The Stone Arrow Read online

  He looked down. The ground rose from the base of his tree, foreshortened from this angle, sloping up to the den, which was twenty-five or thirty feet below the level of his vision. His view of the entrance was obstructed partly by the uprooted trunk of the oak, partly by intervening vegetation; but he could see well enough to know when one of the bears came in or out.

  From within came the cries of the cubs. Tagart composed himself to wait.

  Bears were the masters of the forest. They hunted anywhere, indifferent to day or night. Nothing threatened them. Nothing could bring down an adult bear unless it was sick or wounded. Bears in open country were big enough, but those in the forest attained almost unbelievable size through easy living. Females of four or five hundred pounds were commonplace, and in the densest regions lived males which might reach six hundred pounds in the rich months of late summer and autumn. Yet in a run the bears belied their size, and in staying power and resistance to fatigue and pain they were superior to the aurochs which could run for days though mortally wounded.

  Their only real enemy was the cold, which they detested, and when winter began to bite they sought out caves and other natural hollows which afforded shelter. It was during competition for these shelters that most fatal encounters between men and bears took place, for, though extremely daring and expert hunting parties – usually spurred by hunger – could exceptionally trap and lance a bear, men were with good reason afraid of the bears and left them severely alone. Trackers of the tribe would find and mark out the breeding sites, and from then on, during the summer’s stay, entry to those parts of the forest would be forbidden. Only a madman ventured near a bear’s den, and only a man who no longer wished to live went near to or made the merest or most tentative threat to anything that had the remotest connection with their breeding and their young. And inside that hollow under the oak roots were not only a litter of cubs, but two fully grown females, one a nursemaid having all the attributes of the mother except that it was smaller and even faster and would catch hold of and devour Tagart even more quickly, for its jaws were just as strong, its claws as sharp, its devotion to the cubs and its fierceness in their defence just as well developed.

  He would be killed. He knew he would be killed. It was suicide to remain a moment longer. He would jump down from the tree and run. Run from the she bear, a carnivore, an omnivore, the forest’s chosen one, ultimate receiver of all its bounty, its most perfect design for killing: three times his weight, a mountain of brown fur over driving muscle that could power a single lazy slash of her huge front paw to scoop out hearts and lungs and viscera, in her jaws a glistening crowd of sharp white teeth which were there for nothing but ripping flesh, stripping bones, grinding pelvises and shoulders and heads. He prepared to move, to come down the tree and be on his way, to abandon this madness and think of some other plan.

  But even before he could release his grip on the branch the mother bear came out. As she emerged from the den she rose up to her full height, and on two legs towered for a moment before dropping to all fours. She looked from side to side, and then, seeming to scent something, took on immediate purpose as she looked straight ahead, directly at him.

  Tagart remained absolutely still, praying that what he had been told by the elders was true, that their lore still held. For what he knew of bears had been told him by others. They had told him that a bear could not take his scent from a position such as this; that he might betray himself only by movement, and only then if the movement were pronounced, because a bear’s eyes were weak and poorly suited to recognizing shapes alone.

  The other female came up out of the hole behind her, a smaller animal, with paler fur, her ears flat against her head. The mother turned to greet her, and then the nursemaid was leaving on the hunt, going past the roots of the fallen oak, trotting south among the holly, along the line of the hill. The outline of her rounded, brown body appeared and reappeared among the trees, merged with the vegetation, and she was gone.

  The mother bear irritably shook her head, as if to dislodge a fly. She seemed in no hurry to leave, if indeed she were going to: she might have been hunting during the afternoon. Again Tagart heard the mewling of the whelps. The she bear went partly back into the den, and it seemed as if she meant to bring her cubs outside to play in the dusk. But she turned and came out alone, and once more reared up with crinkled nostrils. Something was worrying her.

  The sun had gone behind the hill. Deep shade filled the forest. A long way off to the south a nightjar was churring, keeping to one note, changing up, changing down. It too would be hunting soon, wheeling and zigzagging over the bracken, snapping and gaping its wide bill at the moths and dor beetles as it flew.

  The light was deteriorating: Tagart refocused his eyes a little to one side of the bear so that he could see better. She had dropped down again and was washing, licking her paws with a long pink tongue. He fancied he could almost hear the rough skin rasping against her fur.

  The bear finished her toilet and yawned, revealing for the first time her rows of murderous white teeth.

  Then, without warning, she was leaving. Tagart watched in consternation as she started downhill towards his tree. He had foreseen the possibility, but it had all been part of the risk and he had not considered it further. He was considering it now. What if she scented him or his trail? What if she scented him and climbed into the tree? If she made a little spring from the ground and her claws took purchase, and with terrifying rapidity passed branch after branch on her way up the trunk towards him, driving him higher, higher, until there was no height left and she had hold of his legs … The wind had not changed: it was blowing steadily from the west, but inside the forest anything was possible, even with a steady west wind. The trees could take a current and break it up, scattering scent in all directions; they could even reverse it. What had been a remote and theoretical problem now took on new significance as the bear approached. He heard the crush of sticks and undergrowth, and as the distance reduced he made out her eyes, nose, the features of her head; the rolls of fat at her neck; the curve of her claws as her in-turned feet came padding forward.

  The bear was yards from his tree. If she chose to stop and look up she could not fail to see him. His bowels felt loose as he looked down. He clung to the branch, holding his breath, holding himself in, not daring even to think in case she heard.

  A moment later her broad back was passing below. She trotted on, downhill through the holly and hazel, each step taking her further below Tagart’s level and away from the stream of his scent. He turned and watched her go. She went under the trees, and in a matter of seconds Tagart had lost sight of the bear, of her huge haunches swaying among the undergrowth. She had gone.

  Now was the time to get down, to get away. He had been wrong to refuse himself help: he would leave at once and find another nomad group, and with them return in strength to the village to carry out his duty. That is what he should have done from the start; that is what Cosk would have done. Tagart had let his pride take him too far.

  With almost no concession to silence he scrambled from branch to lower branch, not caring how badly he might graze his knees or scrape his arms. He paused at the last ten feet and dropped on slack knees to the ground.

  It was almost dark. The nightjar had stopped singing. Tagart glanced at the fallen oak.

  He found himself running uphill.

  Running uphill, his hand reaching into his pouch to free his knife from its wrapping of leather. The yards were behind him: he was standing beside the roots, at the mouth of the den, by the mass of soil and stones that had been dragged up by the tree’s fall. Before he could change his mind he was stooping, scrambling down into the fetid warmth of the den, the flint blade in his hand.

  The bears had tunnelled some way into the earth under the root ball. He could hear the cubs at the end of the tunnel, a few feet ahead. He could see nothing: the only light was a dim greyness from the entrance behind him. The smell of the bears, rich and gamy, almost cho
ked him; the high-pitched cries of the cubs filled his ears. There were two of them. His head struck the earthen roof of the tunnel and dislodged a crumble of soil. He reached down and felt warm, coarse fur. He had hold of one. It struggled half-heartedly as he lifted it by the loose skin at its neck; but then, realizing that it was not a bear who held it, the cub squirmed strenuously and its cries became louder and more urgent. Tagart felt for and with his left hand clamped the jaws shut. The cub was still small, and no match for him in strength, but its milk-teeth were sharp. The other cub was alert now, snapping at his ankles. He pushed it aside, turned, and, bending double with his prize tucked under his arm, started along the tunnel to its mouth and freedom.

  As he came into the open air he changed his knife from his right hand to his left, and without stopping slashed the blade across the cub’s throat. The blood welled, dripped to the holly and the ground. After a moment’s resistance the cub went limp in his arms and it was dead.

  Tagart ran as he had never run before, away from the den, away from the directions taken by mother and nursemaid, caring nothing now for wind or scent, plunging through the forest and the growing night, exultant, alive, set free. Power, triumph, intoxication possessed him as he ran. In his arms he was carrying a few pathetic pounds of lifelessness: fat and muscle and unformed bone.

  But it was more than a dead cub he was carrying. It was the means to draw out the beardless man, the means to draw him out and kill him.

  3

  The death of Gumis had thrown a shadow over the village. What remained of his body had been laid on the Dead Ground. Later, he would be buried with those who had died in the raid, in the village barrow on the western side of the valley. The dead man had no wife and no real family in Burh, and few people he had called his friend.

  For some reason she did not understand – she did not admit any feeling of guilt – Groden’s wife put herself forward as the first watcher in the vigil over the body. She stationed herself beside it, close to the Meeting House, a cape over her shoulders, for the evening was cool. The sun lingered on the hill beyond the palisade, a trembling globe of fire that bulged and became misshapen as the earth drew it down. The underbellies of the few high clouds were lit with orange; the rest of the sky was without feature, a greyish blue turning steadily to violet. Over the forest the first stars of the constellations showed as tiny points.

  The sun went below the horizon, filling the west with red light. Hernou felt the breeze stir on her cheek. She clasped her arms about her knees and gently rocked from side to side. Across the compound, lamps were coming on one by one. Normally such evenings saw eating outside, in groups of ten or twenty, but tonight each family was keeping to itself.

  Behind her in the Meeting House she could hear footsteps and voices, and lights were being lit there too. From its windows a glow came over the Dead Ground and the horrible, empty corpse, making Gumis a drab brown with deep folds and shadows of black. He was still being discussed inside the Meeting House. His death and its implications were keeping the inner circle of the Council late in session.

  Groden was not part of the inner circle, not yet, and he had gone to Morfe’s house to eat. Groden had acquitted himself well in the Council that day, Hernou told herself. How could anyone have foreseen that Tsoaul would act without agency to avenge the savages? That was the explanation given by Sturmer and Vude for what had happened to Gumis.

  Knowing that Tsoaul himself was involved, no one in the village but Sturmer harboured any longer even the least resentment against Groden for the outcome of the raid. The rain had come, as Groden had promised. He could not be blamed for Tsoaul’s intervention.

  Vude had related a tale of his boyhood, when Aih had manifested himself in the compound like a ball of flame. The head man, Vude said, had offered a sacrifice to Gauhm and Aih had not returned. If Gauhm could do that, Vude reasoned, could she not do the same with Tsoaul? So during the afternoon Sturmer, the Council, and the whole village had made prayer at the small shrine in the Meeting House – no one dared ventured into the forest to attend the shrine on the cliffs – and three lambs and a calf had been killed and their blood allowed to run into the ground as an offering to Gauhm, in the hope that she would be able to appease Tsoaul on the villagers’ behalf.

  Hernou brought the cape further round her shoulders and shivered. With each passing minute fewer people were to be seen. The ground was losing heat. On her right she could hear the murmur of the river. From the outskirts of the village came the hard, sharp barking of a fox, and with it the shrilling of a blackbird flushed from its roost, somewhere near the east gate.

  The lights went out in the Meeting House and Sturmer and the others came down the plank steps.

  Vude’s distinctive voice was heard. “Till morning, then, Sturmer.”

  “Till morning.”

  Hernou turned to her left. Sturmer was crossing the open ground to the big house nearby.

  He stooped and went through the flap of leather at his doorway, and for a brief and painful moment she glimpsed the picture of warmth and cosiness within.

  * * *

  The ramp Tagart had fashioned the previous day was where he had left it, hidden in the undergrowth at the top of the escarpment. It was fifteen feet long, covered with brushwood fastened with slipknots so that, after use, it could be quickly dismantled and the components dispersed. The ramp had been heavy and unwieldy enough in daylight, but now it was almost impossible. Tagart was making so much noise dragging it down the escarpment that he was sure he would be heard in the village. He did not really care. Getting caught by the farmers would be a hundred times better than taking too long to get the ramp in place.

  He tripped on an anthill, lost his footing, and fell for the third time. The ramp came down heavily on his leg. A dog fox barked nearby, and as Tagart fell he disturbed a roosting blackbird from the brier patch. He breathed a curse and struggled to his feet.

  There were lights in the village, and food smells on the wind. Tagart hauled the ramp over the anthills. No sound of alarm had yet come from the other side of the palisade. He got under the ramp and raised it, positioning the top against three spikes. The slope was steep – too steep. And would the brushwood stand the load? He did not think so, but there was no time to consider it. He freed the dead cub from where he had tied it, at the end of the ramp so that it had dragged along the ground, and, holding it to his chest, climbed the brushwood rungs.

  His head came level with the top and he looked into the village. The lights in the Meeting House had now gone out. Lamps were flickering in several windows elsewhere, in the dwelling-houses with their conical roofs. It was too dark to see properly: he could not tell whether there were any people in the compound.

  A dog started barking, probably at him. He dropped the cub over the palisade and climbed over the top, turned round and gripped the spikes, then lowered himself as far as he could before letting go and dropping the last six or seven feet to the ground. He landed well, next to the cub.

  Taking the cub by a limp hind leg, he dragged its muzzle through the grass as he ran, half-crouching, along the line of the palisade. The houses were on his left, passing him by. Still he saw no one, but more dogs were barking and he was expecting trouble from them at any moment. He reached the bakery, the last of the buildings before the river, and paused. Beyond the bakery loomed the Meeting House, its walls and stilts and steps silhouetted by lights from the large dwelling-house on the far side. This house, Tagart knew, would be that of the chief: that of Sturmer, the beardless man. His eyes glowed. She might be in there at this very moment, Sturmer’s woman, the one he had seen at the ceremony. He had seen her well and marked her features as she had lain naked, drinking her husband’s urine from a wooden bowl. Tagart hoped he would be able to restrain himself when the time came to take her. To kill her too soon would be a tragic waste. And he prayed he would not come face to face with Sturmer. Yet.

  He abandoned the cub by the bakery wall, ran to the river and slippe
d into the water, which flowed with sparkles of starlight on green and black and closed over his head without a sound. He dived and wriggled deep into the slime, came up for breath, dived again, feeling and then not feeling its subtle touch on his skin. Bubbles of gas wallowed up to the surface and broke about his head. He dived three times in all, ridding himself of all trace of scent of bear-den and blood, masking his own odour with the sulphurous smell of the mud on the river-bottom. Letting the current float him, he drifted past the jetty, past the roof of the Meeting House, black and angular against the stars, and came to the timbers of the bridge.

  He clung to them in the middle of the river, his hair wet and the gritty taste of river mud on his lips. The water flowed about him with small throaty sounds. His eyes were near the surface, below the rise of the banks, which were blacker than the river and sky, tall with vegetation. Above him, the bridge made utter darkness. The space beneath it amplified the river noises, and Tagart strained to listen. He wanted to hear what was happening, away from the river, on the other side of the village.

  With his chin in the water, he waited.

  He did not have to wait for long.

  * * *

  The bear came at speed down the escarpment, in her anguish paying no attention to the obstacles in her way – brambles, briers, oak bushes, tussocks, the anthills at the bottom. Without pause she scaled the ramp of brushwood and, merely noticing the eleven-foot drop on the other side of the palisade, gained entry to the village.

  She had followed the scent of the he cub from the den, each drop of its sweet blood glowing like a marker in the dark. Mingled with the trail she had caught the sickly musk of human feet, and long before the circuitous route had begun nearing the village she had known that the cub had been taken by men.