Spirit Walker by Michelle Paver Read Free Book Online Page A

carry his meaning.
     
The large ears twitched. Firelight gleamed on its yellow tusks. Then the boar gave an irritable grunt, lowered its massive head, and started rooting around in the wreck of the shelter.
     
All it wanted to do was eat. Summer is a lean time for boars, with last autumn's berries and acorns long gone. No wonder it was busy grubbing up roots, beetles, worms; anything it could find.
    The boar took no more notice of Torak, and after a while, he got into his sleeping-sack and curled up, listening to the comforting sound of snuffling. His new companion was gruff and none too friendly, but welcome all the same. Boars have keen senses. While it stayed close, no sick man or malevolent Follower could get near him.
    But soon it would be gone.
As Torak stared into the red heart of the embers, he wondered if Fin-Kedinn had been right; if he'd let himself be tricked into leaving the Ravens. Maybe 68
whoever--whatever--was after him had got him exactly where it wanted. Alone in the Forest.
Whoever it was, they'd been busy in the night.
    It was raining when Torak crawled out of the shelter. The boar had gone, the fire was cold, and someone had rolled away the stones and smoothed out the ashes. Someone had taken Torak's arrows--had crept inside the shelter while he slept, withdrawn them from the quiver by his head, and planted them in the ash to make a pattern.
    Torak recognized it at once. The three-pronged mark of the Soul-Eaters.
He went down on one knee and yanked out an arrow.
"All right," he said aloud as he got to his feet. "I know you're clever, and I know you're good at sneaking up on me. But you're a coward if you don't come out and face me right now!"
    No one emerged from the dripping undergrowth.
"Coward!" shouted Torak.
The Forest waited.
His voice echoed through the trees.
"What do you want? Come out and face me!
What do you want?"
Rain pattered on the leaves and ran silently down
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his face. His only answer was the rattle of a woodpecker far away. .
The morning passed, and still it rained. Torak liked the rain: it kept him cool, and the midges away. His spirits rose as he crossed two more valleys. The feeling of being watched lessened. He heard no more demented howls.
     
Maybe that was because the boar was keeping him company. He didn't see it, but he kept finding traces of its presence. Big patches of churned-up earth where it had rooted for food. A muddy wallow beside a much-rubbed oak tree, where it had had a good scratch after taking a bath.
     
Torak found this reassuring. He had a new friend. He wondered how old the boar was, and if it was the father of the piglets he'd seen the previous day.
    As the afternoon wore on, their paths crossed. They drank at the same stream, and rested in the same drowsy glade. Once, as they were both searching for wood mushrooms, the boar gave a tetchy grunt and chased Torak away, then stamped on the mushroom he'd been about to eat. When Torak went to look, he saw why. It wasn't a wood mushroom at all, but a poisonous look-alike, as its bruised red flesh showed. In the boar's bad-tempered way, it had been warning him to be more careful.
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Next morning it was still raining, and the Forest slumbered beneath a mantle of cloud. But as Torak trudged farther east, he realized that it wasn't only the clouds that were shutting out the light. The Forest itself was growing darker.
    He was used to the Open Forest, where the trees let in plenty of sun, and the undergrowth is usually fairly light; but now he had reached the hills that guarded the Deep Forest. Towering oaks reared before him with mighty limbs spread wide to ward him back. The undergrowth was taller than he was: dense stands of black yew and poisonous hemlock. The sky was hidden by an impenetrable canopy of leaves.
    There had been no sign of the boar all day, and Torak missed him. He began to fear not only what followed him, but what lay ahead. He thought of the tales his father had told him.
In the Deep Forest,