The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy) (4 page)

Whistlenose watched the men
watching each other: one rubbing his neck, but smug and sure; the
other more tense, calculating.

"But you will save us,"
said the Chief eventually. "You, Aagam the... the Conqueror. You
will lead us to join with the Tribe my brother found."

"Exactly. I will warn you of
what lies ahead every step of the way. And more than that. I studied
the Diggers when I knew I would have to come here. I learned their
weaknesses and committed them to memory, my
real
memory." Whistlenose had no idea what Aagam had meant by "real"
memory, but nor did he care. He could only watch the Chief fall
deeper under the spell of a man who wanted him dead.

"And this will help us beat
the Diggers, Aagam?"

"Oh, nobody can beat the
Diggers. Not with the primitive weapons available to you here. But I
can help you identify weak spots to keep us all alive long enough to
get where we're going."

"And you can guarantee all
of this?"

The man laughed, his voice still
hoarse from Whistlenose's attack. "Not at all. It is highly
unlikely any of us will be alive a hundred days from now. The only
thing I can offer you is your best chance. I, Aagam, I am all you've
got. So, you'd best treat me like a
king
.
Like a
god
!
So, first things first. You will trade this murderer here for flesh.
Then, you will offer me my pick of the women."

"The
unmarried
women."

Aagam grinned. "Of course."
He looked at Whistlenose as he spoke, however. The hunter remembered
how the man had stared at his wife. "Or those women soon to be
widowed."

Whistlenose opened his mouth to
plead, to promise—he wasn't sure what—but Wallbreaker got
there first.

"This man, you have ordered
me to sacrifice, is the best hunter in the Tribe." A blatant
lie. Even at his very peak, Whistlenose had never risen higher than a
second spear. "I will not waste this great hunter on a whim."

The stranger's eyes narrowed.
"Don't bargain with a master, Chief. I can count tattoos as well
as anybody else." Whistlenose only had three, not including the
new one he'd been promised.

Wallbreaker shrugged. "I can
have you served to me as soup within the hour, stranger. I can trade
you to the Clawfolk or even the Longtongues now that I have a Talker.
Yes, it might be worth giving them a sign of goodwill."

"Oh, I don't think so.
You'll want to know what happened to Indrani, won't you? That runaway
wife of yours."

"
Kidnapped
wife."

"Whatever you like. You'll
want to learn her whereabouts. She's still alive, you know. She made
it all the way to that new tribe I was talking about. The one only I
can lead you to."

Whistlenose held his breath. He
could feel his life, his family's future, hanging by a thread.

"I could make you talk,
stranger. I could cut bits off you until I had learned your secrets."

"Yes, and you would never
know which things I told you were true and which invented."

"It's not as if I know that
now, is it?" The Chief paused, his eyes like slits. "So,
this then is my decision. You, stranger—"

"Aagam."

"You will tell me something
useful now. Something I can see the truth of immediately. Prove your
value first. Then, we will see about your demands for a wife and,"
he glanced at Whistlenose, "other things."

Aagam nodded and opened his mouth
to speak, but Wallbreaker stopped him with a gesture. "You will
tell only me. Whistlenose? You may return home. We will need a fuller
account of everything you have learned this day. Go. I promised you
rations. Collect them from Mossheart on the way out."

Whistlenose cleared his throat.
"I... I just wanted to say... to ask..."

"I will do what's best for
the Tribe."

"Of... of course."

Whistlenose
had seen his wife by now and the Chief too, so everybody was free to
ask him for news. First among these were some of the relatives of the
men in his hunting party. "Highstepper died bravely," he
lied, "spear in hand until the end. It came for him quickly."
And so on, until, utterly exhausted he came down the steps into the
cellar that was now his family's only home. They'd had a full house
all to themselves before the Armourbacks had wiped out half the
Tribe, but he loved the coziness he shared with his little family and
never missed the extra rooms.

"I have flesh," he said
to Ashsweeper. It was food from the communal stores now run by
Wallbreaker's sad wife, Mossheart. Ashsweeper hugged him, her hair
soft around his face. Another pair of smaller arms came from nowhere
to wrap themselves about his knees.

The next thing he knew, he was
lying on the floor, looking back up the cellar steps with Ashsweeper
and the boy wide-eyed with fear above him. He had collapsed. Not from
an injury, although his leg still tormented him.

"I'm all right," he
told them, voice slurring. "Just need to sleep. How's my strong
boy?" He never heard the answer, or gave his wife news of the
stranger who wanted him dead. His eyes closed and that was all.

***

Whistlenose
woke to the delicious smells of roasting meat. He wasn't sure what
creature it had come from—Mossheart had failed to mention it.
Instead, she had stared at his sore leg before picking out the food
for him. But there was no need to think about that now. The aroma
filled his senses and Ashsweeper laughed at the sight of him.

"Is it me or the food that
has maddened you, husband?"

He grinned, remembering her on
the day they'd jumped the fire together. How shy she had been back
then! She was his third wife. Laughlouder had disappeared one day
while out making rope. Nobody knew how. But Sleepyeyes had still been
alive at the time and a little jealous when Ashsweeper had joined the
family. She'd been proud too, though, to be senior wife, and hopeful
the newcomer might finally bring them all a child.

Sleepyeyes had lived to see the
boy born, but then the Flyers and their allies had come and the
Senior Wife had died, knife in hand, while mother and child escaped
out the back door. She wasn't really an Ancestor, but Whistlenose had
heard Ashsweeper praying sometimes to the older woman and it filled
him with love and pride every time.

"Where's our son?"
asked Whistlenose, mouth full, hands wrapped around a hot skull bowl.

That's when he heard the slap of
little feet on the stone cellar steps and he had to fend the child
off until he could hand the food back to his wife. "Who's this?"
he asked in mock surprise. "This hunter is far too big to be my
child!"

"Men, papa,” said the
giggling boy. "There're men waiting for you!"

A voice called down to them from
the outside. "You awake yet?" it was Whistlenose's friend
Frownbrow.

"Not really," he called
back, hoping Frownbrow would take the hint and leave him more time to
play with his son. He wanted to speak to Ashsweeper too. She hadn't
asked him a thing since he'd come home, but she would need to hear it
all. Collapsing as he had done, had cost him a whole day and a night
when he should have been planning on what to do about Aagam. At the
very least, he could have spoken to Ashsweeper's brothers about
finding her a new husband before it was too late.

"Sorry to disturb you, my
friend," Frownbrow said. "Really. But the Chief wants to
see you."

"Oh," he said, his
heart freezing in his chest.
Already?

"What's wrong?" his
wife asked him.

He called back up the steps. "I
haven't swallowed a bite since I got back. Can you give me a few
heartbeats to finish up?"

He tensed, waiting for the reply.
He heard Frownbrow saying to somebody else, "What's the harm?
We'll tell the Chief he wasn't at home and we had to go looking..."

Ashsweeper stood patiently before
him as the footsteps of the men above retreated. He looked into her
eyes. No fear lay there yet, just puzzlement. An urge took him to lie
to her, but time mattered in these things, so he said, "I don't
think I'm coming back. I love you."

She nodded and scooped the boy up
from the floor. "Give your father a kiss," she whispered.
Another wife might have demanded to know what was happening.
Ashsweeper never thought like that; she already had the important
information and she would bind it up behind her serene face until she
could be alone. He'd often caught her crying in the past and scolded
her for not letting him help. But he was grateful now. Whistlenose
hugged the boy. Then, as he was heading up the steps, Ashsweeper
called him back. "Husband?"

He turned.

"Won't you flick a drop of
blood at me?" It was something hunters did. A promise to come
home. He shook his head. "I think... I think the Tribe needs my
blood. All of it."

What could she say to that? All
she could do now was prevent the giggling boy from chasing his father
up the stairs, her face a mask.

Whistlenose staggered into the
blue Rooflight of midday. Had he really slept so long when every
moment should have been so precious to him? People smiled at him,
around their communal fires.

"You really jumped a
Wetlane?" asked young
Fearsflye
rs
.
The boy—no, he was a full hunter now and one of the
best—clapped Whistlenose on the shoulder hard enough to sting.
He grinned around twisted teeth where half of his most recent meal
rotted unhappily. "Why didn't the canal beasts get you? They
weren't hungry?" He was tagging along and his presence gave
everybody else permission to join in too. People always wanted to
know the details of a hunt.

"I haven't spoken yet,"
Whistlenose said. "I haven't spoken to all the wives and
children of the others."

"Oh, sorry! It's been more
than a day!" said
Fearsflyers
.
As quickly as it had gathered, the crowd was gone and Whistlenose was
left to make the frightening walk to the Chief's house by himself.
Still, though, it was true that he hadn't spoken to Spearcatcher's
widow yet. He'd have to be allowed that first, wouldn't he?

His mind was racing. He couldn't
stop it. He realized his fear of death wasn't just about Ashsweeper
and the boy. He wanted to live for himself too. He wanted to be there
when his son finally got a name. He wanted to teach him to make a
spear; to butcher a carcass. To play the ambush game together; to
sling at old skulls up on the wall.

But it was the Tracking game the
boy enjoyed most of all: the carefully hidden clues to find the scrap
of meat. They had such fun, the two of them!

Whistlenose found himself in
Centre Square all too soon, the houses blackened by a hundred
lifetimes of soot. He looked up at the Chief's home and found his
eyes fixed on the empty sockets of a Bloodskin skull embedded into
the wall. Gone now. All the Bloodskins were gone. Other extinct
species watched him too: Hoppers; Armourbacks; Flim. As well as many
others whose names the people had long since forgotten, but whose
flesh had fed the Blessed Ancestors.

Would his own skull be decorating
some beast's dwelling tomorrow? He wanted to turn back. Instead, he
reached for the heavy hides concealing the entrance to the Chief's
house. The curtains twitched back before he could touch them.

A woman stood there clutching the
hand of a toddling girl. She was startlingly beautiful with her
tossed blonde hair and her pale, pale skin. Her mouth, though, had a
sad look about it, creasing towards the ground. People heard her
shouting at her husband in the night and wondered if he would put her
aside, or even trade her away. Outside of the home, however, she said
little to anyone.

"Hello, Mossheart," he
said.

"Goodbye, Whistlenose,"
she replied. "I think." She led her girl off down the
street and even now, his head turned to follow after her lithe
figure. But the sick feeling in his stomach brought the hunter back
to himself. Go forward, he told himself. Volunteer willingly and
Ashsweeper might be given another husband.

He stepped inside and turned
right towards the main room. He had expected hunters to be waiting on
guard, but the Chief had sent them away, maybe even to look for
Whistlenose. He heard men's voices raised in argument. One wasn't
speaking human, but Whistlenose understood every word.

"Half of us will die,"
the Chief was saying, "if we move from here."

"At least half," Aagam
agreed.

In the dark of the hallway,
Whistlenose imagined the man to be grinning. That's just how the
voice sounded to him.

"We know the streets here,
every building. We can defend ourselves."

"No doubt about it."
Still grinning.

Neither man spoke for a dozen
heartbeats more. Whistlenose squared his shoulders and was about to
step inside when he heard the Chief's voice, little more than a
whisper. "You think I want
her
back so badly, that I would risk... everything?"