Stone Spring

by Stephen Baxter

  Arga and the other children stood by, staring at the newcomers’ big heads. Lightning wouldn’t be kept away; he came sniffing around the strangers, butting their knees until they rewarded him with attention.

  The priest began to make his tea. He took a precious relic from his charm bag: a bowl made from the skull of a bear, brown with handling and polished with age. The visitors looked suitably impressed. Jurgi scooped up water from a wooden bowl and set it on the edge of the fire. Then he took dock and sage leaves, crumbled them in his fingers, and dropped them in the skull bowl.

  The blond snailhead man pointed to himself, and his companions. “Knuckle. Gut. Eyelid.” Their own name for themselves wasn’t, of course, “snailhead,” but something like “the One People.”

  The woman called Eyelid smiled and opened up her bundle of soft skin. The baby was sleeping, a thumb in her mouth. Her head from the brow up was tightly bound by plaited rope. She didn’t seem to be in any discomfort as her head grew within these bonds, shaped and elongated.

  Knuckle pointed at Eyelid’s baby. “Cheek. We camp.” He pointed down the river. “There.”

  Zesi asked, “How many?”

  The traders’ tongue was rich in words for numbers. There were over fifty snailheads, men, women and children, just out of sight of the Etxelur summer camp.

  This was shocking for the Etxelur folk to hear. The world was big, so big that you never had to share your favorite spaces with anybody else, save for happy meetings like the Giving. It was genuinely disconcerting to find fifty snailheads here, as if they had shown up in the heart of Etxelur itself.

  “We come here every year or two years,” Zesi said pointedly. “Our parents before us, and their parents before them.” Her meaning was clear. This is our place. “You?”

  Gut shrugged. “Never been here before. Plenty of room. Plenty of deer for you, for me.” He grinned. Ana saw that his tongue was pierced by a stone plug as fat as her thumb. “Don’t stay here long. Rest, feed, repair kit. Then move on.”

  Zesi asked, “Which way?”

  “North.”

  “That’s where we live,” the priest said. “Already we saw some of your people. A few moons ago. At a beach. It was strange to see snailheads except at a solstice gathering.”

  Knuckle shrugged.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Need somewhere new to live. We lived south. Beach. Far south . . . Many months of walking. A winter of walking.”

  Gall called over, “So what was wrong with it? Why aren’t you still there now?”

  “The sea. In the south, our beach. Sea shifts over land.” He mimed a sea’s waves, chunks of land falling into it. “Splash, splash, splash . . .”

  “So you couldn’t live there anymore,” the priest said.

  “We walk away. North, east, west.”

  “Where will you live?”

  “Where there isn’t people.”

  “Where will that be?”

  “We haven’t found that yet. We will,” said the man with a quiet confidence.

  “They are so strange,” Shade murmured to Ana in the Etxelur tongue. “Those heads . . . But you have met these people before.”

  “A few usually come to the Givers’ feast at midsummer. You know how it is. People travel a long way.”

  “But not fifty of them.”

  “Not fifty. And not to come to stay.”

  “I think I know of their homeland. Where he means, the far south.” Shade sketched with a fingertip in the dusty ground. “Albia here, Gaira here. Albia is nearly an island. But Albia and Gaira are joined by the Northland. A neck, like a bird’s head to its body . . .”

  She struggled to understand. “Oh.” She pointed to the bottom of his sketch. . “This is north. This is where Etxelur is. The coast.”

  . “Yes. We are here, a little way inland. But the snailheads come from the other side of the neck.” He pointed to the top of his sketch, the south. Here he had drawn the sea making a deep cut into the land. “There, a great river flows between cliffs of white chalk. The people live on the cliff tops. Maybe the sea is cutting away the cliffs.”

  “Can the sea do that?”

  He looked at her. “The sea drowned the flint beds mined by your ancestors.”

  “They can’t go home.” The thought horrified her. “But they can’t stay here.”

  Gut, the younger of the snailhead men, grinning, was watching them. “I hear,” he said, in the Etxelur tongue. He held thumb and forefinger a sand grain’s width apart. “A bit. ′Can’t stay here.’ ”

  The priest forced a smile. “We didn’t come here to argue. And nor did you. You have your camp, and we have ours. As to what the future holds, only our gods know that, and yours. But for today and tomorrow and the next day, yes, there is plenty of deer for all, and pig and aurochs, and fish in the river and birds in the air and reeds in the marshes.”

  Knuckle nodded, evidently a man as much intent on peace as the priest. “Yes. Well said. No need to fight, nothing to fight over.” Then a thought struck him. “Ah! We can share. Hunt together? Catch more that way. The One People are good at hunting deer.”

  Gall, looking over, his mouth still stained with blood, grinned dangerously. “Yes. We’ll hunt together. And I’ll show you snailheads how to do it properly.”

  Gut looked slyly at Ana and Zesi. “When we live on your beach we will need wives. I will need a wife.“ Mocking, he turned to Zesi and stuck out his pierced tongue. “Will you be my wife? You look strong. Good babies—”

  Gall lunged at him, but the priest saw it coming; he threw himself at Gall and blocked him. He said urgently in the Etxelur tongue, “Beat him at hunting. That’s how you win.”

  Gall, breathing hard, eyes bulging, backed off. “At the hunt, then.”

  Gut showed his studded tongue again. He hadn’t so much as flinched.

  “Good,” said the priest. “Now—who wants some dock tea?”

  19

  The hunters were up early the next morning, before the glow of the night’s fire had been conquered by the gathering light of dawn.

  Ana pushed her head out of the lean-to she shared with Arga. She could make out hunters from the snailhead camp, already waiting by the bend of the river that separated the two camps. Closer by, Shade was pressing his spear point against the ground to test the rope-and-resin attachment of the head to its wooden shaft. Gall was by the urine pit, noisily emptying his bladder over the deerskin. And Zesi was at the edge of the hearth, scooping up gray ash and rubbing it over her face and arms, the better to hide in the shadows of the forest. The snailheads had been surprised that Etxelur women hunted.

  When they were ready, bearing their day packs and their weapons, the Pretani, Zesi and a handful of Etxelur folk walked up the riverbank to join the snailheads. The hunters had a soft-voiced discussion about the day’s strategy, and then they slipped into the shadows of the trees.

  Ana could have gone along. She had chosen not to; a day without Gall, Shade or Zesi would be a relief. She went back to the warmth of her pallet of leaves and soft doeskin, to sleep a bit more.

  She heard nothing more of the hunters until the sun was past its noon height.

  “Look out!”

  The single cry in the Etxelur tongue was all the warning they had.

  The women from Etxelur had been burning off reeds from the marshy land around the river. A pall of smoke rose high into the air, and the smell of ash was strong. The fire flushed out hare and vole and wildfowl that the children chased with nets of woven bark, and the burning would stimulate new growth.

  Meanwhile Ana was on the bank of the lagoon with Arga, collecting club rushes. These were particularly prized plants, for you could eat all of them, their stems and seeds and fat tubers, and would be useful to carry back to Etxelur. Lightning had been digging his nose into their work and running off with tubers, to scoldings from Arga.

  When that shout came Lightning reacted immediately, turning to face the forest and barking
madly.

  And Ana heard a rumble, like thunder, coming from the forest.

  Arga tugged her sleeve. “I can feel it in my stomach. What is it?”

  Ana saw shadows in the forest. Heard branches cracking. “Run!” She dropped her flint blade and basket of rushes. She grabbed Lightning by the scruff of his neck, took Arga’s hand, and ran downstream, along the eroded bank.

  The animal came crashing through the trees, hooves pounding on the peaty turf, gruffly bellowing its pain. Ana dared to glance back, and she saw it emerge into the sunlight, a huge aurochs bull, thick brown hair, flashing horns, wild rolling eyes, frothing mouth. And she saw a spear dangling from its flanks. The question was, which genius had stampeded it toward the camp?

  Then the animal reached the river—the lagoon, where she and Arga had been working only heartbeats before. It crashed forward and fell, landing so hard its head was twisted right around, with a crunch like breaking wood. It struggled and bellowed, but did not rise.

  Now the hunters came boiling out of the trees after it, yelling, half-naked, some brandishing spears, Etxelur, Pretani, snailhead together.

  “Come on.” The priest was beside Ana. He handed her a spear; she took it by the shaft. “We’ll help them finish him off.”

  She glanced around quickly. The children were out of harm’s way here. “Keep hold of Lightning,” she told Arga. The child nodded seriously. Then Ana ran with the priest to the lagoon. “You’ll have a lot of apologizing to do today, Jurgi.”

  “I’m good at that.”

  The hunters and those who had come running from both camps gathered around the fallen bull. The animal, trapped, squirming, was a mass of muscle and fur, tossed horns and lashing hooves, anger and pain and mud and blood and flying water. Ana could smell how its bowels had loosened in terror, and there was a harder rust stink of blood. More spears were hurled at it, or thrust into its flesh.

  Then one spear went flying over the lagoon, high in the air, following a smooth arc. Ana watched it curiously, absently. It was going to miss the bull by a long way. The spear seemed to hang.

  Then it fell among the snailheads.

  A man went down, the heavy spear in his neck. Few saw this, in the chaos of the slaughter. But those near the man reacted and ran that way.

  Ana dropped her own spear and hurried over.

  It was Gut, the snailhead who had enraged Gall. The spear had got him in the throat, thrown him back and pinned him to the ground. His mouth with that studded tongue gaped wide, full of blood. He was still alive, his fingers feebly thrashing at a spear big enough to penetrate to the heart of a bull aurochs. Alive, but already lost to the world of the living.

  Knuckle stood over his brother, face contorted, veins throbbing along the flanks of his long temples. “Where is Gall? Where is he?”

  20

  Novu and Chona rounded a bluff and looked down on a valley. Under a gray lid of sky it was raining, and their cloaks and tunics were sodden through.

  “There,” Chona gasped. The rain hissed on the grass and pattered on the river water, and Novu found it hard to hear what Chona was saying. “There! By the river—that place. That’s where we meet. That’s where . . . Come on.” He limped forward, and Novu, laden with their packs, followed.

  The river ran over a rocky bed, beside a broad flood plain walled by cliffs of limestone. They had followed the river upstream for so long, they had come so far west, that it was barely recognizable to Novu as the huge waterway they had followed from its estuary, through the Narrow of the fish-people, and across the Continent’s rocky heart. Yet here it was, the same river.

  And here, Novu knew, Chona had been hoping to find his early-summer gathering of traders, for this place was, uniquely, near the head of several of the great rivers that traversed the Continent, a meeting point of the traders’ natural routes. “Always at this time,” he would say, “after the equinox, that’s when the trading is good. Later, at midsummer, all over the Continent the hunters and fishers gather, doling out food and gifts to each other. So this is the time to catch their leaders, early summer, when the big men start panicking about what gifts they have to give. Oh, the aurochs too fast for you this year? The deer too cunning, the fish too slippery? Shame. Maybe your wife’s brothers would be happy with my bits of colored stone instead . . .” Even traders followed the seasons, Novu was learning, from Chona’s increasingly broken talk.

  Chona had been desperate to get here. No matter how ill he became, no matter the cough, the pale, blotchy, sweating skin, the feverish broken sleep at night, Chona insisted on pressing on every day, leaning on his staff and on Novu’s shoulder. But for days Chona had been watching the sun’s arc in the sky, muttering, “Late. Too late.”

  And in the end the illness had slowed Chona down, just enough.

  This rainy day the broad plain by the river was all but empty. You could see how the ground had been churned up by many feet, and old hearths lay like black scars on the ground. People had been here, a crowd of them. But now only a couple of houses remained, in the lee of the limestone cliffs, and one of those looked abandoned.

  “Too late,” Chona said. “I told you!” He raised his hand and clipped Novu’s head; he was weaker than he used to be, but it still stung.

  Novu bore this without complaint. “It wasn’t my fault. You’re the ill one. So what now, shall we stand here in the rain?”

  “Help me.” A trail, well worn, led from this elevated place to the edge of the water. Chona led the way, though he reached back for support from Novu. “That house, that one there. With the smoke, and the boat beside it. I think I recognize the design on it, the sunburst on the skins . . .”

  They reached the flood plain and limped across muddy grass. Their legs brushed thistles, all that had survived the passage of the traders.

  The owner of the house was a big, bluff man who came out and watched their approach, suspiciously.

  “Loga!” Chona called, in the traders’ tongue. “Loga . . . It’s good to see you, my friend.”

  Loga wore a coat sewn together from the black and white pelts of many small animals. “Chona. You look like shit.”

  Chona stood gasping, his eyes concealed by his hood, the rain dripping from his long nose. “We’re soaked. If I can come in—”

  “Who’s this?” Loga stared at Novu. “Son?”

  “No.” Chona laughed, but it turned into a cough. “No, no. Trade goods, that’s all. Hard worker, good walker, and if you want bricks making . . . Oh, what’s the word for ′brick’? Never mind, never mind. Loga, if I can just come in and dry off—”

  Loga held up a massive hand. “No. Wife in there, and other wife. Kids. Baby.”

  “All right. But look, man—old friend—you can see how I am—this rain will kill me—”

  “Cave.” Loga jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the limestone cliffs. Novu saw clefts, vertical, almost like doorways set in the cliff, leading to dark interiors. “Dry in there. Warm. No bear. We chase out bear. Maybe bear shit. Burn on fire.” Loga grinned. “Sorry. Wife. Other wife. Baby. Get warm, clean up, we talk.” And he ducked back into his house, sealing shut the skin cover behind him.

  It was always this way now. Nobody wanted a sick man near their children.

  So Novu led Chona through a cleft in the cliff wall, and into a kind of passageway. It was dark, and Novu wished he had a torch, but the walking was easy, the floor beaten flat by footprints, and the walls were smooth. People had evidently used this passage before.

  After a dozen paces the walls opened out to reveal a larger space, a flat floor scarred by old hearths.

  “This will do.” Chona slumped to the floor and leaned against a wall. “Make a fire. Then food . . . Oh, my bones.” He closed his eyes and seemed to sleep immediately.

  Novu opened up their packs and spread out their skins. Then he looked around the cave. He picked one of the old hearths to build his fire. He found a little wood piled up at the back of the cave, which he collected, a
nd hard round blocks that might be bear turds; he decided to try burning them later. Before it was dark, he would go back out and collect more wood, and bring it in here to dry out.

  He dug out the day’s ember, and soon the wood was burning brightly. He got out some dried fish for Chona, and fetched him a bowl of rainwater.

  The trader’s appetite had been poor for days, but he forced himself to chew. “Here we are at the heart of the Continent. The beating heart, where rivers like veins flow with trade. And I missed the traders’ gathering! I missed it. First time in years. Ten years. More.”

  “You’ve spent ten years as a trader?”

  “More than that. My father traded. He showed me the way it works. I walked with him. The way you’re walking with me, I suppose. Loga thought you were my son! What a laugh.”

  “You don’t have a son of your own.”

  “No family. No wife. Or a hundred wives.” He cackled, and made a pumping gesture with his crotch. “The trading, that’s everything to me. I saw how my father slowed down when he had his family; it ties you down like a tethered goat. Not for me.”

  “Where did you come from? I mean originally.”

  “Nowhere you’d know. Nowhere at all.” He spat a bit of fish in the vague direction of the fire, and missed. “Shut up, boy, you’re annoying me.”

  Novu brought him another bowl of water. But when he returned the trader had slumped back to sleep, and was snoring loudly.

  Left alone, Novu, restless, bored, wandered around the cave. Odd pillar-like formations stood on the floor, and when Novu looked up he could see more pillars dangling from the roof, glistening, damp.

  And at the back of the cave more clefts led off, presumably to more hollows deeper inside the rock.

  Novu made a torch of a bit of pine branch wrapped tightly with dried reeds. He lit this in the fire, and returned to the back of the cave. He counted four, five, six clefts running off from this chamber, gaps wide enough for him to squeeze through. He picked one and pushed his way in. It was just a little wider than his shoulders, the walls rising above his head.