Slow Turns The World (3 page)

Torrin’s pace had slowed as he watched the drama but now he focused again on the herd ahead.  Valhad had run onwards many paces and there were few trees now; he was fast approaching a group of animals that had stopped and stood their ground.  Before them a bull roared and waved its head warningly.   Valhad sped on towards it shouting loud, spear held high and waving.   Torrin knew the barak would charge.  It pawed the ground, head down, the curled horns poised to break and crush whatever bone and sinew stood before them; with a snort it bounded forward, its huge bulk gaining speed with every cloven footfall, its eye fixed on Valhad.

“Valhad!” Torrin shouted above the cries and thunderous footfalls. “Turn! Turn! Save yourself!”

Valhad stopped but did not turn.  Time seemed to lose its pace, as he slowly lowered the spear and set its point towards the charging beast.  It was a huge dominant bull that no single thrust, from even the strongest of hunters, would easily slay.  Torrin watched as the mountain of hide, horn and muscle bore down on the solitary figure of the young man, knowing that a moment of death must come.  But then, in the instant before the horns struck, Valhad turned the spear, grasped it by the point and brought the shaft crashing down upon the animal’s head.  And as he struck he leapt aside, rolled upon the grass, and then sprang up.  The stunned beast skidded to a halt and turned with blinking eyes, but Valhad was upon it, striking with the spear shaft again and again.  The animal pulled away and cantered a few paces.  It turned, snorting, and with an eye already half closed by bruising, it watched uncertainly as Valhad paced towards it.  He screamed and raised the spear shaft to strike once more and the barak bolted away across the plain.  The shouts of the hunters ceased and were replaced by the galloping of four thousand hooves, already growing distant.

Placing a hand upon Valhad's shoulder, Torrin said,

“I have never seen any hunter do what you have done.  No spear thrust could have saved you.”

“Yes, but that was not the reason.  I cannot kill, Torrin, even to save myself.  There is a feeling inside me…sometimes almost a voice that speaks...this is not my path…I am not made to hold a spear.  And I shall not be chieftain.”

“You will not take the birthright?”

“Turnal is born to it, not me.  There is some other path.  That is what the quietest voice whispers to me.  There is some other purpose.  I feel it, Torrin.  I feel it, like knowing that the rain will come.”

Then he seemed to gaze into some distance that was of the mind, not of the eyes.

“You are young, Valhad,” said Torrin, “and perhaps you yearn for more than our life provides.  You look to me, to the other hunters, and to the elders, and you see the pattern of your life already woven.   I too once wanted to wander from our path and to fill in the spaces on our maps.  But enough now, the barak run and we must follow.”

There had been no serious injuries; the hunter tossed by the bull had cracked some ribs, but Turnal's intervention had prevented something much worse. They returned to the camp where every leather dome had been taken down, the skins folded and packed ready for travel.  The time of walking had nearly come and all but the very youngest and oldest prepared to shoulder their loads.  Thunder still sounded and had crept closer so that now their path would take them straight towards the flickering towers of smoke-grey cloud.  Another cloud, of dust, rising from the plain ahead marked the onward gallop of the barak herd.  Torrin watched as the mist drifted on a thin breeze and he wondered how far the animals would run, and if there might be a time of hunger, soon to come.   

He saw Perrith standing with both hands upon the shoulders of a stooped old man.  Perrith's father would not walk with the tribe and he knew that when they departed the old man would chew the special herb that brought an end to all pain.  For how else could it be while the world turned?  Chew the herb or let the Ummakil chew upon you. And, if they pass by, then there is only creeping darkness and cold.  So it was for the old, the lame, and the weak.  There were others who should also have ended their journey; a crippled child who grew beyond the size of carrying and an old woman who was lifted by her sons upon a litter.  There was a custom that no person was ever made to chew the herb, but also that the tribe would never slow the pace of travelling or return to find those who had lagged behind.

And so the Vasagi walked, three hundred figures, each bearing their load, some with the youngest children perched upon their pack.  The sun filled their eyes and darkness brooded behind them. The sunset was their beacon, their compass, like an elusive rainbow that might ever be pursued but never reached.  At the head of the column went Perrith and Rasgan.  Rasgan, the Pathfinder, was keeper of the old maps and maker of the new.  He knew every tale of every land they crossed that had been passed down between the generations.  Sometimes he would scout ahead seeking the mark carved upon rock and tree by his father’s fathers; men who had in their turn held the maps and guided the tribe on their endless girdle of the world.   The great moon Azex slipped into the east and would not return until Kanu made its circle around them twelve times; twelve cycles of walking resting, and sleeping.    

The tribe walked on, under the shroud of the storms and the rains drenched them.   Kanu, hidden behind the clouds, gave no measure of the passing time.  When weariness told them the time to sleep had come they curled and crouched beneath the leather hides with the drumming rain sounding in their ears.  In the far distance, at the edge of the Plain of Ashank, loomed a mass of mountain peaks that grew a little with every march.  They chewed upon meat and fruit that were dried and stored ready for the walking times.  They walked, slept, chewed, and the moon spun twice in its cycle that was the measure of their lives.  Varna grew bigger as the babe within kicked ever harder.  Then the storms passed away, revealing once again the reddening sun hanging barely higher than the nearing mountains, with Azex rising in its glare, and little Kanu riding high above.   

Another walk, another rest, another walk.  Now the great plain rippled with gentle hills and the sun became a blazing crescent as the mountain ridge eclipsed it. With each march it became a thinner arc, as they walked into the mountain's shadow.  Then it was gone and they journeyed in a darker, cooler land while above them drifted streams of crimson, pink and ochre cloud.  Perrith sent scouts both ahead and behind; some to seek the barak herd and others to watch for signs of the Ummakil.  When news passed back it was what they most dreaded, for there was no sighting of the barak, but on the plain behind them smoke rose again.  The tribe walked on, growing weary, with the nagging clutching of empty bellies.  The land was changing, becoming strewn with boulders and they reached a great finger of rock taller than a dozen men that was carved with many symbols.  Rasgan, Torrin and Perrith examined it closely.

“Here is the mark of our people,” said Rasgan, unrolling a faded skin,  “and here upon the map the stone is shown.”

Torrin traced his fingers upon ancient weathered surface.

“There are many markings that I do not know,” he said.

“Aye,” agreed Perrith. “For many are the tribes who have walked this way, each according to their place upon the world.  Is this where our path must leave the way of the barak, Rasgan?”

“It is, Perrith.  The herds have gone yonder, into the forests and then the winding valley that leads to the sea.  Now our way lies there…”  He pointed up to the dark bulk of the mountains whose upper ridges and peaks were highlighted with an aura of crimson sunlight.

And so they left the plain and began the long climb.  There was a path that in parts was worn smooth by the treading of many feet, but elsewhere vanished below screes and falls of greater rocks for the slow cycle of ice, temperate rains and relentless burning sun had left a shattered, broken land.  

“Look to the plain, Torrin,” said Perrith as they struggled upwards.

Looking across the plain, sweeping his eyes from the sea of shadow below to the still sunlit land beyond, Torrin saw the column of smoke rise.

“Do they pursue us, Perrith?”

“I fear so, for they will know the time of our leaving.”

Torrin pictured the body of Perrith's father lying by the abandoned camp.

“Aye, they will, and that we are not far ahead.”

“Torrin, take a small band and seek the trail.  We must pass the high places, those that follow are not the only danger, for the wind begins to change and soon the cold may come.  Choose who you will and go quickly, we shall come when oldest and youngest are rested.”

Torrin gathered together Rasgan, Turnal, Nagul, and three other hunters who were swift and strong.  They set off briskly up the steep and winding path while above them reared great cliffs, dark and shadowy, with only the highest crags flecked with red sunlight.  Many rock-falls had tumbled down ripping away or burying the ancient route.  Despite moving cautiously with their hunter's soft tread upon the tumbled debris, they often sent the unbalanced rocks bouncing away to a distant, echoing impact.  They reached the bottom of a cliff but the forbidding crag showed no sign of breach or stairway.  Then Rasgan, scouting along the wall’s foot, called to them.

“Here! Here is the way!  Our mark is upon it!”

A great cleft led upwards, narrowing back into the mountainside.  It was bridged in many places by wedged boulders that had fallen from above.  Carved in stone at its base was the mark of the tribe, worn by time, battered by rock-falls and barely to be seen.

“The mark must be carved again, “ said Rasgan, “for when the world turns full circle our children's children will come this way.  This is my task, now do yours.  Go upwards and find the path.”

Leaving Rasgan to chip a renewed symbol into the unyielding rock, they began to scale the cleft.  The rocks were smoothed as if many feet and hands had climbed the way before and sometimes on reaching upwards they would find steps and edges that had long ago been hammered or chiselled into the stone.  The cleft was steep and narrow but they made good speed between damp and mossy walls until they emerged at last upon a broad terrace where a final tier of cliffs confronted them with the highest pinnacles rearing up into sunlight.  Another gully beckoned, wider and less steep.

“Did Rasgan say what lies above?” asked Turnal.

“A high valley,” replied Torrin. “And a gentle path downward.”

“I do not like the wind,” said Turnal, facing the darkness to the west.  “It begins to turn and grows cold.”

It was then that a stone fell from above.  They drew silent and bunched together beneath the cliff.  

“Listen,” hissed Torrin, motioning them to silence.   There was a voice above but the words could not be heard.   

“It cannot be the Ummakil,” whispered Turnal.

“It should not be,” replied Torrin, “But we must see...”

He stepped out from the shelter and shouted up.

“I am Torrin of the Vasagi, who stands above?”

A voice called out from the cliff top.

“It is the Asgal who stand above you hunter, as ever we did.”

There were other tribes whose paths crossed theirs from time to time.  If they met in lands or times of plenty, and if no old feuds smouldered, they would trade and sit before a common fire.   But if the land was lean or parched by drought, then they might quarrel and skirmish.   Always somewhere ahead, under a brighter sun, were the Asgal whose pathway was as theirs. There were times when one tribe hurried and another lingered, each for their own purposes according to their ways, and then they might meet.   There had been no bad blood between Vasagi and Asgal in living memory.

Torrin led his companions up the final scramble, into the warm bright rays of the sun again.  Before them stretched a valley, a great trough that curved away between walls of snow-capped ridges.  Further down the valley, from somewhere unseen, rose several columns of smoke.  There was a distant ringing as of many metal hammerheads beating upon stone.   Stood between them and the downward path were a dozen Asgal.  Torrin had met the tribe once in his youth and knew much of their ways. They were hunters too, but hunters of many beasts; he remembered the pelts and skins they had worn when joining the Vasagi at the fireside.  But these Asgal were dressed differently and they did not carry bows or spears.  Each was clad the same, in dark leather bearing a strange emblem, a triangle within a circle.  There were long scabbards slung from their belts and each man held something that Torrin had never seen before, yet he sensed was a weapon; a crossbow.   And they all smiled, but not the smile of welcome, it was the smile of a predator seeing the prey is cornered, anticipating some cruel sport.

“Where do you journey, Vasagi?”  asked one of their band, still smiling.

“We seek the way for the tribe,” replied Torrin cautiously.  “We seek our path.”

“There is no path for you here.”

A silence followed for a moment before Turnal spoke.

“This has ever been our path and well you know it.  Why do you linger here?  Can you not see the fires of the Ummakil yonder?”  

“Why should we fear the Ummakil?” replied another Asgal,  “or any tribe?  We are stronger than we were, Vasagi.  Our ways have changed.  This land we take to be our own.  And none may pass unless we say, be they of any tribe.”  

Turnal stepped forward, flushed with anger.

“End this game and let us pass!” she demanded, “The wind grows cold and our people wait below….”

The nearest Asgal grinned at her.  “You may pass, pretty one,” he said, “you may share all that is mine….”

He walked towards her as he spoke and reached out to touch her breast.  A swift backward sweep of Turnal's foot pulled the Asgal’s legs from beneath him and he fell heavily on his back.  The others of his group each made a movement of their fingers upon the crossbows as with a click, safety catches were released.  Turnal was already kneeling upon the fallen man, with a bone dagger poised at his throat.

“You may share this with me if it pleases you.  What shall I cut?  Your throat?  Or shall I take the blade lower and chop myself a trophy for the women to laugh at? You may choose.”