Stone Spring Part 41

That shocked her. 'I won't hurt you,' she said. 'Really - I'm just curious. Please, tell me about your family.'

Again he hesitated. But in the end he pointed to one of the women. 'She, my wife. The two older children, ours. And she, wife's sister. The two little ones, hers. Her husband died. We took her and her children in. She had four children; two of them died . . .'

It was a story that you could have heard all over Etxelur, of broken families joined together for support. All very ordinary. And yet her relations.h.i.+p with this Wise wasn't ordinary at all.

'Sit down,' she said.

'What?'

'Do what I tell you. Sit down.'

Kirike murmured, 'What are you doing, Dolphin?'

Wise stood still for a long heartbeat. Then, slowly, with a kind of unspoken insolence, he sat.

'Now stand up.'

Again he drew the moment out. But then he stood, unwinding his thin legs.

She said to Kirike, 'I control him in everything he does, as I control the fingers of my own hand. It's not even like a trained dog, for he is human, as we are, and can understand exactly what is asked of him. I can make him do anything. I wonder how far I could go. If I told you to take that stone knife and to start slicing away at your own flesh, would you do it, Wise?'

'Stop it, Dolphin.'

'Just imagine if everyone was your slave. You could do anything you wanted. You could rebuild the whole world! You could tear down the hills, and banish the sea.'

Kirike muttered, 'Ana seems to think she can do that already. How would you know if you gave the right commands? We aren't the little mothers. Even if we had the power, we wouldn't have their wisdom.'

'You could always ask the priest,' she said, but she giggled. 'But if he was a slave, how could you trust his answers? And besides-'

'What?'

She looked down at the children. 'Having slaves around is probably all right as long as you aren't one. Look, that little one has cut her hand.' She knelt down and reached out to take the child's arm. The girl flinched away, and the women tensed. Dolphin murmured, 'It's all right. I won't hurt you. I just want to help. Oh, get your nose out, Thunder, she doesn't want you licking her!'

The wound was small but deep; the blood had smeared all down the girl's arm and over the bark she had been working. The girl was evidently terrified, and now she started to cry, though the women tried to hush her.

Dolphin said, 'This will get infected if it's not treated. The little one will get sick.' The women were scared to respond, she could see, and she wasn't sure how much they understood. She looked up at Kirike. 'Go find the priest. Bring some moss, and ask him for healing herbs - he'll know what's best - and bring cloth soaked in sea water.'

Kirike hesitated, then he nodded and jogged away.

Dolphin smiled at the girl. 'It will be all right. You'll see. I'll clean out the wound and wrap it up.'

'We have healing,' one of the women said unexpectedly. 'In home, in land of Great Eel. Not bring. Pretani. Not let us bring.'

'Well, it's stupid to stop you keeping yourselves healthy, for if you get sick you can't work, can you?'

Wise shrugged. 'Always more Eel folk. Always more children. Why are you helping us?'

'I don't know,' she said. 'Because I'm an outsider here too, and so is Kirike. Because I made you stand up and sit down, and I don't like the fact that I enjoyed it.' She probed at that bit of guilt, like a tongue exploring a broken tooth. 'I'm sorry,' she said.

'Don't say sorry to me.'

'I'm sorry anyhow. When Kirike comes back we'll fix up her hand. Later I'll bring you more healing stuff.'

'The Pretani will take it away. Punish us for having it.'

'Then we'd better make sure they don't find out, hadn't we?' She grinned. But the women looked wary, and Dolphin was reminded that this wasn't a game to these people, but a question of the lives and deaths of their children.

So she sat quietly and held the little girl's hand until Kirike came back with a satchel of medicines.

76.

The Seventeenth Year After the Great Sea: Late Summer.

In the cold dawn light, Acorn and Knot approached the Leafy Boys tethered at the foot of the great old oak. Shapeless in her tunic of stiff hide, Acorn was carrying a skin food satchel. Knot, close beside her, bore a long, stout stick.

Knot felt Acorn's hand creep into his. He could feel her trembling, her small fingers clutching his. His own heart was thumping, for he had a deep gut fear of the Leafy Boys.

And he was always nervous in this place anyway. On their way to Northland, the Pretani party, led by Acorn's father, had come to the very edge of the world-forest, where there were no more trees and the skies were open. He was a forest boy who tried to hide his fundamental terror at the emptiness above.

And on top of all that the touch of Acorn's skin gave him a very complicated feeling.

He was ten years old, she was nine. Not for the first time he wished he was older, when he might understand the hot, confusing sensations that swarmed through his body when she was close. But Acorn was Shade's daughter, his only child, and the Root surely had some more suitable boy lined up to marry her when the time came - more suitable than Knot anyhow, with his slim, scrawny frame, his dead mother, and a father, Alder, who the men sneered at as more interested in mixing medicines than fighting, even when they came to him to get their wounds dressed. He had this morning with her, at least. It had been him she'd asked to come with her on this secret dawn jaunt - whatever it was about, and he didn't know yet.

He just wished it didn't have to involve Leafy Boys.

The Leafies lay on the ground under a weighted net, their naked bodies wrapped around each other. In the murky light Knot could see abrasions around their necks and ankles, and bruises and scars on their backs.

As they approached, the Leafies stared at Acorn and Knot, their empty gazes more animal than human. Knot could smell stale s.h.i.+t. One big buck fixed his gaze on Knot, challenging. Knot raised his club, and tried to think through the moves he would make if the buck tried anything.

But Acorn walked up to the Leafies without hesitation, and counted them. Their muddy limbs were so tangled up, it was hard to tell one from the other. 'Three, four, five. There's one missing. A girl.'

'Maybe the men took her.'

'Anyhow, this is the one.' Acorn was pointing to the smallest Leafy under the net, a boy, very small, thin and slight, looking no older than four or five. His eyes were huge in a skull-like head, and his ribs showed through papery flesh. Acorn made a cooing noise, as if he was a baby. 'Look at you. You're so sweet!' And, to Knot's astonishment, the small Leafy seemed to respond. He moved towards her. 'Look how little and skinny he is!'

'The Leafies s.n.a.t.c.h kids and train them to run in the canopy. There's bound to be some little ones.'

'Well, they got it wrong with this one. He's too weak - you can see that. And he's not able to feed properly. He can't fight with the others when the men bring the food.'

Knot's head spun as he worked out what was going on here. 'You're feeding him. We're not supposed to be feeding Leafies! They're not puppies! They're killers!'

She snorted. 'Look at him. Little Shade isn't going to kill anybody. Unless they die laughing.'

He stared at her face, pale in the gathering dawn light. 'Little Shade? You've given him a name? Your father's name?'

She pouted. 'Why shouldn't I give him a name?'

'He's a Leafy. Leafies don't have names.'

'He got s.n.a.t.c.hed from some house, didn't he? He must have had a name there, given him by his mother, poor thing.'

'Yes, but - if your father found out-'

'Well, he won't as long as we both keep our mouths shut.'

Whatever he had come out here for it hadn't been to make her angry. 'All right, all right,' he muttered. 'Anyway if you've been feeding him already, what do you want me for?'

'Because the handlers have changed the way he's being kept. He was with other little ones before - not with these big ones. It was easier when it was just little ones. These big ones are more trouble.' She dug the food out of her pack. It was deer meat, raw, the way the Leafies preferred, and a paste of crushed hazelnuts. All the Leafies stirred at the scent. 'I thought the two of us would be all right, we could fight them off while he feeds.'

'I'd rather not fight anybody at all.'

'Let's just try.'

He had no choice. He stood at her side, and pointed his stick at the Leafies. 'We'll go in together. But stay close to me.'

Cautiously they crept in towards the net. Knot felt his heart hammer even harder. Acorn, calm and determined, made straight for Little Shade and held out a slice of meat towards him. Another Leafy girl made a grab for it, and Knot prodded his stick at her and she fell back, hissing.

Little Shade was able to reach out through the net and grab the meat. He shoved it into his mouth and chewed enthusiastically.

When he'd done, Acorn tried him with another piece. The other Leafies stirred, eyes wide, but this time the big buck growled, and the others stayed back, letting the little one take the food.

Then Acorn went in a third time. Knot kept his stick raised, ready to attack.

77.

On the morning they were to enter Northland, before the rest of the camp stirred, Shade walked out of his house and into the gathering light.

He was in a broad clearing in the world-forest, here at its ragged edge. The black mounds of the Pretani tents and lean-tos, hastily erected after the march the day before, were angular shapes in the grey-blue light. The men's footprints had churned the ground to mud, and trails led off to the spring to the west, and to the south where the Leafy Boys lay in their night traps by the big old oak.

He hadn't slept well - he never slept well with Zesi in his house. Now in the uncertain light he felt disoriented, as if the boundary between the waking and sleeping worlds had become blurred. This was one reason he'd come out for an early walk; it was best to face the day with a clear head.

In the hearth at the centre of the clearing the big communal fire still smoked, though the huge fallen trunk they had hauled from the forest was disintegrating into crimson embers. Stepping towards the hearth, Shade pa.s.sed a heap of spears, and a row of buckets of s.h.i.+t. The smell was rank, and flies buzzed in the dark. This was one of Zesi's tricks. Dip the tip of your spear in s.h.i.+t, and the chances were that even a grazing wound would become infected; even if you failed to kill an opponent quickly, you could do it slowly. The hunters, always proud and protective of their weapons, grumbled about the mess and the stink, and some had proposed poisons made of various herbs, but they were hard to prepare and dangerous to apply. s.h.i.+t was always available, easy to apply, and safe enough to handle as long as you washed it off.

And here was Bark, squatting on his haunches by the hearth, with his stabbing spear propped before him. He might have been resting like this half the night; Shade had never known a man so patient, with leg muscles so immune to cramp. Bark had smeared soot from the fire over his bare limbs and face, the better to blend into the night's dark. When he grinned at Shade his teeth showed white, with gaps inflicted by years of fighting.

'No trouble?'

'None.' Bark pointed towards the forest wall around them; Shade could see one of the hunters Bark had posted to keep a look-out. 'I swap them around every so often.' He yawned, stretching his jaw, and shook his head. 'Keep them awake.'

'You ought to get more sleep yourself. Night after night you're out here.'

'Do you trust anybody else? I don't. Besides, plenty of time to kip when we're in Etxelur, and I'm lying back on a bed of those lovely flint nodules, with Ana's lips around my c.o.c.k.'

Shade didn't react. n.o.body here but Zesi knew about the tentative relations.h.i.+p he'd once had with Ana - certainly no Pretani left alive. He pointed east. 'I'm going to take a look from the ridge. See how the lowland lies in the dark.'

Bark was predictably reluctant. 'You want me to send somebody with you?'

Shade patted the flint axe he carried at his waist. 'I'm never alone. Anyhow you'll be busy soon enough, kicking the sluggards out of their beds.'

Bark nodded warily.

Shade set off east, out of the clearing. The forest swallowed him up, but his eyes, open to the blackness, picked out a trail from c.h.i.n.ks of light and the stirring of dead leaves. He remembered the trail from the daylight, leading towards the ridge that rose up out of the forest cover.

It was an easy walk, for him. He had grown up in the forest. It had been strange for him to learn that others feared its enclosure, like the sea-coast folk of Etxelur, or marshland dwellers like the Eel People.

He soon found the trail rising, the forest growing less dense. Then he broke out into open ground, a rising bluff on which heather grew, thick and purple and waist-high at this time of year, a month after midsummer. He was facing east towards the dawn, and a crimson glow striped the horizon.

And, on the crest of the bluff, he saw a figure standing alone - stooped, s.h.i.+vering from more than the faint chill of the late summer morning. Shade stopped, silent, cautious, until he recognised the man. 'Resin? It's me.'

The priest whirled, startled. But then he had always been jumpy, even before he had cut back on the poppy juice. 'Shade? That is you, isn't it? My eyes aren't so good in the dark.'

'Then what are you doing out here?'

The priest clutched his hide robe closer. Adorned with cryptic symbols and networks of lines like tree branches, the robe was old, shabby, worn, and it stank of p.i.s.s. He had a mane of ragged grey hair, a face that was lined and sunken, a mouth that was often slick with drool. Resin was younger than Shade, but he looked much older, the poppies had seen to that. 'Oh, I can never sleep. Not in a house full of your hunters, Shade, with their farting and belching, and the women they take from the Eel folk - and, worse, a Leafy girl, it takes two or three of them to subdue one of those, it's like having a mad aurochs calf in the house with you.'

Shade laughed out loud. 'You've become funny since I made you give up the poppy.'

'Funny? I'm glad something good has come of it.' He held out his hand, which trembled violently. 'Look at me. I can't sleep, can't eat. Can't get it up, as your hunters never cease to point out to me.'

'You were useless under the juice,' Shade said sternly. 'I feel like I'm getting a priest back.'

'Maybe you're right. Anyhow if you hadn't stopped me the poppies would have killed me soon enough. But you didn't come out here to talk about me, did you?'

'Walk with me.' Together they stepped forward, towards the crest of the ridge.

And from here, they looked down over Northland.

There was no obvious boundary between Albia and Northland, nothing like a river to mark off one territory from another. But standing here you could see how the nature of the country changed. Looking east from this high point the land sloped down, with forest clumps and copses dark in the grey dawn light. Beyond that the land stretched away as far as Shade could see, low and glimmering with water and folded gently into rolling hills, a plain that merged into the mist of the horizon. A flock of birds rose up in a cloud from some distant lake, their cries just audible. You could see how rich the country was just standing here, with all that standing water and the easy hills.

And all across the plain he could see the spark of fires, twinkling like orange-red stars, the people of Northland dreaming in the dark.

'It's so vast.' Resin pointed at random to a fire. 'So many of them.'