Sarum Read Free Page B

very fast, but he had a look of concentrated determination on his face. Hwll hoped it would be enough to carry him through. The girl, Vata, was a stringy, wiry creature, like a young deer, he thought. She looked the more delicate, but he suspected she was the tougher of the two.
    On the fifth day they reached their first objective: the ridge.
    It rose magnificently above the tundra – a huge natural causeway several hundred feet high, running for two hundred miles down the east side of Britain before it curved westwards across country for two hundred miles more, and finally turned south again to end its journey in the sea. A little before it reached the sea, this limestone, Jurassic ridge would skirt in the centre of southern Britain, a huge plateau of chalk, from which other long ridges spread out across the land like the tentacles of some giant octopus. Throughout prehistoric times, and even afterwards, these ridges were the great arterial roads along which men travelled – the natural and gigantic highways made for men by the land itself.
    The views from the ridge were magnificent and even Akun smiled with wonder as she joined Hwll to look at them. They could see for fifty miles. As they began to make their way along it, they found that there were patches of wood and scrub so that they did not need to descend from the ridge to seek shelter at night. But as the days passed and the little family wandered on alone, it was sometimes difficult not to lose heart. Hwll, however, was set in his purpose. Grim-faced, silent, and determined, he led them down the ridge, and all the time in his mind’s eye, he tried to picture the southern lands where the weather was warm and the hunting was good. At such times he would look back at his two children and at Akun, to remind himself that it was for them that he had undertaken this astonishing migration.
    Akun: there was a prize! A glow of warmth suffused his body when he looked at her. She had been twelve when they met, one of another group of wanderers who had entered the area where his people hunted. Such meetings were rare and were treated as a cause for celebration – and above all for the exchange of mates: for these simple hunters knew from the experience of centuries that they must keep their own bloodstock strong by seeking other hunters with whom to breed. He was a skilful young tracker without a woman; she was a good-looking girl just past puberty. There was no need even to discuss the matter; the two parties hunted together and, for a small payment of flint arrowheads, she was given to him by her father.
    She was twenty-two now, entering middle life, but better looking than most of the tough, weatherbeaten women of her age. Her colouring was lighter than his. She had a rich brown mane of hair, though it was now greased with animal fat and matted from recent rains; her eyes were an unusual hazel colour and her mouth, pursed though it often was against the cold winds, was wide and sensual. She had most of her teeth, and her face had not yet developed the deep wrinkles that one day would make it resemble the cracked clay bed of an empty stream in a time of drought.
    It was her body, though, that made the determined face of the hunter break into a tender smile. Smoother than the squat, hirsute bodies of the other women he knew, her skin had a rich, lustrous quality that set the blood racing in his veins. He would still catch his breath with wonder when he thought of the magnificent, swelling curves of her breasts and the rounded, powerful body in the full flower of its womanhood.
    There was, in the tundra summer, a glorious, all too short period of less than a month when it was warm; and at this magical time, he and Akun would go down to one of the many streams that ran through the landscape and bathe together in the cold, sparkling waters. Afterwards she would stretch out her magnificent body in the warm sun and then, in an access of joy at the sight of her, and at the