Ursus of Ultima Thule (3 page)

The boy ran. Terror runs swifter than rage follows. Boys can go where big men cannot — holes, hollows, runways, dogpaths, shinny up slender trees and drop over palings. There was Bab-uncle crouching up his slender fire. It was an instant. His grandmother’s hut. A packet thrust into his hands, the bark bag with the small victuals the old man took with him when he hunted herbs. A hide lifted up to show an opening the boy had never seen before. A burrow, wide enough for him. A patch of light. The village palisades behind him. An echoing that might have been the clamor of the mob. That might have been the beating of his blood. Something clutched in his other hand. He ran. He ran.

“Go, Arnten. Find your father,” the old uncle had said as he lifted the hide-flap. As it fell and all was dark, the boy heard him say, “It is time.” Then nothing but a faint moment of one of the old man’s chantings.
Arnten
. The word lodged like a grub in a honeycomb cell.
Arnten
. But there was no sign, yet. A faint thought:
it is my name
. No time for further thought.
Arnten
. His name. That and escape. For now, enough. A life. A name.

In the woods, however, nothing was now asking his name. With a knowledge deeper than thought he avoided the hard-trodden dust of the common path and sank into the thicket like a snake. Behind, he heard the clamor and shouting descend into a single sound on a single note and stay there, like the noise of a swarm of bees hovering and
mrumming
its one dull note forever. Somehow it sounded infinitely more menacing than any cluster of mere words. Presently the humming
-mrumming
grew louder. Then loud. The ear-pressed earth echoed like a drumhead. The echo filled the ear and air. Suddenly it was gone and he, Arnten, realized that it had gone a time ago and that he was alone and that if any were still seeking him, they were not doing it here.

Slowly he rose up in the thicket like a mist. He gained the path. He snuffed up the breeze. He listened. He was gone.

• • •

A bird sang twit-twit-twit on a branch. A ground squirrel hopped and scampered, scampered and hopped, vanished from view. There was a smell of wetness, of damp earth and the scent of the sweet green breath of plants. Arnten knew that there were times to look up and times to look down and times to look straight ahead. He saw the bush, he saw through the bush and, a long, long way beyond the bush, he saw the boles of several trees but nothing in between. Softly, gently, he pushed the shrubby branches aside. For a moment he paused, holding his breath, listening. There was not, had not been for long, sounds of mob or pack or crowd. There had been no man sounds at all, save for his own. It was improbable that any enemy of his own blood was near. It was not impossible.

But he heard no new noise. Only the faint patter of the ground squirrel. Only the same twit-twit-
twit
of the bird on the branch.

He slipped past the handful of branches and let them make their own return to their natural positions, only restraining them enough so that they should close without sound. He went on a bit and then he stopped and considered, there in the cool green corridor which for now meant safety. It had been used enough to create a trail, but little enough to allow the bush’s growing to obscure the entrance. Perhaps small and dainty deer slipped along this tunnel through the trees. They would not mind sharing it with him. Or perhaps white tiger, dire wolf, snowy leopard, used it in quest of the same small dainty deer. This thought contracted and shook his limbs in a long shudder. He felt and saw the nap of hair quiver upon his skin and stand up from the fearful flesh.

His mind leaped from thought to thought as a spark of fire leaps from one twig to another. Another boy, conceiving the same thought, might find his mind working
thought of danger — beast equals danger — beast equals panic — run for your life
, without even realizing the process. But his own mind worked
thought of danger — beast equals
think
about danger — beast
. And he stopped and thought.

The thought is not the thing
.

And the thought told him that the thing, the great ones among the danger-beasts, were seldom if ever to be found in this part of Thule at this season of the year; they were to be found (or rather, avoided) farther to the north, where men had less thinned out the game on which they chiefly preyed; winter snows, in which the hooved beasts would flounder and be more easily tracked and trapped and killed, might indeed bring the great killers down.

But then again might not.

He felt the drum within his bosom slow its clamor and then its beats receded to their normal slow strokes, below the threshhold of perception. He began to go on, but the trail was narrow and something caught upon a branch and held him. He looked down and saw he was still carrying without awareness the two things hastily taken in his flight from town. The bark bag of food, the bear-token upon its leathern thong. It was this last he now had to disengage. It seemed somehow as natural to hang it around his neck as to loop the grass cord of the food wallet from shoulder to hip. So. He had no weapon but he had food, itself a sort of weapon — was not hunger the chief enemy? He had a potency in the form of the bear carving, a token of whoever his father was — a father contained in a piece of wood on a thong was better than no father at all.
Find your father, Arnten
. What did he know of how or where? Either his father was or was not a bear. If not, then he knew and could know nothing. If so — then what? Where were bears? Anywhere, manywhere, where there were trees and streams. So. Avoid the grasslands, the great meadows. But he would have done so in any case. There was the game he could not take, there would be the great beasts, the danger-beasts he could not forfend.

Therefore, the forest. A tree creaked. It seemed a Yes.

• • •

When the balls of boiled millet and scraps of dried meat and fish were gone from his bark bag he went a while without and he hungered. Then there were berries and plants his old herb-uncle had shown him. He ate walking and he slept little. He seemed to need less of either. If the path forked and one branch inclined toward the plains of danger, he took the other. If there was still a choice and a question, he held the token in his hands and pointed it between the paths. It moved. Sometimes slowly, slightly. But it moved. It had one day not yet stopped moving when he felt the eyes upon him and looked up. They were great, glowing, amber eyes — intelligent eyes, but far too strange to be the eyes of any man. Nor were they.

The figure was squat of body and shag of skin, with a brown mane of hair upon scalp and broad face. The extraordinarily long arms were folded across the extraordinarily thick chest. A kilt of soft leather girdled the loins. Short were the powerful legs. Over arms, hands and chest and belly the long brown hair grew thickly. The boy found himself looking at his own body and limbs. Instantly, several thoughts — and one of them as an almost instant surprise:
I am not afraid!
And, another —

“Nay, boy.” The voice was strange in more than being unknown. It had odd tones and echoes, the final vowels nasalized so that almost they sounded as
nay’n, boy’n
. “Nay, boy. It’s isn’t me nurr any we who’s is fathered ye ‘n given ‘e them warm hairs upon yurr’s skin.” So acutely did the strange one discern his thoughts. And spoke a few words of no understanding, at first, to the boy — whose ear sped back and caught on a word he knew.

“Arn’t.”

He said, “The bear — ”

Something flashed golden in the amber eyes. More strange words. Then — “Ye dow int speak en witchery words — hey’n?” Arnten shook his head. “Nay,” murmured the stranger. Almost, it was
Ngayng
. He said, “We speak it ever ‘t’the forge. Ye must’s ever speak en ‘t’ th’ Old Tongue t’iron, furr iron ‘t’s a witchery thing. So we speak en it furr habit, ef we dow int think not to — ”

“You said — ‘
Arn’t —
’ ”

“Eh. We speak ‘s’en it, too, ‘t the bear, furr the bear dow be a witchery-beast. All creaturr dow die, but the bear dow come alive agains. And the Star Bear dow gived we-folk the first fire.” The glowing eyes fixed his own. The odd voice, strong and strange, but devoid of harm for him, went on. “En all of Thule’s the wurrd gone round, ‘
When the wolf dow meet the bear: beware.
’ ” There seemed something expectant in his tone, something expectant in his look.

But look and tone alike meant nothing to the boy, who said, as though thinking aloud, “A nain.” The nain stooped his head and his shoulders. And the boy said, “Arnten, I am Arnten.” And this time the nain stooped his entire thick body to the waist.

Then, straightening, he extended an arm so long that its fingers almost touched Arnten’s chest. “We know en what place ‘t is.” The boy’s eyes followed and saw the thick and hairy fingers of the thick and hairy hand were pointing not to his body but to the token slung upon it.

“Where? It is
here
.”

The nain grunted, held up a hand straight from the wrist in the nain sign of negation. “Not this. Th’ other this. Th’ — th’ — ” He struggled to express himself, his manner rather like that of a man seeking a paraphrase for a thing he does not care to name precisely. “Th’
other
this.
That!
”

And he turned and walked away.

Arnten followed.

• • •

After a full seven-days’ walk they came to it. The place was more of a hole or cleft than a cave, but it was dry. Part of the ceiling had fallen in; boulders littered the floor. The nain without hesitating or pausing put his chest against the largest and wound long arms around it. He moved the stone up and over and then back. “Take ‘t up,” he said. “ ‘T’s not furr we to touch.”
It
, clearly, was not the rock. A moment passed in the dim light before Arnten saw
it
. For a moment he thought it was a piece of wood. Then, more by intuition than lineal recognition, he knew that what he saw on the ground where the rock had been was a witchery-bundle.

That
.

It was perhaps the size of his forearm and, with his forearm, after he had taken it outside in the sunlight, he wiped at the dusty hide covering. It was certainly a witchery-bundle. There were witchery signs upon it, some clear, some dim, some familiar, some unknown. Largest and most deeply etched were the sun and the bear. The bear was almost certainly a replica of the one he wore. Or — was it the other way around? “The sun,” he said.

“Eh’ng,” the nain agreed. “The sun and the bear, they go together. For the sun dies and ‘t comes alive again. And the bear dow die and dow come alive again. The sun give fire and the bear, too. Eh’ng,” he said, after a moment, eyeing the hide-covered bundle, and musing. “How many snow-times? Two hands? Surely two. But three? Surely not three. Bear, he telled a-we, Here dow be my token. Here dow by my,” the nain gestured, “
that
. Bear telled: ‘Look for it. If you see him, man-child-bearchild — if you see my token on ‘t him; show him where.’ And we say’d him, Eh’ng-ah, Bear.”

It was mystery, but it was good mystery. Witchery, but he could not think it any but good witchery. It was a good moment. Why, then, did the flood of bad memory rise up in his mind, come spilling out of his mouth? “They stoned me. They pelted me with filth. They called me
nain’s get
and
bear’s bastard
and they tried to kill me.”

The nain’s amber-colored eyes glowed and darkened and in level sunlight glowed like a beast’s in the night, glowed red, glowed like an amber in the nighttime fire.

Words like distant thunder rolled in his vast chest and rumbled in his wide throat.

“Wolf’s lice! Accursed smoothskins!” He spoke at last in the common tongue and continued to do so, though occasionally dropping into naintalk or the archaic language of witchery. “If it were not for us and our iron they would still be eating of grubs and lizards and roots. And what will they do now, as iron dies? Is there one of them, a single one even, with cunning and courage enough to feed the wizards? Their king, ah, he might have, when he was young, but he’s gotten old now, he’s gotten half-mad now, he looks in the wrong direction, he afflicts where no affliction can help, the wind blows cruel hard from the north but he thinks it blows from the south! A nain’s life is that it’s worth to try to persuade him — if a nain wished it. As for the rest of the slim race — ” He caught his breath, part in a sigh, part in a sob. The fiery glow in his eyes began to die away.

“Nay, I’ll say no more as regards that race and blood, ‘tis partly yours. They may deny it, may deny you — you may wish to deny it and them. But the blood cannot be denied. Nay, nay. The blood cannot be denied.” Abruptly, gesturing to the bundle, the nain said, “Open it then.”

The outer covering had been tied tight with sinews, but his probing fingers found one loose enough to allow his teeth purchase. He gnawed, felt the fibers give way — give until his teeth met with a click. Quickly his fingernails pulled the thread, tugged it from pierced hole, from the next and next. Some sort of dried membrane — the bladder, perhaps, of a large animal — was inside the outer covering, bound about with bark cord which did not long resist attack. Inside was a long pouch with a drawstring tied in tassels. Carefully he unfastened this, carefully he laid out the contents on the outer wrappings.

First, by size alone, was a knife in a sheath of horn and leather, with a good bone handle carved in the same likeness of a bear. It was entirely unaffected by the iron-rot. It was a good knife.

There was also a dried and withered beechnut.

There was also a greenstone.

There was also a bear’s claw.

There was also, bent and doubled, but not yet broken, a river reed.

There was nothing else.

He looked up to ask about these, but the nain was gone.

• • •

Every man had a witchery-bundle; even children devised them in imitation of their elders. Some had richly adorned ones, the contents bought of high-priced witcherers for nuggets of amber and pelts of marten, sable, ermine, white tigers, snow leopards. Some had but meager pouches containing perhaps a single item — a bone, a dried this-or-that, a something seen in a dream and sought for and found. A tooth pried from a dry skull. A fragment of something said to be a thunderstone.