Fire Bringer (9 page)

Rannoch had a strange dream that night. He was again in a clearing, but a clearing three times the size of the place where he had smelt the fox. All around were huge oak trees, knotted and twisted with age, and a breeze was blowing, making the dry leaves rustle and sigh like water. Rannoch knew, as dreamers know, that it was night-time and yet the forest was lit by a strange light. Then something was coming towards the fawn.

But Rannoch wasn’t frightened. Instead he felt a deep calm as a huge deer stepped into the clearing towards him. He was larger than any deer that Rannoch had ever seen and his antlers rose proud and terrible above him. As the fawn stood there the stag began to talk to him. His voice was deep and thunderous but Rannoch couldn’t understand him. Then the wind began to rise in the trees and the leaves swirled and flurried across the forest floor so that the whole wood seemed to be talking to Rannoch and saying just one thing: ‘Listen.’

Rannoch woke with a start. Bankfoot was still asleep, stirring restlessly beside him. His tail twitched nervously in his dream and Rannoch could sense the fear that was still with him. It was dark in the forest but as Rannoch sniffed the air he realized that he could smell the morning not far off and the small patches of sky he glimpsed through the canopy above him were paling. The fawn got up and shook himself.

‘Bankfoot. Bankfoot,’ he said softly, ‘wake up.’ The fat little fawn stirred and opened his eyes.

‘R-r-rannoch. It’s you. I thought Mamma. . .’

‘No,’ said Rannoch kindly, ‘but come on. We should get moving.’

The two fawns set off again and soon felt in better spirits, for their sleep had refreshed them and, as the morning came on, the forest grew lighter. After a time they even started to play where the trees opened. They invented a new game that involved running as fast as they could at the leaves heaped on the forest floor and bowling round and round in the scattering foliage. They even played hide and seek, until they lost each other for longer than either of them liked.

By midday though, the forest was a much more welcoming place. The canopy above them had thinned again and in the bright sun the trees began to glow gold and red about them. As they went they saw many wonderful things. Rannoch stumbled on a family of red squirrels collecting acorns for the winter, some of which they dropped on his head furiously as they scuttled up a tree. Bankfoot discovered how many secrets lie on the forest floor and his nose soon became skilled at overturning logs and branches where the startled woodlice and beetles, busy at autumn burrowing, would duck away into deeper crevices to hide themselves from the light.

They came on a stream which gargled sulkily as it pressed through the trees, its muddy course nearly choked with leaves and earth. Here they spotted a stoat dipping its sleek black nose to drink. Its tongue, that seemed nearly as long as its snout, slipped out to lap the brackish water and its whiskers twitched in the dry air. When the stoat spotted them on the other bank and bared its bright, white teeth and pink gums, fear took them both by the throat, making their stomachs churn and their legs shake and freezing them to the spot. But the stoat had little ones to feed and two fawns were too much for her, so she darted away into the undergrowth.

By the afternoon Rannoch and Bankfoot were less happy again. Bankfoot had a stomach-ache from drinking from the stream and both fawns were desperately hungry. They were walking dejectedly through an avenue of silver birch trees when Bankfoot stopped, horrified.

‘Look,’ he said, staring blankly at a mossy tree stump. Rannoch peered down at the stump and his heart sank too. He recognized the speckled red mushroom in its middle. They had passed this very same spot before.

‘We’re going in circles,’ cried Rannoch.

The fawns pressed on in a new direction but by the time twilight came to the wood and the darkness crept out again from behind the trees, the fawns’ spirits were failing. Bankfoot kept talking and telling jokes, for the little fawn was naturally cheerful, but Rannoch was deeply worried at the prospect of spending another night in the forest.

Rannoch was leading Bankfoot through a dense tangle of trees when he suddenly stopped and his ears came up.

‘W-w-what is it?’ said Bankfoot.

‘Hush,’ whispered Rannoch. ‘Look.’

The two deer peered through the thicket. Ahead of them, below a great sycamore, they saw a very rare sight in the wood. It was a family of badgers venturing out of their set for the evening. The father badger was snuffling out of his hole. He stopped as his great black and white head emerged and sniffed the air. Then his podgy body came out. He shuffled around the tree and when he thought that the coast was clear, he returned to the hole and called to his wife. A pretty female badger popped out and then two cubs, no bigger than large hedgehogs. They sniffed and snorted round the tree, then the parents stopped and started talking to each other urgently. They seemed to be arguing.

‘I w-w-w-wish we could speak their language,’ said Bankfoot in Rannoch’s ear. ‘Then we might have asked them the way.’

‘Ssssh,’ whispered Rannoch. ’They’ll hear you.’

Badgers are famously shy and the presence of another animal would surely have sent them lumbering back into their set. But then something very strange happened. As Rannoch and Bankfoot strained to understand what the badgers were saying, Rannoch felt a tingling in his body. It was just like the feeling he had had on the hill, only this time he didn’t sense that anything was wrong. A breeze had come up and the high canopy above rustled and quivered and seemed to be talking with a voice from Rannoch’s dream. As the fawn listened to the badgers, his eyes opened in amazement for, though their tongue was different, he realized he could understand what they were saying.

‘No, no, no, my dear,’ the father badger scolded. ‘That fox may be about.’

‘But we promised the little ones we’d show them the meadow,’ said the mother badger.

‘Oh yes, Papa,’ cried one of the baby badgers, ‘please do take us.’

‘Well, really, I don’t know,’ continued the father badger.

‘Besides we should be collecting food. The larder’s low and winter isn’t far off.’

‘But we could just go for a little while,’ said his wife. ‘We can pick up the trail over there, behind the big log. It runs straight to the edge of the trees. We can just go and have a peek and be back well before morning.’

‘Well, maybe,’ muttered her husband.

But suddenly the badgers turned and looked behind them.

Bankfoot had sneezed.

When the father badger spoke again it was to hurry his wife and little ones back to the set. He snarled like a cat as he backed down the hole but Rannoch found he could no longer understand him.

‘I’m v-v-v-very sorry, Rannoch,’ said Bankfoot when they had gone.

But Rannoch wasn’t really listening. He was still wondering at what had just happened.

‘Rannoch, are you all right?’ Rannoch shook himself and nodded.

‘Yes. I’m fine. Now, we should get on.’

‘It’s all very w-w-well for you to say, but where shall we go? We’re l-l-lost, remember.’

‘Over there,’ said Rannoch, pushing into the open, ‘behind that tree stump. There’s a trail.’

‘Don’t be s-s-silly,’ said Bankfoot. ’How do you know?’   

Rannoch looked at him but for some reason thought better of telling Bankfoot what had just happened. He didn’t understand it himself.

‘I just feel it, that’s all,’ he said and trotted past the badger’s set to the log. But when the fawns reached it Bankfoot was amazed to see a narrow track, largely obscured by leaves, stretching right and left through the forest.

‘But h-h-h-how?’ stammered Bankfoot.

‘Luck. Come on.’

‘Which way?’ Rannoch hesitated.

‘Down here,’ he said at last, turning left.

This was a guess, for the badgers had said nothing about the direction of the trail. But this time Rannoch had chosen right and soon the fawns found themselves running through the wood as fast as their legs could carry them. The trees began to thin, the canopy opened and at last they passed the edge of the trees and found themselves at the bottom of the meadow where the stream turned west under a bright sky flecked with stars.

‘Hooray for Rannoch,’ cried Bankfoot, jumping high in the grass.

‘Stop fooling, Bankfoot. We’d better hurry. You know what they’ll say.’

As the two friends reached the edge of the valley where the home herd were settling in to ruminate again in the evening, they saw two hinds racing towards them. It was Bracken and Canisp, Bankfoot’s mother, a pretty hind with large dappled ears. The anger on their faces as they approached made the two fawns stop in their tracks and lower their tails.

‘You bad fawn. Where have you been?’ cried Canisp as she ran up, but she could hardly disguise the relief on her face.

‘Oh M-m-mother, Mother, Rannoch pushed Br-Br-Braggle into a stream because he was bullying me,’ cried Bankfoot, releasing all the tension that had built up inside him in one go, ‘and I followed him into the forest as the others didn’t want to go and he thought I was a f-f-fox and we got lost and slept in some leaves and we saw squirrels and a stoat and badgers and then Rannoch knew where the trail was, though he couldn’t have known and...and here we are.’

‘The forest,’ said Canisp sternly as Bankfoot tried to nuzzle under her belly to suckle. ‘Well, my young fawn, I shall have something to say about that. Now, run along with you, it’s way past your bedtime.’ She gave Bankfoot a buffet with her muzzle and drove him off across the valley.

‘Goodbye, R-r-rannoch,’ called Bankfoot as he ran, ‘I know we’ll be friends.’

Rannoch stood silently waiting for his mother to speak as the hind glared down at him.

‘Well?’ she said at last.

‘I’m sorry, Mamma,’ said Rannoch, lowering his head. ‘I didn’t mean any harm. It’s just that. . . I’ve never had an adventure before.’

Bracken shook her muzzle and licked the little fawn lovingly on the nose.

‘Well, you certainly seem to have had one now,’ she said. But then Bracken’s eyes grew worried again.

‘You could have been killed. You know that, don’t you? You must promise me never, ever to do anything like that again.’

‘I promise, Mother.’

‘Very well, then. Now it’s high time we were back.’

The two deer set off, trotting slowly across the meadow. But as they went Rannoch turned to Bracken.

‘Mamma,’ he whispered, ‘can I play with Bankfoot tomorrow?’

Bracken looked down at the little fawn. Again she meant to be angry, but his eyes were too bright to resist.

‘We’ll see,’ she said softly. ‘We’ll see.’

4 Flight

The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies. A. C. Swinburne, ‘Atalanta in Calydon’

Rannoch’s punishment was to stay within Bracken’s sight for nearly a quarter of a moon’s cycle. It felt like an eternity to the little deer. After that he was under strict orders to return to her side well before Larn every evening. In fact, this now applied to all the calves, for there was trouble in the herd, and two suns after Rannoch’s adventure Drail imposed a curfew on the Herla. It was near Anlach and the stags were restless. The blood was rising in the stags and with no natural outlet and no potential challenge to the Lord of the Herd, they were on edge.

The hinds felt it too and became very agitated. That autumn, when the hills should have been resounding with the warning bark of rutting stags and the crack and scrape of antlers, the home valley was eerily quiet. The stags were still beginning to establish their harems and make their stands with their mates, but when the strongest deer with the finest antlers would normally have won out, now the Draila would gang up with one another to win and hold mates. Sgorr himself, who, without antlers, probably would have won no mate, had chosen seven hinds. They were forced to stay near him at the Home Oak.

Sensing the unrest, the Draila, whose ranks had swollen considerably and now comprised nearly a third of the herd, also became more officious in their duties. They patrolled everywhere and any sign of dissent was dealt with ruthlessly. Sgorr took a keen interest in the punishments and his hornless presence became more and more feared as his authority grew and grew. Meanwhile Drail’s personal power was spreading even further afield. That autumn over seven herd lords had come to pay him homage and now wherever he went he insisted on being styled Lord of Herds.

Yet the most horrible aspect of the new regime was the new schools for the fawns. Normally young deer learn on the hoof with their mothers or when they gather after Larn to listen to the old tales and the Lore. But Blindweed’s stories had finally been banned and there was no talk of Herne in the herd now. Instead the young deer were forced to gather in the mornings and members of the Draila would address them. They would teach the need for discipline in all things and for respect for the Draila, and tell them stories of the strength, prowess and goodness of Lord Drail, ‘Protector of Herla’. And every story was sure to include some stirring reference to Sgorr.

At these ‘schools’ the fawns were also taught to show absolute loyalty to the Draila, even above their parents. Indeed they were encouraged to spy on their parents ‘for the good of the herd’ and report suspect conversations to Sgorr’s agents. This meant mostly spying on their mothers who looked after them. But, although stags and hinds separate, hinds will show a keen interest in the affairs of their mates for a long while after Anlach and so news of the stags too was quickly relayed back to the Draila. A new group was formed for the older male prickets which was styled the Drailing, and every day they would march up and down the meadow in neat lines singing a special song. It went like this:

Deer are we, we cannot fail,
Born to serve the herd and Drail,
Fearing neither cold nor thaw,
We follow in the slots of Sgorr.
Bowing to the Draila’s call,
Deer that never trip or fall,
Discipline will set us free,
We swear eternal loyalty.