The black stallion was almost on her. The bearded face of its rider grinned. He was leaning down, his spear arm back, the gleaming bronze blade wavering as it came towards her. She was pushed to one side. The blade sliced her hair. The horse whinnied, turned and rose above her, but Scathach was there, wrenching the spear’s shaft. Raider and hunter tussled, strength against strength, the one pulling up, the other down.
Around her Tallis heard the strike of wood on wood; a scream; yells; the frantic barking of the dogs as they ran through the confusion of hooves and legs.
Blood splashed her face: Scathach’s. He was stumbling, the wound in his shoulder shallow but momentarily stunning. The point of the spear had slashed and caught him. As the red-tipped bronze blade continued round towards her, Tallis struck it out of line and reached for the booted leg of the rider, pushing up so that he fell over to the side.
He fell heavily. Tallis stood above him, spear aimed down, but a stone axe struck his head and his eyes dulled, his lips loosened. He sank slowly down on to his right shoulder. Scathach pushed her away, turning her in time to deflect the blow from another raider. A slingshot unseated this one and Scathach impaled him. When Tallis looked back at the leader he was slowly sitting up, reaching for his sword. Scathach walked quickly behind him. He used both hands and all his strength to swing his own sword and took the man’s head with a single blow.
The gate was up, pushed back into place by two of the Tuthanach women. The four riders who remained inside the compound were unsettled by the dogs, which ran among their horses causing them to buck and rear.
Tallis felt wind on her face as a stone whirred past. She dropped to a cautious crouch. One by one the riders fell, not without causing loss themselves: three of the villagers lay in their own gore, and one had been blinded by slingshot in the confusion of the raid. But whoever these men had been, they had not expected stone and stone had won the day against the metal of their more ferocious weaponry.
Now Scathach stripped the body of the leader. Tallis leaned on her spear and watched him. He sniffed the breeches and wrinkled his nose. He tugged off the leather breastplate, then the tunic, and brushed at the blood. He removed the boots. He inspected the helmet, with its heavy crest and the circling ruff of fur around the rim; his blow had cut the ruff and damaged the cheek guard. But when he put it on, for a moment he looked like a prince.
He smiled at Tallis, then removed the helmet. He hefted the dead man’s sword, then strapped the scabbard to his waist, over his heavy furs.
When he came to Tallis, carrying the spoils, there was a strange look in his eyes; he had been fired by the bloody encounter. He was aware of her, but he was envisaging greater battles still. His breathing was almost the panting of a hunting dog. ‘This will be more suitable clothing for whatever lies to the north.’
‘It will be colder in the north.’
‘This is for battle, I mean.’ He raised the soldier’s clothes. ‘In the heat of battle I shan’t need fur leggings.’
The Tuthanach had gathered their dead. Wynne-Jones, leaning on the arm of a younger man, surveyed the corpses, which had been laid on their side, knees slightly bent, hands covering their faces. There was an unexpected and odd silence. No wailing, no beating of drums, no sobbing. The families gathered round in a circle, staring down at the remains of their menfolk. Even the dogs had fallen silent.
Tallis stared into the distance, where the sky was brightening, a beautiful iridescent blue, dark hued; the new day, and her last day here, she was sure of that now. Smoke from the burned rajathuks still coiled into the heavens. Tallis suddenly understood the eerie silence among the clan.
Wyn-rajathuk’s power was gone; there was no way to bury the dead. If they wished to bury them they would have to summon Tig. Tig-en-cruig; Tig never-touch-woman, never-touch-earth.
He was the power now. He had stated so last night. Tallis, listening to the silence, realized that Wynne-Jones was whispering to Old-woman-who-sang-to-the-river. She was listening, her face grim. Then she flung back her head and closed her eyes. Her mouth opened and after a few moments a strange ululation sounded, a despairing cry, a death cry.
Wynne-Jones detached himself from the supporting arm and came over to Tallis. He looked down at Scathach’s armour, touched the small wound on his son’s shoulder, then looked into the young man’s face; he saw the distance there, the faraway look. Tallis asked him, ‘What will happen to these people now?’
Wyn shook his head, then glanced round at the circle of villagers and the wailing old woman. ‘They are calling for Tig. Before he comes we must be gone. If Tig orders my killing they will do it. I’ve told them that my power is finished. I’ve told them that Tig is the new guardian of the threshold. Whatever rituals he devises will be their rituals. Until he comes they have no idea what to do.’
Indeed, even as he spoke Tallis saw fleeting movement in the wood towards the hill. She thought it was Swimmer of Lakes for a moment, but her horse had already returned to open land and was quietly grazing to the east. This new movement was the boy.
He appeared on the grass. He held two tall staffs, one in each hand. His face was blackened, an echo of Morthen. Around his body were tied strips of greying cloth, and Tallis recognized the ragged shrouds of the decaying dead, before they were dismembered and burned. They hung on him loosely, like a tattered dress.
Tallis went into the long-house and gathered up her masks and Wynne-Jones’s few possessions. It was too late to go to the shaman’s lodge and fetch his precious writings. Wynne-Jones stood as if in a daze. Scathach slung the clothing he had looted across one of the horses which still paced nervously in the enclosure. He calmed the animal, quickly inspected it, then led it to a second, checked this animal too for wounds and led it to Wynne-Jones.
He helped the old man climb into the saddle. At the last moment Wynne-Jones seemed to come alive. ‘My work. My journal …’
‘No time,’ Scathach said. ‘We have to get away.’
Tallis ran from the long-house, arms filled with furs, blankets, cord and sacks of oatmeal and barley. Scathach led the way to the gate, pulled it down again and mounted his own horse. He clattered over the wood, reaching for Tallis’s simple provisions. Tallis ran to Swimmer of Lakes and flung herself across its back, twisting into a sitting position and quickly flinging a simple rope harness around its neck. Tig took no notice of her. He was still motionless, standing at the edge of the wood, perhaps waiting for them to leave.
Old-woman-who-sang-to-the-river filled the dawn with her wailing and chanting. Scathach kicked his horse towards the river track, leading Wynne-Jones by the leather harness.
Wynne-Jones cried out, ‘My journal! My writing. Let me fetch my writing. There is no point, otherwise … my writing!’
‘No time,’ barked Scathach again. Tallis rode after them.
As she entered the wood, following the narrow track towards the water, she glanced back.
Tig was standing by the gate to the enclosure, staring in through the earth walls, his dream-filled mind on other things than the old shaman.
[DAUROG]
The First Forest
(i)
They finally reached the edge of the ancient lake late on the second day of their journey up the river, and in company they had not expected to attract.
They had not been able to travel fast, Wynne-Jones finding riding hard and requiring constant rests. He was very weak and his body trembled and broke into sweats whenever he tried to sleep. Scathach, impatient to get on, took note of Tallis’s cautionary wisdom. Wynne-Jones’s knowledge of the woodland realm was far too useful for them simply to abandon him and race furiously for the north.
Wynne-Jones cried – cried for the loss of his daughter, Morthen, and for the leaving of his manuscript in the primitive village of the Tuthanach. A lifetime’s work, he wailed, and Tallis soothed him. Scathach hunted and killed a wild pig. They cooked strips of its meat over a fierce wood fire, but the old man’s appetite was small
. He chewed and stared to the south, where his precious parchment sheets might even now be ash, blowing on the storm wind of the new shaman’s power.
It was during this first day of the journey that Tallis realized they were not the only travellers moving north, towards the marshlands. At first she thought of wolves as she listened to the furtive movement in the woods to each side of the river. Whatever it was, it journeyed in parallel, slightly behind the three riders. When Scathach ventured into the forest, all sound stopped. He emerged, shaken and slightly puzzled, long hair filled with leaves which he brushed away. He had seen nothing. Yet as they continued on through the shallows so birds wheeled about them in alarm, and creatures shifted in the undergrowth.
As she rode, Tallis unslung Skogen – the shadow of the forest – and placed the mask against her face, tying it, then covering her head with her woollen cowl. Now, as she cautiously peered behind, she began to see the shadows in the trees, the gaunt and sinewy shapes of the mythagos which followed them, darting from shadow place to shadow place. She kicked forward and whispered to Scathach, ‘They’re not wolves, they’re humans. Or human-like.’
Scathach turned in his saddle, scanned the skies through the tangle of branches which arched across the river. Wynne-Jones, slumped in the saddle, raised his head. Spears of light made his pale features glow. He sensed the movement all around, then saw Tallis’s mask covered features, recognized Skogen.
‘What can you see?’ he asked. ‘Are they green?’
The three of them rode to the bank of the river, dismounted, then slipped quickly through the underbrush. They found the ruins of a flint and pebble wall, all that remained of an old stronghold, perhaps, or the defensive wall of a village; perhaps a tomb place, or shrine. Beyond the wall there was nothing but the wild-wood, a tangle of small oaks and patchy flowers, not yet destroyed by winter.
In the lee of this wall they crouched, horses tethered, weapons on the ground before them. Wynne-Jones constructed a fire and pushed cut fragments of the wild pig over the flames.
Through the eyes of the mask Tallis watched the shadows move. All Scathach could see was the forest and what appeared to be the flickering of light filtering through the thinning canopy. But Tallis saw human shapes. They hid against the thicker boles of oaks and elm, then moved away, following the autumnal leaf shadow, avoiding entering the lancing beams of grey light from above.
And they came close to the wall of flint where Wynne-Jones waited, breathless with anticipation.
‘Do you know what they are?’ his son asked.
‘I’ve only ever seen them from a distance,’ the old man whispered. ‘I’ve heard them, though. Everyone has heard them. But I’ve never been this close before …’
There were five of the creatures. One seemed bolder than the others and came so close that it began to enter the realm of ordinary vision. Distantly, the sound of movement in the river suggested that a sixth was coming to join its companions. The wood began to fill with an eerie chattering sound, almost birdlike. There was a human quality, too, to the noise, as if several women were clicking their tongues at great speed. Odd whistles made birds flutter nervously. Tallis could see how invisible feet kicked up the leaf litter, broke and trampled bracken. It was a movement so subtle that it seemed to occur from the corner of her eye. A movement, then nothing; but the signs of the creatures’ passing still quivered and calmed.
The nearest of the mythagos came into view, stepping away from the tree shadow, standing at the edge of the forest light. Scathach gasped and reached for his spear. Wynne-Jones put out a restraining hand, eyes fixed on the slender creature that stood before them.
‘Daurog,’ he whispered. ‘Green Man. Becoming Scarag … winter aspect … be careful. Be very careful …’
‘It’s a Green Jack,’ Tallis said, amazed. ‘I remember seeing them in churches, carved in stone. Old men of the forest. Leaf-heads.’
‘It’s an earlier form than you’ve seen carved in churches,’ the old man counselled her. ‘There is nothing jolly or medieval about the Daurog. These are old, and they were made in the mind at a time of great fear. In their winter aspect they are exceptionally dangerous …’
‘Green Jack,’ Tallis said to herself, and as if the sound of the fanciful name from folklore had attracted its attention it took a quick, awkward step forward, sinewy body cracking like old wood underfoot. It stared at her, bristling … rustling … It had stepped into a strand of light which played off the darkening face but caught the remnants of the leafy green which swathed the skull, the shoulders and the upper torso.
Its fingers were long, many-jointed; twig-like. What Tallis had taken for a forked beard she could see, now, were curved tusks of wood growing from each side of the round, wet mouth. The tusks branched, one limb reaching up to the leafy mass on the head, the other reaching down, becoming tendrillar, tendrils curling round the torso and the arms, then down the spindly legs, supplying lobate oak-leaves as a covering for the scored, scoured, bark-like flesh below. The creature’s member swayed as it moved, a thin, thorned length of tendril that flexed like a worm between the rustling thighs.
It was carrying a three-pointed spear in one hand and a rough cloth sack in the other. As it watched Tallis it began to sniff. Flat nostrils opened in the bark of its face. It was growing rotten, this thing, this Daurog, and was shedding summer’s growth. The face was something like a skull, but the contours were wrong. The bone swelled and curved in the wrong places; the angles were unfamiliar. The eyes were very close together. The Daurog didn’t appear to blink, and streams of sap ran from the edges of the eyes. When it opened its mouth a slow drip of slime curled from the wet void; the mouth-tusks glistened. The teeth it exposed were greened with mould, and sharpened.
It sniffed the air again, then focused on Tallis, leaned towards her, made another awkward, hesitant step forward; sniffed again and exhaled, a sound like a breeze, a sound of puzzlement. Wynne-Jones reached out and clutched Tallis’s arm. The pig sizzled on the flames, spitting fat, startling the Daurog for a moment.
‘It smells your blood,’ the old man said. ‘It lives on sap, but it smells your blood.’
‘And not yours?’
‘It’s male. And I’m old and you’re young. It smells the exudates from your body: blood, sweat, filth …’
‘What?’
‘And mind-sap too, I think. It smells your mind. It can probably see the way you are manipulating the wood …’
Tallis glanced at Wynne-Jones, frowning. Me?
He said, ‘Of course. You are creating life every second. Mythago-genesis. You are very alive, very active … you just travel too fast to see the end result. It begins with a fluttering in the mould and rot of the leaf litter. You only recognize it when it rises in bodily form, like the Daurog itself. But the Daurog can probably see the smallest activity. It seems frightened. It is trying to understand us. Stay very still.’
Slowly the Daurog placed its spear and sack upon the ground. It circled the small clearing warily, catching the light and jerking as it did so, moving quickly into shadow. As it walked so browning leaves fell from its body. When it came slightly up-breeze of Tallis she noticed the appalling stench that emanated from its form: marsh gas and the smell of death which she remembered from her time in the mortuary house.
But the old Daurog came closer. Its companions hovered in the borders of light and shadow, hidden against the oaks. Their chattering, clicking conversation had diminished. Scathach stretched forward and rested his hand on his spear. The Daurog was nervous and eyed the human warrior cautiously. It stepped slowly towards Tallis, crouched with much rustling and snapping of sinews and reached a long, tapering twig-finger to touch her hand. Its nail was a rose thorn; she allowed it to scratch at her skin, making a faint red mark. The Daurog sniffed its own finger, then licked at the glistening nail. Tallis thought a lizard had emerged from the creature’s mouth to bite at the thorn, then realized she had seen its tongue. The Daurog seemed pleased by what i
t had tasted. It spoke words; they were high-pitched and meaningless: bird chatter; the creak of a branch; more chatter; the rustle of leaves in wind.
Tallis realized with a start that the Daurog’s body was alive with woodlice, some of them as large as leaves themselves.
The creature rose and backed away. The leaves on its back were being shed in lines and a skeleton of furry creeper and black, gnarled wood was showing through. It picked up its spear and its sack, then called to the shadows. Its companions emerged and approached the small fire, but stayed warily at a distance, more afraid of the flame than of the humans who had kindled it, Tallis decided.
Two of the Daurog were young females, one with skin made of holly leaves, the other silver birch. Their eyes were smaller than the males’, sunk deep below forehead ridges of vine. The branch-tusks from their mouths were a silvery grey. They wore ‘jewellery’ of sloe and hawthorn berries, blues and reds hanging from thorny crowns.
The two males were young also, one skinned in willow, the other hazel. Their tusks were gnarled and they differed from the older Daurog in one remarkable and savage aspect: ridges of long, black spikes grew from the fronts of their bodies; the central, vertical line of thorns ran down on to the twisting, restless sex organs that hung from their rotund bellies.
At last the sixth member of the group arrived, and Tallis almost smiled as she recognized the type.
Not a cloak of feathers, but a skin-cloak of every leaf imaginable. Broad limes on his head, a beard of holly, tufts of pear, shoulders of whitebeam, a chest of browning oak and elm, belly of ivy and brilliant yellow autumn sycamore.
Dogrose wound about his arms; red berries hung in lazy bunches. His legs were impaled with a thousand needles of pine and hemlock; hemlock cones and crabapple were strapped to his waist. From his head grew a fan of spikes of rush.