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Guardian Rock. I--" "What were you doing up there?"
"I found tracks."
Saeunn called to Renn from across the clearing. "Come! We're leaving!"
"There's something in the camp," Torak said urgently. "I saw it!"
Again the Raven Mage summoned Renn.
"Torak, I've got to go!" she said. Pouring the ground ochre into her medicine pouch, she got to her feet. "We won't be gone long. Tell me when I get back. Show me the tracks."
     
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    Torak nodded, but didn't meet her eyes. He wouldn't be here when she got back. And he couldn't tell her he was going, because she'd try to stop him, or insist on coming too. He couldn't let her do that. If Fin-Kedinn was right, if there was even a chance that he was walking into a Soul-Eater trap, he wasn't going to risk her life as well as his own.
"I'm sorry you can't come too," said Renn, making him feel worse. Then she ran to take her place at the head of the clan beside her uncle, Fin-Kedinn.
    The Ravens moved off, and Torak watched them go. He knew that they would carry Oslak's body a good distance from the camp before building the Death Platform: a low rack of rowan branches on which they would lay the corpse, facing upriver. Like the salmon, Oslak's souls would make their final journey upstream, toward the High Mountains.
    The rites at the Death Platform would be brief, and after saying farewell, the clan would leave his body to the Forest. As he'd fed on its creatures in life, so they would feed on him in death. Three moons later, Vedna would gather his bones and take them to the Raven bone-ground. But for the next five summers, neither she nor anyone else would speak his name out loud. This was strict clan law: to prevent the dead man's souls from troubling the living.
    Standing in the clearing, Torak watched till they
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were gone. When the last Raven had been swallowed by the Forest, the camp felt eerily lonely. Only the dogs remained to guard the salmon.
    Quickly, Torak ran to fetch his things. He crammed his light wicker pack with his few belongings: cooking-skin; medicine pouch; tinder pouch; fishhooks; his quiver and bow; his rolled-up sleeping-sack; Fa's knife, wrapped in rawhide; his mother's medicine horn. As he stuck his small basalt axe in his belt, he tried not to think of the last time he'd been forced to pack in a hurry. It had been last autumn, as Fa lay dying.
Torak's hand tightened on the hilt of the knife Fin-Kedinn had made for him. It was lighter and easier to use than his father's; but nothing would ever replace Fa's knife.
    Don't
think about that now, he told himself. Just get out of here before they come back. And this time, don't forget food.
After what had happened to Oslak, he couldn't face salmon: not the smoked meat, nor the Ravens' flat cakes of dried flesh pounded with juniper berries. Instead, he cut some strips of elk meat hanging from the rafters in Thull's shelter. They'd keep him going till he reached the Deep Forest.
    But how long would that take? Three days? Five? He didn't know. He'd never been near it, and had only encountered two Deep Forest people: a silent Red 51
Deer woman with earthblood in her hair, and a wild-eyed Auroch girl, her scalp weirdly caked in yellow clay Neither had shown any interest in him, and despite what he'd told Fin-Kedinn, he didn't expect much of a welcome.
    On his way out of camp, he passed the Leader's shelter--and that was when it hit him. He was leaving the Ravens, perhaps for good. First you lost Fa, then Wolf. Now Oslak, and Fin-Kedinn and Renn...
It was dark inside the shelter. Fin-Kedinn's corner was neat and spare, but Renn's was a mess: her sleeping-sack crumpled and littered with arrows she hadn't finished fletching. She would be furious that he'd gone without her, and there was no way of saying good-bye.
    He had an idea. Outside the shelter he found a flat white pebble. Running to the nearest alder tree, he muttered a thanks to its spirit, cut off a strip of bark, and chewed. Spitting the red mix of saliva and tree-blood