Fire Bringer (2 page)

‘Hatred and fear,’ said Brechin sadly to himself, ‘that’s all they are breeding in the herd. And cruelty.’

Brechin turned west towards the little stream that bubbled along the meadow at the bottom of the valley. Nearby, in the sludgy ground by the water, a hind had made a wallow and was rolling around in the delicious, cooling mud. Brechin plashed over onto to a strip of green that edged the trees, where six or seven hinds were feeding, chewing steadily on the cud, and raced forward as he caught sight of the single rowan tree.

Beneath it Eloin, the hind Brechin had mentioned earlier, was lying on her side in the long grass. Her belly was swollen and as she slept her flanks rose and fell noiselessly and every now and then her smooth body twitched with pain. Hinds can mate as early as two, especially woodland deer which tend to mature quicker than deer that live in the open, but there is some variety in their breeding habits. Eloin was a five-year-old now and had mated with Brechin late the previous winter. At four she was not exactly old to mate for the first time, but some in the herd whispered that the beautiful hind had been holding herself back. The pregnancy had been an unusually long one too and Eloin was one of the last to drop her fawn. Brechin knew that it meant danger for both calf and hind.

He padded up to her side and as he looked down his eyes grew dark with worry and love. The thought of losing Eloin filled him with an aching confusion.

When red deer have mated they separate and do not show much concern for one another, especially during calving. But although Brechin’s strength and prowess had won him seven hinds the previous autumn, he was unusually fond of Eloin. Knowing that she was having difficulties calving, he had spent the last eight suns checking up on her.

The most unusual part of their coupling, though, was that last season Brechin had not even had to win Eloin in the rut. When the stags fight for their hinds the home valleys echo with the clatter and scrape of clashing antlers. After the victorious deer have chosen their mates one or two of the younger deer may step in to claim the remaining hinds. But very occasionally a brave hind will come forward and attempt to choose a mate for herself. She risks being gored in the process but when Eloin had padded up to Brechin and, without even lowering her head as was expected of her, had touched the base of both his antlers with her muzzle, Brechin had simply muzzled her in return and together they had walked away. All agreed that their mating was made by Herne.

All but Drail. He had wanted Eloin for himself and when she had stood with a captain of the Outriders he had been consumed with jealousy. Perhaps that was part of the reason for the change in him, thought Brechin now, as he looked down at his beautiful hind. He lowered his head and licked Eloin’s face.

‘Eloin,’ he whispered softly. ’Eloin. Wake up.’

The hind opened her eyes and tried to lift her head.

‘Brechin. I was sleeping.’

‘Lie still, Eloin. You must rest and be strong.’

‘Forgive me,’ said the hind, sinking back into the grass.‘I’m too weak.’

‘When is your time, Eloin?’

‘Soon. Very soon now. He kicks like Herne.’

‘Will you be the last?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Bracken dropped her fawn this morning.’ Brechin knew the name. Bracken was a doe who had stood with one of Brechin’s Outriders last autumn, an ageing stag of about ten years named Salen. She was a slow hind and rather timid but was still quite a catch for Salen. He had had a bad fall the previous summer and this would be his last season as an Outrider. He had been lucky to have any hinds at all, let alone a new-born calf.

‘Salen will be very proud,’ said Brechin delightedly. ‘Is it a buck or a doe?’

Eloin looked back sadly at her mate.

‘Neither, Brechin,’ she said. ‘The calf was stillborn.’

Eloin looked towards the trees and in the shadow of an oak Brechin saw Bracken. She was standing quite still in the grass. Her head was tilted slightly to one side. Every now and then her haunches would flinch and her muzzle drop to nudge the little body lying motionless at her feet. It was a dead calf.

Eloin laid her head on the earth again. One of the most painful sights in the forest is a mother deer and her dead fawn. The hinds will stay by their fawns for days, waiting for them to move or nuzzling them to feed, until at last, filled with endless confusion, they simply walk away.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Eloin, sensing Brechin’s concern.

‘Bracken was weak but I’ll bear you a fine little Outrider.’

‘Eloin,’ Brechin whispered, ‘I must leave you for a while. Drail has summoned the council to the Home Oak.’

‘And the Outriders?’

‘Bandach says we are called but when I got back to the home valley none of them knew anything about it.’

Eloin stirred and tried to raise her head again. A deer’s instinct for danger is its chief weapon in the world.

‘Be careful, Brechin,’ she said. ‘You know how jealous

Drail is.’

Brechin snorted.

‘If Drail wants you he must fight for you at Anlach,’ he said. ‘That is the law. And if he fights I could take the old soft-foot with one antler. And a broken one at that.’

‘Yes. But there’s Sgorr and the younger stags. They have no duty to sprig nor thorn. Be careful, that’s all.’

‘I’ll be careful and when I return I won’t leave you till you have calved.’

Brechin pressed his muzzle gently between Eloin’s ears and turned away. Across the stream he spotted an old hind named Bhreac grazing on the bank and he ran straight up to her.

‘Bhreac,’ he said, ‘Eloin is near her time and I’m worried. Will you watch her for me?’

Bhreac looked irritably at Brechin for with the years she had come to be no lover of stags, even an Outrider captain like Brechin. But nonetheless she lowered her head deferentially. Reassured a little, Brechin cantered off towards the meeting place. The moon was midway up the sky now and in the distance the Home Oak was surrounded with stags. As Brechin rose up the hill Eloin stirred restlessly by the rowan tree. Her eyes were beginning to mist over with pain and with great difficulty the hind got to her feet. Eloin’s time had come.

What Brechin had said about being able to take Drail with one antler was true. Drail was old – nearly eleven – and virtually lame now, and although he could still hold his own against many a young stag he was no match for Brechin, the greatest fighter in the herd. Indeed Brechin could have beaten Drail even in his prime, though it would have been a bloody business. Brechin had never had any ambitions towards the lordship of the herd but recently he had been pushed further and further towards challenging Drail’s authority.

The organization of a deer herd is not especially complex. There may be up to two or three hundred deer in a large herd like this one, grouped together in loose associations through family ties and friendships. The binding principle among the stags is the Corps, which every male deer must enter, paying allegiance to the Lord of the Herd. Alongside the Corps come the Outriders, elite stags chosen for their strength and courage and usually natural loners. The Outriders are scouts and fighters, who look for new pastures and patrol for predators. The most important of the Outriders are styled Captain, like Brechin.

These simple structures give the herd a strong unity, except in late spring when the deer’s antlers fall and the herd’s hierarchy is disrupted, and at Anlach, at the beginning of autumn, when the deer rut. The rut is the most important event in the deer’s year, when the males fight for mates and settle scores. It is at this time and this time only that a stag may challenge for lordship, which normally happens once every four or five years. But Drail’s lordship had not been challenged for over six years now.

This was not because there was no stag strong enough to defeat him but because a new system had been introduced into the herd. Through a network of invented titles and privileges Drail had gathered together a close and loyal group of males from within the ranks of the Corps. It acted both as bodyguard to Drail and as a kind of secret police, spying on the Corps and the hinds and reporting any signs of discontent. It had been called the Draila and was both resented and feared. But the most feared of all was its leader Sgorr, the hornless deer, or hummel as they are also called, who Brechin had spied with Drail earlier.

Sgorr was not a birth-member of the herd but had appeared just three summers before from over the northern hills. When he arrived, asking for pasture, the young stag had been wounded in one eye and had claimed to have lost touch with his home herd after an attack by a wolf. But many dark rumours had already grown up around him. Some said he had a terrible secret. Others that he had made a pact with the forest god and had been driven out of his own herd for treachery. Some even said that he had broken the oldest law of all and had spent time in the company of men.

Whatever the truth, Sgorr had rapidly won Drail’s confidence and had now been promoted far beyond his seven years. Drail was ageing fast and as he became more and more lame Sgorr played on his fears of being ousted. It was Sgorr who had come up with the notion of the Draila two seasons before and he had personally masterminded its creation, choosing and grooming young stags himself, cleverly spying out the most discontented members of the Corps and promoting them rapidly.

Brechin had mistrusted Sgorr from the outset, though he could see the young stag was very clever, and he had immediately opposed Sgorr’s entry into the herd.

Subsequently he had watched Sgorr’s activities with quiet disgust. But if Brechin had a weakness it was that he was a soldier and Outrider first and preferred not to get involved in the politics of the home herd.

It was not until Sgorr had sought control of the Outriders too that Brechin had shown open opposition. With the other captains he had fought hoof and antler to stop Drail forcing members of the Draila on the Outriders. Drail had responded by sending the Outriders to roam further and further afield, on increasingly dangerous and unnecessary scouting expeditions. The Outriders had lost six members since the spring. One had been taken by wolves. Three killed by men. Two had vanished without trace, including Brechin’s own brother, Whitefoot.

Meanwhile Drail’s ambitions had grown with his power. His power base now stretched far beyond the herd itself; hence the newly invented title, ‘Lord of Herds’, which Brechin had so scoffed at in the glen. But the title represented far more than a name, or the simple reflection of Drail’s vanity, for many of the red deer across the Low Lands now recognized his authority and, before Anlach, would come to pay him homage. The home herd was the largest red deer herd in the Great Land, and the Draila had won support from other lords by offering help against their own enemies. Drail’s methods had begun to spread like a virus and his writ now ran as far north as the Great Mountain and even to the edges of the High Land.

Yet to Brechin the greatest threat posed by the Draila was within the herd itself, for the Draila stags were becoming increasingly aggressive. Apart from predators, starvation and disease the main causes of harm to a deer herd are wounds inflicted during the rut. But although stags will fight often, especially during the rut, their battles are mostly for show and their encounters rarely result in any serious damage. A directly fatal injury is virtually unheard of. But that was beginning to change. The encounters were proving more and more ferocious and Sgorr had even begun to train the young stags to use their antlers in an entirely new way; to sharpen them on rocks and stones and cut and jab with the points and to aim for vulnerable parts of the body. It meant that last autumn there had been far more injuries than normal and one stag, who had been caught in a fight over a hind with two Draila, had even been killed.

The habits of the hinds had also changed under Drail’s lordship. His consuming desire for control had meant that the Draila had forced the females to live much closer to the stags. The herd had become much less mobile and for three seasons now they had used the same Home Oak. Brechin did not approve of this, though he was strangely glad to be so close to Eloin.

As Brechin climbed the hill he heard a familiar voice in the darkness. It distracted him from his dark thoughts. Ahead of him a group of yearlings were sitting in a circle in the grass, their spindly legs folded under them, and listening, wide-eyed, to the old deer addressing them. Most of them were around nine months old and had stopped suckling. But they were not too old to listen to a good story.

‘And so, when the forest was young,’ the old stag was saying, ‘Starbuck stole the magic antlers from Herne and won a promise that for evermore the deer would roam as free as the wind.’

It was Blindweed, the storyteller.

‘Spinning more of those old tales,’ Brechin chuckled to himself. He remembered many cold winter nights sitting at old Blindweed’s feet lapping up the stories of magic antlers, enchanted forests and of Herne himself. The ancient stag seemed to have been no younger then.

No one in the herd knew how old Blindweed really was. Some said he was fifteen, others even older. Eight is a good age for a red deer and thirteen about their natural span, but in exceptional circumstances they can live to as old as twenty and even older. You cannot, except in young deer, tell the precise age of a stag from his antlers, though the number of tines and their size is a good indication, for you find few royals below the age of five or six. Blindweed had a fine head, with nobbly, pearled antlers that rose to fourteen points on his brow. But it was clear that they had gone back, as it is called when they weaken, and would never be as strong as they had been in his prime.

‘Well, that’s quite enough for one moon,’ said Blindweed suddenly. ‘Your mothers will be scolding me with the morning.’

‘But what happened to Starbuck?’ shouted an eager voice from the back.

The fawns took up the cry.

‘Yes, yes, how did he steal the antlers? Come on, Blindweed. Tell us.’

The old deer chuckled to himself.

‘Very well, but then to your mothers. Promise, now.’