Fire Bringer (33 page)

Tain finished on this triumphant note and the deer nodded their appreciation.

‘Well told,’ said Rannoch, ‘and a very beautiful story too.’

‘Yes, it is beautiful, isn’t it?’ agreed Tain thoughtfully. ‘If only it were true.’

‘You don’t think there’s any t-t-truth in it, then?’ said

Bankfoot.

‘No, not really,’ answered Tain, ‘though I believe that what Blindweed said about the High Land had some truth. That there are great forests and plenty of food and cover for a deer. Perhaps there really are less Lera to hunt us.’

‘Well, now,’ said Rannoch quietly, ‘we should get some sleep, for whatever we find up there, we daren’t stay here much longer. It’s not safe.’

But with his friends around him once again Rannoch suddenly felt safer than he had done for longer than he cared to remember.

14 The Fearful Glen

‘For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see ,Saw the Vision of the world and all the wonder that would be.’ Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Locksley Hall’

It was mid-morning when the friends got on their way and it was much colder than it had been, a frost making the grass spark and glitter. After a time, as they journeyed north-west, they came past the opening to a great glen with sheer cliffs and jagged rock peaks that reared into the skies. This they passed and headed on towards the edge of a sea loch they could now see ahead of them. They reached the sea after a sun and the friends grew quiet as they walked and the mountains and the water overawed them.

Rannoch pulled them up as they came close to the end of the loch. In the distance, spreading out from the edge of the water, they could now see dwellings, smoke furling up from their low rooftops. There were people by the water too and carved trees like the ones Rurl had described.

The others stirred as their scents came to them across the wind, but Rannoch told them not to worry for they were still far away. Rannoch could see, though, that to travel ahead would bring them close to the encampment, so he decided to turn back and strike east through the valley they had passed the sun before, hoping to turn north again as soon as they could. This they did and soon the red deer were entering the glen’s wide flanks.

A strange hush fell on the deer as they walked. Never before had they seen country like this. They felt they were entering a world of dreams. The vast walls of the glen rose around them like sleeping giants as the track they were taking along the valley bottom wove left and right through the hills, following the river gurgling through their centre. Ahead loomed three great spurs of rock and the rich, dark green of the valley and the slate black of the mountains seemed to swallow them up. Soon they felt like tiny moving specks lost in an immensity of stone. High above them the cry of birds echoed against the dizzy crags and the mist swayed and broke across the trees.

In the late afternoon they crossed the river and the sun managed to break through the clouds. The deer’s spirits rose for the glen had grown eerily beautiful under its gentle light. They came to a small loch but they didn’t pause to drink or ruminate in the winter sunshine as they would normally have done, for they all felt an urgency to press on, as though something were chasing them through the mighty valley. The sombre mystery that hung about the place made the deer tremble and start at the slightest sound, so by the time night came down they were at their nerves’ end.

‘Do you feel it?’ whispered Willow to Rannoch breathlessly, as the deer stopped in the twilight.

‘Yes,’ said Rannoch, ‘there’s something strange about the place. I don’t know what it is yet.’

‘Herne’s Herd?’ said Bankfoot.

‘No, I don’t think so and I don’t sense any immediate danger,’ answered Rannoch. ‘But it’s very odd. Like some feeling far away.’

Bankfoot looked nervously at Rannoch’s fawn mark.

The deer went on as silently as before. The darkness turned the crags and the stones into fearful shapes and the air seemed to hold an impossible stillness. With the night it began to rain again and soon the deer were miserable. They stopped and grazed a little, then huddled together in the shadow of the hills. At last Rannoch suggested that they move on, so the deer crept ahead through the darkness as the wind wailed through the valley. They began to imagine that they too were a part of the old tales, of the legends that run with the Herla.

After a while, however, Rannoch started to grow restive again and kept stopping to scent the air or listen to the wind. But it was a good while before they heard a sound that made them all stop in their tracks. It rose, strange and mournful, around the rocks; a plaintive piping like an eerie wind. The young deer crowded together and listened and when it stopped, finally and suddenly, Rannoch nodded.

‘I thought so,’ he whispered. ‘There are humans up ahead.’

‘What shall we do, Rannoch?’ asked Tain. ’Go back?’

‘We could,’ said Rannoch, ‘or we could wait till the sun comes. But I think it’s dangerous to stay here. I’m for going on.’

‘M-m-me too,’ stammered Bankfoot. ’I d-d-don’t want to go back the way we came. It makes me nervous.’

Rannoch asked the others what they felt and it was decided that he should lead them on, but they were preparing to set off when Bracken suddenly spoke. It was the first thing she had said since they had been reunited.

‘I don’t think I can,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I think I’ll stay here.’

‘But you can’t, Mother,’ said Rannoch.

‘Just leave me, I’ll be all right. I’ll come on in the sunlight. You wait for me up ahead.’

‘No, Mother,’ said Rannoch firmly. He could see she was shaking badly. ‘It’ll be all right, I know it will.’

But Bracken just shook her head and said desperately, ‘Just leave me. Can’t you see I don’t want to come yet?’ Rannoch looked Bracken tenderly in the eyes and began to speak very quietly.

‘We’re all afraid, Mother. But it’s far more dangerous to stay here on your own. Nothing will happen, for if we get close to the humans they’ll be asleep and have no desire to harm us.’

Bracken shook her head.

‘I can’t. It’s as though everything around me is black.’

‘I know. It’s as though you were trapped in a gully. But you can control it. Fight the blackness until you can think again. That’s the secret, Mother. Follow in my tracks and every time you feel it threatening to overcome you, breathe and think; think of something special. Anything. Think of the High Land or Starbuck or Herne, and as long as you can think, it will be all right.’

Bracken looked at Rannoch pleadingly but at last she nodded.

‘Right. Listen to me, all of you,’ said Rannoch.’I know something of men, so I’ll lead. Stay close and do what I do. Walk slowly if I do, run if I run. I will lead us round them if I can and tomorrow we’ll be well away from here, munching heather in the sunlight.’

The young stag nodded resolutely, turned and led them on.

Above them the sky began to rumble and it started to rain. The water came down in torrents, great pebbles of wet, so that the deer were soon dripping and the ground began to turn to mud as the water splashed and slurried down the sides of the valley. After a while they dimly made out the source of their fear.

The dwellings were grouped loosely across the side of the valley the deer had been travelling along. But, unfortunately, where the encampment hit the side of the mountain the rock buckled inwards and then rose sheer. It was impossible to skirt them to the right. Willow expected Rannoch to stop and lead them across to the slopes on the far side of the glen. But the deer did nothing of the kind. Hardly slowing and not once turning round, Rannoch led them off the slopes and straight down towards the encampment.

As the smell of men hit their nostrils there was not one of the other deer who did not want to turn and run. Each of them felt it. Fear came over them like a fog. But they remembered what Rannoch had said and struggled to keep the feeling at bay, and Rannoch’s strange calmness as he walked ahead gave each of them confidence.

The encampment was quite large with squat boulder walls and peat roofs slung low on the stone houses. The dying embers of open fires outside spat and fizzled their last in the rain, but little smoke came from the rooftops and the only sound that the deer heard was the cacophony falling from the sky. A path ran straight up through the main group of dwellings, and though it had turned to pure mud Rannoch began to follow it. The deers’ heads hung low as they squelched through the mud behind him, hardly daring to breathe. So the line of Herla crept on in the pouring rain through the very centre of the village.

Bracken, who was in the middle of the group, kept looking back nervously at Willow behind her. Although the hind was herself petrified, she nodded to Bracken calmly and kept going without a sound. A horse whinnied mournfully from somewhere and a dog began to bark, but Rannoch neither ran nor quickened his pace. At last the houses began to disappear and the piled boulders dropped away.

Only then did Rannoch suddenly throw back his antlers and run, straight up the slopes of the glen. The others followed him instantly and soon the deer were racing away from the camp as fast as their legs would carry them.

‘Rannoch, you got us through,’ cried Willow delightedly. To her surprise, Rannoch didn’t answer her. He just kept on going, straight ahead through the soaking grass. He didn’t stop for ages and when he did so he still said nothing, but looked about him desperately. Then he ran up the side of the valley to the very edge of the cliff, where an outcrop of overhanging rock formed a kind of open cave. Here Rannoch stopped at last and the others joined him, glad to get out of the wet.

The friends began to talk excitedly and Bankfoot found some leaves at the back of the cave which the exhausted deer munched on gratefully. Their sense of relief was over- powering. Only Rannoch stayed apart, at the front of the cave, refusing to eat or say anything, looking back across the glen. Willow walked up to him quietly.

‘Rannoch,’ she said softly, ‘Rannoch, what is it? What’s wrong?’

Still the deer said nothing.

‘Rannoch, please tell me, you’re frightening me.’

Now Rannoch started and seemed to come out of a reverie.

‘Willow,’ he said, his eyes clearing, ‘is it you?’

‘Yes. What is it, Rannoch? Can I help you?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Rannoch bitterly, ‘It’s this feeling. I can’t get rid of it. Willow, I’m afraid.’

‘We were all afraid, Rannoch, but it’s gone now. You led us through. You know, Rannoch, it’s right what you said about fighting the feeling and thinking at all costs. There was a point out there when—’

‘No, Willow, I’m still afraid. The feeling’s still here. It’s got something to do with this place.’

‘It’s a strange place, but I don’t think I understand. I’m sorry.’

‘I don’t really understand either. When we came to the humans I thought at first that we should cross the valley to try to avoid them. But then something took hold of me. I don’t know what it was. I wanted to get close to them again, I think. To learn more about them. To see if they were like—’ Rannoch stopped. ‘Anyway, I was all right at first, walking up through their stones, but as we went something else happened. Something new came over me.’

‘What, Rannoch?’

‘I was listening very closely for any noise that meant we should run. But as I listened I suddenly thought I could hear the humans, breathing all around me. Then I knew that they were asleep among their stones. But as I concentrated, everything around me suddenly began to grow light and it wasn’t raining any more. The path we were on was dry and as I looked up a mist was rolling towards me across the glen. But, Willow,’ said Rannoch, trembling violently now, his voice strangled with pain, ‘the mist was made of blood. The whole glen was red and as it came down I suddenly felt a terrible pain. It was linked to those sleeping bodies around me. But there was something else. Some feeling that I couldn’t quite touch. Like anger. Then suddenly my ears were filled with screams and the air was thick with the smell of death. I looked up and realized we had come to the edge of their stones and I began to run. But the mist was still everywhere.’

‘Rannoch,’ whispered Willow, ‘how horrible. Perhaps something happened here.’

Like humans, Herla believe that places can be haunted by the ghosts of past events.

Rannoch thought for a while.

‘I don’t know. I can see a little more clearly now but I need to think for a while. Alone, if that’s all right.’

Willow nodded and left Rannoch to himself. She went to the back of the cave and lay down next to the others who had no desire to travel any further in the rain and were just grateful to be under cover. Thistle was chewing quietly on a ball of grass and Tain and Bankfoot asked Willow what was wrong with their friend. Willow just shook her head and told them not to worry. After a while the hind closed her eyes and began to doze as the driving rain pounded down on the rocks around them. When the red deer woke, the rain had stopped and it was growing light outside. Rannoch was still standing at the front of the cave.

The others were already stirring, so Willow got up and walked over to Rannoch. She said nothing at first but just gazed out with him into the approaching morning. The soaring valley was now lost in a thick mist that hung heavily in its bottom and made it look strangely peaceful.

‘I’m all right,’ muttered Rannoch quietly.

‘I think we should be on our way,’ said Willow kindly. Rannoch nodded but Willow could see that Rannoch was in no state to lead them. So she went up to the others and whispered something to Bankfoot. He understood immediately.

‘C-c-come on, everyone,’ Bankfoot cried cheerfully, ‘it’s t-t-time to go and if you don’t mind I w-w-want to lead.’

‘You lead?’ snorted Thistle. He would have argued if Willow hadn’t silenced him with her eyes and nodded to where Rannoch was standing.

So Bankfoot led the deer out of the cave into the misty dawn. The stones reared up again around them as the light swelled in the glen. Bankfoot, Tain, Thistle, and Peppa were soon running on ahead while Rannoch and Willow hung behind with Bracken trailing after them. As they went Rannoch kept stopping and looking back through the mist.