‘Why should we go there?’
‘To win a battle.’
The crowd erupted. A single voice rose above the din. Carnelian saw it was Ravan. ‘Who will escort our people back from the mountains?’
Osidian stood closer to the edge. ‘We shall return victorious with time to spare.’
Many of the upturned faces showed doubt.
Fern leapt up the first few steps of the Crag and turned to face the crowd. He pointed up at Osidian. ‘Can’t you see the Master is possessed? What has he brought us but strife and bloodshed?’
Carnelian swallowed hard, seeing hope in the way the crowd was warming to Fern. His friend stabbed a finger at Osidian.
‘Now he wants to lead us to die in the desert or in a foreign land. Do you want this?’
The crowd growled and many shook their heads.
‘Let us return to the ways of our fathers and mothers.’ Seeing them waver, Fern looked up at Carnelian. ‘If we must follow someone, let us follow one who has spilled no Plainsman blood except in self-defence.’
The intensity of Fern’s gaze made Carnelian eager to rise to his challenge.
‘Are you certain, Carnelian, you could win a pitched battle?’ He turned to look at Osidian.
‘If you were to lose, it is they,’ he glanced down at the crowd, ‘who would lose everything.’
Osidian’s conviction stirred doubt in Carnelian. As Osidian’s eyes fell on the Plainsmen, he seemed to grow larger.
‘The Marula have already massacred two Plainsman tribes and would have done the same to the Darkcloud had they not been dealt with. This time, we were fortunate but which of you would risk being their next victims?’
Carnelian might have even then tried to wrest power from Osidian except that in his heart he feared the Marula danger.
Osidian’s gaze moved over the Plainsmen. ‘You can wait until they send another army or else you can march with me so that when your womenfolk return you can tell them you have destroyed this threat once and for all.’
As the Darkcloud shouted their agreement, Krow pushed to the front.
‘Listen to the Master. You know my desire for revenge upon the Marula, but more than that, I never again want them to do to any other tribe what they did to mine …’
The rest the crowd drowned out. Carnelian read Osidian’s satisfaction from his posture. He had won again. Fern, among the riot, looked appalled.
Carnelian glanced at Osidian, fearful. ‘Now you will punish those who opposed you.’
Osidian turned to regard him. ‘On the contrary, Carnelian, by permitting them to continue living I will disarm the criticism that I have ambitions to be their master.’
In the dusk they rode down the Southing. Beyond the swathe of the Southgardens, Carnelian could see the Bluedancing fires as sparks in the gloomy Eastgarden. Craning round the back of his saddle-chair, he gazed with a deep yearning at the mother trees crowding round the Crag. Then he was riding out across the final earthbridge, following Osidian into the south-west where a livid wound in the edge of the sky was all that remained of the tyrant sun.
Night smothered them. Even mounted, Carnelian could feel the heat rising from the earth. He unwound the uba from his head to let the air from the aquar’s movement cool the sweat on his skin. The ground muffled the drumming footfalls of the aquar. Sleepily, Carnelian watched the riders ahead moving through the moon-glossed tendrils of the dust they raised. In one place, the plain was stone-hard, fissured and cracked, its covering of dead ferns burned away by fire. Fire. They had already ridden far from any sheltering shade. It was growing cooler and soon it would be cold, but Carnelian was already fearing the dawn.
First light revealed the Mother’s Backbone rising before them. As the dawn poured the shadows of the riders out to meet the ridge, Carnelian turned to face the sun, closing his eyes against the radiance, letting it dispel the chill of the night.
Reaching the Backbone, they dismounted and led their aquar up on to the shattered black rock. Krow and Morunasa at his side, Osidian chose a spot where there might be some shade from the coming onslaught of the sun.
Carnelian and Fern exchanged wary glances. They had not spoken since the gathering in the clearing. Brooding, Ravan was keeping his distance from the Master, making Carnelian wonder what had happened between them.
He busied himself angling his aquar so that it would receive as little sun as possible, and used it and its saddle-chair to make a shelter for himself as he saw others doing. Men were looking nervously into the east, where the sun was melting up from the earth. Carnelian lay behind his aquar, dreading when it should rise so high there would be no place left to hide.
The air was a fever that made it impossible to sleep. Even though he had kept his waterskin in his aquar’s shadow, each gulp was as warm as blood. He sneaked out to give the creature a drink then lay trying to ignore the sweat dewing over his body. A saltstone was passed around which burned his tongue.
At last the furnace sun began to abate. Carnelian counted each moment as he watched it fall blind into the Plain. When darkness came the air sighed a breeze of relief. He rose, feeling the day’s ague still vibrating the night. They resaddled their aquar and descended the Backbone back to the plain, where they remounted. Carnelian’s headache was eased by the gentle rhythm of his creature’s gait.
He must have fallen asleep, for suddenly he was aware he was hearing the sea. It took moments to work out that it was sand and not spume spitting in his face. Veils of it slid hissing towards them over the ground. His aquar had lowered her head and covered her eyes with the inner lids. Not caring that they should both be blind, Carnelian pulled his uba down over his eyes.
A brightening in the margin of the sky woke him. Heads were rising, seeing it, too tired to fear it yet. As Carnelian brought his aquar to a halt with the others, one continued to amble onwards. It was Morunasa’s. He looked round to see if anyone else had noticed the Maruli moving away from them. Morunasa was sitting upright, searching for something.
‘He runs away,’ a voice shouted in Ochre. Arguing broke out.
‘Leave him be,’ cried Krow. ‘The Master has sent him scouting.’
Grumbling, the men made their aquar kneel and Carnelian followed their lead. Eyeing the dawn, he clambered out of his chair. Nearby, the Backbone rose as an unbroken wall they could not climb. He made his aquar rise and walked her round so that she was presenting her tail to the rising sun. He made her kneel again and began working at the rope girdles that secured her saddle-chair.
A gruff voice sounded from far away. Morunasa was hurtling back, waving his hands, shouting something in Vulgate. Everyone stopped to watch. His aquar overshot their position before the Maruli managed to bring her under control. As he rode towards them, Osidian went to meet him. Carnelian could hear the mutter of their talk but not what was being said.
Osidian strode back into their midst. ‘Mount up,’ he commanded, causing a tumult of protest.
Carnelian watched Osidian stooping to say something into Krow’s ear. The youth shouted down the noise. ‘We’re close to our goal. There’s a river nearby. Trees.’
That last word cast its cool shade over everyone.
‘Trees,’ the men echoed, hope widening their eyes.
‘Yes, trees,’ said Krow. ‘If we ride now we can spend the rest of the day in shade, beside running water.’ He grinned. ‘Unless you lot would rather spend the day skulking here in the open?’
Everyone could already see the spindly stretch of their shadows. Though he feared the sun, Carnelian shared the general enthusiasm to go on.
Enduring the blinding starkness of the fully risen sun, he began to worry about what it was they were riding into.
Ahead, the scrubby, rusty land was columned by strange trees. Smooth trunks rose to a great height from which nests of branches splayed as leafless as roots. These were not the trees they had expected.
‘Baobabs,’ declared Morunasa, ‘a sure sign we draw near to the Uppe
r Reach.’
Carnelian saw the anxiety the Maruli was failing to conceal and wondered what kind of place this Upper Reach might be. These conjectures were forgotten as they came in among the baobabs. Soon, with the others, he was filing towards one along the shady road of the shadow that it cast. As they drew closer, Carnelian squinted up to see the tree looming vast, its branches startling black against the bronze sky. He became possessed by a feeling he was in the presence of a watching giant.
When they found a break in the Backbone, Morunasa led them clambering over it to the other side and, once they had reached flat ground again, Osidian and the Maruli drew them away into the south-west. Climbing the sky, the sun heated the world into trembling incandescence. Feeding on their own shadows, the baobabs grew ever more massive. Hunched against the migraine day, Carnelian was slow to become aware they were plodding down a gentle slope.
‘The chasm?’ croaked Osidian.
Lifting his head, Carnelian saw Morunasa give a heavy nod while his eyes were scouring the bleached, hazy forest to the east where the Backbone ran along the horizon like a storm. Osidian said something to Krow and the youth turned his aquar and rode among them, rasping out: ‘Unhitch your spears. Prepare to fight.’
At first the Plainsmen stared at him, stupefied, but then with tremulous hands they began loosing their weapons. Soon their march was bristling with bladed flint.
Carnelian saw Osidian beckoning him and rode forward.
‘Take the right wing, I shall take the left,’ he said.
‘Battle then?’
Osidian terminated the interview by making his aquar swing away. Morunasa and Krow followed him, stretching the left flank of their march after them.
Fern rode up to Carnelian. They squinted at each other through the glare. ‘Battle? In this heat?’
‘I am to command the right.’
Fern gave a grim nod. ‘I’ll fight beside you?’
The offer revived him. ‘Like we did against the Bluedancing.’ Their eyes met and Fern twitched a smile.
They were riding side by side when they saw the ground before them fall away.
‘A cliff?’ asked Fern, startled.
The gulf opening up before them caused their aquar to flare their eye-plumes in alarm. Carnelian gaped at the opposite green cliff and, far below, the shimmer of water.
‘A river?’ cried Fern, amazed.
‘You didn’t know it was here?’
Fern turned, his mouth still hanging open. ‘We knew the lands of the Marula lay somewhere in the south.’
‘But this is so close to the Koppie.’
‘This land is waterless, shunned by saurians, besides, we have always feared the Marula.’
Fern looked down into the chasm. ‘Do you think they live down there?’
Carnelian narrowed his eyes. The river traced a narrow ribbon down in the chasm floor, reminding him of the Cloaca that came out of the crater of Osrakum and ran in the Canyon of the Three Gates. The chasm was all barren sand and rock.
‘Perhaps further downstream,’ he muttered.
‘We’re holding the line back,’ said Fern.
Carnelian turned from the chasm and saw the battleline was tearing apart as he and Fern anchored its end.
‘Come on,’ he said, and together they rode upstream along the chasm edge to pull the battleline taut.
*
Carnelian’s head lolled. He felt sick from the long, churning anticipation of battle. The slow uneven judder of his aquar’s stride betrayed how much she was suffering from the heat. The shadows of the baobabs had grown long as they rode along the chasm edge.
A whisper like the distant sea jerked his head up. The windings of his uba gave him a narrow window into the outer world. He was startled to see the wall of the Backbone rising before him. Its black rock ran unbroken to the chasm edge, dipped into it, then rose again upon the other side. Where it dipped, it formed the threshold to a wide and shallow valley that brought the river from the east in many channels. These braided into two feathery falls that had gouged into the Backbone, leaving a single buttress and island between them. This island tottering on the edge of the chasm was clothed by a dense grove of trees. Of an army of Marula, there was no sign.
The baobabs here were not as lofty as before. What they had lost in height they made up for in girth. Some particularly massive specimens squatted upon a knoll which lay beneath the frowning Backbone cliff.
At the edge of his vision, Carnelian registered the line of aquar buckling. Turning, he watched Osidian with Morunasa and Krow riding towards the knoll. He saw no further need to keep his station.
‘No battle then,’ said Fern expressing the general relief.
Carnelian looked to where Osidian was climbing the knoll.
‘You follow him,’ said Fern. ‘I’d better stay with the men.’
Carnelian thanked him and coaxed his aquar towards the knoll. As they wound up its slope, the shade from the baobabs revived her a little. Breaching a ring of them that crowned the summit, Carnelian smelled charcoal and saw the trunks were fire-blackened. Round their roots the earth was littered with burnt wood. Morunasa was peering up at the baobabs and Carnelian saw openings high in the trunks.
‘Where are the Marula we were meant to fight?’ Carnelian asked.
Morunasa glanced at him, irritated. ‘Marula? Pygmies.’
Carnelian was startled. Pygmies? He looked around uneasily, fearful of why Osidian had brought them there with a lie.
The Master was peering among the trees. ‘Could they be hiding?’
The Maruli raised his head and his nostrils distended. He shook his head and frowned. ‘I can smell nothing but the burning.’
‘Perhaps they tried to set these trees alight before they fled.’ Morunasa shook his head. ‘They worship baobabs, which is why we used these,’ he indicated the charred trees, ‘as fernroot granaries.’
Osidian let his aquar wander as he leaned over the edge of his saddle-chair examining the ground. Morunasa straightened in his chair and made his aquar turn slowly on the spot, searching for something.
‘It seems your problem, Maruli, has solved itself,’ said Osidian.
Morunasa continued to search as if he had not heard. Krow was watching the man through slitted eyes, perhaps considering that he was the only Marula left to kill.
‘Come,’ Osidian said with an edge in his voice, ‘fulfil the oath you made to me.’
For a moment Morunasa regarded him with a look of barely suppressed rage, then, frowning, he led them down from the knoll. When they reached the edge of the chasm, the Maruli sat, motionless, gazing at the waterfalls. He waited until Osidian was at his side before he announced: ‘Behold the Voice of God.’
Emotion snagged Morunasa’s voice and Carnelian was close enough to see the light of reverence in his amber eyes.
‘At the moment our Lord whispers,’ Morunasa said without turning, ‘but soon enough you’ll hear Him roar.’
Something in his tone sent a shiver down Carnelian’s spine.
Morunasa turned to Osidian with a fierce intensity. ‘We must cross immediately to the Isle.’
‘What isle?’ asked Krow.
The Maruli looked at the youth in irritation. His ashy finger pointed to the tree-capped rock which Carnelian could now see stretched upstream above the level of the waterfalls to split the river and its many streams in two.
‘Can’t you see it there before your eyes?’ Morunasa gave the youth a feral grin. ‘Pray, boy, you never have cause to see it closer.’
Krow’s failure to control his unease turned to anger. He looked to Osidian for support, but the Master, unaware, was gazing at the island. The youth ducked his head so that his uba fell over his face.
‘First the other place, Maruli,’ Osidian said and, for a moment, Carnelian thought Morunasa was about to erupt but again he brought his fury under control.
‘As the Master wishes, so shall it be done.’
Carnelian recognized t
he traditional invocation of a legionary auxiliary but was more concerned by what Osidian might have meant by the ‘other place’. He had not forgotten that Osidian had deceived them all.
Morunasa dismounted and the others copied him. He leaned over the edge.
‘See, the pygmies cut the Ladder as I described.’
Perhaps a quarter of the way down the chasm wall Carnelian could see a mess of ropes.
‘From here, the cables could be drawn up,’ said Osidian.
‘The land of the Marula lies down there, doesn’t it?’ asked Carnelian.
Osidian looked at him. ‘They call it the Lower Reach.’
So that was it. ‘This ladder was the only way up.’
Morunasa glowered at him. ‘Long ago we had every foothold smoothed away.’
He turned to Osidian. ‘New rope might need to be woven from baobab bark.’
Krow touched Carnelian’s arm to get his attention. ‘Why would the Master want to repair this ladder?’ he mouthed.
Carnelian shook his head. He could not see how such a policy would do anything but increase the Marula threat.
Turning his back on the falls, Morunasa led them along the cliff to where two cables, coming up over the edge, wrapped themselves in a girdle around the trunk of a massive baobab. As the Maruli ducked under the nearest rope, Carnelian followed him with the others. Standing with the cables on either side, he peered over the edge and saw they plunged down the rock and, between them, strands were woven into netting.
‘Down here?’ Osidian asked Morunasa. When the Maruli gave a slow, ominous nod, Osidian turned to Carnelian and addressed him in Quya.
‘Wait for me here, Carnelian. Keep the savages under your control.’
‘Where are you going?’
Osidian’s smile was enigmatic. ‘For now, it is best you should not know.’
Annoyed, Carnelian said nothing more but watched Osidian and Morunasa lower themselves over the edge on to the netting and, slowly, begin to descend the chasm wall. He heard the rumble of approaching aquar and, turning, saw that it was Fern, Ravan and the other Plainsmen.
‘What’s going on?’ Ravan called, sullen.
Carnelian shrugged.
The Standing Dead (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon) Page 52