The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy)

by Peadar O'Guilin

  Stopmouth had seen the lead creature before, recognizing it by its smaller size and the slightly darker shading of its rusty colouring. It bore new injuries: welts and parallel lines of missing scales that could only have come from a close encounter with Diggers. It limped forward to meet him.

  "Hunger needs flesh," it said through the magic of the Talker.

  "Hunger needs flesh," Stopmouth agreed. But not forever. We'll be eating plants soon, Ancestors help us!

  "My sisters are few," the Fourlegger said. "Diggers have brought darkness to all the world and have buried us deep in their nests. Only ninety trios remain, many injured. Many failing."

  It was the longest utterance Stopmouth had ever heard from a Fourlegger, but even so, he felt it had not yet finished speaking.

  "The land needs our bones," it continued. "It will have them in thirty, or ninety days. No more before our last trio fills Diggger bellies."

  Here it comes, thought Stopmouth.

  Humans and Fourleggers had made a sort of alliance some time before. They had promised not to hunt each other and to exchange food. He had been expecting a plea for aid. It's what he would have done if his own people had been in such a desperate position.

  However, the leader of the Fourleggers surprised him. "Hunger needs flesh," it said again. "Your numbers are greatly increased. My sisters and I prefer your bellies for a bed. We will sleep more quietly there."

  Stopmouth looked uneasily at the ex-priest Kubar who stood beside him. "Did it say what I think it said?"

  Kubar was grinning. "This is marvellous! There must be nearly three hundred of them left and they're offering to Volunteer? Why, we might not have to hunt before our first crop! We wouldn't even have to eat that monster Dharam! I suspect he'd only poison us anyway."

  Stopmouth sighed, saddened by the loss of such firm allies, but knowing he had no choice but to accept their brave offer. He opened his mouth, wondering how to phrase it, when he felt something brush past his leg.

  It was the infant Fourlegger his tribe had adopted. It bounded across the space between the two leaders and swarmed up the body of the adult of its own species until it came to a rest behind the triangular head, its forelimbs wrapped firmly around the throat. The adult stooped a little under the weight, but neither creature spoke.

  "Is that..." said Stopmouth aloud, "is that your child?"

  "All children need me," it said. "This one's heart needs comfort."

  "Of course..."

  They stood on a street, soft moss beneath their feet and the light of the sun streaming in through a ragged tear in the Roof. Already it had moved most of the way across the hole. Darkness would fall shortly after it reached the end of the gap.

  "Tell them we accept," whispered Kubar.

  At that moment, the Fourlegger leader lifted its snout high, an action mirrored by the younger one on its back.

  "The Diggers need darkness. They are already near."

  "See?" said Kubar. "Get the Fourleggers inside the new perimeter, at least."

  "How far away are they?" asked Stopmouth. "The Diggers, I mean."

  "Half an old day's travel," said the Fourlegger.

  "Your hearing is that good?"

  "Yours is not, human? The earth suffers the bite of their claws even now."

  Stopmouth felt the decision settle on him with such certainty that he knew an Ancestor must have been speaking to his heart.

  "We will not eat you," he said.

  "What?" said Kubar.

  "Does your hunger have no need?" asked the Fourlegger.

  "What we really need, more than your flesh," he said, "are your talents." "We could do with those ears of yours, and your powerful claws. You will join us inside our walls and tomorrow, when the... the sun comes back into the sky, we will raid the Diggers' fields and find flesh enough for all of us."

  "This is madness!" said Kubar. "We can't go back to hunting! Those new people from the Roof have no skills, they—"

  "Agreed," interrupted the Fourlegger. "We will come inside your walls. Humans are now my sisters."

  Stopmouth found himself laughing and a great many of the men and women around him cheered when he moved forward to touch snouts with the beast. "Sisters!" he said, still smiling and wondering, as Kubar had, if he was truly mad.

  ***

  Not everybody was delighted with the idea of an alliance. The Newcomers had greater reasons to fear it than most.

  Before Indrani had hijacked their ship, they had planned to spend decades asleep in little boxes with only enough food for those who would be waking every few thousand days to tend their machinery. But now, these aliens would need feeding too, and that meant hunting and the risk of a horrible violent death.

  Stopmouth was on his way back towards the U with its new set of defences that everybody had been building, when he smelled Rockface's foul breath. He would have known the man was there anyway by the sudden appearance of hip-high children, armed with better weapons than most of the adults here could make.

  "You've taught them well," he told the older man.

  The children grinned and passed hunting signs amongst themselves as though they had been born to them. Indeed, some of the gestures they used were wholly new to the Chief and only the presence of the Talker allowed him to fully understand what was going on.

  "Where did they learn to do that?" he asked.

  "They're good, hey?" said Rockface, clapping the younger man all too hard on the back. "They were having trouble getting through to me without that Talker you always keep to yourself, and the little Fourlegger can't make half the sounds she needs either."

  "Of course..." Stopmouth couldn't take his eyes off the children, as they mocked each other with supple hands or made jokes that the hunting language of home could never have coped with. "That's wonderful," he breathed and Rockface's chest swelled with pride.

  "I'd nearly take them hunting now," said the big man. "They'd do a better job than any of the Newcomers, but they still lack the strength in their arms..."

  Those words seemed to be some kind of signal that caused three of the children to launch themselves at the old hunter, and with the stiffness in his back, they almost knocked him over. "Not yet, young ones, hey? Wait 'til you're shoulder-height before you try bringing me down! Listen, Chief," he sent the children running ahead with a go signal and an extra wave of the fingers that somehow meant "home." "Listen, these new people you've given me to train, these Ship People... They're worse than the others. They won't learn anything. Won't even try. All they do is weep. The only time they'll fight is against our lot. Ancestors but they hate each other!"

  "I know." Stopmouth sighed. He had really hoped the secular Ship People and the Religious tribe he and Rockface had saved from destruction hundreds of days before, would have united, if only because they were humans together against a sea of Diggers and other beasts that wanted them for the pot. "Indrani says the new ones are unlikely to come around until they get as much of a shock as our lot got back in the beginning."

  Another great backslap from Rockface. "We showed them, though didn't we, hey? What fights we had back then! We were stacking up flesh like the Ancestors intended. A sharp spear and a strong arm. No tricks!"

  The two men were walking past a new set of walls. They wouldn't provide much protection against the Diggers the next time they crossed the hills, but they might deter the few other beasts that were still around. Besides, everybody slept a bit better for being inside them.

  Beyond the gate, Yama was shouting at sweating Ship People, who were building up the defences. "That's all you're good for," he cried at them. "You'll never be a real killer like me! Yama of the Bloody Hand!" The builders glared at him, but saved a little of their hatred for Stopmouth who had brought them here against their will. Two men and a woman halted work long enough to spit as the Chief walked by.

  "Don't worry about them," said Rockface. "We'll Volunteer anyone who tries to murder you in your sleep."

  "Thanks," Stop
mouth muttered, wondering how he could trust any of these people to fight for the tribe, or even themselves. He could understand why they disliked him, but he found it incredible that they had started listening to Dharam again. Surely they knew who had destroyed their world?

  Or, maybe not. The vast majority of them had been frozen in little boxes when Stopmouth had taken over the Warship. They had not heard Dharam condemn himself from his own mouth. And even if they had, they might prefer to continue on in the belief that it was the Religious or some other enemy that had poisoned the Roof. And now, when they had expected to awaken in paradise, they had instead been "kidnapped" by a cannibal and condemned, as they saw it, to a life of flesh-eating and murder.

  "They would have died anyway," he muttered, remembering how the slime had contaminated all their machines. Never mind. Already a plan was forming of how he was going to win flesh for his tribe and their Fourlegger allies. It wouldn't work without the cooperation of the Ship People, so they would be coming along whether they liked it or not.

  "Rockface, I want to talk to the Tribe tonight."

  "Even Dharam's lot? I mean, how is he still alive? They keep feeding him, but I don't know where they get the food."

  Stopmouth knew that a proper Chief would have Volunteered the man. Indrani wanted him dead too, but she thought it more important that Stopmouth take no part in it.

  "It's a new world now, love," she'd said. "Or will be when the fields are producing. We can't be seen to Volunteer anybody, although even the Diggers are a better death than the likes of him deserve! And remember, if we kill him, he becomes a hero for them, a martyr."

  Now, Rockface was saying, "I'll bring them. The ones who will come."

  "No," said the Chief. "You will bring them all."

  A stinging backslap followed and a final gust of foul breath. "That's the spirit, hey? That's what I like to see! I'll have every one of them there even if I have to eat their arms for them."

  "Feast well," Stopmouth muttered.

  ***

  No Roofsweat fell tonight, for the hole created by the crashing Warship lay open above their heads, and tiny bright dots twinkled eerily in place of the reassuring grid of the tracklights.

  Other than guards and scouts, all of Stopmouth's people had gathered together in one place, just in front of the ruins of HeadQuarters. They perched on tumbled masonry, or leaned back against walls. They huddled in rival groups such as the one led by the madman, Dharam, who had killed the Roof and who now whispered and gesticulated amongst his followers.

  "They have a secret stash of food somewhere," Indrani said to her husband. "They're keeping Dharam alive with it. We should take it from him."

  "You're the one who won't let me Volunteer him!"

  "Yes, but there's nothing stopping you hurting him, though! You should break a leg to match his broken arm."

  Stopmouth shifted uncomfortably at the thought. Volunteering a man made sense, but to cripple him? He shook his head. Even so, yes, he already knew about the stash of food, and was counting on finding it.

  Stopmouth looked around the faces in the firelight. The Religious exiles of what he used to refer to as his "New Tribe" all sat together at the front, clustering around Kubar for the most part, or the grinning Yama in some cases. They were few now—no more than a hundred fit for the hunt. Yet, their spears had drunk deep; had bitten into squirming flesh. They had been through trials that the two thousand newly woken Ship People could not imagine.

  But there was no getting away from the fact that it was the soft newcomers who were the future of the Tribe. Knowing their precious machines must soon die, they had brought huge amounts of knowledge with them in flapping boxes known as books. They were the ones who would make food come up out of the ground; food that wouldn't even fight back, that would just lie there, waiting for the butchers... But all of that would only happen if Stopmouth could keep them alive.

  The Ship People hated him, though, most of them. He could feel it like a spear poised at his neck.

  He took a moment now to look over them, to gather the courage he still lacked sometimes when so many eyes rested on him.

  "Why have you kept us waiting here so long?" asked a woman too deep in the crowd to be identified.

  Kubar shouted back at her, "And what else would you have been doing tonight, you Godless whore?"

  "Enough!" cried Stopmouth. There'd already been several fights over the last few tens of days that had come close to killing people. "Sit, Kubar, please." He had expected better of the old priest.

  "Listen now!" continued the Chief, and when they still failed to settle down, he tried a fierce glare. As always, it surprised him to see how well it worked. But it saddened him that his people feared him so much. As if he would ever hurt them!

  He had grown since the days when he had first taken Indrani away from his brother's house. He had the strong limbs of a man, and while he would never be as muscular as Rockface, whenever he spoke to his old companion now, he found himself looking down into the hunter's creased brown eyes. The Ship People saw his growing strength as a threat. Well, so be it. He would use that if he had to.

  "We have new allies," he cried, "the Fourleggers. They have kept treaty with us since before my time in the Roof, and we can trust them to keep it now. They are fierce in the hunt and have excellent hearing, but their claws have not tasted blood lately. We need to feed them before they can be of help to us."

  Mutters rose from the crowd and it was only then Stopmouth realized how odd his statement had been. What would his original Tribe have thought if they could hear him now? Trying to persuade men and women he loved to risk their lives to save beasts from extinction? Wallbreaker had urged something similar for the Hairbeasts, but on that occasion, nobody had had to lift a spear for the creatures or Volunteer on their behalf. The idea made him dizzy.

  "Why should we give those monsters our rice?" shouted a Ship Person. "We don't even have enough to last us until our first harvest. And what if they can't eat rice anyway?"

  "Nobody wants your filthy rice!" Yama replied. "We want flesh! We want to kill it ourselves!" and his crowd of youngsters cheered.

  "Enough, Yama! Everybody, quiet! Quiet!" The glare again, pinning the crowd to the spot as surely as a spear. "I don't know if they can eat your rice, but there's not enough of it in any case."

  "How would you know that?" shouted the woman who had spoken before.

  Stopmouth ignored the question. "The fact is, we need flesh. There's no other way out of it. So, tomorrow at dawn, we will cross the hills and steal as much of it as we can from the fields of the Diggers."

  "We?" an outraged newcomer.

  "Everybody. We are all needed. The Fourleggers will kill the Digger victims for us. Then, with own brave hunters to guard us, every single person who can walk will carry joints of meat up over the hills and back down here."

  "—Disgusting!"

  "—I'm not touching... touching... meat!"

  "—I feel sick."

  "You have no choice," Stopmouth told them. The Seculars weren't listening, they stood to shout at him or to argue with each other or the Religious at the front. Nobody noticed the arrival of Rockface and little Tarini, who had saved him in the Roof. She winked at him, smiling with crooked teeth.

  Stopmouth smiled back. The presence of his two friends was enough to tell him that the secret stash of rice and other foods had been found. A small, loyal group would already be moving it elsewhere. Now, all he had to do was wait for the yelling to die down. Then, they would have to listen.

  But a voice whispered in his heart, they will hate you more than ever if you make them do this thing. And he knew it spoke the truth.

  CHAPTER 19: Ours to Kill

  The old and the lame stayed behind to make a show of guarding the children at HeadQuarters. Humans in ManWays had long ago learned that most of the beasts they fought had difficulty distinguishing a fighter from any other person. Then again, nobody back home lived long enough to have mor
e than a strand or two of grey in their hair. That would change now if the new crops worked. People wouldn't need to Volunteer at all, but would instead hang around, uselessly, getting weaker and weaker forever. It made no sense to the Chief that a hunter would want to live like that.

  Rockface felt the same and Stopmouth knew that if it weren't for the loving attentions of Sodasi and the pleadings of his Chief, the older man would long since have found a glorious end for himself.

  Well before dawn, the whole tribe moved out—nearly two thousand people. Stopmouth already regretted it as he watched his few experienced hunters roaming the edges of the great crowd, making targets of themselves with the torches they carried to guide the ungrateful newcomers.

  Stopmouth had no idea how to bring about peace between the two groups, and he knew in his marrow that many would die as a result of this failure.

  The human river passed along streets of rubble and moved through Slimer territory. The almost extinct creatures would not bother such a mass of well-guarded people. Or at least Stopmough hoped not! His plan was to get everybody to the hills by the time the sun passed over the hole in the Roof. The Diggers disliked its glare even more than Rooflight, so, with luck, his people and the Fourleggers could carry away a few hundred of the creatures' victims while they were still dreaming in their tunnels.

  "Hunger needs flesh?"

  He jumped and nearly stabbed the Fourlegger leader. "Yes," he said, heart thundering, as he cursed Vishwakarma and Yama. Not one of the scouts had spotted the Fourleggers, emerging silently from the last ruined houses along the road.

  "Ancestors watch you," he told his allies. "Are your sisters ready?"

  "Their weakness needs flesh," the creature told him.

  "You will feast tonight," he responded. "We all will."

  The creature didn't nod, but somehow—perhaps it was an effect of the Talker—he knew it was content.