Warrior Scarlet

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  When the morning came for Drem to be setting out, Drustic gave him much useful advice, remembered from his own years in the Boys’ House, and a particularly well-balanced throw-spear of his own, which Drem thought a great deal more of than he did of the advice. And his mother gave him a cloak of thick brown wool with a stripe of kingfisher blue along the edge, a fine cloak, though it was too long for him, as yet. When he had eaten his morning barley cake and mare’s milk curds—always it must be mare’s milk curds flavoured with wild garlic, on the day one went to the Boys’ House—he went and knelt before Cathlan the Old as he sat on his folded bearskin beside the fire, and set his hand on the old man’s thigh in leave-taking.

  ‘I go now, my Grandfather.’

  ‘Sa, you go now, son of my youngest son, little red fighting cock,’ Cathlan said, leaning forward to peer down at him with those fierce, gold-irised eyes, ‘and truly I think that you will be a seasoned fighter before you come again with your Wolf Slaying behind you—if ever you do—Aiee, if ever you do. But I will tell you this: it is good, for you, that your years in the Boys’ House will be the years of Vortrix the Chieftain’s son, also. For ever after, the men who trained together as boys, and slew their wolves and passed into the Men’s side together are a brotherhood; and the Chieftain does not forget the men who did these things with him. I know, ah, I know, I who slew my wolf in the same year with Belutugradus, the great grandsire of this one.’

  Drem bent his forehead on to his hand as it rested on the old man’s thigh; then rose and took leave of his mother, driving his head for a moment into the hollow between her neck and shoulder that was warm and white and soft even though her voice was often harsh with scolding. Then he caught up his new spear and flung his cloak across his shoulder, and went out into the morning, whistling Whitethroat to heel. He forgot to take his leave of Blai at all.

  The parting from his family sat lightly on him, for he was used to being away from home, and had come and gone as the mood took him, since the days when he had gone up to Doli and the shepherds on the High Chalk. But at the foot of the driftway, between the waking green of the young barley, and the sleeping fallow, he halted, knowing that the time had come for a harder leave-taking. He had known that it would be no good tying Whitethroat up to keep him from following, when he went down to the Boys’ House, and so for a long time past he had been training the great hound to go home alone when he bade him. And now it was the time for putting the training to the test.

  Suddenly the three years that had seemed a proud thing earlier that morning, looked very long and grey; and there was an ache in his throat as he dropped his spear and called Whitethroat from snuffing among the coarse grass and the pimpernels and yellow vetch at the side of the rough chalk, and squatted down to talk to him, holding his muzzle and rubbing behind his ears in the warm hollows where he loved to be rubbed. ‘I must go down to the Boys’ House, brother, and I cannot take you with me. Soon I will come again, soon and often, and we will hunt together. But now you must run with Drustic’s hounds, and do as Drustic bids you.’

  And Whitethroat talked back in the singing growl he always made when Drem rubbed behind his ears, holding his head low and flattened, and turning it for Drem to come at yet more delicious places.

  Drem stopped rubbing at last, and pressed his face down for a moment on to the top of the dog’s rough head; then he sprang up. ‘Go home! It is time to be going home, brother!’

  Whitethroat pressed his head against Drem’s knee, his tail swinging.

  ‘Go home! Home now!’ Drem ordered, pointing. And the great hound looked from his face to the pointing finger and back again, whimpering; understanding what Drem wanted of him, understanding also that this time was not like the other times that he had been ordered home.

  Drem caught him by the studded collar and dragged him round to face up the driftway. ‘Home! Off now! Go home, can’t you!’ His voice was rough and angry with the unshed tears in his throat; and he thumped Whitethroat hard on the rump with his clenched fist.

  Whitethroat went then, with a piteous puppy-whimpering, his head down and his proud bushy tail that came from his wolf father tucked between his legs. And Drem caught up his throw-spear and ran, with his shoulders hunched and the ball of tears swelling in his throat.

  When he reached the garth of the Chieftain’s steading, he found a little knot of boys already gathered before the empty doorway of the Boys’ House. Vortrix the Chieftain’s son, and a boy with a round head and a mouth like a frog whose name was Gault, and Luga kicking moodily at tussocks of coarse grass that grew against the wall. Otherwise there was no sign of life in the steading, save for the old hound sleeping on the dung heap as he had been on the day last autumn when the bronze-smith came, and a half tame mallard drake with his dun wives behind him, waddling about the brushwood pile. Drem walked across to the three boys. They opened their ranks for him, and the four of them stood and looked at each other and away again, half grinning, but somehow a little uneasy. None of them spoke.

  Drem leaned against the wall of the Boys’ House. The flints in the wall were tawny and white and grey-blue. He had never really noticed flints before. One of them was striped grey and white and looked like a badger’s mask peering out of the wall. He watched the mallard drake, seeing the glint of metallic green on his wings as he turned in a gleam of sunlight. It was a pale, dry, windy day, with a constant changing of light as cloud and clear chased across the sky; and little whirls of chalky dust hurried about the steading garth, that stung when they got in one’s eyes. He wished someone would come. Old Kylan or some of the older boys—because until they did he was stuck and could not go forward into the start of the three years’ training time that must be got through before he was a warrior and could be with Whitethroat again. They must all be away to the hunting or the weapon practice; and he could hear the emptiness of the Boys’ House behind him.

  In a while, Urian the son of Cuthlyn came stalking across the steading garth with his thumbs in his belt, and brought their numbers up to five; and then fat Maelgan appeared, with little black-eyed Tuan in his shadow; and the gathering of that year’s New Spears was complete.

  There before the door of the Boys’ House they stood and looked at each other, still in silence. Drem saw them all with a new clearness, an awareness of them as though he had never seen them before; and it was the same with all of them. They had run and tumbled and fought together all their lives, like puppies of the same pack; but now, suddenly, they were aware of each other, and a little shy of each other, caught up in a relationship that was new to them.

  A sudden spatter of rain came down the wind, freckling the ground with dark, and streaking the flints of the Boys’ House wall; and a woman slave passed across the garth from the byre, carrying a high-shouldered milk pail, and turned to stare at them before she disappeared. They ignored her with an elaborate air of unconcern, trying to look as though they were not at all at a loss and were standing round the Boys’ House door because they chose to.

  But when she was gone, Vortrix hunched his shoulders and said, ‘It grows wet, here in the garth. Let us go inside.’

  ‘Will they not be angry?’ Tuan said doubtfully. Tuan was always inclined to be cautious.

  ‘I don’t see why. No one seems to be coming to tell us what we are to do.’

  Luga stopped kicking at the tussocks of grass. ‘So long as you remember if Kylan comes with his whip, that it was your idea!’

  It seemed a bold thing to do, to go in without leave; into the Boys’ House where none of them had ever been before; and their breaths caught a little at their own hardihood, as, one after another, following Vortrix, they ducked under the door curtain and prowled in out of the wind and the bright rain, and looked about them. After the sharp spring wind and the changing light out of doors, the air in the great round hut was still and heavy, and the light was dim and brown, thickened by the inevitable bloom of wood smoke over the shadows. There were sleeping stalls round the walls, spread w
ith sheepskin over the piled fern, but they would be for the great ones, the lordly ones who had reached their second and even their third year; the likes of Drem would sleep like hounds around the central hearth. There was a half-made hunting bow before one of the stalls, and a cloak with a green patch at the shoulder in another; a clutter of cook pots beside the hearth and weapons stacked against the roof tree; and several pelts in various stages of curing hung from the rafters.

  The twelve-year-olds felt their own boldness in their chests. Here they were, for the moment, in possession of the Boys’ House, and they grinned at each other, strutting a little. The fire on the hearth had sunk low, to a red glow and a few charred logs in the midst of the white ash. ‘They have let the fire sink,’ Drem said. ‘They should be grateful to us for coming in and mending it for them before it goes out!’ And greatly daring, he kicked the logs into a blaze, and threw on a couple of birch logs with the bark still on them from the pile beside the hearth. Vortrix had led them in here; he, Drem, would be the one to wake the fire. The logs were dry and the bark like tinder; a little tongue of saffron flame licked up, and the silver bark blackened and curled back, edged with red jewels. There was a sudden flare, a flickering amber light that warmed the shadows; and they looked at each other with kindling excitement born of their own boldness and the likelihood that the older boys would make them pay for it later.

  The sudden flare of the flame-light caught the bronze face of a great war shield that lay tilted against the roof tree as though some champion had just cast it down there, and woke sparks of shifting fire among the raised bosses with which it was covered. It caught at their attention, and they gathered round, looking down at it. Each of them knew a shield, maybe more than one, in their own homes; nevertheless, this one caught and held their interest. They squatted about it and heaved it up to examine it in the firelight. Truly it was a mighty shield, a hero’s shield, formed of layer upon layer of bull’s-hide, the whole face sheathed in shining bronze, and the bronze worked in circle within circle of raised bosses, the outermost circle lying just within the hammered strength of the shield rim, the innermost close against the thrusting swell of the central boss. And looking at it as the firelight played and ran on every curve, Drem thought it was like the spreading ripples made by a leaping fish, or when you dropped a pebble—or a brooch—into the water.

  ‘It is a fine shield,’ Maelgan said.

  ‘Ugh! It is heavy!’

  Urian thrust his arm through the straps, and staggered upright, panting a little under the weight, his fierce brown face flashing into laughter. He pulled a spear from among those against the roof tree, and stood straddling his legs and thrusting out his chest though the weight of the great shield dragged his shoulder down. ‘See! I am a man! I am a warrior already! Why should I spend three years running with little boys like you?’

  They pushed him over—it was quite easy, for he was off balance already with the weight of the great shield—and rubbed his nose in the fern; and Vortrix heaved the shield on to his own shoulder, and stood proud and bright-eyed in the firelight, braced under its weight. ‘I am a warrior too! I am the Chieftain, the lord of all your spears!’

  ‘Stop crowing, and let me try it,’ Luga said.

  One after another they all tried their strength with the great shield. Maelgan, who was the biggest of them all, with the slow strength of an ox, even managed to walk a few steps carrying it. Tuan, who was the smallest, only just managed to lift it clear of the ground. One after another, breathless and intent, until there was only Drem left to try.

  ‘Drem! Hai! Drem, wake up!’

  Drem woke up. He had hung back to the last, which was not his way; and suddenly his heart was pounding as he stepped to the great war shield. He thrust his sound arm through the straps, and setting his teeth, lurched up again. The weight bore down on his shoulder, as he stood to face the others. The war spear that each of them had taken in turn lay in the brown bracken at his foot; he felt it there. And it had already dawned on him that he could not take it up.

  It dawned on the others at the same moment. They were all round him, watching him with sudden speculation. Then Luga pointed down at the spear and his face was alight with malice. ‘Aren’t you going to take up your spear? A warrior must needs carry a spear as well as a shield; do you forget that?’

  Drem faced him, faced them all. ‘Na,’ he said. ‘I do not forget that. But it is in my mind that a warrior might do well enough carrying only his spear and not a shield at all! I took up the shield to try its weight as you have all done. No more.’

  ‘Ya-ee! Hark to Drem One-arm!’ Luga cried. ‘Drem One-arm cannot carry his spear and his shield together; he would make only half a warrior—and what use is half a warrior to the Men’s side?’

  Drem was sharply aware of the silence all about him, and in the silence the spattering rain on the thatch and the distant scolding of a woman. He did not move, he was too proud to move before them, even though his arm and shoulder were beginning to tremble under the weight of bronze and bull’s-hide; but if he had been a hound, the hair would have risen on his neck. The others were still staring at him, not hostile as yet—though that was coming—but somehow no longer strange with each other, bonded together under Luga’s leadership; and he was the only stranger. He understood about Luga; Luga had never forgiven him for the matter of Whitethroat and the swan; that was simple. The rest was less simple; but something far down in Drem that had nothing to do with thinking, understood that too. All their lives they had run together in one pack; a mingled pack of children and hounds from the Clan and Half People alike; but now it was different, now Erp and his dark brothers must follow their own ways, and the Clan and the Half People were no longer one. This was the Boys’ House; this was the beginning of the Men’s side, the Spear Brotherhood, the beginning of the question whether Drem’s place was inside with the Spear Brotherhood or outside with the Half People.

  ‘Let you go and learn to weave with the women,’ Luga said, bright-eyed and taunting, and there was a splurge of laughter.

  ‘But you’d need two arms for that, too,’ Gault squealed in sudden excitement; and—he was a great one for playing the fool—he began to jig up and down, making the gestures of a woman working at an upright loom. They were crowding in on Drem, beginning to jostle him. It was more than half in jest at first, but the jest was an ugly one, and wearing thin over what lay underneath. ‘Ye-ee! Drem One-arm—Drem One-arm!’

  It must be Luga or himself, Drem thought, and the only thing he could do was to fight, and if need be go down fighting. He did not stand the faintest chance, of course, but that made no difference. He let go the great shield. It fell with a ringing clash and crash against the edge of the hearth stone, momentarily scattering the little fierce knot, and in the same instant, with the life still tingling back into his arm, he hit Luga fair between the eyes, with all the strength that was in his body behind the blow. And he cried out on a shrill note of challenge, ‘One arm is enough to hit with!’

  Luga staggered backward, shaking his head, as though for the moment he was not at all sure what had hit him. Then he recovered himself and came in again with flailing fists.

  Drem hit him again in the instant before the other boy’s fist crashed into his own cheekbone, filling one eye with a red burst of stars. Having only one serviceable arm, he could do nothing to guard against the blows that came pounding in on him. He tucked his head down to save his face as much as possible, and somehow got his back against the great roof tree. The whole lot of them were on him at once, giving tongue like hound puppies at the kill. He saw their faces pressing in on him, their open mouths and bright eyes; and their shrill clamour rose and rose in his ears. He knew that he was fighting for his place in the Clan, fighting for his whole life—all that made life worth having; and he hit out wildly, desperately, yelling his defiance. He never knew what it was he yelled, only that it was defiance. He kicked somebody’s legs from under them so that they came down across the great
shield with a hollow clangour; but while the thrumming of it still hung upon the air, a buffet landed on the side of his head that sent him staggering sideways, and instantly they were on him, dragging him down though he struggled and tore and bit like a cornered wild cat.

  And then, when he was all but done, somebody dived low through the flailing mass of arms and legs, and whirled about at his side, flinging Maelgan off him with one shoulder, and driving his fist into Urian’s howling face. And as Drem grasped the moment’s respite to drag himself free and stagger upright again, shaking his head to clear it, he realized vaguely that he was no longer alone.

  ‘Sa sa sa! Come on then! Come on all of you and see what you’ll get!’ he heard his new comrade yelling. He had his back against the roof tree again now, and the other boy’s shoulder was against his, guarding where he could not guard for himself, and a sudden warm sense of increase was in him. The smell of blood came into the back of his nose, far up between his eyes; the Warrior Smell. And suddenly, from feeling like a cornered animal, the joy of battle leapt in him like a flame.

  He cared nothing now for the blows he got, only for the blows he gave. It was a great fight, though a short one; a stand against hopeless odds such as no warrior of the Tribe need have been ashamed of. But it was a last stand, and the odds were hopeless; five against two, and Drem had only one arm to fight with.

  In their shrill and bloodthirsty absorption in the matter in hand, none of them saw the sudden dark swoop of figures into the doorway as several of the older boys came ducking in; nor the squat, hairy figure of Kylan of the Boys’ House straddling there with his whip in his hand, looking on. They were not aware of anything but themselves and their own affairs; until someone behind Kylan spoke a deep-voiced word, and suddenly Kylan was among them, wading into their midst with his lash busy in his hand, as a man wades into a fight among his own hound puppies. ‘Break off! Back, I say! Back—get back!’ And the long supple lash of oxhide curled and cracked again and again as he laid about him. Drem felt it sear like a hornet sting across his neck and shoulders. The shrill yammer died down, and slowly, sullenly, the fight fell apart and the fighters stood rather sheepishly looking at each other, and at Kylan, and at the Chieftain himself, standing in the doorway with his great golden head bent under the lintel and the last of the shower shining behind him.