Warrior Scarlet Read Online Free PDF

Grandfather.’
    Talore stood leaning on his spear and frowned down at Drem with a suddenly quickened interest. ‘Let you tell me why.’
    Drem scowled at him, the old misery aching in his throat, and did not answer; and after a moment Talore flicked the tail of his copper snake at the arm which the boy carried trailing like a bird with a broken wing. ‘Because of that?’
    Drem nodded.
    ‘So. Men call me Talore One-Hand as often as Talore the Hunter, yet no man has ever questioned my right to the scarlet.’
    ‘Sabra my mother said that—something of that. But you were a warrior and a—a great one of the Clan before ever you lost a hand to the cattle raiders.’
    Talore smiled, his swift, dark smile that raised his lip over the strong dog teeth at the corners of his mouth. ‘The Grandfather again.’
    And again Drem nodded, and again Talore leaned on his spear and looked down at him. ‘Listen, cub,’ he said at last. ‘If the thing is worth a fight, fight for it and do not hear the Grandfather too clearly. There are ways—ways round, and ways through, and ways over. If you have not two hands for abow, then learn to use a throw-spear with such skill that your enemies, and your brothers, forget that it is not from choice.’
    Drem looked at him in wonder. How could Talore—even Talore—know about Drustic’s bow? And then he realized that Talore did not know about
that
bow, but that for him also there had been a bow that he could not draw, and a spear that must take its place. There were things to think about, here. But first there was something more; a question to be asked. Drem looked at the ground while he asked it, because he could not bear to look into Talore’s face. ‘If I did—all those things, and learned to kill a buck at—at sixty paces with a spear; and slew my wolf at the Wolf Slaying—a—a greater, fiercer wolf than most, would there—might it be that someone among the warriors would stand for me with the Grandfather, when the time comes for me to go before the Tribe, after all?’
    The silence that followed seemed to him so long that he began to give up his new hope. Then Talore said, ‘When the time comes that your mother weaves scarlet on the loom for you, let you remember this dawn in the forest, and bid the Grandfather send word to me.’
    Just for a moment, he could not believe it. Then he looked up, slowly, his eyes suddenly all golden. ‘
You?
’
    ‘Who else has so good a right, small brother?’ Talore said.
    They looked at each other for a moment, steadily; a look that was the sealing of a bond. Then Talore straightened, shifting his hold on his spear. ‘Come now, it is near daylight, and they will be half mad for you at the home steading. You will know your way, now?’
    Drem nodded.
    ‘So. Then our ways part here. Good hunting, cub.’
    And in a little, while the hunter melted in among the trees, going on up the streamside towards the village, Drem struck up through the fringes of the forest on to the swelling flanks of the Chalk.
    It was almost broad daylight, the moon pale as a bubble in the shining sky; and the red plough oxen were stirring andstamping in their stalls, when Drem came up the chalk-cut driftway to the gate of the home steading. The thorn tree was drawn aside and the gateway open, and he walked through and across the garth to the house-place, suddenly so weary that he could hardly drag one leg after the other. He heard Drustic’s voice as he came to the door, ‘Na, he is not with Doli. The Gods alone know where he is or what has come to him!’ and saw his brother standing over the Grandfather, who sat hunched in his cloak beside the fire that looked as though it had been kept up all night. He caught the Grandfather’s rumbling answer. ‘The child is bad; always I have said that the child is bad. He has no respect for
me
his Grandfather! If the Sun Lord so wills it, he will come back when he is hungry enough.’
    And then they saw him, both it seemed in