Fire Bringer (38 page)

‘Are you Haarg?’ asked Rannoch.

The stag nodded and went on chewing.

‘Liath told us to find you. Are you the lord?’ Haarg smiled wearily.

‘The hinds rule in the Slave Herd,’ he answered simply.

‘So it seems,’ said Rannoch.

‘But why?’ interjected Thistle.

‘You are not from a Slave Herd?’ Haarg said, looking puzzled.

‘No.’

‘It’s always been thus,’ answered Haarg.’We do what we’re told and they look after us.’

‘Look after you?’ snorted Thistle with disgust.

‘Yes, but mostly we keep separate. Until we’re needed for mating. Then the hinds come and choose some among us. So the herd goes on and we can provide fawns.’

‘The hinds choose you?’ gasped Thistle. They were all amazed now.

‘Yes,’ replied Haarg, as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

‘And is there no Corps?’ said Rannoch. ‘No council?’

‘The hinds sometimes sit in council when small decisions need to be made. About where next to look for lichen and fungi. But mostly orders come down from them.’

‘Herne’s Herd?’ said Rannoch.

‘That’s right,’ answered Haarg and his eyes suddenly became misty with fear.

‘Tell me about Herne’s Herd.’

‘You mean you don’t know?’ said Haarg with surprise.

‘Doesn’t every Herla in the High Land know about them?’

‘We are not from the High Land,’ said Rannoch quietly. Haarg looked up at Rannoch now. He munched on a limp spray of bracken and then shrugged.

‘Their home herd lies to the east, beyond the Standing Stones. That’s all I know.’ Rannoch pawed the ground.

‘Do you know how to reach them?’

‘Of course not. That is forbidden. It would be sacrilege.’ Although Rannoch was desperate to ask many more questions, he thought it best not to rush things. The friends began to scrape in the snow for pasture, while the Slave Herd

seemed completely untroubled by their presence.

When Rannoch and the others had left the hinds, Peppa and Willow had found a comfortable spot for Bracken to ruminate and set to work finding out as much about the hinds as they could. They all looked healthy, but they had a cold, strangely arrogant air about them. Several of them had calves and these hinds seemed to enjoy a special position in the herd, for the stags would bring the mothers food, especially the mothers suckling male fawns. When the twins saw the males’ heads they were as startled as their friends.

It seemed that in itself the hierarchy among the hinds was not that unusual, though, for Liath had won her pre-eminence by boxing for her place with the others at the beginning of the year, as is normal with hinds in any red deer herd. She was strong and fit and, at six, had already reared three calves. But the twins soon found out that there any resemblance with the home herd before Sgorr or with the herd above the loch ended.

They were up on the hill and had met a hind called Sep. She was ruminating on her own when they came up to her and the old hind seemed less aloof than the others. They had been chatting for a while when Peppa asked her about the hinds guarding the valley.

‘The Outers,’ said Sep.

Peppa looked keenly at Willow.

‘Yes, the Outers,’ said Peppa. ’How are they chosen?’

‘Only the best hinds get to be Outers,’ answered Sep, ‘for they have to know how to box and run fast.’

‘And no stags are. . . Outers?’ Sep looked surprised.

‘Of course not, my dear. Who’s ever heard of a stag being an Outer?’

Again Peppa looked at Willow but her sister shook her head.

‘You don’t think much of the stags, do you?’ said Peppa. Sep munched on thoughtfully. She had browsed a juniper tree earlier and had just tasted the delicious flavour again.

‘There’s not much to think of. I was quite fond of Teeg, I suppose, when I made my stand with him and we had a calf.’

Now Peppa’s bright eyes opened wide. Willow was listening closely too.

‘Your stand?’

‘Yes. He was a good worker and never said much. I chose him for that, I think. And though his antlers were misshapen he even had a half head. I almost miss him, though it’s never good to admit it.’

‘Tell me,’ said Willow, ‘when did you. . . when did you make this stand?’

Sep was thoughtful again.

‘Oh, it must have been six years ago now.’

‘Six years? And you never mated again?’

‘No,’ said Sep almost sadly.

‘But why?’ asked Peppa.

‘There are plenty of hinds who mate more than once and have fine daughters in the herd or good strong buck workers, but there’s always the risk. . . well, you know. . .’

‘No,’ said Peppa.

‘It’s not that I minded having a buck. . .’

‘But?’

‘But that’s the chance you take if you do have one. They might be chosen and they’re really very sweet when they’re calves. You get to miss them.’

Willow looked gravely at her sister.

‘You have to be very unlucky, and at least the rest of the herd helps with the feeding,’ Sep went on. ‘You can get quite fat with all the food they bring you when you’re suckling. But in the end all that waiting can be very hard on the nerves.’

‘So they only take the male fawns?’ asked Willow.

‘Of course.’

‘And they chose your fawn?’ said Peppa quietly.

Sep nodded and though her face had grown a little sad again, there was a strange confusion in her eyes.

‘Tell me,’ said Willow kindly, ‘what happens to them?’

‘No one really knows,’ answered Sep, and then her face brightened. ‘But Liath says they are honoured.’

As Willow and Peppa walked back off the hill towards

Bracken, the twins were silent.

It was well past Larn on the next sun and a new moon had come up. Rannoch and the others were grazing when Bankfoot lifted his head. A deer was coming downwind towards them and through the darkness the stags saw Willow. She looked grave and was obviously doing her best to remain concealed.

‘I’ve found you,’ she whispered as she came up. ‘I had to skirt right round the valley to avoid being seen.’

‘What’s wrong, Willow?’ said Rannoch.

‘Nothing. But they don’t like the hinds talking to the stags. They say it’s unnatural.’

Rannoch nodded and looked strangely towards the red river.

‘What have you found out?’ he asked.

‘Plenty. There must be about ninety deer in the valley. There’s no Home Oak but the hinds congregate over there, at a place they call the gathering ground. It’s where the stags take all the berries and mushrooms they’re made to forage for. It’s also where they come when its time for a collection.’

‘When they take the fawns?’ Willow nodded gravely.

‘And we found out something else,’ she said. ‘They only take male calves.’

‘And Herne’s Herd?’ asked Rannoch.

‘We discovered what little we could. I didn’t want to press it too much in case Liath and the others grew suspicious. For some reason I don’t think we should let the hinds know we want to find Herne’s Herd.’

‘I don’t think there’s much point asking them where they are anyway,’ said Rannoch. ’Haarg says it’s forbidden to know. The only thing we can do is wait until they come again and follow them, like Birrmagnur suggested. It’ll give us a chance to learn as much as we can about the High Land. Perhaps make some friends too. We may have need of them in the future if we ever want to form our own herd.’

Willow nodded.

‘Well, I’d better get back to Peppa and Bracken,’ she said.

‘Peppa doesn’t like it here at all. We’ll try and come and see you when we can.’

‘Good,’ said Rannoch.

‘And Rannoch,’ said Willow, smiling as she turned to leave, ‘try not to work too hard.’

So, as winter settled around them they stayed with the Slave Herd by the red river and though Bracken wasn’t much use, Willow and Peppa devoted themselves to winning over some of the hinds, while the others made friends among the stags.

They soon found out how strange the herd really was, for if the hinds were slaves themselves, they treated the stags as worse than slaves. The stags were made to do all the work collecting the crop, and if any of them complained, the hinds would gather together to punish them viciously, kicking them and buffeting them with their heads. But the stags put up no resistance; they were as docile as lambs.

This shocked the friends, especially Thistle, but whenever they asked the stags about it and why they wouldn’t fight, they just shrugged it off, saying that it had always been the way and that it was the natural order of things, like Herne’s Lore.

Rannoch tried to find out what the berries and fungi were for, but none of the slave stags knew. All they knew was that Herne’s Herd used it for some secret purpose, as they had always done, and that they had to gather as much as possible in time for the collection.

It was only very special types of plants that they were looking for. They sought three types of mushroom and fungus; a strange hooded variety with a bright orange cap speckled with white that the humans call fly agaric; a weird yellow-white fungus that looked like rubbery coral and is sometimes called jelly antler fungus; and the most prized of all and the hardest to find – a club-shaped white mushroom that bubbled like spume and was crowned with blood-red beads. Among the plants they sought a livid purple plant with sprays of minute lavender berries and a dark green fur lichen with sprouting fronds that looked like newts’ feet.

Every morning, even in the bitterest weather, they would go up to the hills to scrape wearily in the snow and at the end of each tiring day, Larn would find them all trooping back to the gathering ground to deposit their meagre spoils. They worked so hard that they were always exhausted, which partly explained their lack of resistance to the hinds.

Rannoch also tried to find out as much as he could about the High Land. Haarg’s knowledge was sketchy because he had never moved away from the red river, but it seemed that there were many such Slave Herds across the north, as far as the great sea to the north-east. But Rannoch also discovered that it wasn’t just fear of Herne’s Herd that kept the Slave Herds in place; it was also belief. This explained Liath’s strange greeting.

They called it Herne’s Hope, for although they hated and feared Herne’s Herd, they also believed that they were the keepers of some ancient pact with Herne that would be fulfilled one day, at the time of the Coming, as they called it, when the Great Land would be made whole again. Then the Slave Herds would join Herne’s Herd and all the Herla who believed would be taken up to the stars.

This talk had a strangely unnerving effect on Rannoch and as the suns passed he began to have bad dreams like the dreams he had had as a fawn. He had remembered too what Rurl had said to him by the sea, about the meaning of the Prophecy, and every time he thought of Herne’s Herd and what he might discover about himself, he shuddered.

One dream came to him clearly one late winter’s night. He was standing by a pool in the moonlight and the wind around his head was whispering softly to him.

‘Rannoch, you want to know what you are?’ it called.

‘You want to meet Herne?’

‘Yes,’ said Rannoch dreamily.

‘Then look into the pool, Rannoch.’

In his sleep the deer stepped forward and looked down. There, in the moonlight, he saw his own face looking back at him.

Rannoch woke with a start and shuddered furiously.

‘No,’ he whispered, ‘it can’t be true. It can’t.’

Rannoch told his friends nothing of his dreams but he found solace in talking to Haarg about his own strange beliefs. Haarg and Rannoch were talking like this one sun on the hillside. The weather had grown milder and the snows were already beginning to melt. Rannoch had seen less and less of Willow and Peppa and he was helping Haarg with his labours, as he often did now, when Haarg looked nervously about him and asked him about Herne.

‘But you believe in Herne, don’t you, Rannoch?’ he whispered.

Rannoch stopped scraping at the ground.

‘Yes, I think so,’ he answered, ‘though I didn’t find him on the Great Mountain.’

Haarg stared at him as though he had just seen a ghost.

‘You’ve been on the Great Mountain?’ Rannoch nodded.

‘But if they ever found out it would be certain death for you,’ said Haarg.

‘Then they mustn’t find out,’ said Rannoch simply. Haarg was quiet for a while. He looked sad.

‘I should like to visit the Great Mountain,’ he said quietly, ‘before I die.’

‘Then why don’t you?’

‘It is forbidden. I can never leave the red river. That is their decree.’

Rannoch felt bitterly angry. He stamped the ground and tossed up his antlers.

‘Haarg,’ he said, ‘have you never thought of escaping?’ Haarg looked out wistfully across the snowy moors.

‘How could I?’ he muttered. ‘I’ve no antlers and there is much danger out there for a Herla. Besides, Herne’s Herd would only track me down.’

‘But have you never wanted to be free?’

‘We will be freed at the time of the Coming,’ answered Haarg flatly, shaking his head, ‘when we will go up to roam through the stars.’

‘No,’ said Rannoch, ‘I mean free to be a real Herla in the Great Land. Free to wander the hills and drink from the burn and loch. Free to wallow in the cool mud, to chew the heather and gorse and follow a breath of wind if it takes your fancy.’

Haarg’s eyes had grown wide with wonder.

‘And never have to collect berries and fungi again?’

‘Never.’

‘Like the Outriders you told me about?’

‘Yes, Haarg, like the Outriders. Though with their freedom is mixed something else; the duty to protect the herd.’

‘Then they are slaves like us,’ said Haarg.

‘No, Haarg, for they choose to be Outriders. And they roam where they will, while guarding the herd too. They answer only to their captains and their service to the herd brings a greater freedom within them, or so Mother says.’

‘What’s it like to be an Outrider?’

At this Rannoch grew a little embarrassed. He realized that he had been telling Haarg only what had been repeated to him by Bracken.

‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘My father was one. His name was Brechin. But that’s all I know about him. Bracken doesn’t really like to talk about him. I think he died long ago.’