Behind him, the churls parted and she saw that four of them were straining under the weight of the bronze fire javelin, held in a canvas sling.
Eadric’s arm squeezed tighter round Algar, until her brother winced. ‘Couldn’t let you leave without a demonstration,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking forward to it all winter.’
Eadric took them to the square of the Great Moot, where Algar had originally intended to display their new device. When they arrived, Alfreda was shocked to see a crowd of dozens, maybe hundreds of thegns gathered. The churls placed the fire javelin at one end of the wooden platform and then moved back, positioning themselves so that one stood blocking each of the exits from the platform. The belt knives they wore were nearly as long as swords, and their hands hovered near them.
Algar hadn’t noticed. He was staring round at the crowd with bemusement and a little satisfaction. She wanted to shake some sense into him. It didn’t seem possible he could believe Eadric had forgiven him. And yet as she saw his stiff shoulders relax and his tense grin turn into a genuine smile, she knew that he did. He judged everyone by his own standards, and he would never hold a grudge against a man for courting a pretty girl.
She tried to move closer to him, to whisper a warning in his ear, but somehow she was surrounded by men, pressing against her from all sides and driving her back, away from Algar and the fire javelin. She tried to shoulder them aside and a hand grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back until she gasped in pain and stopped struggling.
‘No need to worry, lass,’ the man holding her said pleasantly. ‘It’s just a little demonstration.’
She tried to call out to her brother, to warn him of … She didn’t know what. Something. But there were so many people here. Whatever she shouted would be heard by them all and her words were too shy to emerge from her throat. She tried to force them to obey her. She had to. But her voice was gone and she couldn’t recover it.
Algar watched as Eadric set up the fire javelin for him, drawing the fuse through the touch hole and dropping a heavy round ball into the other end.
‘You need to put powder in first,’ Algar said.
‘I put it in earlier – you talked about it often enough. I know how it works. It’s all ready. And look, there’s your target.’
They’d set it up at the far end of the platform, nearly eighty paces away and far out of any realistic range for the fire javelin. Maybe this was what Eadric intended: a public humiliation and all hope of selling their costly invention gone.
The target was a simple wooden board, but someone had painted the outline of a man on it. They’d daubed two blue eyes and a wide, moronic smile. Alfreda remembered the man they’d killed back in Deep Holt. She couldn’t recall the colour of his eyes. They couldn’t have been blue, could they? He’d been a man of the tribes. But when she looked at the grinning outline she saw him.
Eadric stepped away from Algar and nodded at the fire javelin. ‘Go on then. We’re ready.’
Her brother’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. The tension was back in his shoulders. ‘I can’t light it – I need my touch-stick.’
He and Alfreda had devised it after their experience in Deep Holt. It held the flame at its four-foot end and kept them safely away from the explosion.
Eadric shrugged apologetically and took another two steps back. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t see it in the wagon. But you’re not going to let that stop you, are you? Not with all these people waiting. Or are you afraid of your own weapon? That’s hardly much of a recommendation for it.’
Her brother stood in isolation beside their weapon. He looked small and young, his cheeks rosy in the fresh spring breeze. His hair needed combing and there was a smear of black on the shoulder of his shirt. It was the mark of Eadric’s hand, grimy with black powder.
Alfreda struggled again, gritting her teeth against the pain, and more hands grasped her. ‘Quiet,’ the same thegn said. ‘This isn’t your show.’
A hush fell on the crowd as Algar pulled out his flint and kindling. The flame flickered as he held it, shaking along with his hand.
‘Go ahead,’ Eadric said. ‘Show us what you’ve made.’
Algar’s eyes found hers in the crowd. She renewed her struggles and her arm was twisted until the pain forced her to her knees. Her brother took a step towards her.
‘Now!’ Eadric barked.
Algar stared at her and she shook her head but he didn’t understand. He thought they were threatening her to make him do as Eadric demanded. She gasped when he turned his back on her and knelt beside the fire javelin. He made a few adjustments, sighting down the barrel as if there was any chance of hitting the target. As if it mattered.
When he was finished he leaned back as far as he could. The kindling had gone out and it took his shaking hand three attempts to relight it. As he lowered it against the touch hole, she finally managed to speak, but her shout was drowned out in the roar of the explosion.
Cwen’s horse reared as the huge noise echoed down the line of march, breaking the waiting silence that fell wherever Bachur walked. She looked at Aethelgas, sunlight-dappled in the treetops ahead. It was clearly the source of the sound, but she could see no evidence of battle or disaster.
‘Black powder,’ Bachur said beside her. ‘I believe it must be an accident and therefore nothing to concern us.’
It was so strange to see the Hunter mounted on her bay gelding. It was fucking strange to see the whole Hunt riding like a raiding party of the tribes. Cwen’s own horse shifted beneath her, made nervous by the wolves that loped behind Bachur, and she pulled on its reins in irritation. At least hers was a horse. More than two-thirds of the rest were sitting uncomfortably on black deer. With their own mounts slaughtered, they’d had to take what was available, and the Maeng favoured the slope-backed creatures for reasons Cwen had never understood.
The column stretched back a long way down the Salt Road. Cwen had never seen the Hunt gathered in one place before. She hadn’t realised they were so many, a vast flock of hawks. The forest had been stripped bare to bring them here, leaving hundreds of villages near defenceless against the monsters. Cwen didn’t understand why. There were many places the returned moon god might be, but Aethelgas surely wasn’t one of them.
As they approached the city, Cwen saw figures begin to descend the monumental stairway at its heart. Further away, the Jorlith were pouring from Ivarholme and the churls from their fields. The Hunter watched them with her eyes narrowed. Then she nodded once and pulled her reins sharply left, weaving her horse through the column to the far side of the Salt Road. Her golden skin and hair looked like a flame amidst the leaf-green and mud-brown clothing of the hawks. Like a forest fire sweeping through them.
Cwen dragged her own mount to follow. Some of her fellow hawks raised their brows at her as she passed, and she shrugged and waved them on. If Bachur had wanted the whole column to stop, she would have said so.
When Cwen approached her, the Hunter dismounted, raising a hand to help Cwen from her own horse. Her mistress’s flesh burned with a strange cold fire and Cwen held the touch a moment longer than she needed, drawn to it as always.
‘I am leaving you,’ Bachur said, watching the long column as it rode slowly past.
‘Leaving?’ Cwen studied her scarred face, trying to read expression where there was seldom anything but calm. ‘Have you found the moon god? But leaving without the Hunt? Isn’t that bloody dangerous?’
‘Where I go, I must travel alone.’
‘I … I see.’
Baruch smiled fondly. ‘No, you do not. I will explain. The moon god remains lost and his forces free. I name you my deputy to rouse the people of the Moon Forest against him. For all their vows to me, I know the Rhinannish will be unwilling to release the Jorlith to fight, but perhaps the full force of the Hunt will help to persuade them. You will speak to the Great Moot on my behalf and make my will known to them. You will speak as if I speak – I want no doubt of it.’
Her
hand dropped Cwen’s and reached up to her mask, untying it from round her head and flinging it carelessly into the forest. ‘My hawks will no longer hide their faces from them. Tell the rest. It is these people’s daughters and sons who have shed blood to protect them. I will not allow them to hide from that truth any longer, not now all must make the same sacrifices you have.’
Cwen felt naked without her mask. The people of Aethelgas and Ivarholme were swarming over the front of the column. Some of them must surely be able to see her. One of them might even be her mother.
‘And be careful, my Cwen,’ the Hunter said. ‘Not all dangers here can be seen; others too wear masks or hide in shadows. The people of the moon did not all die in the last war and I fear some of them work against us still, here in the forest that once was his.’
‘What about you?’ Cwen asked. ‘If you don’t know where the moon god is, where are you going?’
‘I am returning to my people.’
‘The other gods?’ The Hunter had never once spoken of them.
‘No,’ Bachur said. ‘No.’ She drew in a deep, shuddering breath and Cwen realised in shock that her mistress was unsure of herself. Her ageless face looked suddenly young. ‘They are not gods, Cwen, for neither am I.’
‘But you’re a thousand years old! You haven’t aged a day in all the time I’ve been with you. You haven’t died from injuries that would kill anyone. I’ve seen your guts when a beast gored you and a day later you were healed right up! And the animals of the forest – the wolves flock to you like sheep. They eat from your hand like hounds. If you aren’t a god, I don’t know what the fuck a god is!’
‘Something else,’ Bachur said.
‘Then you lied to us. You lied to me.’
‘I never claimed to be other than I am, but it is true I accepted the names your people threw at me, as you accepted the mask they put on you. Now you see me bare.’ She touched her own cheek, running her fingers down the grooves of the long, white scars, the only blemishes on her perfect body despite all the wounds it had taken. ‘These marks that you and all your brethren have so wondered at, these are what a god does. Do not worship gods, Cwen – they are not worthy of it. You and I are something better. Do you understand?’
Cwen fought back tears for the first time since the night she’d left her village to join the Hunt. ‘No. No, I don’t.’
Bachur sighed. ‘I fear you will, before this ends. It matters little now. Will you obey me?’
Cwen nodded. God or not, the Hunter was her mistress and Cwen had loved her with the same fierce passion for more than half her life.
‘Then go. My wolves will guard the forest while you take its people to war. We both have much work ahead of us, and none of it easy.
12
The grey light of an overcast dawn seemed to blur into the grey formless dreams that had troubled Krish all night and his chest itched with a hundred red bites. He scratched at them with his nails and then let his hand drift lower, into the tangle of hair and on to the hardness beneath. His hand tightened, his stomach with it—
And as his head cleared, he realised he wasn’t alone. Dinesh was in the room, on the bed with him. He had his hand round Krish’s penis.
Krish jerked back, shocked. ‘What are you doing?’
The boy’s eyes were clouded. ‘You don’t, you don’t, you don’t like it?’
‘I don’t!’ He snatched up the thin sheet and pulled it over his wilting member. ‘I don’t want you to come into my room unless I ask.’
Dinesh looked as sad as he was capable of in his drugged state. ‘I’m sorry. Master Uin said you wanted me to.’
Suddenly, Uin’s knowing smile made sense. ‘That isn’t true.’
‘Master Uin likes it,’ Dinesh said. ‘He says I do it well.’
‘I’m not him!’ Krish snapped before the full horror struck him. ‘You’re his son – how could he?’
‘I like to do it,’ Dinesh said, but he liked to do everything he was asked.
Krish imagined Uin sending the boy to all his friends, a favour for anyone who’d pleased him. ‘Have you done this for anyone else?’ he asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.
‘I offered Dae Hyo, but he asked if I still had my balls.’ Dinesh’s hand reached beneath him, as if he wasn’t quite sure of the answer. He nodded at what he found. ‘I told him I did and he said, he said, he said no. Have I done wrong, great lord? Is it wrong to do this?’
‘Yes – if you don’t want to. Do you? If nobody asked you, would you want to?’
Dinesh frowned, just one line on his perfectly smooth forehead. Krish realised it was a sign that he was being forced to think about something he didn’t really understand, but felt compelled to answer because Krish had asked it of him. He felt a sudden swell of tenderness for the boy, the same he’d felt for his goats when they were hurt. Dinesh was as helpless and ignorant as them.
‘The way to tell,’ Krish said patiently, ‘is when your – your member – when it gets hard. Was it hard when you looked at me sleeping, or at Dae Hyo?’
Dinesh shook his head, still seeming puzzled.
‘Is it ever hard?’
‘I saw, I saw, I saw Asook and Ensee naked, since they were little. When they were little, then it made me feel soft inside.’ He touched his stomach and Krish felt his own clench. It was hard to imagine that Dinesh had any feelings beside a dazed happiness. ‘But when they were bigger, with breasts, it was nice. I touched myself until Uin saw me and beat me for it. Why did he beat me, great master?’
Krish couldn’t bear to think of Uin and what he’d done any longer. It filled him with the same helpless anger he’d once felt for his own father. ‘If you want to lie with someone, do it,’ Krish told Dinesh firmly. ‘But not … not because Uin tells you to. And not with Uin – never again. Now please go – I need to dress.’
‘Good, good, good,’ the slave said, reassured to have clear instructions, and left the room through its reed door.
Olufemi’s fourth experiment was almost complete when Krish entered her laboratory. Her mind was clear, the rune forming within it, and she was poised to channel the power of the moon when he pushed open the door and broke her concentration. The rune and all her work faded away into nothing. She huffed in irritation and opened her mouth to order him out, but when she saw his expression she put down her tongs instead. The boy was clearly distressed.
‘Is Uin a good man?’ he asked before he’d shut the door.
She laughed, startling him. He took a step back and then paused to study the room. She supposed it must look peculiar to one who’d grown close to manhood as a primitive goatherd in the mountains of Ashanesland. To her the laboratory itself was distressingly primitive. She could hardly recreate the workrooms of Mirror Town here, but Uin had given her everything she’d asked for, including this house. It floated on the ocean’s border, where she could watch the waves beating against the sand in the moon’s rhythm.
Krish’s gaze lingered over the glass bottles of spirits and acid and mordant and venom, the piles of paper with her careful notes – and later angry scribbles – and the pottery and rock and precious metal fragments etched with symbols he couldn’t possibly understand.
‘Uin is a useful man,’ she told Krish. ‘That’s all. Why is this question troubling you now?’
He sighed and pushed aside her papers to sit on the table. ‘Why does Uin follow me? Dae Hyo told me the moon isn’t a god of any tribe, and the Rah were followers of Marwit, the god of nightmares. Why would they start worshipping me instead?’
‘Why does it matter? I’ve preached the news of your return for years and they listened.’
‘But they keep slaves.’
‘Indeed they do, though very few of them. Their work isn’t hard, if that’s what worries you. Unlike the poor, they don’t break their backs labouring over the looms or ruin their joints in the water of the rice fields.’
‘But they … the Rah use them in their beds. And Uin’s sla
ve, the Ashane boy, that’s his own son. Even if the rest is right, that can’t be. To use your own blood that way, it’s – it’s monstrous.’
‘Is it? No child can come of it and with the bliss inside him, I’m sure the slave enjoys it. Besides, the Rah have little choice but to enslave the children of their slaves. The babes drink bliss through nine months of growing in their mother’s womb. By the time they’re born, they need it as much as they do their mother’s breast milk, which is also rich with bliss. They’ve never known what it is to be free or to have their own will, so how can they miss it?’
‘Then they should stop feeding the mothers bliss! How could Uin want his own son to be so, so empty?’
‘No doubt he hopes his wife will give him a better one now she’s finished with daughters.’
He smashed his fist against the wooden bench. ‘I don’t understand how you can make a joke of this!’
And suddenly her own anger was spilling over: old rage and new and most of all at him, for everything he’d cost her. ‘You think I find it funny? You asked how Uin came to the moon. I’ll tell you. He came to Smiler’s Fair because one of his slaves had fled there: Vordanna, with his son Jinn growing inside her.’
Krish frowned, not frightened by her rage but puzzled. ‘If she was fed bliss, how did she have the will to escape?’
‘Because Uin takes the drug away from his female slaves when he rapes them! He says it’s better that way, that a woman’s more enjoyable when she knows what’s happening to her. And so Vordanna came to me and we raised Jinn, and when Uin came seeking her I spoke to him about the moon while I made plans to kill him, but for some reason I’ve never understood he listened to me.
‘He became your follower when you had precious few and I knew that as one of the wealthiest of the Rah he could lead others to you. And so I let him walk away, this man who’d hurt Vordanna and made Jinn from her rape, because it would serve your cause. It was all for you!’
The Hunter's Kind: Book II of The Hollow Gods Page 13