Outcast (4 page)

Forcing his stiff legs to move, he crawled out and started up the slope. The rocks were slippery with rain. He kept his boots off till his feet grew numb. His plan had been to set a false trail north from the 48

Raven camp, then double back and make for the valleys to the south, where he'd lived with Fa. Instead, Aki had forced him into a huge loop up and down the Green River. He was now somewhere on Broken Ridge, not far from where he'd found the red deer antlers.

His sides ached, and on his forehead the new tattoo throbbed. He found a willow tree, muttered a quick apology, and peeled off a slip of bast. Having chewed it, he smeared the stinging pulp on the wound; then he cut a strip of buckskin from his jerkin and tied it around as a headband. It would keep the medicine in place, and hide the outcast tattoo.

With a jolt, he remembered that he'd used the same medicine on the night Fa was killed. For a moment, it seemed as if everything that had happened since-- finding Wolf, meeting Renn and Fin-Kedinn--as if none of that had been teal. Here he was alone again, and on the run.

 

Before him the ground fell away into dense woods of oak, beech, and pine. He caught the distant glint of the Axehandle. Many canoes plied its course, especially during the salmon run. He must stay well back from its banks.

Keeping to deep cover, he began the descent through willowherb and waist-high bracken. He was light-headed with hunger, but he had no food, no axe, 49

and only three arrows. Somehow he had to eat before he got too weak to run. Somehow he had to find a hidden valley where he could survive on his own. Somehow he had to get rid of the mark of the Soul-Eater and force the clans to take him back....

 

The task was too huge. He'd never do it.

 

Then he remembered something Fin-Kedinn had said the previous moon, when they were gathering bark to make a fishing net. It had been a bitter day like this one, and Torak had stared at the slimy willow wands piled at his feet, wondering how he was ever going to turn them into a net.

"Don't think about the net," Fin-Kedinn had told him. "Take a single willow wand and strip it. You can do that, can't you?"
"Of course." He'd learned how to strip a stick before he was old enough to hold a knife.
"Then do it," said the Raven Leader. "Step by step. One branch at a time. Don't think about the net."
Now, as Torak felt the rain soaking his buckskins, he nodded. Step by step. Food. Shelter. Yes. Leave the rest till tomorrow.
He found an elk trail that stayed concealed as it wound east along the valley flank. The rain stopped. The sun came out.
As he went, he became aware that although the
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Ravens were lost to him, the Forest was not. "Forest," he said softly, "I've always honored you. Help me survive."
The Forest shook the raindrops from its boughs, and told him to look around.
By the trail he saw a sturdy birch tree with leaves still pleated from the bud. It would give him a quick, strengthening drink. Why hadn't he thought of that before?

Asking the tree's permission, he used his knife to cut a shallow hole in the bark at the base of the trunk. Tree-blood oozed. He stuck a hollow elder stem in the wound to funnel the drips, and tied on a birch-bark cone with honeysuckle to catch them.

 

While the cone was filling, he found a digging stick and dug up some crow garlic. Sticking one bulb in a fork of the birch for the clan guardian, he ate the rest. They made his eyes water, but they warmed him up a bit.

 

After that he found some comfrey roots--very acrid and sticky--and, in a boggy hollow, the best of all: a clump of spotted orchid. The roots were so starchy it was like eating glue, but they were the most nourishing food in the Forest, if you couldn't get meat.

 

By now, the cone was brimming. After thanking the tree's spirit and pressing the bark over the wound to heal it, he drained the cone. The birch-blood tasted cool and dizzyingly sweet. The strength of the Forest became his.

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Food made him feel a little better.

I can do this, he told himself. I can make dogwood arrows and harden the tips in a fire. I can make willowherb snares, and catch fish with brambie-thorn hooks. The Forest will help me.

 

Midafternoon was wearing on as he neared the valley bottom, where he had to wade through piles of last autumn's leaves. His confidence waned. His legs wouldn't carry him much farther.

With no axe, building a shelter would be hard; but again, the Forest helped. He found a storm-toppled beech that had fallen onto a boulder. It gave him the perfect frame. All he had to do was pile branches on either side and leaf mold on top of that. It was well placed, too: on the edge of a willow thicket where he could hide if he had to.

The air was turning sharp, but he couldn't risk a fire, so for warmth, he stuffed grass down his jerkin, boots, and leggings. It was scratchy, and it tickled when beetles and spiders scuttled out, but it would stop him freezing.

 

Like a badger, he dragged armfuls of leaves into the shelter and snuggled under them, relishing the woody tang. After a prayer of thanks to the Forest, he shut his eyes. He was exhausted.

He was also wide-awake.
Thoughts he'd been avoiding for a night and a day
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took hold. Like a burr in a wolf's fur, they wouldn't let go. Outcast. Clanless. How could he be clanless?

He thought of the garlic he'd put in the tree as an offering for the clan guardian. But if he had no clan, he had no guardian. No guardian. That made him feel breathless. How could anyone survive without a guardian?

His fingers touched the scar that cut through his "clan-tattoo." He couldn't remember getting it--scars weren't something you bothered about; everyone had them. He had one on his forearm from the night the bear had attacked, and another on his calf from the boar's tusk. Renn had one on her hand from a tokoroth bite, and on her foot from stamping on a flint shard when she was three. Fin-Kedinn had lots from hunting accidents and fights when he was young, and the big, puckered scar on his thigh from the bear.

Scowling, Torak burrowed deeper into the leaves.
Don't
think about the Ravens. Think about Fa, and why he never told you. Think about your mother, and why she declared you clanless.

 

A gust of wind stirred the willows, and they moaned. Torak heard the tuneless bellowing of an abandoned elk in the distance. In early summer, the Forest rang with their miserable cries. Their mothers, unable to look after last summer's young as well as a newborn calf,

 

53 abruptly rejected the older ones, driving them away with savage kicks. For a moon or so, the young elk blundered about, seeking comfort from any large creature they met, until they were killed by hunters, or learned to fend for themselves.

I want my mother,
bellowed the elk.
Torak squeezed his eyes shut.

He knew so little about his mother, and yet the thought of her had always been with him: a kernel of warmth, even through the bleakest times. He had loved her almost without thinking. He had believed that she had loved him. But to have declared him clanless ...

It felt as if she'd abandoned him.
Where do I go now? he thought. Where do I belong?
Another gust, and the willows replied.
You belong here. In the Forest.
Listening to them, he fell into sleep.
With a jolt, he fell out of it.
Voices. Above him on the slope. He lay rigid, heart pounding.
Then he thought, if they were hunting, they wouldn't be talking.

Crawling out as quietly as he could, he shouldered his quiver and bow and dismantled his shelter, sweeping the area around it with crushed garlic leaves to mask his scent. He crept into the willows. Shadows

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were lengthening, but the first stars weren't yet out. He hadn't slept long.

The voices came nearer, then stopped fifty paces above him. Through the branches, he spotted a Viper hunting party on the elk trail he'd used earlier. No dogs. That was something. And he'd swept the trail clear of tracks. Hadn't he?

It wasn't only Viper Clan. A party of Ravens seemed to have met them on the trail. He saw Thull, Sialot, Fin-Kedinn. Renn.
It gave him a sick feeling to be peering at them like a stranger; to be unable to go to them.

He watched the younger Viper men wait respectfully for Fin-Kedinn to speak, then preen themselves as he admired their roe buck kill. He saw two Viper children shyly eyeing Renn, who pretended not to notice as she polished her bow with a handful of crushed hazelnuts.

Their voices reached him. They were talking about Aki.
"His wretched dogs nearly ruined our hunt!" complained a Viper man. "If this goes on ..."
"It won't," said Fin-Kedinn. "Aki won't catch Torak."
"Still," said the Viper. "Those dogs are frightening the prey. The sooner the outcast is out of our range, the better."
"Oh, he'll be long gone by now," said Fin-Kedinn,
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his voice carrying in the still evening air. "He wouldn't be such a fool as to stay around here, not with the clan meet coming up."

The clan meet.
Torak had forgotten all about the great gathering of the clans, which took place every three summers, and which this summer would be held at the mouth of the Whitewater, not two daywalks from where he hid.

 

The hunters said their farewells and parted, the Vipers heading south for their camp on the Widewater, the Ravens west.

 

Don't go, Torak silently begged Fin-Kedinn. He felt hollow as he watched the broad-shouldered figure moving off into the trees with Renn. He watched till his eyes ached.

Long after they'd gone, he remained in the willows, while night deepened around him. A twig cracked. He froze.
Another twig. Loud. Deliberate.
"It's me!" whispered Renn. "Where are you?"
Torak shut his eyes. He couldn't answer her. He'd only put her in danger.

"Torak!"
Now she sounded angry as well as scared. "I
know
you've in there! You left a scrap of chewed bast on the trail. It was all I could do to pick it up before the others spotted it!"

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He
hated
staying silent.

"Oh, all right then!" she breathed, "maybe this will change your mind!" More rustling. "I've brought what you'll need for getting rid of the Soul-Eater tattoo. That's why I'm here, to tell you how to do it." Another pause. "If you don't come out
right now,
I won't!"

 

57
SIX

"What do you think you're
doing?"
whispered Torak as he yanked Renn into the thicket. "If anyone saw you!"
"They didn't," she replied with more confidence than she felt. "I've brought you some food and a sleeping-sack, but I didn't manage to steal an axe, so you'll--" "Renn. No. You can't get mixed up in this!"
"I already am. Have a salmon cake." When he didn't move, she added, "Well if you don't want it, I'll have to leave it for anyone to find!"
That worked, and he snatched it from her,
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demolishing it with fierce concentration. As she crouched beside him in the sour-smelling gloom, she wondered when he'd last eaten.

"There's lots more salmon cakes," she told him. "And blood sausage and dried auroch tongue, and a bag of hazelnuts. Should be enough for half a moon, if you're careful."

 

She was talking too much, she knew that. But he looked so different. That headband made him seem older; and there was a tautness in his face. He kept glancing about, as if at any moment a hunter might leap from the shadows.

 

This, she thought, is what it is to be prey.

Out loud, she asked where Wolf was, and Torak told her that he'd gone to lure Aki off the scent. Then he asked how she'd got away from Fin-Kedinn, and she told him about turning back to "check some snares," then picking up the supplies she'd hidden earlier, along with a wood pigeon which she would take to camp as proof of the "snares." She didn't mention the tightness in her chest as she'd deceived Fin-Kedinn, or the pain in his eyes when he'd realized what she was doing.

"He guessed I was here, didn't he?" said Torak. "What he said about the clan meet. He was warning me."
"I think so. Maybe."
She passed him another salmon cake and ate a couple of hazelnuts to keep him company. Then she
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said, "I've been trying to understand how all this happened. Those red deer antlers, with Aki's mark rubbed out. Someone did that. Someone wanted you cast out." He glanced at her. "The Soul-Eaters."
She nodded. "They'll have come south by now. And they know you're a spirit walker. They want your power."
"They want the last piece of the fire-opal, too."
"Wherever that is."
In the deep blue night, young owls called to each other as they glided between the trees, and bats flitted over the bracken with a swift, light crackling of wings. Torak wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "Renn," he said. "I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For all this. For not telling you about the mark. If only I'd told you. It just--it never seemed the right time."
Her throat closed. "I know how that can be. It's never easy to tell things. Secrets, I mean."
"Well. I'm sorry."

They finished eating, then Torak strapped the sleeping-sack to his back and shouldered his quiver and bow, and Renn repacked the food pouch and placed a morsel of salmon cake in a willow for the clan guardian. As soon as she'd done it, she wished she'd waited till

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later, so that Torak hadn't seen. He told her he didn't mind, but she could see that he did.
"It's strange," he said. "All my life I've been doing that. And I haven't got a guardian."
"It's still an offering. For the Forest."
"I suppose." He paused. "But how is it possible, Renn? How can I not have a clan?"
"I don't know." "I've got a clan-soul; I can tell right from wrong. So how?" She shook her head. "Saeunn says no one's ever been clanless before."

He looked appalled--and she was furious with herself. Oh, very clever, Renn, that's really made him feel better. "Anyway," she went on quickly, "I don't think I'd want to be part of that Wolf Clan. Those yellow eyes ..." She shuddered. "I asked their Mage how they do it, and she said she puts something in the water. Once she got it wrong, and they turned pink instead." She chewed her lip. "I made that bit up. A joke."

Torak forced a smile. She felt achingly sorry for him. "But if I'm not Wolf Clan," he said, "what am I?" She drew a breath. "You're Wolf's pack-brother. You're my friend. And
that's
never going to change." Torak blinked. He rubbed a hand over his face and shouldered the food pouch, and coughed. "Fin-Kedinn
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will be wondering where you are. You said you know how to do the rite?"
"... Yes," said Renn.
He caught something in her tone. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," she repeated. In fact, she'd had to piece it together in snatches gleaned from Saeunn, so she wasn't
entirely
sure. But it wouldn't help Torak to know that. The rite didn't take long to describe, but when Renn came to the part about cutting out the tattoo, they both felt sick.
"Here," she said shakily, untying her swansfoot medicine pouch from her belt. "It's got most of what you'll need."
Torak took it and stared at it.
"You must wait till the moon is full," she went on. "Until then, you'll have to find somewhere safe to hide."