Warrior Scarlet (6 page)

He had left the last of the corn plots behind him, and was
turning down to the little brook that had its spring in a deep hollow under the grazing ground, when his ear picked up the pad of running feet behind him—very small, swift feet on the downland turf—and he had scarcely time to swing round before a flying shadow came down the slope and Blai was beside him, panting with the speed she had made.

Drem was angry. ‘What do you come after me for?’ he demanded. ‘Go home, Blai.’

‘I saw you go,’ Blai said in the little clear voice that had somehow the note of a bird call in it and never seemed to belong to the same person as her narrow, shut-up face, ‘and I thought maybe—if it was a hunting, you would need food for the day.’

Food; yes, he had not thought about food. Well, it was for the Women’s side to think of such things. ‘What have you got?’ he demanded.

‘Only a barley cake. That was all I could steal without waking them. But it is a big one.’

‘It will serve,’ said Drem handsomely, and tucking his throw-spear under his arm, took the hard, crusty bannock that she thrust into his hand. ‘Go home now, Blai, and do not you be telling anyone that I have gone hunting.’

‘I will not, then.’ Blai hesitated on one foot, half going, half staying. ‘Drem—let you take me too!’

Drem said with harsh reason, ‘You! What use would you be?’

‘I would do anything—I would be your hound—’

But Drem was already turning away. ‘Na, I do not need a hound today. And’—suddenly he could not hold it back—‘soon I may have a hound of my own to hunt with me!’

Behind him as he went, he heard her cry out in a little defiant voice, ‘One day—one day my father will come back for me—’ But she was crying it out to herself, not really to Drem.

Drem crossed the brook—it was so narrow still that it did not even need a stepping stone—and went on to his day’s hunting, leaving her standing there.

A faint bar of amber light was broadening in the east as he came down through the oak and hazel and whitethorn scrub of the lower slopes, eating the bannock as he went so as to have it out of the way, and headed for the marshes. A great, slow, full-bodied river, winding south from the forest uplands far inland, found a pass in the hills just there, and went winding and looping out to join the Great Water. Many streams rising in the lower flanks of the Chalk ran down into it, and in several places across it beavers had built their dams—generation after generation of beavers that had been there, Drem supposed, as long as the river had been there, and would stay while the river stayed. And the choked river had flowed out over its banks, spreading far and wide; and so came the Marsh. Sometimes after the winter rains the water spread far up into the forest, making a lake that was a day’s trail, two days’ trail, from end to end, and all the pass through the Chalk was a winding arm of water out of which the alders and sallows raised their arms to the sky. But in the summer it was mostly land of a sort, sour and sodden and very green: reed beds and alder brakes, and dense covers of thorn and sallow, and thickly matted fleeces of yellow iris, all laced with winding, silver riverways and spreading, shallow lakes alive with the wild fowl that came inland at the breeding season and did not go back to the coast until autumn came again.

No one lived in the Marshes that lay inland of the Chalk, for at night mists rose from them and evil spirits prowled abroad in the mists to give men the sickness that filled their bones with shivering fire; and even at high noon in summer time there was always a dank smell of things wet and rotting, for the cleansing wash of the tides that came up and went down again twice in every day over the sea marshes could not reach so far through the Chalk. But the hunters went there after the wild fowl and the beaver.

So Drem headed for the Marsh now, and in a clump of sallows on the edge of one of the many spreading sheets of water, settled himself to wait.

He was shivering with mingled cold and excitement and a
breathless sense of the importance of that day’s hunting. Away eastward the bar of amber light was brightening to gold, and the gold was catching echoes from the water that lay everywhere, and all around him was a stirring as the Marsh woke into life. Light and colour were coming back into the world; and suddenly something dark, almost like a rat, darted from among the pale roots of the rushes close to Drem, hesitated, half doubled back, and then scuttled across to the next clump. When the water-rail moved, other things would soon be stirring. Very soon now, Drem thought, any moment now, and drew his knee farther under him. His hand cramped on the spear shaft, and he opened it, feeling it wet and sticky with the long tightness of his grip; and went over feverishly in his mind everything he had ever been told, everything he had ever found out for himself about the throw-spear; and licked his lower lip, and waited again.

He was so twanging taut that when, without an instant’s warning, a mallard drake beat up from the rushes not three spears’ lengths away to his right, he was thrown completely off his balance. Next instant he had recovered himself, and sent the light throw-spear, thrumming as it flew, after the quarry. It missed so narrowly that it carried away the tip of a wing feather, and for one instant he thought he had made his hit, before the spear plunged back into the rushes and the mallard darted off, raising its wild alarm call to the morning skies. And suddenly with a great bursting upward, the Marsh was alive with startled and indignant wings.

In a while, the morning fell quiet again, and he could hear teal and widgeon, curlew and sandpiper crying and calling in the distance; but all around him the Marsh was silent; empty under a shining and empty sky.

Drem hit the stem of the nearest sallow with a passionate fist; but that only hurt his knuckles and did nothing to mend what had happened. He was almost crying with fury as he slid out of his cover and searched among the reeds for his throw-spear. It took him a few moments to find it, because he was
blind with rage and disappointment; but he found it at last, and settled again to wait. But the wild fowl did not return though he heard them calling in the distance; and at last, with the sun well up and the level light streaming across the Marshes, he knew that it would be no use waiting any longer.

He left his hiding place, slipping along in the lea of the sallow bushes. Maybe he would be able to flush something and knock it down before it got out of range. But though he hunted far and wide as the shadows shortened, he never got within spear-throw of a bird; and something was growing in him that was frightened and a little desperate. There would be other days; Talore would not sell the cub away from him at once, because he failed on the first day of all. But last night he had said, ‘I will pay the price tomorrow.’ And somehow for him there was only this one day; that was the bargain. Somehow, in his mind, the thing was mixed up with his Warrior Scarlet; he must earn the price of the cub today, he must keep his bargain perfectly and completely, and give proof of his skill with a throw-spear
today
, if his mother was ever to weave scarlet on the loom for him.

It must have been noon or later, when, as he came crouching down the fringe of a long straggle of alder trees, he heard the rhythmical creaking sound, half eery, half musical, of a swan in flight, and turning, saw the great bird flying low towards him
across the level of jewel-green turf between two spreading sheets of water. The sun was on its feathers, and its shadow flew beneath it like a dark echo along the ground; a bird of snow and a bird of shadow . . . Drem saw the proud spread of shining wings, beating with slow, almost lazy power and beauty, as it flew with outstretched neck; he heard louder and louder the half musical throb of the wing beats; and the great swan swole on his sight. It seemed rushing towards him, blotting out the world with the white spread of its wings. He was caught up in a piercing vision of white, fierce beauty that was like thunder and lightning and an east wind, like a sun-burst. He was scarcely aware of rising to his feet as the great bird swept towards him, climbing into the sunlight, scarcely aware of his spear-arm swinging up and back in its own perfect curve of movement . . .

The spear went thrumming on its way. It took the swan in the breast, and the great bird pitched in the air, half turning over its own length, and dropped.

Drem started from cover of the alder trees and ran towards it. The swan was still alive, and threshing where it had fallen, with a dreadful, broken struggling. Drem ran in among the flailing wings that could have broken his leg even now, if a blow had landed square, and finished the work with the knife from his belt. The struggling ceased with a last quiver.

The swan—a big cob—lay dead, its neck outstretched as in flight; and Drem pulled out the spear which was still embedded in it. There was blood on the white feathers. Blood on snow, Drem thought, standing over it; blood on his own hand, too; and the living, flashing beauty was gone. Desolation as piercing as the moment of vision had been stabbed through him. How could a little spear that he had thrown almost without knowing it, blot out in an instant all the power and the swiftness and the shining?

But the desolation passed as the vision had done, and he was left with the fierce hot pride of his first real kill. He stabbed his knife into the turf to clean it, and thrust it back into his belt; then stood to think what he must do next.

THE FIRST THING
he realized was that he could not possibly get his kill back to Talore alone. He had seen himself proudly walking into the steading with a teal or a widgeon hanging from his hand; how much more proudly with a swan on his shoulder, the huge white wings drooping all about him! But those wings must be as far from tip to tip as the height of a man. And when he tried, he found that he could not even get the swan on to his shoulder without help, let alone carry it all the way back. The only thing to do was to hide it, and go and tell Talore.

He got hold of the bird, and began to drag it back towards the alder trees. It took him some time to do, because instinctively he was trying not to spoil it. It was his kill, and still beautiful, though with a moveless beauty now; and he wanted it to keep the beauty until Talore saw it. Little by little, the great wings fanned out on the grass, he got it back: in at last among the tangle of alders and the thick-growing rushes and wild iris.
Dragging it deep into the tangle, he folded the great wings close so that it might take up as little space as possible, and dragged up handfuls of brown, flowering rushes and cool, sword-shaped iris leaves and spread them over it in a thick layer until there was no gleam of white to betray it to the magpies and the ravens. Then he got up, picked up his spear and cleaned it as he had cleaned his dagger, by stabbing it into the turf, and taking a last careful look round him to be sure of knowing the place again, set off for the village and the steading of Talore the Hunter.

He had wandered long distances to and fro in search of his kill, but turned back often on his trail, so that he was not so far out into the Marsh as he had expected. But even so, the way up through the midge-infested hazel woods and along the flank of the Chalk was a long, hard one, and his bare, briar-scratched legs were beginning to be very weary when he came within sight—and smell—of the village.

It was the time of the wild garlic harvest, when the women and girls went down the stream sides and through the cool, dark places of the forest fringe, searching for the rank-smelling star-white flowers, and gathering the plants into big rush baskets; and for days the village and every outlying steading reeked of the white flowers spread out on the south sides of the low turf roofs to dry. Yesterday it had been no good trying to dry the flowers, but today the sun shone hot, and the swallows were flying high for fine weather, darting and swerving against the blue of the sky, and every roof had its patch of wilting white stars; the pungent waft of them came to meet Drem as he climbed up between the village corn plots towards the steading of Talore the Hunter.

Talore was not there, nor any of his sons. Only fat, good-natured Wenna sat on her heels in the house-place doorway, grinding corn for the next day in the big stone quern; and she cried out at sight of him, ‘
Now
what thing have you been doing? Tch tch, you’re hurt—there is blood on your forehead—’

Drem had not known that; it must have come off his hand
when he pushed back his hair. ‘Na, I am not hurt,’ he said. ‘I have been hunting, and I have killed. Now I would speak with Talore.’

‘He is away down the valley about a heifer calf,’ said Talore’s son’s wife, smiling at him across the quern, now that she knew he was not hurt. ‘Do you want to go in and look at the cubs? Gwythno came for his today, and Belu also, but there are still three cubs left.’

Drem shook his head. That was a thing that he was saving.

‘Are you hungry, then?’ Wenna asked.

Drem thought about this a little. In the intensity of his thinking about other things, he had forgotten about being hungry, but now he realized that having eaten nothing but Blai’s bannock all day, he was as empty as a last year’s snail shell. ‘I am hungry,’ he agreed.

‘Bide you—’ Wenna rose, and disappeared into the house-place, leaving him alone with the girl-child, who lay in a soft deerskin, sucking the bead of red coral that hung round her neck, and gazed at him out of solemn, sloe-black eyes. Drem stared back at the girl-child, then poked it gingerly in the middle with one toe, to see what would happen, prepared to retreat and swear he hadn’t been near it if it screamed. But it kicked inside the deerskin, and made pleased noises. So he poked it once more, then abandoned it rather hurriedly as Wenna came back.

‘Here—take this, then,’ she said, and gave him a wheaten cake smeared with dark honey, and squatted down again to her grinding.

Drem sat down with his back against the rowan-wood doorpost in the sunshine, and ate his wheaten cake, licking the golden dribble of sweetness round the edges, and watched Wenna scoop the grain from her basket into the hole in the upper stone of the quern, and the coarse creamy meal that came out between the two stones as she rubbed, on to the spread skin under the quern. Every now and then she stopped rubbing, and scooped up the meal into a crock beside her.
Drem did not offer to help; it was woman’s work, and he was of the Men’s side, a hunter, and had made his first big kill.