Fire Bringer (59 page)

‘Come then,’ cried Sgorr suddenly and defiantly. ‘Come, Herne. For you have hunted me all my life, haven’t you?’

The wolves were about to pounce when suddenly Narl came charging straight at them. The stag dipped his antlers to defend his master and as he did so the wolves leapt at him, all three at once. Narl was lost. He felt death in his throat. But he had died with honour, for Narl had won his master time to escape.

‘Rannoch, dear Rannoch,’ whispered Willow as the rain came down. ‘What is happening?’

‘The hunter is amongst us,’ whispered Rannoch.’Stay still, Willow, it will be over soon.’

Everywhere the Sgorrla were standing down, but strangely the wolves didn’t attack them for their orders had been to kill only the hornless one. Instead they held the Great Herd at bay.

‘You’ve won, Rannoch,’ cried Willow.’Won.’

But Rannoch wasn’t listening to the hind. He was looking out into the distance. Near the edge of the pass he saw a stag, a stag with no antlers, slipping away.

‘Rannoch,’ cried Tain, running up to him, ‘Sgorr is escaping.’

‘I’ve seen him,’ said Rannoch.

‘I’ll bring some Outriders.’

‘No, Tain,’ cried Rannoch, ‘I must do this alone.’ Rannoch began to run as fast as he could through the driving rain towards the pass. When he reached it he caught sight of Sgorr again at its far end. Rannoch leapt forward.

But as he came to the centre of the pass, he pulled up. On the ground in front of him lay Thistle.

‘My poor friend,’ said Rannoch sadly.’I’m sorry I failed you. You never really liked me, Thistle, I know that, but I hope you forgave me somehow.’

But no answer came from the dead stag.

‘Herne,’ cried Rannoch bitterly, ‘must we die? Must we all die?’

Rannoch suddenly lifted his head in anger and ran on after Sgorr. He came into the corrie and on the mountainside above the water he saw the old stag scrabbling up the slopes.

‘Sgorr,’ he cried after him, his voice echoing round the stone cauldron.’Face me, Sgorr.’

But the deer didn’t answer. He vanished over the ridge of the mountain. Up Rannoch rose, his hoofs slipping on the wet scree. He came over the ridge above the corrie and again the slopes reared above him. Rannoch couldn’t see Sgorr now but he could see the path he had taken in the wet. He began to thread his way up the steep mountainside.

He rose higher and higher and he kept looking up for Sgorr. Showers of rock and stone skittered onto his head and the stag knew that Sgorr was somewhere above him. Rannoch came to a thin ledge where the mountain sloped back suddenly to another overhang above, crowned by a great rock. The drop below the ledge in front of him was some ten trees while ahead the mountain levelled out. Rannoch paused, fearfully, but he could see that Sgorr had come this way. He stepped out onto the ledge.

Suddenly stones and rocks were showering all around him. Rannoch reared up in terror and as he did so he saw Sgorr above him on the overhang, pushing at the huge rock. It was beginning to sway, to tilt back and forth on the small tor of stones that barely held it in place and had, for centuries, kept it from crashing down onto the ledge below.

‘Rannoch,’ cried Sgorr furiously, ‘do you think you can destroy me with your tricks? Well then, join your beloved Herne.’

Rannoch gasped as the rock lurched and he saw the light of hatred burning in Sgorr’s eye.

But with that Rannoch heard a strange sound, a hissing through the damp air. He had heard it before, and something shot past Rannoch’s eyes. He stood amazed as Sgorr’s head was suddenly thrust upwards.

A thin, tapering branch of wood was sticking from Sgorr’s neck and blood was already pouring from his throat. Sgorr staggered forward towards the edge of the overhang, away from the rock which had settled back on its precarious perch. He looked down at Rannoch and now the hatred in his eye had turned to confusion and defeat. Then Sgorr fell, his legs flailing in the air, his body crashing onto the ledge next to Rannoch. He was dead.

Rannoch swung round and, on the mountainside opposite, standing in the wet grass in the twilight, the stag saw a young human. He was already putting another of the tapering branches onto the wooden cross he held in his hands and lifting it to his eyes. Rannoch quivered as the boy’s scent came to his nostrils. He turned and ran, leaping off the ledge and scrabbling up the grassy slopes. But the human was after him, running as fast as he could.

Rannoch’s heart was beating furiously as he tried to gain a purchase on the slopes. It began to rain again and a wind came up, moaning through the gorse, whispering like a voice Rannoch had heard long ago.

‘So, Herne,’ cried Rannoch bitterly as he climbed, ‘the hunter becomes the hunted.’

Rannoch was slowing now, for the ground was getting steeper and steeper, the earth wetter and wetter. His head lurched forward and he stumbled. He could feel the human behind him. Rannoch scrambled on and suddenly the incline slackened and he was on open, flat ground again. But ahead was a sheer rock face. Rannoch was trapped.

The stag turned to face his pursuer in the twilight and he flinched as he saw the human running towards him through the rain. When he was some two oaks away he came to a stop and lifted the crossbow to his eyes once more. The hard point of the bolt glistened with water. Rannoch backed away, his legs shaking and the fur around his throat beginning to bristle. His senses screamed out, as in his mind he tried to escape the trap. He lowered his antlers slightly.

So you do demand sacrifice, Herne? he thought.

But suddenly the human lowered his arms again. He was looking closely at the deer now, staring at the mark on his forehead. He lifted his arms once more and then lowered them again. As the stag looked fearfully into the human’s hungry eyes, trying to hold his gaze, Rannoch’s mind woke into astonishment.

Those eyes; that piercing green, yet behind it that same searching gentleness, that desperate, questing need to know. The human fawn had grown, but the contours of his face were the same and around them the locks of red hair. It was the boy, grown into a young man; the boy who had saved Rannoch from the pit.

The deer and the boy stared at each other wonderingly in the dripping evening and the wind climbed around them as their nervous breath rose to touch the air. The wind itself seemed to be speaking and saying, ‘Herne, Herne is here.’

Then suddenly the boy raised his hand towards the deer, stretching out towards the mark on his head. He lifted his forefinger for a second and then, without a word, he stepped to the side. Rannoch felt a sudden rush of energy as the space opened, and once more the deer was free, running down the mountainside.

Rannoch stopped and looked back up the slope. But in the coming dark he could see nothing. The boy was gone.

‘Till his need shall summon man,’ said Rannoch and there was wonder in his voice. Then the red stag turned quietly and walked back towards his friends.

As Rannoch came back through the pass and looked out across the plain, he saw that the Great Herd had finally been subdued. To the east the glow in the forest had gone out. The trees spat and sizzled in the downpour, but beneath the bark, where the water could not cool the elements, the fire still glowed on, so that when the trees dried it would suddenly burst out again, here and there, to feed off the still living matter and transform it into light with its furious alchemy, distilling the life force back into carbon.

The wolves were growling angrily in the rain as they faced the frightened Sgorrla, but as Rannoch threaded through their ranks a wondering hush fell on the deer.

Rannoch reached the Outriders and Willow and Tain ran up to him.

‘Sgorr?’ asked Willow.

‘He is gone,’ said Rannoch.

Once again the deer’s eyes were trained on Rannoch and now he turned to address them.

‘Don’t fear them,’ cried Rannoch suddenly.’For this night at least, they will not harm you.’

His voice rose above the rain as the Sgorrla looked at him fearfully. But suddenly one of their number stepped forward.

‘Herne,’ he cried, dipping his antlers.’Herne.’

‘Silence,’ shouted Rannoch immediately, subduing the deer with his eyes, ‘for although I come in the name of Herne, I am not Herne. I am a Herla. Like you. Like the roe and fallow deer. Yes, even like the Sgorrla.’

The Outriders stirred around him and a fallow deer stepped forward from among the Sgorrla.

‘I will follow you,’ he said.’I would have followed you when you came to visit me in the wood last night, if only you had waited.’

Rannoch looked up at the deer and there was puzzlement in his eyes.

‘The deer must follow nothing but their instincts,’ he said, ‘and the laws of Herne.’

The skies grumbled again and the droplets grew harder.

‘But now it is finished,’ cried Rannoch wearily, the water splashing off his fur. ’The Prophecy is fulfilled. The Herla are free, in the High Land and the Low. Never again will Sgorr’s lies infect the herds. We must live as Herla and nothing else. And never again must we kill one another or harm the Lera.’

The Sgorrla looked wonderingly at Rannoch.

‘But what shall we do,’ cried another of them, ‘without a leader? How will the Great Herd survive?’

‘The Great Herd shall not survive,’ cried Rannoch, ‘for it is against Herne’s Law. Anlach is restored. All of you must go back to your own herds, or live alone as the roe. Live free and find your own lords. Then one day those marks on your heads will be healed, healed in the birth of your fawns.’

‘So we should fight for our lords?’

‘At Anlach, yes,’ cried Rannoch, ‘for all things must fight, for their own strength and survival. That law is older than the Great Mountain.’

But at this the wolves around them began to growl. They were growing restless and suddenly one among their number stepped up towards Rannoch. Even the Outriders pulled back.

‘Rannoch,’ he snarled, his yellow-green eyes full of hunger,

‘we came when you called and we have done your bidding. But it is time for us to go.’

It was the wolf that Rannoch had healed by the waterfall. Rannoch nodded.

‘You have done my bidding,’ he said, ‘and Herne’s bidding too.’

The wolf snarled angrily.

‘Remember what I told you, Rannoch,’ he cried.’I came because I owed you a debt and because Sgorr’s madness had spread even amongst the wolves. But now the debt is paid. What I said is still true, Rannoch. Never again will the wolves help the Herla. Your blessed law, Herne’s Law, has returned to the Great Land. So fear us, Rannoch.’

Rannoch looked down into the yellow-green eyes and nodded sadly, but he said nothing.

With that the wolf growled again and, calling to his kind, he turned away. One by one the wolves began to peel off, padding silently through the soaking grass, their eyes glittering furiously in the darkness as they passed through the trembling ranks of the Herla.

‘Willow?’ said Rannoch quietly when they had gone.

‘Yes, Rannoch,’ said the hind, stepping up beside him.

‘We must tend to Bankfoot and to the sick. For many have fallen this day.’

‘Yes, Rannoch.’

‘Willow?’

‘What is it?’ asked the hind.

‘I am tired.’

25 Sacrifice

‘The magnificent cause of being,The imagination, the one reality In this imagined world. . .’ Wallace Stevens, ‘Another Weeping Woman’

‘For his days shall herald laughter, Born a healer and a king.’ Herla Prophecy

A young hind was grazing across a moor in the late autumn sunshine. Her coat had a special lustre and her eyes were keen and bright. Nearby other deer were moving towards her in a loose group, running ahead of one another or stopping to graze also. The hind stopped feeding and looked up.

Not far from her was a mound of heaped earth where a storm had uprooted a large tree and as the deer reached it they seemed to flow up and over its sides, some of them springing into the air off its flanks. A young buck, just one and a half years old, stopped on the top of the mound and looked down proudly at the others as he swayed his single antlers. But almost as soon as he stopped another buck ran up the side. His antlers had brow tines.

When he arrived the other deer simply moved away, slipping off the edge of the mound, and the new deer was left to survey his temporary kingdom. None of the Herla around him challenged him, for they were either hinds or prickets. But as he stood there a third deer, a stag with fine branching antlers, came out of the trees. He saw him and strolled casually forward. Before the adult had even reached the mound, the deer on its top, hardly looking towards the stag, also gave way and slipped off down the hill, so that the stag was left to stroll up its sides and stand gazing arrogantly ahead. The hind that had been watching smiled inwardly and went on feeding.

Suddenly, from above them, there came a great bellow. A full-grown male stag was stamping and ruffing out his throat sack, as another stag approached him and eyed the group of females that were clustered together behind him. The bellowing deer moved forward a little and the newcomer seemed to change his mind and turned away. But he swung back again and ran straight towards a hind that was set slightly apart from the other group.

The first stag roared and charged at full speed. The other deer swivelled and dropped his head and the stags’ antlers met. Both deer were knocked back by the blow and they dug their haunches into the moist ground and struck at one another again, fencing. This time the approaching deer slipped and then turned and ran. The defending deer snorted and followed him a little way down the hill before veering off and returning to his hinds. Now as he scoured the hill his face bore a proud, almost contemptuous look. His name was Quaich. The deer that had just lost the battle pretended not to notice as he started to graze as casually as he could through the heather.

Anlach was almost over, though, and most of the stags in the herd were exhausted. They had shed nearly half their body weight fighting to defend their hinds, but the season in the High Land was mild and the coming winter would take a light toll. Suddenly, from the bottom of the hill, there was a great burst of laughter. Two fawns were running through the grass, leaping and jumping in the autumn sunshine, delighted with their game of tag.