Stone Spring (26 page)

Zesi felt her heart beat harder as she faced the unknown challenges of the day, of a hunt in a terrain she didn’t know, surrounded by men who longed for her to fail. Bring it, she thought. I am ready.

They stepped out of the hut. In the dying light of last night’s fire she saw half a dozen Pretani waiting for them, hunters, the green-clad priest, gathered around the Root and Shade. The Pretani carried spears and light packs, and they all had their faces and arms dyed dark green. The new scar on Shade’s forehead, crudely stitched and stained black, was livid.

As soon as Zesi and the priest emerged, the Root set off without a word. The others followed, and Zesi and the priest had no choice but to jog after them.

At first the Root led them along one of the wide ways that led from the ceremonial centre, but he soon cut off onto a track which, if it existed at all, only the Pretani could see, and they pushed into the deeper forest.

The dawn sky was visible only in glimpses through the endless canopy, and the trees grew dense, their massive root systems sprawling, always ready to trip a careless foot. The Pretani moved silently, all but invisible in the homogenous gloom of the forest in their brown tunics and green and black faces, and Zesi had to concentrate hard to keep them in sight at all. She saw no animals - no deer, no boar, no sign of cattle. Evidently they knew to keep out of the way of Pretani hunters.

The light was brighter when the Root at last called a halt, at the base of yet another massive tree. Jurgi was breathing hard, but the Pretani didn’t look as if they had worked at all. Some of them glanced up at the canopy, wary, narrow-eyed.

The Root beckoned to the priest and Zesi. ‘So,’ he whispered. ‘What do you imagine we are hunting?’

Zesi said immediately, ‘Aurochs.’ The wild cattle, a huge and ferocious prey, had always been the target of the wildwood challenge.

‘Not today,’ the Root said.

Jurgi frowned. ‘The hunt is a custom. A way of binding our two peoples. And we always hunt aurochs. It is central to the meaning. Your own priest should advise you that to defy tradition is to court problems.’

But Zesi glanced at the Root’s priest, hunched over, grinning, showing green-dyed teeth. ‘He won’t help you, Jurgi. Look at him. He does what the Root tells him, not the other way round. If not aurochs, what are we to hunt?’

The Root glanced upwards. ‘Leafy Boys.’

Jurgi looked up, squinting. ‘And what are Leafy Boys? There is no Etxelur word—’

‘Of course not. Not all knowledge resides in salty Etxelur heads. It will be a new challenge for you, Zesi, daughter of Kirike.’ He pointed to the tree behind her. ‘Here’s how we will organise it. Each of us will climb a tree. You, Zesi, take this one. Priest, yours is over there—’

‘I’ve never climbed a tree,’ Jurgi moaned.

The Root sneered. ‘Then you can thank me for a new experience. If you see a Leafy Boy up there—’

‘What do they look like?’ Zesi asked.

‘You’ll know when you see them. If you find one, drive it out along a branch. In distress they call to each other, bring each other out of the foliage. And they leap from tree to tree - flit between the branches like birds. It’s a marvellous sight. We’ll soon see where they’re congregating, which tree. Then we’ll close in. Got that?’

It sounded simple enough to Zesi - just entirely unfamiliar.

The Root stalked away, and his hunters dispersed. Zesi saw Shade looking at her. He had an expression of confusion on his face, faint concern. But he trotted after his father. The priest, with an uneasy frown, jogged over to the tree that had been picked out for him.

Zesi was left alone with her tree. She was distracted by all those looks of disquiet. Something wasn’t right here. But she was in the hands of the Pretani. There was nothing for it but to climb.

She had spare rope around her waist. She took this now, tied either end to her spear, and slung the spear over her back, leaving her hands free.

Then she walked up to the tree, stepped on its roots, and stroked its bark, which was sagging and wrinkled. It really was a very old tree. ‘Forgive me,’ she whispered to it. She looked for her first foothold, and found it in a bulge in the bark - some infestation, perhaps. She stepped up, fingers probing at cracks in the bark. The lower branches weren’t much more than her own height off the ground. When she had hold of the lowest she was able to pull herself up. From here the next branch, oddly bent back on itself, was only just above her.

On she climbed, up through the branches, arms and legs working, her back soon aching, the breath coming short, her palms scraped by the bark. When she glanced down, the tree trunk seemed to narrow to its roots, far below in the litter of the forest floor.

If her Other had been a squirrel this might have been enjoyable. She took a deep breath and climbed on.

Something moved, above her.

She stopped dead, peering up. A shadow shifted in the dense canopy, something massive, silent save for the faintest rustle of the leaves.

Her spear was useless, for there was no room to wield it here among the branches; she might have been better to leave it on the ground. But she had her blade, which she took from a fold in her tunic and tucked into her mouth, leaving her hands free. If she climbed higher, got a bit closer - she remembered the Root’s instructions about chasing her Leafy Boy to the end of a branch—

She saw the stone out of the corner of her eye, flying up from the ground, a whirling blade. She flinched back, but it caught her on the back of her shin, just above the ankle. Blood flowed, hot, and she cried out, her voice loud in the stillness of the forest.

Her injured leg slipped, slick with blood. She lost her grip and fell, landing heavily on her back on a thick branch. She would have fallen further if she hadn’t grabbed onto branchlets with both hands. The branch creaked and swayed, and her leg ached, but she held on.

It was deliberate! Someone had thrown the blade, and injured her, deliberately. Maybe even tried to kill her.

She tried to sit up, moving one hand at a time. If she could bandage her shin with a bit of tunic it would hold until she got down to the ground and the priest could treat it properly. Even so climbing would be difficult, with one weakened foot, and she had dropped her blade in the fall. She searched for her spare.

And it came down on her from above, a heavy, meaty tangle of thrashing limbs and muscles and teeth, a row of white teeth before her face.

She fell back on her branch, clutching with one hand, and got the other hand around the beast’s throat. She pushed back the face, those teeth. The creature thrashed and twisted and pummelled her with feet and fists and knees. It was so close in the green gloom she could barely make out what it was. A boy! It was a boy, with a scrawny torso and stick-like arms on which muscles bulged, skin stained green with leaf fragments, hair long and filthy, and a bright emptiness in the eyes. He might have been eight, nine, ten years old; he was strong, and wild.

She lost her grip. She fell backwards and crashed through one branch, two, before slamming down on another, winded, still high above the ground.

She backed up against the trunk of the tree, scrambling to find her blade.

But she was too slow. The boy swung down, grabbing onto whippy branchlets with a clean instinct, and he was on her again. All she could do was cling to him, trying to push him away, kicking feebly with her one good foot.

And now there were more of them, a second, a third, a fourth, heavy, lithe shapes crashing down through the foliage and joining the pile on top of her. She couldn’t move, she could barely breathe, as the squirming bodies pinned her and fists and feet slammed into her face, her sides, her belly. She couldn’t even see their faces. She thought of the baby lying helpless inside her.

Now she felt small hands dragging at her tunic, pawing between her thighs, and something pressed against her bare stomach - a penis, hard. All this was wordless, the boys silent save for grunts and snarls.

Something heavy slammed into the pile of boys, with a sound like chopping meat. One of them gurgled and fell away, and she felt the weight lift. It had been a spear; she could see the shaft. The other boys screamed and spat. Another spear flew, missing the boys.

With a final volley of blows and punches they scattered and spread. She could hear them go, crashing through the branches with no regard for the noise they made.

She was a mass of pain. She tried to hang onto the branch under her, but it was slick with blood.

She fell again. Another branch slammed into her back, stunning her, and she dropped towards a distant, leaf-strewn ground.

35

The priest woke her.

She had been dreaming of falling. She grabbed at his arm, the pallet under her body.

‘It’s all right.’ Jurgi’s face was over her in the gloom of the Pretani house, his hands on her shoulders, reassuring. ‘You’re safe. You’re down.’ His smile was dimly lit by firelight.

She remembered the tree, the boys. ‘My leg—’

‘A gash. I cleaned it, stitched it.’

Her hand flew to her stomach.

‘Your baby’s fine too,’ he murmured. ‘I heard its heart beat. He, or she, is going to be a tough fighter.’

‘How . . .’ Her throat was dry as dust.

‘Drink this.’ He lifted a wooden bowl to her lips and let her take swallows of tepid, strongly flavoured water. ‘Willow bark tea. From Alder. Kills the pain.’

‘What pain?’ She tried to lift her head off the pallet; a pain like a thunderclap echoed through her skull. ‘Ow.’

‘The Root was worried about the damage your head might have done to his tree on the way down. Look, another few days and you’ll be fine. But I had to wake you now.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Shade asked me to. He wants you to see what’s going to happen tonight.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘He’s challenged his father.’

‘Over me?’

He smiled, but it was a bleak expression. ‘Yes, over you. Wherever you go, trouble follows . . . Come on. If you can stand I’ll get you outside.’

She managed to sit up, and the priest threw a cloak around her shoulders and helped her to her feet. Her leg ached deeply, evidently it had been a bad cut, but with the priest’s help she could hobble. It felt as if her head had been cracked like an egg.

‘So,’ she said. ‘The Leafy Boys. Those things that got me.’

He pulled open the door flap and helped her through. ‘They are boys - human, though they don’t look it.’

Outside the air was fresh, cooler than it had been. Puddles stood on the ground of the clearing, and the sacred posts gleamed, wet. It had been raining, then; the weather had turned while she’d been unconscious. She couldn’t see anybody else.

Jurgi helped her to a log, and she sat, gratefully. He said, ‘I believe it was a Leafy Boy that threw down the branch at you, that time. Remember?’

‘When you saved me.’

‘And almost got killed myself.’ The priest glanced up at the night-black forest canopy. ‘They live in the trees. The canopy is so solid, the Pretani believe, that you could climb a tree and cross this country from north to south, east to west, without ever touching the ground. And there’s food up there, the fruit of the trees, the squirrels and the birds to hunt. And to drink, water that pools in the big leaves and hollows in the trunks. It’s a place to live, if a strange one.’

‘How do they get up there? The boys.’

‘Nobody knows how it started. Maybe a bunch of kids got lost somehow, or they were outcasts . . . They go naked. They lost the knowledge of speech. They’re more animal than human, I think. It’s a harsh life up there - one slip and you fall. Shade says they rarely breed.’

She grunted. ‘A gang of them tried to breed with me.’

‘Oh, they rape. They rut with each other like dogs. But even if one of them becomes pregnant, how could they handle the birth, look after a baby? It’s thought they keep up their numbers by stealing children from the ground, kids old enough to cling to a branch but too young even to remember their own names - toddlers of two or three.’

‘And the Pretani hunt them. What do they do, eat them?’

‘No, they have taboos about that. They display their skulls in their houses. I’ve seen them. And trade the little finger bones with other folk to make necklaces.’

‘I could have been killed.’

‘You’d have been fine if you hadn’t been hit by that stone. Once you were injured the Leafy Boys were on you in a heartbeat. It was the stone that caused it. Or rather, he who threw the stone. For it was deliberate.’

She remembered the stone’s flight. ‘Yes. Yes, it was. Who?’

‘It was their priest. He hasn’t been seen since - I suspect he won’t be back until we’re safely gone. It was a trap, you see - a trap for you. To get you isolated in a tree, in the Leafy Boys’ domain, and then to draw them to you. Ingenious in a way. And, with luck, it could be made to look like an accident. But their priest was seen.’

‘Who by?’

‘Me.’ He grinned fiercely. ‘I did promise your father I wouldn’t let you come to any harm. From the beginning of that hunt, something didn’t feel right. I spoke to Alder. He took my tree and I took his, which was close enough to yours for me to see. And another saw too, another who stayed close to you.’

‘Shade?’

He nodded.

She said, ‘That runt of a priest wouldn’t do anything without the Root’s say-so.’

‘Exactly. Which is what tonight’s drama is all about. Look, it’s starting . . .’

As they watched from their log the Pretani emerged from their houses, the Root first, then his son Shade, and then the hunters. The Root and Shade were both naked, but each carried a single blade in his right hand. There was still no sign of the priest, Zesi noticed.

Last of all to emerge was the Root’s wife. Aside from Zesi she was the only woman here. She stood and watched as the men walked through the ring of posts towards the sacred tree. It occurred to Zesi that she didn’t even know the mother’s name. And yet Zesi sensed she was the most important person here.

Shade and the Root faced each other. The hunters stood around them, reflecting the circle of the silent, watchful posts. Zesi thought it was like the stand-off between Gall and Shade.