The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy)

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The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy) Page 10

by Peadar O'Guilin


  "What does he want this dung for?" she whispered.

  "It must be their sense of smell," he said. "He'll use it to upset them in some way, or... or..."

  "Or blind them?" she asked. "If their noses are as good as our eyes?"

  "Maybe. They have eyes too, though. I don't know."

  "The Ancestors won't abandon us, husband."

  "No." But Whistlenose wasn't so sure. All his life he had heard tales of species going extinct. The story was always the same: numbers would drop below a certain level and then, crack! Gone within days. The Flim were destroyed when he was a boy. The Hairbeasts, by rights, should have been next if the humans hadn't sheltered them.

  And now we are little more than a thousand. And fewer every day.

  He had no doubt the Chief would get them through the next few days, but the real question was how many would die in the process.

  Another filthy woman approached on silent feet. Whistlenose was surprised to recognise her as Mossheart. She too was the mother of a nameless child and shouldn't be here. Punished perhaps, for speaking out at what should have been a meeting of hunters.

  "Why are you dawdling, Ashsweeper?" she asked, proud as ever. "There's a big pit left at the back."

  "It's nearly dark," said Ashsweeper.

  "All the more reason to hurry."

  But at that moment, Browncrack and Shoulderbiter came sprinting out of the woods. They looked worried and tired, but they weren't calling out the alarm.

  "Time to go," said Whistlenose.

  He needn't have spoken. Everywhere, the workwomen were already wrapping up their sacks of filth and piling them on to the food sleds that had been freed up for that very purpose.

  "How near are they?" Whistlenose asked the two young scouts.

  Both were smeared with the poisonous juices of crushed berries and they stank like rusty metal. "Two thousand paces!" said Browncrack.

  "All right, that's all right. I thought we were going to have to put up a fight to allow the women to get away."

  "To get away with the shit?" said Shoulderbiter. "We might have had to die for shit? Can't the women just abandon the sleds?"

  "All right. Let's keep our voices down now. Listen, two thousand paces is plenty. Jumpers are slow when travelling, and when they get here, this whole place will stink of us and it will be night time. They'll have to stop and make sure we're not all around them ready to strike. We have plenty of time to make it to the new position."

  And so it proved. Even in the dark, the gatherers and their escorts had no trouble following the trail left by the tribe earlier that day. The enemy were sure to find it just as easily, although they would have to worry more about ambush.

  Whistlenose stumbled along, struggling to stay alert after a ten-day of incredible worry and fear. All he wanted was to curl up beside his family at the new position and forget about anything until the morning.

  Up ahead, the dark shadow of the mound gradually became apparent. He had seen it only by day when scouting for a campsite, back before they had met the Jumpers. He wondered why no fires had been lit. There was no more hiding now, so why shouldn't the Tribe have one last hot meal to raise their spirits? Why no final dance to the sound of wedding drums?

  He jumped as he felt something brush across his neck.

  "You're dead," a voice whispered.

  "Laughlong?"

  "Is that you, Whistlenose? Oh."

  "Is... is something wrong?"

  He sensed, rather than saw, the lowering of the spear. "I'm sorry, Whistlenose. I'm truly sorry."

  "About what?" But he already knew. Deep in his guts, he already knew. The boy. It had to be the boy.

  CHAPTER 11: Well Worth It

  There were always children who did such things. "Don't run away!" were among the first words parents tried to teach. But every few hundred days or so, somebody's precious girl or boy walked around a corner and never came back. Things had improved after the attack of the Flyers and their Armourback and Hopper allies. ManWays had greatly shrunk and in the process its borders had become tighter, more secure.

  But then, the Ancestors had sent the whole tribe running off into the forest.

  Ashsweeper was on her knees, not even crying, her eyes as dry as a dusty brick, as if she didn't know anything had happened at all. The only sounds were from the great mound where crowds of people were digging pits with improvised shovels of wood and bone.

  Hightoes had been brought out to them. She was weeping while her husband, Fearsflyers, stood nervously at her side. She explained it all again and again.

  "He was too fast. In my state, I couldn't... He said he wanted Ashsweeper... he said... he... he ran back down the trail we had made. I hoped he would just run into you along the way, but he's... he's not with you..."

  Her voice seemed to fade into the night. Here between the trees little chilling drops of Roofsweat spattered Whistlenose's face and rattled the canopy of leaves. He had that spinning feeling in his head, like his spirit was being sucked out of his skull. He was no longer an Ancestor: no longer anything at all. And poor Ashsweeper still made no sound. But the Roof made up for her—it always wept at night.

  Nearby, men were getting ready to grab hold of him. They knew he would try to go looking and they couldn't allow him to waste his flesh that way.

  Suddenly, everybody around him tensed. A warning was shouted and spears were lowered and then, just as quickly, relaxed. Laughlong started jumping up and down, as though he were trying to shout out something, but had lost his voice.

  "Dada?"

  The boy was there, clutching at his father's leg. Was Whistlenose dreaming? Everyone was babbling all at once until a sentry had to come back and shut them up. Whistlenose lifted the child into the air so that they were face to face. "What? How? What did you...?"

  "I hid," said the boy. "I saw you coming and hid. Then I tracked you back. Nobody saw me! I won, I won the game! I always catch you, dada!"

  "Night tracker," said Hightoes.

  "What?" Whistlenose felt dizzy.

  "That's his name," she said.

  Whistlenose still barely knew what was happening, but somebody slapped his back. Others were embracing Ashsweeper. And they were embracing the boy too with "welcome to the Tribe!" and "your Ancestors can see you now!" and other things. Surely it was too early? And the other pregnant women hadn't agreed to it yet, but nobody here had any doubts that the name would stick. Nighttracker. He had chased down his own parents and, in the process, he had evaded even the most experienced hunters. "Nighttracker".

  Ashsweeper finally started crying. But not Whistlenose. Ever since the boy was born he'd felt a grip around his throat that had tightened and tightened so that it troubled even his sleep; so that at times he couldn't breathe. That was gone now, cut loose and all the cool air of night flooded into him at once. "Nighttracker," he said, his voice awed. A good name. So much better than his, with a good story behind it that people would tell around fires for hundreds of days to come. Nighttracker.

  The following day, Wallbreaker revealed the full horror of his plan to the Tribe.

  ***

  A Globe passed overhead, its metal body glinting in the light of the Roof, but not as brightly as it should have. It felt dark for the time of day. Or was it just fear that made him feel that way?

  Whistlenose said nothing. Nobody did, stuck in such uncomfortable positions as they had been for two full tenths already. He wanted water. He was desperate to scratch his right leg. And worse than all of that, was the stench, the awful stench of human excrement, and the vomit too that the Chief had insisted on, despite all the food wasted in order to create it.

  And yet, he still felt giddy. That was the word, "giddy," over the naming of his son. Nighttracker was a real hunter's name. And wasn't that how it often worked out? How people somehow lived up to what they were called? Speareye had been a great Chief; Crunchfist was every bit as powerful as he sounded, and Flimface... poor Flimface! As cowardly in the end as tho
se creatures he so uncannily resembled.

  And then there was "Whistlenose," of course. A fool's name. Harmless and unremarkable, with no stories to leave after him for the fireside. But he had left a great hunter to continue the Tribe and nothing could be better than that.

  A nearby woman, who must have been just as expendable as he was, coughed when the smell became too much. Somebody else hissed her quiet. What a fool! he thought. Can't she shut up?

  And still, in the forest, nothing moved.

  The mound, it turned out, had been terribly hard work to dig. People kept pulling away blocks of the stone known as "concrete." The most disturbing discovery of all, however, had been the bones. Human, beyond any doubt. Crumbling away at the slightest touch. The Tribe had travelled five days away from ManWays. How could there be humans here? Did that mean the tribe had migrated once before, deep in the past? Or worse, that their territory had been slowly shrinking over the generations?

  "None of those things," Aagam had said, but Whistlenose and the other hunters had been sent away before he explained the rest of it.

  Something shifted in the forest and the hunter felt his heart speeding up. Another movement, and his eyes, which had been learning to spot them, made out the camouflaged shapes of two Jumpers crawling through the undergrowth.

  "Ancestors help us," whispered the silly woman, but quietly enough that the creatures were unlikely to be able to hear it. Not that she could know that for sure!

  The two enemies rose up on powerful tails. Whistlenose's fingers itched for a spear. They could see him now, he knew that. They could see he was unarmed and helpless.

  Wallbreaker's schemes often cost lives before he "got them working just right." Whistlenose remembered in particular the Chief's use of nets to pull creatures out of the Wetlanes. Sometimes, it was the hunters who were pulled in instead.

  Whistlenose tried not to think about that as the two Jumper scouts hopped closer to the easy meat. Were they hesitant in their movements? He hoped so. He would be, if he were them. What they were now seeing, were dozens of living humans—as well as a few of the larger men dressed in Hairbeast furs—buried up to their waists or chests, their limbs listless. A stench of bodily wastes hung heavy on the air.

  The Jumpers paused. They lowered their weapons: the wood they used for blocking, which Aagam had called a shield; and their long-tipped spears.

  Wherever they came from, these creatures had been fleeing Diggers. There was little else that could drive such a strong people with so many hunters from their homes. And now, they must be thinking, the Diggers had found them again. If Wallbreaker's scheme worked, the Jumpers would run away as far and as fast as they could, leaving the humans alone.

  Unfortunately, these two scouts did not flee. Something must have been blowing the warning shell in their heads, telling them that all was not right here.

  They hopped closer, coming all the way out of the forest, until Whistlenose, in the front ranks, could see them no more than a spears-length away from him. Sweat rolled down his forehead.

  Of course the assembled humans could overpower these two enemies, even unarmed, even half-buried. But if they gave themselves away now, the green creatures would drum those tongues of theirs in an alarm that would quickly pass to a relay of their friends nearby.

  One of the creatures hopped to a point just in reach of Whistlenose. Ancestors help me. He reacted, grabbing for the beast clumsily, just as a real victim of the Diggers might do. The Jumper swayed back and he brushed its moss cloak with his fingertips.

  It rattled its tongue and Whistlenose moaned at it. Still, it didn't leave, although its companion stayed well back. The sweat ran into Whistlenose's eyes. He mustn't wipe it away! He couldn't react to the sting of it!

  He wasn't the only one suffering. His neighbour was the woman who had been whispering earlier. What was her name? Stonedropper? He barely knew her, although they were close in age. How could that be? She'd been pretty when they were younger, he remembered that much. Hunters had offered ridiculous amounts of flesh to her father in order to woo her.

  He heard her moaning now and she too grabbed at the Jumper—too enthusiastically, he thought. No, no! They're not like that! But then, how would a woman know? They had never been to the fields of the Diggers to see what a hunter saw. They'd never had the chance. She moaned again, louder now and Whistlenose imagined how afraid she must be, how she was trying to scare the creature away. He felt clammy with fear.

  He knew it was wrong, but couldn't help turning his head slightly and in doing so, saw something horrible. The Jumper still wasn't sure one way or the other if these were genuine victims of the Diggers. It raised the arm with its spear slowly into the air where Stonedropper could not help but see it. The long, wicked tip of bone shone in the Rooflight and held there for ten full heartbeats.

  Then, it flashed down and drove in through Stonedropper's belly and into the soil beyond. The pain! The pain must have been incredible! Great hunters, strong men with jaws of rock and chests black with tattoos had screamed their last moments away with such wounds. Whistlenose had seen it. He had seen them beg the Ancestors, their mothers, their Chiefs to save them; to take the pain away; to make it all end.

  But the Diggers' victims did not react like that, would barely feel a thing.

  Whisttlenose waited for the inevitable scream that would ruin the plan and condemn all off them to death. He would make sure to kill these scouts first, though. He tensed his body to leap out of the hole and could sense the other hunters around him preparing to do the same. They would start this last stand with one small victory at least!

  Incredibly, Stonedropper held her silence, letting out no more than a quiet gasp when the cruel spear withdrew. The creature turned around calmly, and hopped away.

  Nobody could move to Stonedropper's aid. Nobody. She bled to death in utter silence.

  Later, just before the fall of darkness, when the signal arrived that all were free to move again, Whistlenose was first to get to her side. "Stonedropper," he whispered. Blood ran down her face from where she had bitten her lip through to keep from screaming. She had saved them all. She had saved the entire Tribe. It was the bravest thing he had ever witnessed.

  "Good," Wallbreaker was saying from somewhere at the back. "I knew it. That was well worth it."

  CHAPTER 12: Ten Thousand Days

  In the days after Stonedropper's sacrifice, the migration went more smoothly again. The Jumpers had passed them by and although other species were seen trying to escape through the woods, they were nowhere near as numerous or as well organised as the green-skinned tribe had been. These new creatures fell easily, almost gratefully to human spears, and before long, enough confidence had returned to the Tribe that the Chief was allowing fires to cook the flesh and to smoke any extra for the long journey that still lay ahead.

  In private, however, Whistlenose wondered at the madness of running towards the source of so much fear. He was sure that other members of the Tribe must be thinking the same thing, but nobody could complain: the Chief had been right so far and had saved many hundreds of lives with his clever schemes. The younger hunters admired him more than ever now. He'd heard Browncrack saying how the Ancestors—at the Chief's request—must have silenced Stonedropper to make the plan work. That was all too much for the older man.

  "Listen," he hissed, grabbing the lad by the neck. "You saved my life. You're a good man and you'll serve the tribe well."

  "Let... let go my neck. Whistlenose! What—"

  "But you didn't see... you didn't see her lip. She did that. Stonedropper. Not the Ancestors, not the Chief. She did it. She had a thousand days left in her. Ten thousand! And you lessen them when you speak of her like that!"

  "All right. I was just saying!" The young man wrenched himself free. He was going to be much stronger than Whistlenose soon, but he didn't realise it yet. He had red marks on his neck from the older hunter's fingers. This wasn't how a man should lead others and Whistlenose felt asham
ed. And yet, not even Ashsweeper had really understood when he'd told her. "I was cursing Stonedropper before it happened," he said. "I thought she was a fool! But there's no way I could have done what she did. I couldn't."

  "Of course you could, husband. You're always putting yourself down. I saw how you volunteered to feed the Clawfolk."

  And so the days passed.

  The Tribe was no more than a short journey from the end of the forest when the Roof turned black again. It was Whistlenose's third time to see such a thing and he should have been ready for it, except it went on for so much longer than before.

  Utter silence reigned in the darkness. Nothing moved. Even the mossbeasts had frozen—he should have felt them whizzing past his ear!

  Whistlenose was holding his breath, waiting for normality to return, and then... then he saw a glow in the distance. A faint blue light that flickered as a fire would. Some creature, perhaps? But, before he could think of trying to track it, the Rooflight came back on.

  People had a name for these periods of total darkness: the Blindness, they called it. This time, no slime fell on the tribe, but another half a day's travel revealed hundreds of crumbling trees caked in the white residue it left behind when it dried out.

  "It would have killed us just as easily," Whistlenose told Ashsweeper. "There was so much of it here!"

  "But it didn't," his wife replied. "The Ancestors wouldn't let that happen." She was starting to talk like all the others now, as if she believed in Wallbreaker's mystical pronouncements. Whistlenose wasn't sure how he felt about that himself. There didn't seem to be any other explanation for all the things that had happened. And yet, why would the Ancestors have sent somebody as awful as Aagam to guide the Tribe? And why would they speak through a coward?

  Speareye had been a great Chief: the man every man should be, but the Ancestors had allowed him to die in full view of the Tribe.

  He dug into one of the trees with a bone knife. Dry bark flaked away to reveal more solid wood beneath. "This is where I saw that blue glow," he said. "During the Blindness."

 

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