Читать книгу The Golden Strangers - Henry Treece - Страница 6

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The black-haired little girl looked up just in time to see the tuft of painted feathers rising above the holly bush, twenty paces nearer the wood. She gave a sharp yelp and dropped the green lizard she had just decided to keep as a pet. Then she began to run. That is what the women had always taught her: ‘Run as fast as you can, if ever you see the Hunters. They will put a stake up through you and toast you for supper over a slow wood fire if you don’t! They are a cruel folk—not like us. Their Gods are different—bad Gods! They are a bad old folk!’

Brach heard heavy footsteps behind her and the jangling of bracelets. Then a new smell, different from that which hung about her own folk. She did not wait. Her heart thumped hard against her new linen tunic, urging her on. A nasty-edged little throwing-axe glanced off a stone before her and swung round, astraddle, between her legs. She stumbled, chin forward and fingers out like a frog, but somehow she kept on running, her dark eyes wide with fear and the whites showing all round the irises.

Then she began to cry as she ran, sorry now that she had passed by the Old Woman that morning without making the little sacrifice, as they called it. She was really very frightened. This was the first time she had ever been chased by one of the ancient enemy from the dark oak forests.

‘Earth Mother! Earth Mother! Help me now!’ she panted.

A flint struck her in the middle of the back. At first she thought it was an arrow and wondered why it didn’t hurt unbearably. The warriors at Craig Dun boasting about the fires, had always said how much an arrow hurt—more than a knife or an axe. Especially a tanged arrow, the leaf-shaped ones weren’t so bad, for it often dragged things out with it when it was pulled, the wet things that screamed in the light. But this didn’t hurt as bad as that, not anywhere near.

All the same, Brach decided not to take any chances. Earth Mother must be asleep that evening, thinking about the Barley in her womb.

‘Old Man! Old Man! Help me now!’ she sobbed—picturing her grandfather, lolling by the dry stone wall of his roundhouse, scratching circles on the floor with his long horny thumb-nail or the black flint knife—if he could remember where he had put it, for he was becoming very forgetful lately. She hoped he would hear her in his magic dreams and send a spell to help her.

Almost as she said the words the runner behind her gave a high laugh. She felt hands on her shoulders, in her hair, on her arms. His breath was hot on her neck. She would have bitten but her gasping mouth was open and would not obey her in its terror. So she kicked backwards with her hard little heels. One, twice, five times! As many as the fingers on one hand.

She heard the man give a deep grunt. There was a very painful tug at her hair—then she was free again and running like the wind. And now it was as though she could run for ever. And the feet no longer thumped along behind her.

An ordinary girl might have rested then or have let her heart sing a victory song. That is what they did—and then they were caught! Brach had heard about things like that before.

But she was not an ordinary girl. Her grandfather was the Old Man who had once outwitted even the Strangers, in Craig Dun. Her father was the ‘fighting-chief’, Garroch, the Old Man’s son, who would be the Old Man himself one day, when the time came to put her grandfather in the Long House, with the clay thick in his eye-sockets and his limbs tied with hide strips.

So Brach did not do as ordinary girls might have done. Instead she recited the names of the trees: oak, ash, holly, birch ... And then the names of the creatures: bear, badger, eagle, stoat, hawk, lynx. Only the wolf would she not name. When she came to him she called him ‘Hair’—just as old Two-fingers the Fool had done fifteen corn-growings before. She thought of old Two-fingers who had gone to Earth Mother on the leaning stone when Brach was six corn-years old. Brach recalled him as she ran. He had lain quietly there as though on a sheepskin bed, without howling. Her grandfather had stroked his hair and had gently felt the holes in his head where the skin was thin. The Old Man was proud of that bit of surgery. Two-fingers had grinned and said: ‘Old Man, can the dogs come with me?’

The dogs he meant were not those that had chased the sheep down the chalk hillside when first the Strangers came. They were their great-grandchildren but like them in grey shagginess and obstinacy when a task was to be completed quickly.

The Old Man smiled back at Two-fingers and said: ‘Yes, in a case like this a wish must be granted.’

The two dogs were fetched from Two-fingers’ mud hovel. The shepherd was unbound for long enough to caress them and then the whole affair went quietly and more easily than was the rule.

Brach thought of all this as she ran. It was surprising how it passed the time. The oaken stockade was ramming into her chest almost before she knew it. She was giving the village warning howl and the gates were opening just as by magic. Then she was inside being sick and the gates were closed again.

‘The Hunters are here!’ she gulped as the women tried to find out what troubled her.

A dark-skinned warrior, his face streaked with the blue war-juice, smacked her back as she bent.

‘How many, my pretty?’ he asked. ‘We have enough men to kill a handful but no more. Garroch your father has taken our warriors to get food from the Fisherfolk.’

He was an old man, six hands old, skilled, but cautious. Another one whose age could be counted on four hands pushed forward and said, ‘Let us go out and chop them, master! They must be tired after the long snow when the creatures died in the forests and would not feed them. Let us go out and chop them!’

But the warrior turned sharply and struck him across the mouth with the flat of his greenstone axe. The young one was silent, licking his teeth.

They led sobbing Brach to the Old Man. She was still sick from eating berries and running. He stroked her and said, ‘If your father, Garroch, was only here he would kill them all. But he has gone away to get food for us till the Barley springs.’

In the gorsebushes, an arrow’s flight from the stockade, a red-headed young Hunter sat rubbing his groin and showing his teeth. ‘Garroch’s girl can kick like a horse,’ he said. ‘She for my wife one day.’ Then laughing at the fright he had given her he hobbled back towards the forest where his tribe were waiting for news about the defences of the village under the hill.