Firesong (7 page)

The rock walls forked before them, and they were led to the right; and then another fork, and a turn to the left; turn after turn, until there was no way of knowing which path they had taken. The cracks became deeper, the rock walls higher as they went: now the slot of sky seemed frighteningly far away overhead: but deep though they were into the ground, here and there their path ran alongside an even deeper crack, that seemed to fall away into bottomless darkness.

After an hour or so they reached a space where several cracks intersected, and here the bandit leader called a brief stop. The girls were untied, and the bandits removed the scarves from their faces; all but one, who kept silent, and remained unobtrusively at the back. Kestrel and Sisi and the others rubbed their wrists where the ropes had chafed them, and waited in fear to learn what was to happen to them.

The bandit leader too removed his covering scarf. He was an older man than they had expected, fifty or more, with greying hair and a deeply-lined face.

‘I am Barra,’ he said. ‘I am the father of the klin. You are now my daughters.’

‘We have fathers of our own,’ said Kestrel.

‘Where are they now?’ said Barra, fixing her with his hard eyes. Kestrel stared back, not flinching before his gaze, but saying nothing more.

‘You think you will run away,’ said the bandit leader, moving his eyes to look at each one of them in turn. ‘If you do so, you will be lost in the labyrinth. You will wander the rocky passages until you’re too weak to go on. You’ll lie down to rest.’

He felt in an inner pocket, and drew out a strip of dried meat. He looked up at the sky far overhead, and then threw the meat onto the rock floor a few paces away.

‘You’ll grow weaker. You won’t be able to move. No one will find you.’

There came a sudden blur of wings, and a great bird flashed down out of the sky, swooped on the strip of meat, and carried it away.

‘But the scavenger birds will find you. They eat the flesh from starving animals while the animals are still alive.’

He saw the terror on the young faces before him, and nodded, satisfied.

‘Stay with us, and you’ll be fed, and protected.’

‘What do you want with us?’ asked Sisi.

‘We are a warrior klin,’ he replied. ‘Young men join us, because we are strong. Young men need wives.’

The leader indicated the bandits on either side. Kestrel looked, and saw for the first time that they were indeed young, many of them even younger than she was herself.

‘Are your young men so hated that they must take their wives by force?’ she asked.

Barra’s hard eyes locked onto Kestrel’s once more.

‘Hated, yes. And feared. As it’s right that they should be.’

The intensity in that lined and weathered face scared Kestrel. He went on in a more controlled voice.

‘The world is at war. Cities burn, people starve. Scavengers roam the countryside, taking what they can. The strong prey on the weak. These are dark, brutal times. You think we choose to live like rats in cracks in the ground? You think we choose to come courting with slingshots, killing for our brides? That is the world today! Our klin survives because we have no pity. Your klin has lost you because they’re weaker than us. You belong to the Barra klin now.’

‘And if we refuse?’

‘Go. Go now. Leave our protection, and die.’

There was a silence. Kestrel looked from Sisi to Sarel Amos, to Red Mimilith and Seer Such and little Ashar Warmish. No one spoke. No one moved. The bandit leader was content.

‘So we understand each other,’ he said. ‘When we get to our settlement, you will each be given a husband. Be good to him, and he will treat you well.’

He gestured to his men, and the ones in front set off once more down the endless passages. Kestrel and the other Manth girls followed. The bandit leader and the rest of his men came behind.

The atmosphere had changed. Kestrel became aware that the men were staring at them as they loped along, discussing them among themselves. From time to time they even tried to catch their eyes, and smile. The girls looked ahead or down, avoiding all contact. They caught fragments of conversation between the young bandits, and realised that already they were being compared and quarrelled over. Shortly two of the bandits started jostling and shoving each other, evidently squaring up for a fight to settle who was to get the preferred bride.

‘Stop that!’ cried Barra.

The jostling stopped at once.

‘The brides will be chosen according to the way of the klin.’

The journey continued in silence, but for the patter of their feet over the rock floor. By now they had come so far down so many twists and forks in the labyrinth that Kestrel wondered if Bowman would be able to follow after all. Also they were deep in rock fissures, which would make it harder for him to sense her presence. Kestrel knew her brother would keep searching until he found them, but she began to realise the search could take many days. Somehow she and the others must survive until then.

The line of bandits, with the captive girls, now ran in single file along a curving ledge. To one side the rock face rose up a hundred feet, to the strip of paling sky above; on the other, the fissure fell away in a vertical drop, that vanished into contrasting darkness. Afraid of the drop, the girls pressed themselves to the rock wall, and found that it was wet. Thin threads of water were trickling down it, and finding grooves and runnels in the ledge, and trickling on down the falling rock face. Shortly this ledge brought them to a triple fork. They took the left-hand way. Here the path ran once again between high walls on either side. The walls slanted, becoming narrower as they rose, so that only a thin slit admitted the daylight above. Soon even this slit closed, and they found themselves walking on in a darkness broken only by the dim glow of light growing ever fainter behind them.

Here and there, barely able to see, they brushed against the sides of the fissure, dislodging loose flakes of stone from the crumbling surface to rattle to the ground. The path was formed out of fragments of the eroding walls, and it crackled and crunched under their feet. Just as the crack above had closed in, so now the walls seemed to be pushing closer, until the space between them was just wide enough for the bandits and their captives to walk in single file.

‘Keep to the middle of the path,’ said the bandit leader, his words echoing down the tunnel.

Kestrel touched the walls as she went, feeling the cracked and crumbling surface. Then her outstretched hand struck a timber post, and another. Feeling more carefully now, she learned that the tunnel was ribbed with timber supports, at first every few paces, then closer and closer to each other. They had been set at a slant on either side, to meet overhead, forming a triangular space. Between these timber frames, showers of small stones and dust fell as they passed.

Ashar Warmish began to sob, afraid of the tunnel and the dark. Sarel Amos, who was next to her in line, felt for her hand and squeezed it.

‘Not long now,’ said Barra gruffly.

The tunnel had become so tight they had to stoop to pass between the supports. There were beams all the way now, making a timber-lined shaft just big enough for a man to pass along at a crouching shuffle.

Then the bandit leader called into the darkness,

‘Watchman ho!’

There came a faint answering cry.

‘Aya!’

‘Barra ho!’

They came to a stop. There was the slow creak of a heavy door opening – and sudden light.

The roar of water. The tang of wood smoke. The dazzle of sky. One by one the bandits and their captives emerged through the low doorway, past the waiting watchman. Kestrel found herself on a broad shelf cut high up in a sheer rock wall. Above her rose the flanks of a great split in the land, hundreds of feet high, unclimbable cliffs of stone. Below her, the forger of this spacious rift, a fast-flowing river, that came rushing from a crack in the far wall to tumble in a hissing spray into a turbulent rockbound lake. At the far end of the rift the water was sucked boiling and gurgling down a succession of narrow slits. Her eyes searched for an escape route, but no other fissures entered this natural fortress. The only way in and out was the timber-sided tunnel through which they had come.

The river’s waters completely filled the rift, from wall to wall. But on the water, supported by timber piles, the bandits had built a deck that extended all along one rock side. The deck was a good fifty paces wide, wide enough to hold a settlement of thatched huts. From it projected three broad jetties, over the widest part of the pool. At the end of each jetty, a fire was burning, and pots were boiling. People came and went between the huts and the fires; most of them were men, but there were some women, and some children.

Kestrel stood on the rock ledge and gazed down at the scene with a sinking heart. The bandits were far more numerous than she had expected, and their settlement far harder to attack.

The bandit leader gestured at his people.

‘The home of the Barra klin,’ he said. ‘Your home.’

He led the way down the steep steps cut into the rock wall, to the timber deck below. Here he was greeted by a tall woman of his own age, her grey hair tied back with string. She studied the captured girls with a careful appraising gaze.

‘Very good,’ she said to Barra. ‘Where are they from?’

‘Travellers,’ said Barra. ‘From the Mastery, I’d guess.’

‘Ah, well. There’s all sorts there.’

She beckoned to the Manth girls to follow her.

‘Come with me.’

She took them to one of the jetties, and told them to sit and warm themselves at the fire.

‘Just take care not to fall into the river. It’s ice cold. You’d be dead before we could get you out.’

Here they sat, shivering and fearful, while the young bandits who had captured them gathered on the main section of the deck and stared at them. The grey-haired woman went into the largest of the huts, and could be heard giving orders. Shortly two younger women with babies strapped to their backs came out carrying cups of water and plates of dried meat.

Ashar Warmish began to cry again. She cried quietly, out of fear, and grief for her dead father.

‘I want to die,’ she said between sobs. ‘I want to die.’

‘It’s going to be alright,’ said Kestrel, putting her arms round her. ‘We just have to be brave.’

‘They can do the dying,’ said Sisi fiercely. ‘I’ll kill anyone who comes near me.’

‘We do nothing at all for the moment.’ Kestrel spoke to them all in a whisper. ‘Eat and drink as much as you can. That way we’ll last longer when we go back into the labyrinth.’

‘Go back into the labyrinth!’ Kestrel saw their frightened looks. ‘We can’t!’

‘It’s the only way. Trust me. I know how to find the others.’

So long as Bowman gets near enough, she thought to herself; and so long as Bowman finds a way to get us back out of the labyrinth. But she said nothing of this.

‘We can’t go while they’re watching us. We have to wait until dark.’

‘Go into the labyrinth in the dark!’

‘It’s the only way.’

She saw the grey-haired woman returning.

‘Let them think we’ve given up,’ she whispered. ‘Do everything they say.’

This was mostly for Sisi’s benefit. The others were too shocked and frightened to offer resistance; but Sisi was angry, and her anger could make her act rashly.

‘You’ve eaten? You feel refreshed?’

The girls nodded in silence. The grey-haired woman sat down.

‘My name is Madriel. I’m the mother of the klin.’ She saw the tears still wet on Ashar’s cheeks. ‘Don’t cry. You’re not prisoners any more. You’re brides. You will be treated with respect and honour. Our klin has a wise father, and a strong one. He will punish anyone who harms you.’

Kestrel spoke up for all of them.

‘Are we to be brides whether we want to or not?’

‘You will want to,’ said Madriel. ‘It is how you will serve the klin. From now on, the klin is your home and your family. It will nourish you and keep you safe while you live, respect you when you grow old, and mourn you when you die. In return you will keep the fires burning for the hunters and warriors. You will give the klin baby boys who will grow up tall and strong; and become hunters and warriors in their time. That is the way of the klin.’

Sisi shook her head angrily.

‘You don’t like our way?’ asked Madriel mildly.

‘Do women have nothing more to do than give life to men?’ said Sisi.

‘Nothing more,’ said Madriel. ‘Just as men have nothing more to do than give life to women.’

The crowd of young men that had been staring at them now broke up, and moved away into one of the main huts. Madriel gestured across the lake, where a second deck ran along the far wall, beyond the rushing water. It was narrower than the platform on which the main settlement stood, and was reached by a long railed bridge that crossed the river at its narrowest point. All along this second remoter deck small thatched huts had been built, newly built by the look of them, each one barely big enough for two people.

‘There are your bridal huts. Tonight you will go to them, with your new husbands, and there you will stay for five days and nights.’

The Manth girls stared at the little huts, and suddenly their fate seemed real and close. Red Mimilith looked back towards the young men.

‘Are we to choose our husbands?’

‘Choose your husbands! Of course not!’ The klin mother was shocked. ‘They will choose you.’

As she spoke, the young men came filing out of the communal hut to form a cluster at the far end of the broad deck. They started to stretch their arms and legs, as if limbering up for some violent activity. Among them Kestrel saw again the one who had kept his concealing scarf, and she wondered fleetingly why he chose to remain masked.

‘The strongest will have first choice,’ said Madriel. ‘He will choose the healthiest and most fertile among you. In this way, he will give the klin strong and healthy babies. The second strongest will choose next. And so six of our young men will choose their brides. That is the way of the klin.’

‘But that’s all nonsense!’ exclaimed Sisi. ‘How is anyone to know who’s the most fertile?’