The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy)

by Peadar O'Guilin

  She was supposed to hit Dharam on the wrist of the hand holding the Talker. Instead, the stone cracked into the metal between his legs. She may have looked abashed, but Stopmouth didn't notice because in his shock at the attack, Dharam had dropped the Talker anyway and Stopmouth barrelled through the crowd fast enough that he was able to leap upon it just as it hit the mud and moss below.

  Stopmouth was on his feet again instantly.

  He didn't get very far, however. The Warden Ekta appeared out of nowhere and pointed a gun right at his face. "I can't let you have that, Chief," she said quietly. But in spite of her artificial strength, she had none of the great speed of a true Elite. She grunted as she felt the tip of Rockface's spear caress her neck.

  "I like this," Rockface said, grinning. "Maybe Vishwakarma can marry this one and all three of us will have women who can fight, hey, Stopmouth?"

  "Shoot them!" Dharam shouted from above. "Why is nobody shooting?"

  "Lower your weapon, Ekta," said Stopmouth to the Warden. "I just want to speak to them. No flesh should be wasted over a few words."

  There came another crack, and a man to Stopmouth's left fell over clutching his temple. The gun he had drawn fell from his hands into the muck and he lay there moaning.

  "We have slingers out there watching you from the dark," said Stopmouth. "And Fourleggers."

  "Fourleggers?" asked Rockface.

  "Enough, Rockface!"

  Ekta lowered her pistol at last and Stopmouth strode forward.

  "Go away," a young man shouted at him. "Nobody wants you cannibals here!"

  "I will go away," said the hunter. "Let me have my say and I'll leave." He fixed his stare on the man who had shouted at him. "And nobody else need get hurt."

  They were still afraid enough to quieten down after that.

  "So, you think you are safe. You trust this man above me. A man you must know is lying when he says he can save your lives."

  "His story makes sense," said Ekta. "There are Deserter craft in the Roof. You have seen them yourself, I imagine. And while there's not enough fuel left to allow the Warship to take off, there's enough for the small craft we are building. Enough for a few pilots to get up there and bring one of those ships back here!"

  Murmurs of agreement followed, and more than a few faces glittered with tears of hope. Stopmouth realised then the futility of his mission as he looked at these people. Even the Religious wanted to believe, even Kubar.

  He imagined Sodasi crouching out there in the darkness with her sling, wondering now if she had made the right choice. For although in its last days the Roof had been a place of horror, it had been nothing but a long wedding feast when many of those around him had been born. There'd been food and comfort for everybody, with nobody to fight but themselves. Stopmouth could not hope to compete with such a dream. Strife was all he could offer them. A short life of terror, ending in a monster's belly.

  Ekta must have seen it on his face. She held out her hand for the Talker.

  Then, somebody laughed out in the darkness. A woman's voice. Indrani's voice. She strode into the gathering, her beauty extraordinary to his eyes. "Those ancient spacecraft will not work," she asserted. "Why else did that lying fool above us go to all the trouble of building the Warship if he could have deserted without one?"

  "You were just as quick to run away," Dharam shouted from above.

  "I was," said Indrani. "I begged for a place on that craft in order to save the life of my child." Her eyes glittered as her gaze swept the gathering. "So, ask yourselves this: why am I not begging for a place now?"

  "Because you want to stay," said Dharam. "Among the cannibals. You have a taste for those foul practices that civilized people long ago abandoned. No wonder you came back here instead of letting us wait for Earth to rescue us."

  Many nodded vigorously at his words, but Indrani had not finished speaking. "Fuel burns," she said. "That's the whole point of it, is it not? Do you really think our ancestors would have been stupid enough to hang spacecraft full of fuel above our public parks? And would there have even been any fuel left to the Deserters anyway after their long journeys through space?"

  One of the older women in the crowd stood up. "Actually... I'm an engineer."

  "Sit down," Indrani told her, "Without the Roof to hold your memories, you're nothing."

  "I'm not nothing," the woman replied. She kept her feet, her grey hair and the lines on her face lending her a strange unruffled dignity. "We have books here, remember? It's clumsy, I know. But still, I have learned some things for myself. Our Warship was only ever meant to orbit this planet while we slept and waited for... well, never mind that. The point is, the Deserter ships are likely to have used a thing called nuclear technology..."

  Indrani interrupted her. "Whatever that is, it will still need some form of fuel."

  "But we can get it!" said the engineer. "I have seen only hints in the books so far, but I'm pretty sure we can dig the fuel it needs right out of the ground!"

  Indrani burst out laughing, her voice startling the older woman. "You are fools, every one of you if you think you can get craft that are hundreds of years old to live again. Look around you! I have no Roof, but I remember the Deserters had centuries of their cruel civilization behind them when they built those things. They had... what do you call it? They had industry. They had our ancestors working for them like armies of slaves. If you are very lucky, it will take you years to get one of them down from the Roof and to get it working.

  "But you don't have years, do you? Do you? Your lives... your lives are now measured in days."

  "She's lying!" shouted Dharam. "Where's your courage? Take her down. Ekta!"

  "I will hear her out," said the Warden. "She, at least, is no coward."

  The two women exchanged a nod.

  "The Diggers must cover 80% of the surface of the world by now," Indrani continued. "And the darkness of the Roof will only have helped them against whatever creatures remain to resist them. Here, only the rocky hills and the memory of how they were burnt out last time keep our enemies focused on easier prey. But already they are running short of food. That will force them to try us again very, very soon. And what will they find when they do?"

  She looked around her, lingering on the Ship People who had never fought a day in their lives, before passing on to the miserable, unloved Religious with barely a hundred left among them who could raise a spear.

  "We have better weapons than the savages," said Ekta. She waved her gun to show everybody what she meant.

  "You can fight them," agreed Indrani. "But I have yet to hear any target practice. Not a single day of it. And do you know what that tells me? It tells me you don't have enough bullets for your guns. And that you don't know how to make any more of them. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me, Ekta, and I'll leave you all in peace."

  But the Warden looked away, unable to contradict her.

  A few cries of fear and shock greeted these words. Stopmouth felt so proud to be married to her, although, it seemed strange she had turned up here to argue in favour of rescuing the Tribe. She would have had to leave Flamehair with Tarini to come out here tonight. And this after all that scowling she had done when they spoke of a rescue back in the Fourleggers' warehouse. Stopmouth had assumed then it was because she feared his brother might still be alive. Now, he didn't know what to think.

  Indrani smiled grimly. "Only savages have any hope of keeping you alive long enough to grow more food. Only savages can win you the time to retrieve one of those useless Deserter craft so that Dharam and a dozen of his cronies can leave the rest of you behind again."

  "Oh, rubbish," cried Dharam, "how could any of you believe that?"

  He may have been surprised by the laughter that broke out amongst the crowd. They knew, of course they knew he wouldn't hesitate to leave them behind. They themselves, after all, had deserted the Roof in its hour of greatest need, and many of them felt terribly guilty about it now.

  Stopmouth took thi
s moment to step forward, holding the Talker high like a trophy. "My people are nearby," he shouted. "My people that I grew up with. They are trapped down the river from us on the great rock that rises above it there. I think that's why the Diggers haven't been pushing us here so much. My tribe have been taking all their fury and they have bought us time. But if we can bring them back here, they could keep us all alive. All of us. For tens of days, maybe, or even longer!

  So, who will come with me?" His voice rose to a shout, without—thanks to the Talker—the slightest hint of a stutter. "Who will come for the Tribe?"

  Nobody moved.

  "Oh, they're useless!" cried Rockface. "But with all the Diggers down there, none of them would last a dozen breaths and—"

  "Will nobody come with us?" Stopmouth asked again, his heart breaking.

  "I will." It was Kubar, looking older than ever. He stood up, his back straight and his head high. "Twice, I owe you my life, Stopmouth. I have only repaid you with betrayal." Behind him his Religious friends stirred uncomfortably, although he had carefully avoided including them. "Stopmouth, you have always been truthful with me and loyal. When you ran off to the Roof, I begged to go with you, because I was... because I still am, a coward.

  "I will go with you, though it terrifies me. I will go with you and die today rather than live five more days in the service of the liar Dharam. The monster. The Deserter." He turned to the Religious behind him. "You know what Indrani said about the Diggers is true." And then, his gruff voice rose in what might have been song:

  "Do not become a coward, because it does not befit you. Shake off this trivial weakness of your heart and get up for the battle!"

  As he sang his voice grew stronger and the words seemed to have a special meaning to his people, for all at once they cried out in rage and leaped to their feet.

  Stopmouth felt Ekta's breath right at his ear. "This is why Religion is so dangerous. A few magic words and they'll do just about anything."

  "They might be saving your life," he said.

  "Oh, I know. That's why I'm coming too."

  "What about Dharam?"

  "If he's right, then nobody here needs a Warden to protect them. Besides, somebody should keep an eye on you savages, right?"

  CHAPTER 25: The End of the Tribe

  They had burnt all the wood. The fires had gone out.

  Whistlenose cried and grunted and spat and cursed. He and the Digger rolled down the side of the hill, locked together. It was stronger than him and barely reacted when he bit the wiry hide of its face—no surprise for a creature used to being consumed alive by its own young.

  The pair had fetched up on an overhang above the river as other knots of human and beast fought around them with only embers to see by. He could feel his muscles weakening under its insistent claws, although he still lived because it seemed reluctant to damage him. No, its real weapon was a single grub that it tried to place on his cheek so that the thing could crawl into an eye or an nose or an ear.

  One of the grubs had already made the mistake of pushing in between Whistlenose's teeth. You feed me, not I you...

  The pressure increased, forcing a grunt out of the hunter. The Digger's breath came in rapid sighs, the sounds swallowed by the river below. He cried out, trying to get a foot underneath to launch both himself and his attacker into the water. The current ran rough here. He and his enemy would die quickly together if he could only pull back far enough.

  But the Digger knew what he was trying to do and kept the old human pinned down, his right arm trembling, but bending too, the first hairy tendrils of the finger-sized grub tickling his cheek. With a cry, he allowed his arm to collapse all at once, using the strength of his enemy to squash the grub against his face. But more followed it, crawling down from the top of his scalp.

  And then, the weight was gone altogether and the Digger tumbled silently into the churning foam below. "Get up!" shouted Fearsflyers. "Up, old man! Up the slope!"

  He obeyed, not sure what was happening. There was fire all around them. Fire everywhere and the Diggers fleeing before it. "How...?" he asked. "The wood is all used up! I saw it!"

  Fearsflyers was too tired, too sad to answer. They had fought all night, and Whistlenose knew that it was night because in the distance they had seen the magical, longed-for daylight disappear, only to return again now, too far away to help them; too beautiful for words.

  In that time, they had piled enemy bodies up three high, while their own losses had all been taken alive—dragged away before they could be rescued, or screaming as grubs found a path into their heads.

  And yet, this supposed final assault had been beaten off and, at the top of the hill, fires burned everywhere once more. Fires. "Where did the wood come from?" he asked Fearsflyers again. Other hunters were staggering back to safety now, too.

  The young man would not answer him. He was weeping. Everybody was weeping. The Diggers' reluctance to kill meant that maybe eight hundred people still survived, less than a third of them hunters. None looked happy to be alive.

  There was something strange about the wood that had saved them, that burned so merrily. Whistlenose's eyes couldn't quite make out what was wrong with it, but then, with a spasm of pain that snapped through his whole body, he understood. Tallies. Tally sticks.

  "No!" he cried. "No!" and he too was weeping. He found Ashsweeper and Nighttracker as soon as he could. He hugged them hard enough to hurt.

  "I'm glad you did not end up in the fields, husband," Ashsweeper said. "We'll have one last feast," she added. "Then... then the boy will sleep."

  All around them, other parents had the same idea. Digger and human flesh were both abundant. Children would sleep when they were full and wouldn't feel a thing. Whistlenose was glad of that, but inside him was nothing but emptiness. The burning Tallies had done that to him.

  He realised now, that nothing had been real: not the voices of the Ancestors speaking to the Chief; nor the Ancestors themselves. There was no future and no past. Even his flesh would go to waste in the end, for the Diggers seemed to have no use for corpses. And that didn't matter either. It had never mattered.

  Off to his right, the Chief sat with what remained of his own family, while Aagam crouched by the side, understanding little or nothing.

  "You're a liar," Mossheart kept saying to the Chief. "We were better off where we were. These people should throw you to the Diggers right now." Their daughter sobbed, not understanding why they fought.

  At the edge of the light, the Diggers had gathered once more in a silent mass. These little fires shouldn't have been able to hold them back, but they must have been caught off guard when the cowardly Chief had given the order to burn the Tribe's history. The creatures could wait another tenth or two, and after that the humans would be no more.

  Two days travel away, the Roof glowed a strange orange colour as the morning there came into its full strength. "You are so cruel," Whistlenose muttered to his non-existent Ancestors. "To bring us this close..."

  "Are we going to win?"

  Nighttracker had come to sit by him. His little body trembled, but he held a spear firmly in his hands.

  "Of course we are, hunter! One more sleep, my fine boy, and we'll push the last of them away. But it won't work, you understand me? It won't work if you don't sleep."

  "I don't understand, dada..."

  "It's what the Ancestors want. Good children sleep when they're told. Especially the ones with names! The ones who will be heroes some day." Whistlenose's voice held steady; his eyes stayed mostly dry throughout. He could lie now as well as anyone because nothing was real and all would be quiet soon enough and forever.

  Away from the Chief, another group of hunters had stood up, gathering their spears and knives. Fearsflyers stood amongst them, making stabbing gestures down towards the Diggers. "We need to go," he was saying, "while there is still firelight to see by." That lot did not care, it seemed, if they were planted in agony for tens of days before death found them.
They wanted to go down fighting rather than take their own lives.

  Whistlenose had had enough of that, however, and of pain too. He hugged his child and gently, gently moved his free hand up towards the boy's neck. How to do it quickest so there would be the least pain?

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. Wallbreaker crouched down beside him. "I know how to do it," he said.

  "What? What are you talking about?" Why had the man interrupted? The man who had caused all of this.

  "Remember when we fell into the tunnel with my daughter and Treeneck? And the Diggers covered up the Talker with their bodies?"

  "I remember. What does it matter now?" Whistlenose just wanted to get on with killing his son before the Diggers came back. At the same time, he grasped at any excuse to delay this awful task.

  "And remember how they didn't attack me after a while? I was killing and killing them and it was like they couldn't even see me? Well... I know now. I know how I did it. We could defeat the Diggers!"

  "Now? We could defeat them now?" hope surged in Whistlenose's heart.

  "Well... no... I don't suppose we could do it now."

  "Then why are you telling me this?" Whistlenose could hear the sob in his own voice and could feel his shoulders tense up to push the Chief away or to stab him or to pluck out the man's hated eyes.

  But just then, a searing blue light exploded on the far side of the hill. It was brighter than anything Whistlenose had ever seen. Brighter than the Roof itself! A great boiling mass of Diggers was suddenly revealed. More of the creatures than could ever have been imagined, pushing back against each other, climbing one atop the other, desperate, desperate, to escape.

  They surged around the base of the slope, trampling their comrades, even diving into the river to be swept away, away from that awful blue light.

  "It's a Talker!" shouted Aagam in perfect human, "a Talker!"

  Not all of the Diggers got away fast enough. People were attacking them from behind. Humans! Humans! And that was impossible, because Whistlenose didn't recognise a single one of them!