of being assaulted by ghouls and spirits, or of being captured by the outcasts. Some women, very few, actually ran to join those fugitives and once there, hidden in the deep trees, they formed small savage clans who preyed on crops, children, herds and flocks.
Yet Saban saw no dangers as he headed westwards through the woods. The sun made the green leaves shine and the warm wind whispered in the branches. He followed the same path on which he and Lengar had tracked the stranger who had brought the treasure to Ratharryn, and though he knew there was a risk in walking such a path so openly when the woods were filled with enemies, he took the chance for he wanted Jegar’s dogs to have no trouble in following his spirit through the tangling trees.
In the afternoon, when he had reached the high crest from where he could stare far across the western forests, Saban heard the faint sound of ox horns blowing. That ominous booming told him that Ratharryn’s hunters had been released. They would be carrying glowing embers in pots so that if they chose to stay in the woods at night they could build vast fires that would deter the spirits and the beasts. Saban could use no such defence. He had only Slaol’s help and one short-bladed knife of brittle flint.
He spent a long time searching for a tree that would suit Slaol’s purpose. He knew Jegar’s dogs would be lunging along the path, but he had a long start and time enough, and after a while he settled on an oak tree that grew low and broad, though halfway up its trunk there was a space from which no branches sprang. A man could easily climb the first length of the tree, then he would need to leap to catch hold of a convenient branch that was the thickness of a man’s arm. That branch made the perfect handhold, and if Jegar thought Saban was hidden in the upper leaves of the tree he would leap for it. Saban leapt for it now, and held on tight as his feet scrabbled for purchase on the trunk. Then he hauled himself up and straddled the tree’s narrow limb.
He sat facing the oak’s trunk, said a brief prayer to the tree so that it would forgive the wound he was about to inflict, then used his knife’s tip to gouge a narrow slit along the branch’s topmost surface. Then, when the cut was wide and deep enough, he jammed the flint blade into the wood so that its wicked, white-flaked edge stood proud of the bark. He did his work well, for the blade sat firm in the tree’s grip when he was finished. He spat on the flint to give it luck, then dropped down from the branch. He looked up to make sure that his small trap was invisible, then collected and hid the small scraps of freshly chipped wood that had fallen by the oak’s bole.
He ran downhill to find the stream that flowed at the ridge’s foot and once there he waded through the shallow water because everyone knew that spirits could not cross water. While he was in the stream his own spirit would shrink into his body, thus leaving no trace for Jegar’s dogs. He waded a long way, occasionally muttering a prayer to placate the stream’s spirit, then climbed back up the hill to discover a place where he could rest.
He found a place where two branches sprang from an elm tree’s trunk, and he placed smaller branches across the two to make a platform where he could lie safely. He was hidden, but high enough to see between the leaves to where the white clouds rode the bright sky, and, by craning his neck, he could just see a patch of mossy ground at the tree’s foot. For a long while nothing happened. The wind rustled the leaves, a squirrel chattered its teeth and two bees drifted close. Somewhere a woodpecker rattled at bark, stopped, began again. A rustle of dead leaves made Saban peer down, fearing discovery, but all he saw was a fox carrying a dabchick in its jaws.
Then the living noises of the woods, all the small sounds of claw and beak and paw, just stopped, and there was only the sigh of the wind among the leaves and the creak of the trees. Everything that breathed was crouching motionless because something new and strange had come. There was danger; the forest held its breath, and Saban listened until at last he heard the noise that had silenced the world. A hound bayed.
It was a warm day, but Saban’s naked skin was suddenly chill. He could feel the hairs prickling at his neck. Another dog howled, then Saban heard men’s voices far away. The men were high above him on the slope. Hunters.
He could imagine them. There would be a half-dozen young men, Jegar their leader, all tall and strong and sun-browned, with their long hair twisted into hunter’s braids and hung with feathers. They would be peering up the oak tree, leaning on their spears and calling insults to where they thought Saban was hiding. Perhaps they loosed a few arrows into the leaves, hoping to drive him down so they could walk him back to Ratharryn and parade his shame in front of his father’s hut, but in a small while they would become bored and one of them – let it be Jegar, Saban prayed – would clamber up the oak’s trunk to find him.
Saban lay, his eyes closed, listening. Then he heard a shout. Not just a shout, but a yelp of protest and pain and anger, and he knew his small trap had bitten blood. He smiled.
Jegar fell from the tree, cursing because his right hand was cut deep across the palm. He shrieked and forced his bleeding hand between his thighs as he bent over to alleviate the agony. One of his friends placed moss on the wound, and bound the hand with leaves, and afterwards, furious, they rampaged along the ridge, but neither they nor their howling dogs came close to Saban. They followed his spirit down to the stream, but there the hounds lost him and after a while they abandoned the hunt. The sound of dogs faded and the myriad small sounds of the woods were heard again.
Saban grinned. He relived the moment when he had heard the scream and he thanked Slaol. He laughed. He had won.
He had won, yet still he did not move. He was hungry now, yet he dared not forage in case Jegar was still stalking the slope, so he stayed on his small platform and watched the birds fly home to their nests and the sky turn red with Slaol’s anger because the world was being given over to Lahanna’s care. The chill seeped up from the stream. A deer and her fawn stepped slow and delicate beneath the ash as they went to the water and their appearance suggested there were no hunters concealed on the ridge above, yet still Saban did not move. His hunger and thirst could wait. In the gaps between the high leaves he could see the sky turning smoky and misty, then the first star of Lahanna’s flock appeared. The tribe called that star Merra and it reminded Saban that all his ancestors were gazing down, but it also brought fears of those folk who had died in shame and who were now rousing from their day sleep to let their famished spirits wander the dark trees. Strange claws were being unsheathed and rabid teeth bared as the night terrors of the forest were unleashed.
Saban hardly slept, but instead lay and listened to the noises of the night. Once he heard the crackling of twigs, the sound of a great body moving through the brush, then silence again in which he imagined a monstrous head, fangs bared, questing up into the elm. A scream sounded higher on the ridge, and Saban curled into a ball and whimpered. An owl screeched. The boy’s only comforts were the stars of his ancestors, the cold light of Lahanna silvering the leaves and his thoughts of Derrewyn. He thought of her a lot. He tried to conjure up a picture of her face. Once, thinking about her, he looked up and saw a streak of light slither across the stars and he knew that a god was descending to the earth which he took to be a sign that he and Derrewyn were destined for each other.
For five days and nights he hid, foraging only in the half-light of dawn and dusk. He found a clearing at the bottom of the ridge where the stream had made a wide bend in its course and there he found chervil and garlic. He plucked sorrel and comfrey leaves, and found some broom buds, though they were bitter for their season was almost done. Best of all were the morels that he found higher on the ridge where a great elm had fallen. He carried them back to his platform in the ash and picked the woodlice from their crannies before eating them. One day he even tickled a small trout up from the weeds of the stream and gnawed greedily at its raw flesh. At night he chewed the gum that oozes from birch bark, spitting it out when all the flavour was gone.
Jegar had given up the hunt, though Saban did not know that, and one twilight, seeking for more morels by the rotting elm, he heard a footfall in the leaves and froze. He was concealed by the fallen
