The Stone Arrow Page 7

“But Gumis is not here!”

  “He has been carried away and eaten!”

  “Tsoaul has acted to avenge the forest people!”

  “No!” Sturmer shouted. “Listen! Listen to me!”

  “He may have been taken by traders!”

  “Taken to Valdoe and enslaved!”

  “Would they have left the marker?” said Meed.

  “Pointing in the wrong direction, just to confuse us!”

  “Let Sturmer speak!”

  Sturmer rubbed his right forearm, moving his left hand up and down, something he did when nervous. He was glad that Groden was not here.

  He looked from face to face. There was no choice. He would have to lie. Vude might already have guessed the truth, and one or two others, but he was counting on them to understand, to keep quiet, not to reveal to the others that a spirit need not necessarily work by agency, need not press bears or wild men into his service; that a spirit if outraged could become substantial and work directly on the world. Vude had once told a story of his youth, of a day when Burh had been further west, when the villagers had witnessed Aih’s descent from the sky like a ball of fire, like lightning in a ball no bigger than a man’s head. Aih had come into the compound and some of the villagers had tried to touch him.

  “My reasoning is this,” Sturmer said. “First, the savages are all dead. We made sure of that. Second, there are no tracks to show that Gumis struggled or was dragged away. Third, no animal could have done these things.” He gestured at the mattock and at the arrow of neatly arranged stones. “Nor,” he said, looking directly at Vude, “could a spirit, which can act only by agency.”

  Vude was about to speak, but closed his mouth and gave an enlightened nod.

  Sturmer continued. “It follows that a man made the marker, and it makes no sense to say that that man was anyone but Gumis. If it were traders they would just have taken him. There would be no reason for them to leave a marker, and besides, we would see their tracks. If – and this is only to complete my reasoning – if Gumis was murdered by one of us in the village, the killer would not have left such clues.”

  The others started to protest. Sturmer cut them short.

  “I say that Gumis heard or saw something in the forest, and went after it. To show us where, he left this marker, and to show us that it was not dangerous he left his weapon, the mattock, behind. Now, whatever he was following took him deeper into the trees than he had intended to go. He got lost. He is still lost. Unharmed, but lost. That is all. We must go after him and bring him back.” Sturmer pointed at the sky. “It’s cloudy. After nightfall and in cloud there is no direction in the forest. We’ll find Gumis somewhere walking in circles.”

  Domack said, “Gumis is not our greatest thinker.”

  The others seized on this explanation, eagerly elaborating on Sturmer’s theory, recalling past cases of villagers getting lost in the trees. Gumis might have seen a wounded deer and chased it; or he might have heard a strange bird calling and gone to find out what it was. A dozen similar suggestions were made.

  “Whatever drew him into the forest, we’ll not find him by standing here,” Sturmer said. “We must follow the arrow and see where it leads.”

  In better humour the party set off. “We’ll cut blazes on the trees to guide us back,” Sturmer announced.

  Vude fell in beside him. In a low voice he said, “You think it is Tsoaul.”

  “I hope I’m wrong.”

  “Will he act now, in the daytime like this?”

  “I cannot say. He might. But what else can we do? We must find Gumis. He might just be lost as they believe.”

  Vude shook his head. “In all his life he has never done anything on his own account. As for following a strange bird-call, Gumis divides birds into two kinds: those that can be eaten, and the rest.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Sturmer said.

  “It may not be Tsoaul. It may be Gauhm.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t Groden and the others act against her wishes? She has been belittled and denied. Twenty-eight of the village, her people, are dead. More are dying even now. Do you think she will be pleased?”

  Sturmer did not answer. Over his shoulder he called out, “If we’ve not found him by noon we’ll send back for help.”

  They reached the edge of the field. A broken whitebeam twig, where the trees began, showed where Gumis had entered the forest. Below it a few bramble leaves had been crushed.

  “There,” said Domack.

  “What is it?”

  The Toolmender reached up and unhooked the talisman from the branch. He weighed it in the palm of his hand, the striped stone smooth against his skin. The talisman had been left dangling on a cord, in plain view at head height. Vude took it. “This is his,” he said. “It was made for him by Chal’s wife. He wore it always.”

  “His fortune stone,” Tamben said. “I have one the same.” He brought it out of his jerkin and held it up for the others to see.

  “Proof he was not taken by force,” Sturmer said. “It’s another sign to us, like the marker. I expect we’ll find others. Come.”

  They moved forward, filing uphill through the dense foliage of oak and hazel. It was obvious where someone had passed the night before, the swath of undergrowth crushed and broken down. A few paces on they found a shred of hare’s-skin, which someone said had come from Gumis’s cap. The shred of skin, like the talisman before, had been suspended from a branch and clearly was meant to be noticed.

  “Make the first blaze,” Sturmer said.

  They went on.

  Even at this short distance from the fields it was easy to see how a man might find himself lost inside the wild tangle of vegetation, the unruly hazel, elder, and honeysuckle bushes pressing and twining from all sides, the brambles snagging at shins and forcing frequent detours which rapidly dulled the sense of direction. Above, huge oaks crowded together, the leaves and branches intermingled and forming a dense barrier to all but the feeblest green light. Pigeons exploded from the treetops as the men pushed and hacked a way forward.

  The ground levelled and dipped, rose again, and again began to fall. Still the crushed path led them on. They found more shreds of his cap, hung on branches like the first. More blazes were cut; soon nobody had any sense of north or south. It seemed that they were moving away from the village, and generally downhill, but whether inland or towards the sea they could not tell; though as yet they had not crossed a regular pathway, only the narrow, well defined courses of badger trails.

  “Look there,” said Meed, pointing to a long tatter of doeskin hanging in the fork of a rowan sapling.

  “A piece of his jacket!”

  Sturmer took down the strip of leather. “There is nothing to fear,” he said, as the men crowded round to examine it. The strip passed from hand to hand.

  Vude said, “For Gumis to have taken off his jacket the prey must have been a stag at least.”

  “Or a beautiful wood-nymph.”

  “Perhaps it was her singing that lured him away.”

  “Should we go on, Sturmer?” said Mastall with a wink. “Will he thank us if we find them?”

  Sturmer smiled. “Let us see what else he has taken off.”

  Presently, in several places along the way, they came across the rest of his jacket, and then his beaver leggings torn into shreds. Their good humour was beginning to evaporate. The ground was sloping noticeably downwards now, and a sinister change was coming over the woodland. The increasing dampness of the ground was reflected by the character of the trees, younger and less massive, oak giving way to oak mixed with birch, and in the undergrowth there was less holly, less hazel, but more elder. They were being drawn down into the valley, towards the river. They were being drawn towards the savages’ camp.

  When they found the clogs, lying casually on the ground ten yards apart, Tamben and several others wanted Sturmer to send back to the village for help.

  Sturmer refused. He told them again
that there was nothing to fear, that they would doubtless find Gumis a little way ahead, probably dead drunk in the undergrowth with a pot of mead stolen from the Meeting House. Privately, Sturmer could see no reason to endanger extra lives. If they were going to be attacked by a spirit, better that a few should die than many; not that he felt there was any real risk. The evil had been done the previous night.

  For almost half a mile there was no further clue to the way Gumis had come, except for crushed vegetation and broken twigs. They came to a stream and crossed it.

  The stream marked a more profound change in the quality of the forest. The soil here was black. Alders lined the stream. Beyond it the woodland was mainly of birch, with thickets of willow. In places the ground seemed to have collapsed and there was standing water: stagnant pools covered by a bronzy scum over which clouds of gnats danced. The bird sounds were different. The ground was strewn with rotting logs, some half in the water. Marsh gas was in the air. Sturmer, leading the way, broke through old dead branches of willow, the noise of it filling the woods.

  He stopped dead.

  His eyes did not move.

  For a moment he forgot the men behind him, forgot his feet slowly sinking into the boggy ground. He forgot everything. There was no past or future, only the present. Only the present in which the forest was a sepia blur, a background to the place ahead, framing it, the place where a man’s five-fingered hand had been speared on a stick and the stick thrust upright into the ground, in plain and intended view.

  * * *

  Sturmer forced aside the last of the elder bushes and at the edge of the clearing stood looking out across the savages’ camp-site.

  Tamben and Merth, despite his orders, had panicked and turned back, leaving only nine men to follow the trail that had been made of the organs of Gumis’s body. Draped over branches or merely thrown down, the signs had come at closer and closer intervals. Everyone had known they were being drawn towards the camp; those who were not already armed had taken up branches to use as clubs.

  They had seen the smoke first, curling upwards through the trees, a single hazy plume which Sturmer could now see was coming from a cooking-fire.

  With a harsh chatter three magpies, white and green-black, rose from the riverbank and on short round wings fluttered to safety. Simultaneously there was the sound of something falling, crashing through foliage to the ground. Sturmer looked up to see, on the highest branch of a tall oak, the uncertain wavering of a slim, mottled bird of prey as it flexed and unflexed its legs, leaning forwards and backwards, as if deciding whether to leave or stay. There were others, ten or twelve: a moment later the kites opened their wide wings and with plaintive cries were sailing away over the treetops.

  Sturmer turned his eyes back to the clearing. It seemed different by day, larger and more open than before. The river had risen. For most of its length through the clearing it was fringed by vegetation, except on the bank nearest the shelters, which was of bare mud leading straight into the water like a beach.

  Sturmer had not seen the final devastation of the camp. Sickened, he had left when the last of the hunters had been overpowered and clubbed down. He had felt no desire to participate in Groden’s plans for the surviving women. Leave no one alive, that was all he had said.

  Little of the shelters remained intact: the skeletons of spars and frames, burnt black like charcoal; charred leather; scorched bedding. Broken baskets and other remnants of occupation had been kicked here and there.

  These things Groden had done. But he had not built the cooking-fire.

  The smoke was issuing from the middle of the camp. A heap of sticks was smouldering under a spit with a joint of unidentifiable meat. The smell of it on the breeze was like pork. Seated around it, shoulder to shoulder, were thirty or forty people. Some held their heads erect; others were bowed to the ground. Their eyes were smudges, their cheeks sunken, their bodies mutilated and disfigured, the colour of decay. They were sitting in a ring, at hideous feast. Above them buzzed a multitude of flies.

  Domack screamed and ran past Sturmer into the open, brandishing his axe, and the others were running too, yelling and shouting, and Sturmer was among them. One of the feasters fell sideways and lay still. Sturmer raised his mattock and brought it down, opening dead flesh, hacking, slashing. The bodies rolled and yielded to every indignity, every blow, passively accepting, not disapproving, until under the blizzard of axes and clubs and mattocks the dead savages had been mangled, rendered unrecognizable.

  But even before they had finished Vude was shouting, pointing into the air and across the river.

  On the far bank was the beech tree that had been struck by lightning in the storm. The heat of the strike had boiled the sap, sundering the trunk from top to bottom. The foliage hung tattered, shrivelled and scorched. Many of the boughs had been peeled of bark, giving the tree an odd skewbald appearance.

  From one of these boughs a curious shape dangled, like a man but then not, slowly turning in the breeze, coming to rest, turning in the other direction. It had no hands, and its chest had been opened from throat to navel and roughly cobbled back with twine. One leg was missing below the knee, and with a rush of comprehension Sturmer knew the nature of the meat on the fire.

  Domack climbed into the tree and worked his flint blade through the rope. The man-thing tumbled, thumped to the ground.

  He had been skinned. Cleanly, expertly, he had been skinned. To give it bulk the skin had been stuffed with leaves and twigs and mud; as it struck the ground they saw something spew from its thorax, crawling and glistening brown. Ants were crawling out. An ants’ nest had been put inside him. They were boiling over the sides of his chest. They were already everywhere, all over him, his body, his nostrils, between the lips. The skull had been left in. The features of the face, however transfigured, could be those of no one else.

  It was Gumis.

  2

  Soon after the farmers had left, taking the remains of their comrade with them, Tagart came down from his vantage in a low branch of a durmast oak and stood surveying the mutilated bodies of his tribe.

  He had ruined it. His trap had worked to perfection: the men had been open targets, so easy to get in four or five quick shots while they had been running amuck among the corpses. Five shots, five dead farmers, and he would have been down the tree and into the forest before they had had time to react. That had been his plan, but he had ruined it, and in the most simple, stupid, and infuriating way possible. He had dropped his arrows.

  It had happened when the magpies woke him, for despite all his efforts he had drifted off to sleep again. As he awoke he had started and knocked the quiver from the branch. It had fallen, the strap slipping away before he could grasp it. One of the farmers seemed to have heard, but his attention had drawn away by the kites which had dropped in to take a closer look at the camp and its occupants.

  Thereafter Tagart had been forced to sit quietly, watching impotently from his tree.

  Yet in a way the trap had not failed utterly. He had managed to frighten them, and he had shown himself that he could draw them out of the village and manipulate them into situations of his own choosing. It was disappointing that the chief, the beardless man, had not been among the search-party. Not that Tagart would have killed him. He was reserving that till last.

  Tagart collected his arrows and left the camp behind, determined never to go back. The bodies of the tribe meant nothing to him, not even that of Balan. They were mere objects, the spirits within having departed long since. But the place itself held memories and he did not want to see it again.

  * * *

  The rain came and went during the afternoon, in the wake of big piles of cloud drifting along the coast from the ocean and the west. Towards evening the cloud thinned, became patchy, and occasional shafts of sunshine glanced across the treetops. Smoky white vapour edged the areas of blue which slowly proceeded east.

  Tagart emerged from the yew branches and sat cross-legged on the ground, che
wing a strip of venison, a water-bag at his side. He felt much better for the food and for his afternoon sleep, spent in the cool half-light under the yew. And he felt much better in his mind. He was reconciled to his own death. Mirin was gone from this world and would never come back. Their life here together was over. He had been robbed of her touch, her softness. And he had been robbed of his son, just as he had been robbed of the tribe. He would be with them again soon.

  As he ate he continued to fill his void with peaceful thought, the only way to keep himself calm. He was studiously steering his mind from the prospect of what, once he had finished this meal, he was going to embark on next.

  His arm was healing, the pain in his chest less. His rib, he was sure, had not been broken after all. Strength was returning. He straightened his legs and appraised the muscles, relaxed his calves and felt them loosen completely, flexed them and they were as hard as wood. He was aware of his body, his sense of speed and balance, and he was glad, glad that he could run as fast as any.

  A final strip of meat, a final draught of water, and he chose three blades from his flints, hitched his pouch to his belt, and left the yew behind.

  To get downwind of the bears’ den he made a long detour, circling back uphill through the oak trees and the thickets of hazel. It took him a long time to cover silently the half-mile of final approach to the root-pit where the she bear had given birth to her litter.

  The hearing of a bear was said to be phenomenal, second only to its sense of smell. In the tribe it was said that a bear could smell fear. If that was so, Tagart told himself as he gingerly moved branches aside, he had doubly good reason for keeping leeward of the den and its mouth.

  The den was on a slight gradient, sloping downhill from west to east. It was situated in a glade of ancient oaks with ground cover of holly, bramble, and dog-rose. Two hundred paces from the root-pit, Tagart halted to listen yet again. He could hear nothing of the bears. He went on, halted, went on again, until he reached the place where he had hidden before, with the others of his tribe, that day when they had kept watch on the den and its occupants. He climbed into the tree they had used, stopping when he was near the top, forty feet from the ground.