Sutcliff Rosemary - Outcast

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STORM ON THE COAST

T HE gale, which had lulled for a little while, came swooping back with a shriek and a beating as of great wings against the village that crouched on the bare hill-shoulder, huddling close to the ground, as though for safety. In the house-place of Cunori, the Chieftains brother, the hearth-smoke came billowing back in stinging clouds from the smoke-hole in the low turf roof, and the seal-oil lamp hanging from the roof-tree leapt and fluttered and sank, bringing the shadows crowding in, so that for a moment the storm and the things of the storm seemed to have broken through into the small round stronghold of warmth and safety that was Cunoris home. But the gust passed, as the others had done, and the lamp steadied, and the side-driven flames leapt up again on the hearth.

Cunori, sitting beside the fire, listened to the gale beating its wild wings all round the house-place, and was glad that the lambing was over and he need not go out again to-night. He leaned forward to catch the light on the spearhead to which he was fitting a new shaft. The old shaft, notched and splintered and warped from many hunts, lay beside him; and the new ashen shaft was satisfyingly white and straight as he fitted it into the socket; and the long, slender head caught the leaping firelight, so that it was like a tongue of flame between his hands. Three hounds lay a-sprawl on the rushes, with their bellies to the warmth: huge, brindled, wolf-seeming creatures. And on the far side of the firethe Womens SideGuinear sat spinning.

Cunori glanced at her from time to time as he worked, but she never raised her eyes from the whirling spindle with its growing spool of greyish wool. He wished that she wouldlook up; he wished that she would stop spinning for a moment; he wished he could think of something to say that would make her laugh. He liked it when she laughed. That was one of the reasons why he had asked her of her father, two summers ago: so that he could have her laughter by his own fire. But she had not laughed for half a moon nownot since the babe died.

Cunori was sorry about the babe, though not so sorry as he would have been if it had been a son. Daughters could be set to help in the field-strips and so on, but almost as soon as they were large enough to be any use you had the trouble of getting them married, and once they were married, you might as well have never had daughters at allbetter, indeed, because you had to give some of your own weapons to whoever it was who married them, to seal the bargain. Sons were quite another matter: they went with you on the hunting trail, and they brought their wives home to work on the family field-strips, and when you were too old to hunt, they hunted for you. When you had enough sons, it might be good to have daughters; a daughter before you had any sons at all was really something of a misfortune. But he knew that it did not seem like that to Guinear; all Guinear cared for was that it had been hers, and that it had lived only a day.

If the harvest is good, I will give her a set of amber pins for her hair, he thought, laying down the wolf-spear and taking up another that was in need of burnishing. And some cooking-pots; and if the harvest is very good, I will give her a length of fine striped cloth such as the merchants sell, to make a tunic.

But he knew that the amber pins and the cooking-pots and even the fine striped cloth would not comfort Guinear for the loss of the babe; and that made him feel helpless, and feeling helpless was a thing that always made him angry; so he scowled at the spear-blade, rubbing harder and harder, as though he hated it.

The gale seemed to be rising higher than ever, and under the beating and howling of it a new note was swelling, nowlost beneath the shriller overtones of the storm, now sounding clear: the deep, reverberating boom and crash that was the sea. The wind was going round to the north, piling the seas on to the black rocks of the headland, flinging in wave after wave like the blows of a hammer, as though to batter the cliffs to pulp.

He looked up with a start, and even Guinear checked her spinning, as a gust wilder than any that had gone before hurled itself upon the house-place with a drumming that shook the very roof-tree. Luath, the pack leader, opened eyes like twin yellow lamps in the wildly flickering gloom, and growled softly in his throat, then sprang up, followed by the rest, their hair rising along their necks, as the leather apron over the low, shielded entrance was plucked aside, and a figure came ducking in with the eddying gale behind it.

Cunori was afoot as swiftly as his hounds, grasping his hunting-spear in one hand while with the other he made the sign to avert evil. But the new-comer was neither live enemy nor storm-driven ghost, though from his appearance he might have been either; and as he came into the leaping flame-light, the great hounds ceased their sing-song snarling and lay down again, and Cunori tossed aside his spear. Flann! he cried disgustedly. You were never nearer to a spear between your ribs! What brings you abroad on such a night?

Flann was gasping for breath as he stood before the entrance, shaking the wild hair out of his eyes. The red mare, in the first place, he panted. She broke out again, and I have been right away over the sea-cliffs after her, and it was so that I saw it. Theres a ship caught in the bay and trying to beat out round the headland. She will be on to the Killer Rock by now!

Cunoris disgust was gone on the instant. He remembered the last time a ship had driven on to the Killer. There had been many things washed up by the sea afterwards. He said nothing, but his eyes met Flanns, and a fierce excitement leapt between them. Then, swinging round on the woman,who had risen also, he demanded: My cloak! Quick! Bring me my cloak, Guinear.

Flann had already disappeared again, to spread the news throughout the village, as she brought it to him. He caught it from her and flung it round his shoulders, stabbing home the bronze pin, and plunged out after Flann into the buffeting darkness, thrusting back the hounds who made to follow him. The wind almost took his breath away as he made his way down between the crowding huts to the gate of the stockade. Clearly he had not been the first to whom Flann had cried his news, for other dark figures were heading in the same direction, and when they reached it they found the thorn bush which normally blocked the gap at night had already been dragged aside by those who had gone before. They left it so, for those who came after them, and turned seaward, heads down and shoulders hunched, leaning into the wind.

The moon, which was near to full, seemed racing across the night, now lost behind great banks of tattered cloud, now sailing out into ragged fjords of clear sky; and as it came and went, the tribesmen were now engulfed in bat-winged darkness, now flooded with swift silver radiance, as they struggled seaward.

The whole Mens Side of the village was out and heading for the coast and the promised wreck, streaming out hound-wise across the hills, eager for whatever harvest Camulus the Lord of Storms had sent their way. And among the rest, Cunori came at last over what seemed to be the edge of the world into the full onslaught of the shrieking gale and the salt taste of spindrift on his lips; and crouching against the thrust of the wind that strove to pluck him off and whirl him away like a blown leaf, looked down. From where he stood the cliff fell away in a gigantic tumble of turf-slopes and granite ledges, ending in the jagged thrust of rocks round which the water boiled in yeasty turmoil, whose farthest rock of all, lying hidden beneath the water save at low tide, was the Killer. And out on the Killer, caught and battered and already breaking up, was the ship that Flann had seen.