Warrior Scarlet (26 page)

They stepped forward, the rest of last year’s warriors with them, and three of the New Spears, to make up the team; each taking up his stand beside one of the toiling men. The hide ropes changed hands, the old team fell back, and Drem and Vortrix, facing each other through the dark framework, with the rest ranged behind them, took up the swift, rhythmic pull and release, pull and release, the long step forward and the long swing back, that set the fire drill spinning. The hide rope thrummed under Drem’s hand, the whirring squeal of the drill was in his ears, and the sense of being one with his own kind again, joined with his Spear Brothers in this, that was the very life and death of the Clan, rose hot in his breast until he felt it pressing out against the smarting patterns of his new manhood. He had tried so hard, down there through the ceremonies by the Council Fire, to believe in what was happening, and somehow never quite succeeded. And now suddenly it was
all real and came piercing home to him, and he could have wept, as he had wept when Vortrix first told him that he was to be let into his own world after all.

In the same instant he caught the smell of charring, and from the sharp nose of the spindle a thread of smoke wisped up into the moonlight.

His eyes flew to meet those of his blood brother, as Vortrix also looked up; and in the hushed moment the excitement and the triumph and the swift, awed delight leapt between them like a shout. They were together in this thing, and the Wonder was coming, and it was good—everything was good. Instinctively they quickened the rhythm of the pull, and the squeal of the drill grew higher and more urgent.

The thread of smoke had become a wisping frond, a feather; suddenly a spark flew out to fall upon the dry moss with which the socket was packed, cling there an instant like a red jewel, and go out. Another followed, and another; and a soft, long-drawn gasp of relief and exultation burst from the watching throng as a little clear tongue of flame sprang up, yellow as a broom flower in the moony darkness.

Old Midir stirred as one rousing quietly from a thousand-year sleep, and brought from within his bull’s-hide robe a torch of plaited straw, and bent to dip it into the flame. Then, drawing himself erect, he began to whirl it in the air until it burst into swooping circles of fire, as though a bird of flame flew about and about his head. And his deep throbbing cry rang out over the Hill of Gathering. ‘Fire is come again! Behold, O ye people, O all ye people, there is fire again in the world of man!’

This year also, the Wonder had come! Roar on roar of fierce rejoicing beat up from the crowd, and as the old priest went from one stack to the other, kindling them from the torch in his hand, they broke into the chant of the Reborn Fire. ‘We were in darkness and fire came again to us, the Red Fire, the Red Flower, the Flower of the Sun . . .’ The little fork-tongued flames ran crackling through the brushwood and laid hold of the bigger branches, flaring up to light the eager,
crowding faces of Golden and Dark People, and the Half People between, to flicker in men’s eyes and jink on copper armring and bronze, leaf-bladed spear, and kindle the eyes of the hounds to green lamps against the moon-watered dark.

Higher and higher leapt the flames, sending their fierce and fitful glare far out over the Hill of Gathering, warming the threshold of the great, quiet mound where the nameless champion slept with his copper sword beside him. And with the flames, the crowd’s excitement mounted too. The young warriors sprang forward and began to whirl and stamp in the fierce glare between the fires, to the rhythm that the girls clapped for them, until with a lowing and a trampling out of the darkness, the first of the driven herds came pelting up. And then a yet wilder turmoil broke out, a chaos of gaunt, up-tossed heads, horns flashing in the firelight, an uproar of shouting and bellowing, barking and bleating, as the terrified sheep and cattle were driven through between the fires by their yelling and laughing herdsmen, that they might be protected and made fruitful for the year to come. Lastly the half wild pony herds were driven through, the mares with their foals running at heel, in a flood of streaming manes and trampling hooves; and the tumult was ripped across by their terrified neighing.

The uproar was sinking a little, by and by, when Drem, returning from helping to gather in some of the ponies, caught sight of little dark Erp on the edge of the fire glow, with the dog Asal beside him. ‘Erp!’ he called. ‘Erp!’ and turned in his tracks, threading his way towards him through the shifting throng of men and beasts.

The boy stood to wait his coming, but did not look round. And when they stood side by side, he asked: ‘Well then, what is it that you want with me?’

Drem looked at him, half puzzled, half already beginning to understand, while Asal and Whitethroat sniffed muzzles in the way of old friends. ‘You have the dog, then,’ he said at last. It was not what he had meant to say.

‘Aye, I have the dog.’

Drem waited a moment, then, as it seemed the other had nothing more to say: ‘Let you tell me of Doli.’

‘Doli is gone back to the Dark. There is no more to tell.’

Another pause, full of the shouts of men and the lowing of scattered cattle—a fine job it would be to get them rounded up again. Drem looked down, a frown between his coppery brows, at the boy beside him. But Erp’s face was shut fast in the firelight, his own gaze caught between the pricked ears of his dog.

‘At least let you tell me where they have laid him,’ Drem said.

The little dark shepherd looked up then, looked him full in the face for almost the first time in their lives, then let his gaze slide downwards. ‘What is it to the Golden People where Tah-Nu’s children lay their dead?’ He whistled Asal to heel, and turned away about the business of the sheep.

Drem made a swift movement as though to catch him, then checked. What was the use? He shrugged and swung on his heel—to find himself face to face with Luga standing close by and looking on. ‘Even the great Drem One-arm cannot hunt in two worlds at once,’ Luga said.

‘If Luga viper-tongue does not have a care, he will not hunt long in any world!’ Drem retorted furiously, and thrust past him with his nose in the air, and went shouldering back to the fire.

The flames were sinking, and the warriors and their women who wished for sons in the coming year had for the most part already leapt hand in hand through the fire; and now some of
the young warriors who had no wives as yet had begun to take the girls of their choice out of the Women’s side—girls with star-wort and the magic vervain in their hair—to leap with them for the same purpose. Just as Drem reached the forefront of the crowd again, Vortrix had pulled out from among her own kind a tall, laughing girl with bright hair round her head. They cleared the fire easily, the girl shrilling like a curlew, and scattered a few hot embers on the edge as they landed. And Drem, watching, thought that little Eyes-and-Ears had spoken the truth; she was indeed fair, the girl that Vortrix had under his cloak.

And now, before the fire sank too low, it was time to be taking home the New Fire to rekindle the dark hearths for another year; and in ones and twos the youngest grown men in every household began to come forward to take their fire; those whose homes were in the village merely dipping a branch into the flames and running with it streaming out in rags of smoking brightness behind, while those whose homes were the outland farms and the herdsmen’s and shepherds’ bothies among the Chalk took carefully chosen embers and stowed them in fire-pots. It dawned on Drem, watching, that it was no longer for Drustic to carry home the New Fire, but for himself.

He went in search of the Grandfather to tell him.

He found the Grandfather sitting defiantly on a pile of cut turfs, with a horn of heather beer on his knee, with Drem’s mother and Cordaella hovering over him, and Drustic standing by at a safe distance. ‘You should come home now,’ Drem’s
mother was saying. ‘It grows late, and so much heather beer is not good for your belly. You will be ill, and then I must tend you.’

The Grandfather was scowling at all of them under his thick, grey-gold brows. ‘I am old, and it is not good for my belly that I do not have what I wish! What I wish is to be left in peace to enjoy myself, on this, the night that the youngest son of my youngest son becomes a man. The Fire will burn for a long while yet. Woman, I shall remain here so long as I choose, and
when
I choose, then Drustic shall bring me home. Let Drem go now and carry home the New Fire, that the hearth may be bright when I choose to come!’

And so in a little, Drem was loping back along the moonlit flanks of the Chalk, with the red seeds of the New Fire glowing in the fire-pot his mother had given him, under his wolfskin.

The steading lay quiet in the moonlight as he came up the driftway between the little irregular barley plots, pausing once to blow gently on the glowing embers in his fire-pot. As he came through the gate gap in the steading hedge, he saw Blai in the house-place doorway, sitting sideways against the rowan wood doorpost, with her head drooping as though she were very tired. He had forgotten that she must be at home; he had not missed the sight of her among the other girls about the Beltane fires. The wind fell away between one long, soft gust and another, and in the moment’s stillness the shadows and the moonlight were sharply pied as a magpie’s feathers; the shadows of the birch tree lay all across the threshold, across Blai’s skirt and her hands that lay palm upward, empty, in her lap.

Whitethroat padded ahead, across the moon-washed garth, and thrust his muzzle against her neck, and she started and looked up, then rose to her feet. She had taken off the woollen net that usually bound her hair, and it hung about her neck and shoulders like black smoke. There were no flowers in it, no star-wort nor magic vervain. ‘Drem,’ she said, a little questioningly.

‘I have brought the New Fire,’ Drem said.

‘Where are the others?’

‘The Grandfather would not come away yet. They will be here in a while; but I have come now, to bring the New Fire.’

Not really aware that he did so, he held out the fire-pot towards her in a gesture of sharing. They stood with it between them, their heads bent to peer into it, like a pair of children holding a miracle cupped between their hands. The red seeds of the fire glowed in the darkness of the pot; Drem blew on them gently and the seeds brightened, casting a faint glow around them.

‘Come, let us wake the fire on the hearth,’ said Blai.

It was very dark in the house-place, with the moonlight shut out, a waiting darkness. They had to grope their way to the hearth. Kneeling beside it, Drem blew on the spark until it grew strong, and Blai dipped in a dry twig, and as they watched, suddenly there was a slender bud of flame at the tip of the twig. Then she kindled a piece of dry birch bark on the hearth, and then another and another, and dropped in the twig as the flame reached her fingers.

Drem blew on the little tender new flames, on the birch bark whose crumbling edges were suddenly strung with red jewels; then sat back on his heels, as the fire quickened and spread, watching the pale, eager tongues and petals of flame spring up out of the dark.

‘It is like a flower,’ Blai said very softly, feeding it with bigger and bigger bits of wood. ‘A flower of the Sun.’

And they looked at each other, in the first firelight, both aware of having been joined in something potent and lovely.

‘Blai,’ Drem said after a while. ‘Blai, why were you here?’

‘I—saw you come back with the New Spears.’ Blai set a piece of wild pear branch with infinite care in the midst of the fire. ‘And then I came away. I had things to do.’

‘What things could you do, without fire to see by?’

‘The moon is very bright,’ Blai said.

There was a small silence. The new flames fluttered on the
hearth, and a long sigh of wind came over the shoulder of the Chalk and brushed across the thatch, and Whitethroat, who had settled himself beside the hearth, stretched out and began to lick his paws. At last Drem said: ‘You were not doing anything when I came.’ And then, as she still remained silent—‘Blai, why
did
you come away?’

She looked up then, but the stillness in her never stirred. ‘What place have I yonder with the Women’s side? I have no place among the maidens of the Tribe. I am not one with them, I am not one with the Half People either. It is better that I come away . . .’

It was as though her words called to something in Drem; something that called back in recognition and greeting. Suddenly he was aware of her as he had been only once before, but more strongly and clearly now, out of a new compassion, a new power of seeing that had grown in him through his outcast year: Blai, who was not quite a handmaid nor yet quite a daughter in his home, who had no dowry of cattle nor any beauty to take its place and make her desirable in the eyes of some young warrior. For a moment it was only compassion, and then quite suddenly and simply he understood that he and Blai belonged together, like to like; that no other girl could ever come as near to him as Blai could do, because she knew the things that he knew.

‘They were still leaping through the flames when I came away,’ he said; and then, as she did not answer, ‘Vortrix leapt through with Rhun the daughter of Gwythno of the Singing Spear, when the flames still burned high, and neither of them was scorched. That means many sons for them by and by.’

Blai was watching him, but still she did not answer.

He drew his legs under him and made to rise. ‘This fire is well enough now; if we bank it up, no harm will come to it. Blai, it may be that there will still be some fire left up yonder, if we go back now—if we run very quickly.’

Blai sat and looked at him, her face whiter and narrower than
ever, in the black smoke of her hair. ‘You are kind,’ she said wonderingly. ‘You did not use to be kind.’

He had sprung up, and taken a long pace towards the doorway, followed as ever by Whitethroat; but he turned, and stood looking at her across the hearth that was alive with fire again. He was understanding more things now. He was understanding why Blai had not looked at him these past moons; that it was not that she hadn’t looked at him since he began to get well, but that she hadn’t looked at him except when he was sick since last sheep shearing. He remembered with sharp-edged clearness that small bitter scene at sheep shearing, and the white blind look on her face; the look that he had seen there once before—when the bronze-smith came with his magic dagger.