The Stone Arrow Read online

  THE STONE ARROW

  Richard Herley

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  – Richard Herley

  THE STONE ARROW

  Copyright © Richard Herley 1978

  The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published by Peter Davies Ltd, London, 1978

  Revised for electronic publication, 2008

  This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California 94105, USA.

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  THE STONE ARROW

  Tagart came out of the woods and stood facing the broad downhill sweep of the cereal field. The feeling of openness seemed strange and sudden after the embrace of the trees; he sniffed at the smell of the evening, almost cloudless now after the storm, a soft wind coming off the sea, bending the stunted ears of barley, fluttering the leaves of hazel and whitebeam.

  A hundred yards away the labourer stood upright and leaned on the handle of his mattock. He had only just become aware of another’s presence; yet Tagart had heard the man at work minutes ago, from the depths of the wood, whose floor he had traversed without so much as the snap of a twig.

  Tagart, or Tugart, or Tergart, was twenty-five years of age, tall and fine in the face, with dark hair and watchful brown eyes that knew the value of patience. His skin – for it was now the height of summer – was well tanned, his frame hard-muscled and long-limbed, with an economy of movement that seemed like slowness to those who had never been with him in the woods and tried to keep up.

  Chance had endowed him with a keen intelligence which the teachings of his elders had turned into solid skill and a command of the necessary knowledge. Of all the young men in his tribe, it was Tagart who had been regarded as successor to the leader, Tagart who had taken the most desirable bride, Tagart whose small son would in turn one day be chief; and Tagart whom the others were beginning to look upon with more and more respect and affection as each season passed.

  But now, in the course of a single night, all that had changed. Everything changed; everything raped and defiled.

  Not quite everything. Tagart was still alive. He was still alive, and behind the grief he was still himself.

  It was time to begin.

  “I come in friendship,” he called out, leaving the safety of the trees and starting across the field.

  The labourer, a short, stumpy man, did not answer. He stood shielding his eyes against the west, his right hand taking a firmer grasp on the polished ashwood haft of his mattock.

  Tagart went on. In the edge of his vision he was making a second survey of the field, making certain that he and the labourer were alone. The farmers’ village, which he had studied the previous day, was a cluster of stone and timber buildings inside a wooden palisade, hidden from this field by the rise of the land. It was only a quarter of a mile away, too close, asking for trouble; but then he’d had no choice. He had been forced into the open by the shape of the forest and by the way the fields sloped. Without revealing himself there had been no way to be sure that the labourer was alone, and to have wasted such an opportunity would have been madness. So he had accepted the risk. But that did not stop the tingling between his shoulder-blades, nor an almost irresistible urge to check more overtly behind and to the sides.

  He halted, just beyond the swing of the mattock, and forced a smile. “The soil needs more rain than this. After the drought she drinks it like a pigeon.”

  The farmer said nothing. He stood impassive, expressionless. His broad shoulders filled a stained and streaked doeskin jacket; his beaver leggings were bound by thongs; mud caked his crudely carved clogs. A talisman of some sort hung round his neck, a flat stone striped with bands of cream and maroon, held by a cord that passed through a hole drilled off-centre. Greasy brown locks showed beneath a hare’s-skin cap and hung in a tangle at his neck. Years of weather had left his skin leathery and his eyes wrinkled almost shut; his was a face devoid of animation or humour, the kind of face under a low forehead that frowns blankly as the brain behind it struggles to assimilate something new. Clearly the man was low in the order of the village, sent out to the fields to do some trivial task on his own. He had been digging up stones and heaping them to one side. This was the kind of work reserved for those at the bottom of the village hierarchy.

  “I have come along the coast from Valdoe,” Tagart told him, speaking more distinctly. He indicated his leather pouch. “My master wishes an exchange of barleys.”

  The farmer’s eyes flicked to the pouch, and back to Tagart’s face.

  “I see barley is your crop here on this acre.”

  No reaction.

  “I was told to ask for a man with no beard,” Tagart said. “A man of importance in your village. Do you know him?”

  The farmer grunted. There was no meaning in it.

  “Is he your head man? Will you take me to him? I want to talk trade.”

  The labourer took his hand from his brow and changed position so that he was no longer facing the sun. He nodded at Tagart’s pouch.

  “Seed barley,” Tagart said, holding the pouch forward.

  The offer was disregarded. “You say you come along the coast.”

  “From Valdoe.”

  “From Valdoe?” For the first time he showed a sign of interest. It was as if Tagart had not already mentioned the word. “Valdoe? From Valdoe? Are you sent by the Flint Lord?”

  “By my master, one of the Trundlemen.”

  “And he sent you trading barley?”

  “Yes.”

  The farmer’s eyes narrowed even more. “You will know the flint sellers. They will be here soon: it is time for their trade. Fallott, Bico, and the rest.”

  “My trade is not in flints,” Tagart said. “It is in seed.” More mildly he added, “There are many at Valdoe. A mere slave cannot know them all.”

  “You are enslaved?”

  “Building my freedom.”

  “Why go back? You are far from the Trundle. They could never catch up.”

  “That is not my way,” Tagart said. “My master trusts me and I am grateful.”

  The farmer forbore from comment. He turned and took a long look to the west, across the curving line of the field, beyond the distant green scrub on the clifftops, to the golden path where the sun was coming down on the sea. The wind pushed wisps of hair at the sides of his face. Tagart heard corn buntings and skylarks, and glimpsed the flash of a jay as it emerged from and returned to the security of the wood. He swayed slightly. Exhaustion was threatening to overtake him. His body wanted to sag to the ground. Sections of his mind were faltering. He was aware that his strength was draining away. With its loss came a fear that he might be left with too little when the moment arrived. He had stupidly eaten nothing that day, and the day before he had felt too ill to contemplate food. His guts had been emptied anyway, in the grey wet dawn with his arms and legs covered in ashes, slime, and blood, the back of his throat burning and his eyes watering with each useless retch as he had crouched beside their bodies on the riverbank.

  His mind drew back. He must not think of them. Not of them. Not of honour. He must think only of the immediat
e, the practical, what had to be accomplished in each moment. Only thus could he see it through.

  Fleetingly the whole vista stretched before and behind. The end of it was unimportant, his fate a mere contingency as long as he got through the next few days intact; for all but that, he was already dead.

  “You must talk to Sturmer,” the labourer said.

  “Sturmer? Is he your chief? A man with no beard?”

  “Sturmer does our trading.”

  “Will you take me to him?”

  “I will not. We have rules.” The labourer scratched his chin. “You say you bring seed. What of it? Our barns are full of seed.”

  “This is different,” Tagart said. “My master wants a barley for the sea wind; the Flint Lord desires new ground opened up along the coast.”

  “So you were sent to villages by the sea to trade. But why should we give our secrets to the Flint Lord? If he wants them he must pay, as we must pay for the things his traders bring. Flints, livestock, salt – these are the things we want. Of barley we have plenty.”

  “No – this seed is different. It’s special.” Tagart pointed to the south. “It comes from there, across the water. The yield is double.”

  “Double.”

  “That is what my master says, sir.”

  “Not possible.”

  “It must be possible or the Valdoe farmers would not sow it by the score of bushels.”

  “Show it to me.”

  “There is nothing to be gained by that.”

  “Show me.”

  “My master said I was only to offer it to a head man. Take me to Sturmer. I will talk with him.”

  “Show me.” The labourer stretched out a hand. “Show me or be on your way.”

  “I should not do this.”

  The labourer impatiently waggled his fingers. Tagart gave him the pouch, which was tied at the neck with a drawstring. Two hands were needed to get it open.

  Seeing this, the labourer tried to loosen the string while keeping a grip on his mattock-handle, picking with a fingernail at the bunched leather, which Tagart had drawn especially tight before leaving the woods. After a few fruitless moments, aware that he would make himself look foolish by asking Tagart to open the bag, the labourer released the mattock, lodging the handle in his armpit, and freed both hands for the job.

  That was instant Tagart chose to kill him.

  Later, Tagart had time to wonder what went wrong. It may have been weariness, making him slow. He was not sure. He knew only that the man had put up a struggle which had made his end more difficult than it ought to have been.

  When it was done, Tagart searched the body for personal effects. With his flint knife he cut through the cord, releasing the talisman, and slipped it into his pouch. He worked quickly, fearing that someone might come from the village and discover him. The sun had gone down. Night was coming.

  A name formed on Tagart’s lips. Sturmer. He said it again. Sturmer. A name to go with the beardless face, the face in the firelight.

  Picking up the mattock by its blade, he thrust the haft into the ground. Beside it he arranged lines of stones taken from the pile the man had made, forming an arrow pointing in the direction of the wood. He finished it with three stones for each barb, and grasped the corpse by its armpits.

  It seemed heavier than a man’s body. Ideally he needed a sledge. He forced a grim smile. Ideally, he needed help for what he had decided to do, the help of a hundred men. Or, if not a hundred, then ten of his friends from the tribe, who were better than any hundred taken from these slab-faced peasants.

  The tribe. He must not think of the tribe. Anger would only slow him down, ruin his chances. He held a duty in sacred trust. The honour of the tribe had devolved upon him and upon him alone. Nothing must be allowed to stand in his way. If he was to discharge his duty he could ill afford the luxury of rage.

  But it was with a fierce renewed energy that he took up the corpse again, pulling it towards the forest.

  PART ONE

  1

  Sturmer opened his eyes and lay listening to the blood pulsing in his ears. The chimney-hole in his roof was blind, blocked for the summer: the blackened rafters travelled up and met in gloom. There were five, like the arms of a starfish, speared by the central pillar that held up his house. From them, on pegs and hooks, hung clothes, netting, tools, pouches of flints, water-bags; seed of wheat, corn, and a dozen other crops; jars of lamp-fat and bundles of rush-pith for lighting; baskets, cooking utensils, pots suspended in nets, leatherware muzzles and straps and tackle, fire-making kits, and all the other possessions that were better kept off the ground and away from the vermin and the village animals which ranged free in all the houses.

  Sturmer’s was the largest and best-appointed dwelling, with three other rooms besides this, where his children slept and he kept further stores. The doorway, which was low and broad and looked out across the village compound towards the Meeting House, gave upon a small area paved with stones from the beach. Behind the doorway and a short, tunnel-like porch, which contained a small effigy of the Earth Goddess in a chalk casket, the passageway opened into a cobble-floored kitchen with a sooted hearth, above which was another chimney aperture. To the side was the room where the children slept; to the front another chamber, and beyond that the main room with the tall roof, which from the outside appeared as a cone of weathered timber, caulked with nettle stalks and clay, in places tufted with clumps of grass and weeds. The flat part of the roof towards the front of the house was turfed, on a base of planking, and the porch was covered with skins that could be drawn across the entrance. A few small windows – simple apertures – had been left in the walls, which were made of selected and interlocked stones, the gaps and chinks filled with pebbles and the remaining cracks plastered with clay. Against the wall were piles of firewood, a wooden water-butt, and an old bench where the people in the house could sit in the evening and face the Meeting House opposite. It was here that Sturmer sat to answer informal questions and settle small disputes. He was head man of Burh village, and had been so for twelve years.

  He was of medium height and build, with mild features and a hesitant manner belied by the perceptive gaze of grey-blue eyes. Sturmer kept his beard neat and favoured subdued clothing: pigskin and goatskin dyed with subtle patterns. His hair, which was dark blond, he tied in a bun. Triple lines of blue tattoo ran the length of his right arm, flank, and leg, culminating in pentacles on his instep and the back of his hand: for he was also a priest.

  He turned on his side and watched the contours of his wife’s back. His eyes explored her shoulders and the tiny humps of vertebrae, the light and shade and texture of her hair, which he found girlish and endearing where it grew from her nape. He extended a forefinger and almost touched the bumps of her spine, moving his hand to compensate for her breathing.

  It was no use making plans any more. The matter was out of control; the spirits had taken over. The drought showed no sign of coming to an end. Starvation, the destruction of Burh, was beginning to look inevitable.

  The previous winter, Sturmer, like all the villagers, had become uneasily aware that too many dry days were following one another, and that the rain, when it did come, was light and sporadic. A single snowstorm in early spring, with a week of bitter frost, had been the only hard weather the whole winter, when usually Burh could expect heavy drifts and blizzards for days on end. And there had been no flooding from the river: sometimes the farmers had to work through the night to protect their village.

  At the end of the spring and for the two months of low summer the clearings had been filled with blossom – of elder, blackthorn, whitebeam, hawthorn, cherry – to an extent which no one had ever seen before. Many plants had gone on flowering through the winter, when normally there was no colour to be seen. Even the spring birds had seemed earlier than usual and more numerous, supernaturally numerous; and the woods and grassland near the village and on the cliffs had been alive with butterflies, flying up in clouds fr
om every bush and clump of nettles. The lilies in the river had bloomed profusely long before their time. The ditches and banks had been choked with frog-spawn. One night the villagers saw shooting stars over the sea, and Sturmer knew then that the Sky Spirit, Aih, had been disturbed.

  The farmers divided their year into six seasons, each of two moons or months, beginning on the shortest day with winter, followed by spring, low summer, high summer, harvest, autumn, and winter again. It was now halfway through high summer, when the crops should have been making their fastest growth and all was to be got ready for harvest. Normally on such a morning Sturmer would long ago have been up and in the fields with the rest of the village. But today there was no work to be done. The crops were dying. For six weeks there had been no rain at all.

  That alone would have been enough, but Sturmer had other worries too.

  During his tenure, the village had enjoyed an increase in prosperity and population. Apart from its thirty-three stone and timber houses, Burh now had a threshing shed, a granary, two silos and a general barn, a bakery, a bear-proof palisade, and, to Sturmer’s intense pride, a long meeting house where met the village council.

  The most important crop was emmer, a kind of wheat that Sturmer had substituted for the old einkorn used by his predecessor. From corn and barley and honey the villagers made ale; broomcorn millet and oats were grown partly as winter fodder for the animals – goats, cattle, and sheep. Crops like lentils and broad beans, kale and rape, were grown in plots beside each house. The wealthier families owned pigs. Most kept a dog, medium-sized hounds derived from the yellow hunting dogs such as once had been used by the nomads.

  Sturmer had been having trouble with the land. He disliked burning the forest and would have preferred to go on using the same fields for the village crops: he had begun to guess at the value of manure, and now regularly changed the location of the animal pens. Some of the beasts were allowed to wander more or less at freedom, grazing on the wild leaves, bringing back their goodness to the village. He had tried mulching with leaf mould from the forest, and gathering seaweed from the shore, a mile to the south, and using that to enrich the ground. The Earth Goddess, Gauhm, needed help if she was to deliver up her best bounty.