The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy)

by Peadar O'Guilin

  I'm sorry. I will fix it. Then, the slime creature collapsed back into a puddle and the light disappeared once more.

  The Diggers paused, perhaps wondering if another slime woman might appear. He could hear their breath all around him, shallower and faster and hissier than a human's. When the sound stopped completely, he knew they were about to spring. But this time, he made no effort to grab a rock to defend himself with. He couldn't get his mind off the slime creature and kept wondering if it had really spoken to him or if he had imagined it. And what could it have wanted with him anyway? Addressing him by name!

  Such strange last thoughts for one who should have been thinking of his family and dedicating himself to his Ancestors.

  "Shtopmouth!"

  A voice called out from up on the hill. Indrani. No! he thought. No! She would get herself killed with him. He surged to his feet. "Get back!" he cried. "Get back!"

  He expected the Diggers to take him then, but they did not move. He couldn't possibly escape, surrounded as he was, and he realised then, that they wanted him to call out to this would-be rescuer, that nothing would please them more than for other humans to rush foolishly into their realm. "Please," he shouted. "Go away! Go away!"

  He heard a rumbling, but had no idea what it was. Something massive flew past his face and warm liquid sprayed over him. More objects crashed and bounced down the hill all around. Finally, he realised what was happening and threw himself flat. Boulders! Somebody was pushing boulders down the hill!

  "Shtopmouth! Shtopmouth!"

  "Go away!" he screamed.

  Another crunch as rocks rolled past him. But that wasn't the end of it.

  Next came fire: rolling bales of dried sticks and moss that turned end over end, with dozens of Fourleggers charging along behind them. They were going to save him! He couldn't believe it, but nor could he allow it. He had to die, that was the deal. He had to. Yet, he couldn't make himself run further downslope into the darkness.

  In spite of the rolling fires, the shadows of Diggers in great numbers surged up the hill just as the first of the Fourleggers reached him. Both sides fought silently and better than humans would have, with senses superior for killing without light.

  "Shtopmouth!" a torch appeared right in front of him. "Come on! Come on!"

  "I can't, Indrani. Please, leave me. I agreed."

  "To him. To him!"

  "He knows a w-way to save us all, but I have to—"

  She shrieked as a shadow appeared suddenly between the two of them, but she overcame her surprise quickly and smashed the flame down hard over its skull, scattering sparks everywhere.

  "Fourleggers die for you. Come! Come!"

  "But—"

  "He tells not true all the time, your brother! Now, you do the same."

  "We need him, the T-tribe needs him!"

  "I need you. So, we tell not truth too. We sleep you with Fourleggers until he kills Diggers. Then, he not to needed again and I kill him!"

  The Fourleggers were beginning to pull back, as their balls of wood and moss began to burn out. And Stopmouth found himself running too, rushing up the slope with his wife. He didn't want to die, had never wanted it. He would hide out with the Fourleggers as she asked, while Indrani would say he had disappeared. And it would be true, wouldn't it? It's exactly what he had agreed. To disappear. And no more than that.

  Yet, as he ran after his wife, he knew the Ancestors would see through such double thoughts and they hated liars. Hated them.

  Indrani tripped, her torch falling away.

  "Forget it," he said, catching up to her and lifting her by the elbow. "Forget it!"

  But the Diggers had not given up on them yet. His legs were taken out from under him and Indrani yelled in rage. Stopmouth had fallen flat on his face and couldn't move at all. He heard his wife snarling over him and then screaming enough to chill his blood, but then, the Digger rolled off him.

  "Come," she said, entirely out of breath. "Come! Oh Gods!"

  They had nearly made it to the top of the slope. The sun still managed to shine for them up there, although when they finally saw it, it was only a few hundred heartbeats away from sliding past the far side of the hole. They would have to hurry if they were to make it to the Fourleggers' warehouse. And what if somebody saw them creeping in? How would Indrani persuade his brother of his disappearance then?

  Sodasi was waiting anxiously for them beyond the brow of the hill, along with the fourlegger child. This then, was how the news of his attempted suicide had been spread.

  "Indrani?" She had come to a stop. He turned to look at her in the fading golden light. Sweat covered her face from all of her efforts so that now she seemed to sparkle.

  "You must to live now," she said, the words spilling softly from between perfect lips. "Flamehair... for her." And blood came too, then, from her belly, where claws had ripped her open.

  "Oh, no," he whispered. "Ancestors..." they hated oath-breakers and always punished them. She collapsed, and he didn't even manage to catch her in time, although she had stood but the length of an arm away. He fell down beside her, pulling her beautiful head up onto his lap, his mouth working uselessly.

  "I never know..." she said, "why you love me, Shtop-mou."

  "What!" her words made no sense.

  "I did... very much bad things... I am monster... but you..."

  "No! No!" Indrani was hard, yes, hard as metal and stone. But loving too. Just like the Tribe, the way it needed to be to survive. She had once told him that he was her heart. But if that was true, then she was his backbone. He couldn't be brave without his Indrani; he couldn't be anything.

  He didn't know how to say that to her here and now. His idiot clumsy tongue and his panicking heart, each tripped up the other so that the only sound they could make was an awful, wordless moan.

  And then, as suddenly as that, she was gone. He trembled, his throat a swollen, aching lump. He rocked her body, their skin sweat-stuck together, as the sun that she had brought to the world disappeared at last.

  CHAPTER 31: Finding Mother

  The time had come for the last battle that would decide the fate of the world. Scouts had spotted huge groups of Diggers. They gathered in the darkness beyond the hills where the light barely reached, even though the hole in the Roof seemed to have grown slightly in the time since the Tribe had arrived here.

  "They're coming," people said. "For sure, this time."

  And so a meeting had been called for the Tribe—the real Tribe: men and women descended from John Spearmaker. He had taught them to hunt; to feed and to clothe themselves. Sacrifice and bravery had been handed down through so many generations of these people, you could taste it in their marrow.

  Heavy moss bandages covered the Chief's shoulder, but Indrani's magic weapon had failed to kill him, and he was finally back on his feet. He grinned, brimming with confidence as in his younger days. His famous dimples were deeper than ever and he seemed so much more certain of himself since his brother had been lost on a scouting mission. He waved his hands to silence the Tribe.

  That was no easy task. Everybody had crammed in together in a new Centre Square they had been made by knocking over the shanties of the Ship People. Children cried. Parents tried to shush them. Young hunters puffed up their chests, hoping to win the eyes of the remaining unmarried girls, or holding up fingers to show how many kills they would make.

  "My people," Wallbreaker cried. "Many of you did not believe me when I said the Ancestors had spoken to me, and yet, here we are, in the new home that was promised to us. The Tribe lives and only one trial remains... The final defeat of the Diggers."

  "How do we know it will be final?"

  Whistlenose jumped. The voice had been a woman's. Worse, it had been that of Ashsweeper, his own wife, right beside him. "The world we have crossed is full of nothing but Diggers," she said. "If we beat off one Tribe of them, what's to say there won't be an armful more?"

  Luckily, Wallbreaker welcomed the question w
ith a grin. "There are more Diggers than we can count, woman. But the Roof no longer supplies the enemy with new tribes to hunt when they've eaten the last of the old ones. They're starving out there. They're already planting each other in the ground, and far away, towards the centre of the streets they control, there is nothing for them to eat at all but rocks and trees. So, those distant from us, would starve to death before they could reach us, or be too weak to do us harm once they got here.

  "If we can thwart their last attack—and it will be a big one, I don't deny it... but if we can hold them off just a little bit longer, then I can promise you that nobody in this Tribe will ever have to volunteer after today. None of those children among us right now will be lost."

  Whistlenose saw his wife was about to speak again, he grabbed her arm to shut her up, but Ashsweeper always had to have her say and he feared for her.

  "But if there aren't going to be any new Tribes from the Roof for us either, what will we eat? What can we eat? Rice?"

  They had heard of the new food—a sort of edible moss. A few had tried the crunchy grains, trying to choke them down with little success.

  The Chief, rather than getting angry, nodded his head, acknowledging the wisdom of her questions. "Humans cannot live on rice. I know that. But Roof People can. They will have all the world to grow it in when the Diggers are gone. They will feed to their hearts content and live long lives without fear. And then, painlessly—I promise you!—painlessly, they will give their flesh to us, the true humans, and the ones who saved them from the agony of the fields."

  There were oohs and aahs from the crowd as yet again, the Chief displayed his cleverness. Even Ashsweeper was nodding, but Whistlenose felt very uneasy all of a sudden. He couldn't put his finger on it. Yes, he loved the idea that neither his wife nor son should ever have to undergo the terror he had felt when he had been turned over to the Clawfolk. But horrible as it had been, his suffering had been no different to that of anybody else. In the end, even Chiefs gave up the flesh of their bodies so that all might make it Home. It was every bit as noble and brave as it was terrifying. This was different. Wrong even, although it was hard to say exactly how. He remembered Stopmouth looking down on a crowd of planted Ship People, saying, "And listen to their pain! That sounds human, doesn't it?"

  None of these qualms prevented Whistlenose from obeying orders after the meeting when the Chief ordered a few hundred Roof People to be rounded up. He had ordered the capture of very specific people too. "I want the ones who can fight," he'd said. "This is very important. Once the Diggers are gone, it must be only our people who hold the spears." The power of the Talker was used to lure the weaponless victims into a place where they could be captured.

  A day later, they had taken their prisoners and gone out onto the plain beyond the hills to a place where the sun spread its light for no more than a tenth every day. They tied the wrists and ankles of the Roof People together. They gagged them with choking black moss. Then, each hunter dug a knee-high pit for himself as quickly as possible. The holes were made in a broad crescent around the clumps of tear-streaked prisoners, to form the jaws of a huge beast.

  "Good," Wallbreaker whispered. "Now, remove their gags..."

  Already shadows had been taking bites out of the sunlight, driving it back. Nothing could be seen beyond the circle of light, absolutely nothing. Some of the Ship People began to whimper then, to cry out for mercy. But the more sensible among them begged the others to shut up. It was too late for that. The Diggers would know. They would know that humans were here.

  "Volunteers," Whistlenose whispered to himself, "think of them as volunteers." It wasn't the first time human hunting parties had used members of their own species to bait a trap. But never had they needed to be trussed up.

  The only prisoners not struggling were Dharam and Yama. Like the hunters, they had been buried, but up to their chests, since half their bodies had been eaten away. Now, just before the last of the sun left them for good, Wallbreaker ordered these two men to be dug up. They came alive then, struggling and calling for their mothers, while the cries of the volunteers beyond them rose to a higher pitch of terror. Knives slit open the stomachs and lungs of the men to release the grubs that had made their homes there. Then, these were handed around to the hunters, small and warm and wriggling.

  "Remember," shouted Wallbreaker. "Don't let them get into your throat! Hold the head against the inside of your cheek and let them fasten there. And don't worry! They eat slowly enough that they won't make it through in the course of a night. We'll be here far less time than that."

  Whistlenose took the creature he'd been given into his hand, feeling it squirm there. He shuddered. Only two days before, under the Chief's orders, he had allowed a grub to feast on his cheek like this. The experience had lasted no more than a hundred heartbeats. Just enough time to sneak up on one of the enemy and kill it, while it made no effort to resist him. The Digger hadn't even seemed to see him! But as soon as the "mother" was dead, Whistlenose had bitten the vile grub in half.

  Now, he had a new one, tiny, and hungry. The top of its body rose, as though questing. Then, it began sliding up his wrist. The thing was making for his nose or his ears. It was all he could do not to crush it in his fist and fling it away. To his left and his right, men were placing theirs carefully against the inside of their cheeks as Wallbreaker had taught them. They cursed and yelped as the creatures fastened there, but better that than swallowing the thing while it yet lived, or allowing it to crawl down your windpipe, which is what it really wanted to do.

  Keeping his tongue towards the front of his mouth, Whistlenose shoved the creature in. For a heartbeat or two, there was no pain. This was followed by a small sting that made him wince a little.

  Not so terrible, after all. Then, the flesh of his cheek grew warm the way he remembered. Tiny strands seemed to reach out from his face, passing through the back of his head, before racing along his spine. All at once, the strands flared into a burning, itching pain and he stifled a scream with only the greatest of effort.

  "They'd better attack soon," said somebody beside him, the voice hoarse and unrecognisable. "Ancestors, but it hurts! I don't know how long I can stand it."

  Whistlenose agreed. He held a single grub inside his mouth. Adult Diggers, on the other hand, had to suffer through dozens of their own young, crawling and gnawing at their mothers every moment of the day! And the only cure was to find another host to put them in. No wonder the creatures had consumed the whole world already!

  But the Diggers were taking their time in coming today.

  The hostages moaned. The hunters moaned too, uncaring after a while how unmanly they must have seemed, rocking with the pain, waiting, waiting for a chance to spit out the grubs. Soon, it was full dark and the only relief was the distant glow of fires from the ruined streets in the protection of the hills.

  The Chief had been the first to experience this pain, the day he had jumped into a tunnel after Whistlenose to save his daughter. A grub had got into his mouth during the fighting and had been pinned against his cheek. Once it had attached itself, the Diggers had left him alone, even when he was killing them. But that situation had lasted no more than a few dozen heartbeats. Whistlenose's later experiment with the magic of the grubs had been briefer still. Nobody had expected the pain to intensify this much over a longer period. Even so, it was a brilliant plan and when the enemy finally came, they would be slaughtered in their thousands.

  Now, Whistlenose tried every trick he knew to ease the growing agony. He daydreamed a future for his son; he planned hunts; he prayed and prayed to his grandfather, the great Slingcatcher who should have been a Chief. Nothing worked. Time passed, but he had no idea how long. He felt hot all over his body. Muscles loosened and his fingers twitched so that his spear fell to the ground.

  No matter. He would look more convincing without it. If an attack came he could pick it up quick enough.

  Soon, he forgot all about his grandfather. In
stead, for the first time in hundreds of days, he thought about his mother. She had a triangular snout, he remembered, that dripped clear liquid. She dug with powerful claws, great tunnels where he could be warm and safe. She was coming! She was coming! So, he called for her and all around him, the other hunters were calling for their mothers too.

  CHAPTER 32: Flight

  Wallbreaker waited until the others had taken grubs into their mouths. Then he waited some more. Darkness had almost fallen and he could still make out the shiny skin of the creature trapped in his hand. It would hurt, as it had before, that was certain. He wasn't ready for the pain yet and worse than that, he hated the thought of it consuming him with its tiny mouth. It was too close to the worst of his nightmares.

  You're thinking too much.

  Thinking was the gift the Ancestors had given him so that he might save the Tribe, but such a hard gift it was! Those terrible dreams of Armourback young had pursued him all the way across the world from the streets of ManWays.

  I shouldn't put it in yet, anyway. Somebody would have to pay attention for the arrival of the Diggers and who better than the Chief? He would place the little creature against his cheek at the last minute, he decided. Yes. He would be the one to watch for danger.

  As the light failed, he saw a few of the hostages struggling to free themselves, hissing urgently one to the other. "You untie me! Try and get your teeth down to the knot..."

  Wallbreaker felt sorry for them, as he always had for Volunteers. His father most of all, of course. He had looked so much like poor Stopmouth, but with a gift for joking and laughter that had left a terrible silence behind it when he had finally given his Flesh for the Tribe.

  A man like that would never have to step forward now, not with so many useless mouths to feed. These Roof People were nothing, nothing compared to Father and he shouldn't waste pity on them...

  But they would feel the terror just as much in spite of that, wouldn't they? The pain of the grubs. The planting. The eating of their spirit and flesh and marrow that might last fifty days or more.