They passed south of the beaver country, right to the shore of the Inner Sea, and they spent a fruitless morning – their fourth on the trail – looking for a canoe.
‘We always sink them in this pool,’ Ta-se-ho said. He prodded the bottom of a deep pool in a feeder stream for an hour while the other two sat in the water sun and enjoyed being only a little damp. He didn’t find a canoe.
He didn’t find a canoe sunk in the deep bay of the Inner Sea, either. He shook his head. ‘Now we have to make a boat,’ he said.
Nita Qwan had not truly absorbed that this was alternative, and he shook his head. ‘I don’t even know how to make a boat.’
The other two men looked at him and laughed.
The boy gathered spruce root. Nita Qwan watched him for a little while, and all the boy did was wander from spruce to spruce, dig down to the wispy surface roots, and pull. When he had a good length, he’d cut the roots with his neck knife, and go to the next. He didn’t strip a single tree – not even a scrubby little tree at the edge of a meadow. He simply took one length of root from each tree.
Ta-se-ho watched him for a while, too. ‘He’s good. The Horned One is a fine teacher. Let’s go find a tree.’
Finding a tree led to hours of walking in the deep woods. It was hard to make sense of this – they were in a hurry, rushing to take a message to the powerful wardens, and yet they were wandering from tree to tree in the woods. Peter was overwhelmed with frustration for several hours, until Nita Qwan decided that this was a matter for careful deliberation.
Ta-se-ho confirmed this view. ‘If the bark opens like a flower while we are on the sea, we die,’ he said. ‘It is worth the time to choose a good tree.’
They hadn’t found it yet, but they found other things – a pair of twisted spruces that years of wind had bent almost over. Ta-se-ho cut both of them down with a light axe – a fine tool, dark steel with a white edge, from Alba.
He tapped many trees with the butt of the same axe – yellow birch, white birch, paper birch – and pulled at the bark on elm and pine and birch alike. As he walked among them, he sang.
‘White birch is best,’ he said.
Nita Qwan felt entirely useless, but somehow, as the day progressed, he learned – almost wordlessly, because Ta-se-ho was a silent teacher – what it was they wanted. They searched for a dead tree – recently dead – with the bark ready to peel away. They found several, all together in the afternoon. They were all a little too small, but the way that his silent companion handled them, and peeled the elm bark back from the trunks, told Nita Qwan most of what he needed to know.
The sun had come out quite strong, and the day was more like late summer than autumn. The two men were stripped to their breechclouts by afternoon, and walking through the magnificent trees was more beautiful than anything Nita Qwan had done – except perhaps make love – for many days. He savoured the smell of the leaves, and the magnificent royal dazzle of red and gold.
As the sun began to sink, he saw a pond, and along the pond a dozen enormous birch trees like white maidens standing over a forest pool. He walked that way, confident that he could find Ta-se-ho, or that the older man could find him, and he reached the first tree – already excited to see that the crown was dead. The bark had the loose feel he thought might be correct, and he turned to raise his voice and saw the doe standing, head turned to watch him, within easy bowshot.
He thought that she was small enough to carry, and he took his bow from its sheath and strung it while she drank warily and watched him.
Then she turned her head, ignoring him. Her ears swivelled like a horse’s ears.
He loosed an arrow, and missed entirely in his hurry. The fall of his spent shaft startled her, and she whirled, white tail shooting up, and he realised that there was another animal, a small buck, even closer to him that he hadn’t seen. He got a second shaft onto his string – the buck turned, and then looked back, and then leaped along the edge of the pond.
He loosed at point-blank range and his shaft went home to the feathers. The deer fell in a tangle of its own hooves, life extinguished almost instantly, and the doe swerved and ran on, ignoring him as she bounded away.
He stood there, flush with deer fever, and realised that the fading hoof beats of the doe were not the only large animal sounds he was hearing.
The hastenoch came down to the edge of the pool along the same path the doe had taken, its long obscene head and enormous antler rack sending a sharp jolt through his body as he realised what had actually panicked the deer.
He found that his fingers had put an arrow on his string.
A horn blew – raucous and long. The four-hoofed monster raised its snout and looked east, towards the other end of the pond – and charged. There was no warning; it went from standing still to full gallop and it screamed its uncanny cry.
Nita Qwan loosed and missed – it was too fast. He had time to loose three more shafts as the great thing raced along the far shore, and his third shaft hit it squarely just behind the armoured plates of its head and upper neck, and the shaft went deep.
Ta-se-ho shot it twice, but both shafts glanced off the bony plates of its head.
Then he seemed to disappear. It was like magic. He was there – and then he was gone.
The horned thing slammed, head first, into the tree next to which Ta-se-ho had been standing. The crash echoed off the trees standing by the pond, and again off the rock face that rose in granite splendour into the afternoon sunlight.
The great beast reared, backed, and slammed into the tree again. Now the monster had an arrow standing upright between his shoulders, like a crest, and then another.
Nita Qwan loosed again. He was shooting the length of the pond, now.
It was too far to see cause and effect, but the monster suddenly sat. It trumpeted its rage, and got its back feet under it.
It sprouted three more arrows – tick, tick, tick.
Nita Qwan’s hands were shaking so hard he had to pause and breathe. But the thing seemed to be down, and he got another arrow – the one he thought of as his best, with a heavy steel head and a heavy shaft and a deep nock he’d carved himself – on the string and then ran at the monster. It was struggling to rise again.
Tick. It now had seven shafts in it.
Ta-se-ho dropped from the tree that the monster had rushed. He landed lightly, bounced to his feet and drew his long knife – and the hastenoch rolled to its feet, antlers lowered.
It rushed him – an explosion of sinew and antler – its rack caught him and he was tossed as Nita Qwan stepped in close, drew his bow to the ear, and put his heaviest shaft through its withers from so close that its carrion smell was like death incarnate in his nostrils.
It whirled on him and he fed it his bow, right into the tentacled mouth. The horn tip of the bow bit deep and then the bow bent and snapped and it was on him and he was on the ground amidst the cold leaves – a great weight on his chest – a sense of slipping – away, away-
It was dark, and he was cold.
He opened his eyes, and the stars were cold and very far, and he was small and very cold himself.
He opened his mouth and a grunt escaped – and suddenly there was movement.
Gas-a-ho had a canteen to his lips. ‘Drink!’ he said. ‘Are you hurt?’
It seemed a foolish question. Until you spoke, I thought I was dead, Nita Qwan thought. He took a deep breath, and smelled only wet fur and carrion. His hand touched something cold and very slimy – a tentacle – and he flinched. And his feet moved.