The Stone Arrow Page 3

  Those who had finished their duties were getting ready for the ceremony, with dyes and pastes and special costumes which after the ritual would be consigned to flame. They wore leather and fur striped and studded, or tasselled and plumed in all colours, especially grey and brown and white. Blue streaks and chevrons on faces and backs, applied with meadowsweet and dog’s-mercury dye mixed with fat, were displayed by those sharing Tagart’s blood, for he had been born into the Shoden, the waterfall people. The Owls were a tribe of the Sare, or cloud people: Mirin and her family were decorated with ash-grey and black, with black and white capes and bunches of owl quills at elbow and knee.

  As chief, Cosk was dressed in a long cloak of owl feathers fixed to deerskin in rows that formed patterns in various ways: diagonals, zigzags, stippled and mottled effects which had taken much work to get right. He would carry a carved and stained ceremonial mace, black with a crest of black feathers, which tapered and continued halfway down its length. Chalk-dust had been rubbed into his hair and beard, and all his skin painted white. He now donned a beaked mask made of owl feathers, with tall plumes and a shaggy ruff that extended across his shoulders and blended with the cloak. His feathered footwear was taloned with three toes before and a spur behind; his oxhide shinguards, with the hair left on, had been dyed and patterned with angular streaks like those on an owl’s legs; and his broad leather kirtle, white, was radially marked from the belt with lines of dark-brown, ash, and black.

  The others were dressing too, some almost as elaborately, according to their family and tribe, and one by one they were emerging in the sunshine.

  * * *

  Groden halted, half turned, and somewhat raised his mattock.

  It was hot. Even under the green gloom of the trees the air felt stifling. Ragged sunlight fell through the high canopy of leaves, sprinkling light on the bracken and brambles of the forest floor. A blackbird turned over litter, making a furtive rustling sound. The silence was almost complete.

  The oaks here were old and massive. Great gnarled boughs turned this way and that. Here and there in the distance a tree had crashed, and in the space so formed saplings were thrusting upwards, greedy for the light. Their roots spread widely, wherever they could, worming through the soil, in places coming to the sides of a stream as it purled through the trees towards the river.

  Groden listened carefully. He was twenty-two, lean and tall, with coarse, swarthy features and cold blue eyes. He shaved his face, not just from vanity, but because he wished to mark himself out. He meant to be head man one day. Helped and advised by Hernou, he was already a voice in the Council.

  He turned and looked at the others, young men like himself: his friend Morfe, and Deak, Feno and Parn. They had covered more than two miles from the village and were far from the usual pathways, much deeper into the forest than anyone ventured in summer when the savages were about.

  “Did you hear something?” Feno said.

  Groden shook his head. “I thought I did.”

  The others were waiting, waiting for him to tell them what to do.

  “We’re too far into the trees here, Groden,” Parn said. “We should go back. If we go on we’ll come to their camp.”

  “Parn’s right,” said Deak.

  Morfe’s teeth showed white against his beard and the tan of his skin. “If you’re scared, go home to your mothers.”

  “It’s not that. You know it’s not that.”

  “Keep quiet, then.”

  Groden treated Parn and Deak to a moment’s glance. “We’ll go on,” he said.

  “Your hound is dead, Groden,” Parn said. “We know how you feel. But do you want our bodies added to his? We’re too close to the river. We’ve seen none of them. Let’s go back.”

  “We are only five,” Feno said. “If they catch us we’ll have no chance.”

  Morfe said, “You talk like old women.”

  “Come with me, or go back,” said Groden.

  Parn and Feno and Deak looked at each other. They all knew that Sturmer would not last for ever. The question was – how important was this moment? It was impossible to tell from Groden’s face. He kept his thoughts hidden: they came out only in actions. By then it might be too late to get back into his favour. But, just as they needed Groden, Groden needed them.

  “I’m going back,” Feno said.

  “So am I,” said Parn.

  “Forget this,” Deak told Groden and Morfe. “For your own good. If they catch you, they’ll kill you both. Uli was only a dog.”

  “You’re afraid, then.”

  “Yes. We’re afraid.” Feno turned to Parn and Deak. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  Morfe sneered and, as they turned and headed back towards the village, flung them a parting insult.

  3

  The Shrine on the cliffs had been made many years before, a dome of chalk with a central alcove holding the altar slab on which rested the carved stone figure of Gauhm, Goddess of the Earth. Only the priest was allowed to come here freely; only he was allowed to pray at the Shrine and listen to Gauhm’s word.

  It was mid afternoon, two hours after the Council meeting when everything had started to crumble in Sturmer’s life. Below the clifftops, far below, gulls swooped across the veins of foam on the green water as it swelled and smacked around the rocks. Their cries and yelps rose up the cliff-face. The air, hot and balmy, smelling of salt and iodine, felt soft on Sturmer’s skin as he lay staring upward into the pink realms of his lids. He heard bees humming, and a faint breeze in the parched stems of grass, and the gulls against the waves below, and the sibilance of rock pipits as they flew from chalk ledge to ledge on the cliffs. From time to time a jackdaw called.

  The sun on his face made him drowsy. He was almost asleep, lingering on the border. Strange thoughts seemed normal. He was enveloped by the sound of the bees, their transparent wings at work in the pink flowers of thrift.

  He was thinking about what had been said at the Council. Reckless to go into the forest, Groden. Reckless and stupid. But they killed Uli, Sturmer. They killed my dog and I was angry. No plan, nothing clear. Just angry. Yes, we were stupid, we were wrong. But in his secret face, in the moment’s flash of triumph in Groden’s eye, Sturmer saw that Groden knew. He saw that Groden was not stupid. He saw but he could not fathom the words to fashion an answer to turn the others from believing.

  Morfe said the same.

  Then they were coming out of the trees, Sturmer. Defending ourselves, only defending ourselves.

  “But you killed one of them?”

  “We had to.”

  “Then you ran away?”

  “There was nothing else we could do. If you’d been there you would have seen it.”

  Groden’s face; the blood on his mattock; the testimony of Parn and Feno and Deak; the circle of believers; the Meeting House closing in.

  “You will bring disaster on us all!”

  “The savages will call on Tsoaul to avenge the dead man!”

  Groden talking, reasoning. His hands outspread. Winning them over. “We must act first and drive them out. If we don’t move quickly it is they who will strike first.”

  “But we are only farmers, Groden! They are killers!”

  “We outnumber them … if we can take them unawares …”

  In all the shouting was Sturmer’s voice.

  And now it was over. Groden had killed one of the nomads. Whether his story was true did not matter … nothing mattered, not even that Gauhm had failed to appear to him as he had lain here on the clifftop by the Shrine.

  Perhaps she did not want to intervene.

  He felt no expectation. Gauhm was not coming.

  Sturmer opened his eyes and raised himself on one elbow, looking down at his fingers as they twiddled with a stem of grass. For a long time he gave his thoughts to his family and himself.

  At last he brought his legs in to sit cross-legged, and then pushed on the outside edges of his feet, bringing himself in a single smooth motion to a st
anding position.

  He addressed himself to the Shrine, bowed to kiss the edge of the altar, and spoke a soft prayer for the village before setting off along the path and back to Burh.

  * * *

  Happiness had brought true radiance to Mirin’s beauty. Her hair was black, the locks wound into plaits, held by a snood decorated with speedwell. On Tagart’s head was a crown of white and pink roses. Little Balan, Tagart’s son, stood between them, holding hands. He was only three: most of what was being said he could not understand, but he was aware that this was a day of importance, that he himself and his father and mother were important to the tribe.

  In front of them, in the sunshine by the water, Cosk was speaking the words of the summer celebration. As he neared the conclusion, Sela handed her daughter a bowl of tisane, vervain and fenugreek. Mirin drank; Tagart drank; and, leaving Balan, they waded into the river. While the others watched, they merged with the current and let the water wash away the white and ochre pigments from their skin, a pale cloud billowing downstream.

  Smiling, Tagart took hold of Mirin’s hands and looked into her eyes. Taking his time, he kissed his woman, and as they kissed they sank beneath the surface.

  An exultant shout went up. It was the signal to begin the feast.

  * * *

  Burh that evening was quiet. There was no communal eating: everyone kept to his own hearth. In Sturmer’s house the conversation was sparse. His children, three girls and a boy, sensed that it was better to say nothing. They ate their beans and oatcakes in silence.

  Afterwards they were sent out to the river to clean the pots. Sturmer was alone with his wife. He put his fingers to his brow.

  “I am afraid, Tamis.”

  “Do you have to go with them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there no way to stop them?”

  “No.”

  “I know what you should do.”

  “Banish him?”

  “He plans your end. It is only fitting that you should plan his first.”

  “He has the Council on his side.”

  “But Groden is a fool.”

  “That he is not.”

  She came and sat beside him. “Only a fool goes into the forest in summer.”

  “A fool or a schemer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He shot his own hound.”

  “What?”

  “Hernou knew it. I could see it in her face. Perhaps Morfe too.”

  “But why?”

  “He wants to start trouble with the savages. By blaming them he can make a start.” He took her hand. “If he succeeds and brings rain I am finished.”

  “Do the others know about his hound?”

  “Would they believe it? They want rain. Groden has promised it.” He gave a wry smile. “We only have his word that he and Morfe killed one of them. Do you really think they’d have let those two out of the woods alive, after that?”

  “You must tell the Council.” She squeezed his arm. “Tell them. You are head man.”

  He snorted.

  The sunset outside made everything blood-red. Pots and discarded tools threw long shadows. The river slid past the jetty, its surface in shade, dimpled by the beaks of the sand martins and swallows as they dipped in flight to drink. Swifts screamed among the barns and over the squat house roofs, chasing each other, climbing to altitudes where the sun was still hot on their wings. The coastline below stretched east and west, a thin ribbon of beach and cliff separating the sea from the shroud of the forest, which spread, faithful to the contours of the land, almost without pause to the very limits of vision.

  4

  The feast fires had nearly burned out, each one a bed of embers that occasionally popped and sent a mote or a wisp of smoke into the warm night air. The dancing and singing had gone on long after dusk.

  No one noticed just when clouds began to roll across the sky to blot out the moon and stars, or when the first low thunder came. For some hours now it had been rumbling intermittently. The air was humid and close, the darkness almost complete, the hot and sticky night smothering the camp.

  The remains of the summer feast lay strewn about: dishes, baskets, trampled flowers and garlands, bits of food. For once the rule had been relaxed and the task of clearing up deferred till morning. Any scavengers within ten miles would have been scared off by the music and shouting – at least, that was Cosk’s theory. Only the usual guard, one man, had been posted.

  Now it was three hours before dawn, and Tagart and Mirin were alone.

  A dazzling blink lit up the camp and the humped shapes of the shelters, making black shadows and ice-white of all colour, jabbing splinters and fragments of light on the leather wall of the shelter. Below Tagart was the pallor of Mirin’s face, the vague expanse of her hair. He felt her hands on his shoulder-blades, pulling him back to her.

  “It was only lightning.”

  The thunder came then, a double crash, followed by a long, ominous roll.

  “The river spoke differently,” Tagart said. “I thought I heard movement.”

  “Just the thunder.”

  “No.”

  “The thunder. Nothing more.”

  Tagart strained his ears, all his senses taut. A wind was rising in the trees. Its hiss mingled with the river currents as twigs and debris broke the surface, mingled with the intricate flow past stems and stalks; with the ripples against the muddy slope and the tiny beach of the bank nearest the camp.

  The press of Mirin’s body became more insistent. The bed was filled with her smell. Her mouth melded with his. Tagart went further in the familiar exploration that had just begun, that now became more searching as he recognized the rhythm of her movements, the spread of her fingers on his back, her face against his. She spoke the syllables of his name as he kissed her eyes, her ears, her neck and throat.

  Again.

  She protested as he broke away.

  It was unmistakable. Something in the river.

  This ceremonial shelter contained merely a bed. Now he wished he had heeded his intuition and left a weapon at the door.

  She whispered, “What is it?”

  “Quiet.”

  Tagart’s mind was no longer in the shelter. It was outside, imagining the river, the banks, wondering what might be happening. He tried to remember everything as it had been at the end of the feast: the position of the fires, the debris on the ground. He pictured the shelters and their relationship with one another and the trees.

  Another peal of thunder, closer than the first. Tagart rolled to one side, crushing scent from the honeysuckle blossoms. Mirin sat up.

  Something was in the river.

  It was too late at night for any of the others to be up, except Braul, who had been posted as guard. A guard did not leave his post. Camp rules were inflexible on that point.

  Tagart raced through his mental catalogue of animals large enough to disturb the water like that, and of animals that might be interested in the camp and its occupants: Tagart reminded himself that there was food lying about. Wolves? Too small. Pigs? No. A bear? There was a brood den some miles south-east, with a mother and two cubs and a nursemaid female; but that was too far away. The he bear? He was probably at large somewhere in this part of the forest, though as yet the tribe had encountered no definite sign of him. Was it the lone male in the river?

  Tagart crawled silently to the entrance and looked out. He could see the dull glow of the feast fires, and above them the faint distinction between sky and forest. All else was darkness.

  If not a bear, then what? A man. Another tribe might have arrived in the region. But they would advance openly and exchange news, share a meal, not come in stealth by night. An outcast? Sometimes offenders were banished from a group. Such men lived as best they could, stealing when it suited them.

  A bear, then, or an outcast from some other tribe.

  A shape moved across the glow of the nearest fire, too quickly for Tagart to glean any information fro
m the silhouette. He felt his ribs contract with terror. His hands became fists and slowly he revised the disposition of his limbs, ready to move. His heart was pounding; his eyes were wide. He wondered whether to alert Braul, and decided against it. Braul was certainly already aware of the newcomer’s presence. To call out might lose them what small advantage they had.

  At the crack of a twig some yards off to the right, Tagart jerked his head in that direction, staring hard into the darkness for some scrap of vision. None came. And then another shadow passed in front of the fire, and another, and another. A fourth, a fifth, and shadows were passing in front of all the fires. A wooden bowl was inadvertently kicked. It scraped and slithered into the ashes. Licking flames leapt at once. Tagart saw a reddish glow on legs bound with fur and thongs. An instant later a sheet of lightning lit the sky and the full extent of what was happening in the camp lay revealed.

  “Braul!” Tagart shouted, coming out of the shelter unarmed, at a run, cursing the fact that he was naked, cursing everything that had conspired to bring this about.

  As the thunder came he reached the nearest man, whose image he had glimpsed in the lightning and retained. He jabbed with straight fingers at where eyes should be. There was a squeal. Tagart gripped a handful of beard and tore it upwards and back; he brought his left arm in low, stealing balance by scooping behind the knees. As the man went down Tagart’s punch missed aim and ploughed up into the solar plexus. He brought his heel up and to the side and rammed it into the screaming face. The jaw broke with a snap like an old branch.

  Tagart reached down and armed himself with the man’s fallen mattock, aware of something happening behind. The mattock blade hummed through the air as he spun round, legs flexed. The shock of the blade striking home numbed his hands and forearms, the impact running up the haft from the dead thump of the blade: a body in which there would be no more life brought down its ruined head and hit the ground.