The Dark Horse by Marcus Sedgwick
35
Mouse. Kara. Whoever she was, she had heard about the decision the Storn had made. She came straight to Sigurd, who fell silent. The others did not cease their singing, but if anything, sang with more heart than ever. They wanted to show her that they had something after all.
“Why, Sigurd, why?” she said. “You are choosing to die!”
Sigurd could not judge her mood. He did not trust her anymore. He had been wrong about who she was all these years. He could not judge her intentions, nor her thoughts. Why did she care now whether they lived or died?
“What life will it be to act as slaves,” he asked, “to these animals!”
That made her angry. “They are not animals!”
“No,” said Sigurd. “Even a wolf could not be so vicious.”
That stopped her. She fought with thoughts in her head.
“They are my people,” she said at last. “I belong with them just as you belong to the Storn.”
“And do you owe the Storn nothing? The people who took you in, who rescued you from wolves?”
“I never wanted rescuing!” she shouted. “You took me from them! You burnt us and killed us and took me away!”
Sigurd looked at the stranger in front of him.
“Who are you? How did you ever live with wolves if these are your people?”
Mouse grew quieter again. She seemed to be weighing up what she would tell Sigurd.
“I was born to these people, whom you call Dark Horse. That is not our own name. I am their princess. Ketil is my father’s brother and leads the tribe now. When I was still a small child, I was abducted by a band of outlaws. They fled with me, intending to claim ransom, but they were in turn attacked by another tribe. I was taken by that tribe, a year passed, maybe more, but one day I escaped. I was far from home, very far, and I did not know where I was. I wandered through hills for many months. And then I found the wolves. Or they found me. I do not know why, but they found me sleeping wild on the hill and treated me as one of their own kind. They raised me.
“Then began my time of forgetting. All that I have just told you was not known to me anymore.”
“Then how . . . ?” began Sigurd.
“How do I know all this? The tribe had not given me up entirely. At least, they began to believe I might be alive, because of Ulf. The one you saw earlier. He is our wise man. He felt my presence in a dream.
“So they began to search for me. They sent a man.”
“Ragnald?”
“And with him the box . . .”
She paused.
“What was it?” asked Sigurd.
“A box of memories. My memories.”
“But if you remembered everything, then why did you run away with us to the hills?”
“The box was strong magic, but it was only a start. Things began to come back. Who I was . . . Then in the cave . . .”
“The drawings? Your drawings?”
“Yes. I made those drawings when I was new to the wolf caves, before I forgot everything,” she said. “The wolf father was attacked by a young male. They were fighting for control of the pack. Just like Olaf and Horn. The older wolf lost. I made the drawings with his blood, to try and remember what had happened to me. When I saw them again, I remembered the tents and the horses and the cold wind of the dark lands to the north where we used to ride. It all came back to me.”
Memories drawn in blood.
Sigurd was silent.
“So I had to find them,” she said.
“But you didn’t have to betray us,” said Sigurd.
Mouse said nothing.
“Your people are killers, Mouse. Look at what they did to us! How can you live with them?”
But she did not get the chance to answer, because suddenly two of the Dark Horse found her.
“Inside,” one of them said. “You are missed.”
He spoke briskly, obviously uneasy that their princess was speaking to the prisoners.
“Sigurd . . . ,” said Mouse, but they led her away.
Night fell. The Dark Horse began their feasting.
36
We sat in the darkness. It was a cold night, but we had been given no fire to keep us warm. No one slept, and not just because of the cold. It’s hard to sleep when you know you will die in the morning.
“Did I do the right thing?” I wondered. I didn’t realize I’d said it aloud until Hemm answered me.
“Yes, Lawspeaker,” he said. “If only we’d shown this courage a little earlier.”
“When they attacked the first time?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Months ago, maybe years . . . we lost our way with Horn. . . .”
We fell silent again. Then from out of my mind came words I had spoken. Words that, when spoken, had been about Ragnald, but that now had a more bitter meaning.
“Have we had one of the Dark Horse in our midst and not realized it?”
Detlef sang another song for us. He chose a sad song, a lament that was sung in honor of fallen heroes. I thought about Thorbjorn again. He was truly a man worth remembering. Faithful and honest.
Detlef sang on.
And then, in the darkness, there came a voice.
“Why sing sad songs?” it said. “We are not yet dead.”
I turned as well as I could in the cramped cage and peered into the darkness.
“Who’s there?” I whispered. The voice had come from the side of the cages that faced the forest.
“It’s me,” said the voice.
Then I recognized it.
“Sif?” I gasped.
“Yes, and Grinling and Bran. There are many of us.”
Too many questions struggled to be the first to my lips.
“Why?” was the one I asked, stupidly, for it was the one I already knew the answer to.
“To save the Storn,” she said.
I was aware then of others creeping quietly up to the cages. Dimly I saw the glint of a sword.
“How many are we?” I asked.
“I have twenty warriors here. The weak and the injured are in hiding in the forest. We have Gudrun! She is caring for them. Your mother is there, too, Sigurd.”
“Freya!” I cried.
I could feel my strength awakening.
“I wish we were more,” said Sif, “but we have some weapons.”
“They are drunk and fattened,” I told her. “There is no better chance for us. Get us out!”
“Yes, Lawspeaker,” she said.
I could have laughed.
37
The Storn fell upon the Dark Horse with no warning and no mercy. They knew their only chance was to take the Dark Horse by surprise, before they could ready themselves.
Sif and Sigurd crawled on their bellies to the edge of the outermost tent, directing their small army to spread out around them. The Dark Horse had no guards posted, so confident of their power that they never expected to be attacked.
“There!” said Sif. “Look!”
She pointed through the maze of tents to the center of the camp. There stood the equivalent of the Storn’s own great broch—a mighty domed structure of skins, ropes, and poles that blotted out the night sky behind it like a mountain. From inside came the bulk of the noise and the light.
“What do we do?” asked Sif.
Sigurd looked at her.
“Don’t you hate me anymore?” he asked.
She pulled the neck of her tunic down and showed Sigurd the scar that had formed where she had been burnt.
“Do you have one of these?” she asked.
Sigurd understood her. Their world had changed, but Sif and Sigurd had become the same.
“Then let’s show them why stone houses are safer than ones made of skin!” he said.
Sif looked puzzled, but Sigurd twanged the rope of the tent that they lay next to.
“Give me your dagger,” he said, grinning in the moonlight.
Sigurd, Sif, Detlef, Hemm, and his son Egil each cut the allotted r
Figures struggled out and were cut down by the Storn as they emerged. For a short time it looked as if there would be no battle at all. But now the alarm was raised, and other tents spewed out Dark Horse, who, despite being drunk, began to deal their terrible blows around them.
Still, though, the Storn had the upper hand. Other tents had been sliced down and set alight now, and the heath had become one big bonfire in the night.
“Come on!” Sif cried with renewed belief, and led them forward to finish the Dark Horse. They all followed, all except Sigurd, whose eyes were elsewhere.
Away to the side, in the shadow of one of the few tents still standing, crouched Mouse.
“Mouse!” he shouted. “Mouse!”
She heard him and jumped to her feet.
“Come here!” he shouted, but she did just the opposite. Like a hunted wolf, she bolted out of the ring of fire and made off into the darkness. Sigurd took one look at the fight, which was near to closing, and sped after her.
He caught sight of her just before she leaped out of the camp entirely and headed for the woods. She ran as an animal does, holding nothing back. Sigurd did the same.
Mouse had the advantage, Sigurd knew that. Her eyes were sharp in the dark.
Like a wolf, he thought.
But there she was, just at the edge of the trees. Once inside, in the dark, it would be harder to find her, almost impossible. He pulled an extra burst of speed from his burning legs and dove into the forest after her.
He could hear her just ahead, scuttling through undergrowth, and then, suddenly, silence.
He pounded on for a few steps and then he fell. Over Mouse.
“Sigurd!” she cried.
Sigurd rolled to his feet and grabbed her legs as she tried to get up.
“No, Sigurd!” she cried. “Let me go.”
But Sigurd pushed her back to the ground and sat on her before she could slip away into the darkness.
He drew the dagger Sif had given him and raised it above Mouse’s head.
“No, Sigurd, no!” she cried again.
His hand hovered.
“You said I was your sister!”
“I know,” he screamed back. His hand shook. “And look how you repay me!” he shouted.
“No, please!”
Sigurd’s hand rose a little higher, anger flooded through him. She had betrayed them. She had caused some of them to die. She had killed her own family. She! The little Mouse who had begged him to be her brother!
He plunged the dagger downward and thrust it into the earth beside her head, crying.
For a while they held each other, crying tears into each other’s clothes. The sounds of the fight from the Dark Horse’s camp had subsided. It was over. Between the trees they could see the skins of the tents burning like gigantic torches in the night.
“Are you going to let me live?” asked Mouse between sobs.
“How can I kill you? I promised to be your brother. I cannot kill you.”
“I’m sorry, Sigurd,” cried Mouse. She wailed and wailed. “I’m sorry for what I have done! But I belong with them!”
Sigurd shook his head.
Mouse crawled away from him.
“What am I going to do?” she cried.
“You cannot stay here. You are no longer one of the Storn!”
“But you let me live! That means you forgive me?”
“I let you live,” said Sigurd, “but I cannot answer for the others, Lawspeaker or not.”
He did not answer her other question.
“Then there is nothing for me.”
Sigurd got to his feet wearily.
“No,” he said, “there is nothing. Or maybe nothing itself is something.”
Mouse quieted a little as she began to understand what he meant.
“You have betrayed your foster family. They, in turn, have destroyed the tribe you were born to. You have no home now. But I think you were happiest when you had no home at all.”
Mouse stood up, too.
She was quiet but shook a little. Tears dropped from her eyes.
“Yes,” she said.
Sigurd raised his hand slowly. Gently he wiped the tears from Mouse’s eyes.
“Yes,” said Mouse again, “I understand.”
She stepped forward and held Sigurd’s hands in hers.
“Sigurd?” she asked.
He knew what she was asking.
“Yes,” he said. “I will always be your brother.”
There was a long silence between them. Mouse let Sigurd’s hands fall free from her own, and then she spoke for the last time.
“Keep my memories for me,” she said. “When you find them.”
Sigurd shook his head, confused. He looked at her, a question on his lips, but Mouse said nothing more.
She turned and, without looking back, walked into the depths of the forest.
Epilogue
When I returned to the camp, it was all over. My people had found courage and had fought bravely, and we had prevailed.
From out of the woods the rest of the tribe emerged. And there was my mother.
Stupid! Even old as I am now, with Freya long in the ground, tears prick my eyes at the thought of that reunion.
So we survived, and more than that. We rebuilt our village by the sea, and Sif and I, as husband and wife, pulled the Storn through famine until better times came again. And Gudrun, who had somehow foreseen this union, was our Wisewoman for many years. I asked her once what game she had been playing the night she had Sif and me carry her into the great broch. She said it had been her plan that Sif and I should marry. She had seen what no one else had, that the warring between our fathers could have been ended this way. But there was something more, she said.
“Love is often hidden to those lost in it.”
“But Sif hated me then!” I protested.
“No, she was just jealous.”
Of me and Mouse, Gudrun meant.
Gudrun grew to be a very old woman, kept healthy, I believe, by her herbs and potions.
And Mouse?
I told the Storn that she had died in the fight, and no one dared to ask me if that was really true, or to ask to see her body. And though I hadn’t understood her last words to me at the time, it wasn’t long before their meaning was revealed. As we struggled during that first winter we ate our way through the pile of grain in the barn where Ragnald had died. And one day, as the mound grew yet smaller, the box of memories appeared from where it had been hidden, I guessed, by Mouse.
So I keep her memories for her, the memories of who she truly was, though who she truly was is something I do not like to think of.
And the years have come and gone, and I think about my life, and I realize that many of my own memories are memories of blood.
From time to time traders come and go, and sometimes they tell stories. We gather round the fire in the great broch to listen, and sometimes the stories tell of a figure seen in the woods.
It is said to be a spirit, or a phantom, or even a woman, who walks through the woods with wolves at her heels.
And as I hear these stories I smile.
About the Author
MARCUS SEDGWICK was a sales manager for a children’s publisher in England and now works as an editor for a children’s book packager. He is the author of Witch Hill, which was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Mystery, and Floodland, which was hailed as a “dazzling debut” and won the Branford Boase Award for best first novel.
Marcus Sedgwick grew up in East Kent and graduated from the University of Bath. In addition to writing, he does stone carvings, etchings, and woodcuts. He has a five-year-old daughter.
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Text and illustrations copyright © 2003 by Marcus Sedgwick
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November 2004
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Marcus Sedgwick, The Dark Horse