‘It’s worse than Herne’s winter,’ said Tain, as they looked out from the mountain. It had suddenly stopped snowing, though, as quickly as it had started, and now they shivered bitterly for they could see the dangerous path they had just taken. To their horror they saw that at one point they had crossed an outcrop of frozen snow which seemed to have nothing supporting it at all and edged out over a sudden, plunging drop.
As the deer pressed on they now found themselves on the edge of a defile with a clear stretch of firm, open snow banking not too steeply above them, which was crisp and firm under their feet. This they began to climb and after a while a thin sun even managed to pierce the clouds and offered a brittle warmth to the deer.
The sun didn’t last. As they reached the top of the defile, the slope above them opened further and rose swiftly. It started to snow again and with the snow came a wind whose breath had been hardened on the mountain top. Worse than this, though, the deer had now reached the ice line where, with height, the fallen powder had compacted and turned hard and glassy. Their feet began to skitter and slip across the solid ground. Lower down the mountain the going had been hard because of the depth of the snow and the deer had sunk into it nearly up to their haunches, but now they found they could hardly get a purchase on the ground at all. Several times they slipped, and at one point Peppa, who had climbed higher than the others, lost her footing and might have been injured if her slide back down the slope had not been blocked by a painful collision with Tain.
It was Willow who had the idea of threading across the ice face and then turning back a little higher up, so that they ended up zigzagging back and forth. In this way the deer managed to climb. But now a new danger confronted them, for traversing the mountain like this brought them to the edge of small ravines and sudden drops with no clear edges in the snow. The deer could not see them until they were right on top of them. Several times Rannoch nearly came to grief, only to see the danger just in time.
The higher they got, the colder it became, and as the day wore on the wind grew more and more fierce. When they were trying to move into its path, as it blew from the east across the mountain, they felt like twigs that could be snapped in two at any moment. But when they traversed back again, they found they were forced forwards too quickly to keep a firm foothold on the ice. Worst of all, night was now coming in. The darkness came suddenly and with the moaning wind and thoughts of Herne and what they would encounter above them swirling through their heads, there wasn’t one of them who didn’t tremble. Except perhaps poor Bracken whose leg had got worse and who was so exhausted that she could hardly think at all.
Peppa, who was travelling with her, suddenly called out to her.
‘Bracken, Bracken, you’re wandering.’
The deer had just started to drift down the slope.
‘What?’ muttered the hind in a dreamy voice. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sleepy I can hardly keep awake.’
‘You must stay awake, Bracken,’ cried Peppa.
‘I know. But it’s so hard. I keep thinking I’m by the loch and it’s summer.’
Peppa shivered as a blast of snowy wind whistled round her head. But just as Bracken had spoken they were interrupted by the terrified bark of a stag up ahead. It was Rannoch. By the time they reached him, the deer was pounding the ice with his hoofs.
‘What is it?’ cried Peppa.
Bankfoot shook his head at his friend.
‘Thistle, what’s happened?’ shouted Peppa, but now she could see at least part of the cause of Rannoch’s distress, for Rannoch had come to the edge of the cliff.
‘Willow,’ gasped Rannoch.
Peppa looked around her and, to her horror, she realized that her sister had vanished. Just in front of them, where the ground suddenly dropped away into the void, the snow was marked and scuffed where Willow, blind with cold, had slipped and fallen over the edge.
‘No,’ cried Peppa bitterly.
The friends inched forward and stood staring out stupidly over the drop. They could see very little for the snowflakes swirled and scurried thick before their eyes.
‘Willow,’ sobbed Rannoch, ‘Willow, what have I done?’
Peppa and the others began to shout and call, but they heard and saw nothing from below. They fell silent, numbed by cold and loss. The wind moaned around their heads as though the heavens were feeling the pain and rage that rose in each of the deer’s hearts. Willow was gone. But still they stayed where they were until Bracken’s eyes began to mist over with pain. It was Tain who came to his senses first, and none too soon.
‘Rannoch,’ he cried, ‘we must keep moving. We’ll die if we stay here much longer. Look at Bracken – she can hardly stand up.’
Rannoch said nothing. He was still staring out hopelessly over the drop.
‘Rannoch. This is no time to give up, Rannoch. What would Willow have said?’
Rannoch lifted his head and looked longingly at his friend. Then he nodded gravely.
‘Yes,’ he whispered, ‘yes, Tain, you’re right. We must get moving. Listen to me, all of you. We’ve got to keep going, to keep warm. There’ll be time to mourn Willow.’
Thistle was the first to move but as Rannoch started to follow the others, Tain stopped him.
‘Bracken,’ he whispered.
Bracken was still standing there, looking out over the drop. Her whole body was shaking.
‘Mother,’ cried Rannoch over the wind, ‘you’ve got to come.’
Bracken made no answer.
‘Mother, please. There’s nothing we can do.’
‘What’s wrong?’ cried Tain.
‘She won’t move,’ said Rannoch desperately.
‘Bracken. Can you hear me?’ said Tain. ’It’s me, Tain.’ Rannoch dropped his muzzle and began to nudge Bracken in the side. It swung her slightly to the right, but the deer seemed to hear and see nothing. Rannoch’s nudges got stronger but they still had no effect in rousing her.
‘Mother,’ pleaded Rannoch, almost at his wits’ end. ‘Can you hear me? If you—’
But with that Bracken turned her head slightly.
‘Quiet,’ she said suddenly, ‘listen.’
The two startled stags pricked up their ears to listen, but all they heard was the howling fury of the night. Rannoch shook his head sadly.
‘Nothing.’
‘Just the wind,’ agreed Tain.
‘No. Wait,’ said Rannoch suddenly. ‘What’s that?’
The wind had died a little again and as Tain strained to listen he thought he heard a very faint voice. The deer’s senses were on full alert now and Peppa had joined them. For a while their hopes fought the wind and faded as the sound they thought they had heard was lost again below the mountain’s angry cry. Then suddenly the wind dropped almost completely and the deer were sure. Below them they could hear something calling. It was a hind calling Rannoch’s name.
‘Willow,’ cried Rannoch.
‘Rannoch. Rannoch, is that you?’ came the voice.
‘Willow. Where are you? We can’t see you.’
‘I’m below you, I think. But I can’t see you either.’
‘Are you hurt?’ cried Rannoch.
‘No, Rannoch, just a little bruised. The snow broke my fall. I think I was very lucky, though. There are rocks everywhere. But Rannoch, I’ve found a cave. We could shelter. It’s warm and dry.’
‘A cave,’ whispered Tain. ’Thank Herne.’
‘But Willow,’ cried Rannoch, ‘how do we reach you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Willow. ‘I’ve tried running along the mountainside to find a way back up, but it’s too dark and the snow is very deep.’
In fact the snow was getting deeper and deeper, for the storm was intensifying. The deer’s relief that Willow was alive was soon lessened by the realization that their situation was, if anything, worse than before. For now they were separated from the hind by a good drop and, no matter how hard they tried, they could find no way down. Rannoch sent Thistle and Ba
nkfoot to scout ahead and behind them, but they soon returned to report that the weather was now so bad that to search along the edge of the ridge would be fatal.
Rannoch tried desperately to think of a way out, but nothing came to him. The night wore on and the air began to freeze. High above them the wind, caught in rock fissures and coves, howled mournfully and Rannoch shivered as he thought of what Teek had said about the souls of the dead stags from Herne’s Herd haunting the mountain.
Willow began to grow more and more worried for her friends, for at least below them she was protected from the full brunt of the storm. She tried to persuade Rannoch and the others to move on without her, but the deer refused to leave her and before long they were so cold and wet that they couldn’t have made it very far anyway. The others lay down and very soon their forms began to disappear under the heaping snow, so that they looked like ghostly statues. Only Rannoch stood, talking less and less frequently to Willow, hoping in vain that some idea would come to him to save them from the mountain.
At last he did something he had never done before.
‘Herne,’ he whispered. ’Herne, if you’re up here, please help us. Save my friends at least.’
But Rannoch’s heart grew heavier. The wind and snow howled and raged and his bones began to ache. He felt the last drops of energy ebbing away from him. Even Willow was defeated. Below her friends, she too lay down and closed her eyes.
It seemed all hope had gone when Rannoch suddenly lifted his head. He had heard a noise above him. It came faintly at first, like a strange creaking. Rannoch’s eyes opened in amazement as he caught sight of a black shape moving towards him. Its path was irregular and every now and then it was knocked sideways by the terrible blasts of wind. Then, just as it was overhead, it was suddenly caught in a scurrying loop of air. There was a dreadful screech and the thing fell like a stone. It landed in a snowdrift, not three antlers from where Rannoch was standing. There was a flurry of snow- flakes and then the black shape began to hop up and down as a series of angry sounds, which Rannoch clearly recognized, exploded from its beak.
‘Nevermore. Nevermore. Never seen anything like it. Like it.’
‘Crak!’ cried the amazed deer.
The raven swung round and cocked his head. But he didn’t seem at all surprised to see Rannoch.
‘Crak, it is you. What are you doing here?’
‘Well may you ask,’ snapped the bird. ‘Trying to get home. Get home. Crak, Crak. But this weather’s impossible.’
‘But it’s extraordinary,’ cried Rannoch.
‘Extraordinary? Extraordinary? Crak, Crak. What’s extraordinary is a herd of deer trying to cross the Great Mountain in a blizzard. That’s what’s extraordinary. Crak, Crak.’
Suddenly from below came Willow’s voice.
‘Rannoch, what’s happening?’
Crak jumped again and shook out his wings.
‘Now I’ve seen it all. Seen it all,’ he screeched.’A talking deer. Stags who try to cross the Great Mountain and now a deer that can fly. Can fly.’
Rannoch explained what had happened and after a while the bird began to calm down a little.
‘Well, from the looks of it,’ he said, ‘you’d better get away from here. Or else. Or else.’
‘Yes, Crak. But I’m afraid you were wrong, we can’t fly.’
‘Nor you can. Nor you can. Crak, Crak. Well, I can. If only just. You mentioned a cave. A cave. Perhaps we can help each other. I was getting rather worried myself up there. Perhaps I can find a way down to your cave and we’ll all be safe. Crak, Crak.’
With that the raven flapped his wings and tried to take off. On the first attempt the wind was so strong that Crak was actually upturned by it and ended up back where he’d started with his beak buried in the snowdrift. But on the second go he managed to launch himself out over the edge, just where Willow had fallen, and with a furious cawing, disappeared into the storm.
It seemed ages before Crak returned, flapping frantically and cursing all the time.
‘Herne’s beak but it’s bad,’ he cried.
Then he closed an eye, stood on one leg and peered irritably at Rannoch.
‘Well?’ asked the stag.
‘Well,’ said Crak, ‘it’s difficult. But just possible. Along there. Can’t see the way from up here. Up here. A thin ledge. Crak, Crak. A little jump and then a careful deer can make it.’
‘Saved!’ cried Rannoch.’Crak, you’ve saved us again.’
‘Not yet. Not yet. But you’d better hurry or none of us will see the morning. Nevermore. Nevermore.’
Rannoch nodded and began to rouse the others. Bracken could barely stand, but with help and with Crak hopping along ahead, the deer set off again through the storm. With some difficulty the bird guided them to a ledge that jutted out some way into the night. Thistle had seen it earlier, but what he had been unable to see was that if they made it to its furthest point and jumped a little way to the left, they could reach a lower slope that banked less steeply.
Tain made the jump first, then Thistle and Peppa. Bankfoot slipped a little but he made it too. Rannoch waited behind to help Bracken and when it came to it he was terrified that his mother would fall. But Bracken seemed to raise herself to the challenge and with Crak flapping encouragement, the old hind threw herself out over the edge and landed safely with the others. Finally came Rannoch and soon the party found themselves walking easily downwards. The ground opened out a little and they came to a path. After just a little time, through the bitter wind and snow, they spotted Willow.
She led them straight along the mountainside to the cave mouth. It was a narrow opening with a boulder lip, but inside it was unexpectedly large. It was dry too and comparatively warm. Crak hopped around delightedly while Bracken laid down by the entrance and closed her eyes. But as Rannoch entered the cave mouth he stopped and his ears came up.
‘What is it, Rannoch?’ asked Willow.
‘I don’t know,’ said Rannoch.
‘Man?’ whispered Willow.
‘Yes. But long, long ago. It’s. . . it’s like that place on the hill. Do you remember? Only much older. Much, much older. And. . . there’s something else. Something familiar yet. . . yet very strange.’
With that there was a cry from Bankfoot.
‘Come and l-l-look,’ he called.
He was standing at the back of the cave and Rannoch and the others joined him. Outside the snow had stopped temporarily and the clouds were suddenly punctured, letting through a shaft of bright moonlight that reached to the back wall. As their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, they saw what had startled him. On the arching wall of the cave, faint but unmistakable, were the coloured images of running deer. The sight hushed the friends. They looked at each other in the gloom with their huge, startled eyes, but this was quite beyond their understanding.
‘Come on, let’s get some sleep,’ whispered Rannoch after a while.
‘Quite right. Quite right,’ cried Crak.
The deer and the bird settled themselves in the cave. It was a haunting place and as they listened to the screaming wind outside and thought of the god who was said to haunt the mountain and of the images on the wall, some of them wished they had never set foot in it at all.
A small pool at the back of the cave, fed by the steady drippings from the roof, had frozen up and when the draughts of air brushed across it they came to the deer chill and bitter; but the cave was considerably warmer than the world without.
Willow had sat down at Rannoch’s side and now she laid her head on his flanks and closed her eyes. Crak, who himself was quite exhausted, hopped to a corner of the cave and now he stood quite motionless, his head tucked low into his great, black wings.
As Rannoch lay there he suddenly felt angry and ashamed.
‘I’m sorry, Willow,’ he murmured. ‘If I’d lost you I don’t know what I would have done. I should never have tried to climb the Great Mountain, Herne or no Herne.’
But the young hi
nd was already fast asleep.
The only sound in the cave now was the deer’s breathing and the moaning wind. Rannoch’s eyes strayed towards those images on the wall and then he looked towards the ice pool. He didn’t know why, but he felt as if something in that pool held a message. Rannoch closed his eyes and slept.
In his sleep Rannoch had the sense that he was coming closer to a great mystery. It had something to do with the cave and the mountain, and it lay in the real world around him.
In truth the deer had indeed come to a very mysterious place. For here, thousands of years before, the first men to inhabit the land of Scotia had lived and hunted, eaten and slept and painted their strange pictures on the walls.
But apart from man and his images, there was something else in that cave on the Great Mountain. Rannoch had sensed it when he first entered the place. Something that linked him and his kind to the land and the centuries. In that pool, down through the fissured ice, lay something discarded by time: a fossil. It had been changed into stone by prehistory, just as the cold had changed and hardened the form of the water.
At the pool’s bottom lay the fossilized remains of an antler. But it was no antler that Rannoch and the others would have understood. It was the beam of a creature named Megaloceros; a deer that had once stood six feet tall and whose antlers in turn rose six feet in height above its mighty head. It had belonged to the giant of deer, long since vanished from the planet, which, ten thousand years before, had been driven by the weather from its natural home on the plains to die up here on the mountain.
Rannoch woke. He had sensed a change in Bracken’s breathing. The deer sounded in great pain and she wheezed terribly as she struggled for air. But Rannoch didn’t wake her. He knew that the best healer now was rest.
The storm was growing worse and worse. In the valleys below, crofters and villagers looked up at the slopes of the Great Mountain and shuddered. They knew that the weather would bring death to any man or animal caught on its slopes. Indeed, when it cleared and the snow lay calm again on its sides, the broken bodies that were hidden under its icy shroud included both man and beast. High in the foothills a young man had been caught in the blizzard and now he lay buried, his once warm body as cold as stone.