When they were ready, bearing their day packs and their weapons, the Pretani, Zesi and a handful of Etxelur folk walked up the riverbank to join the snailheads. The hunters had a soft-voiced discussion about the day’s strategy, and then they slipped into the shadows of the trees.
Ana could have gone along. She had chosen not to; a day without Gall, Shade or Zesi would be a relief. She went back to the warmth of her pallet of leaves and soft doe skin, to sleep a bit more. She heard nothing more of the hunters until the sun was past its noon height.
‘Look out!’
The single cry in the Etxelur tongue was all the warning they had.
The women from Etxelur had been burning off reeds from the marshy land around the river. A pall of smoke rose high into the air, and the smell of ash was strong. The fire flushed out hare and vole and wildfowl that the children chased with nets of woven bark, and the burning would stimulate new growth.
Meanwhile Ana was on the bank of the lagoon with Arga, collecting club rushes. These were particularly prized plants, for you could eat all of them, their stems and seeds and fat tubers, and would be useful to carry back to Etxelur. Lightning had been digging his nose into their work and running off with tubers, to scoldings from Arga.
When that shout came Lightning reacted immediately, turning to face the forest and barking madly.
And Ana heard a rumble, like thunder, coming from the forest.
Arga tugged her sleeve. ‘I can feel it in my stomach. What is it?’
Ana saw shadows in the forest. Heard branches cracking. ‘Run!’ She dropped her flint blade and basket of rushes. She grabbed Lightning by the scruff of his neck, took Arga’s hand, and ran downstream, along the eroded bank.
The animal came crashing through the trees, hooves pounding on the peaty turf, gruffly bellowing its pain. Ana dared to glance back, and she saw it emerge into the sunlight, a huge aurochs bull, thick brown hair, flashing horns, wild rolling eyes, frothing mouth. And she saw a spear dangling from its flanks. The question was, which genius had stampeded it towards the camp?
Then the animal reached the river – the lagoon, where she and Arga had been working only heartbeats before. It crashed forward and fell, landing so hard its head was twisted right around, with a crunch like breaking wood. It struggled and bellowed, but did not rise.
Now the hunters came boiling out of the trees after it, yelling, half-naked, some brandishing spears, Etxelur, Pretani, snailhead together.
‘Come on.’ The priest was beside Ana. He handed her a spear; she took it by the shaft. ‘We’ll help them finish him off.’
She glanced around quickly. The children were out of harm’s way here. ‘Keep hold of Lightning,’ she told Arga. The child nodded seriously. Then Ana ran with the priest to the lagoon. ‘You’ll have a lot of apologising to do today, Jurgi.’
‘I’m good at that.’
The hunters and those who had come running from both camps gathered around the fallen bull. The animal, trapped, squirming, was a mass of muscle and fur, tossed horns and lashing hooves, anger and pain and mud and blood and flying water. Ana could smell how its bowels had loosened in terror, and there was a harder rust stink of blood. More spears were hurled at it, or thrust into its flesh.
Then one spear went flying over the lagoon, high in the air, following a smooth arc. Ana watched it curiously, absently. It was going to miss the bull by a long way. The spear seemed to hang.
Then it fell among the snailheads.
A man went down, the heavy spear in his neck. Few saw this, in the chaos of the slaughter. But those near the man reacted and ran that way.
Ana dropped her own spear and hurried over.
It was Gut, the snailhead who had enraged Gall. The spear had got him in the throat, thrown him back and pinned him to the ground. His mouth with that studded tongue gaped wide, full of blood. He was still alive, his fingers feebly thrashing at a spear big enough to penetrate to the heart of a bull aurochs. Alive, but already lost to the world of the living.
Knuckle stood over his brother, face contorted, veins throbbing along the flanks of his long temples. ‘Where is Gall? Where is he?’
20
Novu and Chona rounded a bluff and looked down on a valley. Under a grey lid of sky it was raining, and their cloaks and tunics were sodden through.
‘There,’ Chona gasped. The rain hissed on the grass and pattered on the river water, and Novu found it hard to hear what Chona was saying. ‘There! By the river – that place. That’s where we meet. That’s where… Come on.’ He limped forward, and Novu, laden with their packs, followed.
The river ran over a rocky bed, beside a broad flood plain walled by cliffs of limestone. They had followed the river upstream for so long, they had come so far west, that it was barely recognisable to Novu as the huge waterway they had followed from its estuary, through the Narrow of the fish-people, and across the Continent’s rocky heart. Yet here it was, the same river.
And here, Novu knew, Chona had been hoping to find his early-summer gathering of traders, for this place was, uniquely, near the head of several of the great rivers that traversed the Continent, a meeting point of the traders’ natural routes. ‘Always at this time,’ he would say, ‘after the equinox, that’s when the trading is good. Later, at midsummer, all over the Continent the hunters and fishers gather, doling out food and gifts to each other. So this is the time to catch their leaders, early summer, when the big men start panicking about what gifts they have to give. Oh, the aurochs too fast for you this year? The deer too cunning, the fish too slippery? Shame. Maybe your wife’s brothers would be happy with my bits of coloured stone instead…’ Even traders followed the seasons, Novu was learning, from Chona’s increasingly broken talk.
Chona had been desperate to get here. No matter how ill he became, no matter the cough, the pale, blotchy, sweating skin, the feverish broken sleep at night, Chona insisted on pressing on every day, leaning on his staff and on Novu’s shoulder. But for days Chona had been watching the sun’s arc in the sky, muttering, ‘Late. Too late.’
And in the end the illness had slowed Chona down, just enough.
This rainy day the broad plain by the river was all but empty. You could see how the ground had been churned up by many feet, and old hearths lay like black scars on the ground. People had been here, a crowd of them. But now only a couple of houses remained, in the lee of the limestone cliffs, and one of those looked abandoned.
‘Too late,’ Chona said. ‘I told you!’ He raised his hand and clipped Novu’s head; he was weaker than he used to be, but it still stung.
Novu bore this without complaint. ‘It wasn’t my fault. You’re the ill one. So what now, shall we stand here in the rain?’
‘Help me.’ A trail, well worn, led from this elevated place to the edge of the water. Chona led the way, though he reached back for support from Novu. ‘That house, that one there. With the smoke, and the boat beside it. I think I recognise the design on it, the sunburst on the skins…’
They reached the flood plain and limped across muddy grass. Their legs brushed thistles, all that had survived the passage of the traders.
The owner of the house was a big, bluff man who came out and watched their approach, suspiciously.
‘Loga!’ Chona called, in the traders’ tongue. ‘Loga… It’s good to see you, my friend.’
Loga wore a coat sewn together from the black and white pelts of many small animals. ‘Chona. You look like shit.’
Chona stood gasping, his eyes concealed by his hood, the rain dripping from his long nose. ‘We’re soaked. If I can come in-’
‘Who’s this?’ Loga stared at Novu. ‘Son?’
‘No.’ Chona laughed, but it turned into a cough. ‘No, no. Trade goods, that’s all. Hard worker, good walker, and if you want bricks making… Oh, what’s the word for “brick”? Never mind, never mind. Loga, if I can just come in and
