The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy)

by Peadar O'Guilin

  He felt sick at the thought of it and then reassured himself with the promise he had made to the bait when he had brought them here: "We won't let the Diggers have you. Or keep you, anyway. We aim to defeat them once and for all. Our hunters will be protected by grubs, so, once you have lured them out of their tunnels, we will slaughter them by the thousand!" And then, the bait would be slaughtered too: for they were the only hunters remaining to the Roof People. But at least it would be quick, and their flesh would be honoured and would feed the real humans for tens of days to come.

  And Wallbreaker intended to thank each of them personally for their sacrifice.

  However, as he imagined this triumph, he couldn't help wishing that Indrani were in there too amongst the rest of them. He still intended to keep his promise to let her live. Nor would he take her for a wife. But that didn't mean she would get away with what she had done to him. A Chief could not be seen to be weak. No. When all this was over, he would turn all his powers of imagination to finding some other way to make her pay. Oh yes. She would come crawling back to his bed before this ended!

  It was too dark now to see the grub in his fist. The Volunteers moaned and his men too. All the better, he supposed. One of them even called out for his mother! Clever. The Ancestors would be pleased. Another man took up the call, and another. "Mmmmmoooother..." Very convincing. Soon, they were all at it.

  I should join them now. The pain won't last. But his hands were shaking. It was all he could do not to fling the grub away. He raised it towards his mouth.

  "Mmmooother..."

  He paused. Something was terribly wrong. He didn't want to alert the Diggers that the Talker was out here—he had intended to save that for the ambush so the men could see the creatures they were killing. But he needed to know what was going on.

  "A gentle glow," he ordered and the Talker obeyed. He stood up to his knees in a little hole, in the back rank of his hunters. Now he brought the globe forward towards the face of the man beside him, a wiry youth by the name of Drooplip.

  Bulging eyes swivelled towards the Chief.

  "Mmmooootherrrr...."

  "Oh, Ancestors..."

  Drooplip made a grab for him. It was clumsy enough that Wallbreaker should have had no trouble stepping back out of the way. But he had forgotten the hole he'd been standing in and he toppled over, the Talker spinning out of his hands.

  As he fell, somebody else caught him in a clammy grip. He yanked himself free, then dived through a thicket of waving arms to pull up the Talker again, before crashing into the back of old Whistlenose.

  "They're here!" shouted one of the hostages. "Oh, Gods! The Diggers! The Diggers are here!"

  Wallbreaker could feel the truth of it himself in the trembling of the earth. They were coming. The Diggers! And all his hunters had trapped themselves because of him! Oh, Ancestors! What if he freed them? They had only one grub each in their mouths. But how many hunters could he get to before the Diggers arrived? And what was the point? The plan had failed. The Diggers would know now, they would know! But maybe... a fighting chance...

  Another scream. The sounds of claws rushing towards him, directly towards him!

  "Bright!" he shouted. "Brighter than the Roof!"

  The sphere flared. Squinting, Wallbreaker could see the enemy driven back, grubs falling dead from their hides. But at the very edge of the light, beyond his hunters and the Volunteers, great numbers of the enemy lay waiting for him. Huge numbers.

  "I can burn you!" he shouted. "I can burn all of you!"

  A single creature stepped forward. There was something different about it and it took Wallbreaker a moment or two to figure out what it was. Smaller, he decided, than the others. But that wasn't it. There was more. Its hide was smooth, completely unblemished.

  No young, he realised. An unmated Digger, without grubs to worry about. Wallbreaker was done for. He was dead.

  More claws rattled the stones behind him. And that was enough, more than enough. The next thing he knew, he was running for all he was worth, parting the horde of Diggers in front of him with the light of his Talker. But behind him, came the sounds of a smaller number of the creatures, those without any reason to fear him at all.

  Rocks gave way beneath him. He skidded on patches of moss as shadows flickered and danced. He had no idea where he was going. He just had to get away from them, desperate for them to take the hostages, to take the hunters, anything and anyone so long as they just left him alone. But even as he ran, he realised his dilemma. The Talker. It was the last thing on this world the Diggers feared and they had to be certain of its destruction.

  He felt the earth rumble, and he knew that it wasn't just a few younger, unmated creatures that pursued him now, but the entire swarm! They could return for the hostages any time, but he... he they meant to finish right away.

  He wept and cursed and ran and tired. He had no sense of direction—he had lost sight of home in the glare he carried with him.

  But slowly, ever so slowly, the light of the Talker began to dim.

  CHAPTER 33: The Women

  Flamehair cried when Stopmouth gave her the rice. Something was missing. So, one of the Religious women showed him how to mash the other stuff, called vegetables, until it looked for all the world like excrement. Then she made him feed it to his daughter, who gobbled it down like it was liver. And all might have been well, except that at the end, his girl said "mama?"

  The word was identical to the one children of the tribe used and he didn't know how to console her when no mama appeared.

  Wallbreaker had ordered all of the Roof People to pack into the remains of HeadQuarters, and such were their numbers, that nobody had noticed when Stopmouth had been smuggled in amongst them. Lost in despair, he had barely noticed himself.

  Now, he held his child tight to his chest, growling and weeping angrily at any who dared come too close. Eventually, he even drove off the gentle Religious woman.

  "Ah, what's this now?" said Rockface. Sodasi hovered behind him, weaponless for once. Stopmouth didn't want to talk to them. He felt he was trying to vomit up his own heart and only the child in his arms, pleading for her mother, kept him present.

  "You followed Indrani before," Rockface was saying. "Into your brother's house. All the way up to the Roof. But you can't follow her now, hey? Even you couldn't do that, boy. You mustn't do it."

  Behind the big man, Sodasi was signing to one of the children. They could have used real words, those two; they came from the same Religious community and spoke the same language. Sodasi's hands were almost as fluent as the child's, although sometimes she stopped him with a puzzled look on her face and he laughed at her. What a strange world it had become where the young taught the old and the old lived on and on!

  "Listen," said Rockface. "We're going. Whether you come with us or not is up to you, hey? But you wouldn't want to miss it! A glorious charge!"

  Stopmouth blinked with slow heavy eyes. What did Rockface mean by "glorious charge"? And what did it matter, anyway?

  "Wallbreaker took some of our people, can you believe it? He took Religious to sacrifice to the Diggers when he could have had all the cowardly Secular scum he wanted!" Rockface spat the foreign words that he must have picked up from Sodasi. "He got Kubar too, hey? I'm fond of the old waster, though only the Ancestors know why. And that little friend of yours, what's her name? Taroona? Tar-something..."

  "Tarini?" Stopmouth felt his arms tremble. Tarini was brave enough she might even have volunteered to be bait if she'd been asked, but he doubted Wallbreaker had asked anybody. He was Chief now and would suit himself. Stopmouth felt something stir within him. Poor Tarini.

  "We're going to get them back," said Rockface.

  Stopmouth found his voice. "What about the plan?"

  "What plan? He's always making plans, your brother. Who cares about his plan? If he needs bait, I should be there, an old man. The sick should be there. The injured, hey? That's how it's done. But he can't seem to tell the d
ifference. He's taken some of our best hunters, for the love of the Ancestors!"

  It was true. The waste was breathtaking enough to push through Stopmouth's pain. Wallbreaker's contempt for even the best of the Roof people cast a dangerous light on the future.

  Stopmouth raised his chin and forced his eyes to find those of the one friend who had stood by him from the very beginning. "Rockface... let me g-go with you. Find me that Religious woman who was looking after Flamehair. Let me come."

  A massive palm slapped him hard enough across the back to jolt Flamehair and to set her wailing again. "Of course you're coming! It will be like the old days when we fought the Fliers, hey? I can't wait!"

  But as the Religious woman returned to snatch Flamehair away from him, Rockface brought up what he called "a tiny problem." "We're blocked in here," he said.

  "Blocked in? How?"

  "The women of the Tribe—our old Tribe, that is... well, you're not going to believe this, but they've been doing a bit of... a bit of hunting during their journey. Mad, isn't it? The women!" Stopmouth, despite his loss, felt his mouth quirk up at these words.

  "No, I'm serious! There are women outside with... with spears, blocking us in. It's not a joke!" Lucky for Rockface, Sodasi, the best slinger in the Tribe, with a hundred days hunting behind her, didn't understand a word he was saying. Stopmouth just shook his head.

  "Gather any hunters who are left and everybody who looks like they might be able to carry a weapon. There don't have to be enough of us to win a fight, just enough to look threatening."

  "Welcome back," said Rockface nodding, and grimly, Stopmouth nodded back.

  "I'm going outside," said Stopmouth.

  On the way to the door, he spotted Ekta, the Warden. He doubted anybody could have made her do anything, and yet, here she sat, alone and useless. Instinct made him tap her on the shoulder. "Come with me, Warden," he said. She must have understood his gestures, for she shrugged and stood without bothering even to wipe the dust from her bottom.

  The only remaining exit had indeed been blocked off by rubble and mossy rocks, so the two of them proceeded up to the roof to look down on a circle of armed women and children.

  "You're supposed to be dead, Stopmouth!" one of them cried. "And yet, here you are, with a new wife already."

  "Mossheart," he said, nodding. She was still very beautiful, he thought. She could never be as perfect as some of the Ship Women, but that didn't matter. She'd had such a hold over his younger self that when he spoke to her now, he felt he was in two places—two times—at once. "We n-need to leave," he said.

  She smiled a hard smile. "I remember when you weren't able to look me in the face like that and talk at the same time. You're a man now, I see. A man who was supposed to have Volunteered. You couldn't keep your word? Well, never mind. You'll be staying where you are, Stopmouth. You can't force your way out when you have no fighters left, can you?"

  She smiled again when she saw the shock register on his face. "He d-did this on purpose?" said Stopmouth. "Wallbreaker took our best fighters to use as volunteers on p-purpose?"

  "Of course! He always could think circles around you. There can't be two Tribes any more than there can be two Chiefs."

  Stopmouth felt dizzy. The implications for the future of his people were even worse than he had realised. Wallbreaker had no intentions of uniting the Tribes and using their skills. The old Tribe would dominate and what would it do then?

  "Is that w-what you've become?" he asked. "V-volunteer the young and the useful?"

  Some of the other women around Mossheart looked uncomfortable at the thought, but these people had already sacrificed the last of their traditions with the burning of the Tallies. Their own Ancestors wouldn't have recognised them now.

  "Hey, Stopmouth," said another woman. This was Ashsweeper, Whistlenose's wife, and she held her spear easily. "What will you do if we let you out?" Mossheart glared at her, but Ashsweeper paid no heed.

  "We will h-help," he said. "We'll provide them with some r-real volunteers and the rest of us will join in the fighting. There are more D-diggers than Wallbreaker thinks out there. We need him to succeed as much as you do."

  "Oh, he will certainly succeed," said Mossheart. "But he can do without any of your help." And Ashsweeper was nodding her head in agreement.

  "There's nobody left in there that can fight," said Ashsweeper. "Even Rockface is too old. He can't even stand straight."

  Ekta shifted next to Stopmouth, bored and sad. He had to stop himself grinning. Thank you Ancestors. "You d-don't understand," he said now. "There are lots of people in here who can fight. They haven't done so before now because they don't want to hurt you. But if they don't get their friends back..."

  All the women below snorted in derision and made the grabbing "show us the flesh!" gesture they would have given to any idle, boasting man. He turned to Ekta. "I need your help," he whispered. He heaved a rock onto the parapet of the roof and the women below moved back out of range in case he planned to hit them with it.

  "W-watch this!" he cried. He mimed for Ekta what he wanted her to do.

  The Warden's arm became a blur, smashing down onto the rock and shattering it with a single blow. It happened suddenly enough that the women below yelped and stepped back even further, the pregnant ones holding their bellies.

  "As I s-said. You have children w-with you. We d-don't want to hurt them if we don't have to. But we are leaving here to join the fighting when it starts. Do you intend to stand in our way?"

  ***

  It took until nightfall to get everything organised. That meant they were probably too late: that the poor Volunteers had already been killed or captured or saved. Stopmouth's force would arrive when the victory was already won.

  Even so, he knew what he was doing still mattered. He needed to make his surviving friends appear dangerous enough that they could not be too easily dominated and destroyed by his old Tribe.

  Language was a huge problem. The children helped, as always, half-bridging impossible gaps. Fulki led the way with that funny sneer of hers that the others seemed to fear. She ran off to try and recruit the Fourleggers, but returned empty-handed. The creatures would not be taking part. And that was probably for the best. Wallbreaker's hunters were nervous around them and might attack them.

  When the people finally came outside under the stars, the women of the Tribe parted to let them go. All except Ashsweeper. "I'm coming with you," she said.

  "You are?"

  "And not just me. Some will stay behind with Mossheart to watch the children, but most of us are with you. I told my husband it was a waste to leave us out of this fight. We need to throw every spear at it. It's too important."

  "Y-yes it is."

  All around them, torches waved through the air and terrified people tried to stay quiet. They knew they were going into danger and Stopmouth had expected the Ship People amongst them to hold back the way they had when he had forced them to gather meat for the Fourleggers. But they did not. His rescue of their friends the day they had used the mirrors had won him their trust.

  All the way to the edge of the ruined human streets, the women of the Old Tribe had built great bonfires of wood and bone that were tended by children too small to hunt. It was something they had learned during their migration, apparently, something that made the Diggers a little more reluctant to attack.

  At the rocky area, just where the houses began to peter out, a last line of fires remained to usher the reluctant humans into the terrifying darkness beyond, where the only illumination was a mad scatter of stars.

  Somewhere out there, Wallbreaker's men had prepared a last ambush that the Chief believed would break the back of the enemy forever. He had done so, ignoring the talents and strengths of two thousand Ship People. Worse, he had chosen to bait his trap with the best hunters remaining to the New Tribe. Wasted. Horribly wasted and possibly dead or planted already far out in the darkness.

  In spite of his anger, Stopmouth paus
ed just before crossing the line of the last fires. There had been low levels of talk around him between those who shared languages. Prayers—even amongst the Seculars, along with the exchange of kisses and good-byes.

  He signalled all of them to silence. The one thing he did not want to do was to ruin Wallbreaker's plan by running in at the wrong time. No, he would bring his people forward to a point where they could reach the fighting at a charge as soon as the cries and shouting began.

  He took a last look around him. Rockface stood at his shoulder with Sodasi right behind. The children they had trained were there, hopping with excitement and signalling one to the other too fast to follow. Further back, Ekta, looking as serene as a Roof Goddess; a terrified, very tall old man clutching a sharpened stick; a young girl, totally unarmed; a bearded man, his mouth moving in silent prayer; and a thousand more stretching back through the streets.

  He'd been a fool to ruin his night vision by looking behind him. Never mind. He took a deep breath and stepped into the darkness. Everybody followed—not in a column as he had expected and might have preferred. Instead they spread out until the whole crowd advanced like a palm sweeping bones from a plate.

  Nobody had brought torches for fear of alerting the Diggers, so nothing could be seen. People to either side of him linked elbows and he imagined the same thing was happening right across the line.

  It no longer moved in perfect silence. Untrained hunters cursed beneath their breaths or cried out when they stumbled. Behind them, the bonfires were still frustratingly close and Stopmouth felt sure the fighting would be over long before they could reach it. His friends might be dead already. He was worried in particular about poor Tarini, who had saved his life and his pride in the Roof.

  He paused and unlinked from the arms holding him on either side.

  Something was very wrong: a certain unpleasant smell on the air. An invisible pressure at the front of his body, lighter than a flake of moss, but real enough. Everybody else must have felt it too for the whole line came to a halt and all those sounds of whispered curses over stubbed toes; all those muttered prayers; all the sliding of rocks and the scattering of pebbles, came to a stop.