by Jack Lasenby
Several followed ours in the growing light. Lamentations, thuds floated across from where Lutha’s warriors surrounded the rafts in a frenzy of killing.
At the river, we landed on the far bank. The Salt Men who had escaped through the hills and around the bottom of the lake struggled across from the Island of Bones. Some drowned. Others crawled from the water, exhausted. As they scrambled up the bank, we loomed above their screams.
We harried those already across, slew the wounded. One fired an arrow at Kalik which I struck off course with the broad face of my spear-blade. Luck. “Thanks, Brother!” Kalik slew the bowman before he could fire again. Under the lowering face of Grave Mountain, the rest retreated to their fort up the valley.
Its stockade fell at our first rush. Between the huts we speared our way. I stopped when only women, children, old men were left. Kalik led his warriors on, killing now for lust.
The fighting petered out, Kalik getting control of himself and the others. I interfered too late, saw a woman cut down needlessly. Her baby tossed in the air, impaled. Kalik ordered a hutful of women and children led back to the canoes.
Further up, we ran down a Salt Man, beat about for others. In the saddle at the valley’s head, Kalik and I circled through trees down the other side of the watershed, but found no recent tracks.
Back to the lake, past the burning remains of the fort. As we went, Kalik ordered the line of corpses down the valley stripped of their gear and weapons. Our dead, like the enemy’s, abandoned.
In the evening by the lake the prisoners waited. Some had disappeared on the way. The Salt Women lamented, dishevelled, the children in terror, but Kalik ignored their despair. As we paddled between two bodies lolling towards the river’s mouth, he smiled grim.
“It will be long before they dare attack again.”
“Yes, but they will return.” I knew something of the persistence of the Salt Men now. I had thought I understood the nature of evil, too, but was beginning to wonder. Did we need to kill the women? Children? Old men? And what about the prisoners?
“Lutha will celebrate tonight!” Kalik threw back his head and shrieked. A scream of blood and killing. And jagged through the growing darkness, a woman’s shriek replied: delight and death.
“You’ll see a difference in the Maidens. Lutha will order the wine.”
“Wine?”
“Like drinking blood!”
Torches flamed. Kalik and Lutha, both of them blood-covered, danced towards each other across red sand. The Maidens chanted and swayed as they moved up to the Roundhouse, circling, raising spears and bows. The air reeking of death, rent with screams of triumph. Edged. Hysterical.
More torches on long poles. Lutha gestured, and the Maidens carried out tall jars. Women. Children. Men. Shouting, leaping in the swirling light, frenzied.
A canoe wallowed in below, paddled by Salt Men. They knelt, slipping over, hauling themselves up under blows, paddling awkwardly. Their captors doubled over, laughing, pointing down into the canoes. Hands bound to ankles, the prisoners tossed ashore. Three of them tumbled and dragged through the gate and up to the Roundhouse where Lutha and Kalik danced and shrieked.
Now the Maidens were working out the sealed stoppers. Tipping the jars into clay mugs. One thrust into my hands. In the ruddy torchlight, it looked like blood. All about me, people were jostling, drinking. Waving to have their mugs refilled.
“Drink it, Ish!” A Maiden urged. She had used my name! She bent graceful, pouring for someone else, I stared. Tall, slim, she straightened, turned back, and smiled. Those great eyes … Raka! The Maiden who had been punished by Lutha.
“Wine! Haven’t you drunk it before?” She took my mug, drank, and something dark trickled down her white chin. She laughed, didn’t wipe it. Held the mug to my mouth, and I tasted the aromatic gush. My head swam. Where had I smelled, tasted that rich earthy flavour before?
Raka was laughing, filling more mugs. Turning back to me. Refilling mine. Drinking from it. Watching me over the rim. Smiling. Eyes that had flared with rage as she levelled her spear at my throat the day before.
The Maidens were fetching more jars. Shouts, laughter grew. And floundering hamstrung, bleeding, the three Salt Men tormented by children and grown-ups. Casual blows and shouts. Kicks. I turned away.
Behind the crowd, Raka found me again. She swayed tall between the drinkers, took my hand, led me into the dark.
I was filled with delight by the wine. By who I was. Part of me said it was the effect of drunkenness. Another part enjoyed the sensation. The first voice, the one that always seemed to be warning me, quietened. In a hut, Raka drank from the mug. Laughed. “We must be quick!”
It was long since I had slept with a girl. I found the same urgency in Raka. And when we were done, lying in each other’s arms, she wept.
Suddenly I understood this was some revenge of Raka’s upon Lutha. I was even more confused. So much seemed impossible to understand. Then she was on her feet, saying we must be there for the ceremony. Hand in hand we ran uphill. Just before we lifted out of darkness into the band of torchlight, Raka kissed me and vanished.
Kalik thrust through the crowd. Handed me a full mug. “Empty it!” I copied him. The roars, the torches, the faces spun. I stumbled. Kalik laughed, dragged me forward, and we were separated by a drunken old woman who waved a dripping mug. A procession of long-cloaked, hooded figures emerged from the Roundhouse. The crowd roared even louder. Beneath her hood, I was sure I could see Lutha. The hood fell forward, shadowed her face again. A tall figure behind must be Raka.
Between us the prisoners knelt, wobbling on raw stumps. Several of the cloaked figures picked up the first between them, threw him on a split slab of timber in front of their leader. A single voice began a chant in a language I did not understand. One by one, other voices joined.
The hooded figure moved to the top of the slab. Others knelt around it, restraining the Salt Man, pulling back his head so the throat curved upwards. And the figure standing above raised an arm. The sleeve fell back from a small brown hand I recognised.
The torches went out. The chanting stopped. Silence. And the only light, a narrow ray struck the raised hand now holding a knife. Like the beak of some ancient bird it fell.
The torches flared. The sacrifice jerked. I heard blood spurt. And as the chanting around me swelled, the priestess raised high a bowl, lowered it to her mouth, drank from its stained rim. Passed it across the corpse to Kalik who drank, too. Screamed joy! Mouth red.
The priestess hacked, plunged in both hands, and tore out the dripping heart. Showed it to the crowd’s roar, turning, holding it high.
The other two butchered, the crowd parted. Air shaking with heat! A hole containing red-hot stones, an earth oven. I backed away. It was what Taur and I had seen on the Green Stone River all over again. However bad the Salt Men, we were no better if we stooped to the same evil. Backing between gore-covered revellers, I heard earth being shovelled over the ovens. Cries for more wine. I got Nip and my pack from the hut, slipped down to the lake.
I scrubbed black stains of wine or blood with handfuls of sand and was looking about to escape when the air filled with the lost cries of children, and a canoe laboured out of the dark, crunched up the beach. Eager for the feast, their guards ran captured Salt Children through the gate and up to the huts inside a stockade. I smelled their terror as they passed, saw shocked faces, wounds and, suddenly, I knew it was not enough to escape on my own, that when I left those children were going with me.
Chapter 6
Leadership and Infection
Above the darkness in which I stood, a ruddy frieze of arms raised in wild lurch and sway. I thought of the dances in the snow-houses of the Shaman’s villages. Hypnotic drumming, frenzy. But the dancers on the Headland cried in a different voice.
I climbed the stockade, shook the doors, called to the Children, but they shrieked hysterical. Over the wall again to Nip and my pack.
Raka found me back in
my hut. Kalik was looking for me, she said. He thought I had gone off with a girl. Raka led me to another hut, half-full of jars of wine.
We drank. Made love. She did not cry this time. By the end of that red night, I had learned much. Yes, she was Lutha’s lover. Her favourite until she had raised her spear against me. No, she had not slept with a man before. Lutha made sure the elect of the Maidens kept to themselves.
As leader of the Maidens, Lutha was the priestess of Hekkat, goddess of night and the underworld. Goddess of childbirth.
“So that was why Lutha held up her baby?”
“Not hers!” Raka laughed.
“Not Lutha’s?”
Raka shook her head. “Lutha displays all new-born girls for the old women’s approval. That baby will grow up one of the Maidens.”
“And the girl who held the baby?”
“That!” said Raka. “Just one of the Salt Children Kalik captured a few years ago.”
Lutha was leader of the settlement, Kalik her lieutenant. No, they were not lovers. There was a curious hesitance in Raka’s voice. I decided she was neither lying nor quite telling the truth.
Lutha was the priestess of the Huntress Moon, the Virgin Goddess. To lie with a man would be the end of her. Yes, the lesser Maidens could lie with a man – whenever Lutha brought out the wine. Usually when the crops were brought in, and at the making of the new wine.
Raka’s voice slurred. We turned to each other again. Something frantic in her clasp, her cries. I remember the curve of her tall body, the wine jar held on her hip, as she turned, came back, pressed herself against me, mouth shuddering on mine. And slipped off to the Roundhouse.
It was still dark. I made several trips to my hut with jars of wine, hid them under my bunk. And, exhausted, slept.
All sign of the orgy was gone next day. Moving like sad ghosts, spectral in mist that swathed the Headland, some older Salt Children filled in the ovens. A guard found me there. “Kalik wants you!”
I followed, noticing sentries back on the gates and lookouts. The bodies of our dead – left where they fell during the attack – had gone. Pitched like the enemy into the lake.
Damage to the palisade and fences was being repaired. Salt Children were emptying the canoes of water, running them back down to the lake. I could hear Lutha giving orders.
His usual elegant self, Kalik stood at the foot of the steps by the Roundhouse, smiling, thanking me for my part in the fighting. Begging my forgiveness – an arm around my shoulders – but he needed my help again.
“One of the sentries spotted smoke across the lake. Lutha ordered us to search the valley under Grave Mountain.”
I took Nip this time. We swept the valley as far as the burned ruins of the Salt Men’s settlement, but found nobody alive. A haze of blue smoke rose from a mound of ashes, the remains of the largest hut. The air nauseous.
Kalik had brought the sentry, Teelah. She was quite sure about what she had seen. “No, it came from further back down the valley. And it was a signal, a column,” she said, “not a drift of smoke like this.”
“Where is the Headland from here?”
Teelah pointed. Kalik nodded. She had the direction right. We split up for yet another search.
“Run a spear through every corpse you see,” Kalik ordered. “Make sure they’re dead.”
I saw several, some our own. Near the river, Nip scented and led through trees to the body of a Salt Woman, one of yesterday’s prisoners who had not made it back to the canoes. It was clear why. I stood over her and swore I would escape this violent society, take the Salt Children with me.
Nip led to a clearing and a cairn of rocks. A little stream murmuring over white pebbles. Breeze lifting and dropping the grass; leaves spinning down in sunshine. A safe, quiet place, removed from the horror of the valley. I sat and thought of our long journey from the North Land.
“Do you remember Taur?” I asked Nip. She looked. “Jak?” She cocked her head on one side. “What about the Shaman?” Nip pounced at a shadow, and I wondered again at our difference in consciousness.
“What was it the Shaman said about leadership?” I asked Nip and remembered his voice saying that being the leader gave confidence and strength, as if you had grown more muscles, more intelligence. Lutha was like that. She made up her mind and acted. No doubts, no uncertainties.
“People,” the Shaman said, “want a leader who will take the decisions for them. Without their leader, they would be lost. But there is always another side to things, Ish: without followers, the leader would be lost.”
Did Lutha understand that, understand what leadership was? It must reshape her personality. Or had she always been like that?
I laughed suddenly so Nip sprang and yapped. “No need to be scared,” I told her. “I’m just trying to make it sound all right to myself.”
I knelt, stroked the ground beside the cairn, and followed Nip towards the canoes. “You’re just jealous,” I told myself aloud and tried to grin at my voice.
“You chose not to be the Shaman: now accept the consequences. Lutha saved her people from the Floating Village. They’re lucky to have her! And I’m lucky to wear her silver bow!” But I noticed – as I followed Nip’s jigging tail – my voice sounded grudging.
We could hear the river now. I looked up the side of Grave Mountain at the scar where the Droll’s tunnel had collapsed, and said to Nip, “I always wondered how the air stayed fresh and dry in the Library. The Shaman said something about it….”
The great bluffs lifted as if the earth sank where we stood. Tawny with tussock, speckled with snow the mound-backed summit. Above, the black cloud stretching up the sky, an even higher mountain.
“There must be another tunnel. From this side? What would happen if Lutha knew of the Library and a tunnel to it? Would she try to rule Arku and the Land of the White Bear? What would she do about the Carny and the Droll?”
Nip growled. I turned to see, and something tore the air! Where my left shoulder had been, something sliced apart the sleeve of my tunic. A line of blood across my shoulder. Fling down! Roll! Kick under branches, through scrub. Crawl out the other side, and run, circling, arrow nocked, eyes wide, listening, sniffing. Following Nip. And there came a throttle of agony.
Several of our patrol ran up. They had found the ashes of a fire, killed some Salt Men hidden in a cave. This one had eluded them, back-tracked, fired an arrow at me, and died on Kalik’s spear.
“That makes us only half-even.” Kalik smiled at my thanks.
He and the others watched curiously as I washed my shallow wound, forcing it to bleed afresh, cleaning it of any dirt, and bandaging it with strips torn off my tunic. Some of the other warriors had wounds, but did nothing to clean them. Kalik himself had a few grazes, a bruise down one side. When I suggested they wash their wounds, they shrugged.
“Why risk infection? Dirt, bits of leaves, wood, anything in a cut will start the flesh rotting. They’re easily cleaned out.”
They shrugged again. Uninterested. I realised they were ignorant of the causes of infection, tried to show them what to do, but they shuffled, looked away. I saw Kalik grinning. “The strong will survive. And if we’re not strong enough….” He smiled and closed his eyes. How beautiful his face! A mask for the demon released yesterday.
“The strongest can get an infection and die from it,” I said, but it was arguing with the wind. I wanted to stanch the blood, tie pads over one or two cuts, but Kalik hurried us back to the canoes.
There, two Salt Men lay dead. And dead, as well, Teelah, the sentry. She had killed these Salt Men trying to escape. Teelah had a simple spear wound, deep in one thigh, through which her life had pulsed away. I could have stopped the bleeding with a pressure pad, could have closed the wound with a few stitches. I tried to explain that to Kalik but was up against prejudice. Superstition.
Nobody gave Teelah’s body another glance. As we paddled, my mind went back to the Library, the books about Healing. There would be no Shaman
to discuss them now. What about Arku? Would he still go to the Library to read? Was he the Blind Shaman now?
“Ahhh….” I murmured.
“Ish is dreaming,” Kalik laughed, and I brought my mind back to where we were. Hekkat’s statue to our left, the Headland before us. Idyllic, set in beauty on the lake. Smoke from cooking fires. A horn announcing our arrival. Nip stirred by my feet. I could not hide my bewilderment from her.
Part of the damaged palisade had been repaired. Arrows and discarded weapons were being collected and mended. Sentries paced; scouts ranged the hills; canoe patrols returning from up the lake. Beyond the causeway, I could see workers in the gardens.
Our wounded had been laid on bunks in a shelter near the lake gate. While Kalik reported to Lutha, I went inside.
An old woman had set a few broken arms and legs, bound up some damaged ribs, and tried to stop the bleeding of the worst arrow and spear wounds. She was chanting over somebody dying. Several other old women worked under her direction; their unwashed hands told me what was going to happen.
Poultices of leaves were put on dirt-filled wounds, a spell jabbered over them, and the sufferers left to recover by themselves. I was reluctant to interfere, but called for hot water and the soap they made here from boiled ashes and fat, and started cleaning some of the wounds myself.
One cut deep in the shoulder of a young woman had a wooden splinter protruding. Green leaves had been laid over it. No attempt made to withdraw the dangerous fragment before the flesh poisoned. I took hold of its end, hoping it was only gripped between the muscles. The young woman fainted as I manipulated her shoulder, but the great splinter came out easily, a wooden spearhead. Blood followed, a good thing because it might carry out anything else that would lead to infection. When I thought the inside of the wound clean, I washed the skin around it with warm water and soap and stopped the bleeding.