The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy) (11 page)

"She was
stolen
.
By Stopmouth. You told me so yourself. You saw him."

"She will never willingly
touch you."

"You're wrong about her. She
was confused, that's all. Life in the Roof is different."

"Why? Don't they poison
women up there in order to rape them? Is that what you did to the
Hairbeasts? I hear their Chief was a female too."

His fist clenched of its own
accord and experience made her flinch, but she didn't step back.
Wallbreaker struggled to control his breathing. "It wasn't rape.
I'm the Chief and her husband. And anyway, this has nothing to do
with her. That flesh out there... we need it. We need all of it. For
our journey. We're never going to get another supply so easily, so
quickly. And what of the other preparations we should be making? We
could do with more red moss. We could toss it into the tunnels of the
Diggers if we had to."

She stepped closer to him,
half-flinching as she approached so that he knew she was about to say
something that would anger him. She never let her fear stop her,
though. From anything. She felt for the pouch that Treeneck had made
for him, the one that held the Talker. "This..." she said,
"this is the only reason you still live."

He relaxed, having expected
worse, something he hadn't already thought of himself. "Have you
a suggestion, dear wife?"

"Him," she pointed
downwards, so that he understood she meant Aagam on the floor below.
"Didn't he tell you there were more humans? Another Tribe?"

He nodded. He hadn't told her
this himself. She must have listened in on one of his conversations.
He knew she often did that, but pretended not to be aware of it. He
trusted her. "Well, you don't need those dancing fools, do you,
husband? You don't need the Tribe at all. You have a Talker just as
poor Stopmouth did. You have your own guide. One who won't try to
seduce you away from your wife."

"Wives."

She pretended not to care. "So...
Go yourself. Go with a small group. Escape. It must be safer and
easier for a few to get away than a blundering mass of people."
There was something about her words that made him feel dizzy and
sick. He couldn't quite pin down what was wrong with them at first,
but he found he was shaking his head and trembling all over. Was it
fear? Was it the fear again? No. He saw Mossheart smile for the first
time since Indrani had stolen his heart. His first wife was still
lovely, he saw now. She took his damp palm in hers.

"The Tribe will die without
you," she said. "Even you care about that, don't you?"

"Yes," he breathed.
"Even... even me." He felt suddenly happy, almost giddy
with it. He hugged her to him, then fiercely kissed her as he had not
done is so long. "Even me," he said again, louder now,
laughing, because, in spite of all the food he had brought to Centre
Square since becoming Chief; in spite of the lives he had saved; part
of him had believed himself a monster.

Just then, the drumming stopped
in the Square and people were shouting. A few screamed. The Chief and
his first wife turned back to the window. Below them, a hunter limped
in amongst the packed members of the Tribe, while everywhere people
panicked to get out of his way. He stopped, spotting Wallbreaker, and
the two locked eyes.

Whistlenose.

"Don't speak his name,"
Mossheart said quietly. Of course not. For Whistlenose was a ghost.
The creature's skin had been worn away in patches on its chest. It
carried an old-style spear that trembled in its grip—as though
spirits could feel exhaustion! When it spoke, its voice too,
trembled.

"I'm not dead," it
said. "Ask the Clawfolk. They sent me back. Ask them!" He
wiped his grimy, pleading face.

Wallbreaker opened his mouth.
"That was ten days ago, it was—"

"Don't speak to it!"
cried Mossheart. "By the Ancestors!"

"I didn't know what to do,"
Whistlenose continued, his voice hoarse. "Who would believe me
when the Chief himself wanted me dead?"

"We have no Chief now,"
said Laughlong from the far edge of the crowd.

Whistlenose shook that off as
though he didn't care. "You have to listen to me. You all have
to listen. The Longtongues... They're... they're leaving their nests.
I've been... I've been robbing their traps during the day." A
dangerous business and one the creatures were usually wise to. "But
today, I saw the Longtongues. Dozens of them. Maybe all that are
left. They were streaming out the gates on this side of their
territory."

"When?" asked
Wallbreaker. Mossheart had pulled away from him as if she too might
be caught by the ghost for acknowledging it.

"Just now. I ran all the way
here when I saw it." He spun around, eliciting screams as people
shoved away from him. "Don't you see? It's daytime. They're so
afraid. The most powerful creatures we hunt. They're so afraid
they're doing their running away
by
day
."

"He's not a ghost,"
said Wallbreaker. He surprised them all and himself by dropping right
down from the window. He even managed to land all right, as though he
had never been out of practice. He rolled in amongst the ashes of an
old fire and strode across the Square to embrace Whistlenose.
Everybody gasped, but he remained unharmed. "And you call
me
a coward?" he said to them, smiling hard enough to bring out the
dimples they used to love him for long ago.

Oh, he knew himself for a craven,
but somehow the arrival of Indrani and Aagam, and the conversations
he'd had with them, had stolen away any fear he might have of such
things as spirits. After all, the tracklights really were just
lights—he knew that now. Nobody made their campfires up there.
Certainly not the Ancestors, and that, that thought, right then, as
he embraced Whistlenose, told him what he needed to do.

He faced the crowd, feeling a
little of the old swagger return.

"You barred me into my
house," he said. "And maybe you thought you had good reason
to do so, because I am not like other Chiefs."

"You're no Chief at all,"
muttered Laughlong. That man would have to Volunteer. And soon.

Wallbreaker widened his grin.
"And yet, Laughlong, my predecessor Speareye sent me a vision
over ten days ago. He stood there with my father and other great
hunters of our Tribe. Even the Traveller was there, although he did
not speak. Speareye, had come, he said, he had come to beg me not to
let the Tribe die.

"But how can I save them? I
asked.

"The flight of the
Longtongues will be a sign, he told me. You must leave too, for the
safe place we have found for you. Use the Hairbeasts as your food
supply. We will send a Roofman to guide you where you need to go."

"It's true," called
Mossheart from the window. "I have heard him cry out in his
sleep many times and always in the morning he has a new way to get us
flesh. How could one man dream up so many clever schemes if not for
the Ancestors whispering directly in his ears?"

Wallbreaker felt his cheeks
burning. He wanted to laugh. For all her thoughts ran bitter as the
red juice of a berry, Mossheart never failed to back him up in
public. She now spoke with confidence of a place where Diggers would
not dare to attack; where children could grow in safety, as in the
old days.

But the reaction of the crowd was
not quite the one Wallbreaker had expected. Laughlong, whom he had
taken for an enemy, began to weep. Wives embraced each other. Hunters
pulled their children close. Feast, it seemed, had turned to funeral.

He saw the drummer resting her
head on her instrument, breathing fast, as though she had been
running for her life. She was a hard woman called Tallythief, loved
by her three named children and nobody else. Except when she was
drumming. Then, she became beautiful and fierce and everybody adored
her. In neither state, was she a weakling, and yet here she was now
weeping like so many others. And for what?

He felt Mossheart's gaze boring
into his own. Her eyes were brighter than he had seen them in some
time and suddenly he realised what had changed, what his crazy,
self-serving lie had accomplished; why braver men than he shivered
and sobbed.

"Finally," he shouted,
"finally we have hope!" He had been hiding the preparations
for the journey from them for fear they would have risen up and put a
new Chief in his place, when all along, they would have loved him for
it. An escape! An escape from the end of the world that everybody had
felt was coming!

"You thought we were
doomed," he cried. "As if the blessed Ancestors would let
us become extinct. But we are not like the other beasts that feed us
so well. This is our world—" he had heard as much from
Aagam, "We were here first, brought here by the same Ancestors
who will deliver us now to our new home. A place of safety!

"We have a hard journey
ahead of us, and our numbers will decline every step of the way. But
you must never lose hope, for other humans wait for us there. They
are softer than you. Weaker than you are. Feeble as a nameless child!
And that means that not one of us who gets there alive will be made
to Volunteer, no matter how severe his injury.

"We will live, my people. We
will live! We will live! The Tribe continues!"

And finally they cheered him.
Those who had fallen to the ground leapt to their feet and the hugs
became firmer. Tallythief screamed, but with joy and punished her
drum as never before. "The Tribe Continues!" It was
something said on the birth of a new child, but it seemed so
appropriate now, so right that many shouted it. "We continue!
The Tribe continues!"

He released Whistlenose and said,
quietly, "You have saved yourself again. For an old man, the
Ancestors like you a lot."

"I want my wife back."

"You know, I think Aagam
might be more than a little glad of that."

"And that man needs to die."

"Not if you want your boy to
get a name."

Whistlenose was on the point of
collapse. Wallbreaker had felt it when the two had embraced. He felt
exhausted himself now.

"Look, Whistlenose. With the
flesh we got from the Clawfolk and the last of the Hairbeasts, we
won't need any new Volunteers for several more tens of days. We might
be safe by then. All of us."

"That man goes before any of
mine," said Whistlenose. And with that, he pushed away from the
Chief. Luckily, nobody seemed to notice his rudeness. The people
continued to dance and to celebrate, while over in Longtongue the
Diggers, presumably, were spreading their tunnels and collapsing the
remaining buildings. He would have to put an end to this feast. And
then, after a day's preparation... two at the most... He felt his
gorge rise in sudden terror and had to cover his mouth.

The journey. Across a wilderness
with a limitless variety of creatures waiting to gnaw on his bones.

The
forest here seemed full of magic to Whistlenose. Berries grew from
the trunks of trees, bursting when ripe with tiny pops that made the
younger hunters jump and look around them. But they weren't the only
ones interested: glittering swarms of multi coloured insects, flashed
through branches and leaves, each rushing to be the first to settle
on a spattered trunk, leaving it clean behind them only to race
towards the next little explosion.

Whistlenose had seen the same
phenomenon twice before. Only the Ancestors knew why the berries
chose one day to burst and not another. He didn't care, it was
beautiful and he only wished his family could see it for themselves.

He motioned his pack forward.
Three days travel from ManWays and in that time nobody in the Tribe
had so much as seen another intelligent creature. Aagam had told the
Chief they would be safe in the forest, but also that it wouldn't
last forever. Sooner or later, trouble was going find them.

"Better if we find it
first," said Wallbreaker when he briefed the scouts. "You're
not there to hunt," he told them. "We have enough flesh for
a while yet. Any non-Digger you find should be left alone unless you
think you can bring it back alive."

"Alive?" That didn't
make sense to Whistlenose.

"Information," the
Chief had replied. That was an Aagam word and it made Whistlenose
angry. But the Ancestors, it seemed, spoke through the Chief, so he
swallowed the bitter morsels of resentment and nodded.

At least
Fearsflyers
had returned to him his Armourback shell spear. He had missed it
while living as a "ghost."

The scouts had struggled through
heavy growth for a full tenth, maybe half a day's travel ahead of the
main body of the tribe. The cry of a baby would not carry so far,
Whistlenose hoped. Nor the smell of blood from an accidental cut. But
who could tell? Not even the Traveller had met all the creatures the
world might hold.

The ageing hunter looked around
at his men. First came skinny Chinjutter with the clumps of black
hair that grew out of his nose and ears. Behind him, walked a boy who
looked barely old enough for a name. But he did have one, and it was
worse than even Whistlenose's—Browncr
a
ck
.
Whistlenose worried about him most of all. The boy had yet to
properly wet his spear in the guts of a living enemy. He would be
anxious: too enthusiastic and too scared all at once.