and the storms may return on their track. Already there are too few days left of Wolf Slaying. Give the word, old Lord of the Boys’ House, and I go tomorrow.’

  Kylan considered, his eyes that were yellow like a wolf’s frowning into the eyes of the boy before him; and at last nodded his ragged head. ‘So be it then; it is your trail, your wolf trail. Let you follow it.’ And he gave the black pebble into Drem’s hand.

  And so in the dark before the next day’s dawn, the hunting band rose and began to make ready. Standing naked by the fire, with the others about him, and the whole of the Boys’ House awake and eager in the shadows as always when there was a Wolf Slaying in the wind, Drem tied back his hair with a thong, that it might not get in his way; and stood for Vortrix to bind the supple, sweat-darkened straps of pony hide about his belly and between his legs and round his left forearm, just as he had done beside the Royal Fire when the King called for a hound fight.

  ‘Too tight?’ Vortrix asked.

  Drem twisted and crouched. ‘Na, not too tight—tight enough, though.’ And their eyes met in the light of the roof-tree torch, one pair very blue, the other suddenly golden, remembering that other time. The others stood looking on; one less of them than there should have been, and Drem, glancing round at them, saw in his own mind the missing one among them; a smallish ghost in the firelight with a mouth like a frog, and felt the skin prickle a little at the back of his neck. Beside Gault’s death fire he had felt that quiver for the first time. Each of the New Spears were well aware, when they went out to the Wolf Slaying, that they might not come back, but he had realized then, as he had not quite realized before, that for him, because of his arm, the chances of not coming back were greater than for the others. Maybe tomorrow they would build the death-fire for him . . . But he would not think of that. He would think of coming back to the village at Sunset with the blood of his wolf on his breast and forehead, and the newly flayed skin on his shoulder.

  He reached out and took his broad wolf spear from the rack beside the roof tree, and turned to the door, while behind him the others caught up the spears and the light wicker hunting shields that they carried for self defence, and Vortrix took down the flaring torch from its sconce. Kylan was waiting for him in the doorway, old fierce Kylan with his bull’s-hide whip laid aside, oddly gentle as he always was at this moment, and set his hand on Drem’s shoulder, saying, ‘Show the wolf kind that I have taught you well. Good hunting, my son.’

  The sky had begun to lighten, a luminous water-green above the dark peaks of the turf roofs, as Drem with his hunting band behind him crossed the steading garth towards the doorway of the Chieftain’s house-place; and his own shadow ran dark and spider-tall before him, in the light of the torch that Vortrix carried. Midir came to meet them on the threshold, with the golden eagle cap upon his head, and the amber Sun Cross on his breast catching the warmth of the torchlight.

  ‘Who do you bring here to the sacred threshold of the Chieftain’s house?’ said Midir as they halted before him; and to the ritual question, Vortrix, the torch bearer, gave the ritual answer. ‘A New Spear to be marked for his Wolf Slaying, Holy One.’

  ‘Let him kneel down,’ said Midir.

  And while Drem knelt before him on sacred ground—every threshold was sacred, the Chieftain’s above all others—the old priest made the three slim lines of the Wolf Pattern with charcoal and red ochre on his forehead. Lastly, with a hand so thin, despite its strength, that the torchlight seemed to shine through it, he took the amber Sun Cross on its thong, and touched Drem with it on the forehead above the Wolf marks, and again on the breast.

  ‘Go forth and slay the wolf that waits your coming, my son. The Light of the Sun be with you through this day.’

  And Drem rose, marked for his Wolf Slaying, set apart from the world of other men, and turned away to his hunting.

  ‘What is the plan?’ Vortrix asked softly, when they had left the still sleeping village behind.

  ‘It is in my mind that the Under-Hill track is a good place to pick up a trail,’ Drem said, moving a little ahead of the rest; and as they went down through the village barley plots he lifted his head and sniffed the morning, his nose almost as sensitive as a hound’s, so that for him, running water and bare chalk and the north side of trees all had their clear, distinctive smells. The morning smelled chill and fresh, the wind still blowing in long, soft gusts that died away into stillness between; but his questing nose could discover no scent of wolf in it as yet. He felt the Wolf mark on his forehead as though the charcoal and red clay pressed against his skin. The light was broadening in the sky when they came down to the track under the steep northern scarp of the Chalk. The ancient trackway was sticky and slippery after so much rain, set with great pools that reflected back the pale shining colours of the sunrise beyond the interlacing hazel and sallow twigs. And for the trained eyes of the boys who came down to it spear in hand through the scrub, it bore a complete record of all the coming and going that there had been on it since the rain stopped yesterday evening.

  Drem, his eyes moving unhurriedly here and there, as he checked beside the way and then began to follow it, was reading the signs with the ease of long use. Here a hedgehog had crossed the track from
left to right, there a herd of deer had followed it for a little way, then turned off into the scrub towards the river: four head of deer, with three yearling fawns among them. A little farther on, a fox had crossed the track, going down to drink at sunset, and his spoor was crossed by that of a hunter coming that way a little after, carrying his kill on his left shoulder. Drem saw where he had halted to change it to the other shoulder, and left the tale in a single blood spot on the sodden ground, and in the changed balance of his footprints when he went on again. And then, just beyond that place, clear in a patch of fine gravel, were three padmarks that might have been the prints of a huge dog.

  Vortrix saw them in the same instant as Drem, and said softly, ‘Here’s your wolf, brother.’

  Drem nodded, slipping to one knee and bending low over the prints for a closer view, for the light was still poor, though growing stronger every moment. The tracks were new; the wolf could not have passed much before first light, and the depth and spacing of the pad marks showed that he was travelling easily, almost lazily. Probably he had killed somewhere up on the hill, and was now on his way back to his lair.

  The others were standing round him, careful of their feet and where their shadows fell, in the way of the trained hunter. ‘Well, do you take it?’ Luga asked impatiently. ‘Or is it that you need that dog of yours to tell you what to do?’

  ‘I take it,’ Drem said quietly, ‘when I am ready.’ And he went on studying the tracks, learning all that he could about his wolf. It was a big dog wolf, and from the angle at which the prints crossed the open ground, he judged that it was heading for the shallows of the stream below, as though to cross over into the dense forest that choked up the valleys on the farther side. He rose from his knee at last, his hand tightening on the white ash shaft of his spear, his heart giving the little lurch of excitement with which he always began a hunting; and with his hunting band at his back, melted into the budding hazel scrub beside the way, leaving the wet track empty in the day-spring until a magpie flew down on to it to drink at one of the puddles.