Outcast (7 page)

There was uproar around the long-fire. Dogs barking, a hornet buzz of voices. Mouths turned ugly with fear, eyes became shadowy hollows. Fin-Kedinn called for calm--and the uproar diminished. "But we've got to go after him now!" shouted Aki. "If we don't--"

"If you go now," said the Raven Leader, "you'll be setting off blind. Remember, it's not just an outcast out there. What about the Oak Mage? The Viper Mage. The Eagle Owl Mage. Three Soul-Eaters of enormous power--and they could be anywhere. Are you strong

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enough to fight them alone, Aki? Are any of you?"
Aki made to reply, but his father snarled at him, and Aki cringed as if to ward off a blow.
Torak had seen enough. He fled. What a fool he'd been to believe they would take him back. They would never take him back.
As he ran, the scab on his chest cracked open. He gasped in pain.
One twitch, and it will draw you,
hissed the Viper Mage.
Having retrieved his sleeping-sack, he took a different path to disperse his scent, and now through the trees he glimpsed the Ravens' shelters. They were deserted.

With every moment the danger grew--and yet he couldn't drag himself away. He was leaving them forever, he knew that now, but he had to be close to them one last time. He had to say good-bye.

 

He found the Raven Leader's shelter and peered in. There was Fin-Kedinn's axe propped against the doorpost; his bow, his fishing spear. But nothing of Renn's, which was odd.

 

His axe.
It was beautiful, a blade of polished greenstone mounted on a sturdy ash handle. It fitted Torak's grip perfectly. As his fingers closed around it, he felt the Raven Leader's strength, his force of will. Torak had lost his own axe in the Far North; Fin-Kedinn had been

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going to help him make a new one. There was much that Fin-Kedinn had been going to teach him.
His grip tightened. To steal a man's axe is one of the worst things you can do. To steal Fin-Kedinn's ...
But he needed it.

Scarcely believing what he was doing, he stuck the axe in his belt and moved on, seeking the shelter where Renn slept. It was madness to stay any longer, but he couldn't leave till he'd found it.

 

He was astonished to discover that she was now sharing a shelter with Saeunn: he recognized it by its stale, old-woman smell. How Renn would hate that.

It hurt to see her gear, piled untidily in the corner. Her beloved bow hung from a crossbeam. As he touched it, he seemed to hear her voice: mocking, kind. The first day they'd met, when the Ravens were enemies and he had to fight for his life, she had given him a beaker of elderberry juice.
"It's only fair,
" she'd said. On her willow-branch mat lay a new medicine pouch he hadn't seen before; she must have made it when she'd given him hers. He upended it, and among the dried mushrooms and tangles of hair, he was surprised to see the white pebble on which he'd daubed his clan-tattoo last summer. She had kept it all this time.

His hand closed over it. This would tell her better than anything that he was never coming back. 92
***
He ran fast and low, heading upstream, keeping to the thickets by the river. He hadn't gone far when he heard slight, furtive sounds of pursuit. It couldn't be Aki--he would've made mote noise. And whoever it was, they were good, moving almost noiselessly and staying in the shadows. They were good, but he was better.

The river flowed deep and slow between half-drowned alders. Torak took off his boots and tied them around his neck. Then, balancing quiver, bow, and sleeping-sack roll on his head, he waded in. The cold took his breath away, but he gritted his teeth and kept going till he was up to his chest.

Bracing his legs against the current, he waited. He heard the slap and suck of water around the trees. Then stealthy footsteps.
From the bank, someone softly called his name.
He tensed.
"Torak!" Renn whispered again. "Where are you?" He made no answer. Then another voice. "Kinsman, it's me!" Torak flinched.

"We're alone, I swear it!" Bale said in a hoarse whisper. "Come out! I mean you no harm! Renn's told me everything. I know you're outcast, but we're still kin! I want to help!"

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Torak clenched his jaw. Renn had already risked her life to help him, and it had come to nothing. He couldn't put her or Bale in any more danger. Like all hunters, Renn and Bale knew how to wait. So did Torak.
At last he heard Bale sigh. "Let's go," he told Renn.
"No!" she protested. Torak heard a stirring of branches as she moved closer--and suddenly there she was at the water's edge.
"Torak!" Her voice was recklessly loud. "I know you're there, I can feel you listening! Please.
Please!
You've got to let us help you!"

Not answering Bale had been hard, but ignoring Renn was one of the hardest things Torak had ever done. The urge to cry out--to give some sign that only she would understand--was almost overwhelming. Go back to camp, he begged her. I can't bear it.

Bale put his hand on Renn's shoulder. "Come on. Either he's not here or he doesn't want to be found."
Angrily she shook him off. But when he started for camp, she followed.

Torak waited till he was sure they were gone, then waded back to dry ground. Frozen, numb, he pulled on his boots. The scab on his chest was open; he felt warmth seeping out. Good. Let it bleed.

He followed the river upstream, running punishingly fast so that he wouldn't have to think, but
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at last he had to stop. He slumped against a whitebeam tree at the edge of a clearing. It would be dawn soon. Far in the distance, he heard dogs.

He found that he was still clutching the pebble he'd taken from Renn's medicine pouch. He stared at the dotted lines which he used to think were his clan-tattoo, but were now meaningless smudges.

 

That's the old Torak, he thought.

 

He realized that for the past half-moon, he'd merely been playing at being outcast, finding any excuse to stay near the Ravens. He'd been like that young elk, bleating for its mother. If it didn't learn to survive on its own, it would get killed. He wasn't going to make the same mistake.

His fist closed over the pebble. Leave it. Leave it all behind.
He tucked the pebble into a cleft of the whitebeam tree and ran.
Mist beaded the bracken and lent the leaves of the whitebeam a frosty glitter. Torak's pebble nestled safe in its smooth brown arms.
A roe buck entered the clearing and began to browse. A robin started to sing. A blackbird awoke. The rising sun burned off the mist.
Suddenly the buck jerked up its head and fled.
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Robin and blackbird flew off with shrill calls of alarm. A shadow fell across the whitebeam. The Forest held its breath.
A green hand reached out and took the pebble from the tree.
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ELEVEN

He's here," said Aki. "I can feel it." "Well, I can't," panted the Willow girl, battling the current to keep abreast of him. "Won't he have headed south instead of east? That's where he came from." "Which is why the others have gone south to cut him off," growled Aki.
"We're too far upstream," Raut said uneasily. "We should go back."
"No," snapped Aki.
"Then let's put in for a rest," protested another boy. "If I paddle much longer, my arms will fall off!"
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"Me too," puffed the girl. "There was an inlet back there. Let's go."
A murmur of assent--to which Aki grudgingly agreed--and they brought their dugouts about.
Perched in a willow, Torak breathed out. When he was sure it wasn't a bluff, he slipped into the water and waded for the bank.
Wolf was waiting. He watched with interest as Torak stuffed his boots with grass to warm up his feet; then they headed upstream.

All day the hunters had tracked them: east of Twin Rivers and up the Axehandle. Whenever Torak tried heading south, the second group of hunters drove him back. It was only by staying in the thickets near the river that he'd kept them off the scent.

 

He was cold, wet, and he hadn't slept since the night before last. He was beginning to miss things. A while back he'd almost tripped over a boar enjoying a wallow. Why hadn't he seen its tracks? A child of five summers would have spotted them.

 

Because of Aki, he'd given up all-thought of going south. His only hope was to cross the Axehandle and make for the gullies leading off it to the north. It was rough country without much prey, and few people ventured in except for the odd lonely wanderer. That was the point.

The river turned angrier, and he caught the distant
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roar of rapids. Around midmorning, Wolf tensed. Then Torak heard it too: paddles slicing the water; dogs panting, keeping level with the dugouts. Aki and his friends hadn't rested for long.

 

Torak made his way across the willow bog, squelching through haregrass, avoiding the pale-green moss, which was so delicate that a footprint would remain stamped on it for days. Wolf managed better, his big, slightly webbed paws letting him run lightly over the surface.

 

To his dismay, Torak saw that his pursuers weren't continuing upriver, but crossing it, as if they'd guessed his plan. In their dugouts they made it with ease. He watched them hoist the boats on their shoulders and climb the bank. They meant to carry them around the rapids and lie in wait for him above.

 

He had no choice but to go on.

The river turned rougher, crashing over rocks and soaking him in spray. As he clambered past the rapids, he watched for his pursuers on the other side. From memory, he guessed he was nearing the place where-- on the opposite bank--two gullies led off from the Axehandle valley. The autumn before last, he and Renn had found a fallen oak and used it to get across. Maybe ...

The oak was gone, washed away by floods.
For a moment Torak didn't know what to do. His
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head felt tight. A buzzing in his ears made it hard to think. There had to be some way of crossing.

There was. Ahead, the valley narrowed, drowned thickets giving way to boulders and straggling trees. A pine had fallen and now spanned the river, ten paces above it. As a walkway, it wasn't promising: the bark was slimy, branches stuck out, and when Torak put his hand on the trunk, it wobbled.

Good enough, he told himself.
Part of him knew this was a mistake--but strangely, he kept going.
Wolf raced lightly along the trunk, leaping the branches. When he reached the other side, he turned to Torak, wagging his tail.
Easy!
No it's not, Torak wanted to say. Not on your hands and knees in slippery wet buckskin, with a sleeping-sack, bow, and quiver on your back--and no claws. He was nearly across when he heard voices. He glanced down--and nearly fell off in alarm.
Blue water and white foam swirled around moss-green boulders. On one, directly beneath him, stood Aki and Raut.
Torak held his breath. If one of them looked up ...
"I've had enough," said Raut. "I'm going back."
"Well, I'm not!" snarled Aki.
Torak tried to move forward, but Renn's rowanberry wristband snagged on a branch. He tried
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to unsnag it. The tree shook.
"The others have gone back," said Raut, "and so should we. We're out of our range."
Again Torak tugged the wristband. It snapped. Rowanberries bounced onto the rocks. Luckily, Aki was too incensed to notice. "If you go now, you'll be going on foot! I'm keeping the boat!"
"You do that!" retorted Raut. Then more quietly, "Aki, this isn't right! Why do you hate him so much?
"I don't," snapped Aki.
"Then why all this?"
"I said I'd get him! I told Fa. I can't go back if I fail."
"Well, you'll have to do it without me. We'll split the provisions--then you're on your own!"
Weak with relief, Torak watched them head off downstream.
He'd just begun to move when Aki's voice rang out. "I know you're out there, Soul-Eater! I'll find you, I swear it on my souls! I'll find you and I'll hunt you down!" Wolf was waiting for him on the other side, but Torak barely greeted him. Huddled in his wet clothes, he thought about Aki's threat. Such determination.

He glanced at Wolf. Every moment they spent together put him at risk. Clan law forbade the killing of a hunter,
except
in self-defense. What if it came to a fight and Wolf tried to defend his pack-brother and Aki shot him?

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A moment of pure panic. He couldn't be without Wolf.
It's the only way, he told himself. And it isn't forever.

Split up,
Torak told his pack-brother in wolf talk. Wolf threw him a puzzled glance.
Impossible to get across that this wasn't for good, but only while Aki was close. With an effort, Torak hardened his heart and repeated the command.
Split up!
Wolf looked offended. Then he shook himself and trotted off into the bracken.
Torak hadn't heard Aki or his dogs for a while, or seen any sign of Wolf.

The buzzing in his ears came and went, and the wound in his chest throbbed. Belatedly, he'd smeared it with chewed willow bast, but it refused to heal. The pain was a constant reminder that it wasn't only Aki who hunted him. The Soul-Eaters had hooked him with an unseen harpoon, and were drawing him in. The ground became stonier. From where he stood, the riverbank dropped steeply to the Axehandle. He'd passed the rapids some time ago, but their thunder still filled his ears.

Leaning against a birch tree, he gulped the last of Renn's blood sausage. He didn't bother with an offering; he needed it all for himself. He was thirsty, but it was a tough climb down to the
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river, so instead he slashed the birch trunk and drank. He left the bark oozing tree-blood and stumbled on. He knew that was wrong, but he did it anyway. Something was getting between him and the Forest. He was too tired to fight it.

Below him the river ran swift and deep. Should he stay this close, or get under cover? He decided to stay close.
Wrong choice. The boulders were treacherous with moss and he fell, bumping and rolling down the slope.

He ended up sprawled on a rock by the water's edge. The trees grew sparsely here, and as he struggled to his feet he got a clear view downstream--and saw a dugout nosing around the bend.

Aki saw him, and yelled in triumph.
Desperately, Torak looked about. No time to climb the slope. Up ahead, a rockfall blocked his way. He was trapped.
And Aki had a quiverful of arrows.
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TWELVE
Torak threw off his gear and jumped in the river. The cold was a punch in the chest, and the current tugged off his boots and blinded him with his hair. Spluttering, he surfaced among willows. He clung to one. It didn't give much cover. He took a deep breath and pulled himself under.