The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy) (9 page)

"I can't control that woman.
She's a monster, I tell you."

"Her boy will go out
gathering moss today."

"What? What are you talking
about?"

Wallbreaker didn't like the man's
attitude and he allowed his knees to sink further into that soft
belly until he started struggling for breath. He expected there to be
pleading, but Aagam wouldn't give him the satisfaction, preferring to
sweat and gasp instead.

"Ashsweeper's boy is too
young to be sent to gather moss," said Wallbreaker. "By
putting him out, I'm sending her a message she will understand. You
will find her less troublesome this evening.

"Now, to business. We need
to plan the migration and you will tell me what I need to know."

On
Aagam's wedding day, Wallbreaker had followed his usual custom of
presiding over the feast from the first floor window of his house. He
didn't like to go outside, but three days later, he forced himself to
do so.

First, as always, he had his
wives dress him in Speareye's famous cloak made of a dozen different
hides. He liked the weight of it on his shoulders and the way the
colours cleverly overlapped to form alternating layers of light and
dark. He felt the breath of the Ancestors on his neck when he wore
it. He became more than himself: he became every great Chief the
Tribe had ever known.

Treeneck chatted away gaily, her
palms gently weaving bones into her husband's hair. Mossheart,
meanwhile, was tightening his tool-belt a little too much.

"I know you, woman," he
said. "It's deliberate."

"Afraid you'll show your
stomach? It's a judgement of the Ancestors that it has grown so
much."

She was too clever to speak this
way outside the home—she wouldn't give him a good excuse to put
her aside.

I loved you once, he thought. She
seemed so plain now when compared to Indrani. Her face was little
more than a collection of angry lines, deepening by the day. And she
made Treeneck's life a misery too.

"You're the mother of my
child," he told Mossheart now. "Bring her to me before I
leave."

"She's asleep."

"I want to see her."

Mossheart softened. He always
liked to flick a drop of blood at his girl before going outside. But
he was even more nervous now than usual. Tomorrow he would finally
tell his people what horror lay in store for them all. That was bad
enough, but beforehand, he would have to put himself in real danger,
something that hadn't happened since the great battle with the Flyers
and their allies.

He stepped outside to where his
men were waiting. Nobody had been allowed to hunt for several days.
Faces showed signs of strain and frustration and no little curiosity.
They were used to his surprises and his schemes, but he wagered
they'd be more than a little shocked today. The younger hunters, the
more loyal ones, were nowhere to be seen.

"You will escort me to the
Hairbeasts," Wallbreaker told the men. He felt their resistance
to his command. His predecessors, Speareye, and before him,
Brainlicker, had always preferred to persuade their hunters. Direct
orders were all very fine from a pack leader away from home. But in
ManWays, the Tribe ruled, and the Chief was only there to voice its
desires. Even the choosing of Volunteers was done by the Flesh
Council, whose decisions the Chief carried out.

Slowly, slowly, Wallbreaker was
dragging his people towards a new way of doing things. Just as a
hunter must protect his eyes, so must the Tribe keep safe its Chief.
He was their vision. His ideas were worth more than any ten of their
lives.

Aagam was the only other person
he'd ever met who truly understood this. The man had swaggered into
the Chief's house with a magic word on his lips:
information
.
Aagam had believed—no!—he had known it would bewitch the
Chief, while that poor fool Whistlenose could only stare, never
having seen the spear that killed him.

Wallbreaker felt happier every
time one of the old hunters volunteered to be replaced by a younger
man. But he knew too, that with the coming migration, he would need
their experience more than ever.

He touched the tool-belt with the
special pouch Treeneck had made him for carrying the Talker. That was
one thing whose importance he didn't need to explain. Its power had
made possible the alliance of enemies that had nearly wiped the
humans out, while its capture had fed them many times since.

He held it up for the men. "Only
I know how to work this," he reminded them. A white lie, of
sorts, but one that made them nod and formed them into ranks around
him. Then, the group was marching out beyond the rickety new defences
towards what was left of the Wedding Tower.

Swirls of blood covered the walls
in this area—typical Hairbeast art. The designs had meaning
that the Talker translated as, "tunnel" and
"life-into-blue" and other, even stranger concepts. The
group paused. A few Hairbeast males regarded them from the roof of
the Tower, watching for hostile hunting parties. Humans, who had been
in alliance with them since time out of legend, didn't count.

"We have come to trade,"
Wallbreaker shouted up to them.

While they waited for a reply,
one of his men, Laughlong, asked, "What if
their
Chief has gone out hunting?"

Wallbreaker ignored the veiled
insult. The Hairbeasts preferred to hunt by night these days. They
were few now. Twenty-three adults and an unknown number of mindless
pups. They survived in the shadow of the humans' protection—something
Wallbreaker himself had achieved. They'd proven themselves invaluable
in the battle against the Flyers and more especially the Armourbacks.

Eventually, their Chief came
outside. It was a female. With the Hairbeasts that kind of thing
didn't seem to matter. It had painted its hands bright red with the
blood of a relative who was probably recovering inside. Surrounding
her came a delegation of her own: fifteen, a number exactly matching
Wallbreaker's. These mangy beasts were the finest surviving specimens
of their race. They stood half again as tall as a man, their bodies
covered in fur that smelled sharp, like blood. It was always
unpleasant and especially strong when the males fought each other.

"Flesh?" the female
enquired.

"Yes," said
Wallbreaker.

"We didn't even have a
Council meeting about this," muttered Laughlong behind the
Chief.
That's
what you think
. Wallbreaker had had a meeting all
right. But only with the younger men who weren't here now.

"You are our oldest allies,"
said Wallbreaker. "Our tribes have worked together since the
time of Treatymaker."

"We have tasted your flesh
forever," agreed the Hairbeast female. "Your marrow is
sweetest of all."

"How many pups do you have
in the Tower?" asked Wallbreaker.

"You have not asked this
question before." The Talker gave the words a suspicious tone.

"We need a lot of flesh,"
said Wallbreaker.

"Why?" asked the
creature and the Chief knew his men wanted the same answer.

"Now, that is a question
that
you
have not asked before!" Wallbreaker grinned. "How many
pups?"

"Sixteen."

"We'll trade for all of
them."

"Three of our pups make
sounds that might soon be words."

"As I said, we'll take them
all."

"I cannot decide this,"
said the female, exactly as Wallbreaker had hoped she would. He kept
the look of relief from his face, although the Talker did not
translate such things as far as he knew. "My tribe must make
sure all the pups are mindless. We will all decide together. In the
dark."

Wallbreaker nodded. "I was
aware this was your tradition. You will gather together and you will
give us an answer tomorrow. Good. I will return then for the flesh."

Most of the humans went back to
Centre Square muttering amongst themselves. But the Chief separated
out three of the best: skinny little Quickbite, the lumbering
Mossdrinker and the ever rebellious Laughlong. "Come with me."
He led them away and then, doubled back, heading through the rear
door of an old house that looked straight across a little square to
the doorway where he had negotiated with the Hairbeast Chief.

"What are we doing here?"
asked Laughlong. The others looked wary, but not worried.

Be
quiet
, Wallbreaker signalled. He felt nauseous. It had
been a long time since he'd been away from his home with so little
protection. He could hear his own pulse in his ears. It was
ridiculous. He knew that. But the fear was not as bad as once it had
been, when he had first escaped with his life from the Armourbacks.

He still bore the scars of their
spears. He still had the nightmare sometimes, of swarming young with
sharp little beaks, consuming him one little stab at a time. But he
was getting better. He slept right through until morning more often.
He allowed visitors into his house and even made trips away from
ManWays to trade for flesh with the power of the Talker.

And now this. Away from home with
the most modest of escorts. Across the road from the building where
he'd consummated his marriage with Mossheart the very night that his
courage had first been poisoned. He was doing well. Very well.

Darkness was falling. The light
of the Roof dimmed and the tracklights came on. His disciplined
hunters stirred not at all. They would keep their curiosity all
penned up until they had the walls of home between themselves and the
hungry night.

Wallbreaker stiffened as he felt
a tap on his shoulder. Quickbite had spotted movement in the weak
illumination of the tracklights. The Chief could only imagine the
surprise of his escort as they realised the figures that now emerged
from the darkness, creeping close to the ground, were human.

Good.
Good
. No alarm had sounded. That meant the Hairbeast
guards were already dead. Generations of butchering Hairbeast pups
had given humans an excellent grasp of how the creatures might be
killed, while the trust between the two species would have allowed
the young hunters to get right up close without arousing suspicion.

On top of the Tower, fires were
burning and large silhouettes waved claw-tipped arms.

The young hunters were carrying
something in their arms: moss. Bundles of red moss. Now there were a
dozen of them crawling around, using their knowledge of the Wedding
Tower to stuff holes with clumps of the plant. They built a large
pile of it right in front of the only entrance to the Tower and set
it alight with the help of the kindling and the embers they had
brought with them.

Wallbreaker's escort stirred
around him, agitated. Perhaps the betrayal horrified them, although
when Chief Speareye had urged wiping out the Hairbeasts before, only
Wallbreaker had spoken up for them.

Smoke began to pour from the
moss. Just as a hole in the roof of a house could draw the smoke of a
hearth, so now, the vapours of the moss passed up the stairs of the
building and into the Tower. Even so, a few swooning human hunters,
overcome by fumes, had to be dragged away by their comrades.

"I don't understand,"
whispered Quickbite.

"We need a lot of flesh,"
said Wallbreaker. "And quickly." He would explain to the
tribe tomorrow about the journey they would all have to take. "This
will get it for us without much risk." Just the way he liked it.

"Yes... but won't the meat
be poisoned?"

"Of course not. Women use it
for smoking food all the time. As long as you don't eat the plant or
consume the juices directly, all is well and the flesh keeps longer."

They waited and waited. How long
before the Hairbeasts noticed there was smoke coming from fires other
than their own? How good was their sense of smell? Strange not to
know such a thing about humanity's oldest friends.

A boom of alarm sounded. "Down,
down!" a Hairbeast shouted, loud enough to be heard.

Wallbreaker turned to his escort.
"They're going to come running out of there like blood from a
throat. I need you to help the younger men keep their heads. Don't
close with the Hairbeasts. Slings only. Got it? Make sure to tell
them. Go on. Go on!"

The three men showed none of the
reluctance they may have been feeling. No fear, either. The first of
the creatures flew through the door and scattered the fire. It bowled
two young humans out of the way and three more of the creatures,
large males whose heads barely cleared the lintel, staggered out
after. One of these had a club as long as a man's leg and studded
with lumps of something that glinted in the tracklights. It swung at
the humans who tried to swarm it, driving them back while more
creatures pushed out into the square. Several fell to their knees,
vomiting just as a human would have.

Wallbreaker's stomach knotted and
squirmed. The fumes hadn't weakened the Hairbeasts as much as he had
hoped. Already, seven huge adults had made it into the square, many
armed with clubs or rocks that swung on the end of leather ropes.