The Wanderers Page 2

  “Get down!” Rhy-lee cried.

  Yfan-wyn was too panicked to hear. The wolf ducked lower. With a curse, Rhy-lee dropped her bow and grabbed her spear. She charged. Now Yfan-wyn threw himself down in the snow. Rhy-lee vaulted over him. The wolf snarled, showing rotted teeth. Its skin was covered in scaly growths where it was bald. One eye was grown shut and tears of pus streaked its cheek.

  She ducked under a wild swing of the wolf’s axe and stabbed at its belly. The wolf batted the spear upwards with its free hand. Rhy-lee’s momentum sent her crashing into its legs. She pivoted, using its own weight to fling it to the ground.

  Yfan-wyn scrambled to get clear. The wolf’s axe flailed and he squealed. Rhy-lee didn’t see where it struck him.

  Rhy-lee stabbed at the wolf’s chest but it moved at the last instant and she missed its heart. The wolf mewled like a hurt child. Again Rhy-lee thrust the spear and again the wolf moved and cried out. Rhy-lee screamed in anguish and struck once more. This time she struck true.

  The wolf gripped the shaft of the spear, holding its head and shoulders clear of the snow. Its tongue flickered between its teeth. Its last breath rattled out in a fitful cloud of vapour. The wolf spat blood.

  Its head fell back and it lay still.

  Rhy-lee sank slowly down onto her haunches. The aftermath of the struggle, with her blood still hot, made her shake.

  She wiped her face and looked up. Yfan-wyn sat a short distance away, regarding her with unblinking eyes. Blood seeped between his fingers, clamped around his calf, and speckled the snow beside his foot. His lips were pale, peeled back from his teeth.

  “Yfan-wyn!”

  She rushed over to him, hugged him, gently pulled aside his hands to see the wound. The axe had caught him above the top of his sheepskin boot. She pulled up his trouser leg to reveal a gash just below his knee. The sparse fur of his leg was matted with blood.

  Rhy-lee made herself take a slower breath. “Let’s wash it and see how deep it is,” she said.

  She hurried over to her pack for her water bottle and medicine kit. Kneeling again beside Yfan-wyn, she carefully slid off his boot, then splashed water over the cut. She peered anxiously into it. The gash was wide, but not deep.

  “It’ll bruise around the joint,” she said. “You won’t be able to bend it or stand on it tomorrow.”

  Yfan-wyn didn’t respond. His gaze was fixed on the dead wolf. It was good for him to know what killing was like, she told herself, the awfulness of it. But still, his shock was distressing. Rhy-lee tried not to think about how badly things had almost gone.

  “This will hurt.” She unrolled a parcel of lime from inside the medicine kit and pressed a handful onto the wound. Yfan-wyn gasped. Rhy-lee quickly rinsed her hand, then bandaged his shin.

  “The body will draw attention,” she said. “We need to be away.”

  Yfan-wyn got himself back down into the ravine, then Rhy-lee carried him as far as she was able. They camped early and watched the crows descend in the distance. Their gathering would be visible for miles around.

  “We can go home, back to Grandfather and Aoin-rhys, if you wish,” she said.

  Yfan-wyn shook his head. “We haven’t found the end of the earth yet.”

  Rhy-lee found a laugh in that, just a breath. She sobered. “I was afraid, when I saw the wolf chasing you.”

  “Do you want to go home, Mother?” he asked.

  Part of her did, the small part that feared the cost of her wandering, feared losing Yfan-wyn, never seeing her father or Aoin-rhys again. The greater part of her answered. “No.” Hearing herself say it made her more certain. “No. We will find the end.”

  She let Yfan-wyn take his turn at watch, once he had rested, and fell into an exhausted sleep.

  As Rhy-lee had predicted, Yfan-wyn’s leg had stiffened and swollen by morning and would not take his weight. Again, she carried him. She was thankful when, before noon, they reached the end of the cracked country and climbed up to find themselves on a plateau. This land was not so flat as the river floodplain they had left behind, but contoured instead with hummocks and hollows and low folded ridges, dotted with boulders large and small, left behind by the ice of ages past. Low heath bushes grew wherever the landscape offered the tiniest shelter.

  The snow was deeper on the open ground, though, and soft with a new fall overnight. Rhy-lee was unable to carry Yfan-wyn far.

  She found a cleft at the bottom of a ridge, partly hidden by a screen of heath and deep enough to shelter them from the wind and any casual gaze. “We’ll rest,” she said, “and see how your leg is tomorrow.”

  “I can walk,” said Yfan-wyn – and indeed he could put his weight on it and hobble about.

  Rhy-lee chucked him under the chin and said, “You will walk better tomorrow or the next day. There will be rabbits hereabouts, probably not all hibernating yet. I’ll set some snares.”

  Once that was done, she opened the dressing on Yfan-wyn’s leg and checked the wound, then they took turns to nap through the afternoon. In the evening, she went out to check her snares and came back with a pair of rabbits, which she gutted and skinned. Yfan-wyn had set a fire, but Rhy-lee waited until full dark before lighting it. They sat close to watch the rabbits char, their noses dry in the heat of the flames and the fur of their tails hot to the touch, wrapped around their feet.

  A soft sound, a clink of two hollow things bumping, made Rhy-lee’s ears twitch. She listened. When it came again she reached for her spear.

  A massive silhouette rose up above the edge of the cleft. Rhy-lee froze. Bear.

  A gust of wind brought its scent down to them, a pungent aroma of maleness and carnivore. Yfan-wyn gasped, only now noticing the arrival. Rhy-lee put her hand on his forearm to hold him still.

  The bear stepped into the light. Rhy-lee’s gaze travelled up from his black claws, hanging over the edge of the cleft, each one as long as her hand. The bear’s limbs and torso were covered in a pelt of yellow-white fur that her spear and arrows would probably not even penetrate. He wore an apron made of the long bones of old prey and vanquished enemies, bound together with leather thong and decorated with feathers, claws and teeth. A girdle of wolf scalps bound the apron at his waist. He leaned on an iron-headed spear that Rhy-lee and Yfan-wyn would have struggled to even lift between them. Black eyes peered down at them from a startlingly narrow head.

  Slowly, Rhy-lee stood. She picked up the spitted rabbits and held one up to the bear. She forced herself to meet his gaze. “Please, won’t you share our meal?”

  Blood pounded in her ears. She waited for the bear’s response. Then he made a rumble deep in his throat – an approving sound, Rhy-lee thought – and stepped carefully down into the cleft. Just as carefully, he lowered himself to his haunches. The rattle of his bone apron put Rhy-lee’s hackles up. Their little fire looked tiny between his enormous feet, a spark. This close, he seemed to block out the stars.

  He reached out and took the rabbit, so delicately that Rhy-lee barely felt the brush of fingers large enough to crush her head. “Thank you,” he said. The deep growl of his voice put her in mind of waterfalls in the canyons of the highlands.

  Rhy-lee resumed her seat. She offered the remaining rabbit to Yfan-wyn. He didn’t move. The whites were visible around his eyes, his fur standing up all over. She took the rabbit off the spit and snapped its spine, then lifted Yfan-wyn’s hand and closed his fingers around the hind portion. He blinked, looking down in surprise.

  The bear observed in silence. His rabbit dangled, untouched, from his finger and thumb, his acceptance of their hospitality not yet consummated. It was a morsel for him, barely a mouthful.

  “You are far from home, little foxes,” he said.

  “Yes,” said Rhy-lee.

  “You have wandering hearts, as I have heard your people say. I have seen others such as you, over the years.” He lifted his chin to scratch his throat, seeming to be musing more to himself than them. “It is a curious affliction for a people wh
o thrive when closed behind walls of stone.”

  Thoughts of her mother boiled up. Rhy-lee wondered if this bear had ever met her. Might he have killed her, if he had? The bear noticed Rhy-lee’s reaction. She said, “My mother came this way, when I was a child.”

  “And you seek her still.”

  Rhy-lee shook her head at that, but inside, she could not be certain that it wasn’t true.

  “I found your wolf,” said the bear. “That was well done. A mad wolf is a threat to young bears, who are wont to stray.”

  Rhy-lee inclined her head but kept her eyes on him. The bear’s smell was overpowering. He examined his rabbit, but still did not eat.

  “You have killed wolves before, I see,” he said.

  “Wolves murdered my husband,” she replied.

  “Ah.” He regarded her a moment, then added, “Yet you did not take the tail from this one.”

  Rhy-lee said, “This was necessity. A mercy, even.”

  “Rather than passion,” the bear said. He tipped his head to one side and his top lip curled up, a quizzical smile. His teeth were thicker than Rhy-lee’s fingers, and as long. “Mercy for wolves?” He harrumphed, then chuckled. As he dipped his head, she saw the scars that crisscrossed his muzzle and brow.

  The bear sniffed, looking at Yfan-wyn. “Your son?”

  Rhy-lee’s heart lurched. “Yes.”

  The bear nodded slowly. “I have a son. He is grown, now, and left his mother.”

  “I have two sons,” said Rhy-lee. “The other stayed home with his grandfather.”

  “Ah,” said the bear, returning his gaze to her. “He has not your wandering heart.”

  “No. Only Yfan-wyn.”

  “‘Yfan-wyn’?” the bear repeated. He addressed Yfan-wyn again, “It is a good name. I am Inanakurekuri – ‘the death of all wolves’. Where does your secret path take you, little fox, if not in search of your lost grandmother?”

  Yfan-wyn stared up at the gigantic being, his lips peeled back in terror. Rhy-lee answered for him, “Yfan-wyn wishes to see the end of the earth.”

  “Aha!” The bear slapped his knee, making them both jump. He smiled broadly, a terrifying sight. “It is a fine ambition. A pilgrimage well worth the journey.”

  Wonder made Yfan-wyn’s eyes even more huge. He forgot his fear long enough to gasp, “You have been there?”

  He shrank back as Inanakurekuri’s gaze turned back to him. “I have.”

  “Is it far?” asked Rhy-lee.

  “Further than you have come, I expect. But not so very far,” Inanakurekuri said. He shrugged. “Further for little legs.”

  Rhy-lee met his eyes in silence for a moment and felt no sense of threat. “I am Rhy-lee,” she said.

  Inanakurekuri nodded. “Thank you, Rhy-lee of the wandering heart, for the hospitality of your fire.” He lifted his rabbit, peered at it briefly, then stuck the whole carcass in his mouth, holding it behind his teeth while he pulled out the skewer. He chewed three, four times, then swallowed. “I will rest.”

  With that, he lay down his spear and shuffled around to lie with his back to them, filling half the cleft. Rhy-lee and Yfan-wyn sat still, listening to his deep, steady breathing. With excruciating slowness, Rhy-lee turned to Yfan-wyn. She carefully slipped the sheepskin blanket from his shoulders, then rolled it and placed it in his arms. Then she reached behind him and picked up his pack. She held the straps for him to slip his arms into and handed him his bow and spear. She picked up her own gear and, moving as silently as they could, they padded out of the cleft.

  They hurried across the moonlit plateau, Yfan-wyn skip-hopping on his injured leg to keep up.

  “Was he really asleep, Mother?” he asked.

  “No,” said Rhy-lee. “No, he wasn’t.”

  “Why did he pretend?”

  “For his honour. Because he had decided not to kill us.”

  They saw bears twice more over the following days, but only at a great distance. Each time, they slunk low and hurried on their way. Winter’s march reversed, briefly, as the skies stayed clear and the sun offered a last burst of summer warmth. Some of the snow melted, and everywhere there were tinkling rivulets of water, that pooled in the lower ground. Rabbits and other small creatures were out to nibble up the exposed grasses and heath, their coats caught between summer brown and winter white. Geese flew over in formations that spanned the sky. Rhy-lee and Yfan-wyn stopped to watch, shading their eyes with their hands.

  They hiked for short days while Yfan-wyn’s leg healed, starting late and camping in the afternoon, until he said, one day, “I can keep going,” when Rhy-lee made to stop.

  She surveyed the land ahead. A line of hills, steep but low, marched across in front of the horizon. Rhy-lee pointed to a gap between two hills. “Can you get that far?”

  Yfan-wyn eyed the distance doubtfully but nodded. “I think so.”

  As it turned out, his leg began to ache before they reached the hills, and his pace slowed. He was determined, though, and Rhy-lee let him go on, even though it meant that it was nearly dark when they reached their goal.

  Yfan-wyn’s leg was stiff again when he woke the next day. His mother smiled at him and chucked him under the chin. “A short day’s walk, today,” she said.

  He grinned, feeling sheepish, but still pleased by yesterday’s effort. She gave him a little while to hobble around the campsite and loosen up before they set out.

  The valley curved gently to the west at first, then doglegged back to the east. The hills were wider across than they had looked from the south. The hills of the valley grew steeper, smooth and nearly vertical.

  “This is a made place,” said Rhy-lee, softly.

  Yfan-wyn’s hackles stood straight up. “Made?”

  She nodded. “Let us see.”

  Her ears were up, showing no sign of fear. Yfan-wyn’s wanted to lie flat against his head. His mother did not slow, though, and he scurried after.

  Another turn pointed the valley almost directly northward. Here, it widened out, and here Rhy-lee and Yfan-wyn stopped.

  Wooden posts flanked the path – whole tree trunks stripped of leaves and branches but otherwise uncarved. More posts surrounded both sides of the space. On top of each post had been placed a skull. Yfan-wyn moved closer to his mother.

  “Hunters,” she said.

  Alarmed, he turned to see. “Where?”

  “The skulls,” she said. “Look – wolves, panthers.” She pointed up at one of the posts nearest to them. The skull on top of it was broad and heavy. “That is a bear.”

  Yfan-wyn looked up at the other near post. “What about that one?”

  It was a similar shape to the panther skulls, but much bigger and with bizarrely oversized fangs, like scythe blades.

  “A sabre-toothed lion!” his mother exclaimed.

  “I thought they were only in stories,” said Yfan-wyn.

  “So did I,” said Rhy-lee. “It has been here a long time.”

  All of the skulls had the decayed, crumbling look of bones that had been out in the weather for many years.

  Yfan-wyn took a step away from her and looked around with renewed wonder. “What place is this? What could defeat all of these hunters?” He thought of Inanakurekuri and the others like him that they had glimpsed. It seemed to him that a white bear should defeat any person or creature in the world.

  “I think I know,” said Rhy-lee.

  She strode past him. The ground inside the ring of posts was filled with low hillocks, covered in heath and moss. Yfan-wyn thought he spied pale rocks peeking through the plant cover. No… Not rocks.

  Dry wood?

  His mother reached the closest hillock and, with a heave, pulled aside the heather branches. The object was covered in moss and so large – longer than his mother was tall – that it took a moment for Yfan-wyn to realise that it was another skull. Long tusks descended from its jaw, their points buried in the earth. Rhy-lee pulled aside more heath, revealing a rib cage the size of a shepher
d’s hut.

  “A mammoth,” Yfan-wyn breathed.

  His mother nodded. They looked around. The other hillocks – all of the hillocks – were really enormous, overgrown skeletons.

  “It is a graveyard,” said Rhy-lee.

  Yfan-wyn stared at the monstrous skull in front of him. He tried to imagine what these greatest of all people had been like when they were alive. Even one as fearsome as Inanakurekuri would have had to yield to these. He felt a sudden thrill of fear.

  “Mother, we should go. Before any mammoths come.”

  Rhy-lee shook her head. “There have been no living mammoths here for generations. This is an old place, long forgotten.”

  It was true. The decayed skulls on the posts and the overgrown skeletons said as much. He could feel, too, the weight of time and long years of stillness.

  “But you are right, we should go,” Rhy-lee said, after a while. “This is no place for the likes of us.”

  Quietly, they picked their way across to the other side of the graveyard, where the valley opened out once more onto the surrounding plateau.

  Rhy-lee paused to look back. She put her hand on Yfan-wyn’s shoulder. “Now that was a rare thing,” she said.

  It felt wrong, somehow, to just scurry away from the place. After a moment’s thought, she took an arrow from her quiver and went back to lie it at the foot of the nearest guardian post. Yfan-wyn followed her, uncertainly, and laid a second arrow across hers.

  She reached out to scratch him behind the ear.

  “Are there any mammoths, anymore?” he asked.

  “Not in this part of the world.” Might there be somewhere else? Now that would be a wonder. “Perhaps in the east,” she said, “where the land stretches on. Perhaps there might be some there.”

  “Perhaps we will go there one day.”

  She looked down at him with a smile. “Perhaps.”

  By the end of the day, the plateau had started to rise. It continued to slope steadily as they continued in the morning. The sky grew leaden again, clouds heavy with snow. As they neared the crest, Yfan-wyn saw that the rise broke off along a ragged edge. Beyond, he could see a white horizon, a perfectly even, barely perceptible curve. His ears caught a sound, and he saw from their twitching that his mother’s did too, a low rumble, a crashing and hissing that rose and fell but never stopped. He caught a scent – salty, but more than that.