Fire Bringer

  ‘Rannoch,’ whispered Willow, ‘how horrible. Perhaps something happened here.’

  Like humans, Herla believe that places can be haunted by the ghosts of past events.

  Rannoch thought for a while.

  ‘I don’t know. I can see a little more clearly now but I need to think for a while. Alone, if that’s all right.’

  Willow nodded and left Rannoch to himself. She went to the back of the cave and lay down next to the others who had no desire to travel any further in the rain and were just grateful to be under cover. Thistle was chewing quietly on a ball of grass and Tain and Bankfoot asked Willow what was wrong with their friend. Willow just shook her head and told them not to worry. After a while the hind closed her eyes and began to doze as the driving rain pounded down on the rocks around them. When the red deer woke, the rain had stopped and it was growing light outside. Rannoch was still standing at the front of the cave.

  The others were already stirring, so Willow got up and walked over to Rannoch. She said nothing at first but just gazed out with him into the approaching morning. The soaring valley was now lost in a thick mist that hung heavily in its bottom and made it look strangely peaceful.

  ‘I’m all right,’ muttered Rannoch quietly.

  ‘I think we should be on our way,’ said Willow kindly. Rannoch nodded but Willow could see that Rannoch was in no state to lead them. So she went up to the others and whispered something to Bankfoot. He understood immediately.

  ‘C-c-come on, everyone,’ Bankfoot cried cheerfully, ‘it’s t-t-time to go and if you don’t mind I w-w-want to lead.’

  ‘You lead?’ snorted Thistle. He would have argued if Willow hadn’t silenced him with her eyes and nodded to where Rannoch was standing.

  So Bankfoot led the deer out of the cave into the misty dawn. The stones reared up again around them as the light swelled in the glen. Bankfoot, Tain, Thistle, and Peppa were soon running on ahead while Rannoch and Willow hung behind with Bracken trailing after them. As they went Rannoch kept stopping and looking back through the mist.

  They travelled on like this for the morning. The mist cleared and the huge glen stood out stark in its vaulting majesty. Towards late afternoon, though, the deer realized they had nearly reached its end so they crossed to its northern slopes and began to climb. This side of the glen was less steep than the other slopes, though still difficult, and after some effort the deer found themselves high above the valley.

  Here Rannoch stopped for a long time, gazing down at the immense cavern of grass and stone. Willow and Bracken stood with him but Willow didn’t interrupt his thoughts and waited until at last he spoke to her.

  ‘Willow,’ he said softly, ‘I think I understand now. I know why I wasn’t sure about the danger. It’s because it has nothing to do with us. Nothing to do with Herla. It’s about them. Humans, I mean.’

  ‘What did you see?’ asked Willow.

  ‘Death,’ said Rannoch quietly. ‘I saw death and pain and betrayal.’

  Rannoch looked at the hind.

  ‘But it’s all right. It’s a long, long way away.’

  ‘Then the red mist and the vision?’ whispered Willow.

  ‘Something did happen here, then, years ago?’

  Rannoch was silent at first and when he spoke he was looking down towards the encampment.

  ‘No, Willow,’ he answered softly, ‘the thing I saw. . .’

  Rannoch was staring hard now and his eyes were glassy.

  ‘The thing I saw is still to come.’

  In the valley below, which men call the Valley of Weeping and where one day the human heart of Scotia would bleed with the news of a dark betrayal and a terrible massacre, hardly a blade of grass stirred in the breeze.

  With that Rannoch shook his antlers and turned. He led Bracken and Willow up, up and out of the fearful glen.

  As they turned north once more, the deer realized that winter was coming in fast and they were rising to meet it, for every sun it grew a little colder. It was about seven suns after leaving the glen that they woke one early morning to find their greying coats covered with a thin, powdery sprinkling of snow.

  They had reached a high mountain now which they started to climb. They didn’t climb much higher than the edge of the trees, and here they sheltered from the wind that had begun to batter the other side of the mountain. They were also below the snow line, for only two weeks before the tops of the mountain had been draped with the first heavy cloak of winter. To a casual observer they might just have been animals struggling towards the edge of what was destined to be one of the hardest seasons ever seen in Scotia. But an onlooker with a keener eye might have noticed that one, with a coat slightly redder than the rest, would at times hang back and pause as though lost in thought, before shaking his antlers and moving on. But they would need the eyes of an eagle or a sparrow hawk to see the white mark in the centre of the deer’s head.

  If that onlooker could have changed his shape and travelled with them, for a while he might have learnt something of their hearts and their needs and of what they saw as they looked out at the world. He would have felt the wind change suddenly, turning its breath on the eastward side of the mountain, and a cold grip the air with a new threat that made the deer shiver even under their thick fur. He would have felt the skies above grow so heavy that it seemed as though they could press the mountain flat with the weight of the ice congealing in the heavens.

  He would have known too, like the deer, that danger was settling around them. For when the clouds finally opened, instead of the interminable, drenching rains that in autumn and winter turn the edge of the High Land to bog, the brittle air was suddenly sharp with huge snowflakes that piled quickly and thick on the earth, and the deer were soon turned to moving smudges on a sheet of white. Then perhaps he would have wanted the journey to end and to be safe in a warm bed listening as a storyteller, grown huge and sinister in the firelight, painted him pictures of the world.

  On they went until the snow stopped and the morning brought them off the slopes down into a valley, its patterns and form lost under the sweeping white. It stretched ahead, flat as a sigh, before rising up again into the arms of a mountain that seemed to climb higher than anything about it. On its tops and flanks the snows were heavy and, high above, the wind lashed across the white.

  As the deer looked up they all shivered.

  ‘The Great Mountain,’ whispered Tain.

  They spent the day on the foothills, wondering what to do next and scraping at the hard ground to get to the sparse nourishment beneath. There wasn’t one of them that didn’t feel a strange sense of awe and foreboding as they hovered in the shadows of the Great Mountain, for they had come to the edge of the Herla’s own myths.

  Rannoch had drifted away on his own and was trying to feed on a clump of dead hawthorn when he suddenly heard a noise. As he looked up and through the bushes he spied a face, watching him intently; a pair of huge, nervous eyes in a smudge of brown. The face suddenly vanished.

  ‘Who’s there?’ called Rannoch.

  The bushes rustled and a deer stepped out into the open. It was the smallest deer Rannoch had ever seen, though it had a magnificently bushy winter coat with spiky grey hairs. The deer was a young stag but with only one small, straight, pointed antler on its head. Rannoch realized it must be shedding.

  ‘Hello,’ said Rannoch, for he felt not the least sense of fear at the sight of this Clovar.

  The deer blinked back at him and started to shake.

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ said Rannoch quietly. ‘I won’t hurt you. My name’s Rannoch. I’m a red deer. Who are you?’

  The deer still looked terrified and said nothing.

  ‘Come, come. It’s all right. What’s your name?’

  ‘Teek,’ said the deer at last, in a tiny, high-pitched voice.

  ‘Well, Teek,’ said Rannoch, ‘pleased to meet you. What kind of Herla are you?’

  ‘I’m a roe deer,’ piped Teek.’I live in the nex
t valley.’

  ‘How many of you are there?’ asked Rannoch.

  Rannoch knew something of the habits of roe deer from stories Bracken had told him as a fawn, but he had never met one before.

  ‘About a hundred,’ said Teek.

  ‘A hundred?’ cried Rannoch, astonished. Roe deer are usually solitary creatures and never live in large groups.

  ‘That’s right, including the hinds and the Outriders.’

  ‘Outriders?’

  Rannoch was even more startled.

  ‘Yes,’ said Teek, ‘I’m an Outrider. One day I hope to be a captain.’

  Now Rannoch was amazed. It was strange to associate such a small and obviously timid deer with an Outrider and to imagine this herd living in the shadow of the Great Mountain.

  ‘I didn’t think that roe were so sociable,’ he said.

  ‘No, not normally,’ answered Teek rather sadly, ‘but we’ve started to live in herds to protect each other. Ever since he came.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘Sgorr. I thought you were one of the Sgorrla. That’s why

  I was so wary.’

  ‘The Sgorrla have been here already?’ whispered Rannoch.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Teek, ‘they’re patrolling everywhere. The length and breadth of the Great Glen.’

  ‘But why should roe deer worry about the Sgorrla?’

  ‘Why? Because of Sgorr’s decree. That all the Herla should pay homage to him.’

  ‘All the Herla?’ gasped Rannoch. ’The Clovar too?’

  ‘Yes. Red, roe and fallow.’

  ‘But he can’t,’ said Rannoch.

  ‘It was because of the threat of Sgorr that we formed the herd in the first place and now our lord is thinking of moving us north, into the High Land. Although Sgorr has forbidden any Herla from crossing.’

  ‘I know,’ said Rannoch, shaking his head gravely.

  ‘So now we don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Go north,’ advised Rannoch.

  ‘But we fear to,’ said Teek, growing nervous again, ‘because. . .’

  Teek stopped and his huge eyes blinked fearfully at Rannoch.

  ‘What is it?’

  Teek’s little voice was barely audible.

  ‘Herne’s Herd,’ he whispered. Rannoch started.

  ‘Do you know of them?’ he asked urgently. ‘Do you know where they are?’

  ‘Beyond the Great Mountain,’ said Teek.

  ‘Then they don’t live on the mountain itself?’

  ‘No. . . well not from what we’ve heard. They never go near the Great Mountain, except to die,’ said Teek, looking up at the swirling white. ‘For them the mountain is sacred. They believe that Herne lives on its top and they can only join Herne in death. Sometimes, when the wind is right, we can hear their souls calling from the mountain top.’

  Rannoch shivered and looked up too. He felt a strange stirring in his guts, like a kind of longing.

  ‘Then where do they live?’ he asked.

  ‘On a high moor, it’s said, beyond the Great Mountain. But not far. Some of our Outriders say they have even seen them. Those that returned.’

  ‘What do you mean those that returned?’

  ‘Most who have dared to venture into the High Land have never returned.’

  Both the deer were quiet now and the cold air was full of fear.

  ‘But why are you so interested in Herne’s Herd?’ asked Teek suddenly.

  Rannoch hesitated.

  ‘Just curiosity.’ He shrugged. ‘We are going north too, into the High Land, to escape from Sgorr. It’s best to know what we’re facing.’

  ‘You are going north? I shall tell the council that. They’ll be pleased that some of the red Herla hate Sgorr too. But now I should really be getting back.’

  Teek dipped his head.

  ‘Herne be with you,’ he said.

  ‘And with you too.’

  As Rannoch ran back to the others, thinking bitterly of Sgorr and what he was doing to the Herla and feeling a swelling guilt rising in him that he was leaving the Low Lands, he kept looking up again and again to the lonely summit of the Great Mountain.

  ‘Are you really up there, Herne?’ he whispered as he ran. But when he reached his friends he had already decided what he was going to do. They were gathered together, discussing the journey and the best route to follow into the High Land.

  ‘We’ll have to skirt its flanks,’ Thistle was saying. ‘It would be far too dangerous in this weather to try and climb it, though in the summer it’d be much quicker.’

  ‘Starbuck climbed it in winter,’ said Tain.

  ‘Starbuck is in a story,’ said Thistle, ‘and we are real Herla.’

  ‘Rannoch,’ said Willow as he came up, ‘Thistle thinks we should try and skirt the mountain and keep to the foothills to avoid the cold.’

  Rannoch nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think that’s just the route you should take.’

  ‘What do you mean the route you should take,’ said Willow.

  ‘I’m going to climb it,’ said Rannoch quietly, looking up at the mountain above him.

  ‘B-b-but you can’t,’ cried Bankfoot.

  ‘I’m going to try.’

  ‘But why?’ said Willow.

  ‘Because it’ll be quicker if I’m ever to find this strange herd and. . . because I want to know if He really lives up there. Herne.’

  The other deer were aghast. What Rannoch was contemplating was terribly dangerous. Besides, all the others had grown up thinking of Herne only as an idea, a legend; a bit like Starbuck, only different. Something they believed in, of course, but not as something that was actually real; not real like heather and the Home Oak. But here was Rannoch talking about Herne as though he was something you could see and scent.

  ‘We’ll meet up again in the High Land,’ said Rannoch, ‘when the spring comes and I’ve found out all I can about

  Herne’s Herd.’

  ‘Well,’ said Bankfoot suddenly, ‘if that’s what you’ve decided, I’m c-c-coming with you.’

  ‘And me,’ added Tain. ’What a story that will make.’

  ‘No,’ said Rannoch, ‘I’ve got to do this alone.’

  ‘I’m coming as well,’ said Willow suddenly.

  ‘No, Willow.’

  ‘If you think I’m going to abandon you now I’ve only just found you again,’ said Willow, ‘you’re wrong.’

  ‘Can I come as well?’ said Peppa, looking fondly at Bankfoot. The stag almost blushed.

  The twins were standing side by side and Rannoch suddenly realized how deeply fond he was of them both.

  ‘We’ll all go,’ said Willow, ‘if that’s what you really want to do. Besides, if we try to skirt round, who knows where the Sgorrla are lying in wait for us. One thing’s for sure: they won’t be up there.’

  But Rannoch held his ground.

  ‘Thistle, tell them they’re being foolish,’ he said, looking suddenly towards his mother. ‘There’s much less chance of us all crossing it and Mother will never make it.’

  Thistle nodded.

  ‘You lead them round,’ said Rannoch.

  ‘No,’ said Tain, ‘Thistle can take Bracken round if he wants, but I’m determined.’

  The others agreed. Rannoch tried to argue but they kept insisting and after a while his resistance began to break down. But then something happened that decided it for all of them.

  ‘Look,’ Tain suddenly shouted to the others.

  ‘There,’ cried Peppa.

  In the distance, from both east and west, two groups of red stags were coming straight towards them, bucking their antlers in the snowy air. There must have been over thirty of them.

  ‘Sgorrla,’ cried Rannoch bitterly. ‘Quickly!’

  There was only one possible means of escape and that was straight up.

  15 A Vision

  ‘I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.’ William Shake
speare, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

  The clouds were heavy with snow as they fled up the sides of the Great Mountain. A wind came up too which blew hard into their faces and the thought of Herne above them and the Sgorrla below soon subdued their spirits. Then it started, great thick snowflakes, and very quickly the deer could hardly see further than their slots. They sank deeper and deeper into the cold white and the wind grew stronger and stronger.

  They bunched together instinctively but, within just a little while, the blizzard had become so strong that they could hardly make any headway at all. The storm, though, had at least masked them from the pursuing Sgorrla, and after a while it died a little and they found the going easier. But as they went they all thought of Herne, waiting above them in the bitter snows.

  After a time they came to a great spur of rock and scraggy tree above them and they were forced to swing west. In the blizzard, they didn’t know that they were now travelling along a narrow ridge that dropped dangerously away to their right and left. The ground was quite steep and the deer slipped and stumbled, their forelegs sinking into the snow so that they were forced to kick and jump to make any progress at all. The air was bitingly cold and the wind and snow got worse as the deer inched painfully up the mountain. They did not know what a dangerous position they were in, for several times the deer came close to the edge of the spur and it was only luck that stopped one of them slipping and crashing down onto the rocks.

  But eventually the mountain flattened out a little. It was here that Rannoch found a place that offered some temporary shelter. It was hardly a cave, but a rock overhang where the wind had actually scooped out the newly fallen snow, creating a kind of snow pit below a lip of stone. There was plenty of room for them all and they nestled together for warmth for a while, shivering in the hollow, their thick winter coats and young antlers flecked with white, the frost rising around their nervous breath.