"They're right in front of us," said Rockface, his voice calm, but sounding like a shout in the silence. "Look," he said. He must have brought an ember with him in a leather bag, for all too quickly he was able to light a torch, his face dancing in the flames. Nobody else spoke, not one of them. Stopmouth could feel them holding their breaths, just as he was. Rockface stepped forward out of the line, shrugging off Sodasi's hand that tried to hold him back.
Twenty paces he walked into the darkness, the light throwing up the crazy shadows of rocks and the torn shreds of moss or the stumps of trees the humans had cut for wood.
And then, the light found another place to rest. A row of glittering eyes, the snouts, the wiry pelts of Diggers, crawling with grubs that retreated from the torchlight.
Nobody of either species made a sound. It was much too shocking.
All of a sudden, one of the Diggers launched itself at Rockface, knocking the big man back and sending the torch spinning through the air. Panic broke out, everybody turned back, running for all they were worth towards the bonfires and the safety of the human streets.
Stopmouth found himself alone with Sodasi, standing over the fallen Rockface, expecting to be rushed.
Instead, the Digger that had attacked their friend hopped away from them, and the rest, the huge mass of them, began to move forward, at a pace no faster than a walk. The humans pulled their comrade to his feet and retrieved the torch. All three found themselves stumbling backwards before the advancing line of Diggers, while behind them, the Ship People ran for their lives.
"Why aren't the Diggers fighting?" asked Rockface. "Why aren't we? A man should charge!"
But he kept moving all the same.
Rockface, the Diggers, all of them, remained calm. It took Stopmouth a few moments to understand why. This is the end, he realised. The end of the struggle. A great moment, and both sides wanted to treat it with the reverence it deserved. The first people of this world, the humans, were about to leave it forever.
But Rockface had a different interpretation of what was going on. "They have killed Wallbreaker's lot. His foolishness has destroyed the Tribe and we are all that is left. These Diggers... They're keeping their larder stocked, hey? After us, whatever will they eat? They want us around a bit longer now that they've picked the bones of the whole world clean."
The humans were pushed all the way back to the streets again and to the bonfires. The children who'd been tending them were herded away by the enemy so that the wood could be scattered and more places plunged into darkness.
"Are we going to take this?" asked Rockface. "You are the leader now, Stopmouth. You have to lead us in a last attack. Even the Ship People will fight, surely! I don't want to see any of my children planted."
Stopmouth agreed. "We'll fight, but not here. We'll do better from HeadQuarters with walls around us. We'll kill more of them that way."
"So what?" the bigger man muttered. He had fought Diggers from HeadQuarters before, Stopmouth remembered. Only the Talker had saved the last of the New Tribe then, but the Talker, like Wallbreaker's hunters, along with those of the Religious, was lost to humanity.
More Diggers must have been arriving in by the many side-streets, for the main road was now packed with people. A thousand of them, maybe. Or fifteen-hundred. The long line stumbled backwards towards HeadQuarters.
Flamehair would be waiting back there for her father. Waiting for the Diggers, too. Stopmouth would kill her first, not caring that her flesh would be wasted. He didn't want her to suffer such pain as the grubs would bring.
And still the enemy followed, gently pushing and pushing, breaking up the fires as they passed them, never more than ten paces away from their intended victims.
Oh, Ancestors. I'm sorry I have wasted our people like this.
The ground began to shake then and he thought the Diggers were burrowing beneath the streets as they had done in the past. Except... except that the confident enemy had stopped in their tracks. Were they uncertain? Was that possible? A cloud of dust was spreading through the air and Stopmouth looked up. He knew exactly where he was now. He recognised the big building he was standing beside and suddenly, a great urgency gripped him.
"Back!" he screamed. "Everybody, get back! Back!" And the crowd, sensing the desperation of his words, obeyed. They were close to panic anyway, expecting pointy snouts to burst up between their feet at any moment. But that wasn't it at all. No, the ground held firm. Instead, the wall of one of the few remaining buildings in the area—the giant warehouse that had been given over to the Fourleggers—shattered, collapsing onto the street, burying dozens of Diggers, but not the humans who had just passed it by.
A hundred Fourleggers, maybe two hundred, of all ages, shot out of the building beyond, their claws bared, flinging burning bundles of moss and twigs into the confused ranks of Diggers. They crashed into the startled enemy, burning and stabbing. Diggers lost their throats in gouts of blood, but worse by far were the bodies of grubs, popping open at the slightest touch of a flame—and the flame was everywhere.
Fourleggers killed Diggers by the dozen, and the fallen, with few grubs to keep them alive, stayed down. Stopmouth saw enemies scrambling backwards, clawing at each other, panicking, desperate to get out of the packed, burning road.
Stopmouth wouldn't give them the chance.
"Charge!" he cried and sprang forward, Rockface at his side. He felt the wind of one of Sodasi's uncannily accurate slingstones as it flew past his ear. He heard chilling human screams—of rage. The women were here, the women of his old Tribe, mourning their men with blood and spears and rocks and flaming torches.
Stopmouth stabbed one enemy after another. Sometimes their grubs kept them alive long enough to start crawling away, but these were quickly finished off by Ship People who brought concrete down on their skulls. Rockface was laughing and the children, oh Ancestors, the children he had trained, were the fingers of a single hand, swarming one victim after another, licking blood from their weapons, signalling to each other, as the Diggers fled before them.
Many of the Ship People fought too. Clumsily, with tears on their faces and in constant terror. Ekta led them and she dashed creatures against walls and snapped their backs across her knees, while shouting orders at people who might or might not have understood what she meant.
And yet, while dozens of Diggers fell, the enemy resolve began to stiffen, to push back. People screamed and fell, hamstrung rather than killed so that they might still be planted later on. They lay there in terror beside fallen Fourleggers as clawed feet used them for a road and pushed the humans and their remaining allies back again, crowding them all together. Ashsweeper fell into the press, her spear, ripped away from her by a dying enemy. Three Diggers worked together to keep Stopmouth back from her, trying to trap his spear in their bodies.
He saw her face, though, on the ground, frightened, but brave enough to cry—"they've bitten through my leg. Kill Nighttracker! Kill my son!"
Poor Fulki went down too, snatched away from the other children with a screech. Rockface burrowed down after her and came back alone, his spear red with her blood, his face streaked with tears.
The Diggers disengaged again, but only a little.
It had taken them a few hundred heartbeats to reassert their mastery, to resume their gentle herding of their future food-supply back towards HeadQuarters. The remains of the U stood no more than a few hundred paces behind them, but the people who had been hiding in it came pouring out of it now.
Stopmouth found Mossheart at his side, her daughter in her arms. She had brought the Religious woman with her, the one who had been looking after Flamehair.
"The Diggers are inside those buildings," Mossheart told him. "They burst up from the floor. We have nowhere left to go."
Stopmouth hung his head.
"It's not you who failed, Stopmouth," she told him. She spoke calmly and seemed almost relieved. "The Tribe failed when we let my husband lead us away from what the Ancestors h
ad taught us. And so, we are no longer worthy of them. He was planning to eat the Roof People, you know? Not just the weak. They would have grown food for themselves only to become food for us. We were going to plant them, as if we were the Diggers."
"No..." he said, but he knew she was telling the truth. "No..."
"If you kill my daughter," Mossheart said, "I will do the same for yours. Although... they are both my husband's children aren't they? Aren't they? I worked it out. There wasn't time for her to be yours..."
"Flamehair is my d-daughter," he said.
She sighed. "Oh, what does it matter now? We are dead. We were dead all along and never knew it. Even back then, when you were a broken-tongued boy and your brother was so beautiful. Now," she said. "Are you strong enough to kill the children? Or do you prefer that the Diggers will have them?"
CHAPTER 34: Grubs and Volunteers
Something, or somebody, banged into Whistlenose's back. He cried out for his mother, but then, he was lost, all alone in the streets beyond ManWays where no child should be. He coughed, his body racked with agony, doubling over on itself. A great light ripped away the darkness, searing his eyes under closed lids.
He cried out again, surprising himself, for his voice was that of a man, rather than a child. He rolled, hacking up phlegm on the earth, barely aware as the light seemed to move away and hundreds of clawed feet gave chase.
Darkness returned and the voices of people weeping nearby. It took him a full hundred heartbeats to remember where he was, and a hundred more to figure out what had happened. The grub had taken him over completely until somebody or something had hit him hard enough in the back to knock it free of his mouth.
Of the Diggers, there was no sign, but the Roof People were still there, whimpering in the dark a few dozen paces away. All he could see now was the light of what had to be the Talker disappearing off into the distance.
"The ambush has failed then," he said. The best he could hope for was to get as many of the hunters out of here as possible before the Diggers caught up with whoever was leading them away.
He groped forward in the dark until arms grabbed him, wrapping him tight in an embrace, while a voice moaned and called for its mother. Whistlenose had been expecting this and he managed to keep his arms free and above his head.
"What woman would admit to birthing you, Clickstone?" He shoved fingers into the man's mouth and pulled the grub free. He bit through it as Clickstone gasped and fell away. "That's one," he said. He had freed a half-dozen others before Clickstone had recovered enough wits to help, and the numbers of hunters rose quickly until all two hundred or so were either groaning on the ground or groping around for their fallen weapons. Now and again somebody would try to light a torch only to be scolded by their comrades. Nobody wanted to alert the Diggers to the escape.
"I'm going to free the bait now," Whistlenose said. "Can somebody find a knife for me? And be careful not to stab me when you're handing it over."
"No fear of that! I can hear the sound of your nose from over here!"
"No you can't! I don't do that any— Oh, never mind. Just get me a knife."
"Whistlenose?" He felt a hand touch him on the shoulder. He recognised the worn out voice.
"Laughlong?"
"Are you sure you want to free the bait? They might keep the Diggers off our backs when we're making our escape. Volunteers, you know?"
Whistlenose did know, and took a few heartbeats to think it over. "I don't think it matters," he said at last. "The Diggers aren't stupid. They were happy chasing after the Talker knowing we couldn't move and that they could come back for us any time it suited them. It's the people who can walk they'll want to catch, so, the more of us there are heading back, the better." What he didn't say was that the Chief's brother had convinced him that these people were human too, and worthy of respect. "Come on," he told Laughlong. "Help me free them."
They made shushing noises so the Volunteers would stay quiet, and everybody obeyed. They stank of urine and terror, but at least one voice in there was collected enough to whisper commands of its own, and in a surprisingly quick time, they had all formed a chain of hands in the darkness.
"Now," he said. "We just need to figure out which way we came from..."
But the gravelly-voiced man amongst the bait seemed completely sure of himself in that regard too. So, the hunters, who had little experience in this place, found themselves trailing after their supposed prisoners.
It was slow going and Whistlenose had no idea how much time was passing. His eyes began to play tricks on him in the darkness. People cursed and fell and the sounds of breathing seemed loud enough to bring the Roof down on their heads. If only the sun would return! This would all be so easy. They'd see its light from ten thousand paces away.
People gasped up ahead and voices babbled in Roof language. Whistlenose pushed forward and for the first time since Wallbreaker had run off with the Talker, he could see something. Fires! The shadowy outlines of houses! And an oily mass of Diggers, pouring in between those buildings. This was the horde their trap had been set up to destroy, but instead, it was going to wipe out their families!
Whistlenose started running. He had no need to say anything—the rest of the hunters were with him too. The Volunteers joined in, weaponless though they were, and before Whistlenose's astonished gaze, many of them began clumping together into the same little groups that had come to save the Tribe when it lay trapped against the river.
He felt a terrible shame then and understood why the Ancestors had allowed the ambush to fail. But he pushed such thoughts away. Ashsweeper was in there somewhere and Nighttracker too, the son he was never supposed to have had.
The back ranks of the enemy turned to face the charge, but the humans barely slowed. Men fought as though insane, desperate to reach their families, while the Diggers still seemed to think they could take prisoners for their fields. Spears jammed in corpses and men used knives and teeth instead. A few of them risked putting grubs from dead Diggers in their mouths again and these were able to kill without being attacked in return, taking dozens and dozens of enemies each before the pain began to lead them astray.
The Volunteers proved no less effective. They knew the buildings here better than anybody. They climbed walls to rain rocks down on Diggers or led them into traps, careless of their own lives and brave as any hunters Whistlenose had ever seen.
The little, malnourished one, a pet of Stopmouth's called Tarini, had a magical ability to pass through knots of combatants without being touched to pull injured people free of trouble.
Whistlenose killed and killed. His terror of the Diggers and their grubs had gone entirely away. He didn't care if they caught him now; he'd been planted, he'd felt what it was like and not even that pain could compare to the deaths of his precious wife; his innocent son. Wounds had no effect on him, his spear cut the air so fast it hummed and every hunter around him fought the same way. Every volunteer too. The Ancestors possessed them all and filled them with a cold and bitter fury.
And then, he faced a new creature altogether. A human being, dripping with gore from tooth and fingernail and the shattered grip of a spear. They almost fought, each holding himself back with the greatest of effort. It couldn't be over. It couldn't be. But already a touch of sunlight reddened the sky enough to drive off the stars and Whistlenose realised he'd been fighting an entire night already.
In all directions, lay a layer of enemy corpses two or three thick, while a small number of survivors fled in all directions. A few men had been overcome again by the grubs in their mouths and these raved for their mothers. This was the only sound.
The filthy creature spoke. "You will n-not eat them, Whistlenose, you hear me? I w-won't l-let him t-touch a h-hair on their heads."
Whistlenose was confused. The Diggers had been killed in great numbers. Did Stopmouth—for that is who the creature was—intend to waste so much flesh? But the young hunter had used the word "him." "I won't let him touch a hair
on their heads."
"Wallbreaker's gone, Stopmouth. He... he led the Diggers away from us with the light of the Talker. He gave us a chance to escape so that we could come to you here."
A sigh and Stopmouth, an exhausted Stopmouth, fell to his knees amongst the enemy corpses. "He volunteered? W-wallbreaker v-volunteered?" His tone was both incredulous and hopeful at once.
Whistlenose found himself on the ground too, all of a sudden. He was bleeding everywhere. His very bones ached, especially his knee. It had given way to dump him on the ground. But he didn't care about that.
"I want my wife," he said to Stopmouth. "I want my son."
CHAPTER 35: Many Worlds in One
As always, these days, a pall of smoke hung over the streets. Digger meat cooked and popped on a hundred fires of dried bones and moss kindling. But nobody tended to them today or hauled rubble, or worked in the fields.
Hands clapped. Drums pounded and throats pealed with the first easy laughter in what seemed like ten thousand days. Ship People shared food with Religious who made clumsy hand signals to men and women of the old Tribe. Fourleggers sniffed curiously at everything, and Ashsweeper, leaning on the shaft of a spear, hobbled after that mad little boy of hers.
Alone, out of everybody, Mossheart seemed unhappy. "Look at that old fool, Rockface!"
Mossheart had taken to spending time with Stopmouth. "Oh, I won't marry you," she had told him, as if he had been thinking to replace Indrani before her soup had even cooled! "But, I miss that brother of yours. I don't care that he was a coward or that he tried to bring in other wives to set above me. He was a man who dreamt of more than the next slice of meat from the spit. And you can do that too."
The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy) Page 27