'What do we do?' screamed Krow clutching an egg.
Carnelian looked over to where Osidian and some others had remounted. He could see they were running out of javelins. They were riding at the bellowers, bellowing, waving their arms. The creatures fell back, letting out a fearsome fanfare of outrage.
Carnelian saw Krow's panic-stricken face among others. 'Line some saddle-chairs with blankets to carry the eggs. The rest of us'll have to get out of here two to an aquar.'
They hurried to obey him. He helped them quickly ferry as many of the eggs as he could into the chairs separating each layer with the fold of a blanket.
Carnelian was not the only one to notice a change in the tone of the bellower calls. He whisked round. What he saw made him drop the egg he carried so that it smashed its yolk and foetus down his legs and feet. A deeper baying like warhorns. Fluted crests longer and more elaborate than the ones he had seen were visible above the bellowers.
Krow went white. The mothers are returning.'
A scramble began into empty saddle-chairs or clinging onto cross-poles.
A blast of screeches rolled over them as the bellower mothers saw the despoiled nests. Carnelian found himself gaping at their charge and at Osidian and the others fleeing towards him.
'Master!' shrieked a voice.
The earth quaked as the bellowers lumbered closer. Carnelian saw Osidian's aquar, readied himself and caught hold of its cross-pole as it hurtled past. The impact threatened to tear his arms from their sockets, but he managed to hang on. He was half running; half carried. His weight was unbalancing Osidian's aquar. Its pistoning leg buffeted him. Its clawed foot would shred him if he were to swing in its path. He kicked his way through a nest before he pulled his legs up. He held on desperately as they careered down the slope to the water. His legs trailed through it, the drag leeching the last strength from his arms. He squeezed his eyes closed against the pain. His hands unhooked and he smashed into the lagoon. He was drowning. His feet found the bottom and he came up coughing water, gulping for air, to see a wall of bellowers crashing towards him. He covered his head with his arms, waiting to be crushed. The wave the bellowers were driving before them washed him off his feet but he managed to regain his balance. He opened his eyes as something brushed past him. Osidian on his aquar screaming Quyan curses at the oncoming saurians. Carnelian gaped with wonder as the creatures dropped ponderously onto all fours. Their stench was overpowering. Their cries battered his ears. Then, miraculously, they began to turn away.
He remained frozen, staring until the water stopped eddying around his legs, until the flamingos had settled back down to the lagoon.
When Carnelian became undazed, the first thing he saw was the relief in Osidian's face. They gazed at each other, for a moment the lovers they had once been. Carnelian became aware of Ravan's excited voice. 'Did you see the way the bellowers obeyed the Master? Did you?'
Loskai was scowling. 'They were already pulling back before he rode at them.'
'What do we do now?' someone asked.
Crowrane seemed deaf, blind and it was to Osidian that faces were turned in awe.
The Master had them repack the eggs more carefully because some had been broken in their flight.
'Wash it all out,' barked Crowrane. 'We don't want the smell attracting raveners.'
Rage distorted his face as people, hesitating, glanced over at Osidian for instruction. Crowrane pointed out several of them.
'You and you ... yes, you, Twostone, get water, now.'
Sullenly, Krow and the others did as they were told and soon came waddling back with bloated waterskins. Carnelian watched one Plainsman wash the mess out from his saddle-chair. The foetus the egg had cradled dropped onto the ground. The man had not noticed the tiny creature lying there but Ravan had and moved to retrieve it. But before he reached it, Osidian, oblivious, trampled it into the mud.
Because of the saddle-chairs packed with eggs, the hunt had to return at walking pace. Krow offered Carnelian his aquar but he declined. Carnelian remembered it was Krow who had been the first to defy Crowrane.
'We owe you our lives.'
The youth sunk his head. 'I owe the Master much.' 'Father Crowrane and his son will not quickly forgive you.'
Krow shrugged.
'Why have you ended up in their hunt?'
Krow looked up. 'Because their hearth took me in.'
The youth's eyes betrayed something of the unhappy conditions in which he had to live. They know I am your friend.'
Carnelian became aware Loskai was observing them. He realized now it was Krow who was in danger.
Unable to ride, the hunt were in peril from raveners. The hunters kept fear at bay by describing to each other the Tribe's delight when they received the precious cargo the hunt were bringing home.
Galewing appeared with his men, saying that they had come to offer any help that might be needed. He told them the Tribe knew of their expedition and were worried for their safety. The amazement the Elder and his hunt showed over their haul of eggs lifted spirits. Still* many would be unable to flee a ravener attack and so the first sight of the Koppie rising out from the plain was greeted with audible sighs of relief. The closer it came, the wider grew the smiles anticipating a triumphant return.
Grim-faced, a large portion of the Tribe were waiting for them across the earthbridge. Carnelian saw among them Harth, Ginkga and others of the Elders. He was disappointed when he could not see Akaisha. He had hoped she would be there with Poppy.
The hunters rode over into the ferngarden and dismounted.
Hands on hips, Harth confronted her husband. 'What possessed you?'
Crowrane made a face, painfully aware of the people watching. His wife gave a snort of disgust and, seeking out her son among the press, withered him with her gaze.
Ginkga gazed out over the hunters. Where her eyes looked, their heads fell in shame. 'Have you any idea how much worry you brought your hearths?'
'But no one was hurt, my mother and -' Ravan began, before the Elder silenced him with a look.
'If we hadn't begged the Mother to shield you, who knows how many would've been killed?'
She stabbed a finger at Osidian and then Carnelian. They put you up to it, didn't they?'
'But it worked out exactly as the Master said it would,' cried Ravan, red-faced.
He reached over into a saddle-chair and lifted out an egg. Walking into the crowd, he handed it to a woman who received it like a baby. Ravan grinned as he heard the excitement rippling out through the crowd.
There may be as many as two for each hearth,' he announced.
The crowd came alive as they began clamouring for theirs. The hunters beamed as they began unpacking and handing out the treasure they had brought back for their people. Bright with pride, Krow joined in. Carnelian did not feel he should, though he was fired by the general elation. Crowrane stood, eyes downcast, behind his wife, so that it was Galewing who oversaw the distribution.
'Losing so many young will hurt the bellowers,' cried Ginkga over the commotion. 'You don't understand what you've done.'
Carnelian was sobered by the woman's dismay. The rest of her cries were drowned out by the sounds of celebration.
Ravan basked in the approval of his hearthkin as he told for the second time the tale of the expedition against the bellowers. Osidian strode heroic through that tale and as the Plainsmen savoured the delicacies that had been made with the eggs, eyes kept flicking to the Master, sitting as he always did watching something only he could see in the dancing of the flames.
Not Whin, not even Akaisha were falling under the spell of Ravan's story. They witnessed his swagger, his naked adoration of the Master, with unhappy eyes. Earlier, returning red-stained from the earthworks, they had uncurled the foetuses from the two eggs the hearth had been given and went to bury them among the roots of their mother tree.
As Carnelian watched Ravan, he fondled Poppy's head as she sat against his knee. He glanced at Fern. Wh
en he had returned to find Carnelian alive he had run to him and, taking hold of his arms, had regarded him with undisguised delight. This had made Sil unhappy even though she had kissed Carnelian as she did the others, glad to see them safely returned. Aware of her reaction, confused by Fern's intensity, Carnelian had disengaged from him. When Fern became aware of Sil, the three of them had been left isolated, prey to confused emotions.
A movement at the edge of Carnelian's vision drew his gaze down to Osidian's pale hand signing: It seems we are heroes.
Carnelian turned to look at him. Use handspeech.
Carnelian obliged him. The boy speaks only of you.
Osidian made a sign connoting amusement, then: This popularity will, I judge, keep our lives safe outside the ditches.
I intend to return to work with — Carnelian indicated Fern.
No. I need you with me.
From petty jealousy, you endangered our lives and many others.
Osidian made a contemptuous gesture of dismissal. I made a bid for power.
You make my decision firmer. I will take no further part in your machinations.
Osidian's hand fell still. Then, slowly, he turned to watch Ravan who was enacting the arrival of the bellower mothers. Without turning back, his hand began to shape signs again. He will not now leave my side.
Carnelian frowned, staring at the pale hand. The fingers curled.
The outer world is perilous.
Carnelian grew inflamed and pulled at Osidian's shoulder to make him look at him. 'Do you stoop, my Lord, like Jaspar did with my brother, to use threats against another as a means of controlling me?'
Carnelian's Quya made Ravan fall silent. The whole hearth were staring at the Standing Dead.
Osidian's eyes burned furiously. 'You should remember why we have ended up here, Carnelian.'
Carnelian was painfully aware of the people round about.
Osidian smiled at Ravan, who smiled back. 'Do not imagine when the time comes I will have mercy on the boy.'
IRON SPEAR
Husband, you are the sky
the angry one
the winged sower of rain.
Come, quench my thirst.
(from a marriage ritual of the Plainsmen)
The Grove was waking when Carnelian picked his way among the sleeping hollows towards Fern and Sil's. He knew where it lay even though he had never been there. It was Sil who first noticed him approaching and raised her husband. Little Leaf began to cry and Sil put her to a breast to quieten her.
Carnelian felt he was intruding. 'Can I speak to you, Fern?'
Seeing that Carnelian wanted to talk to him alone, Fern rose. Both men made an apology to Sil, who looked concerned.
They moved up the slope a little to where the branches of the cedar forced Carnelian to bow his head.
'I won't be returning to the Bloodwood Tree,' Carnelian said.
Fern frowned. 'You've decided to stay with the hunt?' As Carnelian nodded, he could see Fern was waiting for some explanation, but how could Carnelian tell him what Osidian had threatened to do; how could he tell Fern that he had made Osidian swear on his blood that, if Carnelian went with him, Osidian would not deliberately harm any of the Tribe?
'Well, you've told me,' Fern said at last and returned, still frowning, to his wife.
That day Crowrane's hunt was warding so Carnelian, Osidian, Ravan and several others accompanied Akaisha and her women down into the ferngardens. Akaisha had watched Fern go off to work alone and Carnelian had to endure the pressure of her scrutiny. She was clearly unhappy not only with his decision but with the way in which he had made it without giving her an explanation.
In the perfumed shadow of a magnolia, he spent that day, wretched, watching the women harvesting termites from mud towers and trying to ignore Ravan and Osidian. In the evening, he made himself blind to Sil's enquiring looks and, studiously, tried to behave towards Fern as if nothing had happened.
The following day, he helped keep watch over Akaisha and her women as they dug fernroot. He would have helped if Ravan had not insisted that it was tradition that men should rest on their warding days.
Next morning the women had to return to the earth-working. By coincidence, Crowrane's hunt were working in the ditches too, so that Carnelian went with Akaisha and was able to work with Poppy by his side all day.
Three days he laboured thus under the resentful gaze of Crowrane and Loskai. Carnelian saw the deference with which the other members of the hunt were treating Osidian. It was the youngsters, Krow among them, who were most in awe of him. Some dared to ask him questions through Ravan, but the Master remained aloof and worked as if he were alone, carrying the baskets filled with earth up the ladders to the ramparts, his strength fully returned. The women who worked alongside them outnumbered the men almost three to one. The men had to work hard to match them. The older people oversaw the repair of the ditch, or did the lighter work. Carnelian took turns at digging, carrying the dislodged earth up the ladders, or beating it into the ramparts with paddles. The sun was merciless. Carnelian was sheathed in the slime his sweat made of the red earth on his skin. During the hottest part of the day they hid in the depths of the ditch where its high walls, or one of the trees fringing it, cast delicious shadow. They ate, sipped water, napped. At the end of each day they returned to wash under their mother tree and slumped exhausted around the hearth, almost too tired to speak.
The way it worked out, the hunt and Akaisha's women completed their stint in the ditches on the same afternoon. In the morning, Carnelian had to leave Poppy in Akaisha's care when she took her hearth down to the Bloodwood Tree. For the next six days, it would be Crowrane's hunt in company with that of Ginkga's husband who would make the journey each day to fetch water for the Tribe.
It was a relief to ride out from the Koppie to the vast spreading lagoon. At first, Carnelian maintained a careful watch on Loskai and his father. In full view of both hunts, Crowrane made a point of telling the Master that more heroics would not be tolerated. The Elder might as well have directed his tirade against a statue. Osidian's impassivity drove Crowrane and Loskai into an anger which only served to reveal how powerless they were.
That first day, water was brought back to the Koppie without mishap. The aquar pulled the drag-cradles right up to the Homeditch. From there it was unloaded and everyone made at least two journeys up the Lagooning rootstair with a waterskin to pour the precious contents into the cistern that lay in a cleft in the Crag.
The second day they saw riders moving on the other side of the lagoon. Ravan claimed they were from a neighbouring tribe, the Woading.
It was on the fifth day that Carnelian learned why it was the Plainsmen considered fetching water perilous. They were returning from the lagoon when they found themselves in the path of a stampede. Burdened with their fully laden drag-cradles, the hunt could not evade the charge. The bleating earthers thundered through their line. Many of the monsters managed to swerve around the obstacles; others were skilfully deflected with bull-roarers; but one gored a man and another crashed headlong into a cradle, exploding its waterskins everywhere. The hitched aquar was hurled over onto its side. Screaming, it flailed its clawed feet. The earther, tossing its head to free its horns from the ruins of the drag-cradle, ripped open the belly of the aquar and was, in turn, gashed by the aquar's claws. One of the Plainsmen leapt in to end the aquar's agony, others dared to approach the earther to hack it loose. Erupting free, the monster trampled a man. It was clear nothing could be done for him. Crowrane put an end to the man's agony by slitting his throat. They carried the body back on a drag-cradle. For fear of raveners, they used earth to cover the trail of blood they were painting across the plain.
That night the Tribe mourned their loss. Akaisha took Carnelian with her to watch the blackened body being carried up to the summit of the Crag. Osidian came too, with Ravan. At one point, Carnelian overheard them discussing the next day, which was to be his first hunt. He forced the anxiety fr
om his mind by trying to pick meaning from the song of lamentation rising up with smoke into the sky. The dead man's soul would soon be carried up into that blueness by the birds that fed on him.
Akaisha and Poppy came down to the Southgate to see them off. In the predawn twilight many other women had gathered to bid their men farewell. Everyone spoke quietly.
Carnelian was holding his shoulder where Fern had touched it when he had wished him a safe hunt.
'You'll be careful, Carnie, promise me you'll be careful?'
Crouching, Carnelian looked into Poppy's dark eyes and nodded solemnly. Kissing her, he rose and saw Osidian standing apart from them, aloof and remote as he examined a huge spear he was hefting in his hand.
'I'm not a child any more,' said Ravan, looking aggrieved, as he confronted his mother. 'Fern had no right to it. It came to me from my father. It is mine to give away.'
Carnelian looked back at the spear in Osidian's hand and realized it had been fitted with Stormrane's iron blade.
As Akaisha watched her son join the Master, she had the look of someone who had just been slapped. Carnelian looked away so she would not become embarrassed. Harth, who had come down to see her son and husband off, was regarding Osidian with baleful eyes. Krow stood behind them, forgotten, sullen.
A hand on his arm made Carnelian look round into Akaisha's face. She made a point of glancing at Harth, who was hugging Loskai while her husband, Crowrane, stood by. Akaisha looked at Carnelian and raised her eyebrows to see if he understood her warning.
'I'll be careful, my mother.'
As her gaze moved to Ravan, she seemed suddenly old and frail.
'I'll keep an eye on him too,' he whispered and was rewarded by a squeeze of thanks.
'Come, child,' she said, offering her hand to Poppy. Today's our last day in the ditches for quite a while. The sooner we start, the sooner the day's work will be done.'
The Standing Dead - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 02 Page 28
