The Caves of Perigord_ A Novel - Martin Walker [154]
“Evil,” he cried in a voice that echoed like thunder. “Evil that would bewitch your souls, evil that would dry up the rivers and empty the plains and destroy us all.”
He turned as if to confront Moon, but it was a movement that brought the great beaked club high and gave it a whirling force and with a great shout he slammed it down onto Deer’s helpless head.
Moon screamed once as he advanced upon her, the rest all stunned and immobile, and only this still powerful man with the head of an eagle and the great beaked club that dripped blood and loomed high above his shoulder seemed capable of movement.
“Evil,” he cried again, and took the last fateful step, the club whirling down. But Moon had broken the spell, darted forward beneath the blow, and came close to his chest as if to embrace him. Faster than the falling club, she slid to one side with Deer’s flint knife still in her hand. And the Keeper of the Bulls sagged slowly to his knees as his entrails gushed out from the great slash in his belly and slopped to the ground before him. The eagle’s head bent to look at the steaming, bloodied loops, and then lifted to look at Moon as she spun on her heel to slam her foot into the side of his beaked head and send him toppling into the mess that had leaked from his guts. She leaned down and brutally wrenched the eagle mask from the Keeper’s head, and threw it onto the fire. A gush of fresh blood surged from his mouth, and his body stiffened, and then shuddered into death.
She walked slowly across to Deer and studied the crushed and lifeless head, as intently as she had studied him for her sketches, placed both hands on her swollen belly as if to embrace her unborn child, and closed her eyes. The only sound was the crackling of the fire, as its smoke and the stench of burning feathers drifted across the stretch of grass where all stood immobile around the two dead men.
“The evil is gone,” she chanted, her voice thick with grief. She gasped for breath, gathering herself, her jaw working as she fought within herself for control. Her eyes opened but gazed far above the silent people, looking even beyond the weak morning sun and the new day it brought.
“The evil is gone,” she repeated. “But it has marked us all, divided us all, cost us all. The evil has changed us utterly.”
The smoke drifted and the fresh blood steamed in the morning.
“It has broken the brotherhood of the Keepers, broken the bond of man and wife, broken the bond that tied us to the cave.” Her voice was rhythmic, but softer now, almost lulling.
“Bonds can be forged anew. And the evil has been defeated by life.” Her voice sank yet further, a deeper timbre, almost the low tones of a man. Blood trickled down her trailing hand, gathered into a thick and tear-shaped drop that trembled on the end of her finger and glinted in the sun before it gathered itself and fell.
“The evil has been defeated by life,” she said again, a tone of wonder in her voice, and her thoughts drifted back to that night when she had first bitten blood from the evil man … no, from the Keeper who had himself been captured by evil. She felt the new life suddenly kick in her belly. And she smiled, remembering the warm, lulling touch of the Great Mother, who had come to comfort her in the cave that night before Deer had come for her. It was the Great Mother who had granted her the magic that had finally doomed the Keeper of the Bulls. The Great Mother had given her a man and taken him, given her an enemy and the strength to defeat him. And given her Deer’s child. There was a balance. It seemed very clear to her now.
Her upturned face looked down, and it seemed to her frozen audience that she was aware of them for the first time. She paused, scanning their faces. Her father, her mother, the men who had known her