Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [13]
It was in a small clearing by the bank. It consisted of two low huts made of mud, brushwood and reeds. The sloping roofs of the huts were covered with turf and they seemed to grow out of the ground like a pair of untidy fungi. Tethered by the riverbank was a dugout.
Startled, he halted. There was no fire, but he thought he could smell smoke, as if one had been put out recently. The camp seemed to be empty. Cautiously, he moved forward towards one of the huts. And then suddenly he became aware of a small man, with narrow-set eyes and a crooked back watching him intently from the cover of the reeds, fifteen yards away. In his hands he held a bow, fitted with an arrow which was pointed straight at Hwll’s heart. Neither man moved.
Tep, who was the owner of the camp, had watched Hwll’s approach for some time. As a precaution, he had hidden his family in the woods, before taking up his position; and although he could have killed Hwll, he had decided to watch him instead. One never knew, the stranger might be useful in some way.
As Hwll would discover, he was a cautious and cunning hunter; but apart from these two attributes, his character had no redeeming qualities whatever.
He had a face like a rat, with narrow eyes, a long nose, a pointed chin, pointed teeth, unusual, carrot-coloured hair, a shuffling walk and one very distinctive inherited peculiarity: his toes were so long that he could even grip small objects with them. He was mean-minded, vicious without provocation, and untrustworthy. Some time before, he and his family had lived with a group of hunters fifteen miles to the north east of the lake; but after a furious quarrel about the distribution of meat after a hunt – where he had demonstrably tried to cheat the other hunters – they had cast him out. He was a pariah in the region and few of the scattered folk there cared to deal with him. But Hwll knew none of this.
Hwll made a sign to indicate that he had come in peace. Tep did not lower his arrow, but nodded to him to speak.
In the next few minutes the two men discovered that although they spoke different dialects, they could make themselves understood well enough with the aid of sign language and Hwll, anxious to secure aid if he could, told this curious figure about his journey.
“Are you alone?” Tep asked suspiciously.
“I have a woman and two children,” Hwll told him.
Slowly Tep lowered his aim.
“Walk in front,” he instructed. “I will come and see.”
By the end of the day, Tep had inspected the new arrivals and decided that it would be wise to make friends with the stranger from the north. He had a son who would one day need a woman; perhaps Hwll’s girl would do.
When he understood that Hwll was looking for high ground, his calculating eyes lit up.
“I know such a place,” he assured Hwll. “There are many valleys, full of game, but above them there is high ground,” he indicated a great height, “many days journey across.”
“Where?” asked Hwll.
Tep looked thoughtful. “It is far away,” he said finally, “and the journey is not easy; but I can guide you.” He paused. “Hunt with me first,” he suggested. “Then I will show you the way.”
Although Hwll was not sure he could trust the little man, this was not an offer that any hunter could refuse; and indeed, after the endless days of loneliness, he was not sorry once again to have a companion.
“I must reach the high ground before winter,” he said.
“I promise that you shall,” Tep replied.
Thus began the curious relationship between the hunter from the tundra and the hunter from the southern woods. Tep had four children. His first woman had died, so he had travelled to the west and stolen another from a band of hunters, when she was little more than a girl. Her name was Ulla and two of the children were hers. She was a round-faced creature with large brown eyes that wore a perpetually frightened look, and a scrawny body. The children all resembled their father, running swiftly through the woods on their long-toed