Firesong

by William Nicholson

  Now in full silence all the klin watched, as he passed the three-quarter line, smashed and lashed but never brought down. Now he was past the white cloth marker, which was the furthest any of the others had got, and still he did not fall. Now the blows fell harder, and he staggered and tottered, but the big men with their clubs and their whips could not bring him down. Barra, father of the klin, stood at the far end, watching with his hard eyes, and the young man came nearer and nearer.

  Why? thought Kestrel, as spellbound as the rest. Why take so much punishment? No bride is worth so much pain. And as she thought it, she knew, as everyone watching knew, that this was nothing to do with the brides, or even the klin. This, she said to herself, is a young man who chooses pain. He refuses to fall to his knees because he does not want his suffering to end.

  On he strode, and now the entire klin knew he was going to the very end. Barra slowly opened wide his arms. The blindfolded boy, beaten and broken and barely conscious, walked on across the end line and into the klin father’s embrace.

  There he fell, and for a few moments it seemed he had paid the price for his foolhardy glory. Then Barra looked up and said,

  ‘Aya! Honour him!’ He barked out the klin’s cry. ‘Aya! Aya! He is the first to walk the storm to the end!’

  Men and women, young and old, joined him, calling together, stamping the deck and beating their hands in time to the cry.

  ‘Aya! Aya! Aya!’

  Ashar Warmish, the blue bride colour in her hands, looked uncertainly towards Madriel. The klin mother beckoned her, took her hand and led her herself to lay the blue ribbon at the victor’s feet. He was stirring now, finding the strength to hold his own weight.

  ‘See to his wounds,’ Barra said to his wife.

  Madriel took the young man’s arm, holding it gently, and herself unwound the long scarf that covered his head. As it came off, the onlookers saw that his face was disfigured and bright with blood. His nose had been crushed. One eye was swollen shut. One cheek was livid with a long dark bruise. But through the blood and the wounds, Kestrel still knew him, the minute the scarf came off.

  It was Rufy Blesh.

  She turned and saw that all the Manth girls were staring at him: Sarel and Seer, Red and Ashar. Only Sisi didn’t know him.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He’s Manth, like us. His name’s Rufy Blesh.’ Kestrel spoke very low, so that they would not be overheard. ‘When we were slaves of the Mastery, he ran away in the night. Twenty of our people were burned alive.’

  ‘Because of him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he know they’d do that?’

  ‘He knew.’

  Sisi turned her beautiful eyes back to look at Rufy Blesh. He was standing unaided now, his face still a mask of blood, looking towards them. His one open eye was glazed, as if he looked but did not see. Kestrel understood that look. He was saying, Here I am, do what you want with me, I no longer care.

  Barra, the klin father, raised his hands above his head and clapped for silence and attention.

  ‘Stand by your colours!’

  The young men, moving awkwardly, some limping, some clutching their bruised arms, came forward, and each stood by his coloured marker where it lay on the deck.

  ‘Make your choice!’

  No one moved. All eyes were on Rufy Blesh. As the one who had endured the longest, he had the right to choose first. But he seemed not to know it.

  The klin father nodded to him.

  ‘The honour is yours.’

  Rufy Blesh took up his colour, and stepped slowly across the intervening space to the line of Manth girls. He held the blue fabric strip in one hand. It was already stained with the blood that his hand had wiped from his battered face. Kestrel, watching in horror and pity, wondered that he could see to walk at all, through the mess of split flesh and drying blood.

  He came to a stop a few paces away from them, and his head turned this way and that, so that everyone thought he was studying the brides, making his choice. But then, abruptly, he let his colour fall from his hand to the deck, and walked off.

  He had chosen none of them.

  Kestrel released her breath: not having realised until then that she had been holding it. Barra frowned. But already the young man who had placed second in the test was stepping forward, his white colour in his hand. He headed straight for Sisi, just as the klin mother had predicted, and laid his colour at her feet. Sisi looked at it, and then raising her elegant head, she looked away to one side.

  ‘Take it,’ said Madriel. ‘Undo the knot, and tie it round your neck.’

  Sisi pretended she hadn’t heard. The third young man was limping towards them. He laid his colour before Sarel Amos. Kestrel found herself both relieved and irritated not to be chosen.

  ‘Take the bride colour,’ said Madriel to Sisi again, ‘or be cast out of the klin.’

  ‘Do as she says, Sisi,’ whispered Kestrel. ‘It means nothing.’

  Sisi took the strip of cloth then, and with her slender fingers she loosed the knot, and drew it round her neck, and tied it at her throat. As she did this, she kept her gaze averted, looking far away to one side, as if it was someone else who was fixing onto her this shameful neckband, and she knew nothing about it.

  Kestrel was chosen fourth. She glared furiously at the boy as he approached, hoping to make him change his mind, but he just grinned back at her. He was little and young, younger than her, she was sure, and had big sticky-out ears, and hobbled as he walked. Kestrel seethed and burned with humiliation as he laid his miserable colour before her. Pink-and-blue check! Even his colour was childish. To be chosen by a stranger was bad enough, but to be chosen fourth, and by a flap-eared baby, was unendurable. For a moment she was even angry with Rufy Blesh for not making a choice. He would have picked her, she was sure of it. They had known each other all their lives.

  With trembling fingers, she tied the odious pink-and-blue ribbon round her neck. Not much longer, she told herself. Closing her eyes, she reached out with her mind.

  Bo! Can you hear me?

  There was no answer. He would be searching for them, she knew. So would Mumpo, and the others. It was just a matter of time.

  Now the klin mother was beckoning them all to rise and follow her. The choices had been made, each bride had her neckband in place.

  ‘The men will rest after the trial,’ said Madriel. ‘You will wash yourselves. At sundown the klin will eat, and you will each serve your new husband with his meat and drink. At last light your husbands will lead you across the water to the huts they have built for you, and there you will stay with them. That is the way of the klin.’

  As she heard this, Kestrel looked up at the sky above. The winter sun was descending. The shadow on the eastern wall was rising. Last light was approaching fast.

  Bo, she called, my brother, are you coming? Come soon! Come soon!

  5

  The winner chooses a bride

  Bowman loped steadily along the edge of the great fissure, followed by Mumpo, Miller Marish, Tanner Amos, Lolo Mimilith, the Shim brothers, and Mist the cat. The young men carried such weapons as they had: short swords, knives, lengths of timber from the wagon bed. No one noticed the cat.

  The fissure ran east-west. They were moving west, towards the sun as it sank in the white cloud-hazed sky. In every direction the rocky plains stretched away, unmarked except by the maze of cracks that broke the surface every few yards. Mostly the cracks were narrow enough to jump: but this great chasm was twenty feet across and widening all the time, and the stream they could hear rushing along its floor was deeper still. Bowman’s acute senses told him that his sister and the others had been taken north, but until they found a way to cross the great fissure, they were being forced ever farther westward, and the trail was growing cold.

  ‘We must go down into the cracks,’ said Tanner Amos. ‘It’s the only way.’

  ‘We’ll get lost.’ Bowman shook his head. ‘Look how the cracks twist
and turn. We’d lose all sense of direction. Even if we found them, how would we ever find our way back?’

  He turned and strained his eyes to the south-east, to see if the flag was still in sight. The main body of the Manth marchers had made camp for the night in the dry river valley. They had erected a home-made flag on a pole raised on the western ridge, so that the search party could find their way back to them. The flag, a long band of fine white silk, flew bravely in the distance, catching the light of the descending sun.

  Mumpo looked west, along the edge of the fissure, following its erratic path towards the distant mountains.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll ever cross it,’ he said. ‘I think this is Crack-in-the-land.’

  Bowman had had the same thought, but he had kept it to himself, not wanting to dismay the others. He and Kestrel and Mumpo had met Crack-in-the-land many years ago, and had crossed it, but then there had been a bridge. That great chasm had been far away to the northwest, and near the foot of the mountains, but it was possible this crack was its younger self, or a tributary crack, carrying its waters to the distant ocean.

  He came to a stop. Back some way to the east they had passed another fissure, with crumbled sloping sides, that led into the greater crack. They had noted at the time that if need be they could climb down there, and enter the maze of passages the bandits had called the labyrinth. Should they go back?

  ‘If only one of us could stay on the surface, to act as our guide.’

  Bowman was thinking aloud: but it was impossible. No one following on the surface could go where they went, down in the labyrinth. There were too many cracks that were too wide to jump.

  ‘Well, here’s how it seems to me,’ said Mumpo. He spoke slowly, as he always did, and quietly, not much expecting others to listen. ‘If we go on the way we’re going, we’ll never cross the great crack. So that’s no good. If we give up and go back to the camp, we’ve lost them for ever, and that’s no good. But if we go down into the cracks, we’ve got a chance.’

  Mumpo didn’t say to the others that he would go on searching, whatever decision they reached. He would go into the labyrinth, into the depths of the earth, by day and by night, for as long as he lived, until he found Kestrel. And when I find her, he said to himself, I’ll kill the men who took her away.

  This was not an idle boast. Mumpo knew how to kill. They had taught him that when he was a slave in the Mastery.

  Bowman did not share Mumpo’s simple view of the choice that faced them.

  ‘Think what my father would say. We’ve lost our young women. Are we to lose our young men as well?’

  A silence fell. Then they heard a low mew. Mist had decided his time had come.

  ‘Mist! How did you get here?’

  ‘How do you think I got here?’

  Bowman heard the cat’s irritated answer, but of course the others heard nothing. All they saw was that the cat had approached Bowman, and was now sitting down by his feet.

  ‘It must have followed us,’ said Miller Marish. ‘That cat is devoted to you, Bowman.’

  Mist gave Miller Marish a look of withering contempt, and turned back to Bowman.

  ‘It’s just as well for you I came,’ he told Bowman. ‘You go into the cracks below. I’ll follow, and guide you from the ground above.’

  ‘But Mist, you won’t be able to follow us. The cracks are too wide for you to jump.’

  ‘Too wide to jump. Not too wide to fly.’

  The others waited, hearing none of this, but aware that some sort of communication was taking place.

  ‘Look at its face!’ said Rollo Shim. ‘You’d think it was talking!’

  ‘We’re losing time,’ said Tanner Amos.

  Bowman stroked the cat’s back.

  ‘Oh, Mist. You know you can’t really fly.’

  Mist rose up, offended.

  ‘So what did you think? I was making it up to impress you? Why would I want to impress you? I’m not a kitten.’

  He stalked away.

  ‘Do we go on?’ said Bek Shim. ‘Or do we go back?’

  ‘We go back,’ said Bowman. ‘When we reach the slope down into the labyrinth, we’ll decide whether to take it or not.’

  So they turned about and jogged back east, at a steady trot. The cat followed some way behind, to indicate that he was not part of their group, but just happened to be heading in the same direction.

  ‘I’ll show them,’ he said to himself as he bounded along. ‘I’ll show them.’

  When they arrived at the crack with the crumbled side they stopped once more. As the others rested and got their breath back, Bowman reached out with all his senses for some indicator of which way Kestrel had been taken. He called to her, with little hope of an answer; and none came. By now she would be too far away. But the path she had taken still held the fast-fading print of her passing.

  ‘I can feel her,’ he said.

  ‘Then we go after her,’ said Mumpo.

  ‘But Mumpo, even if we find her, even if we rescue her and the others, how do we get back? It’s already dark down there. And my feeling won’t reach far enough to get us back.’

  There came a sudden pattering sound, and Mist appeared behind them, running at great speed. He raced over the ground to the edge of the crack, and there sprang into the air. Up he went, in a long high curve, at the height of which they saw him start to paddle with all four legs, exactly as if he was swimming: and astonishingly, instead of dropping down again, he sailed horizontally onwards, until, in a second gentle curve, he dropped down to the ground on the further side.

  ‘How did he do that!’ exclaimed Rollo Shim.

  ‘He flew,’ said Bowman.

  Mist turned himself round on the far side of the wide fissure and looked back at Bowman.

  ‘So, boy. It seems you don’t know everything after all.’

  ‘Can you do it again?’

  ‘As often as you want. Once you have the knack, you don’t lose it.’

  ‘Then follow us, Mist!’

  To the others, he said,

  ‘Let’s go! The cat will guide us back!’

  Without further talk, the band of young men slithered their way down the sloping side of the fissure, and into the labyrinth.

  The Barra klin held the marriage feast round the biggest of the fires, which was built on the middle jetty. Here the six Manth brides were allotted places in a circle, with the leaping flames between them and the icy water behind. Each was given a plate of food and a cup of sweetened water, not for themselves, but for their husbands; who were in the bachelor hut, cleaning themselves for the bridal night.

  Kestrel watched the light fade in the sky high above, and knew that time was running out. Somehow they must delay the process long enough for her brother to find them. But even then, when he did at last come close enough for them to communicate, how were they to escape?

  She studied the river rift again, as she had already done a dozen times, searching for a way out. Again she concluded, as she had done each time before, that there was no way to climb those sheer towering walls; that the icy rapids of the river would indeed kill them; and that the only way either in or out was the timber-propped tunnel at the top of the flight of rock-hewn steps. The klin had chosen their refuge well. Any attackers would be forced to enter singly, and would then have to descend the exposed rock steps, where they would present an easy target for the deadly slingshots. She saw the watchman standing on the high shelf by the tunnel door, and knew that this one small entrance would be guarded night and day.

  How many would Bowman bring with him? Four? Five? There was no way that they could mount a successful attack on so well protected a fortress. Nor did she see how they, the captives, could escape unnoticed. The people of the klin would sleep soon. But their almost-husbands, lying with them in those tiny bridal huts, would feel them and hear them, if they attempted to creep away in the night.

  Her thoughts broke off. The young men were coming now, filing out of the bachelor hut wi
th their coloured bands on their arms. Each one sought out his bride, identified by the matching colour of her neckband, and took his place by her side in the firelight. The older people, the fathers and mothers of the klin, now followed; and the feast began.

  It was humble enough. The Barra klin lived a hard spare life, with enough food for survival, and little more. There were no songs or stories, and little laughter. The Manth brides had no reason to celebrate either. They shrank back from the husbands seated cross-legged on the deck beside them, did as they were told, and avoided all closer contact. Kestrel could feel the boy with sticky-out ears gazing at her, and she had to exert all her self-control not to smash the plate of food into his face. But now was not the time for an outburst.

  The older people started to drum on the deck with their feet.

  ‘Aya! Aya! Aya!’

  They were greeting the appearance of the honoured champion of the day’s ordeal, Rufy Blesh. He nodded stiffly to acknowledge the greeting, and sat down on the boards alone. He had been cleaned up, but his injured face was still distressing to look on. Kestrel watched him closely: and at last found a plan forming, that might give them a hope of escape.

  The klin mother was watching the new brides, guiding and correcting them in the proper manner of serving their menfolk.

  ‘The wife feeds the husband before she eats herself,’ she said. ‘The wife gives the husband to drink before she drinks herself. That is the way of the klin.’

  ‘Who is to feed the one who sits alone?’ asked Kestrel. Her question was met with silence. ‘He suffered the most. He proved himself to be the strongest. Where is his bride?’