Warrior Scarlet by Rosemary Sutcliff Read Free Book Online Page B

the Chalk ran down into it, and in several places across it beavers had built their dams—generation after generation of beavers that had been there, Drem supposed, as long as the river had been there, and would stay while the river stayed. And the choked river had flowed out over its banks, spreading far and wide; and so came the Marsh. Sometimes after the winter rains the water spread far up into the forest, making a lake that was a day’s trail, two days’ trail, from end to end, and all the pass through the Chalk was a winding arm of water out of which the alders and sallows raised their arms to the sky. But in the summer it was mostly land of a sort, sour and sodden and very green: reed beds and alder brakes, and dense covers of thorn and sallow, and thickly matted fleeces of yellow iris, all laced with winding, silver riverways and spreading, shallow lakes alive with the wild fowl that came inland at the breeding season and did not go back to the coast until autumn came again.
    No one lived in the Marshes that lay inland of the Chalk, for at night mists rose from them and evil spirits prowled abroad in the mists to give men the sickness that filled their bones with shivering fire; and even at high noon in summer time there was always a dank smell of things wet and rotting, for the cleansing wash of the tides that came up and went down again twice in every day over the sea marshes could not reach so far through the Chalk. But the hunters went there after the wild fowl and the beaver.
    So Drem headed for the Marsh now, and in a clump of sallows on the edge of one of the many spreading sheets of water, settled himself to wait.
    He was shivering with mingled cold and excitement and abreathless sense of the importance of that day’s hunting. Away eastward the bar of amber light was brightening to gold, and the gold was catching echoes from the water that lay everywhere, and all around him was a stirring as the Marsh woke into life. Light and colour were coming back into the world; and suddenly something dark, almost like a rat, darted from among the pale roots of the rushes close to Drem, hesitated, half doubled back, and then scuttled across to the next clump. When the water-rail moved, other things would soon be stirring. Very soon now, Drem thought, any moment now, and drew his knee farther under him. His hand cramped on the spear shaft, and he opened it, feeling it wet and sticky with the long tightness of his grip; and went over feverishly in his mind everything he had ever been told, everything he had ever found out for himself about the throw-spear; and licked his lower lip, and waited again.
    He was so twanging taut that when, without an instant’s warning, a mallard drake beat up from the rushes not three spears’ lengths away to his right, he was thrown completely off his balance. Next instant he had recovered himself, and sent the light throw-spear, thrumming as it flew, after the quarry. It missed so narrowly that it carried away the tip of a wing feather, and for one instant he thought he had made his hit, before the spear plunged back into the rushes and the mallard darted off, raising its wild alarm call to the morning skies. And suddenly with a great bursting upward, the Marsh was alive with startled and indignant wings.
    In a while, the morning fell quiet again, and he could hear teal and widgeon, curlew and sandpiper crying and calling in the distance; but all around him the Marsh was silent; empty under a shining and empty sky.
    Drem hit the stem of the nearest sallow with a passionate fist; but that only hurt his knuckles and did nothing to mend what had happened. He was almost crying with fury as he slid out of his cover and searched among the reeds for his throw-spear. It took him a few moments to find it, because he wasblind with rage and disappointment; but he found it at last, and settled again to wait. But the wild fowl did not return though he heard them calling in the distance; and at last,