by Henry Treece
So they faced one another, with only five paces between them, and were silent for a time. Then Wander said very bravely, ‘What have you come for; Are there no more fish in the sea?’
Shark grinned worse than ever and said, ‘There are always fish in our sea. We do not go hungry like other folk. We are a lucky folk and a brave folk. Have you not heard?’
Wander said in her firm voice, ‘I have heard many things of you and not many of them are good. What have you come for?’
Shark laughed back at his clustered war-men then said, ‘We have heard of the pretty things you have here. We have heard of the one who makes them and who brings luck on your village. So we have come for the pretty things and also for the man. We shall take the things and the man back with us and shall hurt no one. If you will not give them up, we shall take them just the same, but we shall do other things as well, and you will not like what we do to you and to your village.’
Then Twilight felt all the River Folk looking at him, so he spoke up at last and said, ‘If you take the things away, their luck will leave them and you will bring sadness on your village. And if you take me away I shall not be able to work for you. I shall not be happy with you and so I shall forget my magic. It will be a bad bargain for all of us.’
Shark said, ‘You are braver now than when we met before.’ He pretended to throw his axe at Twilight, but Twilight stood his ground before all the folk and did not move. Shark looked angry at this. No one outfaced him usually. He said roughly, ‘When I speak, all the folk listen. I do not like it when a crippled fellow from inland stands against me with words. I shall take the things and you also. We will test your words then. If the things bring us bad luck, we will throw them into the sea, and the bad luck will end. And if you will not work for us, then we will see that you work for no one at all, for we shall hold your hands in the fire until they are burned sticks. What have you to say to that, lame one?’
Now all the River Folk gazed at Twilight and he suddenly forgot his fear. He turned to Adder and said, ‘Lend me your spear, brother. The talk is ended. Who can expect a sea monster to understand the wisdom of men?’
8.
at first there was a heavy silence, then suddenly Shark began to laugh and all his war-men joined him, bending and slapping their thighs. Even the River Folk laughed a little, but most of them did it behind their hands.
Adder said, ‘I will go in your place, Twilight. I might last a little longer against this man.’
But Twilight put on a hard face and said, ‘Did you not hear me? Give me your spear. Why should you die for me? I did not ask you to.’
Adder gave him the spear and Twilight glanced round to see where there was space for him to move back when Shark rushed at him with that terrible axe.
He set himself, with one leg well behind the other, to keep his balance, then he said, ‘Let us begin, if we are going to.’
Shark was still laughing and the water was running out of his pale eyes on to his brown cheeks. He stopped laughing suddenly and ran at Twilight without any warning. But Twilight had the luck to get his spear up and pointed at Shark’s chest, and this stopped the rush. Shark looked at the little wound in surprise and put his left hand to it to feel how deep it was. Then he became very angry and started to yell. Twilight felt quite sorry at what he had done, but he did not have much time to feel like that because Shark had dodged round the spear and had struck out with the bone axe. Twilight saw it coming but could not step aside fast enough. Shark was so angry that he did not aim well and the slippery handle turned in his hand so that it was the flat side of the axe that hit Twilight in the ribs and not the keen edge. It knocked the breath out of him, but did not cut him. Now he was so furious that he forgot all fear and all sorrow, and before Shark could strike again, he poked the spear point at Shark’s legs. Shark shouted out and began to hop round, saying what he would do in a moment. He even put his axe under his left arm so that he could bend and look at the cut in his knee. And as he did this, Adder whispered, ‘Now, Twilight, now you can have him.’
Then Twilight poked out again and this time missed Shark, but knocked the axe on to the ground.
‘Now, now, now!’ the River Folk yelled.
But Twilight felt all the anger go out of him and he could not do it. He was suddenly shocked when Wander stepped forward and swept her foot out, knocking Shark off balance. And then Adder snatched back the spear and pushed it through the Fish chieftain into the ground.
Everyone began to scream out then, and the River Folk swarmed all over the enemy. Even the women and children hung on to arms and legs while the warmen used their spears and axes.
And when it was over, Fish Folk lay sprawled from the village gate across the barley field and right to the river reeds where their boats still waited.
Adder said laughing, ‘They will not need their boats again. We shall use them. You did well today, Twilight. Now we have a war-chief among us. You did not tell us that you could fight as well as make brooches.’
Wander said, ‘Go away, Adder, and see that all the Fish men are thrown into the river. It will carry them away from us. I do not want to see any more of them.’
Twilight said, ‘I am so sick at what I have done I shall never take up a spear again. What I have done will stop me from making pretty things again. I did not know that I was such a bad man.’
Wander said, ‘You are not a bad man. It had to be done and you were the only man who would dare do it. It is not a bad man who saves our folk as you have done. Now I have seen what sort of man you are, I am willing to kneel before you in front of the folk and call you my master. Then this tribe will be yours, and if you will take my hand, I will be your slave. I will cook your food and sew the hides to make clothes for you. You shall live in my house and call it your own.’
Twilight shook his head and said, ‘You are the woman here. I am a stranger and no more. My teeth are chattering and my legs are shaking. How can you call me your master? I do not like myself now. I feel too sick to eat. I am worth nothing now.’
But Adder came back from the river and said, ‘You are worth everything to us. No one has a chieftain like you. We shall take the boats and go down the river to the place of the Fish Folk. There will only be the old men and the women there now that we have put their warriors into the water. So we shall wipe them out and then our folk will never have anyone to fear again. You have brought this happiness to us, and you shall lead us in the boats to destroy them for ever.’
9.
they set off before the dusk came down. Wander went in the same boat as Twilight. Adder led the rest of the war-men. Wander would not let Twilight paddle the boat, but did it herself in homage to him. He tried to say that he would not go, but they would not listen to him. And that night they pulled in to the river bank close to where it met the sea. The next morning, before dawn, they rose silently and went on their way down the coast. Before the sun had got to its full strength they came in to the little haven where the village of the Fish Folk was. The Fish Folk thought that their own men were coming back, and ran down the shore to meet them.
Then they saw who it was and started to cry out and throw sand on to their heads. Some of the old men and women rolled on the shore in misery and stuffed shells and seaweed into their mouths. They were most afraid.
Adder called out for Twilight to let the war-men rush up and spear them as they lay, but Twilight said, ‘No, they are suffering enough in their sadness. I am not the one to make them suffer more. Would you want your own old folk and women hurt?’
Wander said in a hard voice, ‘You would wipe out a pack of wolves, wouldn’t you? Would the Fish men have shown us any kindness? You will gain no love from these people by sparing them. They will not think you are a greater chieftain.’
Twilight said, ‘I do not care what they think. I do not want anyone to love me because I spare their lives.’
Just then a group of the young women came down the shore with ash on their heads, wailing, and Twil
ight saw that the one who led them was Blackbird. She did not know him for a time, and when she did she stood before him with her head bowed, waiting for him to have her speared.
He went closer to her and said, ‘There is no cause to be afraid of me, Blackbird. Once you took care of me and led me through the forest safely. I could not hurt you after that.’
He smiled at her, but she did not smile back. She said, ‘I left you on the shore here and went with Shark. You should punish me for that. I deserve it, so punish me.’
But Twilight took her by the hand and said, ‘I do not think of it. Shark forced you to go. All has turned out well, so why should you think of it? Tell me, where is the clay owl I made for you when we were wandering together?’
Blackbird said, ‘Shark would not let me wear it. He said it was too strong in magic for a girl like me. He put it on the shelf in his house to be prayed to and to bring luck to his folk.’
Wander said in scorn, ‘It has not brought much luck. You might have been better off without it.’ She did not like Blackbird.
Then she turned to Twilight and said, ‘Who is to kill her, you or me? Some offering must be made for our good luck, or we shall have no more of it and our folk will not love you any longer. If you will not do it, give me the spear and I will do it.’
Then Twilight got very angry and said, ‘How many
times must I tell you that there is to be no killing? If you speak of it again I shall walk over the hill and leave your tribe for ever. Killing must stop between tribes.’
When he said this, Wander looked at him very strangely. Then she turned and glanced at Adder and they seemed to nod to each other. But neither of them spoke and Twilight took no more notice of them. Instead, he told the women and old folk that they would be safe and need not wail and roll about on the shore any longer.
A few of the youngest war-men of the River Folk grumbled at this and made fierce faces, but Adder went among them and quietened them down. They whispered together for a while, then began to search the houses to see what they could find.
Not even Twilight could stop them from doing this, for it was the oldest custom and could not be broken.
But he saw to it that Blackbird got her owl back. Though when Wander saw it hanging round the girl’s neck she said, ‘Why did you never make one of those for me? I like this more than anything you have made for me. Tell the girl she must give it to me. I want it and I am the Woman of the tribe.’
Twilight said, ‘I will make one for you, but the girl has a right to this one. It was made for her, and only for her.’
Wander frowned and said, ‘This girl has no rights at all. She is my slave now, and I shall see that she does what I say, or she will suffer. All the bravery seems to have gone out of you, Twilight. You are not the man I thought you were.’
Suddenly Wander stepped forward and grasped at the clay owl on the thong. Blackbird cried out and tried to stop her, but she was not quick enough or strong enough. Then Wander found that the soft clay had broken in her hand. She flung it into the sea in anger and said, ‘That was your fault, girl. You shall be whipped for not giving it to me when I asked for it.’
Blackbird began to weep then. Twilight said, ‘Wander, the fault was yours, not Blackbird’s. It is foolish for two women to quarrel over a little clay owl. Look, tomorrow I will go inland and find where there is clay. And I will make one for each of you. Then there will be no more tears and anger.’
Wander said, ‘Then you must see that the one you make for me is prettier than hers. A slave must not wear a prettier thing than her mistress.’
By then Twilight was so weary that he said no more, but went to the men’s longhouse under the cliff and lay down to sleep on a bracken bed.
the next morning he set off inland and followed a small brook. At last it led him to a shallow pool where there was clay. So he sat down in the sunshine and made two owls. He saw to it that they were shaped exactly alike and that each was as good as the other. As he made them he thought how much quicker his fingers were now at moulding things than they had been when he first tried. By evening the owls were dried out, so he put them in his pouch and loped back across the moorland towards the shore. He thought he would put the lamp-black and hoof glue on them tomorrow, for he was not yet very good at making fires.
He was quite happy, running in the late sunlight, and he made up a little song to keep time to his running.
‘Oak and ash and holly and thorn,
In spring the bleating lambs are born;
Thorn and holly and ash and oak,
In winter their wool will clothe the folk.’
It was not a very good song, he thought, but it was better than nothing for running to, and it seemed to help his stiff leg along. He had not tried to make songs before and now he wondered if he could get to be as good at songs as he was at making shapes. He dreamed himself standing up by the hearth fire in the blackness of winter when there was nothing to do, when folk were waiting for the sun to come again so that they could go out into the field and scratch the earth with pointed sticks and then scatter the grain into the furrows. He thought how much the folk might like to hear his songs then, under the rush lights and with the snow piled up outside the door. Songs would make the folk merry and would help to pass the dark time along.
He was still thinking these things when he came to the cliff edge and looked down in horror at the shore below. The houses were still smouldering, and old folk and women lay about among the rocks. Some of them sprawled with their heads in the sea, being pushed up and down as the water came in and went out again. There was blood on them.
He scrambled down the loose shale and ran from place to place. There was no one to answer him. The River folk had all gone. Those folk who were left would not speak again.
Then he knew why the young war-men had whispered to one another and he felt very angry with them. He felt angry with Wander and Adder as well. They must have ordered this to be done.
Then he stopped being angry and grew afraid in case Blackbird lay among those on the shore. He went from one to the other, but could not find her.
After a while he sat on a flat rock wondering what to do next. They had not left any round boats behind and the only way he knew to get to the village by the river was along the shore in a boat. He could not think how you would get there going on foot inland.
He wished he had not gone away to find clay for the owls. Then he got angry with the owls for causing this, and took them from his pouch and ground them back to dust under his foot. But when he had done this he felt very foolish because he had taken such trouble to shape them well, and might never make anything as good again. He felt as sad as when he had first put the spear-stick into Shark that day, only sad in another way. He did not like spoiling anything, whether he had made it or not.
He did not dare stay in the village that night, with all the old folk and women and children lying about in silence. So he went back up the cliff and found a tree to get into, away from wolves. He did not sleep much that night, because he kept thinking that he was the cause of what had happened down on the shore. If he had not left the village he could have stopped the war-men from doing it.
Sometimes as he sat in the fork of the tree his running song came back into his head; but it was not very pleasing now. It gave him no happiness at all. He wished he had not made it, because it sounded a bad song to be thinking of when you remembered all the stiff folk lying in the sea with their houses burned down.
Once in the darkness a beast stopped under the tree and began to sniff up at him. He tried to smell what beast it was, but the wind blew the wrong way and he could only guess that it was some sort of cat because it spent a long time howling and sharpening its claws. And when he heard this he became very afraid, because a beast with claws could climb up into the trees and drag men down. At first he thought he should go higher up the tree, to where the thin branches were and where a big beast could not walk. But he was too frightened to move, and before
dawn the beast went away, howling and grunting and scratching at the turf in anger.
When it was clear daylight he came down the tree and set off towards some woods that looked a misty blue in the sunshine. He thought the river might lie beyond the woods and that he might find Blackbird there.
10.
it was a thick wood and he was only in the middle of it when the dusk came again. That day he ate only some red berries off a bush, but he found a stream where the water was clear and sweet, so he did not go thirsty. Sometimes in the village where he was born the warmen would go for three days without eating when they were on their way to another village for a raid. But they had to have water to drink, or they would have died, they said. When they got to be very hungry on a raid, they would chew the bark of a tree. And when they got very thirsty and there was no water they would suck a smooth round pebble.
Twilight thought of these things in the deep wood. He looked round for a tree to climb into, but they were all so straight and tall, and their lowest branches were too high for him to reach. He became very frightened then and wished he knew how to make fire so that the red flames would keep the beasts away in the night. He tried to strike sparks off the stones that lay about, but he only knocked the skin off his knuckles. He thought how clever women were, to know how to make fire even from the time when they were little girls, almost too young to talk. He broke a young holly tree down and tore off all the side shoots. Then he bit at the end of it to make a spear-stick. It was not a very good one and would not have hurt a hare, much less a strong wolf with a thick hide. But he thought that if a wolf came and saw it in his hand, the wolf might think it was sharper than it was, and go away.
