Shouldering her pack, she set off along a narrow hare trail that delved into gullies and gave the best cover. Wolf trotted before her, pausing now and then to catch the scents. His tail was relaxed and his hackles down, so Renn’s fears began to ebb, and she let her mind drift.
I felt as if I was being pulled loose, Torak had said. It felt as if I was the fish.
That troubled her almost more than the tokoroth. And it had troubled Torak, too.
Suddenly she stopped. It felt as if I was the fish. That had nudged something in her memory – something just out of reach.
She knew it was connected to the sickness, but when she tried to grasp it, it sank beneath the surface . . .
Uff!
Wolf’s warning dragged her back to the present.
He was standing motionless, gazing down at the lake.
Renn dropped to the ground and crawled behind a juniper bush.
There. Sliding through the water. A skinboat.
The light was too poor to make out who was in it. All Renn could see was that it was a man – or maybe a boy – with the long fair hair of the Sea clans. He was paddling silently east, in the direction of the Seal camp. Or almost silently. Now and then she heard the click of his paddle against the side of the boat.
Something in the turn of his head indicated stealth, and even though she was forty paces above him, Renn held her breath as she watched him reach the end of the lake and step into the shallows.
She knew that the lake drained into a stream which tumbled through a ravine and down into the Bay of Seals. The ravine was too steep and the stream too fast for anyone to pass through it – so what would the skinboater do now? The only means of reaching the bay was the way Tiu had shown her, by the little white beach.
She watched as the skinboater carried his craft ashore and hid it in a clump of birch. Then he disappeared into the trees – in the direction of the little white beach. Which meant that he was either a Seal, or someone who knew the island well.
Renn sucked in her cheeks, wondering what to do. She wanted to go after him and find out who he was and what he’d been doing; but she also needed to get a head start on Torak, or she’d never reach the Heights in time.
The thought of the Heights decided her. She didn’t trust the Seals one bit; she couldn’t let Torak go there alone. She would head west. And maybe when the light improved, she could pick up the skinboater’s trail, and find out what he’d been doing.
As she stood up, she saw that Wolf had left her, in the noiseless way that wolves do. No doubt he’d simply gone off on one of his hunts, but she wished he’d stayed.
Treading as quietly as she could, and placing one hand on her clan-creature skin for protection, she started west.
Wolf was worried. As he loped towards the Den of the pale-pelted taillesses, he hardly smelt the voles scurrying on the other side of the Still Wet, or the female crashing through the brush. He would catch up with her once he’d made sure that his pack-brother was all right – and found something to eat.
The female had been generous with her kills, and yet a haunch of hare was nothing; he could happily have eaten a whole roe buck. But in this strange, light land where no wolf had run before, there weren’t any roe buck. Or horses. Or elk. And the fish-birds were best left alone, because if you got too close, they spat.
Settling into the lope and trying to ignore the hunger gnawing his belly, Wolf raced up to the ridge, where the smells wafting from the valley were many and fascinating – then down the other side, past his friends the ravens, and on towards the Great Wet. The crunchy white ground scratched his pads, and the stink of the salt-grass made him sneeze, but Tall Tailless’s scent was strong, and Wolf followed it easily to the Den.
Keeping to the shadows, he pricked his ears and snuffed the air. Tall Tailless was too far off to see, but Wolf smelt and heard him well enough – although of course his pack-brother and the other taillesses didn’t even know he was there.
Taking long, deep sniffs, he sorted the different smells. Then he shook himself in frustration. Taillesses were so complicated. One of the pale-pelted ones spoke as a friend, but hid a terrible hunger. And Tall Tailless himself didn’t say all that he felt, not even to his own pack-brother.
As Wolf stood uncertainly, a distant howling reached him – so far away that he could hardly hear it. In its feeling it was like a wolf, but not in the sound. Between the howls came many hard snapping noises, and high, swift squeaks.
Wolf had heard this howling before: once on that terrible journey in the floating hides; then again, the previous Light. It came from under the Great Wet. It came from the big black fish who hunted in packs, like wolves.
Wolf knew that the howling he could hear now was coming from the lone blackfish who had left its pack and was roaming the Great Wet alone, bitten by anger and sadness. Wolf dropped his ears in fear, and flicked his tail between his legs. He knew that against this blackfish he was as helpless as a tiny blind cub.
Tall Tailless, of course, was not helpless – but the strange thing was, he didn’t know it.
Wolf had been astonished when he’d sensed this in his pack-brother as they’d sat together by the Bright Beast-That-Bites-Hot.
Tall Tailless didn’t know what he was.
TWENTY-FIVE
‘I told Bale you won’t be taking any gear in your boat,’ said Tenris as he helped Torak carry his craft down to the water. ‘You’ll need all your strength just to keep up.’ He cast Torak a worried glance. ‘You look tired. Didn’t you sleep?’
Torak shook his head. He wanted to tell the Seal Mage about the net and the tokoroth, but there was no time. Already the others were loading their boats.
It was a hot day, and the Sea was deceptively smooth. But Torak kept thinking of the terror of the capelin; of black fins slicing the waves.
Tenris guessed his thoughts. ‘I’ve put a masking charm on your hull. The Hunter won’t even know you’re there.’
‘I wish you were coming,’ said Torak.
Tenris smiled. ‘So do I.’ With his good hand he touched Torak’s shoulder. ‘Be careful.’ Then he walked off up the beach.
Detlan approached, holding out a gutskin parka. ‘You’ll need this,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ said Torak. The gutskin felt stiff as he pulled it on over his jerkin, and it chafed his throat and wrists. But it would keep him dry.
‘And tuck this inside your jerkin,’ said Detlan, handing him a small roll of dried whale meat. ‘But don’t eat it.’
‘What’s it for?’ said Torak.
‘Always carry food on a Sea journey,’ said Detlan, his brow creasing. ‘Then if you go down, you don’t go empty-handed.’
Torak stared at the whale meat, then tucked it in his jerkin.
On the beach, those Seals who hadn’t yet left for the Cormorant island were waiting to see them off.
Detlan’s little sister was trying not to cry. She was old enough to remember the last time the sickness had struck, and now, in her terror that her family would be taken, she was making a nuisance of herself by checking everyone’s hands for sores.
Asrif’s mother was subdued as she patted her son’s chest, and told him for the tenth time to be careful.
Bale’s father pressed something small into his son’s hand. Bale murmured his thanks. His father’s smile lit up his blue eyes.
Torak felt a pang, seeing them together. Then he thought of Wolf and Renn, and he didn’t feel so bad.
‘Is that an amulet?’ he asked Bale when the older boy came over to check his skinboat.
Bale nodded. ‘A rib from the first seal I ever caught. Fa’s wound it with cormorant gullet, so if there’s a storm, it’ll help pull me to shore.’ He glanced at Torak. ‘What amulet do you carry?’
‘I don’t,’ said Torak. ‘But when I was in the Forest I had my father’s knife and my mother’s medicine horn.’
Bale looked thoughtful. Then he ran up the beach to the shelters, returning moments later with
a slender rawhide bundle. ‘Your amulets,’ he said. ‘Tenris says you can have them back.’
Torak unfolded the bundle. Inside were the blue slate knife, his medicine pouch, and the antler-tine horn. ‘Thanks,’ he muttered. But Bale had turned away, and didn’t hear him.
Without ceremony they got under way. At first Torak had his hands full merely keeping his balance, but as they rounded the headland, he risked a glance over his shoulder. Tenris stood beneath the jawbone arch, watching them go. That gave Torak a twinge of unease. For a moment it looked as if the Seal Mage was being swallowed.
Heading west, they made good progress, accompanied by herring gulls and guillemots. A light breeze sprang up, shivering the surface of the Sea like the wrinkles on an old woman’s face.
‘She’s at peace,’ said Detlan, bringing his boat near Torak’s.
Torak was unconvinced. Despite Tenris’s masking charm, he couldn’t stop scanning the water for tall black fins. Every time a fish darted beneath him or a gull’s shadow slid across his bow, he jumped. Notched Fin could be anywhere. It could be under his skinboat right now.
All morning they paddled, as the sun beat down from a cloudless sky, and the coast slipped past. Torak surprised himself by keeping up, but soon the rhythm of the paddles sent him into a daze.
He was gazing blearily over the side when, almost directly beneath him, he saw a small dark shape rising – growing rapidly bigger.
He snapped awake, his skinboat rocking dangerously. He tried to shout a warning, but it stuck in his throat.
A sleek grey head broke the surface beside his paddle, and shook the droplets from its whiskers. Then the seal yawned – baring lots of very sharp teeth – and gazed up at him with mild, curious eyes.
Torak blew out a long, shaky breath.
The seal blew out too, opening its nostrils wide. Its smooth grey fur was dotted with dark rings, which explained why it was so friendly; it knew it wouldn’t be hunted.
Bale had seen it too. He was grinning as he brought his boat about. ‘The guardian! Now I know we’ll be all right!’
The seal floated lazily on its back with its tail flippers curled over its belly, watching him go by. Then with a soft ‘oof’ it shut its nostrils, and disappeared beneath the waves.
Maybe because of the guardian, they saw no sign of Notched Fin, and made such good speed that in the mid-afternoon they put in at a little bay to rest.
The tide was out, and the sand was webbed with seaweed and the three-toed tracks of oystercatchers. Bale and Asrif built a fire, then went to refill their waterskins, while Detlan showed Torak how to catch shellworms. Soon they had a pile of the long brown shells, which they baked in the embers. Torak thought the shellworms tasted slightly better than they had the first time. He must be getting used to them.
With the shellworms they ate the crunchy stems of a sea-plant which Asrif had gathered. It tasted like salty green ice, and Torak only ate it because the others did; more to his liking were the baked marshmallow roots that oozed a gluey sweetness. Nobody spoke while they ate, and it struck Torak as odd that he should feel almost at ease with the same boys who’d hunted him only four days before.
The afternoon passed, and as they paddled west, Torak’s arms and thighs began to ache. More than once he nodded off, jolting awake just when his paddle was about to slip from his hands. But still the Seals kept going, their fair hair streaming behind them.
He’d given up hope of ever stopping when he heard the distant din of seabirds. Narrowing his eyes against the glare, he saw a rockface rising sheer from the Sea towards a peak shaped like a Hunter’s fin. At the very top he could just make out a few dark specks slowly circling.
Eagles, he thought.
‘And you’re really going up there?’ said Torak, craning his neck at the Heights.
‘I’ve done it before,’ said Asrif with a shrug. But his face had gone the colour of wet sand.
‘Once,’ muttered Bale, ‘you did it once. And never all the way to the eyries.’
They were standing right beneath the Heights, on a narrow stretch of rocks that followed the line of the cliffs, then reached out into the Sea like a claw. It was on this claw that they’d left the skinboats – so that, as Bale said, ‘if he falls, he won’t damage the boats.’
The Eagle Heights were the tallest cliffs Torak had ever seen. Scarred by the frosts of many winters, their gaunt flanks were the dark red of raw whale meat, and spattered with bird droppings. The stink caught at his throat; the din made his head throb.
And if he’d thought the cliffs at the Bay of Seals were crowded, this was far worse. You couldn’t slip a feather between the cormorants huddled on the lowest rocks; further up, hordes of guillemots jostled for space, while kittiwakes and herring gulls squabbled above them. The highest crags of all held the huge, shapeless eyries of the eagles.
‘Some of those eyries are hundreds of winters old,’ murmured Bale, ‘and some of the eagles are over fifty.’ Despite the noise he spoke softly, and Torak understood why. It wasn’t just the eagles they had to watch out for. The Heights themselves were awake, and would shrug off an unwanted intruder. At his feet lay fragments of shattered stone which meant only one thing. Rockfalls.
And yet according to Bale, the Seals did sometimes climb the Heights, if other prey was scarce, and they couldn’t get enough eggs closer to camp. That explained the short stone pegs jutting at intervals from the rock all the way to the lowest eyrie, dizzyingly high above.
That was their target; but Torak couldn’t see any plants growing around it, let alone the selik root Tenris had described. ‘Small, about a hand high, with purple-grey leaves, and hooked roots, like the talons of an eagle.’
Torak’s neck was getting sore, and he rubbed it. ‘Who put in the climbing pegs?’ he asked.
‘My grandfather’s grandfather,’ said Bale. ‘Although we have to replace them when the cliffs move.’
‘And we don’t usually go as far as the eyries,’ said Asrif.
‘And it’s a bad time to be trying it,’ said Detlan. ‘They’ve got nestlings. They’ll think Asrif’s after them.’
‘Let’s hope they’ve got the wisdom to know that he’s not,’ said Bale. From a pouch at his belt he took a withered grey-green stalk which he broke into four. ‘Here.’ He handed out the pieces.
Detlan and Bale chewed theirs, but Torak eyed his suspiciously. ‘What is it?’
‘Cliffwort,’ said Bale with his mouth full. ‘Takes away giddiness.’
‘I thought only Asrif was going up.’
‘He is,’ said Bale. ‘But you can get just as giddy looking up as you can looking down.’
The stalk was bitter, but almost immediately Torak’s head cleared.
He felt spare and useless as he watched Deltan help Asrif put on the heavy kelp-rope harness, and check the big wooden hook at its back; Bale slinging the coil of rope over his shoulder, and testing the hook at its end.
‘What can I do?’ he asked.
Asrif flashed him a grin that was more of a grimace. ‘Catch me if I fall.’
‘Just keep out of the way,’ muttered Bale.
Torak ground his teeth. They wouldn’t even let him help.
Stifling his frustration, he watched Bale draw back his arm and throw the rope. The hook floated high, then dropped neatly over a peg about ten paces up. Asrif caught the hook and fixed it to the one at his back, and Detlan took the other end of the rope and pulled it taut. Asrif began to climb, finding cracks and climbing pegs with his hands and feet, while Detlan braced himself to take his weight if he fell.
When he neared the peg over which the rope had been flung, he found a ledge beside it and balanced on his toes, clinging to the rockface with one hand while he unhooked the rope from his harness and tossed it down. It hit the ground with a thump – Torak had to jump smartly back – and Bale cast it again, this time over a higher peg, taking care to avoid knocking Asrif off. Asrif needed good balance to catch the swinging hook and attach
it to his harness.
As he climbed higher, seabirds lifted off the cliff and fluttered indignantly about him. A couple of times he slipped and came off the rockface. Only the harness – and Detlan’s muscle – stopped him plunging to his death.
While Detlan and Bale sweated at the rope, Torak stood by, hating his helplessness. Asrif made his way precariously up the cliff. For the last few lengths – which were out of Bale’s reach – he cast the rope himself, choosing pegs that were close enough to allow him to do so without losing his balance. By now he was nearing the eyrie.
As Torak watched, shading his eyes with his palm, he saw a dark, hunched shape lift off a crag. It had the enormous, blunt-fingered wings of an eagle; and it was spiralling slowly down towards Asrif.
A solitary eagle circled the peak. Renn thought of Torak on the other side, and quickened her pace.
Although the sun was getting low, it was still hot on the trail, and the breeze wafting from the lake did little to cool her. She’d been walking since well before dawn. Wolf had returned soon after, to her great relief; but he’d been keen to head west, and it had been a struggle to keep up with him. Even now he was racing ahead – although always running back for her.
She wondered if he knew where Torak was, or if he’d picked up the trail of the skinboater she’d seen on the lake. She had found no trace of him, except for a second skinboat hidden under some brush at the edge of the lake. The boat had been empty. A spare, maybe. But that told her nothing about what the skinboater had been doing in this part of the island.
‘These days, the Seals don’t go inland,’ Tiu had told her. ‘They used to, but they’ve become much stricter about keeping Forest and Sea apart.’
‘Doesn’t anyone live on the west coast?’ Renn had asked.
Tiu had shaken his head. ‘It belongs to the eagles. You can see their home from far away: a great red peak shaped like a Hunter’s fin.’
Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Page 34
