Lifting his arms to the sky he shouted at the top of his voice. Echoes drifted back to him, and tears coursed from his eyes. He had never heard an echo, and he felt the mountains were calling to him.
‘I am going home!’ he had shouted.
And they had answered him.
‘HOME! HOME! HOME!’
Far down the slopes Caswallon heard the echoes and smiled. The boy had a lot of learning to do, and even more problems to overcome. If he thought it was hard to be a thief in Ateris, just wait until he tried to walk among the youths of the Farlain!
A lowlander in highland clothing…
A sheep to be sheared …
And being the son of Caswallon would make life no more easy. Caswallon shrugged. That was a worry for tomorrow.
For three days the new father and son wandered the Farlain mountains and woods, into the high country where the golden eagle soared, and on into the timberline where bears had clawed their territorial marks deep into the trunks of young trees.
‘Why do they do that?’ asked Gaelen, staring up at the deeply-scored gashes.
‘It’s very practical,’ Caswallon answered him, loosening his leather pack and easing it to the ground. ‘They rear up to their full height and make their mark. Any other bear in the vicinity will, upon finding the mark, rise to reach it. If he can’t he leaves the woods – for the other bear is obviously bigger, and therefore stronger, than he is. Mind you, the bear that lives here is a canny beast. And he can’t reach his own mark; in fact he’s quite small.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Gaelen. ‘How then did he make the gashes?’
‘Think about it for a while. Go and gather some wood for a fire and I’ll skin the rabbit.’
Gaelen scoured the clearing for dead wood, snapping each stick as Caswallon had taught him, discarding any that retained sap. Every now and again he glanced back at the tree. Could the bear have rolled a boulder against the trunk? He didn’t know. How clever were bears? As he and Caswallon sat by the fire he told the older man his theory about the boulder. Caswallon listened seriously.
‘A good theory,’ he said at last, ‘but not true. Now look around you and describe your setting.”
‘We are in a hollow where our fire cannot be seen, and there is protection from the wind.’
‘But exactly where in the hollow are we?’
Taking his bearings from the mountains, as Caswallon had taught him, the boy answered with confidence, ‘We are at the north end.’
‘And the tree, how is it placed?’
‘It is growing ten paces into the hollow.’
‘Where does the wind come from in the winter – the freezing wind?’
‘From the north,’ answered Gaelen.
‘Picture the hollow in winter,’ prompted the clansman.
‘It would be cold, though sheltered, and snow-covered.’
‘How then did the bear make his mark?’
‘I see it!’ yelled Gaelen. The wind whipped the snow into the hollow, but it built up against the bole of the tree like a huge step and the bear climbed up the snow.’
‘Very good.’
‘But was that just luck? Did the bear intend to fool other bears?’
‘I like to think so,’ said Caswallon. ‘You see bears tend to sleep through the winter. They don’t hibernate as other animals; they just sleep a lot. Mostly a bear will only come out in winter if it’s hungry, and then it wouldn’t be thinking about territorial marks.
‘But the lesson for you, Gaelen my lad, is not about the bear – it’s about how to tackle a problem. Think it through, all the way. A question about the land involves all four seasons.’
As Gaelen rolled into his blankets that night, beneath the hide roof Caswallon had made, his mind overflowed with the knowledge he had gained. A horse always kicks the grass back in the direction from which it has come, but the cow pushes it down in the direction it is facing. Deer avoid the depths of the forest, for they live on saplings and young shoots which only grow in strong sunlight, never in the darkened depths. Never kill a deer on the run, for in its terror its juices flood the muscles making it tough and hard to chew. Always build your fire against a cliff wall, or fallen tree, for the reflected heat will double its warmth. That, and the names of all the mountains, floated through his mind and his sleep was light, his dreams many.