Suddenly Torak wanted to bury his head in Wolf's scruff and cry till his heart broke: for the Bat Mage, for himself, and in a tangled way, for his father.
'Here,' said Renn, holding out a scrap of seal meat.
He sniffed; took the meat, and tried to sit up, but the pain in his chest made him wince.
'Are you hurt?' said Renn.
'No, I just fell. Bruised my chest.'
'Do you want me to take a look?'
'No,' he said quickly, 'I'm fine.'
She looked puzzled. Then she gave another shrug, and went off to leave a piece of meat for the clan guardian. When she came back, she gave another piece to Wolf, keeping the last for herself.
They ate in silence, watching the sun sink towards the Sea. The wind had gone, and the ice river was asleep. The afternoon was still. Torak watched a solitary raven rowing across the vast white sky and was suddenly sharply aware of how far they were from the Forest.
He glanced at Renn, and saw that she'd had the same thought.
She said, 'We've got no food, no blubber, and no skinboat. How in the name of the Spirit are we going to get home?'
That was how Fin-Kedinn and Inuktiluk found them when they came up from the south in their skinboats: Torak and Renn huddled together on the ice, with Wolf standing guard beside them.
FORTY.
After that first stunned moment, Renn had given a strangled sob and thrown herself at her uncle. He'd stood on the ice and held her, and she'd breathed in his smell of reindeer hide and Forest.
He'd borrowed a skinboat from the Sea-eagle Clan, he told her, and kept to the leads between the skerries and the coast until he'd reached the camp of his old friends, the White Foxes.
'And the rest of the clan?' she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
'Back in the Forest.'
'In the Forest? So you '
' came alone. I thought you needed me more.'
Now she lay curled in his skinboat, wonderfully warm beneath a sleeping-sack of white winter reindeer hide. Torak was in Inuktiluk's boat, and Wolf was keeping level with them on the ice.
After a while, she said to Fin-Kedinn's back, 'I still don't understand. The Soul-Eaters. Torak says they want to make all the clans the same; but we are the same. We all live by the same laws.'
Fin-Kedinn turned his head. 'Do we? Tell me. Since you've been in the Far North, what have you lived on? Seal?'
She nodded.
'And what do seals eat?'
She gasped. 'Fish! They're hunters. I never thought.'
Fin-Kedinn swerved to avoid a chunk of black ice. 'The Ice clans live as the ice bear does. They have to, or they wouldn't survive. Some Sea clans do too. In the Forest, it's different. That's what the Soul-Eaters want to change.'
Renn was thoughtful. 'They told Torak that they speak for the World Spirit. But '
'Nobody speaks for the World Spirit,' said Fin-Kedinn.
After that, they didn't talk again.
It was an overcast day, and the sky was heavy with snow. Gulls wheeled overhead. A fox trotted over the ice, scented Wolf, and fled. Renn watched Fin-Kedinn's paddle slicing the water, and began to feel drowsy.
The spirit bees were back. She reached out to touch them, laughing as they brushed her fingers. Then they were gone, and she was alone on a high mountain, and red eyes were coming at her from the dark . . .
She cried out.
'Renn,' Fin-Kedinn said softly. 'Wake up.'
She screwed up her eyes against the light. 'I had a dream.'
The Raven Leader steadied the boat by sticking one end of his paddle in a cross-strap, then twisted round to look at her. 'The Soul-Eaters,' he said quietly. 'You got close to them, didn't you?'
She caught her breath. 'Before, they were just shadows, but now I've seen them. Thiazzi. Eostra. The Bat Mage . . . Seshru.'
They exchanged glances. Then Fin-Kedinn said, 'When we reach the Forest, tell me everything. Not here.'
She nodded, comforted. She didn't want to talk about it yet. She didn't want to bring it back.
Fin-Kedinn took up his paddle, and they moved off again.
Inuktiluk steered his boat alongside them. Torak sat behind him, and Renn tried to catch his eye, but he didn't see her. With his short hair and fringe he looked disturbingly unfamiliar.
He'd been very subdued since the battle on the ice. At first she'd thought it was because of what he must have witnessed in the caves. Now she wondered if there was something more; something he wasn't telling her.
A little later, she said to Fin-Kedinn, 'It isn't over, is it?'
Again, the Raven Leader turned to look at her. 'It's never over,' he said.
Wolf was troubled because Tall Tailless was troubled. So now, in the deep of the Dark, Wolf decided to brave the great white Den of the taillesses who smelt like foxes, and make sure that his pack-brother was safe.
Luckily, all the dogs had been taken off to hunt, and Wolf was able to crawl into the Den un-smelt. A tangle of scents hit his nose: reindeer, fish-dog, tailless, fox, lingonberry; but it wasn't hard to find his pack-brother among them.
Tall Tailless slept curled in his reindeer hide, back to back with his pack-sister. He was frowning and twitching; Wolf sensed the depth of his trouble. Tall Tailless was trying to make a choice about something. He was frightened. He didn't know what to do. More than that, Wolf didn't understand.
For the present, though, his pack-brother seemed safe with the other taillesses, so Wolf turned his attention to the interesting smells in the Den. The bladder of a fish-dog was intriguing until he bit it, and it spurted him with wet. Then he found a hanging ball of hide, and patted it with his paw. It gurgled. Looking inside, he was startled to see a small tailless cub gazing up at him. Wolf licked its nose, and it gave a happy squeal.
Next, Wolf went to sniff the fish-dog meat that hung from a branch in the middle of the Den. Around him the taillesses were whiffling in their sleeps. Stretching his neck, he took the meat delicately in his jaws, and lifted it down. He was just about to leave when he caught a gleam of eyes.
Of all the taillesses, the lead wolf of the raven pack was the one Wolf respected the most. Only this tailless slept as lightly and woke as often as a normal wolf. He was awake now.
Wolf dropped his ears and wagged his tail, hoping the lead wolf hadn't noticed the meat in his jaws.
The lead wolf had. He didn't growl. He didn't need to. He simply crossed his forepaws on his chest, and regarded Wolf.
Wolf understood, put down the meat, and left the Den.
Out in the Dark again, he found himself a place in the Bright Soft Cold, and curled up. Now he was sure that Tall Tailless was safe, at least for the moment, because the leader of the raven pack was watching over him.
The clearing in the Forest was aglow with firelight, and heady with the smells of woodsmoke and roasting meat. Fat sizzled on the fire 'The first real fire,' said Renn, 'that we've had in half a moon!'
After the dim flicker of the White Fox blubber lamps, it was wonderful to be able to scorch themselves before a proper Raven long-fire. An entire pine tree lay ablaze in the middle of the clearing, its flames leaping higher than a man could jump, its embers hot enough to singe your eyebrows if you got too close.
Many people from other clans had joined the Ravens on the banks of the Axehandle, to celebrate the return of the travellers from the Far North, and the vanquishing of the demons. All had brought food. The Boars had brought a whole side of forest horse, which they'd baked in a pit, to much good-natured argument about whether spruce boughs or pine gave a better flavour. The Otters brought delicious sticky cakes of cranberry and reed flour, as well as a strange-tasting stew of dried bog-mushrooms and frogs' legs, which nobody much liked, except them. The Willows brought piles of salted herring, and several skins of their famously potent rowanberry brew; and the Ravens provided great coils of auroch-gut sausage stuffed with a delicious mix of blood, marrowfat, and pounded hazelnuts.
As the night wore on, everyone became flushed and voluble. Dogs raced about excitedly, and those trees that remained awake leaned closer to the fire, warming their branches and listening to the talk.
Torak hadn't drunk as much as the others, because he didn't want his souls to wander. He'd done his best to take part in the jokes and the hunting stories, but he knew he wasn't very good at it. Even before the Far North, he hadn't really belonged, and now it was harder. People kept looking at him and whispering.
'They say he was with the Soul-Eaters for days,' breathed a Boar girl to her mother.
'Sh!' hissed the mother. 'He'll hear!'
Torak pretended he hadn't. He sat on a log by the fire, watching Fin-Kedinn cutting chunks of horse and putting them in bowls; Renn wrinkling her nose as she fished a frog's leg from her bowl, and surreptitiously fed it to a waiting dog. He felt cut off from them. They didn't know what he was concealing; and he didn't know how to tell them.
Of everyone, only Inuktiluk had seemed to have some idea of what was tormenting him. As they'd stood together on the ice on their last morning in the Far North, the White Fox hunter had turned to him and said, 'You have good friends among the Ravens. Don't be in a hurry to leave them when you're back in the Forest.'
Torak had been startled. How much did Inuktiluk know, or guess?
The round face had creased in a smile tinged with sadness. 'It seems to me that you're like the black ice bear, who comes once in a thousand winters. You may never find peace. But you will make friends along the way. And many lands will know your name.' Then he'd put both fists to his chest and bowed. 'Hunt well, Torak. And may your guardian run with you.'
In the clearing, food had given way to singing and storytelling. Suddenly, Torak couldn't bear it any longer. When no-one was looking, he slipped off to his shelter.
Throwing himself onto the willow mat, he stared into the fire at the mouth of the shelter, wondering what to do.
'What's the matter?' said Renn, making him jump.
She stood on the other side of the fire. He thought she looked as frightened as he felt. 'You're not thinking of leaving?' she said.
He hesitated. 'If I did, I'd tell you first.'
Picking up a stick, she poked the fire. 'What is it you're afraid of?'
'What do you mean?'
'There is something, I can feel it.'
He didn't reply.
'All right,' she said, throwing away the stick, 'I'll guess. In the caves, you had blood on your forehead. You said it was tainted. Was it did they make you take part in the sacrifice?'
It was a good guess, though not the right one. But he decided to go along with it. 'Yes,' he said. 'The owl. The first of the nine hunters. I killed it.'
Renn's face drained of colour.
Torak's heart sank. How would she feel if she knew the rest?
But she recovered fast, and forced a shrug. 'After all, I fletch my arrows with owl feathers. Though I don't actually kill for them, I wait till I find a dead one, or someone brings me one.' She realized she was talking too fast, and sucked in her lips. 'We can make this right, Torak. There are ways of purifying you.'
'Renn '
'You don't have to leave,' she said urgently. 'That won't solve anything.'
When he didn't answer, she persisted. 'At least wait till you've talked to Fin-Kedinn. Swear you won't leave till you've talked to Fin-Kedinn.'
Her face was so open and hopeful. He swore.
When she'd gone, he bowed his head to his knees. Suddenly he was back on ice, with his hands tied behind his back. Seshru was running her finger down his cheek. 'You will never be free of me,' she whispered in his ear. Then he felt Thiazzi's strong grip on his shoulders, holding him down, and Seshru was pricking his chest with a bone needle, rubbing in the stinking black stain made from the bones of murdered hunters and the blood of the Soul-Eaters.
'This mark,' she breathed, 'will be like the harpoon head beneath the skin of the seal. One twitch, and it will draw you, no matter how hard you struggle . . .'
Opening the neck of his jerkin, Torak put his finger to the crusted scab on his breastbone. He wondered if he could ever bring himself to show the Ravens the Ravens who trusted him this mark on his chest. The three-pronged fork for snaring souls.
The mark of the Soul-Eater.
FORTY-ONE.
Fin-Kedinn woke Torak before dawn, and told him to come and help check the fishing-lines. When Torak emerged from the shelter, he found Renn waiting with her uncle. He knew from their faces that she'd told the Raven Leader of their talk the night before.
Nothing was said as they made their way through the sleeping Forest. Fog lay thick in the valley; along the riverbank, the bare branches of the alders made a delicate purple haze. Torak glimpsed Wolf, weaving between the trees. The only sound was the Axehandle, which was bubbling noisily under the ice that still crusted its banks.
They reached the flat, boggy part of the valley where the river broadened into pools. It was across these pools that wovenbark ropes had been strung, with baited lines trailing in the water.
The catch was good, and soon they had small piles of perch and bream. Fin-Kedinn thanked the spirits of the prey, then stuck a fish head in the fork of a spruce for the clan guardian. After that they woke up a fire beneath a battered old oak, and began the finger-numbing work of gutting, and scraping off the scales. As each fish was cleaned, they threaded it by the gills on a line which they hung from the oak, well out of Wolf's reach.
A breeze sprang up. The oak was slumbering too deeply to feel it, but the beech trees sighed, and the alders rattled their tiny black cones, chattering even in their sleep.