Authors: John Hart
When the hunters had eaten they conferred. The one in the crossbelt scratched a plan or design on a bare patch of ground, which all looked at intently for a while and discussed. Then, as one man, they leapt to their feet, brandished their javelins, jigged round the patch of ground, uttered a single howling whoop that startled Urrell almost into giving away his hideout, and trotted off in single file in pursuit of the bison.
It was some time before Urrell felt safe enough to steal out to the gnawn bones marking the spot of the hunters’ repast. He regnawed every one clean of the least shred of gristle, fat and sinew, his belly quaking for such nourishment after days of raw fungus, handfuls of berries and grubs prised from rotten logs. Then each bone was cracked with stones for marrow and juices to suck dry.
Only after the last splinter had been dealt with did Urrell think to look at the drawing on the ground. It was the outline of a bison, the bison he had witnessed, with spears in its sides and a rear hoof caught in that trap-like box.
He was absorbed in this when his heart tripped as he heard a tread and realised that he, in turn, was being intently observed.
U
rrell crouched stock-still, eyes locked with the watcher, who appeared to be alone. He too kept still, offering no threat of violence.
They had time to examine each other. The stranger was little above the lad’s height, with shaggy hair and a remarkably intense gaze from yellowish, goat-like eyes. He seemed to understand how hungry the boy was. From a pouch he drew out a sizable chunk of cooked flesh, still on the bone, and held it out invitingly. As the boy did not budge, he beckoned with the other hand. Still the boy dared not shift.
The rank weeds, the fetid smell.
Holding out his offering, the watcher slowly advanced towards Urrell, pausing to instill trust before moving forward again. Urrell saw he was unarmed and limped. It was clear he meant no harm, even meant good. When he was a few paces away he tossed the meat to the lad and squatted to see how it was received, never taking his light eyes off Urrell’s face. He uttered a few words in a strange language, underscored by gestures urging the boy to pick up the food and to eat. It was enough to allay some of Urrell’s wariness, enough for him to pick up the joint and sniff it: venison, cooked right through. He bit. It was delicious. He chewed and tore at it, his hunger overcoming fear. An expression of pleasure and approval on his provider’s features was accompanied by more words, ones conveying a tone of friendly interest. Urrell nodded and grunted.
“It is very good,” he said. “I am very hungry.”
“Good. Then you eat, eat,” said his benefactor in the boy’s own language. He spoke it haltingly, as if recollected from a far past.
So Urrell did as bidden, ravenously, on his hunkers opposite this strange short man who had appeared out of nowhere bearing sustenance and was now squatting a few paces away watching him eat his fill.
That the watcher spoke his language did not surprise the boy much.
He was used to hearing different languages among the women in the camp when they conversed among themselves, or crooned to their infants. They came from distant places, exchanged and traded at moots, or stolen, bringing with them strange ways and words, so that boys like Urrell hanging round the camp picked up smatterings of words, mainly names of things, leaf movements, animal moods, ghostly occurrences, and objects brought from faraway places, passed from hand to hand and held to be valuable or potent due to their very rarity. His red spearhead, now the bear’s, had been one.
“Where you come?”
The boy answered by pointing up and over the cliff he had been following.
“How many days?”
Shy to risk speech with this unusual being and loth to look straight into that yellowish, enquiring gaze, Urrell kept his eyes fastened on his venison haunch-bone and held up one hand, fingers outspread, clenched and outspread twice, to signal how long he had been travelling.
The answer seemed to satisfy his questioner who left him to get on with his meal.
Then: “How you called?”
“Urrell.”
“Ah, Urrell, Urrell,” repeated the stranger, savouring the name, fluting the sound.
As the boy said nothing, the man volunteered: “I, Agaratz.”
By now the bone was picked clean. No excuse remained for staying crouched, so Urrell stood up slowly, unsure of himself, avoiding sudden movements that might look hostile. His spears he left on the ground.
Agaratz also rose. Although he was scarcely taller than Urrell he had a grown man’s breadth of shoulder and a powerful chest, as well as adult hairiness. Indeed he was hairier than any man Urrell had ever known. His head hair grew coarsely down the back of his neck, sprouting from the nape, its rusty colour matching the yellow eyes. Agaratz noticed the boy’s hesitant look. A gleam of playfulness lit the strange eyes, as in a feline’s when chasing and tumbling in play with other kits outside their den. Was it a prelude to a half-playful, half-hurtful gambol? Urrell tensed, ready to retreat or dodge.
Instead, Agaratz turned to show his back in profile, to show the boy that he was crookbacked.
Urrell’s surprise must have shown – he knew that malformed babies were not kept, even if their mothers tried to save them. He had heard their screams as the men of the clan wrested the cripple from its mother, threw it into the air and skewered its falling body on a spear to avert evil befalling the encampment. Again that half-playful gleam played across the yellow eyes as they noticed Urrell’s discomfiture and appeared to prelude a pounce, making the boy feel like the smallest cub confronting the biggest of a litter.
But no pounce came. Instead, Agaratz spoke, forgetting the boy did not understand his native tongue. It was some kind of explanation, perhaps to do with his back, in no way threatening, so Urrell relaxed a little and stared.
“Ah,” went Agaratz, brought up by the boy’s blank look. “Ah-ha, I say that I
konkoraz
.” Then, to show what he meant, he pointed at his hump.
Urrell nodded, more to show friendliness than comprehension.
It was then that Agaratz did an astonishing thing. Placing his hands on the ground and kicking his legs in the air, he walked about on his palms. Instantly Urrell understood why. One of Agaratz’s legs ended in a club foot, hence his limp. Instead of toes, the foot split into two horny extensions from the callused heel. The lame leg was hairier than the other, thinner, more sinewy. Urrell had never seen anything like it and his face showed his astonishment when Agaratz sprang upright from his handstand.
Impulsively he stepped forward to look closer, then as quickly drew back, alive to danger. Agaratz’s arms could have broken every bone in his body with ease. But there was no menace in Agaratz’s stance, not a hint of danger in the gleaming eyes that seemed to say, ‘Look at my skill and singularity’, with a look that changed to wistfulness no sooner had Urrell shrunk back. It was that look which told Urrell, as no words could, that Agaratz meant no harm. This time he stepped forward and did not step back, but placed his hand on Agaratz’s forearm, a gesture as natural as when he had set off up the course of the waterfall and across the moors.
In his turn Agaratz placed his hand on Urrell’s and they remained motionless for a while in this gesture of friendship.
A
garatz stirred first, to pick up Urrell’s spears. He examined them attentively a few moments before handing them over. The fibre bindings, tested with a thumbnail, seemed to meet his silent approval. Old Mother’s fibres that she had shown Urrell how to ret.
Without a word, Agaratz leading, they set off across the glade into the forest. Under the downswept boughs of the first fir Agaratz stooped and recovered a pouch, several javelins and smaller objects bound in a bundle with thongs. Urrell realised Agaratz had cached these things before coming out to meet him, perhaps to avoid frightening him. It roused in him feelings he could not name, this rare kindness. He felt safe, glad to be trotting behind this being with the rolling gait from the odd foot, the roll of powerful shoulders humped under the russet hair.
Urrell now had time to notice his new companion’s garb. Never had he seen the like for stitching: the man’s trews fitted to below the knees, sewn down each side, the leather supple. Over his back and chest Agaratz wore a seamless jerkin that reached mid-thigh. Small ornaments like quills were stitched to the front. Over this was slung a pouch, also ornamented with quills, coloured to make patterns in white, reddle and black.
He could also see that Agaratz’s javelins were beautifully crafted, finer than anything he had ever seen, the shafts incised with tiny heads of deer, bison and other creatures. The tips, long and wrought in a reddish stone new to Urrell, delighted him. His were poor, boyish things in comparison.
Their route ran parallel with the cliffs in the same direction as Urrell had intended to go in the hope of finding a settlement. Neither spoke, nor did Urrell think to ask where they were going. Despite his club foot Agaratz travelled with the tireless trot of hunters, barefoot on the springy pine-needle floor of the forest, broken now and again by clearings where a beck ran down the cliff face and created a little glade with light enough for deciduous trees and bushes to grow. At these Agaratz was careful to pause, look and listen before crossing over. What he was wary of he did not say.
They had come to one of these when Agaratz said: “We stop. You hungry?”
“Yes.” He was tired too.
“Good. Look.” So saying, Agaratz pointed with his javelins up the clearing to the cliffs at an overhang at ground level. It looked unexceptional to Urrell. Agaratz made for it and he followed.
Charred wood and ashes in a small hearth near the back wall betokened a hunters’ shelter. It had none of the usual rubbish, bones, broken flints, cast-off shreds of pelts that littered camps, nor their stench, to which Urrell was used.
“Your camp?”
“One my camp.”
“Where is your main camp, your tribe?”
For all response Agaratz waved a hand in the general distance towards which they were travelling. It seemed an inconclusive answer but Urrell dared not question more. Instead he squatted by the dead hearth awaiting what Agaratz might do or offer. His own pouch was bare. Since the venison hours earlier he had eaten only a few bilberries and raspberries grabbed as he trotted behind Agaratz. Food would be welcome in this forest seemingly bereft of game, apart from a few fowl that whirred aloft before they were within range of even a weighted throwing-stick.
“You look, Urrell.”
Agaratz dragged a pine log from the weeds outside and leant it against the inner cave wall. Snags stuck out of it like rungs. Using these, Agaratz climbed to a ledge under the ceiling of the shelter where, invisible from below, were cached provisions: a bundle and a joint of meat. These he tossed to Urrell and followed down his scaling pole.
“I kindle fire. You find wood.”
Keen though he was to see how Agaratz made fire, Urrell did as bidden and was soon back with an armful of dry twigs and cones from beneath the nearest firs. Agaratz was twirling a fire-stick in a hollow log and already blowing on tinder till it flared. Several times Urrell was sent to fetch more fuel, Agaratz intent on building up substantial heat. Urrell expected him to thrust the joint into the flames or dangle it over; instead he built up a bed of embers.
“Now cook.”
He parted the embers with two stones till the glowing mass lay open before Urrell’s inquisitive eyes. Agaratz placed a flat, much-blackened stone in the bottom of the hearth, placed the joint on top, drew the embers over and squatted to wait. Urrell had never seen this done, nor had his surprise gone unnoticed. When he glanced at Agaratz he saw in the crookback’s eyes that playful gleam, like the one when he had astonished Urrell with his handstand, a look which said, ‘See, another trick you did not know’.
It was a trick worth knowing; Urrell’s nose twitched and his stomach rumbled at the savoury smells rising from the roast. When he judged it done, Agaratz scraped away the embers and with two pointed sticks speared the meat and placed it on a flat stone, as Urrell followed every move. First he brushed off ashes and coals then, from a belt pouch, produced a flint knife, longer than a man’s handspan, exquisitely knapped to a fine edge from the same reddish stone as his javelin points, and with it sawed the joint in two, half for Urrell, half for himself, handing the lad his share skewered on one of the roasting sticks.
In companionable silence they set to, Urrell savouring a feast he would long remember.
But it was not yet over. Agaratz surprised Urrell again by producing from his pouch a bark bundle which, unfolded, revealed most of a honeycomb. He halved the delicacy with the same flint knife and gave Urrell one piece and kept the other – something no man in his own tribe would have done. Urrell wavered before the offer, expecting a cuff if he reached out for it.
“Take, Urrell. For you. I bring for you.” Then, perhaps to coax him the better, he said, “
Etzi”
in his own tongue.
“Honeycomb.”
“Ah, honeycomb,” repeated Agaratz, savouring the new word.
“Etzi,” said Urrell, in the same spirit. Their eyes met in a look of complicity and Urrell saw an expression new to him on a human face: a sly grin, part fun, part knowingness, part mockery, which gave him a curious sense of pleasure and comfort, so that he laughed as he never had before and clapped his hands. This incited Agaratz to do another handstand round the fire, then drop on all fours and begin mimicking the gait and movements of different animals, delighting the boy who called out the names of the creatures being imitated, identifying them from the performances before him: “horse – foal – mare in foal – boar – sow with young – bear – buck – doe – stork…”
Plainly his pleasure redoubled the performer’s, encouraging Agaratz to move from mimickry to imitating the calls, grunts, sounds made by each animal with such accuracy as to make Urrell think, eyes closed, that the beast was in the shelter. His repertoire seemed to include all creation. At least all creation that the boy knew – until Agaratz rose on his toes and knuckles, rounded his back even more than his hump made it, and circled Urrell on toes and knuckles with a rolling, massive gait, rocking from side to side, burbling and rumbling, till without warning he emitted a blaring trumpeting that echoed out of the shelter into the woods, startling Urrell from his happy state.