The Dark Horse (2 page)

4

What a mess!

Grinling striking his flint without success. Horn stamping around the place.

“Hasn’t anyone got any dry tinder?” Horn barked.

No one spoke.

“Wait, boy,” my father whispered to me, “wait until he’s really seething.”

A dangerous game, but Father wanted to make the most of any chance to get at Horn.

Finally Horn lost his patience and kicked Grinling hard in the backside.

“Go on, then,” said Father through his teeth. “Now.”

I stepped forward, a huge rock in my belly. That was fear. I was scared of Horn.

“Please, Lawspeaker,” I said. “Please, is this any use?”

I tried to sound innocent of Olaf ’s game, but I think Horn knew what was going on. He stared at the mugwort in my hand. Dry, fluffy, and perfect for catching sparks with.

“Is this any use?” I said again. I wasn’t really asking. We both knew it
was.

If Horn knew the game we were playing, he didn’t show it. But with everyone staring at him, he couldn’t appear to be bested by a boy. A boy of no more than twelve summers.

He grunted and waved a paw at Grinling.

“Let this boy show you how,” he said, shifting the shame onto Grinling.

So I lit the torches, which we carried to the mouths of the wolves’ caves, while Father was congratulated for having such a clever son.

“Olaf, you must be so proud!”

And did they say it within Horn’s earshot?

No, not then.

Who was it?

I can’t think now. How terrible not to remember who it was whose throat was ripped out by a wolf’s fangs.

Oh. It was Snorri.

It was as if fate were dealing the blows, because it was in retaliation for the attack on Snorri that Horn had dragged us up into the hills anyway.

Grinling threw a torch into the darkness of the first cave.

Then, holding another flare in front of him, Snorri stuck his head into the cave.

Behind him the sun was starting to set on the sea horizon, flooding the sky with the color of the blood that was about to spill across the rocks around the cave mouth.

Snorri’s head was followed out of the cave by a surge of fur and claw that raged from the darkness within.

The wolves poured out. It’s my belief they had smelt us a long while before, and were waiting and brooding in their home. We had lit a match and started a fire.

So they poured out and away down the hill, and two more of us were dead before the sun had sunk another hairsbreadth.

And no, I am afraid I cannot remember who they were.

Then, despite the screaming and the shouting, all noise ceased. At least, it did in my head, for my eyes fell to the front of the cave, where there stood a girl.

A small girl, naked and dirty, standing quietly in a frame of shadow, with a look on her face . . . of confusion.

Mouse.

5

Smoke curled thickly from the fire pit and twisted around inside the darkness of the broch until it found its way eventually out of the small hole in the roof of the round house. Somewhere in a dark corner the hounds snored. The Storn sat in small groups, waiting for the Spell-making to begin. Another hard day had ended, and the ceremony at least gave them a break from the usual routine. Everyone was still and quiet. The fire threw a red light onto their faces. They were faces that had been shaped by the wind and the salt and the rain that came with living on the coast.

In the center of the broch, next to the fire, sat Horn. His own face was deeply lined, worn by the weather and by leadership. It was as rough as the rocks that the broch was built from. At more than forty years, he was amongst the older of the Storn, though nearby sat Longshank, who was the oldest.

Longshank was the Lawkeeper. He had learned all the history of the tribe, told to him as a young man by the previous Lawkeeper. He was often called on to advise on difficult and serious matters, though he had no power himself. All the power lay with the Lawspeaker.

With Horn by the fire sat Gudrun, the Wisewoman. She was more than thirty years old and had never taken a husband. She was large, and might have seemed fat but for her height. Long brown hair and the hood of her thick deerskin cloak hid her face. She began to make the spells to keep the Storn safe, to bring them food, to bring them whatever they needed or wanted.

“Bring us fish, make us warm, lift the sun, stop the snow, sharpen our tools, heat our fires, forge our iron, grow our grain, still the wind. . . .”

Her voice began its hourlong journey through their fears and desires.

The faces in the great broch watched intently. Though they had seen it all many times before, they needed the Spell-making, believing fiercely in its power to protect them.

But at the back of the hall Mouse and Sigurd were thinking about something else.

“We shouldn’t have brought it here,” Mouse said, whispering quietly to Sigurd, her head bowed.

“You mean Sif ? She won’t notice, she’s too busy painting her skin these days to—anyway, it’s far too cold outside and there’s nowhere—”

“No, Siggy. I mean we shouldn’t have brought it, touched it at all.”

Gudrun’s voice continued to spell out her magic. “Bring the herds, brew our beer, strengthen our babies. . . .”

Sigurd sneaked a look at Mouse’s face, trying to get at what she meant.

“All finds are Horn’s property, that’s his right as Lawspeaker.”

“No, Siggy, I don’t mean that, either. I’m not scared of Horn—”

“And nor am I,” Sigurd whispered back.

“I’m scared of the box, Sigurd. The box.”

Now Sigurd understood. “You felt something? At the beach?”

Mouse shrugged.

“I wasn’t sure,” she said defensively, “you know what I’m like . . . sometimes it’s not clear. There might just have been some animal nearby . . . I might have been feeling its fear of us instead. . . .”

She stopped, sensing something else entirely now. Although she hadn’t lifted her head, she knew Sigurd wasn’t listening to her anymore.

She looked up. Horn stood in front of her. Gudrun was still speaking, down in the center, by the fire, but as Horn held up his hand she stopped.

The entire community of Storn was staring at Mouse.

“Well, girl, what is it? What is it that is more important to you and Olaf the Weakling’s son than the Spell-making?”

Horn spoke quietly, his voice only just audible over the crackle of the fire, but there was an edge to it that made it clear.

Mouse trembled.

“I’m sorry, Horn. We were talking of the poor fishing and the poor finds to be had on the shore. That’s all. I’m sorry.”

“You. Olaf ’s boy,” said Horn to Sigurd, though he was still staring at Mouse, “what do you say?”

“That’s all, Horn, just the poor finds along the beach. And the fishing—”

“They’re lying!”

Sif. Horn’s daughter.

Mouse shuddered, fearful of what Sif would do.

Horn turned and strode to the center of the circle. As he stood by the fire the flames lit his face with an orange glow. He looked terrifying.

“Well?” he said, staring at his daughter.

Sif stood up, a little nervously. She hid behind her long black hair. Nevertheless, Mouse could see one of her slate gray eyes fixed right on her.

Sif knew she was risking embarrassing her father, but she wasn’t going to miss the chance to humiliate Sigurd and Mouse. She disliked them, maybe even hated them. She hated their closeness.

As she looked at them now, standing next to each other, practically clinging to each other for comfort, the envy rose in her again.

“Father . . . ,” she began, then remembered where they were. “Lawspeaker . . . they found something on the beach. I saw them.”

“Go on,” said Horn. Something in his voice indicated he was scared his daughter might embarrass him if she was not careful.

“They hid it. Sigurd hid it from his own father.
She
pretended to fall, and he hid it outside the broch.”

“What was it? Food?”

A muttering rose from those gathered at the assembly. Sigurd looked toward his parents. Freya, his mother, tried to smile at her son, but then Olaf caught his eye. His father’s face raged with a mixture of shame and anger.

“No,” said Sif, “it was this.”

She turned and knelt down. From underneath the blanket she’d been sitting on she produced the box.

She held it up for everyone to see, and there was silence.

6

Of course, she wasn’t called Mouse then.

When we found her, four summers before
she
found the box, she wasn’t called anything. She was just a girl we found in a cave full of wolves.

After a while others noticed what I was looking at. They turned and saw the naked girl, standing in the cave mouth. Still she did not move. Her hair was long and unkempt. She was filthy. She was perhaps seven or eight summers old, but it was hard to tell.

“What’s this?” asked my father. He came and stood by my side.

“Look!” I said. “She’s crying!”

“Poor thing,” said Selva, one of the few women who’d come with us on the war party.

“It’s a miracle she’s still alive,” said someone else.

There was confusion. Still the girl stood staring at us, crying quietly. And then I remember very clearly, though I don’t remember who said it:

“How could a little mouse like that have survived in there? With those animals?”

A little mouse.

“They must have been saving her. You know, to eat later.”

A little mouse. I can’t remember much after that. How we took her home to the village. There was a lot of debate, that I do remember. Argument while we were still on the hill.

It was obvious we had to take her. Obvious to everyone apart from Horn, that is.

“Another mouth to feed, that’s all she is,” he said.

“But we can’t just leave her!” I cried.

Olaf put his hand over my mouth, but Horn hadn’t even heard me.

“You don’t have to worry about feeding her,” he said, “I do. I have to see you’re all fed. . . .”

No one spoke for a while. There was a standoff. Then Father stepped forward.

“What’s the matter, Lawspeaker?” he said. “Is it beyond your powers to feed a tiny girl like this?”

Horn must have sensed that the mood was against him, because though he spat on the ground at my father’s feet, he gave in.

“Very well. But the child will belong to your family, Olaf. It will be on your head.”

And I do also remember that though we had decided the girl was coming with us, the girl herself had not.

She had not spoken a word, and then she struggled and fought.

“She’s out of her mind.”

“She’s just scared.”

“Who knows how long she’s been here!”

But she came with us in the end. The caves were empty, the wolves had gone. It was time to get down off the hill. Before we got home, we had stopped calling her the mouse and just called her Mouse instead.

That was that.

We put a cloak around her and left the hill.

About halfway down the stillness of the evening air was suddenly broken. There was a cry from a wolf high above us. A single long, piercing howl that stopped us in our tracks. It was a sad sound, it seemed to me.

I looked at Mouse, to see her reaction, but she was still crying. Crying tears of relief, I assumed. But then she held back her tears, sucked in a huge breath, and let out a long, heartbreaking wolf howl.

We looked at one another, hesitating for a moment, and then we set off again down the hill, a little faster than before.

Olaf, my father, carried Mouse all the way back to the village on his back.

I was so proud. And not just of my father, for some reason.

No one knew then what Mouse was. What she could
do.

Horn thought he was giving us an extra mouth to feed and nothing more, but he was wrong.

We began to understand when we found her sleeping with the hounds.

But wait—I am telling this the wrong way round.

It was hard at first for Mouse.

Weeks went by. She hadn’t spoken a single word. We thought she was mute. We had cleaned her up. Washed and cut her hair. Found that there was a girl underneath all the dirt, though a strange-looking girl she was. She was small and delicate; she had a small, round, delicate face, with huge and beautiful eyes. She tried to hide behind the hair we had left straggling down in front of her face.

She didn’t seem to know where she was at first. What she was doing with us. Though she hadn’t spoken, she seemed to understand what we told her. Food, sleep, things like that.

She would nod her head, or tip it to one side if she wasn’t sure.

But if anyone tried, and they
did
try, to ask her anything more complicated, she would just stare blankly through them.

“When did the wolves capture you, Mouse?” asked Freya, my mother.

“What’s your name?” asked Olaf, my father.

“Where are you from? Really?” I asked.

Any of these questions brought the same response from Mouse. She would stare through you as if she were looking at something in the distance.

We decided she was simple. Stupid. Perhaps as a result of being caught by those wolves, we thought. Perhaps it had scared her out of her mind.

And then one day we lost her.

She’d been kept in our own broch since we found her. If she went outside, it was with my mother, and only for a short time. She had nothing to do; we’d given her no work, and she would just sit in the darkness of the broch, blinking from time to time. Outside she seemed even more timid.

“She likes the darkness,” my mother said to my father.

He nodded.

“Like the cave,” he said. “Now, why should that be?”

So we’d grown used to her sitting in the darkest corner of our dark little broch, saying nothing, taking food when offered, sleeping when we did.

But then, as I say, we lost her.

My mother said she thought she was still in the broch, but when Father and I came back from fishing, we saw she was not there.

“But I never saw her leave!” Mother cried. “She was here!”

We searched all over the village, trying not to attract attention. But it was a busy time of day, with men coming back from fishing and pulling the boats up the beach, and women returning from the fields.

“Lost something, Olaf?” Herda, the Song-giver, asked my father.

He held up his hand as if to say, “Be quiet,” but it was too late.

So Herda and a few others joined the search, and Mouse was found. Sleeping with the hounds in the farthest darkness of the great broch.

A crowd had gathered as Father pulled Mouse blinking into the light.

Horn was standing by, a mocking smile on his face.

“Your daughter prefers the company of dogs?” he said.

There was laughter. Not kind laughter.

My father was embarrassed. He shook Mouse angrily by the shoulder. It was one of the few times I saw him angry with her.

“What are you thinking of ?” he shouted. “Lying with dogs!”

Then, and then, and then! Mouse spoke for the first time!

“But they were sad,” she said.

For a while we were all too amazed that she’d spoken at all, never mind what she had said. Never mind the strange accent to her voice.

Olaf gathered himself.

“What did you say?” he asked her.

“The dogs are sad since Graylegs died,” Mouse said simply, as if it were obvious. Graylegs was one of the older hounds. He had died a couple of days before.

“What? How do you know they’re sad?” Father asked, bewildered.

“They told me,” said Mouse.

Then she asked her first question. That look of confusion she’d had on her face when we first saw her had returned.

“Why?” she asked. “Don’t they talk to you?”