Outcast by Michelle Paver

flooded back. Bracken whipping past his antlers, mud squelching beneath his hooves. Flint flashing, red hair flying. Then--nothing. What had he done?
     
80 In a heartbeat he was out of the sleeping-sack, startling Wolf.
     
The pack-sister! Torak said in wolf talk. Is she all right? Don't know, came the reply. A lick on the muzzle. Are you?
    Torak didn't answer. He never spirit walked in his sleep. And it couldn't have been the drink he'd made for the rite; Renn had told him it wouldn't make his souls wander. Besides, he'd daubed the sign of the hand on his cheek, like she'd said. With his fingers he searched his face, but the earthblood was gone. He must have rubbed it off while he slept.
How could this have happened? He glanced at the crusted scab on his chest. The mark was gone--but the power of the Soul-Eaters was great. Maybe while he'd slept, they had forced him to do this: to attack the person he cared about most.
    It took him the whole morning to reach the clearing. He had some idea of where it lay, having noticed the badger sett and the stump on previous hunts; and Wolf helped too. But when they got there, Torak didn't recognize it. The bracken and willowherb had been flattened as if by a hailstorm, the oak kicked to splinters. Here and there he saw scarlet spatters on green leaves.
    The world tilted. He tasted bile. He fought to stay calm, to piece together what had happened. 81
In the churned mud near the stump he found a print of Renn's boot; a red hair snagged at one of the entrances to the sett. On the riverbank he found drag marks where canoes had been drawn up. A mess of men's footprints, deeper on their way back to the boats. They'd been carrying something heavy.
    Maybe they had arrived in time, killed the elk, and taken it with them in the boats.
Maybe it was Renn they'd carried away.
Torak's mind refused to work. His tracker's skill deserted him.
I did this, he thought. There is something inside me that I can't control.
Wolf nudged his thigh, asking when they were going. Torak asked him if he'd tried to help the pack-sister, and Wolf replied that he'd wanted to, but then he'd smelled "Other."
    What do you mean? said Torak, but Wolf's answer was unclear. Wolves don't talk only with grunts and whines and howls, but with subtle movements of the body: a tilt of the head, a flick of the ears or tail, the fluffing up or sleeking down of fur. Not even Torak knew every sign. All he could gather was that Wolf had caught a bad scent making for his pack-brother and raced to his defense, but whatever it was had gone by the time he'd arrived.
    Torak stared at the desolation around him. He
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should get under cover; at any moment a canoe might slide into view. He didn't care. He had to go to the clan meet and find out what had happened to Renn.
Dusk was coming on by the time he reached the river mouth where the clans were gathered. At this time of summer, the night wouldn't get any darker. Which made what he was doing even more dangerous.
     
Apart from the headband, he hadn't stopped to disguise himself, simply smearing wood-ash on his skin to put off the dogs. For the rest, he would rely on his hunter's ability to stay out of sight, and the fact that he'd persuaded Wolf--with some difficulty--not to come too.
     
He found a stand of juniper and pine well back from the camp, hid his sleeping-sack in some brambles to retrieve later, and crouched down to plot his next move. Around the mouth of the Whitewater, fires glowed orange in the deep blue dusk. Before them, black figures reached stick-limbs toward the sky, like paintings on a rock. So many people! For a moment Torak was small again, just short of his eighth birthnight, and proud to be going with Fa to the clan meet by the Sea.
    The Mountain Hare Clan had built their reindeer-hide shelters on the rocks above the shore, perhaps because this reminded them of home. The Rowan 83
    Clans' turf domes squatted in the meadows, while the Salmon Clan had pitched their