The hunters started down the slope towards her.
Her mind darted in panic. Her body ached to run, but she knew that her only hope was not to move. Keep still, wait till they were almost upon her – then run like a hare, jump in the river – and pray to the guardian.
They were spreading out to surround her. She tensed to run.
Another redstart whistle, behind them on the slope.
The blank heads turned.
There it was again. It had to be Torak. Renn recognized the uplift at the end. Somehow, he’d found his way behind them.
Holding her breath, she watched them climb towards the sound.
Again the call came, but this time it was in the reeds by the river. How could that be? Torak couldn’t have moved that fast.
Suddenly a shadow swept over her, and Rek alighted in an alder near the curse stick, whistling like a redstart.
The hunters paused. Painted fingers flickered in silent speech. They started down, heading for the tree where the raven perched. They passed within three paces of Renn’s juniper without sensing her presence. Their ferocious intent blasted her like heat.
Rek gave another perfect imitation of the redstart signal, and as they drew near, she flew off with a harsh raven laugh.
Silently, the faceless hunters watched her go. Then they headed up the trail and vanished into the Deep Forest.
‘Are you all right?’ said Torak, grasping her shoulder.
Renn nodded. She was shaking, clenching her teeth to stop them chattering.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ muttered Torak.
They retreated to an alder thicket. ‘They’ll have found our tracks,’ said Renn when she could trust herself to speak. ‘They’ll know we’re here.’
Torak shook his head. ‘They’ll think we went with Fin-Kedinn. ’ He told her how he’d left the remaining canoe downstream, judging it too conspicuous to take into the Deep Forest, and had hidden their gear and covered their tracks.
‘How did you know they’d come?’ said Renn.
‘I didn’t. Didn’t even know they were there till I heard you call. But I got used to covering my tracks when I was outcast. Come on. I’m hungry. Last chance for hot food.’
It hadn’t occurred to Renn that once they were in the Deep Forest, they’d have to do without fire. Feeling childish and ignorant, she went off to forage. They ought to save their supplies for the days ahead; at least she’d thought of that.
When she got back, Torak had woken up a fire. He’d set it under a rock facing away from the Deep Forest, and used only small, dry pieces of beech, without the bark, so that it burned almost without smoke.
Renn thought, he learned these things when he was outcast. It made her feel as if she didn’t really know him.
Food steadied her a bit. She made a stew of chickweed, bittercress and bramble shoots, with meaty spring mushrooms, and woodpigeon eggs and snails baked in the embers. The snails were particularly delicious, as they’d been feeding on crow garlic.
While they ate, Rip and Rek took their morning bath in the shallows, flicking water over themselves with their wings, and splashing Wolf, who’d returned from hunting and lay on the bank, pretending not to notice.
Renn gave Rek a peeled egg and whispered her thanks. Then to Torak, ‘Who were those people?’
‘Aurochs, I think. Green headbands, and one had a horn amulet.’ He asked her about the spear in the trail, and she told him it was a curse stick. ‘If you pass it without the proper charm, you fall sick and die. You can’t see the curse, but it’s there. It draws fever demons like moths to a flame.’
He thought about that. ‘Can you get us past?’
The knot in her belly tightened. ‘Maybe.’ In fact, she doubted it. The Deep Forest had the best mages of all. She would be no match for them. ‘But they won’t rely on curse sticks,’ she added. ‘They’ll keep watch.’
He didn’t reply. Often, when he was working up to say something, he would run his thumb over the scar on his forearm. He was doing it now. ‘Renn . . . ’
‘Don’t say it,’ she broke in.
‘What?’
‘He wasn’t my kin, I don’t have to go with you, it’s too dangerous, I might get killed.’
He set his jaw. ‘It is too dangerous. And it’s not just them, it’s me. Look what happened to Fin-Kedinn. Next time it could be you.’
She began to protest, but he talked over her. ‘There’s something else. We were watched in the night. I found a trail and a pile of ash.’
‘Ash?’ She tried to conceal her alarm. ‘Do you think it was Gaup?’
‘I did at first. Now I’m not sure.’
She realized what he was doing. ‘You’re trying to put me off. Why must you always do this? Do you think it’ll work? Do you think I’ll say, Oh, well, in that case I’m going back to my clan?’
‘That’s what you should do. Yes.’
‘Well I won’t!’
He glared at her. In the morning light his face looked older. Ruthless. ‘Renn. I warn you. I’ll do whatever it takes to get Thiazzi.’
‘Fine,’ she retorted. ‘Let’s get started. We’ll need a disguise. We’re on the Aurochs’ side of the river, so we’d better try to look like them.’
He gave a curt nod. ‘Right,’ he said.
‘There,’ said Renn. ‘I defy even an Auroch to spot you now.’ She was being very practical and brisk, but Torak wasn’t fooled. She was as scared as he was.
Over the winter, Fin-Kedinn had taught them a few tricks about concealment. It had taken all afternoon to put them into practice. Renn turned out to be extremely good at it, which Torak found unnerving. She seemed to have a Mage’s skill for making things appear other than what they were.
First, she’d made a greenish-brown stain of lichen and river clay, taking the clay from below the waterline, so that no-one would notice. She’d mixed it with wood-ash and the marrowfat salve, to mask their scent and make it waterproof. Then she’d unpicked her clan-creature feathers and tucked them inside her jerkin, and they’d daubed the stain on each other’s faces, throats, hands and clothes, dappling it in blotches: some light, some darkened with charcoal.
They knew from clan meets that Aurochs daubed their scalps with yellow clay to resemble bark, so they tucked their hair inside their parkas and did the same. They didn’t have time to make nets for their faces, so they simply stained Torak’s headband green and made one for Renn. Next, they padded their quivers with moss to prevent the arrows rattling, and agreed a new warning signal. Finally, Torak cut them hogweed breathing tubes, in case they had to hide underwater.
When it was done, Wolf approached Torak cautiously, gave a tentative sniff, and jerked back in alarm.
It’s me, Torak told him in wolf talk.
Wolf flattened his ears and growled.
It’s me. Come here.
Warily, Wolf moved closer.
Torak breathed softly on his muzzle, talking in wolf talk and person talk. It took a while before Wolf was reassured.
‘He didn’t know you,’ Renn said in a strained voice.
Torak tried to smile, but his face felt stiff beneath its disguise. ‘Do I look so different?’
‘You look frightening.’
He met her eyes. ‘So do you.’ Her smooth green face was disturbingly like her mother’s. She even moved differently. Her body, her hands, seemed fraught with mysterious power. He thought that if he touched her, he might burn his fingers.
‘Do you think it’ll work?’ she said.
He cleared his throat. ‘At a distance, maybe. Not up close. The best defence will be – ’
‘Not getting caught.’ She flashed him her sharp-toothed grin, and was Renn again.
Dusk fell, and the half-eaten moon rose above the trees. Moths flitted among glowing white campions. High in a spruce tree, Torak heard the hungry cheeping of woodpecker nestlings.
‘Now for the charm,’ said Renn.
In the faint moonlight, Gaup’s severed h
and turned slowly on its cord. It should have been crawling with ants and flies, but there were none. Such was the power of the curse that no creature would touch it.
Torak stood watch with Wolf, while Renn approached the curse stick, keeping to the shadows and placing her feet on dock leaves to obscure her prints. She clutched a bundle of wormwood and rowan twigs, and as she squatted near the stick, she muttered the charm and struck the spear-shaft over and over with the bundle.
The river flowed more quietly. The trees stilled to listen. Torak felt the curse hanging heavy in the air. He worried that Renn was too close; that it might be seeping into her skin.
She broke off with a gasp. ‘I can’t,’ she whispered.
‘Yes you can!’ he urged.
‘I’m not strong enough.’
He waited.
She went on. At last, she heaved a ragged sigh, rose, and threw the bundle in the river.
‘Did it work?’ said Torak.
‘I don’t know. We’ll soon find out.’
They withdrew, taking care to brush away their tracks. It seemed to Torak that a tension had leached from the darkness.
Wolf padded towards the curse stick and sat gazing up at the bloody hand. Without warning, he seized it in his jaws, worried it to make sure it was dead, and trotted off to eat in peace. Soon afterwards, they heard a flurry in the undergrowth and an irritable growl; then Rip and Rek flew off, each bearing a finger in their beaks.
Torak unclenched his fists. ‘I think it worked.’
‘Maybe,’ said Renn.
They went to fetch their gear.
‘We’ll go in after moonset,’ said Torak.
Renn didn’t reply, but he knew what she was thinking. They still had no plan for getting past any watching Aurochs.
Above him in the spruce tree, the woodpecker nestlings called tirelessly for food. Torak saw that their parents had been clever, pecking the hole under a bracket mushroom which made a roof to keep off the rain, and choosing a hollow tree riddled with more holes, so they’d have lots of escape routes if a marten attacked. He remembered Fin-Kedinn’s lessons on concealment. The first rule is to learn from other creatures.
The male woodpecker flew in with nightmeal for his children, spotted Torak, and sped to another tree some distance away, where he perched, calling loudly, kik-kik-kik! Not that tree, this one!
‘I think,’ said Torak, ‘I’ve got an idea.’
The moon had set, the wind had dropped. The trees stood breathless. Waiting.
Torak knelt beside Wolf and told him in wolf talk that they needed to hide from everyone, but were still hunting the Bitten One. He wasn’t sure if he got it across.
Rising to his feet, he nodded at Renn. She nodded back.
Keeping off the trail, they started upriver. They passed the curse stick. They drew level with the great stone jaws.
A squirrel scampered up a tree. A roe buck fled, flashing its white rump.
Good, thought Torak. Maybe the Aurochs aren’t so close.
Maybe.
Renn walked beside him, silent as a shadow. Wolf’s paws made no sound.
The spruce trees waited for them, their arms dripping with dark clots of moss.
Torak paused. He thought of the Oak Mage. He thought of Bale. He took a breath and entered the Deep Forest.
TEN
Wolf’s hackles rose. Torak glanced at Renn to make sure that she’d seen. She had.
Bitten One, said Wolf.
Near? said Torak.
Many lopes.
Torak bent close to Renn. ‘He’s picked up Thiazzi’s trail,’ he whispered, ‘but he’s far away.’
‘And still no Aurochs?’
He shook his head.
She was puzzled. So was he. They’d been creeping between the shadowy trees for ever, following the river upstream, but staying well back from its banks. So far, no sign of Aurochs. The trees, though . . . Roots snagged Torak’s boots. Twig fingers brushed his face. It was warmer in the Deep Forest. The air smelt greener, more alive. Bats flitted overhead, and the undergrowth stirred with secret rustlings. Moss dripped from every branch and log and boulder – as if, thought Torak, a great green tide had drowned the Forest and then receded. And behind it all, he felt the immense, watching presence of the trees.
Wolf turned aside and ran to an ash tree. Rising on his hind legs, he put both forepaws on the trunk and sniffed a low-hanging branch. Odd, he told Torak with a twitch of his whiskers.
Torak touched the branch. His fingers came away slimy, smelling strangely of earth.
Renn pointed to the branch. What is it?
He shook his head, wiping his hand on his leggings and wishing he hadn’t touched it. Deep Forest clans were known for their skill with poisons.
They reached a grove of murmuring alders. As they entered, the trees fell silent, as if they didn’t want to be overheard.
Wolf halted and snuffed the air.
Bitten One. Over the Wet.
Torak was still taking that in when Wolf lowered his head.
Den.
Beyond the alders, Torak glimpsed shadows moving in blackness. Bulky shapes that might be shelters.
‘Camp!’ Renn breathed in his ear.
‘And Wolf says Thiazzi is across the river, in Forest Horse territory.’
‘We have to go back,’ she urged, ‘cross downstream.’
That risked confusing Wolf and losing Thiazzi’s trail, but they had no choice. They started to backtrack.
At least, they tried, but Torak got the sense that they’d lost their way. The gurgle of the river seemed fainter, and he caught the sharp, unmistakeable scent of crow garlic, which they hadn’t encountered on the way in.
He strained to pierce the gloom. A dock leaf skewered on a twig glimmered in starlight. A whisper of air cooled his cheek as an owl or a bat swept past.
That leaf.
He stopped so abruptly that Renn walked into him.
‘What is it?’
‘Not sure. Don’t move.’
That twig could not have speared the leaf by chance. It pierced the leaf blade like a needle, straight down its length, to the right of the midrib. It had to be a signal.
To the right of the midrib.
He glanced to his right, saw only a dim lattice of branches.
There.
Ahead, to the right, a sapling had been bent back and secured by a deft arrangement of crossed sticks. Mounted at its tip was a vicious spike. From the crossed sticks, near-invisible, a rope stretched across his path at chest height. Another step and he would have sprung the trap, releasing the sapling and sending the spike plunging into his side.
Torak licked his lips. They tasted chalky from the disguise. He showed Renn the trap. Her hand went to her shoulder, where her clan-creature feathers had been.
They had to push through junipers to get around the trap, which had been cunningly set between the thorny bushes, to drive its victim towards it. When they were through, Renn hissed, ‘This isn’t the way we came.’
‘I know. And it was sheer luck I spotted that trap.’ He didn’t need to say it: how many more lay in wait?
Wolf turned his head towards the river, and they followed his gaze. Did that shadow just move?
A moment later, starlight glinted on a spearhead.
The Auroch hunter was maybe twenty paces away, walking upstream. Torak and Renn sank into the bracken – slowly, so as not to attract attention by sudden movement. Torak’s mind raced. Upriver lay the Auroch camp. Downriver, the way back to the Open Forest, and maybe more lethal traps. On the riverbank, at least one Auroch hunter was keeping watch.
Renn voiced his thoughts. ‘We’ll have to try your plan right here.’
‘Could you make the shots?’
‘I think so. If we climb a tree.’
He nodded.
Renn found a tall lime that looked easier to climb than the others, as it had an odd snake of thickened bark rippling down its trunk. ‘Lightning-struck,’ she murm
ured, ‘but it survived. Maybe that’ll bring us luck.’
We’ll need it, thought Torak. His plan was simple, and if it worked, their decoys would draw the Aurochs north, away from the Blackwater, allowing them to slip across.
If it worked. He was losing faith fast.
Linking his hands, he boosted Renn into the tree. Then he knelt and told Wolf to stay close, to come back in the Light – and be alert for traps.
Wolf’s breath warmed his face as his muzzle brushed his eyelids. Stay safe, pack-brother, he told Torak.
He was so trusting. And Torak was leading him into terrible danger.
On impulse, Torak took his medicine horn from its pouch, shook out a little earthblood, and daubed it on Wolf’s forehead, where he couldn’t lick if off. Stay safe, pack-brother, he said. Putting his hand on the lime’s rough bark, he begged the Forest to protect Wolf.
The lightning scar was thicker than his wrist, and he climbed it like a rope. He felt the tree sensing their presence. He asked it not to give them away. Below him, Wolf’s silver eyes glowed. Then he vanished into the dark.
Huddled in a fork made by three great limbs, Torak and Renn kept their sleeping-sacks rolled, relying on their reindeer-hide clothes to stay warm. ‘We’ll wait here till morning,’ whispered Torak, ‘less chance of being seen.’ And less chance of escape if they were seen, but neither of them mentioned that.
Renn pointed to a tall spruce north of the Aurochs’ camp. Its upper branches spiked the stars; they should catch the rising sun. From her quiver she drew one of the arrows she’d prepared.
As she took aim, her face tensed with concentration. Her disguise made her alien: as if, thought Torak, she’d become Deep Forest.
Her bow creaked. She lowered it again. The night was too quiet. The Aurochs might hear the twang.
At last a gust of wind woke the trees. She took aim and let fly. The arrow struck the spruce and its burden swung free on the cord tied to the shaft. Renn nocked another arrow and hit another tree, further east; then another and another, each time waiting for the breeze to cover the sound.
Now they had to wait till dawn, and hope the plan worked.
Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Page 86
