The Forest - Edward Rutherfurd [30]
It is normally a few days after the autumn equinox, when he has taken charge of the group of hinds who will form his exclusive harem, that the red stag raises his mighty head and utters the haunting call, a few notes higher than the bellow of cattle, which echoes over the heather at twilight and causes men to listen and say: ‘The stags have started to roar.’
And more days will pass before, in the woodland glades, the fallow bucks add their own, different call to the sounds of autumn.
The buck’s stand was not one of the most important – older and more powerful great bucks held those – for this was still his first rut. It was about sixty yards long and nearly forty wide. He had prepared it carefully for days. First, working his way around the perimeter of the stand, he had used his antlers to thrash the saplings and bushes. As he did so, a strong scent exuded from glands below his eyes, marking the bushes as his territory. He anointed the trees along the perimeter too. Then, as the moment came closer, he had made scrapes with his forefeet, which also contained glands, upon the ground, even tearing it up in places with his antlers. He urinated in the scrapes, then rolled in the wetted dirt. This created the pungent smell of the rutting buck, thrilling to does: for unlike the red deer, it is the females who come to the male in the fallow rut.
And so, as if for some magical knightly tournament that was to take place in the forest glade, the handsome young buck was ready to challenge all comers on his rutting stand. His rut would last many days, during which time he would not eat, living on the energy provided by a phenomenal production of testosterone. Gradually he would grow less alert; by the end he would be exhausted. The watching does would guard him, therefore, patrolling the outer edges of the stand, looking out and listening. And indeed, all nature participated: for the birds would call out at the approach of danger and even the forest ponies, usually silent, would whinny in warning if they saw human intruders come near the dappled forms in their secret ceremony.
The buck had been pacing the stand for hours. Trampled grass, crushed bracken and nutty brown acorns lay underfoot. As well as the does, two prickets and a sore, who was trying to look as if he might step into the ring, were watching. A faint light was filtering through the trees. From time to time he would pause in his pacing to give the rutting call.
The rutting call of the fallow buck is known as a groan. Stretching his head slightly downwards, he then raises his swollen throat to emit this call. Its sound can hardly be described – a strange, grunting, belching trumpet. Once heard, it can never be forgotten.
Three times he groaned, handsome, powerful, from the centre of the stand.
But now a new figure was approaching through the trees. There was a rustle as the does scampered out of his path. He emerged and crossed the line quietly into the stand, walking calmly towards the buck as though he had not a care in the world.
It was another buck and, judging by his antlers, the two were perfectly matched.
The pale doe trembled. Her buck was going to fight.
The interloper moved slowly across the stand. He was darker than her buck. She could smell his scent, pungent, sour, like the mud from brackish water. He looked strong. He walked past her buck who fell into step – this was the ritual of the fight – just behind. The two males kept walking, almost casually; she saw the muscles flexing in their powerful shoulders, their antlers waving slowly up and down as they went along. She noticed that one of the two little curved horns just in front of the base of the antler blades on the dark buck’s head was broken, leaving a jagged spike. A sudden twist of the head and he could gouge out her buck’s eye. The other does were watching silently. Even the birds