The Stone Arrow

by Richard Herley

  Suddenly Sturmer felt oppressed by the trees, isolated, confined in a place where he had no right to be. He was a trespasser here. A hostility seemed to come at him from the forest itself, as if it somehow knew that he lived by the axe, cutting fields and clearings where green had reigned, the village an intrusion, the palisade and all the stolen timber, the trees uprooted and shorn of their branches a crime, an act of sacrilege.

  Behind him, where no sound should have been, a spray of leaves rustled as if deliberately shaken. He whirled round to see the source of the noise, but cloud once more obscured the moon and the grove darkened.

  He began to back away, his hands shaking and his mouth dry. He trod on a stick and broke it, turned, and with his forearm held high plunged through the grove. A forked branch snatched at his spear. He let it go, too frightened to stop.

  He ran straight into the blow. Its force knocked him off his feet and flung him sideways, and he was landing hard and badly, smashing through dead wood, slithering in the carpet of leaves and rotting sticks. His fingers stretched out and the violence of his fall drove them into the ground. Pain flared in his neck and shoulder and jaw where the club had struck him.

  He looked and against the sky saw the shape of his killer with arms raised, club held high for the finishing stroke.

  * * *

  Tagart’s eyes opened at the scream. He had been almost asleep when he had heard it, a little way off to the south-west: a man’s scream, ended abruptly as if by death.

  He lay there listening, wondering if he had imagined it. His condition had improved a good deal in the day and a night since putting the woman’s body out on the escarpment. But he was still not right. For long periods he had lain motionless under the yew, his mind invaded by irrational plans. More than once he had determined to set fire to the village, or to build a dam and divert the river, or to lie in wait for ever if need be and shoot the farmers one by one. When the delirium receded he remembered Valdoe and Segle and he was unable to think of anything but getting back to her. At dusk he had checked the village again. He knew that he must wait for the music to come from the Meeting House, the music: he kept that in his mind, centrally, and even when he could not remember why he was waiting for the music he knew that it was important and he could not make a move before it came.

  At nightfall he had returned to the shelter of the yew to sleep, to recover more of his strength; and then, some hours afterwards, had come the scream.

  He sat up and pushed himself to his feet.

  Broad white moonlight bathed the forest outside the yew tree. Tatters of cloud drifted overhead. Away from the moon’s glare a rich haze of stars filled the sky. Tagart looked up and found the constellation of the Giant, a bowman with arm outstretched and one foot crushing the head of the Snake. The third star of the Snake’s tail, between the Ladle and the Bear, marked due north. Taking his bearings, he set off to the south-west, downhill, frequently breaking the run of his progress with his hand against a branch or trunk, not daring to risk a fall by going too fast.

  * * *

  Groden untied the end of the twine from the bush and wound it round his hand, making a neat hank which he pushed into his pouch. The trick had worked well, just as he had intended. And now Sturmer had atoned for Hernou’s death: for it had been Sturmer’s fault that the bears had found a way into the village, Sturmer’s fault that Morfe had been killed, Sturmer’s fault that the village was dying and all the families planning to move away.

  But Groden had long ago suspected him of worse than just poor leadership. His opposition to further clearance of the forest, his unwillingness to fight back at the savages who infested the trees and made spells against the village and its crops: all had added to Groden’s suspicions about Sturmer’s secretiveness and his pretence of introducing new methods and crops. Over the months a pattern had begun to make itself clear. In the days before the raid, while the sun had steadily baked the fields to rock, the truth had emerged. Sturmer, for months or even years, had been in league with Tsoaul. And when, in Council that afternoon, Sturmer had offered to go into the forest and fight its Spirit, Groden had suddenly known that he had to stop him before he could make a new pact with Tsoaul and finish the village altogether.

  His suspicions had been vindicated in full as he had followed Sturmer from the village and heard him calling, trying to draw his evil master from the trees. Groden’s last doubt had evaporated. He had gone to the hazel grove and put into effect the plan he had made, to lure Sturmer there, and with the twine to deceive him and throw him off guard.

  Now it had succeeded. He pulled Sturmer’s body through the thicket and towards the path. He did not trouble to hide the broken branch he had used as a club. It would not be found. The corrupt head man had been disposed of. With his going, the canker that had rotted the village would go too, and Tsoaul would once again shrink away before their axes. When Burh became strong again, with time to heal the damage Sturmer had done, Groden would tell them the truth. But for now such revelations could serve no purpose; they might even prove dangerous, because Sturmer had so warped their minds that they could not see. For the moment Groden decided to pretend that Sturmer had fallen in combat with Tsoaul. After the change of leadership he would take a fighting party and go deep into the forest to challenge Tsoaul. Thus the matter would be resolved. Tsoaul would be afraid to come forward: Gauhm’s power was too great. With her help, and with the people of the village, Groden would work to make Burh new again.

  He reached the path and put the body over his shoulders.

  * * *

  Tagart kept his distance, following Groden, the beardless man, down the path to the village. In the moonlight Tagart saw that he was carrying a corpse: the origin of the scream. He had not imagined it.

  Tagart badly wanted to attack, to kill, but he hung back, slowing when Groden slowed, forcing himself on when Groden went faster, unsure what to do. He wished he were armed.

  They were getting near the village. Tagart had left it too late, even had he wanted to make a move; but his curiosity had been aroused and it made him follow.

  Groden turned off the path, to the right and through the stand of oaks which gave on to the top of the escarpment. He passed among the dark trunks and the moonlight, bearing the weight of the body easily, one of its arms hanging and swinging as he walked. Tagart left the path and in utter silence passed over the twigs and brambles.

  At the edge of the escarpment, Groden let himself down and onto the steepness of the slope, taking it sideways, faltering a little now. Halfway down he stopped and let the body fall from his shoulders, just as Tagart had let Hernou fall. Tagart drew back, into the shadows.

  When he moved forward again the body had been leaned against an oak bush, and Groden was crossing the escarpment, descending as he went, making for the east gate. At the bottom he merged with the total shadow of the palisade.

  The gate opened slightly, effortlessly, as though it had been left unlocked for his return, and Groden slipped into the compound. Tagart did not hear the two wooden locking bars being eased into place, but he saw the gate drawn shut and a moment later Groden’s figure on the village thoroughfare, walking towards the cluster of houses.

  6

  Sturmer’s body lay, covered with flowers, on the Dead Ground. His common clothes had been removed and consigned to the altar flame. In their place he had been dressed in a chief’s grave-robe of ermine, the hood drawn up and showing the oval of his face, with beard and eyebrows shorn. Beside him lay everything he had owned, everything that would go with him into the burial mound. His wife, Tamis, knelt weeping at his feet. Their four children, dressed like their mother in white, stood nearby and watched. The youngest did not understand.

  One by one, the villagers climbed the steps of the Meeting House. Nobody had yet challenged Groden’s sudden elevation to prospective leadership of the Council. At the meeting that morning, held to discuss the finding of Sturmer’s body, no other candidate had emerged. The new head man w
ould have to be chosen tomorrow, by Council vote, or by trial and contest of wisdom if Groden were challenged; but today they mourned Sturmer. At sunset, after they had tasted the agaric and joined him on the road to the Far Land, he would be buried.

  As they passed into the Meeting House they left their clothing by the steps, a mark of purification, and, naked, crossed the floorboards to take up their positions in the circle of hierarchy.

  By the altar sat Groden. On his right sat Vude, the oldest man on the Council and friend of Sturmer the priest, in whose care – until a new head man should be chosen – now rested the health and spiritual guidance of the village. Beside Vude, in their order from high to low, sat the members of the inner Council, on their right the other Council men, followed by the wealthiest of the ordinary villagers, decreasing in power and importance as the circle curved round towards the altar. On Groden’s left squatted the lowliest man in the village.

  The women, each holding a wooden bowl or drinking-vessel, came forward and took their places behind the men, ready for their part in the ritual.

  Vude arose, his hands under the Agaric Casket. Turning towards the Dead Ground, he inclined his head and reverently slid the casket onto the altar, in line with the small flame flickering there, which represented Sturmer’s soul.

  “We take this hour the gift,” he said, and waited for the congregation to speak the words of the response.

  “The gift of the Earth Mother.”

  “On eagles’ wings we go with our loved one.”

  “Borne in peace along the road of the dead.”

  “We see the gates of the Far Land and the journey safely done.”

  “We turn back.”

  “And in sadness and in joy come home again.”

  The musicians took up their instruments and on pipes, tamtams and flutes opened the dirge. Vude went on reciting the phrases of the Agaric Chant, and as he did so pulled back the lid of the casket and removed the trays. The first three were empty; he put them aside and handed the caps from the fourth to the woman behind him and to his left, who passed them round the circle. The chant finished: the women put the caps on their tongues. Vude lowered himself to the floor and sat cross-legged.

  When the women had finished fashioning the caps into pellets, rolling them between their palms, squashing the fungus in their mouths to take away the taste and rolling it again, the men reached behind and took the pellets with their fingers, opened their mouths wide, thrust the pellets to the backs of their throats, and swallowed.

  Chal’s wife came to the altar and spoke into Vude’s ear. “Something’s wrong, Vude. The taste is not the same. It tastes like … pepperwort. Usually it burns like fire and makes us sick.”

  None of the women were showing any sign of nausea. Vude glanced at Groden, who opened his hands, able to offer no explanation.

  “The caps must be old and weak,” Vude decided. “How long have they been in the casket?”

  “I cannot say,” Groden said. “Did Sturmer replenish the whole casket every autumn, or just the empty trays?”

  Vude did not know.

  “What is it?” Feno said, from across the circle. “The pellets aren’t working.”

  Others spoke up to say that the fungus tasted different, that it was having no effect.

  “Then let us eat more,” Vude said, and gave out more caps, from each of the trays. He himself tasted a cap from the bottom tray. At once the fierce burning flared in his mouth, and he spat the fragment out. “This one has not lost its power,” he said, holding it up for all to see. He turned to the girl behind him. “Chew this for me, child.” To the others he said, “Taste the caps until you find those with strength.”

  But although they found many caps which still seemed potent, most had lost their vigour and there were not enough good caps to make a ceremony. As Chal’s wife had said, the stale caps tasted peculiar, peppery, and the men as well as the women ate several of each, hoping without success to produce some of the effects of fresh fly agaric, even in a diminished form.

  * * *

  Not long afterwards they came out into the compound and, taking their clothes from the pile by the steps, walked slowly to their houses to prepare for the funeral of their chief.

  Across the river, in the sunshine, blue cornflowers and scarlet poppies made colour in the drab fields extending to the edge of the valley. Rooks flapped in the haze above the ground, pitching unhurriedly here and there in small groups to dig at the soil and turn over clods. From the estuary came a faint skirling of terns, and the piping cries of the wading birds as the tide went out and the rich grey mudflats appeared. A warm sea-wind blew across the village, carrying before it a few husks and wisps of barley, gently knocking a loose plank on the bakery roof.

  The west gate opened. Tamis and her three daughters, keeping near the palisade, stooped and picked bunches of corn chamomile, which together with red campion would make their simple wreath for Sturmer.

  Tamis had decided to leave the village, with the sick who could walk, the children, and the animals. The others had been persuaded by Groden to wait, to remain behind while he challenged Tsoaul anew. And when Groden triumphed the animals would come back, and the children, even the sick; but not Tamis. She meant to take her children back to Highdole, her home village, where her mother was still alive and the children could be raised in peace and safety. In time the grief of Sturmer’s death might recede. Until then she would go on in her numb state, stunned, doing what was best for her family. As was the custom, she had not taken part in the fly agaric ceremony, and she had chosen to stay outside on the Dead Ground with the body of her husband.

  Just before sunset, his funeral began.

  Vude led the villagers over the bridge, through the west gate and along the narrow path through the barley field. Groden came at the rear. Six men were carrying Sturmer’s body, on straps passed beneath his ermine grave-robe.

  At the spinney on the far side, the path curved between the trees and Tamis looked over her shoulder for a last view of Burh. Chal and Hombeck were to escort her that evening after the funeral on the nine-mile walk to Highdole.

  The procession left the spinney and halted on the close sward of the burial ground, outside the line of chalk stones enclosing the earthen barrow where for many years the dead of the village had been interred. Tonight a chief was to join the ancestors. Part of the barrow had been freshly dug away, ready to receive him.

  Vude spoke the incantation. In the long shadows of sunset, and then the darkening dusk, the corpse in its robe and the dead man’s possessions were covered with earth and filled in, to begin by their decay the slow return to the place from which they had come.

  Over the escarpment, the moon appeared above the trees.

  * * *

  Tagart stared into the space below the yew branches and tried to remember: how many days? How many days had he squandered here, waiting his chance? How many days before the Crale Festival and Segle was taken from the kitchens and put into the Trundle?

  His thoughts swirled. He would need weapons and clothes from the village. And if he wore clogs and looked enough like a farmer, he could use the coast road and pass the forts unchallenged to reach Valdoe in a single day. He would find a way to get inside. Somehow he would locate Segle and bring her to the gates and they would be free: free to run into the marshes and reedbeds along the coast, to hide where the Valdoe dogs could never find a scent. And after that, when he had kept his promise to Bewry, they would travel north, away from the coast and the farmers, and together would go in search of the Waterfall people, his old blood-tribe, among whom his father had been born.

  He sat up. Tomorrow. He must attack tomorrow. He was well enough: he had recovered much strength. The bruises were easing. He could walk, and he could run, and he tried to tell himself that his thoughts had cleared and that he was planning lucidly again for the first time in days.

  But with the fever of ideas in his mind it was a long time before he closed his eyes and allowed
sleep to come.

  * * *

  Before dawn he had settled on a scheme to finish the village using fire. By appearing on the escarpment, he would draw them after him, south through the forest and down to the beach. There, in the corner of land between the estuary and the sea, he would trap them while the trees burned and the wind spread the flames east and south. At high tide there could be no escape under the cliffs, nor along the beach of the estuary, where the scrub grew close to the shore. Those who could not swim would be burned alive. Of the others, many would drown in the tide race, out by the shoals. But he would have a coracle waiting, and if any of the farmers tried to swim towards land he would chase them and club them in the water with the paddle.

  This was his plan. To enact it he needed a coracle. He knew there were coracles at the village, some left outside the palisade.

  The moon had set when he arrived. He skirted the village to the south and came to the river. Two coracles had been left upturned on the bank; he holed one by thrusting his heel through it, and launched the other. At once the current tugged at the painter. He walked beside the bank, letting the river carry the coracle along, easing it round clumps of sedge, and led it downstream into the tidal reach. Jumping over channels and runlets, or walking ankle-deep in mud, he brought the willow-and-leather craft to the edge of the estuary, where the water of the river merged rippling with the sea. Here he dragged the coracle to a narrow strip of shingle and left it hidden by the bushes.

  From the shore Tagart turned back into the forest and climbed uphill, reaching the edge of the gorge and following it past the wreckage of the bridge and on to the path. East of the village, a quarter of a mile behind the escarpment, he knelt and in some dried grasses nurtured the first fire. Blowing gently, he held them to thicker dry stems, to brown bracken, to dead twigs broken into lengths, and then blew hard to make the flame dance. White smoke curled: the twigs burned. He put them against a small cone of dry sticks, and when they had caught light he brought larger branches and heaps of bracken until the pile burned orange and strong. Ash and glowing charcoal began falling into its heart. The encircling ground slowly grew hot. The grasses withdrew in a scorched circle, elongating on the leeward side, and suddenly the neighbouring bracken was alight.