The Standing Dead sdotc-2

by Ricardo Pinto

  ‘I should kill you,' said Osidian.

  'You should. I will not cease fighting you.'

  Osidian nodded, considering it.

  'But you will not kill me,' said Carnelian, wiping his eyes. 'Seeing any Chosen die would diminish your glamour in their eyes.' He indicated Ravan and the others gaping at them.

  Osidian looked as vulnerable as a child. That may not always be so.'

  They gazed at each other, feeling the depth of what they had lost. Carnelian was the first to speak. 'What now?' i go to conquer,' Osidian said, his face turning to stone. 'You will remain behind and conduct yourself with due care, my Lord, or else those you seek always to protect will suffer my displeasure.'

  Saying this, he broke through Ravan and the other guards and, sweeping across the Crag summit, disappeared down the steps leaving Carnelian impotently to contemplate his failure and his betrayals.

  No one at the hearth blamed Carnelian for failing to rid them of the Master, but Sil was not the friend she had been and Whin was colder. Akaisha had grown suddenly old. Bent almost double, she never seemed to leave her place in the root fork by the fire. Gradually, Whin took on more and more of the duties and powers of hearthmother.

  Tortured by guilt, Carnelian threw himself into the continuing struggle to cure the heavener meat before it spoiled. Great hunks were smoked until they looked like wood. Fires burning day and night were fed with the magnolias cut down from the margins of the ferngarden. The Killing Field had long been abandoned to the ravens. Drifts of them turned the carcasses into ivory ruins. When, rarely, a breeze would blow from the west, a sickening stench wafted over the djada field. But it was the east wind everyone feared most, for then the hill of offal soaked the air with its miasmas and Carnelian and the Bluedancing would be forced to slave even in the hottest part of the day with their faces swathed in cloth.

  The men whom the Master sent to bring them water brought also news. The warriors of the Tribe and their allies the Woading were digging another earthwork, to the north-east, at the crossing of the lagoon nearest to the koppie of the Smallochre. From this earthwork they daily harried them when they came to fetch water. Scuffles had already broken out. It was only a matter of time before the Smallochre would be stung into giving battle.

  Carnelian was down in the Eastgarden watching the Bluedancing braid the heavener djada into rope when, pointing, Poppy let out a cry. Smoke was rising from the Crag. Fern and the others returning, thought Carnelian, and began running towards the Blooding. Poppy's shouts pulled him up short. Turning, he saw she was running after him. He returned, scooped her up and ran on.

  They found the gate to the Grove unguarded. They met Sil and some others of his hearthmates halfway up the rootstair moving at Akaisha's pace. Anxious as he was to find out if the signal really meant their men were back, Carnelian walked the rest of the way with them. He glanced furtively at Akaisha. He could not bear to see how fragile she had become.

  When they reached the clearing before the Ancestor House they found many of the womenfolk gathered there and, near the Crag steps, many of the Elders craning to listen to a woman up on the summit. Her words were passed back.

  The Master and Ravan.'

  The woman on the summit was shouting something else. Her words came accompanied by a murmur of fear. They're bringing dead.'

  People began to move to the opposite side of the clearing where a path led to the Lagooning, but Ginkga climbed the first few steps up the Crag and urged them to wait. Her face hardened when her words were ignored by many. Carnelian decided it would be better if he waited.

  At last a massive figure appeared at the edge of the clearing repelling the crowd. It was the Master and, beside him, Ravan. Together they walked through the Elders to the steps and began to ascend them. Behind them came a procession carrying drag-cradles on which lay shrouded bodies. No one could tell who they were because their faces were hidden by ubas. As the crowd moved back to let the drag-cradles be set down, their murmuring began tearing into sounds of grief.

  'Why do you mourn when you should be joyous and proud of your noble dead?' said Ravan from the porch of the Ancestor House. Behind him the Master was just a shadow.

  'Fern?' said Carnelian beginning to move forward but Sil's hand stayed him. Til go.'

  'See here,' cried Ravan and from his hands hung tresses of grey hair loaded with salt beads. This is the tribute the Smallochre pay you as the Woading did before them.' He shook the tresses and they could hear the beads tinkling. This salt and more like it means our men will never again have to go and serve in the legions.' He pointed with his fists at the dead. These heroes died to bring this blessing to the Tribe. Honour them.'

  Sil returned pale from the women swarming the dead. She shook her head. 'He's not there.'

  Carnelian, Akaisha and Sil shared the relief. A pale movement made Carnelian look up to see Osidian's hand signing.

  Come up and talk to me.

  Still worrying about Fern, Carnelian began moving towards the steps.

  'Where are you going?' asked Akaisha. The Master summoned me.'

  Akaisha looked from him up to where Osidian was climbing up to the summit. 'What sorcery could let you know his thoughts?'

  'None, my mother.' He lifted his hands meaning to explain, but Sil caught them.

  'Find out about Fern.'

  Carnelian looked into her eyes and nodded, before he began pushing his way through the mourning crowd.

  Ravan was waiting for him at the Ancestor House. He had transferred all the beaded hair to one hand. Carnelian examined it distastefully, almost expecting to see bloody fragments of scalp attached to the roots.

  'Where are the rest of the men?'

  Ravan smiled. 'You mean my dear brother?'

  Carnelian searched the youth's eyes for Fern's death.

  'Oh, he lives. The Master left him commanding a joint force of Woading and Ochre in the Woading earthwork.'

  Carnelian caught some resentment in the youth's voice. 'Not you?'

  Ravan scowled. 'He needs me as his interpreter.'

  The youth lifted his empty hand towards the steps leading up to the summit and Carnelian took the lead.

  Climbing up onto the summit, Carnelian saw the signal fire was still smoking. Osidian was there with some guards. As Carnelian approached him, the guards put themselves between Osidian and the edge. Carnelian ground his teeth, angry at that reminder of his failed assassination.

  'So you have absorbed another tribe into your empire, Osidian.'

  The first of many.'

  They stood gazing at each other; only their eyes exposed. Carnelian felt Ravan standing behind him.

  'How goes the curing of the heavener meat?' Osidian asked.

  'Well enough.'

  'If the slaves have been worked hard then the process should be nearly complete.' 'It is.'

  'Good. I have other work for them.'

  Carnelian waited, dreading it already.

  They will cut a new ditch to annex more of the plain. The ferngardens must be greatly expanded if I am to pasture the multitude of aquar I intend to gather here.'

  Osidian turned and swept his arm round, pointing out an arc as far from the Newditch as the Newditch was from the Grove.

  'Surely you don't mean to take this ditch all around the Koppie?' Work on the margin of the Killing Field had taught Carnelian what a vast labour that would be.

  Osidian nodded.

  'But that would take for ever.'

  T have calculated it will take four years if they work without ceasing.'

  They are not to accompany us on the migration?'

  That would be impractical.' Osidian sketched some gestures in the air. Aquar, the valley, many impediments…

  'How do you expect them to stay here without water? The cistern would not hold nearly enough to give drink to so many mouths.'

  'We shall dig new cisterns.'

  There's not enough time.'

  'You are in error.' He pointed out alo
ng the Lagooning. 'We shall dig them there where my men can most easily fill them. If we put them close to the path they will be in the shade of the magnolias.'

  He looked back at Carnelian. The cisterns will hold enough for the Bluedancing but also for the warriors of the Ochre and the four other tribes I shall rule before the migration.'

  Carnelian knew there must be reason behind this madness but he could not see it. The Tribe has to be escorted to the mountains. You must see that.'

  'All my tribes will be escorted. Their warriors will take them as far as the mountains and then return here.'

  'Why would you want…' He fixed Osidian with a stare. 'You fear that in the mountains their Elders and their women might work them free of your dominion.'

  There, you see, you can think like one of the Chosen when you want to.'

  Carnelian knew what was to come and raised his hand. 'Please, Osidian, spare me your threats. I will do as you ask.'

  Thank you for being so understanding.'

  Carnelian controlled his anger. Nothing would be gained at that moment from violence. He would bide his time.

  The next day Carnelian began work on the cisterns. He had explained to Sil that the Bluedancing were going to stay in the Koppie during the withering. Once she had overcome her disbelief, then horror, she helped him find women to act as overseers.

  By the end of the second day, the first cistern had been cut: a rectangular hole in the ground the bottom of which was bedrock. He had sent the men Osidian had given him to the lagoon and, when they returned, their drag-cradles were sagging under the weight of the clay they had gouged from its banks. This was tipped into the hole, where the Bluedancing used it to plaster the walls and floor. When it had dried, waterskins were carefully emptied into the cistern. All that day, drag-cradles arrived laden with more. Slowly the level of the pool rose brown and murky up the clay sides of the pit. When it had nearly reached the top, Carnelian laid over it covers of woven fernfrond strengthened with scouring-rush poles. The structure sagged a little but held. Days later, as the Bluedancing and the others were digging the next cistern, Carnelian had the covers lifted off the first. A sigh of relieved delight rose from his Ochre helpers as they saw the clay had settled, leaving the water clear.

  When the mother trees announced the Withering with their cones, Poppy came to Carnelian eager to plant her seed. Though Akaisha had promised to ask permission from the other Elders, Carnelian was reluctant to ask her if she ever had. Besides, he suspected it was no longer their decision to make. He became anxious about what might happen to Poppy's precious seed once it germinated. In the end, he persuaded her it would be best to wait. A year was not, after all, such a long time in the life of a mother tree. Tearfully, she agreed.

  Torrid days blazed in indistinguishable continuity. Each morning the men set off to fetch water to fill the cisterns. Each time they had to ride further as the lagoon shrank away.

  'Most of its bed is cracked like old skin,' one of them coughed, resting his hand on the pole of a drag-cradle, trying to keep in his aquar's shadow. Their mouths and their eyes opened in faces caked with dust.

  Carnelian reassured them they had enough water stored. He had himself surveyed the nearly forty cisterns that morning. The wall of one had crumbled. The levels in each had fallen, no doubt through seepage as well as evaporation. Still, after consulting Whin, he gauged that they had enough for those who were to remain behind, at least until the Rains came.

  A morning after a full moon, the air began to haze with spores. Soon they so choked the day even the sun could not peep through. At night, hiding with Poppy beneath blankets, they could not sleep for the hissing. Seven days the storm lasted and on the eighth the whole world seemed to have rusted.

  The weddings held during the next moon were not the joyous events they had once been. People were uncertain whether the old should preside over them as they had always done. Besides, the ceremonies were tainted by mourning.

  When the Master came, he always brought dead with him. Never very many, he was a skilled commander, but enough to haunt the Grove with wailing. Ravan would talk to them of victories and show them the salt tribute they had forced their victims to pay. He and the Master would spend the night on the summit of the Crag and did not seem to mind sharing it with the corpses nor with the ravens that came to feed upon them. Carnelian shunned the Master, as did the rest of the Tribe, who had grown to dread his returns.

  Even in the shade, each breath was toasting Carnelian's throat dry. He looked out past the Newditch to where the curve of Osidian's ditch was already cutting into the burning plain. He imagined the Bluedancing suffering there with only improvised hats to keep off the sun; ubas over nose and mouth to filter the air their digging kept always clouded with dust. They already knew their fate. They were to labour all through the Withering on the new ditch. Worse, Carnelian imagined, was the news that it was nearly time to fire the ferngardens. The Tribe would then leave for the mountains. The Bluedancing knew this was when their tithe-marked children were to be sent to the Standing Dead in place of the Ochre's own.

  Carnelian wondered how the Wise would react once they discovered that the Bluedancing had not come to Osrakum to pay their tithe. Would this alert them to Osidian's presence? Perhaps the crime would be lost for a while in the ocean of their bureaucracy. This seemed a bleak hope. What was certain was that if Osidian continued to disrupt the Earthsky, one day there would be retribution. On that day, Osidian would have the war he craved.

  In the cool of the night, the Grove was sometimes disturbed by the cry of some woman calling for her husband. In the day it was hard to believe any of their men would return from the torrid, shadeless plain. The heavener djada was packed onto the drag-cradles ready for the migration. The Tribe sipped water drawn from the cisterns. Even the men who had come to tell them the lagoons were dried up were long gone. So it was that when the messenger came to declare that all their men would be returning the next day, he was disbelieved. No one dared to challenge the Gods by feeling hope. The next day many dared the summit of the Crag, but nothing solidified from the wavering air. Despair saturated the shade beneath the mother trees.

  Shouting raised Carnelian from fevered drowsiness. The greatest heat of the day had passed. When word reached them riders were approaching the Koppie, Carnelian joined the rest of his hearth running out along the Lagooning across the black deserts of the ferngarden to welcome them.

  That Fern was there alive would have been cause of joy enough for Carnelian and the hearth, but that there were no dead at all stunned people to silence. Riding at the Master's side, Ravan announced that the Ochre were everywhere victorious. The Tribe burst into song, ecstatic that what they had dreaded had not come to pass.

  The tension between Fern and Ravan had subdued the carnival atmosphere of the hearth. That and the demand the returning men had made that the Elders should give up their salt regalia so that the warriors could protect it along with the rest of the Tribe's wealth. Whin's and Akaisha's hair looked lank without beads. Even Sil's joy at the return of her husband could not withstand his moroseness. Carnelian was desperate to talk to him but he felt it was Osidian watching them through Ravan's eyes.

  Something woke Carnelian. Taking care not to disturb Poppy, Carnelian sat up. Someone was moving towards the rootstair. Instinct made Carnelian rise and follow. The cold night air made him glad he had thought to bring a blanket. The figure was climbing to the Crag, its footfalls lost in the sighing of the mother trees. Carnelian went as fast as he could, but when he reached the path that hugged the Crag, he found he had lost the figure. He hurried on, guessing that whoever it was, was going down the Westing to the latrines. Suddenly, a shape appeared before him.

  'Why are you following me?' it whispered.

  Carnelian realized with relief it was Fern. He had hoped it would be him.

  'It's me.'

  'Carnie? High father, you frightened me. Why are you stalking me?'

  T need to talk to yo
u.'

  Cursing softly, Fern pulled Carnelian after him. They said nothing as they descended the Westing. When they reached the Homing, they turned right and walked along it until they reached two cedars from between which a piece of rock extended out over the ditch. This was one of the men's latrines.

  Fern turned to him. 'What do you want?'

  Carnelian could not make out his face. He tried to find a question. 'Something needs to be done.'

  'Why should I trust you?'

  Carnelian grimaced. As well as he could, he explained what had happened on the summit the day he had intended to kill Osidian.

  'Do you still love him?'

  Carnelian bit back the easy denial he was about to make. 'A part of him, but the rest, I despise.'

  Silence fell between them. The cedars on either side of the ditch creaked. Beyond, the burned ferngarden was a paler darkness.

  'Don't worry. I'll do it.'

  Carnelian was shocked by his friend's cold determination. 'You can't.'

  Carnelian could feel Fern growing angry. 'Even now you try to protect him. Will you also betray me?'

  Carnelian became angry too. 'If I'd wanted to do that don't you think I've had plenty of opportunities?'

  He hesitated, then reached out and gripped Fern's hand, holding on to it when Fern made to pull away. 'He controls me by threatening you.'

  The hand relaxed in Carnelian's grip. 'You must see we need him now. Who else will stand between us and the revenge of the conquered tribes?'

  'You.'

  'What?'

  Take his place.'

  'Would the men follow me?'

  'Why not? One of the Standing Dead is very much like another.'

  Carnelian considered it. He released Fern's hand. 'I couldn't do it.'

  The men would follow you. The other tribes too.'

  'I'm not the Master. I don't have his stomach for violence.'

  'I've seen you fight well enough when you have to. Besides, if we're careful, there shouldn't be any need.' 'What would we gain?'

  "The end of this madness. I believe the Master is possessed. Somehow, the spirit of the swamp ravener passed into him when he spilled its blood.'