Warrior Scarlet

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Dumnorix the Chieftain looked them over with interest, his frowning grey eyes moving from one to another in little darts and flickers that missed nothing. His gaze rested a long moment on Drem and the boy beside him; and he said to Kylan, with the merest flicker of a smile under his long moustaches, ‘You spoke too soon when you swore but now that the bad days were here, and there were no more champions coming up to take their stand in the Spear Brotherhood.’

  ‘So it seems,’ Kylan said, breathing loudly through his hairy nostrils as he stood now drawing the supple lash again and again through his broad hairy hands. ‘If the snapping and snarling of puppies gives any proof in the matter.’

  Drem, his breast still heaving, the blood trickling from a cut under one eye, stared rather muzzily at Luga’s face. Luga was working at a loose tooth, and his nose was bleeding and seemed to have spread over his face like a bannock. Yes, he’d set his mark on Luga. He’d set his mark on a good many of his own kind—he and the other at his shoulder. For the first time it occurred to him to wonder who it was; and he turned his head carefully, as though it were loose on his neck, to see.

  He saw that it was Vortrix, the Chieftain’s son. Vortrix turned his head at the same moment, licking a cut lip; and they looked at each other gravely, almost warily, and then, as though making up their minds, broke into slow and rather wavering grins.

  The voice of Dumnorix the Chieftain called them back to the matter in hand. ‘And what thing brought it about, this mighty battle?’

  No one answered; they looked straight before them and scuffled among the strewed fern, while the older boys looked on as the lords of the world look on at the antics of a litter of puppies. ‘Well?’ said Dumnorix. ‘Are you all dumb? You yelped loud enough but now!’ and the frown gathered on his face like the shadow of thunder clouds gathering on the face of the High Chalk. Dumnorix the Chieftain was not a good man to defy.

  For one agonized moment more, the silence held, not even Vortrix found his voice; and then Drem cocked up his head and grinned into the Chieftain’s frowning face. ‘We were practising to be warriors. O Dumnorix, Lord of three hundred spears, is it not for that, that we live three years as the Chieftain’s hounds, at the Chieftain’s hearth?’

  For a moment after he had said it, he was so frightened that his mouth dried up and he could not have spoken again if he had wanted to. And then the storm broke—into a gale of laughter, as Dumnorix the Chieftain flung up his head among the rafters, and roared. His great laughter filled the Boys’ House, so that a log fell on the hearth, and the sparks whirled upward, and even Kylan chuckled grumblingly in his deep chest, and the older boys nudged one another, grinning. But to the twelve-year-olds it was no laughing matter.

  ‘Sa sa sa! We have champions indeed!’ Dumnorix said, still laughing. ‘The good days are not gone yet, Kylan old wolf; and we shall not be without cunning champions in the Men’s side, when our time comes to sit by the fire and dream of old battles!’ And then, already turning to the low doorway, he added to the knot of silent twelve-year-olds, ‘It is in my mind that there has been enough practice for one day. Maybe now the time comes to be washing off the blood.’

  When he was gone, they looked at each other uncertainly, while the older boys turned away to their own affairs as though they no longer existed. They wondered a little, now that it was over, what it had all been about. Only Luga, still working at the loose tooth, looked as though he remembered. Then Maelgan grinned suddenly, blinking pale eyelashes, and began the drift towards the doorway and the spring below the village.

  Drem and Vortrix were the last to go, and as the drift became a scramble, Vortrix flung an arm of friendliness round Drem’s neck. He had cut his knuckles on Urian’s front teeth and a crimson trickle from the cut under Drem’s eye splashed on to his hand where it was still bleeding. They both saw it, and looked at each other. Vortrix laughed, and then grew sober, for it was no laughing matter after all. ‘See, we have mingled our blood. Now we are brothers, you and I.’

  VII

  The King-Making

  ON AN EVENING well into the Fall-of-the-Leaf, Drem came down the long flank of the Chalk towards the village. His hunting spear was over his shoulder, and he had just left Whitethroat at the foot of the home driftway. Two and a half years had gone by since the first time that he had left his hound there, to go down to the Boys’ House—two and a half years in which Drem had become the finest spearman among his fellows and a rider who could control his little fiery mount with the grip of his knees alone when he needed a hand free for his weapons—and by now it was a thing that they were both used to. It had become a definite pattern. Always, when Drem was free to hunt with him, Whitethroat would seem to know, and would refuse to go with Drustic about the farm or on the hunting trail, though at other times he went willingly enough; and when Drem and Vortrix came up through the alder brake beside the stream, he would be waiting at the foot of the driftway, smelling the wind for their coming, quivering with hope. Then he would leap up, baying, and come with great leaps and bounds down over the springy turf to fling himself upon his lord, and they would roll over together, laughing—the hound as well as the boy—Drem with his arm round Whitethroat’s neck, and Whitethroat growling and roaring in mock ferocity while all the while his bushy tail lashed to and fro behind. And then they would go off, the boys with their spears on their shoulders, the hounds—Vortrix also had his hound—padding at their heels. And when the hunting was over, Drem would bring Whitethroat up the combe again to the foot of the driftway, or sometimes even to the gateway of the steading where he might speak with his mother or Blai, though he might not cross the threshold while he was of the Boys’ House. But if he went up to the steading, Whitethroat always came down again to the foot of the driftway with him. There, by the lowest of the little ragged corn plots, was their place for parting.

  Drem and Vortrix had hunted together since that first day in the Boys’ House, the day that they had become blood brothers whether they would or no; but Vortrix was never present at these partings. Drem was one to keep his loves in separate stalls; and Vortrix, though not in general over-quick to sense such things, was wise in the ways of his blood brother, and always went back to the Boys’ House alone, while Drem ran his great, white-breasted hound back to the foot of the driftway.

  The autumn dusk was coming up blue as wood smoke across the rolling dimness of the Wild, quenching the russet flame of the forest far below, as Drem came down through the higher field plots of the village. There was a black and white flicker of plovers’ wings over the fallow, and the starlings swept homeward overhead; and already firelight was beginning to strengthen in house-place doorways. It all looked very quiet, a faint mist stealing among the huts, made up of wood smoke and the first promise of frost and the warm breath of the cattle byres. But as he drew nearer, as he came in among the crowding bothies, Drem found that it was not so quiet as it had seemed. There was a strange activity in the village that evening; a coming and going of figures dim-seen in the dusk, a fitful murmur of voices, a general air of making ready for something. And in the Boys’ House, too, when he reached it, was the same air of preparation. Vortrix, who had arrived some while before him, was squatting by the fire on which the evening stew bubbled in its great, slung cauldron, his light hunting bow lay beside him; and he was skinning the hare that he had shot that day, with an air of one attending to first things first. But the other boys of his year and Drem’s, sprawling or standing around him, were talking eagerly as they burnished cloak pin and dagger blade, and furbished their trailing pony harness as though for battle, while Kylan sat on his skin-spread stool with his spear across his knees and watched them with a bright and vigilant eye.

  ‘What is it, then?’ Drem said. ‘Is there a raid?’

  Two or three voices answered him, taking up from one another. ‘The King is gone beyond the Sunset!’

  Drem whistled. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘The runners were here when I got back,’ Vortrix sa
id, intent on his hare.

  ‘What killed him, then? He was not old?’

  Urian tested the blade of his dagger. ‘They say it was a boar. He went hunting yesterday—but it was the boar who killed, and not the King.’

  Excitement shivered through the little group. There was no sorrow in them; they had never seen the King in his high Dun, they knew from their fathers that he was a hard man and a shining warrior, and that was all. And now he was dead, gone back beyond the Sunset because of a long-tusked, red-eyed boar, turning at bay.

  ‘Now there will be a great Death Feast, and a King-Making for a new King to lead the Tribe,’ said Tuan.

  ‘A three day feast, with wrestling and foot races, and all the Men’s side gathered in the Royal Dun—’

  ‘My father says that when the last King was made,’ Maelgan put in, blinking pale eyelashes in the firelight, ‘there was so much cattle roasted that the smell of roasting fat reached from the Wild to the Great Water.’

  There was a shout of laughter. ‘That is the thing that you would care about, Fat One! . . . When Maelgan was small, they drove him down with the swine in the autumn to fatten on acorns!—Let you be careful, Maelgan, that they do not mistake you for one of the fattened porkers for the cooking pits!’

  Drem’s eye ran over the preparations that were going on, while Maelgan, who was used to being a butt, grinned peaceably. The swift excitement that was rising in the others took hold of him. ‘Is it that we also go to this feast?’

  ‘Surely.’ Old Kylan grunted, speaking for the first time. ‘Are ye not of the Chieftain’s household, hounds of the Chieftain’s pack? Let you stop asking questions now and get to making ready for the morning. It grows late, and you are away behind the others, and I’ll not have it said that any of Dumnorix’s hounds looked like a mangy flint-knapper’s cur when he followed his lord to the Death Feast and the King-Making!’

  Luga, who was burnishing a bronze bridle bit, looked up with a sneer. ‘You forget, Old Father, that Drem has always to take that most precious hound of his home, before he can come back to us in the Boys’ House. Sometimes it is in my mind, Drem One-arm, that I wonder you can bear to come back at all, leaving him behind you.’

  ‘Is it?’ Drem said, stacking his spear in the rack beside the hearth. ‘Maybe if you had more thought for your own hound, Luga, he would answer to you better on the hunting trail.’

  It was queer how long Luga could carry a grudge and still find pleasure in it, he thought, as he clattered up the ladder to the loft in the crown of the roof, and began to delve among the gear of the rest of the Boys’ House for the things that were his own. But there were other things to think about than Luga and his dark, rankling humours. He got out his brown cloak with the kingfisher stripe, which was now as much too short for him as it had been too long when his mother cut it from the loom, and his good saffron kirtle, and his belt with the bronze studs, and brought them down again. And when the evening meal was over he sat with the rest, round the fire, burnishing his dagger and the bronze belt studs, and combing and combing his hair to make it shine, as the Men’s side combed their hair. For they were almost men now, he and Vortrix and the rest. The twelve-year-olds, thrust away from the fire to shiver in the door draughts, watched them enviously. They had no need to comb their hair, they would not be going to the Death Feast and the King-Making. That was for the third year of the Chieftain’s hounds, who sat lordlywise around the fire, and talked as men, with their spear beside them.

  Next morning at first light, when the village was already seething like a pan of warming yeast with last-moment preparations, the men from the outlying steadings of the Clan began to arrive, riding their small, shaggy ponies whose harness was rich with bronze and narwhal ivory, and leading others to serve as pack beasts. Cattle were being driven in from the grazing grounds, for the Royal Dun could not feed the whole Tribe, and so every Clan would drive its own meat with it, on the hoof. Supplies were being brought out and laid before the riders, or bound on to the backs of the pack animals: barley loaves and white cakes of ewes’-milk and mares’-milk curds, and meal in sewn skins. And everywhere children and dogs were under foot; children squealing, dogs barking, ponies trampling.

  Drem had bitted and bridled his own mount—the Boys’ House did not have ponies of their own, but rode the fiery little brutes out of the Chieftain’s stable—and was standing with Vortrix near the Chieftain’s door, when a cold muzzle was thrust into his hand, and he looked down to see Whitethroat beside him with waving tail. ‘Greetings, brother!’ he said, pulling the great hound’s ears. Then to Vortrix, ‘It must be that Drustic is here.’ And at that moment Drustic rode into the crowded open space below the Chieftain’s steading, his own hounds loping among the ponies’ hooves; and a little behind him, leaving him to force their way through the throng, rode the Grandfather!

  Drem had known of course that Drustic would come, but he had not thought of the Grandfather coming with him. He let out a soundless whistle. ‘And the Old One! It must be years since he had his legs astride a pony, and he’s too old by far and far for such a journey!’

  Vortrix laughed. ‘He looks very well pleased with himself, the old Golden Eagle!’

  ‘Always he is pleased with himself,’ Drem said. ‘It is the rest of the world that he is not pleased with!’ and leading his own mount with him, he plunged into the throng, weaving his way through to join his kinsmen.

  Drustic grinned at his young brother as he came up, but he had a somewhat harassed look; and the Grandfather, seated on his bearskin that had been flung over the pony’s back for a riding rug, splendid in his beaver-skin cloak with the scarlet lining, with his best bronze bracelets on his arms and his heron-tufted war-spear in his hand, was alight with triumph. Clearly, Drem thought, there had been a battle.

  The Grandfather, it seemed, was still in something of a fighting mood, for he ignored Drem’s salutation, and said in his deep crackling voice, ‘So! You also think I am too old!’

  ‘Did I say so, my Grandfather?’ Drem said.

  ‘It looks at me out of your eyes. It looks at me out of everyone’s eyes. Aiee! I grow old indeed, and because I grow old, it is bad for me not to do as I wish! Now, I wish to see once more the full gathering of the Tribe. I wish to wear my bronze bracelets and talk with the men who stood up with me in arms when the world was young—with such as are left of them. Is it so great a thing to ask?’

  ‘It is in my mind that you are not one for asking, my Grandfather,’ Drem said, grinning, and put up his hand to caress his pony which was growing restive in the crowd. ‘And surely you are wearing your bronze bracelets, and surely you are going to the gathering to talk with whoever you wish to talk with.’

  ‘You—you were always an impudent whelp!’ the Grandfather began, shooting out his lips and his ragged brows; and then unwillingly he chuckled. ‘But it is true as you say. It is Sabra your mother’s fault: I have argued so long with that woman that now I cannot stop. Also with so much arguing, my throat is dry. Go you and bring me some barley beer instead of standing there grinning like a frog on a hot stone!’

  By the time Drem had found some barley beer and brought a cup of it to the old man, and reclaimed his own mount which he had left for the moment in charge of one of the second year boys, Dumnorix the Chieftain had come out from his house-place, burning on the grey autumn morning in his scarlet cloak and the gold-work on his arms and about his bull neck, and mounted the raven black stallion that Vortrix was holding for him before the door. The elders and the great ones of the Clan were all assembled by now; and most of them already mounted. Drem saw Talore sitting a young red mare close behind the Chieftain; Talore seeming as always very slight and dark among the tawny warriors of his kind. He saw Morvidd with a necklace of blue beads showing under his wolfskin cloak, as small and hard and bright as his hot-tempered blue eyes, and old Kylan from the Boys’ House, and the rest. Now suddenly Midir was in their midst, all men urging their ponies back from him lest any should s
tep in his shadow; Midir with the amber Sun Cross on his breast and his grey hair straggling out from under the folded eagle wings of his head-dress. The holy man settled himself on a litter of skins slung from birch poles, and was lifted on the shoulders of six runners. The great bull’s horns brayed and bellowed to the mist-pearled morning sky, and the foremost riders following the Chieftain kicked their ponies from a stand into a canter. One after another they swung in a jostling stream, away between the crowding huts of the village, then up towards the Ridgeway that followed the crest of the Chalk from Sunrise to Sunset. And behind them rode Drem and the other boys, with their dogs running among them, driving the lowing, wild-eyed cattle.

  All that day they followed the ancient green ridgeway along the High Chalk, with their faces towards Sunset, the Wild falling away below them on the Sword side; and on the Shield side, wherever the long upland ridges fell back, the far off shining line of the Great Water—only for Drem it was the other way round, because he used sword and spear left handed, and carried his shield, when he must carry one for appearance, on a harness over his right shoulder; and so when anyone said ‘Shield side’ or ‘Sword side’ he had to turn the things round in his mind.