The Standing Dead (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon)

by Ricardo Pinto

  ‘Were we victorious?’ a childish voice asked suddenly.

  It was Galewing who answered: ‘We were routed. They were ready for us. They were too many.’

  ‘Even the Skyfather fought against us,’ someone said, his tone incredulous, recalling the rain that had flung its needles at their faces.

  ‘Are we safe now?’ pleaded a boy.

  Over Fern’s shoulder Carnelian scanned the darkness for their enemy.

  ‘They’ll begin their hunt for us with the morning light,’ said Galewing.

  ‘We must flee,’ said Loskai.

  ‘We can’t.’ It was Ravan. ‘Too many of us are wounded. We’ve lost too many aquar. Even if some of us escaped, do you think they’d be enough to defend the Tribe against the revenge of the Bluedancing? We must wait here until dawn.’

  Groans were the only answer.

  ‘No, it’s best we wait,’ said Ravan, insistently. ‘If we can get some sleep then at least we might be able to sell our lives dearly.’

  ‘They might spare us,’ said Crowrane.

  ‘Would you beg them for mercy? Would we have given any if our situations were reversed?’

  Fern disengaged himself gently from Carnelian. ‘They’ll show mercy, Ravan. We’re all Plainsmen. No tribe has ever destroyed another.’

  ‘Go and tell that to the hearthkin of those we killed and maimed,’ said Ravan. ‘They’ll show no mercy. We must make an end of it here. At least the sons and daughters of the Tribe might live. The Bluedancing might adopt them to swell their strength. The most we can do is to make sure our people don’t remember us with shame.’

  Sobbing broke out here and there. Carnelian despaired for Poppy. She had lost so much already. At that moment something like the moon came out from the clouds and, drifting towards them, resolved into a ghostly face.

  Carnelian felt a violent shudder against his leg.

  ‘The Master,’ gasped several voices.

  Carnelian saw it was Osidian who stood before them, personifying the darkness. He spoke.

  ‘In my right hand I hold defeat: in my left, victory. Which will you have me open?’

  As Ravan translated Osidian’s words, even through his relief, Carnelian was overwhelmed by a sickening foreboding, for the Wise taught that the left was the hand of darkness.

  THE BLUEDANCING

  The most elegant system of domination is one in which the dominated

  are unaware of their state: they believe the world has always been and

  always will be as they know it; that the order under which they toil is as

  immutable, as unassailable as the sky.

  War is a clumsy means of enforcing such dominion. Not only is it costly

  and wasteful of resources, but it is difficult to control and subject to

  catastrophic and unforeseeable changes of fortune.

  Famine is a surer tool of statecraft, with the crucial proviso that it must

  be seen to arise naturally from the land. Hunger will keep not only the

  body, but the mind in chains.

  (from a treatise on statecraft compiled in beadcord by the Wise of the Domain Lands)

  AT FIRST LIGHT, OSIDIAN LED THEM TO THE EDGE OF A LAGOON. HE spent time surveying the ground and eventually settled them on a ridge on the shore. After a brief conference with Carnelian, he rode out across the dried-up bed with the better half of the warband: he had chosen only the unwounded and, of those, predominantly the young. Ravan went as interpreter. Galewing had volunteered to go to represent the Elders. Krow had chosen to stay behind. That Osidian had not objected to this made Carnelian suspicious that the youth had been left as a spy.

  Standing on the shore with the rain flying in his face, Carnelian watched the riders fade into the grey south among gentle hills that would soon become islands. He had been left with clear instructions, delivered by Osidian as if they were strangers. By using Quya, Osidian had ensured that only Carnelian could be aware of his plan. Carnelian had had to obey him. If he had refused to command the men left behind, Osidian had said he would abandon them all to the revenge of the Bluedancing.

  Carnelian could feel his men staring at his back. He leaned close to Fern. ‘Will you be my second?’

  Fern grimaced. ‘The Elders will like taking orders from me even less than from you.’

  Carnelian yearned to rid himself of the burden of command. He forced himself to look round. The Ochre remaining were massed on the ridge, sunk into their saddle-chairs, miserable in the downpour, many wounded, all disheartened, every one of them older than him. Their eyes accused him.

  Carnelian turned back. ‘If that’s how they feel, then they shouldn’t have agreed to follow the Master in the first place.’

  ‘What options did we have?’ said Fern.

  ‘Do you believe I’m less trapped than you?’

  ‘Have you more experience of war than the veterans?’

  ‘You know perfectly well I don’t, though I’d question how much experience they have of fighting on foot.’

  Fern had no answer to that. He smiled winningly. ‘Things are as they are, Carnie, but you know you can count on me.’

  Carnelian had them all dismount. The kneeling aquar were hobbled to ensure they could not wander away. He oversaw the removal of their saddle-chairs. The Plainsmen looked at him as if he were mad when he asked them to pile the chairs in a heap. Discontent turned to outrage when he told them to set the heap alight.

  ‘Do you want to bring the Bluedancing down on us?’ said Crowrane.

  ‘That’s exactly what I want.’

  Carnelian’s answer produced incredulous consternation.

  ‘All of them?’ said Loskai, scowling.

  ‘If we’re on foot, they’ll ride us down,’ said Crowrane.

  ‘That’s what the Master hopes they’ll think. You saw how carefully he chose this site? He knows what he’s doing.’

  Krow was nodding.

  ‘How do you imagine we’re going to be able to ride home without our saddle-chairs?’ demanded Kyte.

  ‘Let’s worry about that when we’re victorious,’ said Carnelian.

  The Plainsmen fell silent as the desperate reality of the situation soaked into them.

  ‘The moment they see us, the Bluedancing will know only half of us are here,’ said Fern.

  Carnelian was relieved that they were beginning to move along the path of argument Osidian had predicted. ‘Knowing that, what do you think the Bluedancing will imagine is the reason we’re making all this smoke?’

  He was answered with many frowns.

  Understanding came over Fern’s face. ‘A signal. They can’t know how many of us attacked them last night. They’ll assume we’re signalling the Tribe to send the rest of our men.’

  Fern looked out across the lagoon bed in the direction Osidian had ridden. ‘The Master will come at them from an unexpected direction.’

  As Carnelian gave a nod, he saw a tinge of confidence dawning in the faces around him.

  Loskai, alone, retained his scowl. ‘How can we hope to stand for long enough against four times our strength?’

  Carnelian had been primed to answer that too. ‘How do the earthers fend off raveners?’

  Carnelian formed them up in ranks along the ridge in a dense formation they all understood was an imitation of an earther hornwall. He distributed the veterans along the front and put himself at the extreme right with Fern at his side. Each man was armed with a spear and a shield improvised from the wicker backs of the saddlechairs. Looking down the line, Carnelian almost winced at how flimsy their hornwall looked. He caught one of the men looking at him, eyes red from fear and lack of sleep, and forced fierce resolve into his face.

  He squatted down on his haunches, calling out, ‘We might as well relax while we wait.’ The movement rippled all the way down the line.

  ‘Does anyone know a good song?’ Carnelian asked. It was Krow who began a ballad which told of the love between the Earth and Sky. Raggedly othe
rs began joining in. The smoke from the saddlechair pyre was being driven back over the aquar that lay like a field of boulders protecting their backs. Carnelian felt the flanks of the hornwall were too exposed and curved them back a little. He went over and over in his mind how Osidian had said the battle would go. His wounded forearm itched. He gazed out over the lagoon, squinting through another volley of rain, his heart racing every time he thought he saw the Bluedancing.

  Carnelian was the first to spot them marching across the lagoon bed. He rose on to shaky legs and the rest of his men followed his lead. The Bluedancing were advancing towards them in a rabble.

  ‘They can’t have seen us yet,’ Fern said in a low voice, as if he feared they might hear him.

  Carnelian nodded, wishing the rain was not slanting into his eyes. He turned to survey his men and his heart faltered, seeing how few they were. He forced a grin.

  ‘The Tribe will sing with pride of this day.’

  Some answered him with watery smiles, others stared unblinking at the approaching enemy.

  Faint cries confirmed the Bluedancing had seen them. Their front widened, then broke into a charge.

  ‘Make ready!’ Carnelian cried.

  They locked their makeshift shields together as best they could and thrust their spears over the top, holding them in their fists, leaning their hafts on their shoulders as Carnelian had shown them. The spear points made their front a hedge of thorns, but Carnelian still felt desperately exposed on his unshielded right.

  As the Bluedancing crashed towards them, Carnelian scoured the vast grey spaces of the plain but Osidian was nowhere to be seen. Fear of abandonment and death rose up into his throat. He slowed his breath, focused his mind on the play of rain on his skin. His was the command; his the heart that must strengthen them. He denied his fear its hold on him, then reached round to take Fern’s shoulder.

  ‘The Master will not fail us,’ he said. ‘Pass it on.’

  Fern smiled grimly and sent the message along the hornwall. Carnelian saw how they gripped their spears more tightly. He locked eyes with Fern and they smiled fiercely at each other. When Carnelian looked out across the lagoon bed he saw rolling towards them a storm of threshing mud that far out-flanked their hornwall on either side. The blackened faces of the Bluedancing were holed by the red of their screaming mouths. Their hair flickered black haloes round their heads. Their ululating warcries were swelling louder. The percussion of clawed aquar feet set the ground trembling, flinging earth up in all directions.

  Around Carnelian the spear hedge bristled. The odour of their attackers washed over him. He felt more than saw the hornwall around him softening. He felt the Ochre on the verge of running from the screaming tidal wave rushing at them.

  ‘Steady,’ cried Carnelian in a long-drawn-out tone. Then, almost as if he had commanded it, the charge broke before them. Osidian had seen that there marshy ground formed a trough along the shore. Aquar screamed as their legs buckled and they tumbled forward. The whole front shivered and broke and his vision was filled with the twisting necks of aquar, eye-quills flaring like hands to stop their fall, the looks of dismay as their riders were sucked down into the collapse. In front of Carnelian, an aquar twisted, falling before the feet of another who tried to leap it, failed, and the two became entangled, rolling in a turmoil of thrashing legs, saurian screeching and then the death cries of their riders as they were folded into the mangling, threshing mass.

  Some of the riders made it through the soft ground to crash their aquar into the Ochre’s wavering front. The spears of the hornwall impaled one beast: others waded in, snake necks writhing with splayed plumes. The air was filled with a splintering of spears. In a nest of these a blue-painted man fallen from his saddle-chair was thrashing around him with a stone axe, but was quickly cut down by a dozen, fevered blows. Another man was hurled forward as his aquar fell. He struck the shieldwall like a boulder, rolling right through their ranks where he was set upon and butchered.

  Carnelian bellowed at his men that they must heal the breaches in the hornwall. In the corner of his eye he was aware of Bluedancing rising from the wreckage of their charge. They threw back their hair and snarled. Still they far out-numbered the Ochre. Avoiding the death-kicks of the aquar, they came on at a lope in twos and threes. Some who had lost their weapons tore shards of splintered wood from the saddle-chairs that were sinking into the soft mud. Those who had to clamber over the debris to get at the Ochre hissed curdling promises of what they would do when they reached them. They fell upon the hornwall clawing, shrieking, tearing at the wicker with bladed stone, with their hands. One man came at Carnelian from his exposed side so that he was forced to abandon his spear. The man swung a blade that Carnelian heard singing through the air. Though he ducked, it still scraped along his skull. He swung his own axe up and buried it beneath the man’s ribs. Frantic, he worked it free, aware more Bluedancing were pushing into the hedge, heaving against the wicker shieldwall seemingly oblivious to the spears snapping off in their flesh. Blood arced through the air. Enraged Bluedancing chopped at them like demons.

  Pulling the encumbrance of his torn uba from his head, Carnelian tried to order his men back, to reform their line, but the hornwall had dissolved into a confused mêlée. Two blackened faces close enough for him to see the veins in their eyes that gaped at him in frozen disbelief. He swung his axe. Blood seemed to be thickening the air so that, as hard as he pushed, his blade took time to reach them. He watched its scalloped edge puncturing blacked skin scarlet. Teeth and foaming gore. Carnelian poured his strength into the killing, ploughing through the thicket of their flesh. Each impact sent a slow judder up his arms. He felt a cut opening his face; a remote bruising impact to his shoulder. He clubbed a man from his path and saw more of them leaping towards him through the carnage of their beasts. Counting them, Carnelian began turning his head, despair rising in him like vomit. His voice erupted even as his people slid into sight. He saw them set upon, harried, too far away for him to help. Other cries were rising above the din of chopping. He could not understand the expression of surprise in the faces he knew. Slow, drawn-out battle-cries were rising from behind their enemies. They faltered. Recognizing the voices as Ochre, new vigour shot from Carnelian’s heart down his arms. He could sense the enemy tide turning. Aquar were coming up behind them. He glimpsed the fierce black faces of their rescuers. The Bluedancing were turning away, their faces flaccid with dismay. He saw several collapse under a succession of blows. Some were in full flight. Their backs drew Carnelian on with a lust for slaughter. He surged forward snarling in pursuit. He was in a forest of wounded aquar and shattered saddle-chairs. The earth was trying to suck him down. Through a red haze a man fleeing drew him on. He ducked under a swinging huge clawed foot. First his victim, then Carnelian, reached more solid ground. Carnelian careened in pursuit. Judged the distance. Raked his axe blade down the length of the man’s back. The body fell forward vomiting blood. Carnelian slipped on gore. Regaining his footing, he came to a halt, swaying, his mind seeping free of fury. Panting rasped his throat. The axe felt suddenly unbearably heavy in his hand so he let it go.

  ‘They … will … escape … us,’ he said, between breaths as he watched the Bluedancing streaming away.

  ‘No they won’t,’ said a voice nearby.

  Carnelian turned, beginning to feel the pain of his wounds. It was Fern, heavily lifting his arm to point. Carnelian followed the finger. At first he could not understand what he saw. A rushing, dark, many-legged mass. Then he saw the huge figure at its apex and heard a cold voice raised in a Quyan paean. It was Osidian, bearing down upon the luckless, routing Bluedancing.

  Carnelian and Fern approached the mob of Ochre cavorting around Galewing and Osidian. Ravan detached himself from the others and threw himself on Fern, hugging him hard. Fern pushed his brother away, holding him at arm’s length to see his face; a laughing mask of sweat and gore.

  ‘It’s unbelievable,’ the youth said. He spun round, han
ging on his brother’s arm. ‘Just look at what we’ve done …’

  Seeing the carnage, Carnelian was back on the ship that had brought him to the Three Lands, reliving the massacre he had caused when its crew had seen his face unmasked. Nausea gripped him, forcing him to double up while, all the time, Ravan kept pouring out his gloating chatter. Amid the universal glowing mood of celebration, others interjected details of the fighting, laughter, jests.

  Coming up for air, Carnelian saw Fern surveying the field upon which the Bluedancing had been turned into so much butchered meat and was relieved to see his friend sickened by what he saw. Krow crouched, vomiting. Carnelian realized how similar this looked to the massacre of the Twostone.

  Osidian towered severe among the youths, each vying with the others for the privilege of his attention, but he seemed unaware of them. His gaze was gliding across the dead as if he could not believe they were real.

  Carnelian walked towards him and the youths made way as they might have done for Osidian himself.

  ‘You knew this would happen,’ Carnelian said in Quya.

  Osidian’s eyes had lost their over-bright look. He shook his head slowly, narrowing his eyes as he gazed out.

  ‘You are in error, Carnelian, I did not know.’

  Carnelian became aware Ravan and others were as keenly watching their exchange. Carnelian sensed Ravan’s resentment, but chose to ignore it. He felt compelled to address Osidian in Quya, even though it was turning all those around them into barbarians.

  ‘But you promised it when you left us there.’

  As Carnelian lifted his arm to point he became aware of the blood staining it to the elbow. His mind was drawn back to the slow dance of the battle. He saw past the vision to the marshy ground littered with the broken remnants of men and aquar; spears and saddlechairs. The men of the hornwall were slogging towards them. With some effort, Carnelian wrenched his gaze back to Osidian’s serene face.

  ‘You promised us this … this victory,’ he said, spitting out that last word because it felt filthy in his mouth.