* * *
Sturmer paused in his work and stood upright, pulling back his shoulder-blades and stretching his spine. Stooping no longer agreed with him so well. In his right hand he was holding a sickle, a yard of blackthorn with a steam-curved end in which were set half a dozen flint chips to form a cutting edge. With it he had been swinging gradually along the river-bank, cutting down the tall bromes and meadow-grasses for winter silage, in line with thirty others. Between them they had cleared most of the river field since daybreak. Now, at mid afternoon, the women and children, and those who could no longer do full work, came behind collecting the cut grasses into sheaves ready to be bundled and dragged back to the village. The old men, supervised by Vude, were trimming the hay-sheaves to size, ready for packing in the barn.
This task would not normally have fallen to the old men; but the population of the village had been almost halved, with the worst losses among the young, those whom Burh could least afford to be without. The crippled and maimed numbered more than twenty, and they, like the orphans and widows, would have to be fed.
Most of the surviving young men wanted to leave. They were afraid that Tsoaul had not yet finished. Fallott had failed to come with help, and for that Sturmer had been blamed: but he had pleaded with them, begged them to wait. The forest had been quiet since the new moon. The trouble was over. Tsoaul had taken Hernou and would not be back. Why allow themselves to be driven out? Why throw away years of work for nothing? Why face the danger and hardship of founding a new village when their true home was here in Burh?
The Council’s deliberations on the matter had been inconclusive. The older men said that Hernou had been taken because it was she who had been to blame for the attack on the nomads. It was only right that she should be sacrificed for the common good. They said she had plotted against Tsoaul, blinding Groden and those around her with her beauty, a baneful influence. Now that that influence had gone, there would be no more risk. Even Groden had given up hope of finding her.
The younger men argued differently. The only reason, they said, that no one had been abducted since Hernou’s disappearance was that no one had dared to leave the village, except in parties of a dozen or more, and no one at all had ventured into the trees. Tsoaul was still in the forest, waiting his chance.
Sturmer had been unable to convince them. In deference to the elders, and for that reason alone, the young men had reluctantly agreed to stay.
Now their fears had been eclipsed by the urgent need to make a harvest.
The prospect was not good. Even though there were only half as many bellies to fill, there would not be enough food to last the winter. The drought had persisted too long. The barley crop was all but ruined; the wheat down by three fourths; the millet by two; and the oats had failed completely, the panicles stunted, crumbling to dust when rubbed between the fingers. To save feed, all but a few of the animals would have to be slaughtered. Some could be sustained on the rougher ensilage that usually was not even harvested – including the bromes and meadow-grasses.
Sturmer returned to his cutting. The line of men moved steadily forward, in a rhythm with the swish of sickles and the sound of the river as it went on its way to the sea. Behind them the slain grasses lay strewn across the field.
The women had not been gathering for long when Sturmer heard his name being called from the village. Vude, white-bearded, his bald head hatless, was hurrying towards him along the river path.
“Sturmer!”
“What is it?”
He went forward to meet the old man. They came face to face, twenty yards ahead of the line, and Vude bent and leaned on his knees, breathing with difficulty. He turned his face. “You must come, Sturmer. They’re in the barn. They haven’t seen it yet.”
“Seen what?”
“Come quickly.”
Vude led him back to the village, through the east gate. On the far side of the compound the women, on ladders leaning against the palisade, were dropping bundles of hay to the old men waiting below. Another group of old men was trimming and shaping the sheaves, while a third carried them into the barn and packed them crosswise and lengthwise, making a solid rick.
“This way,” Vude said, branching left from the thoroughfare and leading Sturmer between the houses.
At the base of the palisade he stopped. “I came to see how much of the trimmings we could save. I took off the covers. Look.”
A tunnel had been burrowed through one of the silos. Its cover, a mat of interwoven sticks, showed holes and signs of damage.
“The tunnel is large enough for a man,” Sturmer said.
“It joins up with a trapdoor in the turf on the other side. I thought you alone ought to know.”
“So you have guessed the truth too.”
“Not before now.”
“I told Groden to make sure none remained alive.”
“You should have seen to it yourself.”
“I think it was only one.”
Vude nodded. “Any more and the ambush would have been different.”
“That is how I reasoned it.”
“Do you think he’s still up there, in the forest?”
Sturmer squinted at the escarpment. “There’s been no trace of him for a fortnight. He must be ill, or dead. If he’d gone for help it would have been all over for us a week ago.”
Vude agreed. The savages could signal each other, by magic, over great distances. One survivor of the massacre, if he had sought them, could have brought many to attack the village.
“You did well to tell me first,” Sturmer said. With his sickle he rearranged the silo to hide the tunnel. “I must have your silence, Vude. If the others hear of this, the young men will prevail in the Council.”
“But suppose the nomad is still alive? Suppose he has gone for help?”
“He hasn’t.”
“I trust you, Sturmer. But the young men … they’re saying you’re not what you were. Groden …”
“Groden is disgraced,” Sturmer said curtly, standing up.
Vude let the comment pass.
“If you doubt me,” Sturmer said, “tell the others. Tell them an army of savages is coming and Sturmer is too stupid to admit it. Tell them and kill the village yourself.”
“All I say is that you must be careful.”
“I shall be.”
“Then you have my silence, head man.”
* * *
Tagart shifted sideways, throwing the woman’s body from his shoulders. She rolled a little way down the escarpment and came to rest, arms and legs at strange angles, her face bloated and stretched, as tight as a drum. Tagart came after and shoved her with his heel. She turned over, twice, thrice, and came to rest again.
The village lay in shadow; from up here the last wash of sunset could be seen. The moon, almost full, rode in the sky among the trees. Already its shine outdid the dusk: he could see it on the roofs and palisade and on the forest across the valley. The evening star was burning steadily in the west. A heron flapped its way inland, like a grey wraith following the reflections and rushes of the river, neck curled back, legs outstretched behind, still dripping the water of the estuary. Over the village it uttered a single harsh cry.
Tagart rolled the corpse most of the way down the escarpment, stopping well short of the palisade for fear of alarming the dogs.
Next he dragged the body upright and manhandled it over to an oak bush, resting it against the drought-scorched, prematurely brown leaves. It slid rustling to the ground. He hoisted it again, positioning it another way, and another, until it remained, spreadeagled, in full view.
With many pauses to catch his breath, he turned and climbed back to the forest.
5
By early afternoon the next day, Sturmer knew that to save himself and the village only one course of action remained. His private knowledge, shared only with Vude, made the decision easier to take, for it promised him the recapture of the support he had been losing throughout the day in Council. B
ut the courage he needed did not come easily, and in the floating unreality of the Meeting House he almost left it too long. His announcement, that he alone would go into the forest and fight Tsoaul, drew gasps of disbelief, amazement, and then admiration.
The day had begun rapidly. His bed was still warm when he heard the news, and then Deak and Feno brought the corpse into the compound and he saw it for himself. The thing laid in the dirt before him had at one time been Hernou. It had housed her spirit, long since fled. He himself had, years before, slept with it, made love to it, even once thought it might be his wife and mother his children. In those putrid orbits, eyes had sparkled.
Tsoaul, the young men were already saying, had finished with her and flung her back: an omen, a sign of hostility renewed. In the dawn twilight, made chill by mists from the river and the fields, Groden came at a run from his house and thrust his way among the villagers gathering round the body. He broke through to the inner circle and stood transfixed, staring at what had been his woman.
His face twisted; he took a step back. His mouth seemed to fill, and he turned away.
An abomination sprawled there, a body with no soul. Without prayer, without the necessary repose on the Dead Ground, her spirit had been driven out, forced to wait too long alone in a disembodied state. Her soul had been lost for ever to the demons and the wilderness. She could not be given a place in the burial mound. She had become part of Tsoaul’s works, like the bodies of the bears.
But they did not burn her. At Sturmer’s order, with Groden’s acquiescence, she was conveyed to the beach and left for the tide to carry out to the shoals, where the sea would take her away.
They returned to the Meeting House and sat in session all day. Every aspect of the omen was discussed. It meant further violence, further deaths. It meant plague and murder and terror. Tsoaul had not finished with them. There could be no mistaking his intent. In the arguing and voting the young men now held sway. Those with families wanted to pack their belongings and leave, and many of the old men were changing their minds and voting to join them. Vude stood out against the many.
“Where will you go? And what of those you leave behind? The old, the sick, the orphaned?”
“They can come with us or starve!”
“It’s all the same to us!”
“We’ve had enough!”
“Time to leave while we can!”
“No!” Vude shouted. “To leave is to be defeated!”
“Easy for you to say, old man!”
“Where were you in the fighting, old man?”
“Listen to Vude!” Groden said, and Sturmer for the moment could not understand what was happening. “Listen to him! He’s right! Where will you go? No other village can take you. You’ll have to start again. How long will it take you to build another Burh? Five years? Ten? How many will die before you can finish a new palisade? How many will the wolves come for? How many the bears? Do you think Tsoaul’s hand can’t reach wherever you go? This is our home! Our life has gone into these fields! Nothing, not even a spirit, must be allowed to drive us away!” He turned on Sturmer. “This fool denies the truth! He refuses to face it! He still tries to tell us that Tsoaul has gone! Well Tsoaul threw my woman back and any man who says not is no longer fit to lead us!” He thrust an arm towards the forest. “Tsoaul is up there! He’s up there but we can fight him and we can win. We can win and we can stay!”
“I’ll fight,” Feno said.
“And I,” said Deak.
“Who else will show himself a man?”
But before anyone had a chance to reply, Sturmer rose and told the Council what he intended to do.
* * *
High above the village, well into the forest, Sturmer thought he heard something.
He listened, turning his head, holding his breath.
Random sounds of the forest at night came to him: the squeak of dead branch on dead branch, a low hiss of breeze.
He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted again.
By day or by night: he’d had to make the choice. He knew the nomad was ill and alone, no match for a fit man. But in the forest a nomad would have all the advantages of woodcraft and silence. Night among the trees held many fears, imaginary as well as real, but Sturmer had witnessed the nomad’s skill at shooting, and only darkness would rob him of it. To kill him, Sturmer’s best hope would be to come face to face and attack him with a spear; and a hope was all it could be, even though one man, sick and alone, made a very different adversary from the Spirit of the Forest. So Sturmer had chosen night. He waited and listened on the path, sick with fear.
The promise of a return triumphant, boasting that he had personally slain Tsoaul, now shrank in importance in his eyes. Again he wondered whether to go back to the village and disclose what he and Vude had found, to take a group of the better fighters with him. But then he would never be able to flush the nomad out. He had to go on his own, to entice the man from cover and into a position where he could be seen and attacked. If he were to tell what he knew, his advantage over Groden would be lost: how much longer then would Sturmer be head of Burh, even if there were a Burh left to be head of? Self-preservation, more than bravery, or any desire to spare the village, was keeping Sturmer standing there.
“Come out! Come out! I am your friend! I mean you no harm!”
Far off to the left he heard the sound again, the rustling that had made him stop and listen before.
He put one foot off the path.
“Show yourself!”
The branches swayed a little in the breeze. The multitudes of leaves gently moved and returned, moved again. The wind had freshened. Sturmer looked up. Behind the sparse, high cloud, moving like fish-scales across the sky, he could see the faint disc of the moon.
“I only want to talk! Come out! Please!”
No answer came. Sturmer got back on the path and took a few steps along it, towards the gorge and its ruined bridge. The clearing there would be a good place to wait; he had already decided as much. The risk of traps in the clearing would be less than under the trees, for on the day of the ambush the nomad himself had walked freely to and fro across the clearing and presumably would not have rigged it since.
The cloud thinned and the moon appeared briefly, misty at its edges, casting a faint, bluish light down the length of the path.
For less than a second, in less time than it took an eye to blink, Sturmer glimpsed someone moving ahead, glimpsed the movement of limbs, sensed rather than saw a sunken face in shadow; and the hazel branches by the path had opened and swallowed the figure up. He scarcely heard the scrape of leather on bark, circling him to the left, but it was as loud to him as any sound could be.
“I only want to talk!”
The nomad had halted.
“Show yourself! I mean you no harm! Come out and we can talk!”
The soft crush of a foot on dry leaves reached him and, hesitantly, another. He caught the judder of bramble hooks across leather, the tiny snap of a twig. And he realized the nomad was moving away, leaving him.
“Come back!”
But it was no use. He obviously suspected trickery, or else was too timid to show himself. Sturmer listened closely and heard another twig break, deeper into the trees.
He looked up and down the path, not sure whether to follow. Was he himself being lured on? Was he being led into a pitfall or a hoist-trap? Or was the nomad merely afraid?
The spear Sturmer was carrying bore a short shaft, so that it would be less likely to catch in undergrowth. He slid it into his belt and stepped off the path. As he put down each foot, Sturmer made a conscious effort to avoid breaking dead wood. He groped for sprigs and branches which might whip back. The woods here, hazel under oak and hornbeam, lay deeply littered with dead leaves and he could not prevent them from rustling, seeming to him to be making much more noise than his quarry.
He stopped to listen. A little way ahead he heard a faint scratching, and then it was as if the nomad had stopped to li
sten too.
“I must talk to you! I mean you no harm! I can help you! Answer me if you hear!”
The given reply came as a loud snap of old wood. The nomad was going on. Sturmer followed. They were climbing, across the side of a slope.
Behind them the cloud went past the moon’s face, becoming patchy, showing ribbons of clear sky with stars. When these crossed the moon its circle stood sharp and flooded the trees with light, sliced to black shadows by the leaves and branches, and Sturmer was able to see that he was being led into a grove of old hazel. He waited for the moon to be covered, and went on.
Something like confidence began to encourage him: he could hear the man plainly now, breaking a way forward. They were entering the grove. Rotten hazel sticks lay this way and that, some caught up in the living bushes, others on the ground, half buried in the leaves. Lichen, pale in the weak moonlight, festooned the sticks and bushes.
Sturmer took his spear from his belt as he heard his prey stumble. He quickened his step, no longer caring how much noise he made, snapping off projecting stubs, treading on dry branch after branch. He was gaining on the nomad, whose progress seemed to be slowing, growing weaker, the attempt of an injured man to get away unheard.
After three paces more, Sturmer realized that the grove had fallen silent. The nomad had stopped.
Gripping his spear with both hands, Sturmer warily turned from side to side. In the stillness following the crashing trail of the preceding minutes, he strained hard for a sound of movement or life. Frowning, he bent his head and listened. He could hear nothing. Nothing at all.
The moon sailed from the clouds and illuminated the hazel grove. He stared at the place where he thought the nomad might be. Perhaps the nomad had fallen; perhaps he was even dying.
Sturmer opened his mouth to call out, but another thought checked him. He looked round. He had allowed himself to be drawn into the middle of the hazel grove, a natural sounding-box strewn with dead branches and obstacles, from which, whether he chose it or not, he could not hope to extricate himself without revealing his exact whereabouts with every step he took. The nomad had stopped making a noise; but had he stopped moving? Could he pass quietly where a farmer could not?
The Stone Arrow Page 17
