by John Hart
“Better we go now,” said Agaratz. “Bear come back.”
CHAPTER 10
Once out of range of the bear they filled their pouches with beechmast, for lack of walnuts, so that their foraging had not quite been in vain.
“Agaratz, are there big cave-bears?”
“Now few. Long ago many.”
Urrell recalled his engraving, the bear lumbering away, its head turned as though towards pursuers.
“But ice-bears, Agaratz, bears that live with mammoths?” They were the huge bears of legend, those Old Mother spoke of, like the big tiger cats and the beasts with one horn.
“Only in pictures, in caves, Urrell. Now gone.”
“I saw a picture of one, Agaratz.”
At this Agaratz stopped and looked intently at Urrell, making the boy feel he had hit on something important.
“Where?”
“In my valley.”
“How far?”
“Five, six days.”
“When cold time over, you show me.”
“Oh yes.”
Old Mother of the Mammoths, you would be watching, you who knew the bear.
In the last long weeks of fine weather, as the bison drifted across the grassland, herds of horses with them, fattening as they went, harried by wolves and the furry lions of the forest, Urrell watched Agaratz’s preparations for winter and helped, learning. His muscles were developing and the down over his mouth and by his ears was darkening into hair. He was now slightly taller than Agaratz.
“Soon be man,” said Agaratz as Urrell washed by the spring.
“Good.”
The wolf, too, was now nearly full grown.
“I take that wolf because smallest. If stay with pack, soon die in cold. Now strong.”
They had been scraping hides for several days, following deer hunts where Agaratz’s skill and accuracy with the spear-thrower had roused Urrell’s admiration, when the lad thought to ask the question uppermost in his mind.
“When deer, bison, horses all go to lowlands what can we hunt in great cold?”
“Boar stay. Snow-deer come. Snow-oxen come. Aurochs in forest. Some big deer in woods. Perhaps… mammurak.” Agaratz grinned at Urrell. “No, not mammurak.”
“How can you hunt alone?”
“I hunt. Now you help. But much foods here.” He waved a hand at their stores of seeds, nuts, roots, bulbs and pouches packed with fat and suet mixed with herbs.
“But auroch, bison are too strong for a lone hunter, Agaratz.”
“You see. Now we go for mushroom.”
However, this search was not for the edible fungus that Urrell liked.
Instead Agaratz ferreted under logs, in crannies, for kinds either Urrell did not know or knew were poisonous. In addition Agaratz sought berries no-one touched. In clefts where limestone whitened the cliff-face Agaratz gathered a creeper with a milky sap, as well as its seed pods. Urrell followed, observing.
Back in the cave he watched Agaratz mix and mash these into a sticky paste to be stored in hollowed stems of elderberry wood, using acorns as stoppers. He muttered something rhythmic and unintelligible as he laid the filled stems delicately on a little ledge.
When Urrell asked their purpose he was told, “Soon you see.”
On their next hunt Agartatz took a stem with him. Game was scarcer with the approach of winter but deer were still about, if in small wary groups keeping out of range. Without explanation Agaratz had armed himself with light javelins, little more than reeds, tipped in bone, that to Urrell looked inadequate.
After a morning spent stalking they managed to close on a small herd. Agaratz paused to dab paste from his elderberry vial on to the tips of two javelins. The movement alerted the deer. As they raised their heads in alarm he sprang forward and cast both javelins almost together, one from either hand, hitting the buck and a doe. At such range neither animal was much harmed and fled with the rest, the buck’s javelin even falling out. Urrell expected disappointment on Agaratz’s face. Instead he set off in pursuit, waving over his shoulder for Urrell to follow, picking up his javelin on the way.
On the open floor of the woods the deer spoor was not hard to follow. After a few hundred paces Urrell saw the doe, unsteady, lagging behind her group. Agaratz ran up and speared her dead.
“Urrell, you catch buck.” He knew it was an honour, a test maybe.
The male, stronger, less affected by the paste on the javelin, had gone much further before Urrell caught up with it and managed to pierce its tough hide with his stabbing spear, proud to win a four-point stag. Dragging it back to where Agaratz had already gralloched the doe and was flaying and quartering it into manageable cuts was another matter.
They did the same between them with the buck, its flesh rancid from the rut.
“See,” said Agaratz, “in winter can hunt.”
Half the meat they cached in a tree fork; the remainder they bundled up in the animals’ own skins and hoisted on their backs for the return trip. “Tomorrow fetch other, Urrell.”
“How do you know which plants and mushrooms to use?” Urrell felt there was more to it than the ingredients, which he had seen and memorised.
“Secret from my peoples.”
“Your father?”
“Yes, father. Others.”
“Why not use the bane all year?”
“Not ready then. Not time.”
Agaratz would, Urrell knew, not expand. He would have to learn the rhythmic chant that went with the paste, to make it work.
In the mornings frost had begun to whiten the grass and sharpen the air. Urrell’s breath hung before him. In his home valley his clan would be gathering to leave for the caves by the sea, there to huddle behind piles of seashells discarded by earlier folk, perhaps those who had painted and engraved those very cave walls beyond which only the dead dared venture.
Urrell was wondering why no people trekked along their own grasslands in the wake of the bison, as the snows approached from the mountains of the mammoths across the void land, when his thoughts were interrupted by Agaratz.
“Soon you see people, Urrell.”
“Oh, people! Your people?”
“No my people.”
“Who?”
“Hunters. They go to Nani, to big salt water.”
“My people go. They are going now.”
“Yes. I know. I see.”
“See?”
“See. See like…” and he turned to Urrell and placed his forefingers on each temple and fixed his stare ahead “…see like that.” He said it as he might have said, “That is a stone, yon is a tree.”
“Agaratz, when I came, did you see me, see the bison and the hunters?”
“I see,” then he added, “I see your folk – seven mans, twelve womens, fourteen childs. One man, blue mark on face.”
“Blueface!”
Some people could see ahead in time, this Urrell knew, some could see beyond distance, some even spoke to the dead. It was whispered that some could halt weapons in mid-flight, others cast curses that slew.
Urrell’s fear of the approaching great cold lifted: he would be safe with someone of Agaratz’s powers.
Agaratz bent over a bone needle, sewing moccassins. Agaratz able to soothe wolves, outface bears, see afar.
CHAPTER 11
Agaratz was also right about groups passing.
The two were returning with bags filled with garlic
and onion bulbs for storage when Agaratz pointed at a far-off line of humans advancing across the grasslands, men ahead, women behind with chattels and infants. They too had been seen, so flight being futile, Agaratz squatted to wait, Urrell beside him while Rakrak flung herself on the grass and panted.
Agaratz watched the group keenly. “These different,” he said.
They were tall, lithe men, swarthier than Urrell’s folk. Black hair hung down their shoulders and each carried six long spears, bone-tipped. All wore necklaces of teeth and coloured stones. When they were ha
lf a stone’s throw away they stopped and the tallest stepped a few paces in front. Agaratz stood. The man declaimed in a language unknown to Urrell.
His words roused jeering laughs among the man’s followers. He twirled a spear over his head in mock-threat at Agaratz, whom he overstood by more than head and shoulders. Agaratz, unperturbed, spoke in what sounded to Urrell like the man’s own language, with a hint of warning. Unimpressed, the man strutted nearer, then noticed Rakrak sitting up in the long grass beside Urrell. He pointed at her and said something to his followers, who relayed it to the women who had caught up and were shuffling about in the rear. Whatever he had said, his intention became clear when he raised his spear arm, not at Agaratz nor at Urrell but at the wolf. The lad’s panic – he grabbed Rakrak by the neck and pulled her down to shield her – amused the man. He glanced back at his followers for approval.
As he did so Agaratz, with the speed of the lame, limped forward and caught the man’s eye as he turned. Urrell saw the spear-arm freeze in mid-throw. Reaching up on tiptoe Agaratz took the spear from his grip and in a feat of strength that none could have emulated snapped the shaft like a reed. A little ‘uh’ rose from the crowd. The hunters fell back. Agaratz roused the man with a tap on the shoulder and he resumed his journey, all intentions forgotten, followed by the column of his cowed and silenced clan. As they filed past, Rakrak, interested in the scene, ears cocked, uttered a little ‘woof ’ that sent small children scuttling to their mothers’ skirts.
Awe mixed with gratitude in Urrell’s heart, gratitude winning.
As on that first day when they had first met, Urrell expressed his feelings by touching the crookback’s forearm, his reward the sly grin of acknowledgement of a feat that had impressed.
However, all he said was, “Now time go for eztik.”
“Eztik?
“From bees”
“Honey.”
“Ah, honey.” He did not say where or how it was to be found.
Urrell was to discover where and how the next day. Not since that first meeting when Agaratz had given Urrell a piece of honeycomb had honey featured in their searches and garnerings. Now Agaratz chose several quaiches and pouches from his stores, and implements hitherto unknown to Urrell.
“Now go for honey.”
Urrell’s experience of honey-gathering was to find a hive and raid it. His folk, when they chanced on such a treat, left nothing behind, glutting themselves on combs, honey, grubs, wax, everything, in an orgy of sweetness that no fruit, no berry, however ripe, could rival. He wondered what Agaratz would do with the hives. Would he in his careful way, as with fruit, bulbs, plants, birds’ eggs and so on, spare some, muttering low incantations that he never explained?
They set off along the cliff line towards the river, much as they had done to gather cobnuts, but soon stopped at a place where the cliff-face changed to a yellowish, friable stone with a number of holes and cavities.
“Bees,” said Agaratz. Indeed, high up bees swarmed in and out of holes far beyond reach. “Follow.”
He continued a little further and turned into a cleft that split the cliff from top to bottom. The sides were smooth. On them Urrell saw engravings, the first since his bear.
“Look bees, Agaratz.”
A little further was the outlined head and fore quarters of a bear, looking up.
Agaratz said: “Old time.” He took a burin from his belt pouch and ran it along the outline of the bear. “You do.” Urrell took the burin with a feeling new to him, yet as old as always, and ran the flake along the outline as he had seen Agaratz do. A sense of elation, of strength, of the ability to perform beyond the normal suffused him, like the dream he sometimes dreamt of flying, soaring with outstretched arms above everything else caught in earthbound normality. Waking was always a disappointment. This time when he ended the scrape the elation remained.
“Now bees not sting,” said Agaratz.
They followed the cleft, in single file, sometimes sidling to squeeze through, till at a turn a tunnel led off at waist height, round and smooth-bored, large enough for a man to wriggle up lying on his belly or back.
“Rakrak stay.” Agaratz made the sounds of a female warning her cubs to lie still and Rakrak crouched, looking up at Agaratz then at Urrell, who repeated the command. She would wait.
“You follow, Urrell.” He entered the tunnel head first, on his back, his bowls, bags, and tools strapped to his midriff, freeing his arms to draw himself along the tunnel. When his feet, the normal and the cloven, disappeared into the hole, Urrell lay in the same way and followed up into the darkness.
Soon he was in total gloom, wriggling behind Agaratz whom he could hear ahead. The walls, smoothened by ancient waters, offered little purchase. He heard Agaratz say, “Now narrow,” and he came to a gullet which seemed impossible to get through. “Pass things.” He did as bidden, his arms half trapped by the narrow tunnel, and felt his things taken one at a time. Then Agaratz said, “Arms first.” To get his arms well above his head Urrell wriggled back to a wider part of the tunnel then squirmed his way up to the gullet. Hands took his to ease him through the gap till he squeezed out, like a child thrust from the womb, into what must have been a chamber. Agaratz held his hand to guide him in the total blackness. They felt their way round a rock-face into another low tunnel, stooping, till the total gloom lightened and as his eyes attuned Urrell saw they had squeezed into a huge, high chamber with stalactites at the far end reaching the floor in a forest of stone. Light filtered from on high through chinks and holes – those the bees used. They must have been close behind the cliff-face.
Agaratz ignored all this, his attention fixed on the gaps and chinks near the roof of the chamber. “Up there, etzi,” he said. “Now fetch pole.”
They left their paraphernalia and Agaratz went to a full-size pine log, notched with footholds, lying along the cave wall, unnoticed by Urrell. It was very old yet still serviceable. Who had dragged it there, and how, Urrell was left to wonder. They pulled and rolled it into position and while Urrell steadied the butt Agaratz ‘walked’ the bole up hand over hand till it was leaning high against the wall.
“Hold, Urrell, I climb.”
He brought down two big honeycombs and blew off the bees still clinging to their possession, muttering something as they flew back up to the light. They rolled the log along the wall and Agaratz repeated the operation, never taking more than two combs or a quaich of liquid honey each time. The liquid honey they savoured, miracle of sweetness, in the dark, the combs Agaratz stowed in the pouches they had brought.
“You try, Urrell.” The lad went up and found himself peering at an immense hive, the work of years, teeming with bees. As he clung to the pole, undecided what to do next, Agaratz called from below, “Take two eztic, with hand. Not sting.”
Bees crawled all over his arm, his face, his hair as he reached in, steadying himself on his shaking perch. Very carefully he detached two combs, one at a time, dropping them into the pouch round his waist, and edged down in a cloud of bees. None stung him.
“Only two eztic, Agaratz?”
“Two. I tell bees. So not sting.”
It was too dark to see Agaratz’s expression but Urrell sensed the grin at his puzzlement. Around them the air smelt sharply of honey.
If their trip in had been hard, the return journey was one Urrell would never forget. They worked in stages, pushing their bulging pouches ahead, repeating the wriggling, squirming operation three times to ferry their booty to the entrance for Rakrak to guard. Once all was out, Urrell watched Agaratz dance to the bear, offer it honey, dab the bees with a dot of honey apiece, before they rested and ate a comb between them and gave a piece to Rakrak to gnaw.
Once back in home cave Agaratz stowed quaiches and pouches on ledges beyond any creature’s reach.
“Agaratz, you did this before, alone?”
“With father. Now my people gone.”
Whether he meant departed, leaving the cripple behind to die, or wip
ed out by some catastrophe, Urrell was left wondering. It would be unwelcome to ask, though he ached to know more about Agaratz’s folk. Agaratz’s hints of their powers, of skills he revealed unbidden, as to an apprentice, whet the lad’s appetite to know more, to observe everything, to forget nothing. But how to get beyond the sly smile, to enter the mage’s mind? Ah.
CHAPTER 12
Summer was beginning to break. Clouds drove across the skies, the air cooled, skeins of geese flew overhead, southerly. Agaratz redoubled activity and Urrell fell in with the new urgency; even Rakrak behaved less playfully.
“Today go for gooses.” Rain drifted across the grasslands, shortening sight-lines.
They set off through the wet grass at a hunter’s lope, armed with stone-throwers, spears and long lines that Agaratz tressed from thongs. Urrell waited to see what their use would be.
A new stretch of the River Nani was Agaratz’s target this time and took them half a day to reach. Late mushrooms dotted the meadows. In brakes, raspberries, bilberries and whortle-berries clustered. Urrell saw where bears had raked pawfuls of fruit into their mouths in an orgy of feasting ahead of their winter sleep.
“Bears,” he said. Agaratz nodded. They saw deer aplenty, bison in the distance while herds of small brown horses showed their pale bellies as they galloped away at the approach of two humans and a wolf, gliding over the deep grass on invisible hooves. Hares abounded. Agaratz had other things in mind.
Through a fringe of trees they came to their destination: a loop in the Nani where the current had cut across an oxbow bend, creating a backwater. Floating on the still water were flocks of migrant geese, gathered for their long flight south, sorting themselves out by kind before flying off. So engaged were they in their own affairs that they ignored the two humans standing on the bank. Rakrak sat on her hunkers, looking on with interest.
