The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy)

by Peadar O'Guilin

  Whistlenose had seen a planted human once. While the expressions of beasts were unreadable to him, the agony on the man's face had been obvious, and horrifying. And now those children would suffer like that for fifty or a hundred days. How could it be borne? Was the life of the Tribe worth so much?

  But of course it was. Tribe was everything. And so, still crying, he kept running.

  Although the trees had stopped falling around them, nobody slowed, their movements still full of panic. Even packs of food lay abandoned in the path. But Whistlenose had almost caught up with the main body now and he breathed a little easier. He felt wretched, knowing he would never forget the cries of the lost.

  Wallbreaker's family, at the very back, began falling further behind. Mossheart hobbled along on an injury she had picked up, while Treeneck carried the girl and the Chief kept watch for enemies, his face shining with sweat.

  Whistlenose came to a stop, not wanting to catch up with them. He was supposed to be the rearguard, after all. And he wasn't sure he was ready to talk to a Chief who had ordered him to abandon children to the Diggers. You wanted to run, though, boy. But how he hated it! How it hurt!

  Wallbreaker and Mossheart started arguing in heated whispers, while Treeneck walked on ahead with the girl. And then, as if, Whistlenose had merely imagined them, the woman and child were gone. Straight down into the earth without a sound.

  The old hunter didn't even think about it. He sprang forward, all pains forgotten. He passed by the Chief and Mossheart. He had no spear, but it didn't matter. His mind knew nothing. He dropped into darkness, landing amongst a writhing pack of Diggers with his knife already in his fist. He was yelling and stabbing all around him. The brain. Go for the brain and maybe, like the creatures in the fields, they wouldn't come back to fight him.

  He left his knife in an enemy's skull. He bit at their faces, he clawed at their eyes. One of the monsters served him as a shield, as others, a stream of them, their pressure relentless, forced him up against the chill damp walls of the tunnel.

  All was darkness. But then, suddenly, a ball of the purest, blinding light, dropped down from above—the Talker, of course. Heartbeats later, another man was in the tunnel beside him, both of them fighting and screaming together, possessed by an insane Ancestor. A Digger threw itself over the Talker and it was as though dusk had come, allowing the enemy to surge forward once more. Whistlenose's companion went down, swamped. Now, Diggers tore at the creature Whistlenose was using as a shield until it came to pieces in his hands. But they weren't trying to kill the old hunter. No, they fought to pin his limbs down, to steady his head to receive a grub...

  He shouted, "Ancestors, kill me! Kill me!" He could feel tiny beasts crawling down his scalp. One of them pushed up into his left nostril and he lost control of his bladder. The slimy creature's boneless body met an obstruction and began to eat through it. The pain! Oh, the pain!

  But out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other man rise again. Wallbreaker! It was Wallbreaker, the coward, the Chief! He was on his feet, stabbing about himself with a spear when he should have been calling for his "mother." And the strange thing, the really strange thing, was that the Diggers were just... taking it. He killed them and none of them fought back. It was as though they couldn't even see him.

  He uncovered the light of the Talker, and all at once, the enemy fled.

  Whistlenose, crying his disgust, flung grubs away from himself and pulled out the one that had got stuck in his nostril. A stream of blood followed it to the ground.

  "Daddy?"

  Gore dripped down Wallbreaker's cheeks, glistening in the light of the Talker. He seemed not to notice. He was shaking and weeping and hugging his daughter to him. Treeneck's body lay trampled beside them. At least she would never be planted.

  "Treeneck had a thousand days left in her." Whistlenose said. Or wanted to, anyway. He couldn't quite make anything come out of his mouth. His throat was raw. He kept seeing images of Wallbreaker killing Diggers without any of them fighting back. He couldn't understand it.

  "Give her to me," cried Mossheart from above. "Give me my girl!"

  They cut a little flesh from Treeneck to remember her by. That was all there was time for. They left their kills behind them too. Then, they climbed out and resumed the march.

  Whistlenose should have gone back to the rearguard, but couldn't quite manage it any more than the Chief knew how to give orders. So, it was Mossheart who took charge, shouting at Browncrack and the others to spread out.

  And then, night fell, normal in every way, except it came too early, and, instead of Roofsweat, human bodies rained from the sky.

  CHAPTER 17: The Fall

  Nobody knew what was happening.

  A hundred heartbeats after the tracklights had come on, great thumps and clatters in the forest sent dozens of hunters running for their spears. "It's an attack!" somebody cried. How wrong he was. But nothing could have prepared the exhausted men for what they saw: a dark-skinned woman lay dead in the first clearing they came to, her body twisted, her face mercifully out of view beneath her fine black hair.

  Whistlenose and Fearsflyers were at the back of the group that discovered her. "In the trees," whispered the young hunter, pointing up. Right above their heads, the branches had caught another man in a weave of foliage and floppy limbs. Nearby were others, all Roofpeople: men with beards like Aagam's, their faces stark with fear, their arms spread wide as a Flyer's wing; a mother who had wrapped herself around a boy in the vain hope of cushioning his fall; a creature so shrivelled and wrinkly, it was some time before they could even recognise it as human. On and on through the trees, in bushes, burst against rocks, were ever more corpses, covering an area as large as ManWays...

  Here and there, men began to weep. They hugged each other or threw themselves down on their knees. "Thank you, Ancestors!" they cried. "Oh, thank you! Thank you!" In the Tribe's hour of greatest weakness, when food had run low and Diggers pressed from all sides, their forebears had sent them a feast of brave volunteers from the Roof itself!

  The night that followed was the most joyful of the migration.

  "Dada! Dada! I'm eating liver! Like a real hunter!"

  "Your father's tired," said Ashsweeper. So he was, but Whistlenose grinned, clutching a hot bowl of brains and watching those with greater energy who were dancing or arguing over the fantastical array of garments with which the Roofpeople had been clothed.

  "There's enough for everyone," said Ashsweeper. "Even the Diggers. A pity they wouldn't take their share and leave us alone for a while."

  Whistlenose smiled, or thought he did. He felt his eyes glaze over as he scooped little bits of food into his mouth. He tried to savour the taste, but his mind kept wandering. There were those who asserted loudly they could tell the difference between a male and a female brain. "A man leaves richer flavours behind," they would say, only for the nearest woman to scoff back with "More simple, you mean!"

  Sadly, Whistlenose wasn't quick-witted enough to join in these games and, truth be told, it all tasted the same to him in the end.

  The last time he'd had this much human meat had been after the passing of Laughlouder, his first wife. The body of his second wife, brave Sleepyeyes, had never been recovered, so he hadn't been able to honour her in this way. Are you there, my sweet? he wondered. Have you been protecting us all this while? He felt arms around his shoulder, and for a moment, he really thought—but no. This hug came from the woman whose life Sleepyeyes had saved. Ashsweeper.

  "There's something different about you, husband," she whispered. "I know, I know. I said I wouldn't bother you, but you're not the same since you came back from the rearguard."

  He tried to guess what she meant, but he was so, so tired. He had fought Diggers in their own tunnels. He had seen more people fall from the sky than he even knew were alive. Of course he was different... But that wasn't what his wife meant at all.

  "Your nose," she said, at last. "It doesn't whistle any more.
"

  "It doesn't?" if he hadn't been so exhausted, he would have realised it himself, but yes, yes, it was true! A Digger grub had tried to eat its way through a blockage in his left nostril, the one that had caused him such humiliation all his life.

  Whistlenose had no recollection of dropping the bowl, but he found himself hugging Ashsweeper and laughing like a fool. That was how the Chief found them a few heartbeats later.

  "Whistlenose?"

  He looked up to find Wallbreaker waiting for him at the edge of the fire.

  "Won't you join us, Chief?" asked Ashsweeper. "We have more than enough."

  "No, thank you. I wish to consult with your husband."

  "We were sorry about Treeneck," Ashsweeper continued. "She had a thousand days left in her."

  "Ten thousand," agreed the Chief, but he was too agitated for real courtesy. "Come with me, hunter."

  He sighed and put down his bowl. The two men trudged away from the firelight, although the breaking of branches all around them told Whistlenose that they were never completely alone or unprotected. They pushed through bushes and over drooping trees until soon, the nearest hearth was little more than a flicker between the branches.

  Whistlenose struggled to stay focused. Part of that was tiredness and part of it was all the attention he paid to his own breathing. Amazing, he kept thinking. The sound is gone!

  The Chief too seemed lost in his own mind. He said nothing for what felt like hundreds of heartbeats. He was just a shadow to the older hunter and when at last he spoke, it was barely louder than the voice of an Ancestor heard in the heart. "I ordered you dead."

  Whistlenose froze. "What? I—"

  "No, no. I don't mean now." The Chief actually gripped Whistlenose's shoulder, as though they were the dearest of brothers. "No. I mean before. Aagam wanted you gone, and anyway, everybody knew about that limp of yours. It was nearly time." He snorted. "It's funny, that, because since then, you've been a better hunter than you ever were as a young man."

  He paused, breathing heavily now, his grip still tight and sweaty. "You saved my daughter today."

  "No, Chief. I only delayed her capture. You were the one to save her... And... I'm sorry to say this. I always believed you were a coward, but you jumped right into that hole too."

  "I am a coward, hunter. More than ever now. That's why I jumped into the hole."

  "I... I don't understand."

  "I don't care. What matters is that if you'd had the decency to die when I ordered it," his voice shook, "my daughter would be gone."

  "Wallbreaker... Chief. I am a father too. You're welcome. And... and if I may say so, the way you used the Talker down there in the tunnels was amazing. The light drove them right back! You gave us time to fight and..." Whistlenose's words died in his throat. He was just remembering something else that had happened in the tunnel, something truly miraculous. Why had the Diggers, having covered the Talker and brought down the Chief, let him escape again so quickly? And afterwards, why had they seemed to ignore him even as he slaughtered them?

  The old hunter strained through the dark, trying to see this man that the Ancestors loved so much. They must have been involved in such a miraculous escape! There could be no other explanation. And in that moment, the last of Whistlenose's doubts about the Chief flew off like a cloud of insects.

  "I'll be honest," Wallbreaker said. "I never thought of using the Talker as a weapon before. Even though it's obvious now... I just... it was dark. Darkness is especially... I mean, I just wasn't sure I could go down there, even for my own daughter. That's the truth of it. So... hunter, ask a favour of me. Ask anything and—" But he never finished the sentence. The grip on Whistlenose's shoulder tightened suddenly. "There it is again! Look, the creature!"

  Sure enough, another light shone through the branches all around them, but with a bluish hue that showed it was no campfire.

  "It's on this side of the Wetlane," Wallbreaker breathed. And then, although there was a very real possibility of Diggers in the area, the Chief was off running through the trees. Whistlenose followed, only to find that a lot of slime had fallen here in the last tenth or so. He skidded through puddles of the stuff, burning his feet. He found the Chief at the edge of a clearing and slid to a halt beside him, breathless; shocked at what he was seeing.

  The usual, gentle sounds of a forest night assured their ears that all was as it should be. There were cracks and creaks; rustles and the fluttering of tiny wings; and then, the crunch, crunch, crunch of pounding feet as the Chief's guards finally caught up. "By the Ancestors!" said the first of them. Whistlenose didn't look to see who it was. It didn't matter. His eyes couldn't leave the bright figure in front of them. It was a woman, as they had seen before. Except... except they could look right through her to the other side. She glowed with a slightly blue colour, her body shivering like a bowl of fat.

  "It's slime," said Wallbreaker. "She's made of the slime that fell from the Roof. Remember the way it moved sometimes? Remember the way it seemed to follow me?" Whistlenose did. And now the strange substance had made a woman out of itself with features that reminded him more of Aagam or Indrani than any member of the tribe.

  "Who... who are you?" asked Wallbreaker. "What are you?" He had the Talker of course, and the creature may have understood him, for she drew closer, her steps leaving tiny, moving puddles behind her.

  "It's an Ancestor," said one of the honour guard.

  "Then why is she so sad?" said another, and Whistlenose realised it was true: she looked like a mother whose child had just been volunteered.

  "I am," she said in a voice like a bubbling stew. "I regret. I am... regret." She said other things that made no sense at all, and the Chief in frustration held out the Talker, as if bringing it closer to her might make its magic stronger. Instead, the effect it had was quite astonishing: the woman simply exploded, soaking all of them in drops of slime.

  "That's it?" Wallbreaker shouted. "That's it? You came all this way for that?"

  But that wasn't it. The next day, the Talker, their only weapon against the Diggers, their one way of communicating with Aagam who was guiding them, started leaking slime. It would never work again.

  PART TWO: UNDER THE SUN

  CHAPTER 18: Making Enemies

  The Warship ruin glittered in the light of the topmouth shaded his eyes with one hand while bouncing his daughter with the other. She was chewing the leather strap that held her firm against him, her drool running down his shoulder.

  "You like that, little one?" Flamehair she was called, despite her dark colouring and the fact that it was unnatural to name a child before she could walk more than a few steps. Other children played near the wreckage and not all of them were human. A Fourlegger pounced in amongst them and that too, was wrong, or, as Indrani would have said, "new."

  "Well, love?" His wife had arrived. He felt an arm snake around him from the far side and he smiled, couldn't help it. None of the strangeness mattered. He had everything a man could want.

  "It's the hole," he said, nodding upwards. "The one you burned in the Roof."

  "With the Warship's lasers. Yes, love."

  "It's bigger," he said. "It's growing."

  "That's just your imagination, Stopmouth. It was huge to begin with. As large as a city. But..." she sighed. "I keep thinking of all the people we must have killed when we did that. We—"

  They'd had this conversation before. "Those people were dead already," he insisted. "You know that. Or dying. Look at the rest of the Roof! Look!" He pointed away from the sun-filled gap and out towards the hills beyond. Here and there, a few tracklights still worked or blinked on and off. But the rest of the world lay smothered under a thick blanket of darkness. The Roof was gone for good, along with all those who had remained in it.

  But down on the surface, although Diggers waited just beyond the hills, down here there was a chance to survive. The sun dropped warmth and light through the massive gap Indrani had created. And the crashed Warship had bro
ught with it little kernels of magic called "seeds" that could be tricked into making food. It would take time, apparently, despite the fact that the seeds had been altered in ways beyond his understanding to grow faster. There were rations too. Disgusting stuff, and not enough to feed everybody, but they would help a lot until the harvests came along.

  It better work, he thought. There are too many of us now who don't know one end of a spear from another.

  Toiling in the glare of the sun, hundreds of Newcomers, woken from the freezing boxes in which they had thought to sleep for generations, were clearing rocks away and pulling up plants. Another group, faces screwed up in disgust, raided latrine pits for excrement, while still others, cursed and wrestled with a thing called a pump that produced water out of nothing.

  Indrani sniggered. "Oh, they're paying the price now! Look at them!"

  He wished she wasn't so open with her distaste for these people, but he was finding it hard to care right now. The warmth and the strange new light had a lovely relaxing effect on him. Here, with Indrani by his side and a milky, squirming child in his arms, Stopmouth couldn't have felt happier. Let every day be like this, he prayed. This place and these people. Let it be home for us all.

  A tap on the shoulder banished his peace.

  Why did it have to be Vishwakarma? A great sadness had descended on the man since the awful attack that had happened when Stopmouth was in the Roof. But his over-excited nature was never too far away. "Uh... Chief? Um. Yeah, what you were expecting. The Fourleggers. Amazing!"

  "They're here?"

  "Just three of them."

  "Of course. Thank the Ancestors. All right, Vishwakarma. Get everybody up from the... the fields and arm them all."

  "But, Chief! Those people. Farmers. They haven't a clue how to fight!"

  "Don't worry about it. Just get them together. Give them spears or sticks. Anything."

  Stopmouth could no longer tell the time without the ever-changing brightness of the Roof to guide him, but perhaps a tenth of a day later, a crowd of up to a thousand humans confronted a ragged band of Fourleggers.