Chronicles of Ancient Darkness Part 141

'Bad weather on the way,' said one. 'Dangerous to be in the Forest alone.' Out of respect, he didn't ask what the Leader of the Ravens was doing so far from his clan.

Fin-Kedinn declined the offer and ignored the unspoken question. Instead, he told them of the gathering of the clans.

'The Ravens have already set off, and I told the Boar Clan when I pa.s.sed their camp, they'll have left by now; and Durrain has sent word throughout the Deep Forest. Go back to your people and tell your Leader. If the clans stay together, we will remain strong. Even against Eostra.'

That he dared speak her name aloud gave them courage. But the hunter who had spoken grabbed Fin-Kedinn's arm. 'Come with us, Fin-Kedinn. We need you. You can't leave us now.'

'Others can lead,' said Fin-Kedinn. 'I must seek the one who can bring down the Soul-Eater. The one who knows the dark places under the earth.'

'Who? Where are you going?'

'North,' was all Fin-Kedinn would say.

Before they could ask more, he was on his way. Time was against him. And to find the one he sought, he must rely on knowledge many winters old.

He hadn't gone far when the boy came racing after him. 'My father says to give you this,' he panted, holding out a squirrel.

Fin-Kedinn thanked him and told him to keep it. The boy glanced up at him shyly. 'Can I go with you? I know the land to the north, I could help you find your way.'

The Raven Leader bit back a smile. He'd hunted in this part of the Forest since before this boy was born.

He was about twelve summers old, with loose limbs and a sharp, intelligent face; a little like Torak at that age. 'They say you've journeyed further than anyone,'I he ventured. 'To the Far North and the Seal Islands and the High Mountains. Can't I come too?'

'No,' said Fin-Kedinn. 'Go back to your father.'

As he watched the boy plodding off, Fin-Kedinn became suddenly alert. The crunch of the boy's boots had an odd, brittle sound, which rang too sharply through the trees. And the snow looked wrong. It had an almost greenish tinge.

Fin-Kedinn's hand tightened on his staff. No wonder the Forest was bracing itself.

'Tell your father to hurry,' he shouted to the boy. 'Get back to camp, quick as you can!'

The boy turned. 'I know! Snowstorm on the way!'

'No! Ice storm! Much worse! Tell your father! Run!'

Fin-Kedinn watched till the boy was safely back with the others. Then he started looking for a place to build a shelter.

As he did so, he prayed to the World Spirit that Torak and Renn wherever they were had seen the signs too, and got under cover.

EIGHT.

A sense of foreboding had been growing on Renn since she woke up.

It was cold. Too cold for snow. The night before, there'd been a ring around the moon. Tanugeak the White Fox Mage had once told her that this meant the moon was pulling the ruff of her parka closer around her face, because bad weather was coming.

And to make matters worse, Renn had heard Wolf howling in the night. She'd never heard him howl like that before.

The River Horseleap was beginning to freeze, the shallows congealing in fragile, pale-green swirls. In an inlet, Renn found splintered ice and a trace of a paw-print; further on, boot prints, unmistakeably Torak's. She was puzzled. He'd headed downstream, then backtracked. Why?

Soon after, she drew level with the resting place on the other side of the river, and craned her neck at the cliff. She howled, but no wolves peered over the edge. She told herself they must have taken the cubs exploring. But her uneasiness grew.

Her spirits rose when she found the pine trunk where Torak had crossed the river. His trail was fresher than she'd dared hope, and he'd been walking with his usual long strides, so he must be all right, which meant that Wolf couldn't have been howling for him.

She followed the trail into the gully of the Fast.w.a.ter. She didn't know it well, except from Torak's description of where he'd first met Wolf, but halfway up, she spotted an arrow, tied to a birch tree and pointing east. This was baffling. Torak must have put it there as a sign for her. But if he wanted her to follow, why not just wait?

For some reason, she pa.s.sed the arrow without examining it, and hurried on. But to her dismay, she found no more tracks. Torak hadn't come this way.

She went back to the birch tree, and came to a dead stop. The arrow had been tied in place with nightshade: a deadly plant, beloved of the Soul-Eaters especially Seshru, her mother. Torak would never have used it. This wasn't his sign. It wasn't his arrow.

A gust of wind threw back her hood. She shivered. While she'd been tracking, the wind had got up, and the sky had darkened ominously. Storm coming. She should make camp right now.

But then she would fall even further behind.

Fighting a rising tide of panic, she decided to flout everything she'd ever learnt, and keep going.

As the wind strengthened, she found Torak's trail and followed it into the next valley. She paused for breath under a huge, watchful holly. Her sense of wrongness deepened. It wasn't even mid-afternoon, but as dark as twilight. The snow had an odd, greenish tinge. She hadn't seen a single living creature all day.

Fin-Kedinn would have called a halt long before now. 'The first rule of living,' he'd told her once, 'is never leave it too late to build a shelter.'

And this was a good place for a camp: a patch of level ground near the holly tree, even if it was a bit far from the river.

Renn chewed her lip. 'Torak?' she called. 'Torak!'

Angrily, she flung down her gear. Why had he left without her? And why hadn't she caught up?

Now that she'd stopped, she realized how little time she had left.

Come on, Renn. You know what to do. First, the fire. Wake it now, before you're tired from chopping wood, and build the shelter around it. Plenty of tinder in your pouch, keeping warm inside your jerkin; and you've got a bit of horsehoof mushroom smouldering in a roll of bark, so no messing about with a strike-fire.

Which was just as well. The trees were moaning, and the wind was tugging at her clothes and whipping branches in her face. It was malicious. It wanted her to fail.

Gritting her teeth, she woke the fire, then wrenched her axe from her belt. Now for the shelter. Bend saplings and tie them together with willow withes, leaving a smoke-hole at the top. Build long and low to weather the storm, and cut off the saplings' heads so the wind can't pull them over sorry, tree-spirits, you'd better find a new home. Fill in the sides with spruce boughs, plug the gaps with bracken, and weigh it down with more saplings, as many as you can.

Despite the cold, sweat ran down her sides. Too much to do, and the trees were thrashing and creaking. They sounded frightened.

Bracing herself against the wind, she wove a rough door from hazel and spruce branches, then crawled inside, dragging in firewood, and more spruce boughs for bedding. The shelter was thick with smoke, it was swirling close to the ground, too scared to leave. Coughing, Renn pulled the door shut. The smoke-hole sucked the haze upwards, and the shelter cleared.

She'd made it just big enough to take two people, in case Torak needed it too. Now she recognized that for the delusion it was. Torak was long gone.

'Water,' she said out loud, trying to banish her fears. The river was too far, so she'd have to melt snow. Yanking her parka and jerkin over her head, she used the jerkin's lacings to tie its neck and sleeves shut, to form a makeshift bag. Then she pulled her parka back on and crawled out into the jaws of the storm.

The wind pelted her with flying branches and stung her face with ice needles. Quickly, she crammed snow into the jerkin, and crawled back inside. With her spare bowstring, she hung the snow sack from a support sapling, and placed a swiftly-made birch-bark pail underneath to catch the drips.

The wind screamed. The shelter shuddered. Suddenly, the World Spirit speared the clouds and sent the hail hammering down. Renn hugged her knees and prayed for Torak and Wolf.

A thud shook the shelter.

She gave a start. That wasn't a branch.

Pulling up her hood, she shifted the door and peered out.

Hail struck her face.

Only it isn't hail, she thought, it's rain and it's turning to ice on everything it strikes.

s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her face against the onslaught, she saw the freezing rain hitting twigs, branches, trees imprisoning all it struck in a heavy mantle of ice. Boughs bent beneath the weight. Already ice was forming on her clothes.

She groped to find whatever had fallen against the shelter. Her mitten struck a lump which didn't feel like a branch. She squeezed.

The lump squawked.

Rek's wings were clogged with ice, but once Renn got the raven inside and brushed her off, she began steaming gently in the warmth.

Shivering with terror, she cowered on Renn's lap. As Renn gazed into those deep raven eyes, she sensed in them more than terror of the storm. Where had Rek come from? Where was Torak?

A thunderclap split the sky. The Forest roared as Renn had never heard it roar before. She heard deafening cracks and tremendous, splintering crashes.

And then, quite distinctly, she heard a voice in the storm. She strained to listen. Was that could it be Torak, calling her name?

It would be madness to go out again.

And yet if there was a chance that Torak needed help.

She grabbed a brand from the fire.

The fury of the storm beat upon her. The Forest was under attack. She saw trees flailing wildly, desperate to break free of their burden of ice. Branches crashed. A pine snapped like kindling. Even the boughs of the great holly bowed so low they threatened to split the tree in half.

'Torak!' yelled Renn. The ice storm ripped away his name like a leaf. 'Torak!'

It was hopeless.

A flash of lightning, and from the holly, a face peered down at her. Icicle hair. Eyes glittering with malice.

Renn screamed.

Thunder boomed.

The tokoroth leapt into the dark.

The holly gave a groan and tore itself apart.

Renn threw herself out of the way a heartbeat too late. One of the holly's limbs crashed across her calf, pinning her to the ground.

Wildly, she struggled, but the tree held her fast. She'd left her axe in the shelter. With her knife, she hacked at the branch. The wood was like granite, the blade bounced off. Frantically, she dug at the earth beneath her leg. Frozen hard.

Already, ice was weighing her down, sucking the life from her marrow.

'Torak!' she screamed. 'Wolf!'

The wind whipped her voice away into the night.

NINE.

The hill below Torak was a precarious jumble of flood-tossed logs.

He'd spent ages searching in vain for some trace of his pack-brother. And now he couldn't even get down. He guessed that Wolf had run lightly over the logs; but if he tried, he'd start a logslide.

'Fool,' he muttered. A while ago, he'd pa.s.sed a good campsite on some level ground near a big holly tree, but he'd been so intent on finding Wolf that he'd ignored it. The strange thing was, he'd known at the time he was making a mistake, but he'd done it anyway.

The wind tore at his hood and pelted him with branches. The trees roared a warning: Get under cover, fast!

Rip thudded onto his shoulder, making him stagger.

Quork! cawed the raven. He looked bedraggled. Torak wondered how far he and Rek had chased the eagle owl.

The raven lifted off and flew uphill.

That was the way Torak had come. Maybe Rip wanted him to get back to that campsite while he still had the chance.

Quork! Follow!

Torak followed.

The light was so bad that he could hardly see. As he crashed through the undergrowth, he glimpsed Rip's white wing-feather. Then the clouds let loose the hail.

Only it isn't hail, he thought as he ran, it's freezing rain. Torak, you're caught in an ice storm!

Bent double, he battled up the slope. He couldn't go much further. He had to find some hollow under a boulder, anything, and wait out the storm.

He would have missed the shelter completely if Rip hadn't perched on top.

A shelter? Torak couldn't believe it. He recognized the patch of level ground, although it looked different: the holly had toppled over. And there had been no shelter here, he was sure of it.