The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy) (25 page)

His words made the people around
him uncomfortable and more than one face turned to Dharam to see how
the Commissioner would respond.

"It's not what I
think
that matters, savage, it's what I know. There is another escape route
from this terrible world you cannibals have made for yourselves—"

"
We
did not make this world and everybody here knows that!"

"You make it every day,
savage. Through your barbarous actions. Your killings, your feastings
on the flesh of others. We tried to give you a chance. To let us get
on with growing our food, but no! You forced us to kill, yesterday,
just to feed the beasts you invited to live right in our midst. Alien
killers and human killers together. For many of us, it was the last
straw."

Stopmouth felt his face go red,
but he managed to control himself, to not fly at this monster before
him. "If you hate killing so much, Dharam, then I expect you
will be letting us go?"

A pause. Dharam's followers were
uncertain again. "We will have a... a trial," said the
Commissioner. "There will be no murder."

"Apart from the murder of
the Roof that you committed?"

"Your Religious allies did
that, Stopmouth, not me." And he spoke that monstrous lie with
such assurance that even the Chief found himself believing it.
Almost. But the words had strengthened Dharam's supporters, no doubt
about that.

And then, Stopmouth saw something
that chilled him to his bones. A few of the men to either side of
Dharam produced shiny black objects from pouches at their sides.
Guns
!
He had seen their like in the Roof. The men carried the weapons
awkwardly, but eagerness showed on their faces and they swapped
excited grins.

"Where did you get those?"
he asked. "We could have used them a hundred times before
today!"

"Oh, there was plenty of
cargo in the ship, known only to me, savage. We don't need you any
more; we don't need you at all now.
I
will protect the people."

Stopmouth tensed his muscles. It
was time to leave. Tarini could skip through far denser crowds than
this one and Vishwakarma would be stronger than any of them would be
expecting.

But Vishwakarma chose that moment
to fall to the ground, weeping.

"Don't worry, Vishwakarma,"
Dharam said, misunderstanding. "Your crimes will be forgiven and
when we leave this terrible place, they will never be spoken of
again. You were civilized once. But this other, this Deserter who
corrupted you, who has tried to do the same to the rest of us..."

Stopmouth reached his hand slowly
towards the Talker and Dharam's grin widened. "Remember, the
Talker is the only weapon the savage has now. When he commands it to
brighten, don't forget to close your eyes. You see, cannibal? I am
wise to all of your tricks. I advise you now to surrender. We cannot
afford mercy otherwise."

The Chief touched Tarini's back
and whispered. "Surrender if you want, but I don't think you can
trust them."

"I know I can't."

Still whispering he told her what
he meant to do. Then, suddenly, he raised the Talker and shouted,
"Brighter!" But he never finished the command. Instead, he
and Tarini charged forward just as everybody else was closing their
eyes as tightly as possible. Many had dropped makeshift weapons to
cover their faces. A gun went off with a tremendous
bang
.
Everybody flinched, or screamed as though they had been hit.

The Chief powered through the
Ship People, knocking two of them aside. Nearby, Tarini too passed
through the line of enemies using that uncanny ability of Crisis
Babies to dodge through crowds as though they were made of air.

The Warden, Ekta, had been too
clever for Stopmouth. She appeared right in front of him, her face
determined. "Now, stop right there, Chief—"

That was all she had time to say
before a sling stone sped past Stopmouth's ear and struck her in the
side of the head. Vishwakarma! It had to be! Other cries of pain from
behind Stopmouth told him the young hunter had fully recovered from
his weeping fit.

More hands were reaching for the
fugitives.

"This way!" shouted
Tarini, running off down the narrowest of gaps between the lean-tos.
He pounded after her, ignoring the sting of weakly thrown stones and
curses. All of this area was new to him. Real buildings had collapsed
into the earth, leaving rubble behind them, or entire walls in some
cases that fooled the eye into thinking a full house lay beyond. Much
of this lay hidden by the maze of shanties. They had been built of
plastic scraps and sheets of torn metal that flickered in the sun as
though alive.

The cursing continued behind him.
Ahead, Tarini had come to a stop at the back of a lean-to. A dead
end, it seemed. "Get out of the way!" he shouted, still
running. He picked up the pace, ignoring the risk of tripping and the
jagged metal edges that threatened to rip him open if he strayed too
close. He smacked hard into a wall of plastic, knocking it over, so
that the roof of the shelter, heavy enough to trap them if it fell,
swayed dangerously. He plunged in through the darkness, choking on
the fumes of poorly pounded moss, before passing through a curtain of
the same material to come outside again.

"This way!" Tarini
cried, pushing past.

More Ship People must have come
from the fields. He could hear them calling one to the other, combing
the narrow alleys for the fugitives.

"Where are we going?"
he asked her. "I need to get to Indrani before they do!"
The Ship People regarded Indrani as a traitor of the vilest sort, and
even his own followers, the Religious, still disliked her. That was
mutual, of course.

"I found them!" shouted
an excited man. He and two women came rushing from the right bearing
sticks. Stopmouth wasted no time in charging them, knocking them all
in a terrified heap.

"You're pretty," Tarini
told the man as she passed, before calling, "This way, Chief! I
know where we are now. We can get in to HeadQuarters through here."
And it wouldn't be a moment too soon. A large group with Ekta at
their head and another man beside her in the torn garments of a
Warden were running towards them. Shots rang out, punching holes in a
nearby wall.

"Stop wasting bullets!"
Ekta shouted. "We've got them trapped!"

"Come on," said Tarini.

Stopmouth needed no further
urging. The shanty dwellings had been built right up to the walls of
Head-Quarters. One whole side of the 'U' had fallen over, and stones
from the barrier had been taken away to make new defences farther
out. It was simplicity itself to slip in through the curtained
entrance and run up towards the roof where he had left Indrani and
Flamehair. This was where he had hidden the food of the Ship People,
filling entire rooms, and leaving only a narrow entrance at the top
of the stairs. He and Tarini might be able to block themselves in for
a while. Then he could use the flashing of the Talker to signal for
help from the Religious patrols. With better fighters and control of
the food supply, he would soon put Dharam back in his place and then,
by the Ancestors! Then there would be a Volunteering! That man...
that man would feed the Tribe before he destroyed it.

Stopmouth and Tarini had risen
two flights of stairs before the first of their pursuers could be
heard entering the building below. Just as well, since Tarini could
barely put one foot in front of the other now. For all her courage,
she would need more than rice in her belly before she ever became a
proper hunter.

The sun, almost directly above,
blinded him when he came out onto the roof.

"You led them quite a chase,
Stopmouth!" Who was this? Most people called him "Chief"
now, except Indrani and maybe Kubar. It took Stopmouth a moment to
recognize Yama, back from patrol with his "pack." They were
all there: a group of fifteen young men who used to cause trouble
when all had lived in the Roof together. Now, they had found a better
way to use their high spirits by serving the Tribe.

"Guard the stairs,"
Stopmouth told them. "Don't let anyone up here!"

A few moved to obey him at once,
but only a few. Then, even these ones paused, looking, not to
Stopmouth, but to Yama. The boy grinned.

"You taught us all about
sacrifice, didn't you,
Chief
?
Threatened to Volunteer me when I took this wound on my leg for the
Tribe. Remember that?" The leg still bore a bubbling scar from
the burning spit of a Skeleton Hunter.

Stopmouth felt suddenly dizzy at
the sight of so many spear points turned towards him. "I don't
know what Dharam told you," he said quietly, speaking as quickly
as he could. "There is no escape from the world, you know that,
right? You know you can't believe anything he says. He even blamed
your people for what happened up in the Roof. Surely you remember
that?"

The young men stirred
uncertainly.

"I don't care if we can't
leave," said Yama. "I like it here. I like it when my spear
drinks, and it
always
drinks. Right, boys?" That got them grinning again, although
Stopmouth knew some of them still wept in their sleep and wet
themselves before a fight. They wanted to go home even if Yama did
not. "But we need a new Chief around here. And real women.
Proper beautiful ones who'll do anything. Right boys?"

"You can't... Yama! You
can't!"

Tarini's eyes opened wide.
"Stopmouth!"

He had barely time to look
around. Ekta's fist was waiting for him. She knocked him hard onto
his bottom, his head spinning. "Sorry, Chief," she said,
with real regret. That didn't stop her hitting him again, harder this
time, cursing under her breath at the knuckles she must have bruised.
"Tie him up!" she said. "Tie them both up!"

"I don't take orders from
you," Yama said. The voice seemed to come from far away. Where
was Indrani?

"Tie them up,
please
,"
said Ekta. "Or I'll rip your head off."

Stopmouth tried to resist when he
felt them loosen the Talker pouch from his belt. But somebody hit him
again. Not Ekta this time. He felt woozy, he felt like being sick. He
heard a chorus of Ancestors cursing him for his foolishness. "Too
trusting!" they cried. "You have killed your Tribe!"

"That
wasn't so bad, hey? A little knock on the head?"

Stopmouth wrinkled his nose. He
knew that smell, that voice.

"They wanted to volunteer
us, boy—I mean, Chief. But our lads, Kubar and them, even some
of Yama's lot, wouldn't stand for it." Rockface paused. "Is
he even awake yet? Am I talking to a corpse? Thin-skulled like his
father."

Another smell he knew and the
hic-cough of a baby.

"Leave him, Rockface. Not to
touch." Indrani's voice. She was speaking strangely, with
difficulty. Almost as if...

Stopmouth opened his eyes and
tried to sit up—too quickly. A high dark room was spinning
around him with miserable looking, blurred faces. He felt his gorge
rise. "Ekta hit him hard with those muscles of hers, hey? What
kind of a woman is that? She'd crush her own babies if she hugged
them, so she would, and smash a man's tally stick!"

"You are idiot, Rockface.
Sit, love. You must to... to
down
."

"Lie down," Stopmouth
croaked. "I must l-lie down. They took the T-talker?" Of
course they did. Half of the Ship People didn't even speak the same
language, although they had made plans for dealing with that problem,
he remembered. Still. The Talker would save them a lot of trouble.

His vision began to clear. Light
leaked through a crack in the wall of a building he didn't recognize,
seeming to redden everything it touched.

Apart from Indrani, Flamehair and
Rockface, there were two others with him in the large room—Tarini,
her clothing ripped, her face speckled with dried blood; and
Vishwakarma, also lying down, staring at the ceiling.

Something flashed by Stopmouth's
hand. He brought it close to his face: a Fourlegger scale. They were
everywhere. It explained the rusty-looking colouring of the floor and
told Stopmouth exactly where he was: in exile; sheltered by allies he
would never be able to speak to without the Talker. All over the
room, were balls of moss and twigs. It looked like some kind of art,
like the charcoal pictures of home, or the bloody swirls of the
Hairbeasts.

"I'm hungry," he said.
Indrani and Rockface nodded. The big man looked suspiciously cheerful
for a hunter who had been exiled from his Tribe. But it wasn't the
first time for either of them, and maybe that explained it.
Nevertheless, a shudder passed through Stopmouth's body.

He felt Indrani's warm touch on
his shoulder. "We still live," she said. "We still
will win. We kill Dharam and we take Talker and we..." she
shrugged, lacking the words, but her expression revealed everything:
anger, ferocity, strength. She would not be anybody's Volunteer and
she had survived far worse situations than this. The death of a
world, for one thing; Wallbreaker for another.