Stone spring

69

Shade waded to the island, with Hollow and Bark at his side, their feet and legs caked in mud.

The fighting was done. The adults were dead or subdued, the survivors bound together near the ruin of their big outdoor hearth. Shade could hear that his men were still busy with some of the women. The small children had all been killed or driven off. Some of the men were still walking around the island, throwing little carcasses into the muck, and using the poles the islanders had used to push their flat-bottomed boats to shove the surviving kids back into the water, ignoring their cries and pleas.

The Leafy Boys, those who lived, had been fixed with their tethers, and had been thrown the carcasses of dogs to eat. It was extraordinary to see the naked creatures rip the skin of the animals with their teeth. The islanders cowered from them.

Shade inspected one of the islanders’ sturdy houses. He stepped inside its reed cover and let his eyes adjust to the dark. The big support beams were stained black with smoke and, in the middle of this marsh, had somehow been kept as dry as old bones. The posts were of oak, the right wood for the task, and must have been hauled to this soggy place from far away. He wondered how they kept the ground drained to stop the beams rotting. There was stuff on the floor, clothes, half-prepared food, a necklace of fish bones, a toy animal made of straw that looked as if it had been much played with. The people who lived here not been long gone, but were never coming back.

He went to the fire, picked out an ember glowing red hot, cupped it in a bit of hide and brought it to a wall. He knelt down and teased out dry straw from the wall, set the ember down, and began to breathe on it delicately.

‘Generations old,’ he whispered to the house. ‘Parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. This very morning a family woke here, thinking it was just another day.’ The straw had caught; flames licked, and he stepped back. ‘And now it’s over.’

‘And that pleases you.’

He turned.

Zesi stood by the door flap, silhouetted against the daylight. ‘The ability to destroy, on a whim. To kill, or not to kill. The most fundamental power of all. And you don’t even have to lift a finger to wield it. Feels good, doesn’t it?’

And it did, though Shade sometimes felt uneasy to admit it. What did that say about him, about the state of his own spirit? Not for the first time he wished he had a decent priest to talk this over with. Maybe he ought to do something about getting Resin off the poppy.

Smoke was already gathering in the house, so Shade followed Zesi outside, where Bark waited. Then he watched with thoughtful interest as the fire ate up the reed cover of the house, leaving only a skeleton of posts, lit up by the flames. Then the oak, too, began to burn.

He was aware of the captive islanders sitting in their loops of rope, watching apathetically. He turned, looking around at the island, the shining water that spread around this place, the drifting boats, the banks of gravel and mud. This soggy place, in the north of Albia, was rich and populous, comparatively, and peaceful. Now its human story was over. But some of the birds were coming back, to swim on the water and to plunge for food. The birds always came back, he had observed, as soon as the human fuss was over – and the other birds, the buzzards that enjoyed human flesh, and had, he suspected, learned to follow the Pretani around.

‘What a disgusting place,’ Bark said, wrinkling his fleshy nose. ‘Water. Mud. Watery mud and muddy water. Fish and eels, and not a dry scrap of land or a decent tree anywhere.’

‘Much of Northland is like this,’ Zesi murmured.

‘Well, there you are. The fight went well.’

‘I could see that,’ Shade said.

‘The Leafy Boys did their job. I sometimes wonder if they’re worth all the trouble. But they cost nothing to feed and they deliver a mighty shock, especially in those first few moments of the attack.’

Shade eyed the captives. Healthy adults and older children were the prize, the point of these raids. Workers and hunters. There seemed pathetically few of them as a reward for all the destruction and lost life. ‘Let’s get on with the breaking. Pick out the biggest man. You know the routine.’

Bark grumbled as he went over to the captives, ‘Since I worked it out, yes, I know the routine. You.’ He made the chosen man stand, bound his hands tighter, and brought him before Shade.

The man was tall, strong-looking, maybe twenty, twenty-one. He was bare to the waist, and had a tattoo of the kind these people seemed to favour, an eel wrapped around his thigh. He looked at Zesi and Shade with a spark of defiance.

Zesi brought over heaps of purloined hide. She set these on the ground, and she and Shade sat, sharing a water skin.

‘Kneel.’ Bark repeated the word in the traders’ tongue. When the man did not comply Bark slammed his spear shaft into the back of the man’s knees, forcing him into a kneel, grunting with pain.

The islander lifted his head, and said something in his own tongue.

‘Speak traders’ tongue,’ Shade snapped back. ‘Everybody speaks the traders’ tongue.’

‘Why?’ the man said thickly. ‘Why have you done this? Why have you killed our children?’

‘Well, the children are no use to us,’ Shade said, almost kindly. ‘What is your name?’

The man considered. ‘True. True, son of True.’

Shade gestured at the island, the burning house. ‘And what do you call yourselves?’

‘We are the People of the Great Eel.’

Zesi laughed. ‘That’s new.’

‘We have lived here since the beginning of time, when the gods of water and land and sky fought the Great Eel at the Centre of the Earth-’

‘Save it for your priest, if he lives,’ Shade said. ‘Well, you don’t live here any more. And you are no longer the People of the Great Eel. You have no name, save a name I may choose to give you. We, by the way, are the Pretani, and I am Shade. Now we will take you far from here – some of you, those who choose to live; those who defy us we will kill, and throw their bodies to the water, so that the Great Eel may feast one last time.’

Zesi burst out laughing.

True looked at her as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Shade thought he knew how he felt. True said, ‘You will take us far from here – what then?’

‘You will cut stone. And then you will carry the stone, or drag it, to another place even further away.’

True looked bewildered. His face was very expressive for a big man, Shade thought absently. ‘Stone? Like flint?’

‘No. Sandstone. And not for tools. Big blocks of it.’

‘The other thing you might do for us is fight,’ Zesi said.

‘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 bloody 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 coarsely 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 breasts, 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.