The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy)

by Peadar O'Guilin

  He had rarely experienced fear as a child. His father had fed him and Stopmouth with tales of bravery; of close encounters with sneaky Bloodskins; of daring escapes and heroic kills made to feed the starving back home. It was all a game that Wallbreaker longed to play for himself and when the chance finally came, he displayed a wondrous talent for it, such as the older men had never seen before. "The bravest of the brave!" dear old Flimnose had called him. And, when Mossheart had asked him once, "Do you never feel afraid?", he could answer, with perfect sincerity, "Not so much as a tremble!"

  Looking back, he saw now that all this "courage" was born of the mistaken belief that he could not be hurt at all. The shock, then, when his invulnerability had turned out to be a lie, had destroyed him. He understood that. He wished with all his heart, he could fight against it, fool himself once more with the lovely lies he had grown up with. But, as mother used to say, "You can't uncook a liver."

  Fears were all he had now and he spent his life balancing one off against the others. Should he worry more about Laughlong's efforts to unseat him or an imminent attack of Diggers? How important was his personal safety against that of the tribe? After all, not even he could survive without a people! And what about his family? His little girl? So like her mother, but unpoisoned by the world and still content to find him and sleep in his arms.

  He always felt strongest when she was close, but cursed her too, because her arrival into the world had brought a whole new type of fear for him to deal with and one that Laughlong had made worse with that challenge of his. Now Wallbreaker's treasure would have to walk with her father at the back of the migration—the worst possible place to be when the Diggers came looking for revenge.

  Whose life would Wallbreaker save first when that happened? His or hers? He feared he knew the answer and hated himself all the more for it.

  "Aagam, come here."

  The man looked so much fitter and younger than when he'd first arrived in the Tribe, although his skin had broken out in an unsightly rash of pimples that everybody joked about.

  "We can't cross, so which way do we need to go? For the hills?"

  "I don't know. This isn't what I planned for." Aagam sweated and twitched in the heat while mossbeasts crawled over the hair he called his beard. "Maybe... maybe..."

  "Maybe's not enough," Wallbreaker said.

  "You think I don't know that, savage? This is my death sentence too." He paused, scratching his scalp, eyes tightly shut. "By the gods..."

  Wallbreaker, recognizing calculation when he saw it, let the man take his time.

  "It's no good," Aagam said at last and shrugged. "You should have left ManWays when I said and we wouldn't be in this position now."

  People were watching, so Wallbreaker had no choice. He took Aagam by the neck and dragged him right up to the edge of the Wetlane, forcing him to lean over the water so that drops of sweat from his brow spattered its surface. In the murk beneath the hot blue reflection of the Roof, something swam, its movements excited by the approach of food. But the threat Wallbreaker meant to make died on his lips when the Roofman said something curious: "You barbarian! You mean to waste clever Aagam like this? I can't swim!"

  "Of course you can't swim!" Wallbreaker sputtered. "A man is not a twig that he can float away!" And then, as though possessed by a crazy Ancestor, Aagam started laughing. "Wait, wait! I know the answer! I know which way to go!"

  "You're just lying now."

  "Am I?" a grin had spread over his spiteful hairy face. "The twig—you said it yourself—the twig! It floats along the Wetlane, but not at random! No! It's got to be heading for the river."

  Aagam explained what a river was. He claimed to remember seeing it on a map flowing right past the place where their new home would be.

  "How long will it take us to get there?"

  "I don't know. I didn't learn that route. Longer. A lot longer. But we can't cross here, now that you've destroyed all the trees."

  "And Diggers?"

  "Of course, there'll be Diggers along the way. They're already everywhere. Except beyond the hills."

  Wallbreaker pulled him back. "We will follow the twig then."

  A whole day stretched in front of them, but a great amount of organizing needed to take place before the Tribe could follow a new plan. Scouts moved forward, but slowly, so slowly. They had to stab hundreds and hundreds of creatures in the brain or risk capture and Wallbreaker knew their arms would tire quickly. So, he sent four or five times more hunters than would have been normal, and when he set the Tribe to moving again, he caused more grumbling among his veterans by ordering that some of the younger women be armed too.

  "You're killing the Tribe in two ways now, Chief," said Laughlong. "Our Ancestors won't recognise us, won't want us like this."

  "As long as we don't join them too soon," said Wallbreaker, "I'll be happy." He was relieved to see younger men nodding behind Laughlong's back. Survival was the only real law and everybody understood that, no matter what they pretended to believe.

  Slowly, the Tribe made its way down the narrow track of dead planted bodies, and eventually, after a full tenth of nervously watching the Roof at the back of the column, Wallbreaker got to follow them, along with Mossheart, Treeneck and his sweet little girl. His stomach roiled with fear, threatening to make him waste his breakfast.

  "It's flickering again," said Mossheart. She was looking up at the Roof, shading her eyes. "The rhythm, it's like the heartbeat of a pup as it bleeds out."

  "Enough of that, wife. I don't want anybody hearing that kind of talk from us."

  "They have eyes of their own," she replied.

  Aagam, on the other hand, seemed to have become less worried by the phenomenon. "I figured it out," he said. "It's just the rebels interfering with the way the Roof works. But they can't win, you know? Not with everything that's against them up there. And the funniest thing? The Roof is self-repairing. It's filled with tiny machines that can fix anything. No, this can't last. All we need to do is to get beyond the hills and when the Rebellion is over and everybody has calmed down, Aagam will find a way back. You see if I don't."

  That first day, the Ancestors seemed to be with them. The scouts discovered another stretch of forest, and even Wallbreaker, right at the very back of the migration, growing ever more anxious with the falling light, made it under the cover of the rotted, tilting trees. The only shame was that none of the wood seemed strong enough to support a man's weight, or they could have used it to build a bridge to the far side of the Wetlane.

  Everybody seemed excited and happy. Even the night passed peacefully, except that a young scout shook Wallbreaker awake shortly before dawn and beckoned him out to the edge of the wood where it grew right up against the Wetlane.

  "Look," whispered the young man who bore the unhappy name of "Browncrack." "Over there!"

  Wallbreaker stared and stared, not sure what he was looking for, but then he saw it: a blue, flickering glow, moving between the knee-high bodies the Diggers had planted on the far side of the Wetlane. It came closer to the hiding hunters, seeming almost to float.

  "The bodies aren't even trying to grab it!" breathed the younger man and Wallbreaker saw this was true. The Diggers' victims lolled as they always did, drooling in private agony, while the blue creature floated on past them. It glistened and flickered, yet, the strangest thing about it was that it bore the unmistakable shape of a human woman, her head seeming to quest this way and that. When drops of Roofsweat touched her, they turned into a sudden mist that hung around her, sharing in the glow.

  "Why is she growing smaller?" asked Browncrack.

  Sure enough, even as they watched, the woman became completely transparent, before fading away altogether. "An Ancestor," breathed Browncrack. "Lots of people have seen them by now," he said. "Scouts anyway. They've got to be protecting us."

  Wallbreaker was not so sure. It wasn't just that he alone knew he'd been lying about the communications he'd pretended to receive from the af
ter life. There was something else too: something about the quality of the glow from the creature that felt familiar to him, although he couldn't quite identify the taste of it.

  And then, the tracklights turned black, plunging the world into pure darkness. He felt the young hunter's grip on his arm, but for once, he wasn't afraid. Part of him was counting down the heartbeats to measure the blindness. Another part of him was thinking about the glowing creature he had finally seen with his own eyes. Did it assume the form of the prey it hunted? he wondered. Why had the planted bodies not tried to grab it? He would love to catch one and speak to it with the Talker!

  And that reminded him of something.

  He took the magic ball out of its pouch. "Activate," he said, and it glowed gently with a warmer light than that of the spirit creature.

  "We'll find our way back to the others with this," he told Browncrack. And so they did.

  On a normal night, the tracklights would have faded away as Rooflight slowly replaced them. This time, however, it was suddenly mid-day and people, frightened by the darkness of a moment before, cursed angrily at the unexpected glare.

  "Get everybody ready to move," Wallbreaker said, pretending to be unruffled. "We all need a good breakfast, but give more to the scouts. Laughlong! Get up here! How far does the forest extend this time?"

  "Two days' travel. I don't like it, though. See the trees? They have that Digger rot about them. And look at how they're tilting! Half of them have sunk into the ground like the bodies do."

  "At least they won't try to grab us. Listen, Laughlong, we need to keep following the direction of the Wetlane."

  "Well, we'll only get a day and a half in the cover of the trees if we do that. And what about food? The women say we'll be lucky to get three more days out of what we have."

  "That's no worry of yours, hunter."

  Laughlong wrinkled his lip. He looked like he wanted to spit, but even he wouldn't go so far, even now when extinction seemed certain. "A day and a half, Chief. A day and a half. And what will you do then, I wonder?"

  CHAPTER 16: The Tunnel

  When total darkness had fallen in the woods and the tracklights seemed to die, Whistlenose had been dreaming of the Clawfolk's slaughterhouse. He woke up sweating and blind.

  "Where are you?" he whispered.

  "I'm here," his son replied.

  "We both are," said his wife, her hand finding his without so much as a fumble. "You should have left us to sleep through the Blindness, husband. It's not as if there's anything worth looking at."

  Ancestors, but she always made him smile! He replied, "And it's not as if you couldn't find me in the dark!" He was referring to the sound his nose made, hoping to amuse her and trusting that she wouldn't push the joke too far.

  Nor did she. They rested together in silence, as Nighttracker drifted back to sleep.

  Whistlenose tried to take comfort in their warm presence, but he couldn't help wondering what would happen if the dark-loving Diggers ever decided to attack during a blindness. How could a hunter possibly save his family?

  Light returned far too quickly and painfully. He cursed, shading his eyes, blinking away the glare. "It's too early for mid-day!" His stomach told him that much if nothing else. But the sudden brightness might have caught the Diggers by surprise too and fried a few of their grubs.

  All around them, the camp stirred into life. He smiled across at Hightoes, waddling around with an armful of moss. She grinned but didn't come over, still embarrassed, he supposed, about the night she had lost track of their boy.

  "She looks tired," said Ashsweeper quietly. "All this walking is bad for pregnant women."

  A few hunters came looking for him. The previous day, everybody who had been involved in the forest ambush had been allowed to stay with their families, but Whistlenose had a feeling his time off was about to end. He smiled at Laughlong, who said, "I'm to go scouting forward."

  "You want me to come too?"

  Laughlong shook his head. "No, and too bad for you! You have to take charge of the rear. Worse. You'll have him for company."

  "All right."

  "And I'm telling you, Whistlenose, you should stop up your ears with moss. He'll only fill them with lies and promises."

  "And what about food, Laughlong?"

  "Oh, there's plenty of that in the fields. Just lying there." But nobody would want to risk another big fight with the Diggers so soon, so it might have to come back to Volunteers.

  Thank the Ancestors Nighttracker had a name! Some of the other children weren't so lucky and might be picked. Especially during a migration when they were slowing the Tribe down.

  He collected together his weapons, before eating a twist of dried flesh—he had no idea what kind—and helped his wife and son get ready. "I'll be at the back today, but I want you both walking in the centre. Look after Hightoes. We'll probably be fine for the next two days, but you know..."

  She did. Ashsweeper would keep her guard up.

  And then the Tribe trundled into motion, everybody trying to speak quietly, helping their friends, shushing children or hoisting them up to carry on their shoulders, food and Tallies packed away. Whistlenose allowed them all to pass him by until finally the Chief and his family and that awful man, Aagam, left him alone with the rearguard. It was a tired bunch of men he commanded: seven hunters other than himself, all of whom had been involved in the forest ambush. A few of them limped almost as badly as he did, but he smiled at them. Brave lads every one, and the Tribe lived on thanks to them.

  He didn't speak to them, of course. Hand signals sent them left and right, except for Browncrack—the fastest and best recovered—who would keep watch over the path behind them. The young man smiled thanks for the responsibility before slipping in amongst the rotted trees without so much as breaking a branch. When had he learned to do that? He was growing up fast, that boy!

  Time to go.

  He sniffed at the air in case it hid some clue, but the Tribe had spent so long surrounded by the Digger stench already that he might as well have buried his nose in his own armpit for all the good it did him.

  The day passed easily enough. Dried out moss cracked underfoot. Light glittered from the Wetlane when the trees allowed it. The only strange thing was how the Rooflight failed to dim properly and he couldn't keep proper track of time.

  The whole Tribe came to a halt several times when obstacles were encountered ahead: like the small stream that must have been terribly difficult for Hightoes to cross; or an ancient wall that seemed to be made of nothing but uncorrupted metal that shoved itself right out of the trees.

  "Deserters," he heard Aagam say with a sneer. It meant nothing to Whistlenose, but Wallbreaker seemed intrigued and lingered to examine it some more until Whistlenose threatened to leave him behind with it.

  "Have you really no curiosity, Whistlenose?"

  "Will it help us escape the Diggers?"

  "Who knows? Who knows how such things could help us if we learned their secrets."

  "Won't Aagam tell you?"

  "I don't think he understands this wall any more than I do. He is as incurious as any of you hunters." The Chief rubbed his hands over faded symbols. They swam under Whistlenose's gaze, crawling together to form meaning:

  "In honour of those who died in the great crossing."

  The strange sight brought a gasp from his lips and Wallbreaker chuckled. "That's the Talker, making you understand the words."

  "But... but there's no creature here to speak any words!"

  Wallbreaker shrugged and even winked at this man he had sent, more than once, into death. "Come on, then, hunter. Let's go. You're supposed to keep me safe."

  That was when it happened—screams from up ahead.

  The two men ran forward without hesitation. Whistlenose could feel the new threat in the soles of his feet: an angry, rumbling shaking of the earth. The rotted trees were feeling it too, and to the left and right, a number of them sagged suddenly, while others, just out
of sight, must have fallen altogether with a tremendous crunching and snapping that urged the men to greater efforts.

  The Diggers had found them again and were no longer content to wait for darkness. Instead, Whistlenose realised, they had been busily burrowing under the humans to ambush them in a place where the forest shade might protect their grubs.

  All of this sped through Whistlenose's mind as he ran through the undergrowth, stumbling occasionally as his leg let him down, or when a root tripped him up.

  The Chief had no such problems, it seemed. Although his spear had not tasted blood in the longest time, Wallbreaker, the supposed coward, fled towards danger. It made no sense.

  The screaming had grown louder. Directly in Whistlenose's path, a great old tree, began to topple over, groaned its agony as it fell. It would come down between Whistlenose and the Chief; between him and the tribe. He would be too late to help if it blocked his way.

  With a great cry of pain, he launched off his injured leg and dived forward into a roll, even as one heavy branch raked across his back. He came up on the far side of the trunk, spearless, helpless. In front of him, there was only chaos. Women and men seemed to be fighting the ground. They screamed or wept. They stabbed spears into the soil while dust filled the air and whole clumps of people fell suddenly into nothing.

  Immediately ahead of Whistlenose, Wallbreaker was shouting orders: "Don't stop! Leave them, it's too late for them. Run! Everybody run!" He had gathered his own family about him and was pushing them forward away from the action, until others started to obey, and in moments, everybody was fleeing for their lives.

  Whistlenose felt he had no choice but to join them. He too ran, ignoring the pain, leaping over holes in the ground where people cried piteously. He wept, knowing he must stop to help; knowing he couldn't. The rule was to keep running, after all. The Tribe, the Tribe needed to survive more than any individual. But he heard children down there too and knew that by nightfall, they would be buried in a field somewhere.