The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy)

by Peadar O'Guilin

  He hit the Wetlane in a shock of cold that bubbled around him; that swallowed him down like a huge and slavering beast.

  He panicked, clawing all around until his hands fixed on the lip of the wall. He pulled himself up, although the water sucked at him, sapping at his strength. He got his knees up onto the edge, hacking up water.

  Behind him, the Wetlane churned. The far bank held a dozen Diggers, but others had made it into the water, their snouts peeping above the surface and writhing with grubs. They could swim? But they lived underground!

  He had lingered too long on the bank already. One of the Diggers had caught up with him, but, hidden by the lip of the wall, he didn't see it until its clawed hand came up to fasten on his foot.

  He would have died then, had not the inhabitants of the Wetlane arrived in force. Water frothed around the Digger. It released its hold on Whistlenose's leg, almost politely, and disappeared beneath the surface. A few bubbles remained, and then nothing. The other Diggers sank too, until only those on the far bank remained to stare across at him.

  A promise, he felt. They were making him a promise.

  He opened his mouth to shout defiance back at them, but closed it again in the face of that remorseless stare.

  CHAPTER 2: A Stranger

  Whistlenose ran hard for BloodWays, although he had no intention of entering those dangerous, burning streets. He ducked behind the first rock big enough to hide him and then began crawling on his belly, parallel to the Wetlane he had crossed. Hopefully the Diggers wouldn't know which way he had turned in order to circle around towards home again. He was praying daylight would chase them off—and the Longtongues too, whose territory he was now approaching.

  His crawling brought him at last to a small wood. He could stand here, but that didn't mean he could start running again. Longtongues loved to set traps: invisible threads they made inside their own bodies that a man would stick to and could not escape. He collected a branch and pushed it ahead of himself, wincing every time his feet crunched on dry leaves or snapped a twig.

  He wouldn't have to go much farther. All he wanted was a place to hole up until daylight. He would cover himself in vegetation and muck and then—

  He heard a voice—a human voice—a cry of anger. Whistlenose started forward and then froze. "Don't be a fool, boy," he told himself, although he was far from a boy now.

  Nevertheless his feet, of their own accord, turned him in the direction from which the cry had come. More than once as he made his way through the trees, dizziness overcame him. Had he really killed a Digger and jumped into a Wetlane? Nobody would believe him back home. But they hadn't seen that thing crawling up Highstepper's nostril...

  The cry came once more, sounding more like frustration than outright terror. Whistlenose pushed the stick ahead of himself and pressed on.

  The Roof was starting to brighten, thank the Ancestors! Whistlenose already fancied he could feel the heat of it under the trees. He came into a clearing, just as dawn broke, and stopped in surprise. One of the strangest creatures he had ever seen floated between two trees. It had a face that might have been a man's were it not for the hair that grew on its upper lip and the darkness of the skin. The rest of its body—other than the all-too-human hands—was made of a white flappy material.

  Whistlenose stood there, frozen, until the creature's eyes swivelled and widened at the sight of him. He crouched, wondering how it would attack and knowing he was too exhausted to flee.

  But nothing happened except that the tone of the floating creature's voice changed to what must have been curses.

  "You're not really floating, are you?" said Whistlenose. Sure enough, as the daylight brightened, he could see the threads of a Longtongue net glinting around the tangled beast. For the first time, after that long night, the hunter smiled.

  "Thank you, Ancestors!" Chances were, he'd make it back to ManWays alive now, and not only that, he'd bring the flesh of this creature home for his family. His belt-knife was made of that new material the Chief had discovered—Armourback shell. It would cut through anything, even the sticky threads of the Longtongue trap. He drew the weapon and stepped forward with a grin.

  "It'll all be over quick, my hairy friend," he said to the creature, although he hesitated when he saw its eyes widen in all-too-human fear. It began struggling again as he approached. Spitting and shouting. It would attract the attention of other beasts if he didn't hurry. But just as he raised the blade the creature's struggles caused some of its flappy white hide to fall away and Whistlenose realised with a shock that it wasn't skin after all, but a form of clothing. The limbs beneath, for all their puniness and dark colouring, were every bit as human as that of anybody in the Tribe.

  "I've seen skin like that before," Whistlenose murmured. And he had, too—that strange wife of the Chief's. The one his traitorous brother, Stopmouth, had stolen away. Whistlenose remembered the day she'd fallen from the sky and how she'd kicked some of the hunters in the face when they'd tried to subdue her.

  "Shhhh," he said to the stranger. "Shhh." And the roofman seemed to understand that Whistlenose had decided on rescue rather than butchery.

  After that, only the Ancestors knew how the pair of them made it back to ManWays alive, for the stranger crashed his way through the woods and caught his ridiculous clothing on every branch or stung himself on every patch of red moss. He didn't understand the most basic of hand signals. He had to be guided everywhere with tugs of his puny arms.

  But Whistlenose had lost the strength to feel any fear at all. He too, would have made easy prey for any hungry creature that came along. He was limping by now and in between pulses of pain from his bad leg, he kept thinking how unfair it was that it was taking them so long to reach safety. The first streets they encountered had been part of ManWays when he'd been learning to hunt with his father and uncles. Once upon a time, human guards had manned these walls, each with a shell to blow warning in case of attack.

  War had put an end to that. The Armourbacks had wiped out half the Tribe and the new Chief—as Whistlenose still thought of Wallbreaker—had pulled everybody back to a few small streets around Centre Square where they could defend themselves better.

  The loss still hurt, especially amongst the proud older hunters.

  The hairy-faced stranger stopped suddenly to stare up at the Roof. Oh, there'd been a lot of activity up there lately: metal Globes speeding through the air and spitting fire at each other, while sometimes, distant patches of the great Roof itself turned completely black. But there was little to be seen there now, and Whistlenose nudged the man back into weary motion until—thank the Ancestors!—the first of the rickety New Walls came into view and a sudden waft of cookfire set his tummy to grumbling. Even better, his wife was there, jumping to her feet. Ashsweeper! He felt a lump in his throat. Too young to be with a man who had so few days left in him.

  The stranger saw her too. He all but licked his lips at the sight of her long limbs. Rude, very rude. Whistlenose glared at him, but the man, if man he was, kept on looking at Ashsweeper even as she wrapped her husband in a warm embrace. People came running from all directions. "What's that on its face? Should we kill it? Is it a man?"

  Ashsweeper ignored all of it. "You took your time," she whispered. Whistlenose could barely stand. He wanted to lose himself in her, but the stranger's eyes were still there, like knives in the back of his skull.

  In the Chief's house, Whistlenose's left leg continued its trembling while his belly cried out for food. Smoke from a single fire tickled his eyes and lingered over trophies on the walls: the skins of mankind's enemies and prey. Whistlenose kept such souvenirs in his own home, but here, Wallbreaker had laid them out in ways that showed off the inner workings of the creatures' limbs and muscles. He had even drawn charcoal lines on the skins to show where the sinews used to be.

  "Our Chief is mad," he had told Ashsweeper once, as the boy tossed in sleep beside them.

  "Well, he can be as mad as he likes, husband.
He's all that's keeping the Tribe alive."

  "No, Ashsweeper. It's strong hunters that keep us alive. And that... that Chief won't even lift a spear. As if that feud with his brother unmanned him."

  "Say what you want, love. We eat better thanks to his strange ideas and lose fewer hunters now than we ever did before. I think our population has even increased since we ate the Armourbacks."

  Whistlenose brought himself back to the present to find the Chief studying him, as though he were one of the strange creatures pinned to the wall. The magic ball known as "the Talker" lit up the Chief's body with an eerie glow. Its light picked out the skin of his belly, strangely soft, like a woman's breast.

  "Thank you, Whistlenose," Wallbreaker said. "You did well."

  What he really meant, Whistlenose knew, was that of the six hunters who'd gone out the day before, any of the others would have been a more welcome sight than this old man so close to the soup. "You'll get your share of the prisoner if he is to be Volunteered."

  "Thanks, Chief. But..." his tummy rumbled again. "But what about now? Could I... for my family...?"

  Wallbreaker's eyes narrowed and seemed to fly like slingstones towards Whistlenose's sore leg. "Are you still limping, hunter? You told me that injury was better."

  Upstairs, a child was crying and one of the Chief's wives tried to soothe it. Whistlenose felt sweat beading on his forehead. "I got away, didn't I? When nobody else could? You don't have to worry about me, Chief. I'll Volunteer like a proper man when my time comes, but it's not today." Please, Ancestors! Make him listen. "I leaped over a whole Wetlane on that leg. But my family still need something to eat."

  "You brought nothing back."

  "I brought the stranger. That makes it either a successful hunt or a successful rescue, depending on how you count it."

  All of a sudden, the Chief laughed out loud, making the hunter jump.

  "Your mind hasn't blunted, anyway," said Wallbreaker. "Very well. You can take four days’ rations for your family. There are only three of you, am I right?"

  Whistlenose nodded.

  "And a tattoo. You don't have too many, I see, but if you really jumped over a Wetlane, then, by the Ancestors, you've earned one. Now, sit down while I speak to the creature you brought home. He might trust you, since you were the one to rescue him. But," the Chief raised a finger. "This is like the Flesh Council. No rumours leave my house. Sit. Go on. Sit."

  Whistlenose stifled a sigh and hoped his bones didn't creak too loudly as he lowered himself onto a cushion of stuffed Hopper skins. Shame they were extinct. Their hide softened so well when properly chewed.

  Hunters pushed the stranger into the room. He shrugged off the helping hands behind him.

  "Too proud for his own good," Whistlenose muttered and the man's head swivelled towards him. He had understood the words and it took Whistlenose a moment to remember the power of the magical Talker.

  The stranger's mouth moved. A quiet, musical voice spoke words that should have made no sense, but again, the Talker's power made them real: "This world is at an end."

  The Chief flinched. Ever since the dreadful struggle with the Flyers and the Armourbacks, people had been saying the same thing. "The world is ending." Barely more than a thousand humans remained alive, squashed into a handful of streets. Strange lights had been seen on the Roof, and a new, numberless enemy, the Diggers, swept all before them so that even the Longtongues teetered on the verge of extinction. Wallbreaker hated such talk. He sent his Flesh Council bullies from hearth to hearth to shut the pessimists up. But even the Chief was said to cry in his sleep.

  "He's worried he can't save us," Ashsweeper used to say.

  "Can't save himself, you mean..."

  And now this dark-skinned stranger with hair growing on his face and perfect teeth, had arrived in their midst like a messenger of doom from the Ancestors.

  Wallbreaker cleared his throat and licked his lips before speaking. "You mean the Diggers will kill us?" He waved a hand at Whistlenose. "Just today your rescuer told me the Bloodskins are no more. Their streets were collapsed or burning."

  "Yes," the man said. He sat forward then and grabbed Whistlenose by the wrist in his strange dark fingers. "So good of you to keep me from the Longtongues. It's a bad way to go, getting your insides sucked out while you're still alive." He released his hold, like discarding a toy. "But the Diggers are the worst I've seen. Not even entertaining to watch—they're far too... too efficient." He looked from the Chief to the hunter and back again. "I know you think you're going to eat me now, but you won't. Or were you planning to sell me to the Clawfolk? You won't do that either."

  "How do you know these things?" asked Wallbreaker.

  "Didn't your runaway wife explain it to you, Chief?"

  "My... how...?" The Chief should have beaten the stranger bloody, but he only looked confused.

  The man grinned. It had a strange and terrible effect, coming as it did from behind the hair on his face. "We see everything in the Roof. Everything. We know what you did to her. A few, like myself, found that funny. A stuck-up Commissioner's daughter! Ha! Most of them up there have you down as a villain. But don't you worry about your reputation, savage. They have plenty to keep them occupied up there right now. Plenty."

  "Why are you here?"

  "Oh, it's not for the cooking, I'll tell you that." The man grinned again, as if he thought that was funny. "This little trip to the surface was way down on my list of options. Let's just say I passed on information that should have been kept quiet. The punishment for that sort of thing has grown drastic all of a sudden and when I knew they were on to me, I said to myself, Aagam, my friend, if they're going to send you down to the surface anyway, why not pick your own spot? Go where the professionals are. The ones who already know how to survive. Rule over them!"

  Whistlenose sputtered, "You... you mean to rule over us? And how—"

  "Oh, not by force! Don't you worry! I, Aagam, the conqueror," he winked, "will run this tribe through its current Chief. That's right, Wallbreaker. You will do all the work. Deliver me my food and hope I learn to keep it down. Give me a few of the prettier wives and a bodyguard and generally do as I say."

  Whistlenose looked from one man to the other, amazed that the Chief allowed this stranger, Aagam the Conqueror, to speak to him this way. It made no sense, but Wallbreaker seemed to have overcome his earlier surprise. Now, he cocked his head, the expression on his handsome face one of polite interest.

  "And in return for all this free food and protection?"

  "Information."

  Wallbreaker nodded and suddenly, Whistlenose couldn't take it any more. He leaned over and pulled the man by his black, black hair into a strangle-hold until Aagam's eyes seemed to pop in their sockets and his weak fists tore hopelessly at the old hunter's rock-hard muscles.

  The Chief watched, waiting until it was almost too late. Aagam was kicking up the furs at his feet, his face under the hair even darker.

  "Enough, Whistlenose." Wallbreaker waved him lazily away. "I think our guest has learned his lesson. Haven't you, guest?"

  It took Aagam a hundred heartbeats of spitting and choking to recover. When he had finished, his voice emerged as little more than a croak, although the Talker continued to translate it perfectly.

  "You will regret that, savage," he said to Whistlenose. "Next time your tribe is looking for Volunteers to be traded for flesh, I'll make sure your Chief here puts your name at the top of the list."

  For the first time, Whistlenose began to fear the stranger. Aagam the Conqueror and the Chief looked each other in the eye like kindred spirits, and Whistlenose couldn't get his mind around it. A few dark utterances about "information" and suddenly this beast could make threats? Whistlenose remembered the Chief's stolen wife, Indrani. She had fallen from the Roof, and she too had escaped the pot by means of the strange fascination she had held for Wallbreaker, little more than a young hunter back then.

  "What exactly are you offering?" ask
ed the Chief.

  "Survival," said the stranger.

  "How?"

  The man grinned, rubbing at his neck. "Let's talk about your brother."

  The Chief stiffened. Everybody knew that Stopmouth had run away with the Chief's second wife a few hundred days earlier. That Wallbreaker had survived the disgrace that followed was testimony to how much the Tribe relied on his clever schemes and his meticulous planning.

  "Stopmouth must be dead by now," said the Chief.

  "Yes," replied Aagam. Wallbreaker looked away and Whistlenose couldn't tell whether it was from sorrow or relief. "But," Aagam continued, "this is the best part. He only died about ten days ago, when these creatures called Yellowmaws got him."

  Wallbreaker leaned forward. "Only ten days ago? Impossible! Unless... did you... did you see him die?"

  "As good as. I watched him fall right into the mouth of one of the monsters. He was surrounded, and the nearest help lay three hard days’ travel away. He's dead for sure."

  "But only ten days ago..."

  "I'm telling you this free of charge," said Aagam. "I'll even tell you how he survived so long. The answer is that he found more people. More humans. As many as you have here. They have a Talker of their own and a few streets like these, only, see, they're living now behind a set of hills..." it took a few moments to explain what a hill was, but the important thing was this: the hills represented a rocky barrier that Diggers found hard to tunnel through.

  "They have a far more defensible position than you have here. That's the first thing. The second, is that this new tribe are weaklings compared to you. Fresh down from the Roof with little experience of hunting. They need you, and make no mistake, Chief, you need them too. You're surrounded by men like this savage beside me—the one you will soon have killed for me." He pointed at Whistlenose. "Yes, you." He grinned horribly from behind the hair on his face. "Stopmouth's tribe do not think as clearly as you do. They will not yet have realised that their numbers have grown too small to survive into the long term, even if the Diggers had never existed. At most, each group has another generation or even two, shrinking all the while. You know this, Wallbreaker, and I know you know it. You have a daughter of your own already and two pretty wives who want to kill each other. You may see grandchildren, but there'll be no great grandchildren. And that's the best outcome. That's with no Diggers at all. But there are Diggers, aren't there, Chief? The Bloodskins, you say, have fallen. Even the Longtongues, for all their love of the dark, will be lucky to last a hundred days more. And after that? Well... you know what happens after that."