Authors: John Hart
During one of these visits to his ragged friends Urrell determined to penetrate into their minds. They, in turn, appeared to wish to respond. Urrell squatted in front of an elder and locked gazes with him. As he stared into the old man’s rheumy eyes a picture formed deep down in them, as though Urrell were prying into an ancient vision in someone else’s memory, resurrected from ages past. In an icy landscape of vast slopes, dark shapes moved, too small at first and distant to make out. The harder he stared the closer they came, till he recognised the woolly flanks of a huge kind of bison, of musk-oxen and then, farther away, the unmistakable outlines of hairy mammoths. Tiny human figures trailed behind them.
“
Mammurak
!” He jumped up, breaking the spell. The old man’s eyes emptied. It was too late to recapture the vision, to Urrell’s bitter regret. Had those humans been hunters, or worshippers of the mammoths? Could this old man, indeed all his folk, connect to the mammoths in a memory held in common by these silent people? Urrell had heard of some men who could summon fishes out of the water, and as a boy had once seen an old man call the seals to the shore to be slaughtered. Could these people call up mammoths?
Something of his thoughts must have connected with the elder. The old man rose and went into his hutch. He came out holding a length of hide, a sort of belt, one end of which he handed to Urrell while he grasped the other.
He was expecting something to happen. Both waited. As they did so, Urrell felt the thickness of the hide and its coarse stubble of shaven bristles. As he wondered at it, the air grew cold around the encampment, the old man mumbled and clucked in the manner of his people and stared with a greenish intensity at Urrell, the misty, empty eyes lighting with new power, drawing Urrell away from where he was, into a coldness remotely recalled from the episode at the huge tree.
Later he could scarcely recreate what happened as he froze in his summer apparel. A vast distance traversed, behind the elder and a group of his clan. They travelled into the ever-colder, ever-farther, ever-vaguer elsewhere. Urrell’s awareness grew fainter but he hung on to it, knowing he must not let go, as a man knows he survives in the cold by dint of consciousness.
His reward came. Through snow-dazzled eyes he saw, he knew he saw, within a stone’s cast of him, a group of massive animals, darkly outlined against the surrounding whiteness. His companions went towards the mammoths and his last memory was of them trudging in the snow behind the huge creatures as the animals lumbered away.
When he came round he was curled on the ground. He got up and looked around for the camp, for the elder and his folk. All had vanished: hovels, hearths, people.
In his hand, he held the strip of hide. This he would reveal to no-one, not even to Agaratz. It was to be his alone.
*****
Meanwhile, Agaratz seemed to have a quest of his own, absenting himself without a word for days. He would not answer Urrell’s tentative enquiries, only saying, “Soon see.”
He was loth to spy on his mentor, even wondering if he was meant to or not. By chance he got his answer when, out foraging in a remoter part of the combe’s rim, he stumbled on a sight that struck him still, making him hold on to Rakrak’s fur lest she rushed forward: it was Agaratz. He was stripped to his breechclout, face and limbs streaked white and red, his rusty mane dishevelled and hanging down his humped back, his ears and cheeks. He was intoning the same lament which Urrell remembered from Agaratz’s long farewell to his dead kinsfolk in the cavern on the River Nani. He was addressing them again, but why? Was he about to rejoin them? Fear rose in Urrell’s whole being, of possibly becoming an orphan once more.
Whether in answer to the lament or not – he would never know or ask – the ground shook. A powerful tremor nearly knocked Urrell off his feet. He knew these occurred and remembered a severe earthquake when he was small that had brought down sea cliffs and cantles of rock from crags. Old women had told the boy that the Great Bear in his cavern underground had woken and shaken himself. Even as a small boy he had found that unlikely. He had never sought an explanation from Agaratz, the all-knowing, any more than he asked what shooting stars were meant to be, or do, flashing across the night sky as he gazed at the stars. Some things were not known or meant to be known.
During the tremor Agaratz had remained motionless in his posture of supplication, the lament rising.
Urrell edged back and returned silently to camp. He noticed that the rock face over the biggest cavern bore new cracks and that one or two slabs had detached and were being cleared away.
O
ne day activity started round the grassy open space in front of the cavernous openings. For the first time Urrell noticed men entering and leaving the caves. They carried in objects taken from shelters round the green and returned empty-handed. When he tried to see what they were doing, old men in strange furs, carrying ceremonial wands, barred his approach and shooed him and other youths away.
When he asked Agaratz, he only got the same “Soon see”.
And soon he did. A long horn blast next dawn announced the start. From every shelter and hollow girls wended their way to the green. Urrell wanted to follow.
“Only young womens, Urrell, this day.”
He watched them stream over the green into the caves, to the blare of horn-blasts, and waited for them to come back out again. They did not. Nothing else happened all day save the ceaseless horn-blowing at the cave mouths, performed by men in furs with stag antlers on their heads, led by one adorned with the horns of a bull. That night the blaring continued and the maidens remained confined. No-one in the camp slept, fires blazed, groups sat round them, eyes on the green.
At dawn the maidens streamed out, to more blares on horns. They were almost naked, bodies streaked white and red, hair hanging down, faces haggard. A huge shout rose across the encampment, mixed with yells and ululations, as much from women as from men. Urrell noticed that Agaratz remained silent. As suddenly as they had begun, the shouts died down. The horn-blowing stopped and all fell quiet.
The tall man, he of the bull’s horns, made to look taller by his headgear, took the lead with a blast of his long trumpet, followed this time with several notes, a sort of tremolo, which had the effect of setting the girls into a circular dance, one behind the other, holding hips. A group of old women began a monotonous rhythm tapped out on drum-like hollow logs, accompanying the feet of the maidens. This went on and on. From his distance, Urrell could not make out whether Guimera was among the begrimed, painted figures jigging round and round.
The dance proved the only event of that day, and continued until exhaustion set in, the circle of girls dwindling as dancers fell from weariness, sprawling where they tumbled, or gasping on their hands and knees in the grass, hair hanging down. By dusk there remained but half a dozen maidens still shuffling round and Urrell imagined he saw Guimera as one of them in the shape of a taller girl with tawny locks that straggled over her shoulders on to her painted breasts.
As suddenly as it had begun, the tap-tap of the old women ceased; the horn was blown; the exhausted girls, those still upright and their sisters who got up or were helped up by one another, re-entered the cave mouths for the night. The throng of watchers dispersed to their shelters, fires and food.
When Urrell reached his shelter, Agaratz was already enlivening the embers to grill bison meat he had traded for beads from neighbours who had had a good hunt. Of what might occur on the morrow there was no hint, but whatever it was to be Urrell vowed to himself to get nearer to the green, through the crowd, to see Guimera. Outside, there was a sense of anticipation in the camp. Rakrak slept beside Urrell, her head on his feet. Piura gently snored nearby.
Nothing happened next day, only tension hanging in the air, an aftermath of excitement from the dancing of the girls, the blaring of trumpets, the drumming, the horned men. Agaratz looked wary. “Keep Rakrak and Piura here,” he said.
Gangs of youths, with the high spirits and the pack instincts of young males, roamed about looking for fights. Wrestling challenges ended in injuries and spear wounds were not uncommon. Stones flew. Misrule reigned.
Amongst all this a gang of tall men, swarthy and bedecked with beads, came round, upsetting shelters, bullying and purloining, in search of someone or something. Agaratz, at his cooking, looked up. “Watch, Urrell. Spears.”
Both recognised men from the tribe that they had crossed on the grasslands. They must have heard of a hunchback or of a youth with a wolf.
Agraratz laid out his spears, signing to Urrell to do likewise. He heaped pebbles beside his stone-thrower, three short throwing javelins with the spear-thrower, and a cudgel inset with flints at the knob-end which he had just made, a weapon new to Urrell. Satisfied with these preparations, he stood up to watch the progress of the oncomers. Shrieks from shelters, shouts and cries, signalled their advance.
The tallest, the leader to judge from feathers strung in his hair, noticed Agaratz first, pointed with a spear and yelled to the others, who came out of a shelter they were ransacking, its inhabitants fleeing downhill. The men advanced up the slope towards Agaratz and Urrell. There were six of them. Agaratz showed no concern, merely stooping to pick up a pelt and wrap it round his right forearm as a shield. “Do too, Urrell.” As Urrell did so, he shooed Rakrak back into the shelter for safety. Piura, by the fire, crouched and watched.
When they were within range, Agaratz held his spears aloft and brought them down points first, a sign of non-aggression, only to be met by a yell of derision. Agaratz gestured to Urrell to do as he did: he laid down the long spears and picked up his spear-thrower and short javelins. Urrell’s, with its rim of tiny mammoths, felt warm, ready for action in his grasp, a true weapon.
Two spears flew close and now Urrell saw the purpose of the wadge of pelt: with it Agaratz fielded the missiles, snapped the shafts as he had done before, and threw the pieces at their foes. Then it was Agaratz’s turn. Urrell was to see another side of his mentor. The yellow eyes blazed at the spearmen advancing up-slope, never a good tactic for missile warfare. Agaratz set the butt of a javelin in the dub of the thrower, singled out the tall man and in a long arc of his left arm, using all the power and leverage of his shoulder, hurled it. The man continued forward as though the javelin had missed. Even Urrell thought it had. Then he fell on his face. His fellow warriors paused, looked uphill, looked at their leader, and fled. Timid people who had been peeping out of their shelters started to creep out. A boy shouted he had found the javelin farther down the slope and ran up to Agaratz with it, proud of the blood on his fingers. Urrell realised that the javelin had not only hit its target but gone through the man’s ribs and beyond.
Agaratz turned back to his hearth and cooking.
Around the corpse huddles formed to stare. From there they drifted up to Agaratz and Urrell, making an uneasy half-circle, others packing in behind the first arrivals. Several tendered small gifts, a lame old man stepped forward, spoke and made an obeisance, an old woman prostrated herself followed by others who beat the ground with the palms of their hands and wailed. At this Agaratz left his cooking to acknowledge their attention, leaning on a spear, flanked by Urrell, a wolf and a lioness.
Urrell wondered what he would do next. Mimick animals? Do handstands? Pipe?
Instead, Agaratz stepped forward, raised the woman and went up to the crowd, touching each member in turn as though pacifying a herd. When all were quietened he waved them away with both arms. They turned and went back to their fires. Several men, led by the old man who had spoken, dragged the body away.
It was a golden afternoon. Word of Agaratz’s feat must have travelled fast. Small knots of men and women came to look at him, standing humbly a little way off. What they sought Urrell could only guess – some kind of solace, a sense of wonder at the survival of such a strange being, for everyone knew the fate of babies born hunchback or malformed.
Agaratz, after his spear-throw and the calming of the crowd, seemed weary and somewhat shrunken to Urrell’s eyes.
I
n dribs and drabs the maidens had left the cavern to return to their family groups. Urrell did not see Guimera come out. She must have slipped by when he was out foraging with Rakrak. Although he searched among the shelters, wherever he dared, alive to the hostile clan whose leader Agaratz had slain, he could not find her or whatever group she belonged to. She had vanished.
When asked, Agaratz waved a hand. “You see. Now not.”
Little knots of people went on hanging about their shelter. They stared at Agaratz, at Urrell, at the wolf and at the lioness. Shyly some brought offerings, gifts of food, objects to trade, and in return Agaratz showed them his stock of beads, amulets and carvings in bone and ivory for them to wonder at. Nothing Urrell saw from others could vie with the craftsmanship of his objects, yet Agaratz looked at each offering with interest and encouragement.
A woman brought a sick child. Agaratz took the child, felt it and muttered over it, rubbing its belly with a paste of his making. Urrell watched as it seemed to improve. The rumour of a healer ran round the camp and soon others with ailments, wounds, sores, even fractures, trooped to be cured, patched or blown over.
He turned none away. Urrell observed that his concentration of mind, chants, hands laid on the sick and smoke blown over some of them wore Agaratz down. After he had laid hands on an ill person, muttering under his breath, sometimes kneading a back or a limb, he would appear diminished, would need to rest back in the shelter. It was entirely new behaviour to Urrell who, as though in response, felt surges of energy enter him as Agaratz tired.
“You touch, Urrell.”
The patient was an old woman bewailing aches in her middle. Urrell acted as he had seen Agaratz do. He laid her down, placed both hands on her midriff, and concentrated, eyes closed. He wondered what would happen. As he did so, Agaratz came from behind and placed his own hands on Urrell’s shoulders, pressed down with them, accompanying the pressure with an incantation. In moments Urrell felt a warmth run through him, down his arms and into the woman. She ceased her moaning and went limp.