We all said, “May the clay purge from you. Come forth again in your true strength.”
This is what we always say. Then we watched the flames roar up in the wind. Our campfire was dwarfed. In that light, wide space the flames looked pale and saw-edged. The One was soon lost in them. They raced up from the edge of the hill, whirling round and round, and dropped flaming pieces on the water.
We were staring at the blaze, thinking that it was the best fire we had ever made, when we heard shouts.
“What was that?” said Robin.
“Hey there! You on the island!”
“I’ll go,” said Hern. Naturally Duck and I went over the hill with him.
On the shore opposite, beyond the small stream that was all that was left of the racing channel, a row of Heathen men were standing.
“Hey you!” they shouted. “Come over here!”
8
At first I thought the Heathen were monstrously tall, with strange-shaped heads. Then I saw that they had on iron hats which came high in the crown. The strange shapes were decorations made of feathers and tufts of fur and colored tassels. They had tunics like the Heathen brat’s, but they wore long boots and gauntlets and flapping heavy cloaks, which made the outfit look a little warmer. They were all strong, strapping men. Three of them leaned on spears. The other two carried what looked like short planks with a little bow on one end. We knew those were the bows Uncle Kestrel told us of, which could send a bolt through two men at once.
“The fire gave us away,” said Hern. “Pretend we’re Heathens, too.”
“How can we?” I said. “With the One in his fire.”
“Shut up!” said Hern. The Heathen were shouting to us again to come over to them. “Why should we?” Hern shouted back. “What do you want?”
Several of them shouted back and beckoned. We could not hear what they said. “Are they talking about a King?” Duck said. The confused shouting and the beckoning continued, but none of the Heathen tried to cross the channel. They thought, as I had done, that it was still sinking mud there. As we still stood there, the two with bows pointed them at us.
“I think,” said Hern, “we’d better do what they want. Tanaqui, go and tell Robin to lie low and look after the One. Don’t upset her.”
They hoped to cross over to the Heathen while I talked to Robin. I would never have forgiven them for that. But when I went back over the hill, Robin was asleep with the cats curled up round her, and the One’s fire was blazing majestically. I threw some wood on the campfire and raced back. I was in time to catch Hern and Duck as they walked into the water. I bunched up Robin’s skirt and splashed after them.
The Heathens were taller than I thought. They wore iron waistcoats, which looked even odder than the hats. All of them had brown skins and long noses like Hern’s, and from below the metal hats tumbled hair that was either fair as ours or the brown color of the sand. They stared at us with as much interest a
s we stared at them.
“Just as Ked said!” one of them remarked. “Who would have thought it! Tell me, your honors, which of you pulled a lad from the waters awhile back?” The Heathen accent is hard to understand. Their voices lift in all the wrong places. That was why I had not been able to understand the Heathen brat very well. You have to listen hard, as if you were deaf.
“Er—that was me,” I said.
The Heathen raised frosty eyebrows at me. He had a very grizzled and important look. “The lad said it was a youth.”
“I was wearing my brother’s clothes,” I explained.
“She was soaking, and she had to change,” said Duck.
“If you think it’s important,” said Hern.
The Heathens heard us attentively, with strained frowns. I think they found us hard to follow, too. “It is important, your honors,” said the grizzled one, “if I am to take the right one to the King.” Then he gave an apologizing kind of cough. “Will it trouble you all three to come with us?”
It was strange that he was so polite. It ought to have made me much less frightened. But the men with the bows remained tense and alert, holding an arrow ready to fire and glancing from us to the land around all the time. Looking back, I think maybe that it was not us they intended to shoot.
Hern was very good all through. He did not understand what the man asked straightaway, but he made it seem as if he was considering. “We shall be pleased to see your King,” he said, and pecked with his head, graciously.
“This way,” said the Heathen. He turned and walked off. Another spear-carrier stepped in front of him, releasing his spear from his cloak. The spear proved to hold a flag full of all sorts of colored devices. We walked behind him over the sandy hills, feeling like part of the Shelling River Procession. I had only seen a flag used for religion before, but this one, as it clapped to and fro over our heads, held no religious picture that I could see.
It was not very far, onto higher land and crustier sand, where grew a stand of trees all bent as if to hold their backs to the sea. There, by another sandy river, was a collection of dwellings no larger than Shelling. As Duck said later, it would have frightened us to death if we had known our camp was so near the King of the Heathens—always supposing we had noticed the King’s camp when we saw it. It was of tattered tents and driftwood huts, with rubbish thrown about. It was poor beside the poorest village I have seen since. Yet more flags flew from the rickety roofs as proudly and religiously as you please.
“What kind of King have we come to?” Hern said out of the corner of his mouth.