Stone Spring Part 38

'Fight who?'

Shade said, 'We don't know yet. Others, like you. You will fight, so that others may be taken. And they in turn will cut stone, or fight. Some of the men who attacked you today were once as you are, captured. This is how we proceed. How we grow.'

True shook his head. 'You are mad. What is all this for?'

'That does not concern you.'

'How long must we do this, this cutting of the stone and fighting?'

Zesi sighed. 'There was me thinking you were clever. You'll do this for ever. Or until you die, at any rate.'

'My children.' He glanced over his shoulder. 'If they survive in the reeds-'

Shade said, again not unkindly, 'They are probably dead. And even if not, you will never see them again. But you're young. You may have more children.'

'And what will become of them?'

'They will cut stone.'

True looked still more bewildered, more shocked than fearful or angry. Shade had seen this reaction before. He simply didn't understand what he was hearing.

Zesi leaned forward. 'Let me teach you a new word. Slave. This is what you are. You are a slave. You will die a slave. And in future your children will be born slaves, and will die slaves.'

His eyes were wide. 'Are you even human, woman?'

'Oh, yes,' Zesi said. 'But you aren't. Not any more. Nor are your children, who don't even exist yet. You are as dogs to us, that we control, and we do what we like with.'

True considered this. 'I would rather die than cut your stone.' And he spat on the ground, bringing up a mouthful of b.l.o.o.d.y phlegm.

'Let me see if I can persuade you.' Shade nodded to Bark.

Bark grinned, and went over to the other captives, hefting his spear. At random he shoved the blunt end into the face of a man, who howled and went down. Shade carefully watched True's reaction. Bark struck a woman next, then another man, then aimed for another woman- True flinched, tugging at his bonds.

'That's the one,' Shade called. 'Bring her over.' As Bark separated the woman from the group, Shade asked Zesi, 'So who is she, do you think? A lover, a sister? Well, it doesn't matter.'

Bark got a couple of the men to help. Holding the girl's limbs, they briskly cut her clothes from her and got her on the ground, laughing and coa.r.s.ely fumbling at her as they did so. About the same age as True, she wasn't very pretty, Shade thought, but she had good full b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and a slight swelling at her belly that might be a pregnancy.

Bark laid out long hide tethers on the ground. He carefully soaked them with water from a leather pitcher, and then tied them around the woman's wrists and ankles. With the help of the hunters he pulled the tethers away so the woman was stretched out on the ground, arms and legs spread wide. The men fixed the tethers to house posts and fish racks, dragging them tight until the girl screamed, and Shade heard a joint crack.

Bark stood back and inspected what had been done. 'This is a lot easier in a forest with lots of handy trees standing around, I can tell you. But it will do, I think.'

Shade switched to the traders' tongue. 'All right, True. Let me explain what will happen now. You're going to stay there on your knees. Your lady will lie there on the ground. And in time those hide tethers will dry out. They will shrink, and cut tighter, down into the skin and the fat and the flesh, through to the bone. Very slowly. And meanwhile the long lengths that are holding her will contract too. You can imagine what will happen.' He tried to project a kind of glee. It was important to make True believe he would go through with this. 'Her body will give way where it is weakest, at the knees and the elbows. She will be jointed. Her limbs will come off, one by one.'

'No.' True raged, hauling at his ropes. 'Must I cut your stone to make you stop this?'

'Oh, no,' Zesi said. 'To save the girl . . .' She leaned close to True, who was sweating now, shuddering. 'Choose another.'

'What?'

'Choose another of your family, your friends to take her place.'

'I will not.'

'It is the only way you can save her. Do it, and you'll have her back. Otherwise you will spend a day and a night and a day watching her-'

'Gentle.'

Shade snapped, 'What?'

'Take Gentle.' He turned. 'The one with the beard. Take him.'

Shade looked at the man, who looked harmless enough, but he was growing alarmed. 'Why him? No, don't answer. I don't care. Bark, free the girl and get this Gentle.'

Gentle was already screaming, cursing, struggling, for he knew what was to come. True was crying openly now, in shame and bitterness, his spirit broken, as intended. Bark cut the girl loose, and Shade saw the huge relief on her face as she folded over on herself, realising she was not going to die today.

Suddenly he was sickened.

70.

The Sixteenth Year After the Great Sea: Autumn Equinox.

Dolphin was standing on the d.y.k.e across the mouth of the bay when she heard Kirike's call.

She could see him down there on the Bay Land, near a stand of willows, mature trees growing out of what had once been sea-bottom mud. He waved, his broad smile revealing a flash of white teeth.

The people around Dolphin, labouring on the d.y.k.e, looked up, distracted. They were all snailheads, most of them children, doing small jobs under the supervision of the adults. One girl grinned when she saw it was Kirike calling. You couldn't keep secrets, and everybody knew about Dolphin and Kirike.

A flood of complicated, contradictory feelings welled up in Dolphin. She'd missed him every day he'd been away on his late-summer hunting jaunt with the other boys to the southern forests. Now he had returned, but she had to share some seriously bad news with him. Besides, she felt grimy, ragged, her clothes and skin covered in dust from the Pretani sandstone she had been handling all day. It was late afternoon, and she was tired. Why couldn't he have come home in the morning, when she was clean and fresh?

He called again, his voice as distant as a gull's cry. She pointed north, beyond Flint Island; they had a favourite spot on the sh.o.r.e. He nodded, and began to jog that way.

She jabbered her apologies to the snailheads. They shrugged, dirty, sweating, bored; few of them would work much longer today anyhow.

Then she walked across the d.y.k.e to its abutment at its northern end, on the island, and clambered down to the sandy beach. Her afternoon shadow stretched before her, long, oddly elegant - more elegant than she felt herself. As she walked she kicked off her boots and let the damp sand soothe her feet, which were aching after a day of cutting and hauling stone. It was almost the autumn equinox and the water was sharply cold.

At the headland she glanced back once at the d.y.k.e. The wall stood proud, defying the sea, though it wasn't nearly as spectacular as when viewed from the Bay Land side, where its whole face was exposed. It was a patchwork, with around a quarter of the original core of mud bricks and plaster now faced by sandstone slabs.

The work with the stone, with stuff that was heavy, unfamiliar and blighted by a superst.i.tious dread, was progressing slowly. Dolphin was coming to hate the d.y.k.e, for the way it ate her life, and the lives of so many others.

She turned her back on the d.y.k.e and walked on, and was glad when she turned around the headland to the island's north sh.o.r.e, and the d.y.k.e was out of her sight altogether. Here wading birds, vast variegated flocks of them, worked their way along the littoral, having paused here on their way to their winter homes. There was plenty of evidence of humanity here, in the great middens, the houses standing on their mounds looking out over the ocean, even the stubs of the new d.y.k.es extending out to sea towards the Mothers' Door. But somehow, away from the great drained expanse of the Bay Land, there was more of a sense of nature, of the world as it was supposed to be.

And here came Kirike, walking along the beach to meet her. She flung away her boots and ran towards him.

They collided in a tangle of limbs, tripped each other up, and fell to the sand. His face was before hers, the skin soft under a stubble of dark beard, and she could smell his sweat, and a subtle tang of wood sap, and crushed acorns on his breath when he kissed her. 'You smell of forest,' she murmured into his mouth.

'And you smell of the sea. And of stone.'

'Ugh. Does that bother you?'

He rolled away, sat up and shrugged. 'I don't much care. Maybe that's the Pretani blood in me. Come on, shall we go up to our sh.e.l.l place? We'll be out of this breeze.'

She got up, brus.h.i.+ng sand from her legs. 'Getting out of the breeze. That's all you're concerned about, is it?'

He grinned, standing. 'For now.' He grabbed her hand so they were drawn together, arms and bodies and foreheads touching. 'Wait until we get back to the house - as long as we can get your mother out of the way.' He kissed her lightly, teasing. 'Come on.'

Then he pulled away and jogged across the sand to where she'd thrown her boots, and picked them up. He was tidy that way, with a neatness that she lacked. She mocked him for it, but it was one of the ways they fit together, the ways they worked better together than apart.

They walked along the beach, and before they reached the holy middens they clambered up into the dunes. Here there was a little hollow between one dune ripple and the next, bounded by long stalks of marram gra.s.s, just wide enough for two people to lie side by side - a spot they called their 'sh.e.l.l place', for it was always carpeted by broken sea sh.e.l.ls, washed up from the beach. It was here that they had first made love, not long after returning from the midsummer Giving expedition to the World River. It was a place Dolphin liked to think was special, was theirs alone - but that was probably a dream.

Kirike lay back in the soft, dry sand, his arms tucked behind his head. 'Ah - it's good to stop moving. Believe it or not I'm pretty tired. It felt like we ran all the way to the southern forests and back.'

She grunted, not impressed. That was what you had to expect with boys and young men. She settled down beside him with her head on his shoulder. 'So how was the hunting?'

'The deer were shy this year. We came back with heaps of mushrooms, though. Mushrooms, and acorns. We were lousy hunters, but the squirrels won't forget us in a hurry. And how's the wall building going?'

'Dismal. Hard. Boring. Listen, Kirike, we need to talk. Ana wants to see us later. And my mother-'

He covered her hand with his. 'In a moment. I just got back. Let's not talk about that lot of old monsters, just for a while longer.' He sat up, pus.h.i.+ng back his thick black hair from his eyes, and looked out to sea.

From here they could see the sweep of the ocean, the shadowed ma.s.s of Flint Island's single hill, the huge, empty, deep blue sky. On a rocky headland to the west Dolphin saw movement, small, fat, white shapes crawling. Baby grey seals, just born, venturing out into a new world. And in the air she saw a flight of swans leaving for the winter, their huge wings pink-white as they caught the sun's low-angled light, and waders swooping in from the east, to settle like snowflakes on the littoral.

Kirike said, 'I love this time of year, and the spring. The equinoxes, the times of change. When the birds of summer fly away, and the birds of winter come. As if the world is taking a huge breath. It's so beautiful here. Every time I go away I forget . . . Even if I don't belong here.'

'Don't say that. Listen, Kirike - my mother. She's talking about going away.'

He turned to look at her. 'Where?'

'She fears she is the last of her people - or I am. She thinks she should go back and find others. Save them, perhaps, as she was saved by Kirike, your grandfather.'

'She wants to go back over the ocean?'

'She's done it before.'

'But my grandfather Kirike is dead, and Heni who travelled with him. Without Kirike and Heni, how could she even find the way?'

'My mother thinks she might remember. There are plenty of young men who say they want the adventure. Anyhow she is talking of trying.' Dolphin frowned. 'She's not happy here - not any more. She and Ana bicker a lot. There was always tension between them, because when she first came here Ana thought my mother was taking her father away from her. I think she grew close to Ana when they were recovering from the Great Sea together.'

He snorted, and spat a gob of phlegm into the sand. 'These old folk, with their ancient fights and their Great Sea. Don't you get sick of hearing about it?'

'If she goes,' Dolphin said simply, 'she wants me to go with her.'

'Oh.' He dug his fingers into the sand. 'What about us?'

'My mother doesn't want us to be together anyhow. You know that.'

'What about you? What do you want?'

His Pretani-dark eyes were on her, and she saw how important this question was to him. She didn't want to answer, she wanted their relations.h.i.+p to continue to be the wonderful game it had been so far. But she knew that what she told him now would shape them for ever. It must be the deepest truth.

She set her hand on his. 'How could I leave you? Our babies will be beautiful.'

He grabbed her to him. 'Beautiful, yes. Hairy, but beautiful.'

That made her laugh.

He whispered in her ear, his breath hot, 'It doesn't matter where we came from, or our parents. All that matters is who we are, and where we are. What we feel, here and now . . .' She felt his hand move down her back, strong and confident. She thrilled as he explored the cleft of her b.u.t.tocks.

But she pushed him away. 'No. You were right. Too windy and cold here. And besides, Ana will be waiting.'

He pulled back, reluctant. 'All right. What shall we say to your mother?'

'Nothing.' She stood, brus.h.i.+ng away sand from her tunic. 'We know what we're going to do. But it's none of her business - not until she asks, or we choose to tell her. Come on. You can carry my boots, as you're so keen on them.'

They walked away down the dunes and along the beach, heading for the abutment of the d.y.k.e and the way back to Ana's house.

71.

Ana's was a big house, set on top of one of the biggest mounds in Etxelur, big enough for a dozen people. This evening, when Dolphin and Kirike arrived, four people sat around the hearth. Ana herself sat on her own bed, which was piled up with skins so she looked down on the rest. She had oil lamps burning at her feet. She was thin, swathed in a cloak, and sat very still; ageless, she looked barely human, a thing made of stone.

To Ana's left Jurgi and Novu sat together, close enough for their shoulders to touch.

Ice Dreamer sat to Ana's right. When Dolphin and Kirike walked in through the door flap, defiantly hand in hand, Dreamer watched, hard and suspicious. With her proud nose and streaks of grey hair, Dolphin sometimes thought her mother was coming to look like a great and beautiful bird of prey.

Dolphin and Kirike sat together, beside Dreamer.

At last Arga pushed her way in. She looked faintly anxious, as she often did; Dolphin knew she was never truly happy away from her children. She smiled at Ana, and sat down in the gap between Dreamer and Novu. 'Sorry I'm late-'

A bundle of hair and big paws came pus.h.i.+ng through the door flap after her. It was Thunder. The dog was excited to find all these people here, as if they had gathered especially for him. He ran around the group, wagging his tail and submitting to pats and strokes. Finally he jumped up at Ana, resting his paws on her chest. She rolled her eyes. 'You're wet, dog! Look at the marks you're making on my cloak. Oh, get away with you.' Gently, Ana pushed the dog aside. He circled, found a comfortable patch close to the hearth, and slumped down, head on his front paws.

Arga said, 'I'll take him out if you like.'

'Oh, leave him,' Jurgi said. He looked up at Ana. 'At least he's broken the silence. Shall we get on with it, whatever it is you have to say?'