Iwa gasped – the cave was far bigger than she’d imagined. Lines of gypsum and lime glowed in coloured bands, but it was the paintings that caught her eye. The walls were filled with them: swirling colours and symbols mixed in with the forms of bison and deer, and tiny stick figures hunting them. There were snakes as large as men, and creatures the like of which she’d never seen. Palm prints littered the rock; the marks of ancient hands laid out before her in a myriad of colours and, in between them, strange symbols flowed. This wasn’t the work of the Bison Grass, or any other clan.
For a moment she forgot herself and ran her fingers over one of the symbols. The colours shone brightly as if freshly painted, but she had the feeling that this was something very ancient.
Then she saw the burnt-out husk of a fire. ‘Yaroslav!’ she cried. This time there was a moan as a formless shadow stirred within the cave. Now that the fire had taken hold she could see more clearly. Further along the cave wall, where the rock had been worn away to form a tiny hollow, a bundle of rags lay next to the remnants of a meal. ‘Yaroslav,’ she called again and, this time, the rags moved. ‘Father!’ she cried and ran over, but there was no reply. ‘It’s me.’ She reached down and touched his skin, clammy and wet as though he burned with a fever. Carefully she rolled him over. It was hard to recognise the face that greeted her; the skin was drawn thin and yellow over the cheekbones and the eyes were pallid. Red blotches stained his neck and forehead, and it was only the whisper of a breath that told her he was alive at all.
‘I’m sorry,’ Jarel said. ‘We were almost into the woods when an arrow caught him. Kazik and one of the others helped him, or else he’d never have managed to escape at all, let alone live this long. It was a wonder that we ever got him up here; the arrow must have ruptured his liver.’
‘And so you left him to die.’ Iwa shuddered. She’d gutted enough animals to know how deadly such a wound would be.
‘His blood’s gone bad. It was all we could do to get him here and ease his way into the ancestor world.’
Around Yaroslav a few pieces of broken pottery lay scattered on the ground. Now she understood: they were remnants of his life, left about his body so that his spirit could remember who he’d been as he passed into the ancestor world. Jarel had been lying all along, with his story about joining the Wolf’s Jaw. Iwa shot him a narrowed gaze as he lurked uncertainly at the cave mouth, his feet trembling as if about to run. Maybe he had wanted to spare her, but she hated his cowardliness all the same. Better to bed down with hard truths than soft lies, as Katchka would say.
‘We should go,’ he said, his voice little more than a whisper. He wants to spare his own feelings, she realised. He’d seen too much of death to want to face any more. She could have forgiven him that, but not the lie. He probably didn’t even think he’d find the man still alive.
From underneath the rags there was a flicker of movement, which brought with it the hot, sweet smell of death and decay. There was no telling how bad the wound was under the skins. ‘There was nothing we could have done.’ Jarel turned away as he shifted the weight from his wounded leg.
‘We need some coltsfoot and comfrey,’ she said firmly, ‘and some burdock root; gromwell too, lots of gromwell.’
‘There’s nothing you can do for him,’ Jarel put his hand on her shoulder, ‘except to make his death a little easier. There,’ he said as Yaroslav moved slightly, ‘he knows that you’ve survived, that should ease his passing into the spirit world. Now he can stand before his ancestors and tell them that you are safe.’
He tried his best to smile. Nobody lived so closely with death as a hunter. There were many things that the hunt alone could teach, and though the women lived amid the gutted carcasses and scraped the skins clean to be tanned into leather, few had ever attained the same intimacy with death.
‘We’ve got to try and keep him from the ancestor world. I’ve helped Katchka often enough. She’s managed to cure bad blood before.’
‘There’s no herb to help him now.’ Jarel knelt and tucked the blankets around the man. Yes, there were a few women who tended the sick and dying, they understood about death and the passing to the ancestor world almost as much as any hunter. If only this child had picked up Katchka’s skill, she’d recognise the time of passage then. If only there was anything he could do to help her.
He remembered his first sight of a man’s death, a young hunter who’d been too eager for the kill. He could still hear the screams as the man tried to pull his ripped guts back into his stomach, the blood thick about his fingers and the trace of a boar’s tusk still lodged in the ruined remnants of his abdomen. He stood by and watched, tears in his eyes as he felt his own helplessness. ‘Did Katchka give you any recipes to ease pain?’ He shook the memory off. At least this man’s passing would be easier.
‘If we could only get gromwell.’
Yaroslav groaned, the air escaping thinly through his lips. Suddenly Iwa felt useless. If only she’d kept her pouch about her. Now she had nothing, no herbs or tools or sacred carved bones.
She should never have
