The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy) (19 page)

"And Diggers?"

"Of course, there'll be
Diggers along the way. They're already everywhere. Except beyond the
hills."

Wallbreaker pulled him back. "We
will follow the twig then."

A whole day stretched in front of
them, but a great amount of organizing needed to take place before
the Tribe could follow a new plan. Scouts moved forward, but slowly,
so slowly. They had to stab hundreds and hundreds of creatures in the
brain or risk capture and Wallbreaker knew their arms would tire
quickly. So, he sent four or five times more hunters than would have
been normal, and when he set the Tribe to moving again, he caused
more grumbling among his veterans by ordering that some of the
younger women be armed too.

"You're killing the Tribe in
two ways now,
Chief
,"
said Laughlong. "Our Ancestors won't recognise us, won't want us
like this."

"As long as we don't join
them too soon," said Wallbreaker, "I'll be happy." He
was relieved to see younger men nodding behind Laughlong's back.
Survival was the only real law and everybody understood that, no
matter what they pretended to believe.

Slowly, the Tribe made its way
down the narrow track of dead planted bodies, and eventually, after a
full tenth of nervously watching the Roof at the back of the column,
Wallbreaker got to follow them, along with Mossheart, Treeneck and
his sweet little girl. His stomach roiled with fear, threatening to
make him waste his breakfast.

"It's flickering again,"
said Mossheart. She was looking up at the Roof, shading her eyes.
"The rhythm, it's like the heartbeat of a pup as it bleeds out."

"Enough of that, wife. I
don't want anybody hearing that kind of talk from us."

"They have eyes of their
own," she replied.

Aagam, on the other hand, seemed
to have become less worried by the phenomenon. "I figured it
out," he said. "It's just the rebels interfering with the
way the Roof works. But they can't win, you know? Not with everything
that's against them up there. And the funniest thing? The Roof is
self-repairing. It's filled with tiny
machines
that can fix anything. No, this can't last. All we need to do is to
get beyond the hills and when the Rebellion is over and everybody has
calmed down, Aagam will find a way back. You see if I don't."

That first day, the Ancestors
seemed to be with them. The scouts discovered another stretch of
forest, and even Wallbreaker, right at the very back of the
migration, growing ever more anxious with the falling light, made it
under the cover of the rotted, tilting trees. The only shame was that
none of the wood seemed strong enough to support a man's weight, or
they could have used it to build a bridge to the far side of the
Wetlane.

Everybody seemed excited and
happy. Even the night passed peacefully, except that a young scout
shook Wallbreaker awake shortly before dawn and beckoned him out to
the edge of the wood where it grew right up against the Wetlane.

"Look," whispered the
young man who bore the unhappy name of "Browncrack." "Over
there!"

Wallbreaker stared and stared,
not sure what he was looking for, but then he saw it: a blue,
flickering glow, moving between the knee-high bodies the Diggers had
planted on the far side of the Wetlane. It came closer to the hiding
hunters, seeming almost to float.

"The bodies aren't even
trying to grab it!" breathed the younger man and Wallbreaker saw
this was true. The Diggers' victims lolled as they always did,
drooling in private agony, while the blue creature floated on past
them. It glistened and flickered, yet, the strangest thing about it
was that it bore the unmistakable shape of a human woman, her head
seeming to quest this way and that. When drops of Roofsweat touched
her, they turned into a sudden mist that hung around her, sharing in
the glow.

"Why is she growing
smaller?" asked Browncrack.

Sure enough, even as they
watched, the woman became completely transparent, before fading away
altogether. "An Ancestor," breathed Browncrack. "Lots
of people have seen them by now," he said. "Scouts anyway.
They've got to be protecting us."

Wallbreaker was not so sure. It
wasn't just that he alone knew he'd been lying about the
communications he'd pretended to receive from the after life. There
was something else too: something about the quality of the glow from
the creature that felt familiar to him, although he couldn't quite
identify the taste of it.

And then, the tracklights turned
black, plunging the world into pure darkness. He felt the young
hunter's grip on his arm, but for once, he wasn't afraid. Part of him
was counting down the heartbeats to measure the blindness. Another
part of him was thinking about the glowing creature he had finally
seen with his own eyes. Did it assume the form of the prey it hunted?
he wondered. Why had the planted bodies not tried to grab it? He
would love to catch one and speak to it with the Talker!

And that reminded him of
something.

He took the magic ball out of its
pouch. "Activate," he said, and it glowed gently with a
warmer light than that of the spirit creature.

"We'll find our way back to
the others with this," he told Browncrack. And so they did.

On a normal night, the
tracklights would have faded away as Rooflight slowly replaced them.
This time, however, it was suddenly mid-day and people, frightened by
the darkness of a moment before, cursed angrily at the unexpected
glare.

"Get everybody ready to
move," Wallbreaker said, pretending to be unruffled. "We
all need a good breakfast, but give more to the scouts. Laughlong!
Get up here! How far does the forest extend this time?"

"Two days' travel. I don't
like it, though. See the trees? They have that Digger rot about them.
And look at how they're tilting! Half of them have sunk into the
ground like the bodies do."

"At least they won't try to
grab us. Listen, Laughlong, we need to keep following the direction
of the Wetlane."

"Well, we'll only get a day
and a half in the cover of the trees if we do that. And what about
food? The women say we'll be lucky to get three more days out of what
we have."

"That's no worry of yours,
hunter."

Laughlong wrinkled his lip. He
looked like he wanted to spit, but even he wouldn't go so far, even
now when extinction seemed certain. "A day and a half, Chief. A
day and a half. And what will you do then, I wonder?"

When
total darkness had fallen in the woods and the tracklights seemed to
die, Whistlenose had been dreaming of the Clawfolk's slaughterhouse.
He woke up sweating and blind.

"Where are you?" he
whispered.

"I'm here," his son
replied.

"We both are," said his
wife, her hand finding his without so much as a fumble. "You
should have left us to sleep through the Blindness, husband. It's not
as if there's anything worth looking at."

Ancestors, but she always made
him smile! He replied, "And it's not as if you couldn't find me
in the dark!" He was referring to the sound his nose made,
hoping to amuse her and trusting that she wouldn't push the joke too
far.

Nor did she. They rested together
in silence, as Nighttracker drifted back to sleep.

Whistlenose tried to take comfort
in their warm presence, but he couldn't help wondering what would
happen if the dark-loving Diggers ever decided to attack during a
blindness. How could a hunter possibly save his family?

Light returned far too quickly
and painfully. He cursed, shading his eyes, blinking away the glare.
"It's too early for mid-day!" His stomach told him that
much if nothing else. But the sudden brightness might have caught the
Diggers by surprise too and fried a few of their grubs.

All around them, the camp stirred
into life. He smiled across at Hightoes, waddling around with an
armful of moss. She grinned but didn't come over, still embarrassed,
he supposed, about the night she had lost track of their boy.

"She looks tired," said
Ashsweeper quietly. "All this walking is bad for pregnant
women."

A few hunters came looking for
him. The previous day, everybody who had been involved in the forest
ambush had been allowed to stay with their families, but Whistlenose
had a feeling his time off was about to end. He smiled at Laughlong,
who said, "I'm to go scouting forward."

"You want me to come too?"

Laughlong shook his head. "No,
and too bad for you! You have to take charge of the rear. Worse.
You'll have
him
for company."

"All right."

"And I'm telling you,
Whistlenose, you should stop up your ears with moss. He'll only fill
them with lies and promises."

"And what about food,
Laughlong?"

"Oh, there's plenty of that
in the fields. Just lying there." But nobody would want to risk
another big fight with the Diggers so soon, so it might have to come
back to Volunteers.

Thank
the Ancestors Nighttracker had a name!
Some of the
other children weren't so lucky and might be picked. Especially
during a migration when they were slowing the Tribe down.

He collected together his
weapons, before eating a twist of dried flesh—he had no idea
what kind—and helped his wife and son get ready. "I'll be
at the back today, but I want you both walking in the centre. Look
after Hightoes. We'll probably be fine for the next two days, but you
know..."

She did. Ashsweeper would keep
her guard up.

And then the Tribe trundled into
motion, everybody trying to speak quietly, helping their friends,
shushing children or hoisting them up to carry on their shoulders,
food and Tallies packed away. Whistlenose allowed them all to pass
him by until finally the Chief and his family and that awful man,
Aagam, left him alone with the rearguard. It was a tired bunch of men
he commanded: seven hunters other than himself, all of whom had been
involved in the forest ambush. A few of them limped almost as badly
as he did, but he smiled at them. Brave lads every one, and the Tribe
lived on thanks to them.

He didn't speak to them, of
course. Hand signals sent them left and right, except for
Browncrack—the fastest and best recovered—who would keep
watch over the path behind them. The young man smiled thanks for the
responsibility before slipping in amongst the rotted trees without so
much as breaking a branch. When had he learned to do that? He was
growing up fast, that boy!

Time to go.

He sniffed at the air in case it
hid some clue, but the Tribe had spent so long surrounded by the
Digger stench already that he might as well have buried his nose in
his own armpit for all the good it did him.

The day passed easily enough.
Dried out moss cracked underfoot. Light glittered from the Wetlane
when the trees allowed it. The only strange thing was how the
Rooflight failed to dim properly and he couldn't keep proper track of
time.

The whole Tribe came to a halt
several times when obstacles were encountered ahead: like the small
stream that must have been terribly difficult for Hightoes to cross;
or an ancient wall that seemed to be made of nothing but uncorrupted
metal that shoved itself right out of the trees.

"Deserters," he heard
Aagam say with a sneer. It meant nothing to Whistlenose, but
Wallbreaker seemed intrigued and lingered to examine it some more
until Whistlenose threatened to leave him behind with it.

"Have you really no
curiosity, Whistlenose?"

"Will it help us escape the
Diggers?"

"Who knows? Who knows how
such things could help us if we learned their secrets."

"Won't Aagam tell you?"

"I don't think he
understands this wall any more than I do. He is as incurious as any
of you hunters." The Chief rubbed his hands over faded symbols.
They swam under Whistlenose's gaze, crawling together to form
meaning:

"In honour of those who died
in the great crossing."

The strange sight brought a gasp
from his lips and Wallbreaker chuckled. "That's the Talker,
making you understand the words."

"But... but there's no
creature here to speak any words!"

Wallbreaker shrugged and even
winked at this man he had sent, more than once, into death. "Come
on, then, hunter. Let's go. You're supposed to keep me safe."

That was when it happened—screams
from up ahead.

The two men ran forward without
hesitation. Whistlenose could feel the new threat in the soles of his
feet: an angry, rumbling shaking of the earth. The rotted trees were
feeling it too, and to the left and right, a number of them sagged
suddenly, while others, just out of sight, must have fallen
altogether with a tremendous crunching and snapping that urged the
men to greater efforts.

The Diggers had found them again
and were no longer content to wait for darkness. Instead, Whistlenose
realised, they had been busily burrowing under the humans to ambush
them in a place where the forest shade might protect their grubs.