For a moment, as he spoke, he reminded Michael irresistibly of Mullan, and he might have been talking wistfully of the horses moving up to Ypres in 1915. The resemblance was striking, but it lasted only a second, and Irae was a grey-haired savage again, his skin stained with madder and his teeth rotten in a weather-lined face.
The hunters returned in the late part of the evening, grins breaking out across their faces as the women welcomed them, laughing at the burdens they bore on poles. Three does, thin but full-sized. The tribe would eat well for a few days.
Ringbone came over to where Cat and Michael hunkered near one of the rekindled fires. He was chewing on raw meat and the dark blood drooled down his chin. The fox man offered Michael a chunk and he took it politely, biting into the juicy flesh and feeling the blood slip down the back of his throat. At the other fires the people were butchering the deer. The animals had already been gralloched, the organs replaced in the chest cavity. Now they spilled out glistening in the light of the flames. Knives flashed wet as the women expertly skinned the beasts, cramming odd bits of meat into their mouths as they did so. By the fires the older children were readying what earthenware the tribe possessed while two of the men were stoking up the embers in the smoke tent. There was almost an air of festivity about the place, and Semuin was looking relieved. The hunting was his main concern and if it failed he would be held at least partially responsible.
Ringbone sat opposite Michael at the fire, taking off his headdress and scraping his short-haired pate. He caught a louse and threw it to pop in the flames. His face had grown serious. He wiped the blood from his chin and told Michael that he had been speaking to Irae. The old man was perturbed. This was not a good country they were in, he had said; it was too full of beasts and strange things. They should go back north and take their chances with the Knights. What had the Utwychtan and Teowynn to say to that?
Michael hesitated. It was true, he told Ringbone, that there were strange beasts and strange peoples in this part of the world, and the tribe had best be on its guard for there were grymyrch nearby in all likelihood. He told Ringbone what he and Cat had found at the lip of the valley.
The fox man's face went blank, as it always did when he was thinking something over. He asked Cat if she knew of these grymyrch. Were they dangerous to a band of warriors such as this? What were their customs, and how close did she think they were?
Cat answered perfunctorily. She did not know much more than she had told Michael or Irae. Ringbone's face grew blank again. He would have to think on this for a while, he said—until tomorrow at least.
Then Michael said in a rush that he was leaving the tribe, pushing on south alone with Cat. He was going into the Wolfweald. He could feel Cat's glare on his face as he said it.
The fire cracked and spat, branches slumping with a noise like rattled tinsel. It was a very quiet night now that the rain had stopped.
What the Utwychtan sought to do was his own affair. No man could tell another one where to go, Ringbone told them, but his eyes were as black as jet pebbles in his face, fixed on Michael's. For a second Michael thought his habitual reserve was going to break and a flood of questions spill out, but the fox man remained silent, only shaking his head a fraction and staring momentarily into the glowing logs. When he looked up again there was grief in his eyes. He thrust an arm out over the fire and Michael clasped it, the flames scorching hair from their skin.
Things would be readied to aid them on their way—food, clothing, shelter. And their horses would be rubbed down for them and given the last of the barley grain. Then Ringbone rose fluidly and padded off to the butchery and feasting at the other fires.
'So you will do this thing, no matter what I say?' Cat asked Michael in a low, stilted voice.
I1 have to. I don't think I have any choice. It's what I came here for, I think.'
A memory of Rose with the lightning flickering in her eyes. You'll look for me no matter what they tell you? Promise? She was here all right. Somehow she had known what was going to happen to her.
'I'm sorry, Cat.'
'You'll be the death of me, Michael.'
'Don't say things like that.'
True night fell, the silent pitch of night in a windless forest.
Michael had come to love and fear it. There truly were bogey men in the world. They were not just a fairy tale, and they roamed the darkness at the edge of firelight. But there was a beauty in the trees and the snuff of woodsmoke that eddied about their trunks, a peace he had not known even in the placid Antrim countryside. He wondered sometimes if he would ever again be able to live content without it.
The camp was still, the fires burning down and most of the tribe asleep, their bellies full. Even the horses stood with their eyes closed, resting one hindquarter.