Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

"I hope that's not a river estuary behind them, or we're stuck here. Don't think it is. Water's too clear; no silty outflow. Must be a sea arm, what the Celts call a lough. Anyway, that's north, Donuil's country, over there, and we have to get there." He paused and spat over the edge, watching the flying spittle fall away. "You agree?"

I nodded. "So far. What else is in your mind?"

"Well, since you ask, it seems to me that taking the horses down there entails one certainty: we'll have to bring the whoresons up again."

"Why? We might be able to ride right along the beach, as far as the inlet extends."

"Aye, and it might extend for miles and then pinch out, leaving us to ride all the way back and still climb this cliff again . . . I say leave the horses here, hobbled, where they can graze along the fringes of the trees. We can carry our saddlebags and go down on foot. That's not a roadway, and horses have no hands. A man can climb down backwards, if he has to. If there is a way along the beach, and if it's possible to lead them down, we'll come back up and get them. If not, we'll have to come back, either way."

"Done," I said, and wheeled to make the arrangements.

After our perilous descent and the welcome we received from Donuil's Scots, they sat in silence around us while we ate, and listened intently as we told them the story of our meeting with the boar. One of our number, a normally taciturn man called Falvo, grew lyrical in his description of the monster, and his account of the battle fitted strangely with my own recollection of the debacle I had witnessed.

When Falvo had finished his tale, translated in the telling by Donuil and its verity endorsed by the approving murmurs of the rest of my men, Feargus looked at Dedalus, who had found the boar's body afterwards, then turned to me. "How big was this beast, truly?"

As I shrugged my shoulders, Dedalus reached for a blanket-wrapped bundle I had noticed hanging from his saddle earlier. "Big enough." I answered, watching him idly. "He cost us five horses and almost killed Rufio there."

Something large and yellow flew through the air from Dedalus to Feargus, who caught it in an outstretched hand and held it there for everyone to see. It was one of the beast's huge, spiralled tusks and the sight of it brought a concerted hiss of surprise from the assembled Scots. I turned to Dedalus.

"I didn't know you'd taken that."

"I took them both." He tossed the second one to me. "They'll be impressively barbaric once they've been cleaned up and polished."

I hesitated, struck by a thought. "How did you know what Feargus asked me?"

Ded grinned. "I didn't. I guessed from the tone of his voice. It's what anyone would have asked, isn't it?"

Fascinated to see the thing up close, I examined it carefully, aware of the glances of the others moving between me and Feargus who still held its mate. It was heavy, solid ivory, yellow with age and dirt, save where it was worn white towards the tip, and it was thicker than the base of my thumb at the blood- and bone-encrusted end where Ded had chopped it free of the jaw in which it had been set. From there, it swept outward in almost three complete, tapering curls, perfectly round in section save for the last part of the third curl, the width of my hand in length, which was edged with wickedly sharp, blade-like ridges capable, as I knew, of shearing and destroying anything they struck. From end to pointed end, the thing extended almost the full length of my arm from wrist to elbow.

"Dermott, come forward." The voice belonged to Feargus and an old man stepped forward at his bidding. "Show them."

The man, whom I could not remember having seen before, extended his right arm, and I looked with wonder at the bracelet wrapped around it, embracing the entire lower part. It was a tusk like the one I held, but it had been worked into a thing of beauty, polished to a creamy, glowing whiteness and carved, its ends capped with hand-crafted gold.

"Dermott is our bard," Feargus said, his voice solemn and filled with respect. "But in his youth he was a fearsome fighter and the greatest hunter of our clan. His wife, Moira, wears the other tusk, the twin to that. The arms of each of them have shrunk with age, but these symbols of their prowess that they wear with pride do not age. They killed the boar between them, with two spears, before any of you were born. A man-eater it was, ancient and evil and cursed for years. The biggest boar ever seen or known in our lands. Look!"

He held up the new tusk until it was level with Dermott's, and the polished whiteness of the old man's bracelet was dwarfed beside the dirt- smeared mass of the new-killed monster. A murmur of awe rose and fell into silence. Long moments Feargus held the tusk there wordlessly before passing it to me. I felt the solid weight of it matching that of its fellow in my other hand. I handed both tusks back to Dedalus, who rewrapped them in his blanket, and then I led the conversation towards the things I needed most to know.

Dedalus had guessed correctly. The water beside us was a sea lough, stretching inward for two leagues, or six of our Roman miles, and there was no open way along the beach. Half a mile inland, the precipice fell straight into the lough, its bottom lost in the depths. The only route for us to follow was atop the cliffs, where our horses already awaited us, but we were pleased to learn that our journey was more than half complete and we could travel from this point onward without fear of the Wild Ones, whose territories now lay behind us. Not that we should ride carelessly, Feargus added, since the Wild Ones knew no boundaries. When we reached the inner rim of the lough, Logan told us, taking over from Feargus, we should strike out to the north and west where, after another eight leagues, we would come to a river estuary with a road along its bank on our side. To the left, that road would lead us straight into King Athol's stronghold, the heartland of the Celtic Scots. If the galleys arrived there first, as they ought to, he said, they would row upstream to their point of anchorage close to home, and await us there, sending runners on ahead to prepare our welcome.

Having seen the surprise on my face that this "heartland" should lie so close to the domain of the Wild Ones, Donuil interrupted Logan to explain that his father had built his stronghold in the south of his domain because of the richness of the soil and the openness of the country. Fully four fifths of all the land the Scots claimed as their own was either heavy forest or rugged, barren uplands.

I asked next about the giant deer whose prints were everywhere, but of which we had seen no other sign. Elk was their name, a Norse word, Feargus told me, and he went on to explain that the legends told that they had been imported, two hundred years earlier and more, by a Norse king who had settled in Eire but pined for the giant deer of his homeland. He had sent his longships home to bring back breeding pairs of the huge beasts, and they had thrived in Eire's forests, where no predator but man was large enough to stalk them. They lived in the deep forest and preferred marshy land and boggy streams, since that was where they fed. Seldom were they seen beyond the deepest woods, and when they did venture that far they were easily killed. They were gentle creatures, he said, like all deer, but large enough to be dangerous, even lethal, when threatened, for their massive horns were like the horns of no other deer, being heavy, broad and spatulate, sculpted like great, flat spoons and as wide across as a big man's arms, with only tiny, blunted tines around the outer rims to mark them as deer horn. When the rutting males fought for dominance every year at the time of mating, he said, the clatter of their head-butting could be heard echoing through the forest for many leagues.