Warrior Scarlet

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  So winter came, and in the long dark nights the shepherds huddled close about the fire in the turf bothie, with their sheepskin or wolfskin cloaks drawn close about them, listening, as somehow one never seemed to listen in the summer, to the great loneliness of the Chalk beyond the firelight. It was an open winter at first, a winter of gales and rain, but not cold, and there was little danger to the folded sheep from their ancient enemy; and the midwinter fires of the Golden People had burned out, and it was within a moon of the start of lambing time when the first hard frosts came.

  A few nights later, they were huddled round the fire in the smoke-filled bothie, over the evening meal of barley stirabout and broiled deer meat—Drem and Whitethroat had been hunting. They were all there save Flann, who had a woman among the little green hovels of the Half People, and so was often missing when winter brought flocks and shepherds alike down to the lower pastures. Drem, who had finished eating, was polishing a new spear shaft with a piece of sandstone. The white ashen shaft came up silvery pale and smooth in the firelight; the rubbing stone, crumbling a little under his fingers, shed an occasional trickle of yellow sand, like pollen, like dust of gold, into the lap of his sheepskin mantle. From time to time he glanced across through the smoke at Erp and the girl who had cooked the evening meal. More than once, that particular girl had come up, in the past moon, and Erp had bought her a necklace of jet and blue glass beads, paying an otter skin for it to the trader. She showed her teeth like a young vixen when he sat too near her; but she was wearing the necklace. Drem could see it in the opening of her sheepskin. Pretty it was, with little blue sparks where the firelight caught the glass beads.

  Drem shifted his hold on the spear shaft under his arm to come at another length of it; and drew closer to the fire, though his shins were scorching under the cross-bound deerskin leggings. That was always the way in frost or wind, one’s front scorched and one’s shoulders froze. He hunched deeper into his cloak, and said, because he was tired of the silence: ‘See, the fire burns red all through. There is a frost tonight.’

  Hunno looked up from the piece of rib that he was chewing. ‘I should know that without a fire to tell me,’ he growled, ‘by the gash that I carry here in my shin where the she-wolf caught me seven winters ago. Always it aches in a frost.’

  And in that moment, as though the mention of wolf had been a spell, first one and then another of the dogs pricked its ears and growled softly. Old Doli raised his head to listen. ‘So. It comes,’ he said. ‘Always it comes; later in some winters than others, but always it comes.’

  Drem listened, aware of Whitethroat suddenly tense and quivering beside him. They all listened, dogs and men alike, hearing afar off in the starry darkness the long-drawn, desolate, cry of the wolves on the hunting trail.

  ‘So, the time comes to be keeping the Wolf Guard,’ Hunno said.

  It was the thing that Drem had been dreading; knowing that it must come, yet unable to bring himself to face it. The Wolf Guard would bring his brother Drustic, and the young warriors who had been boys with him in the Boys’ House—and Vortrix. At shearing time he had not had to face that fear, for the Men’s side did not concern themselves greatly with the sheep shearing, considering it work only for the women and the Half People; but the Wolf Guard was another matter, that was man’s work, and all must take their turn when the wolves hunted among the sheep runs and the lambing time drew near.

  The rubbing stone slipped in Drem’s fingers, a jagged angle of it making a long score in the silvery smoothness of his new spear shaft, and he cursed with the small, bitter, adder’s-tongue curses of the Dark People.

  So the men of the Tribe stood the Wolf Guard with the men of the Half People, through the long bitter nights that followed. Men who had been great warriors and hunters before Drem was born, men who had been boys with him only a year ago.

  He did not mind the older men so bitterly—even Talore, who never tried to speak with him, but set a hand on his shoulder once in passing, as he bent over a sick ewe. But his own fellows he minded with a minding that cringed in his belly. They talked easily enough with Doli and the Half People, squatting round the fire that had been built at the mouth of each fold, easily and with no sense of barriers between; there had been no barrier between Drem and the Half People before the Grandfather raised it, six summers ago. But they did not know how to speak to Drem, nor he to them; their eyes slid away from meeting; and in the end they pretended, both he and they, not to see each other. Even when Drustic came, they pretended not to see each other. It was better that way.

  As yet, Vortrix had not come at all.

  At least, when lambing began, Drem had plenty of work to fill in days and nights, and that helped. Never a night went by for the next two moons or more, that several lambs were not born in it; and all the while the ewes must be watched and tended, the lambing pens constantly crossed and re-crossed to keep a look-out for trouble. When there was a moon it was easier, with the silver light to see by; in the darkness there was only the ewe’s bleating, and your own hands—hand—to tell you when she was in trouble; and then she must be got down to the fire, where there was light to work by, for you could not carry a torch among them without frightening the whole flock. And trouble came more and more often as the time went by, and the winter shortage began to tell on the ewes. There were foolish ones too, who would drop their lambs in the trampled fern and wander away; that also was a thing that must be watched for, for a lamb left long to lie on the frozen ground was a lamb dead. Then there were lambs who lived though the ewe died, and must be reared beside the bothie fire, cared for as a woman cares for a babe, until maybe they could be given to a ewe who had lost her lamb. Yes, there was work enough for Drem as for all the shepherd kind, now that the lambing time was here.

  On a night midway through the lambing season, Drem squatted with Hunno beside the fold fire, working over a straining ewe, while the men of the Wolf Guard leaned on their spears and looked on. It was a bitter night, with a shrill north-east wind blowing, and snow whirling down the gusts; snow that became visible like a cloud of eddying and swirling feathers as it entered the firelight. They had got the ewe close in against the turf wall for whatever shelter there was, but even there the snow reached her, pale-freckling her fleece that the wind parted in zigzag lines. But Drem doubted whether she felt it. He doubted whether she felt anything clearly, any more. She was beautiful, too. Sheep had ceased to be just sheep to Drem by that time, and he had begun to see them as the shepherd kind saw them, as he saw men and women; this one beautiful and that one sour-faced, this one cross grained and that one placid. Beautiful and proud she was, but old Doli had said for some time that it would go hard with her when the lamb came.

  And now the lamb was here; a fine little black-faced ram lamb limp and sprawling on the handful of brown bracken fronds that they had hastily spread to keep it from lying on the snow; and they left it to itself for the moment while they turned themselves to do what they could for the ewe. Small, surely Hunno rose and turned to the fire for the barley gruel that was warming beside it. But the ewe was already stretching herself out.

  Drem leaned over her. ‘Quickly, Hunno!’

  And then Hunno was kneeling beside him again, with the bowl in his hands, and the growling gentleness in his voice that was only there when he spoke to a sick sheep, and never for his own kind. ‘So now, the work is over. Now gruel, my girl.’

  The ewe seemed to know that they were trying to help her, and raised her head a little. But a shudder ran through her under Drem’s hand, and her head fell back on to the snow. And they were left, Drem and Hunno, as they had been left before, with a lamb flickering into life, and a dead ewe between them.

  It had happened before, and each time Drem had hated it, but tonight, perhaps because he had actually felt the shudder that was the life going out of her under his hand, perhaps because she had been proud and beautiful like the great swan that had been his first kill, he hated it more than ever; and the old wailing b
ewilderment rose in him, crying out to know where the life had gone to . . . but it was no time to be asking such questions, with the movements of the lamb already growing fainter.

  ‘Sa, the thing is over,’ Hunno said, setting down the gruel with a slow, expressive shrug. ‘Let you take the lamb down to the bothie before it goes the same way. I must see how it is with the speckled one with the torn ear.’

  So, carrying the lamb like a mere rag of wet wool trailing from his hand, Drem made his way across to the bothie that looked more than ever like a little knoll of the hillside, with the snow to muffle its outlines. The bothie was empty but the fire burned low and red, and a crock of ewe milk stood ready as always in the lambing season. Drem set the lamb down on the spread fern beside the hearth, and left it to be licked and nuzzled by Whitethroat, who, though no sheep dog, seemed to have the love of all small and young things that some very big dogs possess, and an instinctive feeling for what to do with a new-born lamb, while he set some of the milk to warm in a bronze pipkin, and with fingers numb with cold brought out from the dark recesses of the bothie the feeding bottle of stitched sheepskin, and a short length of elder twig with the pith scraped out. When the milk was warm, he poured it into the bottle, wrapped the elder twig in a scrap of rag so that it would be soft and the lamb might be persuaded to suck on it, and pushed it into the neck of the bottle; then, taking the lamb from Whitethroat, he settled down beside the fire, with the little creature against his knee, to the business of getting it to suck.

  Patience never came easily to Drem, but he had more patience with animals than he had with people; and besides, he was learning. He was learning many things, those days and nights. Again and again he dipped his fingers into the drops of warm milk left at the bottom of the pipkin, and painted the lamb’s mouth with them; again and again the little thing wavered its head away, or merely lay there making no response whatever. But it was stronger; he was sure that it was stronger. That was Whitethroat’s licking and the warmth of the fire. Little sprawling tremors began to run through it; and then quite suddenly the battle was won, and it began to suck. ‘Sa, that is the way of it, small one,’ Drem said, and dipped his fingers again in the warm drops and gave them once more to the little sucking mouth, and then hastily took up the feeding bottle; and the lamb butted at it as though it was its mother’s flank.

  It was half standing against Drem’s knee, its tail awag behind it as it sucked, while Whitethroat looked on with prick-eared interest, when old Doli came ducking down the entrance step, with the snow thick in his sheepskin mantle. Drem looked up with a kind of wry triumph. ‘If we are no good for anything else, Whitethroat and I, at the least we do well enough in the place of a dead ewe.’

  The old man crouched down beside the fire, taking in the little scene with those shrewd, weatherwise eyes of his. ‘There are worse things for a man or a hound to do well at,’ he said.

  The next night it happened the other way round; a lamb dropped in the snow that no skill even of old Doli could stir to life, and a ewe was left bleating pitifully without understanding. Drem went across to the shepherd’s bothie with the dead lamb hanging from his hand as yesterday the living one had done. And there, leaning against the squat roof tree, with a barley bannock in one hand, the firelight flickering upwards warmly saffron over his square, bandy-legged figure and steady face, was Vortrix.

  Drem checked an instant, crouching in the low doorway, and as he did so, Vortrix’s head went up; and for a long moment their eyes met through the drifting, firelit smoke, while Erp and Hunno looked on.

  It seemed to Drem that there was a pain, a physical, dragging pain, under his breast bone. Then, deliberately, as Vortrix made the beginning of a movement towards him, he turned away, as he had done from the others of his kind. Only this was not just another of his kind, this was Vortrix, with warrior patterns blue upon his breast; and the sudden wild weeping rose against the base of his throat as he bent to the next thing he had to do.

  Laying the dead lamb down beside the fire, and thrusting away Whitethroat’s exploring nose with a, ‘Na na, brother, not this time,’ he drew the knife from his belt.

  ‘The ewe?’ Hunno grunted.

  ‘It is well enough with the ewe,’ Drem said, and his voice sounded hoarse and heavy in his own ears, as he set about the task of skinning the dead lamb.

  ‘You will give her the other one in its place, then?’ Hunno jerked his head towards where last night’s motherless lamb slept curled into a little grey hummock against the wall.

  Drem nodded and went on with his task. Hunter though he was, he had never found an easy way to skin an animal one handed. It would have been much simpler to pass the task over, lordlywise, to Erp. The other boy would have done it for him, he knew, though he was in the middle of his evening bannock. But if he did that, he would have no excuse to keep his head bent over his hand; he would have to look up. He did look up once, and saw Vortrix watching him, the bannock still untouched in his hand. Then he bent his head again over his flaying-knife.

  When the skin was off he did turn to Erp. ‘Bring the small one and help me get him into it.’

  So Erp brought the live lamb, bleating in scared protest, and between them they worked his back legs into the pelt of the dead one; then his forelegs, finally drawing up the head over his own like a little hood. Hunno laughed, and little dark Erp laughed; there was always something funny in the sight of a lamb wearing another lamb’s skin over its own; and the little creature’s shrill, indignant clamour made them laugh the more. Only Drem, tying the skin lightly at neck and belly to keep it in place, did not laugh; nor did Vortrix, looking down on them from his stance against the roof tree.

  When the thing was done, Hunno tossed a bannock towards him, saying, ‘Best eat before you take it out.’

  Drem shook his head, and left the bannock. ‘Later, maybe.’ He got up without looking again at Vortrix, and carrying the living lamb in the pelt of the dead one, shouldered out blindly into the grey, snow-lit darkness.

  He went down, Whitethroat as always at his heels, through the big lambing enclosures, parting the ewes and turning them aside with his knee where they were most densely packed, until he found the ewe he sought. The ewe was restless, calling for her lamb. He set his small burden down beside her, and stood to see that all was well. The little creature staggered to its feet, bleating, and made instinctively for the warm woolly flank that meant milk. The ewe swung her head and sniffed at it, suspiciously; but the smell was the smell of her own lamb; all was well. Seemingly quite satisfied, she stood, passive and peaceful, while the fosterling, accepted as her own, butted at her flank to make the warm milk flow faster. Both of them were perfectly content.

  If only there was as simple a cure for all ills, Drem thought dully, and turned away, holding himself bent a little as though to ease the ache of a physical wound.

  Another figure, short and bandy-legged and dearly familiar even in the darkness, had come down towards him through the sheep, and Vortrix’s voice said, ‘They are happy now.’

  ‘They are happy now,’ Drem echoed. He drew a quick breath. ‘Why have you come down after me?’

  ‘You left your bannock lying,’ Vortrix said. ‘Therefore I have brought it down to you. Why did you turn from me as from a stranger, up yonder in the bothie?’

  ‘Maybe because I was a fool,’ said Drem wearily. ‘I am tired of things that hurt in my belly.’ And he took the bannock that the other held out to him in the darkness, and began to eat; but the bannock seemed to be made of dust instead of barley meal, and his stomach revolted at it though he was wolf hungry.

  ‘I also. I am tired of things that hurt in my belly,’ Vortrix said.

  Wading through the grey, huddled shapes of the flock, they had come out to the opening of the great fold, and stood together, looking away down the curve of the snowbound valley. It was a very still night, still with the brittle, waiting stillness of hard frost. The seven stars of the Great Hunter seemed to hang out of the sky, p
ulsing with cold fires; the Great Hunter, swaggering as he always swaggered, above the pale shoulder of the snow-covered downs. Far off in the distance a wolf howled, and the sheep stirred uneasily, and were quiet again, their breath and the warmth of their bodies making a faint smoke in the starlight. With their backs to the fire beside the fold opening, Drem and Vortrix might have been the only living men in a frozen and forgotten world.

  They were standing very close, and Vortrix brought up his arm and laid it across his blood brother’s shoulders. Drem felt the warm weight of it through the thick rough sheepskin of his mantle, and let it lie there. But the gulf was between them, nevertheless, and neither of them could cross it to the other’s side.

  ‘How is it with you, my brother?’ Vortrix asked, very quietly, in a while.

  ‘It is well enough with me,’ Drem said. ‘I have let go my own kind, and I hunt with the Dark People in all things now.’

  ‘Is it truly so?—in all things?’

  There was a long silence, and again, far off among the woods that lay dark and soft like furs flung across the whitened hills, the wolf cried, and again the sheep stirred in the fold, snorting and stamping. Then Drem said, ‘Na, we cannot think with one mind, the Dark People and I. We speak the same words but they do not mean the same things. We laugh together, but I do not know the things that stir behind their eyes. Maybe one day I shall learn . . .’ He turned to Vortrix. ‘And with you? How is it with you?’