The Dark Horse
Table of Contents
For
my
mother
Part One
THE BOX
1
It was Mouse who found the box. She was trotting along the tide line, running with Sigurd. Looking for sea cabbage washed up in the black sand after last night’s storm, because the fishing had been bad again. They were half a day from home.
Flicking the hair from her eyes, Mouse tilted her head to one side.
“Sigurd?”
Sigurd came over to where Mouse stood. He towered above her.
“What is it, Mouse?”
“That.”
She nodded at the box. It was different. It didn’t belong here. All around them was the coast—rocky outcrops, with the low hills behind—and the sea, the sea, the sea in front of them. Everything was the wildness of Storn. And amongst all this wildness lay the box. A small wooden box—a couple of hands wide but quite slender. There was no metal visible—no hinges or corner braces. No lock. It was a plain wooden box, but somehow it was very beautiful. It was made of a deep and rich red wood, black in places. It had a shine that reflected the light from the sky back onto Mouse’s small, round face.
It
was
different. It was from somewhere else.
Mouse felt her head swim a little. She staggered a few paces away from the box.
“Mouse?” Sigurd had noticed. “Anything?”
Sigurd was used to spotting the signs, better than anyone else at knowing when Mouse might “see” something. But she put her hand on Sigurd’s arm.
“No,” she said. “No, it’s gone now.”
Mouse drew in a deep, calming breath. They turned their attention back to the box, but Mouse kept her distance. “What do you think it is?”
Sigurd said nothing. He knelt down to touch it, but gently, as if it were a cornered animal.
“It’s dry,” he said. “It’s . . . warm.”
“What is it?” Mouse asked again.
“Shall I open it?”
Mouse shook her head.
“Let’s take it back.”
Mouse hesitated.
“It’s getting late,” he reasoned.
“All right,” she said.
They started back to the village, Sigurd carrying the box, Mouse with a net half full of cabbage.
Neither of them had noticed the man lying still amongst the rocks, just twenty paces from where they had found the box. His skin and hair were white, whiter even than Sigurd’s, but the palms of his hands were black.
2
I remember better than anyone.
I remember better than anyone the day we found Mouse.
It was unusual that we should have been up in the hills in the first place. There were about thirty of us, I think. A huge war party—going to wage war on . . . wolves.
Father said it was stupid. Just because a lone wolf had attacked Snorri as he came home over the hills was no reason to risk our lives. That’s what my father said, though he didn’t say it to Horn’s face.
As I remember, it was only a couple of summers after Horn had beaten Father for the title of Lawspeaker of the tribe. Father was licking his wounds then, I suppose. He swore that one day he’d tell Horn to his face what he thought of him, but not then.
That probably had something to do with it. The fight, I mean. Why we were up in the hills, hunting wolves. That was stupid, too. Wolves live in woods, and there were no trees up there. Horn was showing us all that he was our leader, that we had to do whatever he told us.
I was the only child there, and I
was
a child then. It was my eleventh or twelfth summer; I can’t remember. I was a part of the games Horn and Father played.
“Well, Sigurd,” Father said to me, “if that fool is going to take us on a wild wolf chase, we may as well show him what kind of family we are!”
What this meant was that he’d take the opportunity to show me, his son, off to everyone. Because Horn, the Lawspeaker, had no son, only a daughter, Sif. There was no one to succeed him as Lawspeaker, and so there would have to be a fight for the job, just as there had been between him and Olaf, my father.
It was late in the day when we reached the higher slopes of the hills. A couple of the hounds had picked up the scent of something hours ago, and we’d been following the trail ever since. Once or twice they’d lost the scent and we’d hung around while Hemm, a small, clever man who was our best dog handler, made wide circles around us with his hound. Eventually the dog would find a scent and we’d be off again, always higher up into the hills.
“If that’s still the scent of the wolves,” muttered Father, loud enough for only me to hear, “I’ll wash Horn’s feet before bedtime.”
On we went, higher and higher, until suddenly we came to the top of a slope, and there in front of us, no more than a spear’s throw away, were the small, dark entrances to a series of caves. The dogs were going crazy, pulling toward them, and suddenly the mood changed. I felt a touch of fear stroke me.
There was a chill in the air. We were high above the sea, directly above the village, though you couldn’t see it from there. There really were wolves here, and they had chosen somewhere special to live. I had never heard of wolves living in caves. Forests are their usual home. And I have never heard of another case since. We should have realized then that it was an omen.
It hadn’t seemed real until that moment, but now Horn’s ridiculous wolf chase was actually happening. It had actually come to something. We avoided one another’s gaze; no one looked at Horn.
But he stepped forward, undaunted. He wasn’t about to turn around and go home.
“This is what we’ve come for,” he said quietly.
“So what do we do?”
“You want us to go in there?”
“They’ll rip us to pieces before we even see them. . . .”
Horn held up his hand.
“Let’s lighten their darkness. Let’s get them out here.” He pointed at Grinling. “Grinling! Make fire.”
So then we understood what he meant to do.
3
After they found the box, it took Mouse and Sigurd more than three hours to get home. They were tired and spoke little as they went. They walked up from the shore to the brochs of the village while the sun began to sink into the sea horizon out in the bay.
Storn, the village, was just a cluster of these brochs— mostly round stone houses with turf roofs that each family lived in, maybe thirty or so in all. The grass of the turf roofs made the houses blend in with the grass and ferns that grew all around the settlement. It seemed as if the brochs grew from the landscape, rather than being built upon it. The edge of the village was marked by no boundary, no fence, not even a ditch, but just ran off into grassland and the fields behind, and the pebbles and black sand of the beach in front.
More or less in the middle was the great broch—a large meeting hall that dominated the village. It was nearly twice the height of the rest of the brochs.
There were other buildings, too. Mouse and Sigurd picked their way carefully past the grain barns and smoke-houses, the kennels and the goat huts. They were both exhausted. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around. They could see orange flames from the fire in the great broch through its low, round doorway. They paused. Only now did they consider the box.
“Where shall we take it?” asked Mouse.
“What do you think’s in it?” asked Sigurd, grinning. “I bet it’s treasure!”
He thought it must have come from one of the trading ships that sailed up to them from far away in the south. In a way he was right.
“Let’s open it!” he said.
Mouse said nothing. Something worried her, but she did not understand what it was.
Before they could decide what to do, a huge figure blocked the firelight coming from the great broch and strode toward them.
“Sigurd! Come here, boy!”
It was Olaf, and he was cross. He pushed his rough hand through his beard. That meant he was nervous, too.
“We’ve been waiting for our cabbage! And the Spell-making is about to start!”
“Coming, Father!” called Sigurd.
They hurried to the broch, but Mouse stumbled, catching her feet in the cabbage net. Olaf put out a huge hand and caught her and the net together.
“Is this all?” he asked, looking from the half-empty net to Sigurd.
Sigurd started to burn with humiliation, but Mouse spoke.
“Yes,” she said simply.
Olaf ’s face softened a little.
“The sea is abandoning us, eh, Mouse? No fish today, either. Go inside, it’s nearly time.”
They went in. Olaf gave his son a clip round the head as he passed, but it was gentler than it might have been.
“He thinks I’m useless,” Sigurd said to Mouse.
“That’s not true. He loves you.”
“Why’s he always so hard on
me
? He’s supposed to be
your
father, too.”
As soon as he said this, Sigurd regretted it.
Mouse looked at him. “But he isn’t, is he.”
They wove their way through the villagers gathered in the great broch. Trying to find a quiet spot to sit in for the Spell-making, trying to sit as far away as possible from Sif, Horn’s daughter. From experience they found it best to avoid her. When they saw her right across the other side of the fire from them, they sat down, at the edge, by the wall. This was where Mouse preferred to sit, and not just because of Sif.
Sigurd knew why but never spoke to Mouse about it. He knew she was still a little wary of fire.
The Spell-making was about to begin, as it had done at every quarter of the moon since anyone could remember.
It was only then that Mouse remembered.
“The box!” she whispered. “What have you done with the box?”
Sigurd smiled.
“I’m cleverer than some people think!”
But now Gudrun, the Wisewoman, was entering the circle, where she joined Horn, the Lawspeaker. The Spell-making began.
Mouse was silent.
Away, far down the sea line, the white man with black hands lay amongst the rocks in the darkness. He lay still. But the tide was returning, and as the first slush of salty foam washed across his face, he stirred. Immediately, even before his eyes had opened, his hands searched for something. Something that was missing.