Page 54 of Circle of Days

Bez stood up and walked behind Gida. They had done all this without alerting the herders. Clearly silence was the key. They had got away with it—so far.

Suddenly Bez felt the brush of a wing against his cheek. He gave an involuntary shout of shock and fear. He heard a small animal squeal loudly and desperately. Gida screamed.

At his feet Bez saw a pigeon hawk struggling with a long-necked weasel.

The hawk was big, its wingspan as long as a man’s arm, and the weasel no bigger than a man’s hand, but the little creature was fighting back, wriggling and biting.

Nevertheless, the hawk rose into the air with the weasel in its talons, and a moment later was lost in the darkness of night. The weasel’s screams faded to nothing.

And the herders’ dog was barking maniacally.

“Go that way,” Bez said to Gida, pointing toward the oak tree. “As fast as you can, but don’t scare the cow. I’ll go in the opposite direction and create a distraction. Meet me in Round Wood.”

Gida calmly set off at a jog-trot with the cow.

Bez ran, bent over, around the outside of the herd toward a point east of where the barking came from.

When he had covered a significant distance, he stopped and drew his flint knife from his shoulder bag.

He stuck the point into the rump of a bull and quickly stepped behind another beast, putting the knife away and taking into both hands the heavy club.

The bull bellowed loud and deep, a noise that could be heard throughout the herd.

Bez knelt down and listened carefully to the barking of the dog.

He was able to tell that, as he hoped, the dog was moving toward him and away from Gida.

He lifted the club and held it over his right shoulder, ready to strike.

He remained still. The dog came on, barking, and Bez could hear the running steps of the two herders. However, the dog moved faster among the cows, and in moments Bez saw it.

The dog saw him and bared its fangs. Bez knew he had to silence the dog with just one blow. The dog leaped at him. Bez swung the club and hit the dog in midair, striking it on the head just behind its ear. The dog fell to the ground and lay still.

Bez turned and ran.

He got out of the herd. Far to his right he could just about see Gida running with the cow behind her.

She was well past the oak tree and would soon cross a rise and drop out of sight.

To keep the attention of the herders away from her, Bez angled left.

There was a patch of woodland ahead of him, too small to be home to a tribe: if he could reach that, they would never find him.

He was confident he could outrun herders. They were not hunters and rarely had reason to run, except for their quickrunner messengers. Woodlanders hunted deer, so they had to run fast.

The herders may have come to the same conclusion, for the running footsteps behind him ceased.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that they had not given up, but had stopped to aim their bows.

He immediately began to run in a zigzag, to make it difficult for them to sight on him.

Two arrows went wide and landed ahead of him, but he knew their aim would improve.

He quickened his pace with a huge effort, and doubled his zigzags.

The arrows came closer, but none hit, and soon they began to fall short.

He was out of range. The herders started running again, but it was no good: he was too far away.

They stopped, doubtless reasoning that they could not catch him now.

He made it to the copse and slipped into the bushes. Looking back through the leaves, he saw the two herders walking disconsolately back to the herd, carrying their bows.

We did it, he thought. We are now cattle thieves.

He began to think about how to do it better next time.

The elders met at Riverbend to discuss a message brought from the west by a quickrunner, a young woman called Fali.

She had said: “Zad asks me to tell you that we are losing one cow every night to thieves. We assume they are woodlanders of Bez’s tribe.

They come at night and quietly lead a cow away without making any noise. ”

Scagga immediately said: “This cannot go on. We herder folk will be wiped out if we carry on losing cattle at this rate.”

Ani was outraged. “It’s your fault!” she burst out. “They wouldn’t need to steal if you hadn’t destroyed their habitat!”

“I couldn’t help it!” Scagga said.

He would have said more but Keff interrupted. “Ani and Scagga, there’s no point in arguing about whose fault this is. We have to look to the future. What are we going to do to stop this thieving?”

Jara spoke. She was a new elder, the sister of Scagga, but more reasonable. “We can’t stop it,” she said. “They will carry on stealing cows because their alternative is to starve to death.”

She was probably right, Ani thought despairingly.

Scagga backed his sister. “We have to wipe out the entire tribe of Bez,” he said. “Otherwise we will starve instead of them.”

Ani decided to oppose Scagga’s belligerence by raising a practical issue. “Do you know where Bez’s tribe is living?”

“West Wood.”

“What little is left of it.” Ani shook her head. “They’re not stupid; they’ll be hiding out somewhere.”

“Not necessarily. Perhaps they are stupid.”

Ani said: “Let me go and investigate.” Her heart sank at the thought of another long walk across the Great Plain, but at least it would force Scagga to postpone violence for a few days. “I’ll see if I can learn where the tribe is hiding.”

Scagga looked ready to argue, but his sister said reasonably: “That makes sense. Before we send an army, we should find out where the enemy is.”

Ani found the sight of the burned wood horrific. Nothing green remained. The ground was covered with a layer of grey ash as far as the eye could see. A few trees stood still, bare of leaves, their trunks and branches blackened and lifeless, ghostly plants growing out of a dead landscape.

But farmers were at work, digging the ground, turning the earth over to bury the ash.

Their furrows ran east to west, parallel with South River, so that the rain—if it ever rained again—would be retained in the field instead of running down the slope and into the river.

Little clouds of ash lifted and sank as the shovels worked.

The land would be green again next summer, but with regular shoots of growing wheat instead of the fecund jungle of wild woodland.

Troon had enlarged his territory, Ani thought. At a stroke he had added a huge area to his domain. She wondered if he would do the same to East Wood one day.

Yana and Pia were not there. Presumably Troon had not favored them with an allocation of the new lands. Ani found them in one of their old fields, Pia carrying baby Olin strapped to her back. Both women were thin but not unhealthy.

They sat on the ground to talk. Ani said: “I’m here because someone is stealing our cattle.”

“We know,” said Pia. “Zad thought it might be the farmers. He came here, and Troon let him look everywhere for beef, cow hides, and cow bones. He didn’t find any.”

Ani nodded. She was not surprised that the farmers were innocent. “So who do you think it is?”

“Oh, Bez, obviously,” said Yana. “There’s really no other possibility.”

“And where is Bez? In the remnant of West Wood?”

“No. It’s too small for a whole tribe.”

“Then where?”

“We don’t know,” said Yana. “No one knows.”

Ani walked west along the bank of the river until she came to the small surviving area of woodland. She walked all around it and satisfied herself that it was not big enough to hide a tribe, no matter how clever they might be at concealing themselves.

She then went into the wood and found a small settlement, just two houses. A handful of woodlanders were sitting around while a spitted joint of meat roasted over a fire.

It smelled like beef.

An old woman was sitting by the fire, turning the spit occasionally with a veined brown hand. Ani sat beside her. Some of the children came closer to stare at the stranger with frank curiosity. Ani noticed that they were wearing new-looking leather tunics.

She said to the old woman: “I am Ani.”

“I know you,” said the woman.

She spoke the herder language. That was helpful.

“You had a son called Han,” the woman added.

“He’s dead now.”

“I know. Stam killed him. Stam killed Fell, too.”

“And now Stam is dead.”

“The balance was restored.” The woman nodded in a satisfied way.

Everyone suspected that the woodlanders had killed Stam for murdering Fell, but no one could be sure. And even this woman’s statement was enigmatic: a balance had been restored, but by whom? She was not saying.

Instead she said: “I am Naro.”

Ani said: “You’re cooking beef.”

“Venison,” said Naro firmly.

Ani looked around. She saw mainly old people and children. There were two young women, one heavily pregnant and the other breastfeeding a newborn baby. Ani was glad the children had food, but the tribe could not go on living by theft.

She said to Naro: “Where are the others?”

“Hunting,” said Naro.

“When will they be back?”

“Soon.”

Ani reached out and touched the garment of a child standing near her. She said: “This is cow hide.”

Naro shook her head. “Deer skin.”

Ani said: “I’m a leather tanner. I know the difference between one skin and another. This is not deer, it’s cow.”

“Hard to tell them apart.”

“Not for me.”

Naro became cross. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for Bez.”

“He’s not here.”

“But he comes here, and he gives you cow hides and beef.”

Naro said nothing.

“When Bez leaves here, where does he go?”

“You should leave now,” said Naro. “We don’t want you here.”

Zad told Ani that he was sick at heart because he could not fulfill his duty of protecting the herd. She believed him.

The herd supervised by Zad took up one-third of the Great Plain, but for as long as anyone could remember it had needed only half a dozen families to take care of it.