But Rannoch was lost. Down he went again and this time he had nothing to fight with. The sea closed over his antlers.
Rannoch felt something brush his side. Then something was underneath him too, bearing him up. Rannoch was lifted, up and out, so that it seemed as if he was riding on the water itself. He found himself thrust forward and suddenly he had the strength to swim again.
‘Herne,’ cried Rannoch, and as he did so he found he could breathe again.
Suddenly a head broke the surface in front of him. It was a seal.
‘Rurl,’ gasped Rannoch.
There were other seals with him, swimming by Rannoch’s flanks and carrying him through the water.
‘What are you doing here?’ spluttered Rannoch.
‘I could ask the same of you, Rannoch,’ barked the seal.
‘But now we must get you to the shore.’
So on Rannoch was carried, half swimming, half born up by the lithe bodies, towards the island and Sgorr’s dark secret.
As Rannoch saw the sand in front of him and a great rock on the shore, his heart felt strong again and he tossed his antlers in the sea. The seals had dropped away from him now and with one last effort Rannoch kicked at the waves, found his legs touching sand and rose out of the water. As he did so Rurl splashed from the waves too, barking and flapping in the gull-driven day.
Rannoch shook himself furiously and looked down with infinite gratitude at the seal, lying there on the shore.
‘Rurl,’ he gasped, ‘I don’t know how to thank you. I thought I was lost.’
‘No need to thank me, Rannoch,’ said the seal. ‘It’s good to see you again after all these years. You’ve grown but that mark is just the same.’
Rannoch nodded.
‘Yes,’ he said quietly, ‘and it means more to me now, I think. Though I still fear where it will lead.’
‘The Prophecy?’ said the seal.
‘Yes, Rurl, I found out that I am a changeling, that—’
‘It’s all right, Rannoch, I know all about it,’ said Rurl.
‘You know?’
‘Yes and about Herne’s Herd.’
‘But how?’
‘The Lera, Rannoch. The Lera have been watching you for longer than you think. Anyway, I spoke with an otter two suns ago and he told me about your mother and your plea to the Herla in the High Land. That you are going south again. But first he said you were making for the west coast. That’s how I found you. We’ve been swimming up and down ever since.’
‘Thank Herne you did.’
‘So you found out what you wanted to know about Herne from Herne’s Herd?’ asked Rurl.
‘Yes and no. At least I know that I am not Herne but that. . . that the Prophecy is true.’
Rurl nodded.
‘Many things kept me from believing it. What you said about my power to speak to the Lera for one. You were right, Rurl, Tain can do it now and Haarg; many of the other Herla too.’
Rurl nodded once more.
‘But something else is happening,’ said Rurl quietly, ‘that I hadn’t expected from the land. They’re all beginning to speak to each other, Rannoch. All the Lera.’
Rannoch looked at the seal and shivered. It was more than just the cold.
‘Rannoch, there’s one thing none of them could tell me, though,’ said the seal, ‘about man. Did Herne’s Herd. . . did they have. . . ?’
‘Yes, Rurl,’ said Rannoch quietly, ‘they knew of man. They knew of man’s violence, anyway. Sgorr knows of it too, for he came from Herne’s Herd. But he has an even darker secret that is hidden here on this island.’
Rurl had heard rumours of a secret.
‘So Sgorr knows about the bringer of violence?’ he said gravely.
Rannoch paused thoughtfully.
‘Perhaps you’re right and men bring violence,’ he said at last. ‘Yes, yes they do. But there is something else about man. . .’
‘They are bringing violence now,’ said Rurl.
‘What do you mean?’
‘For ages now they have been coming from the north in their great carved trees, more than I have ever seen before. And when they reach the land they strike and kill.’
‘The stones I saw. . .’ said Rannoch. ’That’s what happened.’
‘Yes. They have been preying on the land right along the west.’
‘What is happening?’ whispered Rannoch.
‘The seals say that their king from the north has landed once more on the islands to the west. That he would be lord there. But there are other men coming across the Great Land to meet him. The Lera whisper that the people of the Great Land want the islands back so that their land will be whole once more. There will be a fight.’
‘Rurl,’ Rannoch whispered. Rurl, the Prophecy. To restore the Island Chain. That’s what it means.’
The two Lera looked at each other with wonder in their eyes as the wind licked off the sea. As the air howled and moaned it seemed as though Herne was speaking to them. But the sound made Rannoch feel neither strong nor brave.
‘Rurl,’ he said suddenly, ‘I’m afraid.’
‘Why, Rannoch?’
‘It talks of sacrifice. The Prophecy. I wish. . .’
‘What?’
‘This burden would pass from me.’
The wind rose and swirled, shaking Rannoch’s antlers and sending sand scurrying across the beach, whipping into the animals’ eyes. Then it died again and the sound that filled their ears was the sound of the waves on the shore.
Rannoch dropped his head suddenly. He felt ashamed.
‘No. That cannot be,’ he said quietly. ‘My friends are in danger and Sgorr has enslaved the Low Lands, just as Herne’s Herd enslaved the High. Wherever it leads, I know I have to face him.’
‘If I can help you, Rannoch, I will,’ said Rurl quietly.
‘You have already helped me, more than I could ever ask,’ said the deer. ‘But if you will stay with me now, perhaps we may face Sgorr’s secret together.’
Rurl readily agreed and Rannoch led him over to the great rock that rose on the shore. Set back from it, where the sand turned to grass, they noticed more human stones. It was a dwelling like the one where Rannoch had been tended to by the boy, but the peat roof and the walls had fallen in and the place looked blackened and burnt. It was a crofter’s cottage, but it had not been destroyed by the men from the north as the animals thought. For, years before, the humans that lived here had destroyed it themselves, in heartbreak and fury at the bitter tragedy that had befallen them.
As the seal watched, the deer began to dig with his hoofs, throwing the sand back around the great stone, searching for the thing that Sgorr had buried here. The thing that would give him a clue. It was a while before Rannoch found anything and then, suddenly, he felt something under his slots. It was hard and hollow. He began to dig more furiously in the wet sand until, at last, it was uncovered. The two Lera looked down in horror.
There, in the sand before them, lay Sgorr’s terrible secret.
21 The Outriders Return
‘Ancestral voices prophesying war.’ S. T. Coleridge, ‘Kubla Khan’
Thistle needn’t have been nervous about the coming winter, for it was unusually warm as the band of Outriders descended once more into the Low Lands. A strange haze hung over the land as they came down off the slopes of the Great Mountain, and there was a rare stillness in the air. The sky was cloudless, and though the approaching winter had tilted the warming sun away from the earth’s axis, it felt more like summer than November. But it gave the deer little pleasure, for there was fear in their tread as they looked out into the day.
They walked in lines of five abreast, a phalanx of tilting antlers. Thistle and Braan walked at the front, silently, their heads held high, matching each other’s gait and pausing together to survey the land below them. If they expected to have to fight at any moment, now at least their fear was premature, for there was not a Sgorrla in sight.
Suddenly, from
the south-west, a small band of stags came running towards them.
‘Captain Bankfoot,’ cried Thistle as they ran up, ‘what signs?’
‘It’s odd,’ answered Bankfoot, nodding his antlers in salute, ‘but there’s no sign at all of the Sgorrla. We picked up a musk boundary a while back, but it was very old.’
‘But I thought Sgorr was moving north,’ said Braan, shaking his head.
‘Have you noticed the stillness?’ said Tain suddenly. He had been walking behind Braan.
‘Yes, Captain,’ answered Thistle, ‘I think we all have.’
‘It’s eerie,’ said Tain, ‘like a kind of emptiness.’
‘I think I know what it is,’ said Willow.’Have you noticed how few Lera there are around?’
Thistle nodded his head gravely.
‘Yes, yes I have. It’s as though they’ve all run away. Well, we must keep our eyes peeled and we should try to find some tree cover as soon as possible.’
The Outriders set off once more. Towards Larn they came to a small forest of beach and elm and, glad to get undercover, they plunged into the gloom. Tain and Bankfoot were walking together now and both of them shared the same confused feelings of fear and excitement as the eighty Outriders began to thread through the trees. When the friends had settled in the High Land they had both been proud to be styled Captain, but it was only now that they were beginning to know what it meant to be real Outriders. To look fear in the face and not shrink from it.
‘Tain,’ whispered Bankfoot in the twilight, ‘is it all right to feel like I’m feeling? I mean, to be a little. . . nervous.’
Tain smiled.
‘Of course it is, Captain,’ he said. ‘I feel the same.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, and that’s natural. Even Starbuck got frightened at times. Do you remember the story of Herne’s hoof?’
Bankfoot nodded.
‘It shows that the Herla should value their fear,’ said Tain, ‘for it keeps us wary and wariness keeps us alive.’
‘What do you think Thistle’s got in mind?’ asked Bankfoot quietly.
‘You heard what he said, about getting to Sgorr. But I think that’s as far as it goes. I know Braan is determined to rescue their hinds, Herne willing.’
‘Herne willing, indeed,’ agreed Bankfoot as the two friends walked on.
‘Tain,’ said Bankfoot after a little while more, ‘I wish Rannoch was with us. I feel better somehow when he’s around.’
‘I know, Bankfoot.’ Tain nodded sadly.’But we’re on different journeys now. Rannoch made his choice and I can’t blame him.’
‘But if the Prophecy were true. . .’
‘But it’s not. It’s just a story like all the stories about Starbuck. So we shall have to face Sgorr without his help and fight him like true Outriders.’
Bankfoot’s spine tingled, but suddenly there was a bellow up ahead. One of the Outriders was rearing in the air and kicking his front legs in terror, as if boxing with some imaginary opponent. They both ran forward and saw that the stag was on the edge of a clearing. They gasped as they caught sight of the thing that had startled him.
There, in the darkening circle, strewn across the ground and hanging from the brittle branches, the deer saw Lera. They were all dead. There were stoats and mink, rabbits and field mice, two fox cubs lying on the earth and, hanging skewered on a nearby branch, an otter. The stench of death hung everywhere.
The Outriders trembled as they looked on at that ghastly scene.
‘What’s happened here?’ cried Thistle furiously.
‘Sgorr,’ whispered Braan.
Amid the choking smell of decay, the deer caught the faint scent of their own kind hanging in the still air and they knew that the Sgorrla had been here.
‘It’s terrible,’ cried Willow.’What is he doing to the Great
Land?’
‘That must be why there are so few Lera about.’ Bankfoot trembled. ‘They’re fleeing from Sgorr.’
‘Sgorr,’ said Thistle bitterly. ‘I didn’t think even he could sink to this. Well, let him come, for when I meet him he shall pay dearly for this.’
The Outriders pushed on through the trees but a fury was beginning to stir in their hearts.
They rested that night on the edge of the forest and the next morning plunged into a deeply wooded valley that was cut by a series of burns. Strangely for the season, the streams were very low and it was clear to the Outriders that there had been little rain in many suns. A sense of foreboding was growing in their hearts as they travelled with no sign of other Lera about them. Tain was banking the far hill when he stopped and called to the others.
‘Quiet,’ he hissed, as loudly as he dared.
The Outriders, some of whom had been discussing the scene in the forest, others who had been trying to raise their spirits by talking of the old days, fell silent immediately, as a true Outrider was trained to do. Thistle and Willow were the first to reach Tain, who was gazing down into the next valley. Wider than the one they had just crossed, it was even more heavily wooded on its far slopes and through the middle of it, going south-west, ran an earth track.
‘Sgorr?’ whispered Thistle, as the other Outriders began to crest the hill too.
Tain shook his antlers.
‘No. Listen.’
The deer began to listen intently and soon they caught on the wind the sound that Tain had first heard as he crested the hill. It was coming from the far north-western end of the valley, where the track swung past a wood and out of sight. It rose on the wind like a kind of wild howling that made the air throb. Bankfoot suddenly realized that he had heard it somewhere before.
‘The noise we heard in the glen,’ he whispered.
Now something was added to the strange sound that put the Outriders instantly on edge. A scent was coming towards them down the valley and they all knew what it was. The Outriders began to back away in the grass.
‘Lie down,’ ordered Thistle.
They did as they were told and it wasn’t long before they saw them. The noise rose even higher and suddenly, from the corner of the trees, they began to appear, marching straight down the track. Some were on foot, moving in columns, and others came on horseback.
‘The shining sticks,’ gasped Willow, ‘like the ones I saw with Rannoch in the gully.’
Most of them did have swords at their sides, while others carried long wooden poles with strange-coloured leaves tied to their tops that fluttered and flapped in the breeze. The deer looked at each other nervously. Soon the valley was filled with their sounds, for there were hundreds and hundreds of them.
‘Where are they going?’ whispered Peppa.
‘I don’t know, but something’s happening,’ answered Willow gravely.
The deer stirred fearfully in the grass as the men came on. But if they were frightened of being seen they needn’t have worried, for the humans were far below and their heads and hearts were too full of thoughts of warfare and the enemy that was waiting for them to the west, to give any time for the hunt. The men marched through the valley and the deer watched until the last of them disappeared down the track and their strange sounds were lost on the wind.
The Outriders did not notice that from the far hill, as they watched the humans, a group of stags was watching them too.
They crossed the valley themselves and entered the far trees. Now Captain Bankfoot and Braan took some Outriders to scout ahead, while the others wove on slowly through the forest. It was nearly dark when Willow strayed into a thick clump of undergrowth and started, for something was moving beneath her. Suddenly, a little black-brown head with tiny shining eyes popped up from the dying leaves, and when it saw Willow its eyes blazed with hatred and the creature spat violently before springing away. It dashed forward but as it did so, it caught sight of five Outriders ahead of it. Again it spat and swivelled round.
Its escape was barred both to the left and right by the surrounding Herla and the creature seemed to be in a f
renzy of terror. As the Outriders spotted it, it spat again and bared its teeth, and then, in a single bound, it leapt for a nearby tree. It landed on the trunk and, in a flash, shot upwards and along the lower branch.
Tain and Thistle were below it now and they raised their antlers to the little animal.
‘You there,’ called Tain, ‘don’t be frightened.’ The creature glared at Tain and hissed.
‘Don’t be frightened, I said. We don’t want to hurt you. ‘Once more the creature spat but then it stared at their brows and a little of the anger went out of its eyes.
‘You’re not marked?’ it said suddenly.
‘I’m sorry?’ answered Tain with surprise.
‘Your foreheads. They’re not branded like the Sgorrla’s.’ Tain blinked. He was thinking of Rannoch.
‘No.’
‘What do you want?’ said the creature.
‘Nothing,’ answered Tain.
‘Deer always want something,’ said the creature bitterly.
‘Usually to hurt and kill the Lera.’
‘We don’t want to hurt you,’ answered Tain quietly. ‘It’s other Herla that do that.’
‘So you are not with him,’ whispered the creature. ’Sgorr.’
‘No, we are not with Sgorr.’
The little animal seemed to relax considerably. Willow and Peppa had come up now and the rest of the Outriders – those that had come from the loch – were pressing in too, fascinated by the sight of Tain talking to a Lera.
‘Who are you?’ asked Tain.
‘I’m called Sek. I’m a pine marten,’ answered the creature.
‘I came up here to hide.’
‘From Sgorr?’
Sek nodded sadly.
‘But who are you if you’re not with Sgorr,’ he said suddenly, ‘and what are you doing here?’
‘We’re Outriders,’ answered Tain. ’We’ve come to find
Sgorr.’
‘Find Sgorr?’ whispered the creature, sucking in his breath. ‘But Lera flee Sgorr. Why would you want to find him?’
‘To kill him,’ answered Tain simply.
The pine marten cocked his head and his little eyes glinted excitedly.
‘Kill him? Then it’s true, what the Lera are whispering.’