by Maurice Gee
They came round a bend in the river and found a clearing where crops had grown and a village stood. The houses and the grain fields were burned. Carrion birds rose squawking into the air. At a small jetty a sunken river boat thrust her prow out of the water.
Dawn said, ‘Bess has found an old woman in the jungle. She has children with her.’ The Seafolk took the barge close to the jetty and Dawn jumped ashore and ran through the sacked village into the trees. After a short while she came back. ‘The men were taken for Widd’s army. Then a band of outlaws came – bandits and priests – and burned the village, took all the food. They killed the old people and carried off the women and children as slaves. That was yesterday. This woman managed to hide in the jungle with her grandchildren.’
‘Do they have food?’
‘Enough. They are frightened of wild dogs.’
‘Tell them to board themselves in a house. Tell them – one day, soon, the women and the men will come back.’
‘Is that true?’
‘I think so. People will drift to places they know. Do you think so, Soona?’
‘Perhaps,’ said the girl. Her eyes were distant. She did not know.
Dawn went back to the jungle and the barge pulled away from the jetty. Soon Yellowclaw lifted the Woodlander girl aboard. The voyage went on, through midday into afternoon. The channel zigzagged from bank to bank. Swamps steamed in the sun, the mudbanks glimmered, creepers and tree-roots invaded the river. Insects swarmed and bit – but Dawn went into the jungle again and made a paste of leaves and gum that kept them off. They passed another village, with nothing alive in it but carrion birds, and once heard a pack of dogs hunting in a swamp. And once someone unseen loosed an arrow at Silverwing, but she was too high for it to strike. After that, Thief prowled in the jungle with the Varg.
Night was coming on when they saw the ruined buildings of the city. Broken walls crept down to the river, sank in mud. They leaned on trees as though grown tired. Fallen roofs lay webbed in creepers. Roots thrust up through pavements and seemed to peer about like burrowing creatures inspecting an upper world. A dozen rotten posts stood in the river. Susan wondered if they were part of the jetty where she had landed a hundred turns ago.
The barge went on. Soon they came to a stone wharf running back to walls rising from the river, three storeys high. Here and there a glass pane glimmered in a window, but most of the wall had fallen out and rooms showed, plundered long ago.
‘Here,’ Watcher cried from the river. ‘Further up it gets too shallow. Tie the barge on the ring in the stone.’
Nick found an old rusty ring and secured the barge. Thief came leaping through the building, ran down the wharf, and made sure his trio of charges were safe. Ben and Bess loped up, and were joined on the wharf by the Birdfolk.
‘The city is overgrown,’ Silverwing said. ‘There’s a building here and there above the trees, but most are fallen and the streets are blocked.’
‘What about the palace?’
‘We saw no palace.’
‘But a mountain of broken stone,’ Yellowclaw said. ‘Black. Overgrown with creepers. There was a giant gate swinging on a hinge.’
‘That must be it. There must have been an earthquake,’ Susan said.
‘An Oquake,’ Nick put in. ‘Do they have them here?’
‘Big ones,’ Jimmy said. ‘That palace must’a’ come down like a dunny in a storm.’
‘We saw people,’ Silverwing said. ‘They haunt the streets, one here, one there. They live like rats in the rubble.’
‘How long to get to the palace?’ Susan asked.
‘A day. You must cut your way through. We would carry you but we cannot carry the Varg, and you must be guarded.’
‘We better get some shuteye an’ start early,’ Jimmy said. ‘Susie, you an’ yer mates sleep on the barge. Me an’ Ben’ll doss down in the building so no one can come sneakin’ up.’
They ate their food and lay down to rest. Susan and Soona were in the deck-house, with Aenlocht and Thief across the door, one on each side. Dawn and Bess made their beds in the bow, and Nick on the rear deck. The Birdfolk stood sleeping on the wharf.
Once in the night Ben roared in the building, and men fled yelling through the city. And later Nick was wakened by Thief padding by. He heard the soft splash of oars in the dark, and a creaking of rowlocks. But then came a thrashing in the water. The Seafolk had surfaced under the boats and overturned them. Thief added his scream to the din. After that there were no more alarms.
In the dawn the grey mist over the city turned white. Yellowclaw and Silverwing came back from scouting. ‘It will lift, but for the first hour we cannot see. The Varg and the Bloodcat must keep you safe. Sundercloud has flown north to the armies. We must know how close they have come to each other.’
‘When will he be back?’
‘This time tomorrow. What do the Seafolk plan?’
‘We will take the barge to mid-river so no one plunders it,’ Watcher said. ‘If Susan needs us we will be here.’
Jimmy had made a fire in the building and heated food. They ate breakfast sheltered by the walls. ‘Listen,’ Jimmy said. Out in the jungle dogs were baying, an eerie sound, especially in this building where creepers climbed through windows and threads of mist drifted down stairs that led to nowhere.
‘Will they attack?’
‘Not if they know what’s good for ’em.’
Thief had slipped away. Presently a dog yelped, only once, and not long after Thief was back. He had eaten.
They shouldered their gear. Jimmy put the fire out. ‘We gotter keep to wide streets if there’s any. Me an’ Ben go first. The rest in the middle. Bess can watch the back. I reckon Thief had better scout around.’
Susan made images for Thief and he snarled agreement. Then Jimmy led them through the ruined building into the city. There had been a yard, a turning place for drays, heavily cobbled, and much of it was clear of growth. But trees in close ranks stood all about. Their heads were in mist. The sun was a fuzzy ball, slanting bars of light through the vapour. Jimmy crossed the yard and forced his way between two mounds of rubble into a street. Creepers leaned from walls. He chopped them with his axe, and Ben tore them, and they went on slowly through the ruins, with gaping doors on either side.
‘A handy place fer an ambush,’ Jimmy said.
But Thief, peering through doors, leaping on walls, kept up a screaming, and Nick could not imagine anyone coming close. Aenlocht too began to roam about, though keeping Soona in sight. His wounds were almost healed and his agility matched the cat’s. The jungle was not his element, but his sharpened sight, his reflexes, seemed to operate as though in the desert. Once he leaped sideways and plucked a hissing spear from the air, and hurled it back where it came from, over the trees.
‘They’re tryin’ long shots,’ Jimmy said. But Thief was away after the spear, and nothing more came from that direction.
The mist dissolved. Silverwing floated overhead, with Yellowclaw and Snowflier making sweeps. The lurkers in the ruins would see them too and realize that now they had no chance of lying in wait. They must attack openly or wait for dark.
When the sun was overhead Jimmy stopped. The place had been a city square and like the yard by the wharf was not overgrown. It was paved with tiles a metre square and some were inlaid with images of Otis Claw. His giant statue lay on its back in the middle with an upraised arm broken off at the wrist. His face seemed noble, and that was a lie. So was the inscription on the pedestal: His fame will live until the end of time. Jimmy sat on his chest. He sharpened his axe on Claw’s cheekbone. Nick took wood from a smashed ox-cart lying nearby and made a fire. It was more for comfort than warmth. A fire in this desolate place was a friendly thing. He rolled a spoked wheel on to it and made it blaze high.
‘I don’t think I came this way,’ Susan said. ‘But I came through a square like this.’ She remembered a cart hauled by slaves, and Halfmen and women thrusting up their bowls for greasy stew.
Silverwing landed. ‘You must go north and east. The black mound is there. But the streets are narrow and the jungle lies thickly over them. We have seen only single dogs, and people in twos and threes. But Yellowclaw thinks they’re gathering behind you. They’re waiting to see what you will do.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Ruin-dwellers. People who hunt and scavenge here for food. Untouched by the history of the last hundred turns. The city was a dark place to outsiders.’
‘The priests called it the place of desecration,’ Soona said. ‘There is a pit. Sinners go that way to eternal punishment.’
‘I’ve heard that one before, or somethin’ like it,’ Jimmy said.
‘The pit’s the way to the Motherstone,’ Susan said.
‘You will reach it by dark. You must find a place there to pass the night.’
They ate, and Jimmy led them out of the square, leaving the fire sinking to ashes by the fallen statue. ‘Poor old Claw,’ Nick said. He thought of the statues of Susan and himself at the Temple. They were broken too. His fame would not live in this world any longer than Claw’s. He found the thought oddly comforting. More and more he had the sense of not belonging on O. It was as if he and Susan had been called to do a job – like carpenters or plumbers – and when it was done they would go back home and be forgotten, and their work would be just a part of things. Susan’s work, he reminded himself. She was the important one. He did not have much to do any more.
They went through streets in an old part of the city. Shops and houses leaned over alleys too narrow for carts. In places their upper storeys touched, and here and there they had fallen in, making barriers of brick and stone and timber. Creepers twisted everywhere like snakes, and trees were getting a foothold, standing up at shoulder height wherever there was light and space for them. In the shade, in places the sun never came, everything was slimy, fungus-grown. The cobblestones spat water on their ankles. Black pools lay in hollows, with tufts of pale weed at their edges. Insects bit, and Dawn brought out her paste again. It was easy to believe fevers and diseases lived in these alleys. Old yellow bones, rib-bones, pelvis bones, lay half-in half-out of a pond. Jointed fingers gripped a stone. Teeth grinned in a broken jaw. Susan stopped. She shivered.
‘I came down this street. There was a murdered man over there.’
‘Take it easy,’ Jimmy said. ‘We must be gettin’ close.’
‘It looks like thick jungle up ahead,’ Nick said.
‘That will be the park. There was a creek. A ditch. The palace is on the other side.’
Silverwing shouted from overhead. She led them out of the alley into a clearing where it seemed people had lived recently. Dead fires made patches all about. Jimmy felt one. ‘Cold. I wonder where they’ve got themselves holed up.’
Silverwing landed. ‘They are behind, in a half-circle. It seems they like the direction you’re going.’
‘They’re herdin’ us,’ Jimmy growled. ‘How many of ’em?’
‘Seventy. Eighty. With clubs and spears.’
‘They must want us to go to the palace,’ Susan said.
‘I don’t like it. I’m for havin’ a bash at them.’
‘We’ve got to go. Why fight?’
They started into the jungle again. No light came in. The tree-roots were moss-grown and the ground spongy. Soon they came to the ditch Susan remembered but now it was twenty metres wide, stagnant and slimy, and the trees were too thick for the Birdfolk to fly down and lift them over. ‘We’ll have to swim.’
‘It’s full of leeches,’ Jimmy said. ‘They’ll ’ave yer sucked dry before yer know it.’ He scraped one out with his boot – a slug the size of a match-box, grey, with a patch of yellow gut. ‘Get one of these on yer skin, yer wouldn’ burn ’im orf with a blow torch.’
‘What will we do?’
Jimmy looked at Ben. The old Varg nodded.
‘Hop on ’is back. You first, Susie. Don’t worry, they won’t get through ‘is fur.’
Dawn was already on Bess’s back, and the younger Varg stepped easily into the water and started swimming, head held high. Jimmy helped Susan up. ‘Don’t fall orf. There’s millions of ’em.’
She knelt and gripped the fur at Ben’s neck. His back was as broad as a sofa and though he walked with a rolling gait, in the water only the joints of his shoulders moved. The leech-filled slime slid by close to her knees, but her only worry was that the creatures would find a way through Ben’s fur. She glanced back. The others were in a group close to the water. Thief had gone back into the trees. She saw what he meant to do, and though it looked impossible she knew that for him it was easy. He ran to the water’s edge and his leap took him soaring over her head, elastically stretched and light as a bird, and down in an arc, over Dawn and Bess. His forepaws splashed in the ooze. A single bound took him clear. He snapped at his leg, where a leech had fastened, and spat it out; then stood waiting for Susan, mewing anxiously. Dawn jumped clear of Bess and the younger Varg turned back. Then Susan was on the shore; and Thief rubbed her once, then prowled the trees.
Soona and Aenlocht came next. Susan saw men moving in the undergrowth, hunched to the ground like animals that searched the mud for food. They darted from tree to tree, dark and dwarf. Jimmy faced them with his axe, but they stayed back, making a soft whistling, a kind of signal. It could be the singing of birds, Susan thought; but coming from the men it was horrible.
Nick and Jimmy came over. Under their weight the Varg struggled to keep their mouths clear of the slime. On land, they shook themselves, and Dawn and Jimmy took their knives and cut leeches from their fur. One had got into the split between Ben’s toes and the old Varg watched stoically while Jimmy dug it out. Dawn doctored the cut and they went on. It took another half hour to bring them clear of the jungle.
The space was man-made. Beyond, a wall of stone blocks rose to a shattered top, with an entrance at the end, and half a barred gate, ten metres high. It leaned inward on one hinge, resting on stones, mason-cut, that rose in a tumbled hill towards the sky.
‘There, that’s it, the palace,’ Susan said. Nothing was left of the beehive shape or the chimney that had poured out Otis Claw’s poison smoke. It was the gate she recognized. Nick was at her side. ‘The ramp must be under all that rock.’
‘We’re not goin’ lookin’ ternight,’ Jimmy growled. ‘Grub’s what we need. An’ some shuteye.’
Silverwing glided down and hovered. ‘We have found a broken place in the wall. It makes a room where you can be safe. Dark is coming. Build a fire. You must be quick. These jungle folk are gathering.’ She flew ahead of them along the wall. They were on a kind of beach, Susan thought, with the jungle as the sea and the stones of the fallen palace a kind of land. The trees were full of flitting shapes, and man-made bird-calls. They came to the hole in the wall. Beams had crashed on blocks of masonry. Sections of wall had tumbled in, and a cave was made – cave more than room – head-high, as large as a double garage.
Thief went in and made sure it was safe. Nick and Jimmy lit a fire at the entrance, building it high with timber from the rubble. They made a barrier half over the door so spears could not be thrown into the cave, but no move came from the jungle, although men watched, some in the open, taking no heed of the Warrior Birds, or Thief, or the Varg.
‘They’ve been herding us, all right.’
‘They’re a scruffy-lookin’ bunch,’ Jimmy said.
Nick stood for a while watching them. Men, the whole gathering, not a woman there. Crooked, half-naked, stringy-fleshed. The spears and clubs they carried seemed too large. He supposed they barely kept alive, scavenging and preying on each other in these ruins. Yet there was something dreadful about them. Not their numbers, not their weapons – but their silence, their discipline. It was as though they were engaged in some rite.
He looked into the sky. The Birdfolk were there. Ben and Bess were at the fire, one facing the jungle, the other the mound, so no surprise attack could come. And Thief wa
s in the cave. But still he could not feel safe.
‘Nick, come and have some food,’ Susan called.
He went in. ‘They want us here.’
‘At the Motherstone?’
‘Yes, maybe.’
‘We’ll find out tomorrow. If they want us it means there’s a way to get down there.’
That did not bring him any comfort. He lay awake thinking of what Susan must do. And Soona. And Aenlocht. He wished there were a part for him to play. If he had guessed right, their task was terrible – the burden of it, the hugeness, made him weak. The threat of the men in the jungle shrank to nothing. He looked at Susan sleeping in the flickering light. It astonished him that she had the strength for tomorrow. And those two, Soona, Aenlocht, sleeping side by side, with her black hair making their pillow – their strength was even more terrible. He dreamed about them spreading out their hands to cover O. He could not tell whether it was life or death they brought.
Chapter Eleven
Motherstone
It was dark in the cave but outside the unrisen sun lightened the sky. Susan sat up in her blanket and shivered. Aenlocht lay with open eyes, watching her. He spoke a word in his dialect and she guessed it was, ‘Good morning’. Soona was still sleeping, with a strand of hair caught in her mouth. It was so childlike that Susan reached out and stroked her cheek. Aenlocht made no move, he seemed to smile, and Susan whispered, ‘Look after her.’ She threw off her blanket and went outside. Ben was by the fire, almost in the ashes, and Thief was walking back and forth halfway to the jungle, with the untamed regular motion of a tiger in a cage. He stopped and came to her and she scratched him under his jaw.
Jimmy came out yawning and stirred the fire. ‘Where’s our neighbours?’ There was no movement in the jungle, but Susan had no doubt eyes were watching.
‘No mist. Are the Pollies keepin’ watch?’
They turned in the sky like hawks; but Yellowclaw wheeled north and flapped away, and Silverwing folded her wings and tumbled like a pigeon towards the fire. She braked at tree height and settled lightly.