Osidian turned his green eyes on him. ‘I would have promised anything, anything at all for this chance. The dead would not have reproached me in defeat.’
‘Chance? What do you mean, chance?’
Osidian turned away, seemingly distracted by the moaning of the dying. An aquar that had been felled lay intermittently screeching, its tail lifting then subsiding, its taloned foot feebly gouging the bloody mud. The youths’ excited chatter seemed to be mocking the poor creature’s attempts to rise. Then they quietened. Following their gaze, he saw the Elders approaching, faces sagging with age.
Ravan stepped up to welcome them. ‘My fathers, is this not a vast victory the Master has given us?’
Kyte surveyed the carnage. ‘Yes, vast.’
Fern’s eyes were welling tears. He grew suddenly enraged. ‘What are you all doing behaving as if this were a wedding?’
Then everyone saw Crowrane, bowed, the body of his son in his arms. A silence fell which allowed them to hear the dying.
‘Are you all deaf?’ Kyte demanded. He seemed to have become ancient since the morning. His hand shook out. ‘Go finish what you’ve begun.’
Sullenly, in ones and twos, taking their flint axes, the Plainsmen wound off across the battlefield.
Tears were rewetting the blood on Kyte’s face as he watched them. ‘This is an abomination.’
‘What?’ shouted Ravan. ‘Haven’t we been delivered from destruction? Wouldn’t this have been our own fate if the Master hadn’t saved us?’
Fern regarded his brother with horror. Kyte wiped away tears and regarded Ravan with unconcealed wrath. ‘Can’t you see, boy, all the men of the Bluedancing lying as carrion at your feet?’
‘What of it?’ said Ravan, face reddening.
‘“What of it?”’ echoed Kyte. He looked up blinking at the sky. His bloodshot eyes fell on Ravan. ‘Who’ll protect the hearths of the Bluedancing? Who’ll hunt for their mothers and their children now their strength lies here rotting on this ground?’
Ravan’s mouth hung open but he did not seem to have anything to say.
‘Well, thank the Skyfather you’ve run dry at last,’ said Fern and was rewarded with a look of hatred.
‘What did the old man say?’ Osidian asked Ravan.
The youth regained something of his composure as he translated Kyte’s words into Vulgate.
‘I regret this but we clearly had no choice,’ said Osidian. ‘Is it certain the Bluedancing are finished?’
Galewing nodded. ‘They are no more.’
‘Then we must do what we can to save what is left.’
The old men focused narrowed eyes on Osidian.
‘You could take their children into the Ochre to swell your strength.’
The old gave wary nods: the youths standing round looked uncertain.
‘Their salt shall swell the wealth of the Ochre.’
This the Elders listened to more attentively.
‘They’ll have a good quantity of it, sure enough,’ said Galewing. He looked over to where their men were moving, silencing the dying with blows.
Osidian addressed his next comment to everyone. ‘We can send those of them already marked for the tithe to the Mountain in place of your own children.’
Carnelian watched the look of disbelief turn on many faces to hope. Shocked, he contemplated the joy of keeping Poppy from the Masters.
‘But what about their women?’ asked Galewing. Osidian shrugged and then looked the Elder in the eye.
‘Either we let them die or else you might welcome them into the Ochre … as servants.’
The old men considered this. ‘As servants …’ they muttered, uncertainly.
They fished the Ochre dead from the carnage on the ridge. They salvaged saddle-chairs to replace the ones they had burned and improvised drag-cradles to carry the casualties.
‘We must do something about all these bodies,’ said Galewing in Vulgate, watching his people move among the corpses despoiling them of salt.
‘Look around you,’ Osidian said, sweeping his arm round. Sitting in his saddle-chair, he towered over the Elder. ‘How shall we give them to the sky? See how numerous they are. It’s impossible to take them with us. Would you leave a contingent of our strength here to keep away the scavengers? Consider that the Ochre are wholly unprotected.’
Galewing looked up sad, fearful. ‘Then we’ve not only destroyed their tribe but we also damned the souls of all their men to live as raveners.’
Krow looked ill. Ravan was gazing uneasily over the battlefield, but then burned doubt away with anger. ‘It’s what they deserve. Rather them than us.’
Binding up Carnelian’s wounds, Fern made no attempt to hide his contempt for his brother. Unabashed, Ravan strode to his aquar and when he was mounted, said, ‘Let’s go and save their women and children.’
Riding over a ridge, they saw an encampment spread on the plain.
‘So many,’ someone exclaimed.
‘Even without their men they would still outnumber the Tribe,’ said Fern.
‘How can we hope to feed them all?’ said Galewing.
‘If you set them to work in the ditches you will be free to hunt more,’ said Osidian. ‘In time you can use their labour to extend the Koppie.’
As they rode closer, Carnelian saw the Bluedancing had formed their drag-cradles into a barricade behind which they stood waiting. Osidian brought the warband to a halt when the women’s faces could clearly be seen peering out from under their head-blankets.
A shrill voice cried out a challenge.
‘What?’ Carnelian asked Fern.
‘I’m not sure,’ his friend replied. ‘Something about their men. By the tone of her voice, a warning.’
‘They don’t know what’s happened.’
Fern looked morose. ‘I think it more likely they’re clinging to the hope we’ve got here by somehow eluding their men.’
‘I wouldn’t like to be the one who has to tell them,’ said Krow. His statement was greeted by a murmur of agreement.
The Elders talked quickly among themselves. Kyte called over to Crowrane, who sat hunched in his saddle-chair, but the old man showed no sign of having heard. He had been like that since the battle and the death of his son.
Galewing forced a decision. ‘We’ll go down and talk to them.’ Osidian interrupted Ravan as he began to translate. ‘I understood.’ They watched the Elders and the men who had lost children to the Bluedancing ride down towards the barricade. What if the women became violent? Carnelian did not doubt Osidian would be prepared to attack them.
The Elders were dismounting. They addressed the women over the meshed drag-cradles. Kyte made a speech. His head dropped before he was finished. A wave of consternation moved round the circle of the defenders. They began detaching themselves from their defensive ring and running towards where Kyte was speaking. His posture betrayed his shame, as he turned to point up the slope. Wailing wafted on the wind. The Elders fell into a long discussion with them.
‘Father above, what can they be finding to talk about?’ said Ravan.
Osidian made him fall silent with a look. ‘Everything depends on how much they love their children.’
Carnelian’s heart was down there with the Bluedancing women. He watched the Elders remount and ride back.
‘They’ll agree to come with us for the sake of their children,’ Galewing cried out while he was still some distance away. ‘But they demand that they be allowed to collect the bodies of their men for proper burial.’
Osidian waited until the Elders had reached him before he spoke. ‘We can’t allow this.’
‘Why not?’ Kyte asked.
Osidian raised an eyebrow. ‘If you insist, I shall point out the obvious. Firstly, it would delay our return to the Tribe. They’ll already be worrying about us and, besides, the longer we remain out here the greater the danger to us all from raveners. Secondly, this would mean we have to take those bodies back to the Koppie. Can you imagin
e the Ochre welcoming so many dead? Not to mention the sheer labour of it. Thirdly and, perhaps, most importantly, how do you think those women down there will feel towards the Ochre when they see all their men dead? You can see how numerous they are. How could we hope to control them in their grief?’
Kyte frowned and glanced back at the barricade in misery. He shook his head. ‘Perhaps we should just let them die.’
‘If that’s your wish,’ said Osidian.
The old men returned to the barricade, round-shouldered. When they gave out their decision, the wailing grew so that even at that distance, Carnelian felt harrowed. The children stolen from the Ochre were being given back. The women untangled their drag-cradles and began to load them up.
The Elders returned wan and tearful. ‘We should help them.’
Osidian shook his head. ‘In their midst we’d only give their grief a focus for revenge.’
So it was the Ochre sat and watched until at last a mass of the Bluedancing came up the slope towards them, a great march of aquar pulling drag-cradles. Looking among them Carnelian could see the dejected faces of the women, their snotty children, but it was to the people leading them that his eyes were drawn: old women, their grey hair jewelled with salt, their eyes brighter still with hatred and a staring disbelief.
Uncertain, the Tribe watched their men approach followed by the mass of the Bluedancing. The returning men and their women gazed at each other over the divide and Carnelian could feel the yearning drawing them together. The pull of it was stronger than their wariness at the crowd of strangers. The riders accelerated into a wild rush and the women came streaming out to meet them. Carnelian found himself left behind with Osidian and the Elders; the dead and wounded. The aquar slowed, then intermingled with the advancing women. Men were slipping down from their saddle-chairs into the continuous turmoiled mass in which everyone was shouting, hugging, kissing. It was through this the women Elders came riding with Harth and Akaisha at their head.
Carnelian smiled at Akaisha but her eyes were fixed on the people and drag-cradles coming up behind them.
‘The Bluedancing,’ announced Galewing.
‘All their women. All their children,’ said Kyte.
Harth frowned. ‘What are they doing here?’
‘It’ll take some time to explain,’ said Galewing.
Ravan’s aquar advanced. He grinned. ‘We won a great victory and killed all their men.’
‘All?’ Akaisha gasped, in horror.
‘Did anyone tell you, child, that you could speak?’ said Harth, severely.
Ravan recoiled as if she had slapped him. He opened his mouth to say something, but a sharp look from his mother made him shut it again. He focused on his knees, struggling to contain his anger.
Harth turned her glare on the Elder men. ‘What is this you’ve allowed to happen?’
‘The boy spoke out of turn, Harth, but he spoke truth,’ said Kyte. ‘We snatched victory from a dangerous defeat.’
‘You mean the Master did!’ erupted Ravan, before he rode off towards the Ochre crowd.
Harth gave Akaisha a glance of approbation and then her eyes fell on the Elder men. ‘Did we suffer loss?’
Her face paled as she saw none were prepared to meet her gaze. She noticed Crowrane, head bowed. ‘Husband?’ She rode towards him, spoke again but still he did not respond. She noticed the drag-cradle hanging behind his aquar. She dismounted and, seeming infinitely old, walked round to find her son lying dead in it.
‘How many dead?’ asked Ginkga, tearful as she watched Harth collapse to her knees beside her son.
Nervously, Kyte gave a full account of their casualties.
Akaisha indicated the Bluedancing. ‘And why are they here?’
‘We couldn’t very well leave them to die,’ said Galewing.
‘Which they would do without their men,’ added Kyte.
Akaisha looked severe. ‘We don’t need lessons in husbandry from you, though perhaps you could tell us how we’re going to manage to feed them all?’
‘If you set them to work in the ditches we will be free to hunt more,’ said Galewing.
‘We can use their labour to extend the Koppie,’ added Kyte and it seemed to Carnelian that Osidian was speaking through their mouths.
The Elder women greeted these suggestions with a thorny silence.
‘We have back the children they stole from us,’ said Kyte.
The women nodded. Ginkga shook her head. ‘Was this worth the spilling of so much blood?’
Galewing glanced at Osidian. ‘The Master has suggested we could send their tithe children to the Mountain in place of our own.’
The women started in amazement. Ginkga was the first to recover her composure.
‘There is something shameful in this.’
Akaisha’s face showed she believed she was speaking not only for herself but for many of the others when she said: ‘But there is also hope.’
In the days that followed, the Tribe plodded on through the mud and storms drawn by the yearning to be home. The Bluedancing slogged on behind like the Tribe’s grim shadow. Gradually, people were becoming accustomed to them being there. News had spread like fire of the plan to save their children. Carnelian sensed many could not help seeing this as a gift the Master had given them beyond even the victory that had brought most of their men back safely from the battle. Like him, others were drawing reassurance from glancing back at the treasure of these foreign children. Unease increased when the Tribe began to grow familiar with them. People told each other that the Bluedancing children were bound to suffer from the same fatal arrogance as their fathers. Ochre youngsters began to be forbidden to play with the Bluedancing. It was said that their marked children would have gone to the Mountain anyway; that they deserved to go. The list of claims and accusations grew until the rainy wind had washed away the stain of guilt from the faces and hearts of the Tribe.
In the lull before the dawn, Carnelian was woken by whimpering. He rose, knowing it was Poppy. Sil had told him that, since the night of the Bluedancing raid, the girl had been suffering from nightmares of which she would not speak. Carnelian rose and woke her. Poppy flung herself on him. He thought her shaking a result of her being cold and drew her into his blanket. There was light enough to see her staring blindly. When he asked her gently what she was seeing, it all came pouring out.
The black demons had attacked as her tribe returned, joyous to be home. Her mother had managed to reach the ditch carrying Poppy. They had tumbled into the outer ditch and managed to find a hiding place. Morning revealed her mother dead. Then Poppy’s tale grew garbled. Carnelian gleaned that she had hidden in the ditches from the demons who were haunting her koppie. At night she would creep out to dig up fernroot which she ate raw. She drank from pools deep in the ditches. When she had heard the Ochre tributaries calling she had thought it a trap but had eventually come out. They had allowed her to return to her mother tree.
Poppy looked up into his eyes. ‘Is it true I’m no longer going to the Mountain?’
Carnelian suppressed his foreboding at what the price might be for her salvation and nodded. She buried her face in his chest and began sobbing. Her grief did not open to anything he said. He grew desperate, not knowing what she was feeling. At last she calmed down enough to say: ‘She’s dead. I killed her.’
‘Who?’
‘My seed.’
Carnelian sagged with relief. She watched him fumble in his robe. When he pulled his hand out he opened it to reveal the seed and was rewarded by wide-eyed wonder and delight.
When the familiar shape of the Koppie was spied against the stormy sky, the Tribe wept tears of joy and, imagining themselves already sitting under their trees, felt suddenly exhausted. They struggled on, cursing every step, urging each other to ever greater speed with promises of the homely comforts of their hearths.
When they were close enough, their march dissolved into a furious dash to see who would be first to reach the outer Lag
oonbridge. Carnelian’s heart was pounding. He too was desperate to be safe within the rings of the Koppie’s ditches. He almost gave way to the eagerness he could feel his aquar had to join the race, but then he saw sullen Ravan, nervous Krow, and between them Osidian, his ivory face indifferent to the Tribe’s excitement. This Masterly serenity disturbed Carnelian and forced him to remember the Bluedancing. Craning round, he saw them stretching away so far behind they seemed to be a frayed hem to the stormclouds. They showed no joy but only a sad weariness. For them there would never again be a homecoming.
The Koppie’s welcome was everything Carnelian had hoped for. That first night, the Tribe held a solemn feast of thanksgiving for their safe return; for the Father’s rain that they prayed would renew the Earth and bring healthy children and easy births. Loskai and the other men who had fallen in the battle were given skyburial. The Bluedancing killed by Osidian in the raid was to work out his debt to the Tribe as a huskman. Whin and her husband, Ravenseye, among others, were elevated to the Elders.
The hearth had returned to find every branch of Akaisha’s mother tree edged with new jade growth and the rootearth beneath littered with her seeds, many of which had germinated. Both seeds and seedlings were lovingly plucked and buried deep among their mother’s roots. Now that Poppy had been reprieved, Carnelian asked Akaisha if she might be allowed to plant her seed. Tenderly, Akaisha had told him it was already too late that year but that she would talk to the other Elders and see if it might be allowed before they set off on their next migration.
Rain continued to fall in heavy, but intermittent showers. Sometimes, the clouds would tease apart revealing sky that was the purest blue. The red earth responded by uncurling fresh fronds into the humid warming days and, as if this were a sign, the women of the Tribe seemed to give birth all at once. Soon the sun was reigning over a world so green it hurt Carnelian’s eyes. Ambling, the saurian giants returned, their herds stretching along the horizon.
Carnelian slipped back naturally into the rhythms of koppie life. It was better this time, because Fern no longer had to work beneath the Bloodwood Tree. He became the companion Osidian had long ceased to be. The Elders and others muttered against the Master when he made himself a hearth under one of the unclaimed cedars that buttressed the Homeditch, though none opposed him openly. Ravan, Krow and many other youths joined him there and each day he would lead them to fetch water. To meet the needs of the Koppie, almost three times as many men and aquar were needed now. Ravan relayed Osidian’s wishes to the men and they obeyed willingly. Since the battle, many would follow no other.
The Standing Dead (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon) Page 42
