It was a relief to come up into the sky. He breathed deep, seeking to free his heart from despair. Voices made him turn to see Plainsmen hurrying across the rock towards Osidian. Carnelian moved to intercept them. Their whitened faces betrayed them as Osidian’s acolytes. They were gaudy with the salt trinkets with which he had seduced them. Carnelian held his spear horizontal in front of him to bar their way. Craning round him to see Osidian, they spoke all at once. Carnelian gleaned enough of what they were saying to answer them. ‘It was I who summoned you.’
They fell silent, staring at him. ‘At the Master’s command?’ said one.
Carnelian shook his head slowly. More consternation broke out, but he ignored it. Smoke was rising in the north from the Koppie. Enraged, he silenced their clamour with a glare. Some started to kneel. ‘I’ll speak when all the tribes have assembled here and not before nightfall.’
Some were brave enough to threaten leaving. Seeing their fear of him, he felt compassion for them. That must have softened his expression for they relaxed a little.
‘All must combine their strength if that,’ he pointed to the Koppie, ‘is not to be the fate for all your homes.’
Defiance left them as they looked upon the Ochre pyre.
‘Please go now and set your men to gathering fernwood. We’ll meet in council here and will need a good fire to warm us against the coming night.’
Like everyone else Osidian sat upon the summit gazing at the Koppie burning. Carnelian searched his face, looking for satisfaction, anger, a glimpse of cunning, but found nothing. All he saw was Osidian’s beauty marred by defeat and the pain and sickness caused by the maggots burrowing in his flesh.
He rose and went to crouch beside Poppy. Grime from the burials grained her skin. She looked up at him. ‘Can you really save them from that?’
Though he wanted to take away the fear in her eyes, the most he could say was: ‘I hope so.’
She gave him a pale smile then turned her gaze back to the Koppie. Sitting near her, Krow shot him a grim look to which Carnelian responded with a nod before going off to sit beside Fern.
He had chosen a promontory away from the others. His gaze was fixed, sightless, on his burning home. The creases of grief in his face deepened Carnelian’s misery. He longed to comfort him, but did not know how. Touch would not reach Fern, nor words. At that moment Fern turned to look at him, tearful as he shook his head. Carnelian’s own grief welled up. He understood what Fern’s eyes were telling him. Whatever they had had, or could have had, was gone. The dead stood between them like a wall.
Carnelian walked around the rim of the summit on the lookout for more Plainsmen on the plain below, but could see none. He was having to pick his way around funerary trestles bearing bones so sun-bleached they resembled carved limestone. It seemed a sterile imitation of the stinking mess they had left behind in the Koppie. The Koppie. Its dying exerted a horrid fascination over him. He had stood watching past the point where he could bear it. Even now that he had managed to tear free he felt its pull. It was as if the heart of the world was failing.
He was sure he now knew how Osidian had intended to cover his flight with the Marula, picking the salt up on the way. Osidian had coaxed Aurum to the Koppie and offered it up with his Plainsmen as a sacrifice. Osidian had made certain Aurum was aware the Koppie was the centre of his power. From the tattooed hands of the Plainsman veterans he had killed, the old Master would have already learned the names of the tribes defying him. He would know he had now reached within striking distance of their homes. Torching the Koppie was a warning for all to see. Aurum would now make camp in their midst, send messengers with threats and rely on the Plainsmen to bring him Osidian alive. Such methods came naturally to all Masters.
Loathing for Osidian, for Aurum seeped into Carnelian, swelling into hatred of all the Masters, chief amongst them himself. He and they were responsible for this misery, these atrocities. The Masters were a curse, a cancer that had fed off the world for millennia. Desperate fantasies possessed him that he might find a way to cut out their disease.
Suddenly, Poppy leapt to her feet. Others joined her. Aurum’s legion was swarming out from the Koppie like ants fleeing a burning nest. Carnelian watched, heart pounding. Was his reasoning flawed? If Aurum came for them now, all was lost. Across the summit, people were turning to look at him. It was Morunasa who spoke. ‘Do we flee?’
Carnelian knew he must hold firm. ‘Hookfork moves towards the lagoons. He intends to make a camp and will need water for his host.’
His words appeared to soothe many, but Morunasa, for one, did not seem convinced. As the legion crept across the plain, Carnelian watched, affecting unconcern. Shadows were stretching east when it became clear that Aurum was indeed heading for the lagoons. Carnelian’s relief was soured by the realization that Aurum’s camp would be sited on the shore where the Ochre had been accustomed to fetch their water.
Plainsman fires formed constellations in the ferngardens, but were a poor imitation of the stars. Carnelian was only intermittently aware of the scuffling and muted voices behind him as the representatives of the tribes came up onto the summit. What he intended to say to them might lead him back to Osrakum, back to his father and the rest of his lost family. It felt like a betrayal that, for so long, they should have been so far from his thoughts. The pattern of lights below resembled any one of so many of the stopping places he had seen from the watch-towers on his way to the election. He was reminded also of when he had stood with his father upon a spur of rock high in the Pillar of Heaven surveying the tributaries gathering on the Plain of Thrones. Both seemed more fairytale than memory.
He gazed north as if his sight might pierce the night all the way to Osrakum. It was the glimmering wheelmap of Aurum’s camp that caught his eye. Three concentric rings inscribed into the earth by the ditches Aurum’s dragons had ploughed into the fernland. The outer, bright with the fires of the auxiliaries, enclosed a dimmer ring where the dragons formed a wall around a flickering hub. That flicker showed where Aurum and his Lesser Chosen commanders no doubt were enjoying the exquisite pleasures they could not deprive themselves of even on campaign.
The citrine splendour of that camp contrasted with the murky smoulder of the Koppie that appeared, strangely, the same size, so that the two seemed to form a pair of unmatched eyes. The Koppie too was a wheelmap in form. Osidian had been right: in that design the Plainsmen aped the Chosen, but it seemed clear to Carnelian now that it was not a wheelmap, but rather military camps they copied. It saddened him that the Plainsmen had shaped their homes in imitation of the military mechanisms of their oppressors. The thought awoke his longing to free them, instead of which he was going to urge them to return to slavery.
The bonfire roaring behind him was spilling his shadow over the summit edge. He turned to face it and at first could see nothing but its great circle and, for a moment, stood again before his father’s hearth in the Hold. That its light must be clearly visible from Aurum’s camp thrilled him with fierce defiance. Approaching the flames, he began to be able to see the people gathered round it. Plainsmen, mostly legionary veterans, no doubt chosen by their men because they spoke Vulgate; others were youths, many with white-painted faces that shone too brightly. Here and there he saw some wrinkled faces, ears flaccid without their gleaming ear spools, chests bare without the pectorals; those salt treasures now bedecked the young. As his gaze touched each of these ancients, he gave a nod of respect and was warmed by their cautious smiles. He completed the circuit near him, with Poppy’s grim face, and Fern staring blindly, Osidian at his side, head bowed. Some vestige of the love he had had for Osidian disturbed him, but he crushed it. A part of him yearned for death for them both.
‘This fire will bring Hookfork here,’ a voice accused.
Carnelian looked for its owner, but could not find him. ‘Would you prefer he went to an inhabited koppie? The Ochre dead on the summit of their Crag will confirm what Hookfork already guessed: that their kopp
ie was the centre of the Master’s rebellion.’ He regarded Osidian with contempt. ‘For in that atrocity he will recognize the unmistakable handiwork of one of the Standing Dead.’ He scanned their faces. ‘Hookfork torched the Koppie of the Ochre as an object lesson. Tomorrow he’ll proceed to terrorize the neighbouring koppies.’
A man stood forward. ‘Though my tribe feels deep sympathy, how does that concern us? Our koppie’s far away and safe.’
Carnelian walked round the fire towards the man, who stepped back, fearful. ‘You’re sure of that?’
As the man stared back at him Carnelian leaned closer. ‘Tell me, have any veterans from your tribe fallen to Hookfork’s assaults?’
The man pushed out his chest. ‘We’ve fought as bravely as any here.’
‘I don’t question that. Did you recover their bodies?’
The man looked uncertain. ‘Most of them. Why?’
‘Most, but not all? Then Hookfork knows exactly where your koppie lies.’ He surveyed the gathering. ‘He knows where all your koppies lie.’
‘Who betrayed us?’ many voices cried out.
‘Your dead,’ Carnelian said, stoking up their consternation. He returned to the man he had been speaking to. ‘Give me your hand.’ When the man hesitated, Carnelian reached down and grabbed it. Twisting it open he strove to decipher the service tattoo on his palm. ‘The Fireferns.’
The man plucked his hand back, aghast. Carnelian moved round the line grabbing hands, calling out the name of the tribe inscribed on each. Terror spread as men stared at their palms.
Carnelian waited until they had begun to look up. ‘I believe I know a way in which you can save all your tribes.’
The hope that lit in many faces struck him in the heart. He could not bear quenching it, but he had to. ‘First you must understand something,’ he said, gently. A ripple of unease spread around the fire. ‘Things will have to return to the way they were.’ Fear haunted their eyes. ‘You’ll have to resume the sending of your children to the Mountain.’ He felt their anger rising. ‘Surely you must know in your hearts that the great hunts are over for ever? Surely you see that you must return to hunting as your fathers have done or else starve?’
There were some protests, but Carnelian chose to ignore them. ‘Your young men must return into service in the legions.’
Protest swelled, among which clearly could be heard the phrase: ‘Marula salt.’
‘I destroyed it all,’ Carnelian cried. His words released a gale of shock and disbelief that he bellowed over. ‘Even if it hadn’t caused strife among you, you must earn your salt in the legions. The Standing Dead would not permit anything else. Surely you can see that? But there’s another reason . . .’
As their noise abated, Carnelian pointed at Osidian, who might have been carved salt. ‘I couldn’t let him get his hands on it. With it he could do to other tribes what he’s done to you.’
Several men stepped forward. ‘We wouldn’t have let him.’
‘How could you stop him when he made sure to bring the dragons here to destroy you?’
They stared at Osidian, horror turning in some throats to howling rage. ‘Kill him,’ cried one and was echoed by many others.
Carnelian retreated to stand before Osidian, shielding him with his body. ‘This you must not do,’ he bellowed. ‘Hookfork must have him alive.’
Krow appeared from the crowd. ‘How will that help?’
The youth’s fury took Carnelian by surprise. Eyes flaming, Krow advanced on Osidian, listing his crimes, his betrayals, his lies. Osidian, smiling coldly, froze Krow to silence. The youth stared, shaking his head. ‘He can’t, he mustn’t escape our vengeance.’
Carnelian felt a strange kinship to the youth in his distress. ‘Krow,’ he said, to get his attention, ‘I promise you that, if the Master’s given to Hookfork, he will die. The Law of the Standing Dead demands it.’
Tears in Krow’s eyes had put out their fire. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Because he’s the reason Hookfork is here.’
Krow grimaced, unfocused, lost. Carnelian stood back. ‘He is the brother of the God in the Mountain, who hates him.’
Fernwood cracked and sparked in the flames as the Plainsmen gaped, blinking, at Osidian. Murmurous fear began moving among them. Some glanced around, seeking confirmation of Carnelian’s claims. Others, who tried to laugh it off, soon fell silent. Osidian’s white-faced lieutenants cowered. Carnelian saw they were, after all, only youths whom Osidian had corrupted and he felt sorry for them.
An old woman fixed Carnelian with bleak eyes. ‘Then we must give him up.’
‘And me with him, my mother,’ Carnelian said.
Poppy, gazing at him, looked miserable.
‘But that won’t be enough. You’ve rebelled against the Standing Dead. You’ve looked upon our faces. Either of these sins on their own would provide Hookfork with a pretext to destroy you all.’
He let the horror sink in before he spoke further. ‘There may still be a chance to avert total disaster.’ Their looks of hope made him pause to re-examine his plan. Could it possibly work? It had to. ‘We must draw Hookfork away into the north. Only then must you give us to him, as close as possible to the Leper Valleys.’
Their frowns demanded an explanation. ‘I believe Hookfork will be so greedy to return to the Mountain with his prize that he’ll not bother returning here.’
The old woman’s frown refused to smooth. ‘What if he leaves some of his dragons behind?’
Carnelian saw in his mind’s eye the broth Kor and her sartlar had made from the pygmies. ‘What is every man, aquar and dragon of a legion fed on? Render. Hookfork’s stretched an umbilical cord of its supply all the way from the Guarded Land. Cut that cord and all his forces must retreat. Further, by consuming the render ourselves we’ll have no need to deplete the migration djada of the tribes.’
‘And what of the Marula, Master?’ Morunasa asked.
Carnelian gazed at the Oracle. He and his fellows with their grey faces had sat so quietly he had forgotten them. He glanced at Fern. This part he had not cleared with him because he knew he must put the needs of the Plainsmen before his friend’s feelings.
Sthax came unbidden into his mind as he turned back to Morunasa and the other Oracles. Carnelian could think of no way to neutralize their threat except by returning Sthax and all the rest of the Marula warriors into their power. ‘You’ll take them back with you to the Upper Reach?’
Morunasa bared his ravener teeth. ‘You know perfectly well they’ll only serve the Master.’
‘Disband them. With salt you’ll be able to recruit enough Plainsmen to hold the Upper Reach.’
Krow pushed forward, grinning unpleasantly. ‘Oh no. They won’t be doing that. I cut down the ladder trees.’
Morunasa fixed the youth with such a staring look of horror that it stirred a commotion among the other Oracles.
Plainsmen were crying out. ‘Both ladders?’
Krow looked crazed. ‘I had the sartlar do it then dig the roots up so there would be no anchors for new ones.’
Carnelian sensed Osidian had deliberately chosen the Darkcloud to accompany Krow. Of all the tribes they had most reason to hate the Marula. ‘You did this at the Master’s command?’
Krow gave a gleeful nod. ‘Now my tribe, the Twostone, is avenged, Maruli,’ he said to Morunasa. He looked towards Fern and became only a sad boy. ‘The Ochre too.’
Fern sprang at Krow, who fell near enough to the fire to raise a jet of sparks. Fern stood over him. ‘Do you really imagine this will clean my kin’s blood from your filthy hands?’
Krow stared up at him, petrified. Only when Fern turned away from him did he roll over. As he rose, people moved out of his way as if he were a leper. Carnelian watched the youth slink off and felt regret he had not intervened.
Fern closed on Morunasa, thrusting his face towards him. ‘You and your kind murdered my people at the Master’s command,’ he snarled, close enough that
his saliva sprayed Morunasa’s face. ‘Now it seems he’s repaid you as you deserve.’
Carnelian feared Morunasa would launch himself into Fern, but instead he seemed lost in thought. Fern’s rage was spreading to the other Plainsmen. As people realized the Marula were trapped in the Earthsky with no hope of reinforcement they began to list the killing they had carried out during Osidian’s conquest; the men they had tortured on their Isle of Flies. The Plainsmen were turning into a mob that looked to Fern to lead them. He was still glaring at Morunasa. ‘There’re ten of us to every one of you, Maruli.’
Though Morunasa did not react, the other Oracles moved around him, baring their teeth at the Plainsmen, hissing. Transfixed, Carnelian considered letting the Plainsmen destroy them. If the Marula had been dangerous before, desperate they were doubly so, but he remembered Sthax’s remorse and that most of the Marula had had little choice but to collaborate with Osidian. Pushing in between Fern and Morunasa, he rounded on the baying mob. ‘Turning upon each other will only make us easier prey for Hookfork. I’ve no more liking for these Marula than you but, deprived of the Upper Reach salt, their people will perish.’ He glanced at Fern. ‘That seems enough revenge for now.’
He became aware Morunasa was regarding him malevolently. Carnelian remembered the promise he had made to him that day. He gazed round at the Plainsmen. ‘Besides, if it hadn’t been for the Marula today the Master would’ve fallen into Hookfork’s hands and you and all your people would be doomed. In the coming days we’ll have need of all the strength we can muster.’
He turned back to Morunasa. ‘Will you throw in your lot with us?’
The man gave Carnelian an almost imperceptible nod. Carnelian knew he had merely postponed the confrontation between them. He pulled back. ‘He says yes.’
The Plainsmen confronted him with silence.
‘Who among you will follow me north?’
The Third God Page 7
