Ice Magic Page 2

did the same to Deri. "This one, also," she said. "They both have a Power."

  "I am Gol, leader of the Auroch people," said the big man. "You will join us."

  Bran and Deri looked at each other, and at the circle of men with spears. It didn't look as if they had much choice - but at least they had found a tribe that wasn't afraid of them.

  The camp of the Auroch people was in a hollow not far from the river. Some of the men were out hunting on the plains, and the tribe was waiting for them to come back before they moved on.

  While they waited, Bran begged the leg bone of a deer from one of the women. He spent a whole morning with a sharp flake of flint, making a hole in it near the top of the shaft. he had made sure before he got it that it was hollow all the way down the middle, where the marrow had been.

  Deri leaned back lazily, chewing a stalk of grass, after his swim. "What are you doing?" he asked.

  Bran looked up briefly, and then got abck to scraping at the bone. "I had to leave mine behind when I - when I left the Ice Gull people," he said. "I need to get the holes in exactly the right places, and then I can make music with this."

  "'Music'?" This was a word Deri obviously didn't know.

  "When we're dancing after a hunt, or for the New Moon, or when a baby is born - anything like that - the Ice Gull people play bone pipes and bang drums."

  "Drums?"

  "Animal skins stretched over a frame," Bran said. he tried to think of a way to describe the sound to someone who had never heard it. "You'll see, when I've finished," he said, finally. "It's a good sound."

  He held the pipe up to his ear, imagining the air moving through holes that weren't there yet, hearing the sounds they would make.

  "There," he murmured, pressing the burin firmly against the bone a thumb's width beneath the first hole. "That's where it'll sound best."

  "My daughter tells me you can command the wind," Gol said. He was sitting on a bull hide outside his shelter and he had summoned Bran to speak to him. As Bran nodded, he went on. "That could be a useful skill to have. I wish to know how it can be used in hunting."

  "I can bring birds down from the sky," Bran said. That had been easy.

  "We hunt the great cattle - the aurochs," Gol said. "Could you kill them with the wind?"

  Bran had been thinking about this, in the days since he had been forced to leave his tribe. It seemed to him that he could have been very useful to them in the hunt, if they had let him.

  "I think I can," he said. "If I can get close to them, I think I can take away their breath, and then they would die."

  Gol nodded slowly. "Every living thing breathes," he agreed. "When I take our hunters out next time, you will go with us, and you will show us this Power."

  The hunters returned, with an auroch and an couple of deer and, after the feast and the dancing, the camp moved on. They moved away from the river, following a little stream deeper into the grass lands.

  Unable to swim every day, Deri started to look unhappy.

  Mara, Gol's daughter, walked with him. "Don't worry," she said. "There is a lake where we're going. You can swim there."

  When they finally set up camp, Deri went to look at the 'lake'. "It's more like a puddle, compared to my Lake back home," he complained.

  Bran laughed. "There's plenty of water for you to swim in," he said. And stopped, because he could hear sounds that were not being made by the Auroch people in the camp.

  Since he had begun practicing the use of his Power, he had found that his ears were far sharper than any other person around him, and his sense of smell was almost as keen as a dog's. Now he could hear the stealthy slide of moccasin against stone, up above the lake shore, and he could smell human scent that was unfamiliar to him - and strangers were whispering together as they looked down on the camp.

  Bran left Deri by the lake and went to find Gol. "There are men watching us," he said.

  Gol nodded as if he had been expecting this. "They will not attack us," he said. "They are too few." He clapped one big, meaty hand down on Bran's shoulder. "This is why I have brought us here," he said. "There is a great thing I wish you to do for me. Later, I will tell you more."

  When Bran returned to Deri he was sitting with Mara at the water's edge. "Those people watching us," Deri said quietly. "This is their tribal land."

  "This is one of the places where the Horse people camp," Mara said. "They will be angry with us - but they have few men, and many women. We have many men, and few women. The men want the women to do all the work for them. I know how their minds work." She spat onto the ground beside her. "Has father told you yet what his great plan is?"

  "He said he wanted me to do a great thing for him," Bran said. "He didn't say what it was."

  Mara scowled. "He wants to kill all the men of the Horse people so that our men can take all their women to work for them and be their wives. It isn't just animals he wants you to kill by taking their breath."

  Bran stared at her. "Why does he want to do that?" he demanded. "Can't he just talk to these Horse people? Maybe some of their women would want to join this tribe. Why does anyone have to die?"

  Mara shrugged. "Father wants everyone to do as he wants. All the time. That's why he was so pleased when he found out about my Power. I can do much more than he thinks I can, but I won't tell him. I don't want all my friends to jump every time he tells them to. He would like that - having the whole tribe follow where he wanted them to go because none of them had a will of their own. He wants it all to be his will."

  "What can we do to stop him?" Bran asked.

  Mara looked close to tears now. "I don't know. I won't control them for him - and I can't control him. His mind is too strong."

  "I'm not killing anyone for him," Bran said. "Hunting is one thing - you have to hunt to live - but not people. There's got to be a better way."

  The group of Horse people who came down into the camp looked nervous. Gol sat on his bull hide, with his daughter sitting beside him, and other men of the tribe grouped around them.

  One of the Horse people, a white haired old man, stepped forward reluctantly.

  "You camp on our campsite," he said.

  "It is a good campsite," Gol said. "We are getting ready for a big feast. The hunting has been good, and we wish our friends the Horse people to join us."

  This was not what the Horse people had been expecting at all. They looked at each other doubtfully - but they couldn't discuss it in front of the whole of the Auroch people.

  The old man said: "When this feast is over, will you go back to your own hunting grounds?"

  Gol smiled, showing many white teeth through his bushy black beard. "Of course," he said. "We wish only to share our good fortune before the meat goes bad. Come to us the day after tomorrow - all your people are welcome."

  They came. Bran had hoped that they would see the invitation for the trap it was, but they all came, bringing food of their own to share, and hides to trade.

  The women spent the day around the fire pits, slowly cooking the meat, and mixing dried fruits and berries together in big leather bags. The young men spent the afternoon painting their chests with ochre and white clay.

  Bran and Deri did not paint themselves. Bran and Deri did not want to be there at all. When they were asked, they said it was not the custom of the Ice Gull people or the Lake people to paint themselves for a feast.

  "Let them eat first," Gol said quietly into Bran's ear. "Then they will be relaxed, and easier to deal with."

  Bran said nothing. He wished he could just run away from the camp - but then the Horse people would be killed by the other men of the Auroch people. He watched them together, telling hunting stories, laughing at jokes.... It was starting to remind him of the New Moon festivals back home.

  As the sun went down, they gathered around the fires, and the women began to move among the crowd, giving out portions of cooked meat, and the fruit mixture, and tu
bers that they had cooked close to the edge of the fire. Everyone seemed friendly and happy and relaxed - except for Bran, sitting tensely upright with a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Across the fire, Gol's friends had their spears in easy reach, and they kept glancing at Gol as if waiting for a signal.

  There was a lull in the conversation, and Bran stood up abruptly. A few people looked round at him. He moved to the edge of an open space between the fires, and gestured Deri and Mara to join him. He pulled the deer bone pipe from his tunic, and put it to his mouth.

  No-one there had heard the music of the Ice Gull people before, and Bran used his Power to make it loud enough to be heard clearly right at the edge of the crowd. Conversation fell still, and they listened.

  Then Deri moved into the middle of the open space. He was as surprised as anyone at the sound of the pipe, but he knew how to dance, twisting and leaping like the salmon that swam up the river to the Lake every year to spawn.

  Mara joined him, following where he went, and nudging with her mind at the other young people in the crowd, the ones she knew had no partners among the Auroch people - for the Horse people, she had to guess, but soon most of the young people were dancing, and some of the little children were copying them around the edges, and there was even a group of old women of the Horse people swaying in a line, clapping in time with the music and banging sticks together.

  Bran played on. Slowly, men and women began to pair off