The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy) (37 page)

Whistlenose jumped. The voice had
been a woman's. Worse, it had been that of Ashsweeper, his own wife,
right beside him. "The world we have crossed is full of nothing
but Diggers," she said. "If we beat off one Tribe of them,
what's to say there won't be an armful more?"

Luckily, Wallbreaker welcomed the
question with a grin. "There are more Diggers than we can count,
woman. But the Roof no longer supplies the enemy with new tribes to
hunt when they've eaten the last of the old ones. They're starving
out there. They're already planting each other in the ground, and far
away, towards the centre of the streets they control, there is
nothing for them to eat at all but rocks and trees. So, those distant
from us, would starve to death before they could reach us, or be too
weak to do us harm once they got here.

"If we can thwart their last
attack—and it will be a big one, I don't deny it... but if we
can hold them off just a little bit longer, then I can promise you
that nobody in this Tribe will ever have to volunteer after today.
None of those children among us right now will be lost."

Whistlenose saw his wife was
about to speak again, he grabbed her arm to shut her up, but
Ashsweeper always had to have her say and he feared for her.

"But if there aren't going
to be any new Tribes from the Roof for us either, what will
we
eat? What can we eat?
Rice
?"

They had heard of the new food—a
sort of edible moss. A few had tried the crunchy grains, trying to
choke them down with little success.

The Chief, rather than getting
angry, nodded his head, acknowledging the wisdom of her questions.
"Humans cannot live on rice. I know that. But Roof People can.
They will have all the world to grow it in when the Diggers are gone.
They will feed to their hearts content and live long lives without
fear. And then, painlessly—I promise you!—painlessly,
they will give their flesh to us, the true humans, and the ones who
saved them from the agony of the fields."

There were oohs and aahs from the
crowd as yet again, the Chief displayed his cleverness. Even
Ashsweeper was nodding, but Whistlenose felt very uneasy all of a
sudden. He couldn't put his finger on it. Yes, he loved the idea that
neither his wife nor son should ever have to undergo the terror he
had felt when he had been turned over to the Clawfolk. But horrible
as it had been, his suffering had been no different to that of
anybody else. In the end, even Chiefs gave up the flesh of their
bodies so that all might make it Home. It was every bit as noble and
brave as it was terrifying. This was different. Wrong even, although
it was hard to say exactly how. He remembered Stopmouth looking down
on a crowd of planted Ship People, saying, "And listen to their
pain! That sounds human, doesn't it?"

None of these qualms prevented
Whistlenose from obeying orders after the meeting when the Chief
ordered a few hundred Roof People to be rounded up. He had ordered
the capture of very specific people too. "I want the ones who
can fight," he'd said. "This is very important. Once the
Diggers are gone, it must be only our people who hold the spears."
The power of the Talker was used to lure the weaponless victims into
a place where they could be captured.

A day later, they had taken their
prisoners and gone out onto the plain beyond the hills to a place
where the sun spread its light for no more than a tenth every day.
They tied the wrists and ankles of the Roof People together. They
gagged them with choking black moss. Then, each hunter dug a
knee-high pit for himself as quickly as possible. The holes were made
in a broad crescent around the clumps of tear-streaked prisoners, to
form the jaws of a huge beast.

"Good," Wallbreaker
whispered. "Now, remove their gags..."

Already shadows had been taking
bites out of the sunlight, driving it back. Nothing could be seen
beyond the circle of light, absolutely nothing. Some of the Ship
People began to whimper then, to cry out for mercy. But the more
sensible among them begged the others to shut up. It was too late for
that. The Diggers would know. They would know that humans were here.

"Volunteers,"
Whistlenose whispered to himself, "think of them as volunteers."
It wasn't the first time human hunting parties had used members of
their own species to bait a trap. But never had they needed to be
trussed up.

The only prisoners not struggling
were Dharam and Yama. Like the hunters, they had been buried, but up
to their chests, since half their bodies had been eaten away. Now,
just before the last of the sun left them for good, Wallbreaker
ordered these two men to be dug up. They came alive then, struggling
and calling for their mothers, while the cries of the volunteers
beyond them rose to a higher pitch of terror. Knives slit open the
stomachs and lungs of the men to release the grubs that had made
their homes there. Then, these were handed around to the hunters,
small and warm and wriggling.

"Remember," shouted
Wallbreaker. "Don't let them get into your throat! Hold the head
against the inside of your cheek and let them fasten there. And don't
worry! They eat slowly enough that they won't make it through in the
course of a night. We'll be here far less time than that."

Whistlenose took the creature
he'd been given into his hand, feeling it squirm there. He shuddered.
Only two days before, under the Chief's orders, he had allowed a grub
to feast on his cheek like this. The experience had lasted no more
than a hundred heartbeats. Just enough time to sneak up on one of the
enemy and kill it, while it made no effort to resist him. The Digger
hadn't even seemed to see him! But as soon as the "mother"
was dead, Whistlenose had bitten the vile grub in half.

Now, he had a new one, tiny, and
hungry. The top of its body rose, as though questing. Then, it began
sliding up his wrist. The thing was making for his nose or his ears.
It was all he could do not to crush it in his fist and fling it away.
To his left and his right, men were placing theirs carefully against
the inside of their cheeks as Wallbreaker had taught them. They
cursed and yelped as the creatures fastened there, but better that
than swallowing the thing while it yet lived, or allowing it to crawl
down your windpipe, which is what it really wanted to do.

Keeping his tongue towards the
front of his mouth, Whistlenose shoved the creature in. For a
heartbeat or two, there was no pain. This was followed by a small
sting that made him wince a little.

Not
so terrible, after all
. Then, the flesh of his cheek
grew warm the way he remembered. Tiny strands seemed to reach out
from his face, passing through the back of his head, before racing
along his spine. All at once, the strands flared into a burning,
itching pain and he stifled a scream with only the greatest of
effort.

"They'd better attack soon,"
said somebody beside him, the voice hoarse and unrecognisable.
"Ancestors, but it hurts! I don't know how long I can stand it."

Whistlenose agreed. He held a
single grub inside his mouth. Adult Diggers, on the other hand, had
to suffer through dozens of their own young, crawling and gnawing at
their mothers every moment of the day! And the only cure was to find
another host to put them in. No wonder the creatures had consumed the
whole world already!

But the Diggers were taking their
time in coming today.

The hostages moaned. The hunters
moaned too, uncaring after a while how unmanly they must have seemed,
rocking with the pain, waiting, waiting for a chance to spit out the
grubs. Soon, it was full dark and the only relief was the distant
glow of fires from the ruined streets in the protection of the hills.

The Chief had been the first to
experience this pain, the day he had jumped into a tunnel after
Whistlenose to save his daughter. A grub had got into his mouth
during the fighting and had been pinned against his cheek. Once it
had attached itself, the Diggers had left him alone, even when he was
killing them. But that situation had lasted no more than a few dozen
heartbeats. Whistlenose's later experiment with the magic of the
grubs had been briefer still. Nobody had expected the pain to
intensify this much over a longer period. Even so, it was a brilliant
plan and when the enemy finally came, they would be slaughtered in
their thousands.

Now, Whistlenose tried every
trick he knew to ease the growing agony. He daydreamed a future for
his son; he planned hunts; he prayed and prayed to his grandfather,
the great Slingcatcher who should have been a Chief. Nothing worked.
Time passed, but he had no idea how long. He felt hot all over his
body. Muscles loosened and his fingers twitched so that his spear
fell to the ground.

No matter. He would look more
convincing without it. If an attack came he could pick it up quick
enough.

Soon, he forgot all about his
grandfather. Instead, for the first time in hundreds of days, he
thought about his mother. She had a triangular snout, he remembered,
that dripped clear liquid. She dug with powerful claws, great tunnels
where he could be warm and safe. She was coming! She was coming! So,
he called for her and all around him, the other hunters were calling
for their mothers too.

Wallbreaker
waited until the others had taken grubs into their mouths. Then he
waited some more. Darkness had almost fallen and he could still make
out the shiny skin of the creature trapped in his hand. It would
hurt, as it had before, that was certain. He wasn't ready for the
pain yet and worse than that, he hated the thought of it consuming
him with its tiny mouth. It was too close to the worst of his
nightmares.

You're thinking too much.

Thinking was the gift the
Ancestors had given him so that he might save the Tribe, but such a
hard gift it was! Those terrible dreams of Armourback young had
pursued him all the way across the world from the streets of ManWays.

I
shouldn't put it in yet, anyway.
Somebody would have to
pay attention for the arrival of the Diggers and who better than the
Chief? He would place the little creature against his cheek at the
last minute, he decided. Yes. He would be the one to watch for
danger.

As the light failed, he saw a few
of the hostages struggling to free themselves, hissing urgently one
to the other. "You untie me! Try and get your teeth down to the
knot..."

Wallbreaker felt sorry for them,
as he always had for Volunteers. His father most of all, of course.
He had looked so much like poor Stopmouth, but with a gift for joking
and laughter that had left a terrible silence behind it when he had
finally given his Flesh for the Tribe.

A man like that would never have
to step forward now, not with so many useless mouths to feed. These
Roof People were nothing, nothing compared to Father and he shouldn't
waste pity on them...

But they would feel the terror
just as much in spite of that, wouldn't they? The pain of the grubs.
The planting. The eating of their spirit and flesh and marrow that
might last fifty days or more.

He felt sick at the thought of it
and then reassured himself with the promise he had made to the bait
when he had brought them here: "We won't let the Diggers have
you. Or keep you, anyway. We aim to defeat them once and for all. Our
hunters will be protected by grubs, so, once you have lured them out
of their tunnels, we will slaughter them by the thousand!" And
then, the bait would be slaughtered too: for they were the only
hunters remaining to the Roof People. But at least it would be quick,
and their flesh would be honoured and would feed the real humans for
tens of days to come.

And Wallbreaker intended to thank
each of them personally for their sacrifice.

However, as he imagined this
triumph, he couldn't help wishing that Indrani were in there too
amongst the rest of them. He still intended to keep his promise to
let her live. Nor would he take her for a wife. But that didn't mean
she would get away with what she had done to him. A Chief could not
be seen to be weak. No. When all this was over, he would turn all his
powers of imagination to finding some other way to make her pay. Oh
yes. She would come crawling back to his bed before this ended!

It was too dark now to see the
grub in his fist. The Volunteers moaned and his men too. All the
better, he supposed. One of them even called out for his mother!
Clever. The Ancestors would be pleased. Another man took up the call,
and another. "Mmmmmoooother..." Very convincing. Soon, they
were all at it.

I
should join them now. The pain won't last.
But his
hands were shaking. It was all he could do not to fling the grub
away. He raised it towards his mouth.

"Mmmooother..."

He paused. Something was terribly
wrong. He didn't want to alert the Diggers that the Talker was out
here—he had intended to save that for the ambush so the men
could see the creatures they were killing. But he needed to know what
was going on.

"A gentle glow," he
ordered and the Talker obeyed. He stood up to his knees in a little
hole, in the back rank of his hunters. Now he brought the globe
forward towards the face of the man beside him, a wiry youth by the
name of Drooplip.