The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy) (40 page)

She sighed. "Oh, what does
it matter now? We are dead. We were dead all along and never knew it.
Even back then, when you were a broken-tongued boy and your brother
was so beautiful. Now," she said. "Are you strong enough to
kill the children? Or do you prefer that the Diggers will have them?"

Something,
or somebody, banged into Whistlenose's back. He cried out for his
mother, but then, he was lost, all alone in the streets beyond
ManWays where no child should be. He coughed, his body racked with
agony, doubling over on itself. A great light ripped away the
darkness, searing his eyes under closed lids.

He cried out again, surprising
himself, for his voice was that of a man, rather than a child. He
rolled, hacking up phlegm on the earth, barely aware as the light
seemed to move away and hundreds of clawed feet gave chase.

Darkness returned and the voices
of people weeping nearby. It took him a full hundred heartbeats to
remember where he was, and a hundred more to figure out what had
happened. The grub had taken him over completely until somebody or
something had hit him hard enough in the back to knock it free of his
mouth.

Of the Diggers, there was no
sign, but the Roof People were still there, whimpering in the dark a
few dozen paces away. All he could see now was the light of what had
to be the Talker disappearing off into the distance.

"The ambush has failed
then," he said. The best he could hope for was to get as many of
the hunters out of here as possible before the Diggers caught up with
whoever was leading them away.

He groped forward in the dark
until arms grabbed him, wrapping him tight in an embrace, while a
voice moaned and called for its mother. Whistlenose had been
expecting this and he managed to keep his arms free and above his
head.

"What woman would admit to
birthing you, Clickstone?" He shoved fingers into the man's
mouth and pulled the grub free. He bit through it as Clickstone
gasped and fell away. "That's one," he said. He had freed a
half-dozen others before Clickstone had recovered enough wits to
help, and the numbers of hunters rose quickly until all two hundred
or so were either groaning on the ground or groping around for their
fallen weapons. Now and again somebody would try to light a torch
only to be scolded by their comrades. Nobody wanted to alert the
Diggers to the escape.

"I'm going to free the bait
now," Whistlenose said. "Can somebody find a knife for me?
And be careful not to stab me when you're handing it over."

"No fear of that! I can hear
the sound of your nose from over here!"

"No you can't! I don't do
that any— Oh, never mind. Just get me a knife."

"Whistlenose?" He felt
a hand touch him on the shoulder. He recognised the worn out voice.

"Laughlong?"

"Are you sure you want to
free the bait? They might keep the Diggers off our backs when we're
making our escape. Volunteers, you know?"

Whistlenose did know, and took a
few heartbeats to think it over. "I don't think it matters,"
he said at last. "The Diggers aren't stupid. They were happy
chasing after the Talker knowing we couldn't move and that they could
come back for us any time it suited them. It's the people who can
walk they'll want to catch, so, the more of us there are heading
back, the better." What he didn't say was that the Chief's
brother had convinced him that these people were human too, and
worthy of respect. "Come on," he told Laughlong. "Help
me free them."

They made shushing noises so the
Volunteers would stay quiet, and everybody obeyed. They stank of
urine and terror, but at least one voice in there was collected
enough to whisper commands of its own, and in a surprisingly quick
time, they had all formed a chain of hands in the darkness.

"Now," he said. "We
just need to figure out which way we came from..."

But the gravelly-voiced man
amongst the bait seemed completely sure of himself in that regard
too. So, the hunters, who had little experience in this place, found
themselves trailing after their supposed prisoners.

It was slow going and Whistlenose
had no idea how much time was passing. His eyes began to play tricks
on him in the darkness. People cursed and fell and the sounds of
breathing seemed loud enough to bring the Roof down on their heads.
If only the sun would return! This would all be so easy. They'd see
its light from ten thousand paces away.

People gasped up ahead and voices
babbled in Roof language. Whistlenose pushed forward and for the
first time since Wallbreaker had run off with the Talker, he could
see something. Fires! The shadowy outlines of houses! And an oily
mass of Diggers, pouring in between those buildings. This was the
horde their trap had been set up to destroy, but instead, it was
going to wipe out their families!

Whistlenose started running. He
had no need to say anything—the rest of the hunters were with
him too. The Volunteers joined in, weaponless though they were, and
before Whistlenose's astonished gaze, many of them began clumping
together into the same little groups that had come to save the Tribe
when it lay trapped against the river.

He felt a terrible shame then and
understood why the Ancestors had allowed the ambush to fail. But he
pushed such thoughts away. Ashsweeper was in there somewhere and
Nighttracker too, the son he was never supposed to have had.

The back ranks of the enemy
turned to face the charge, but the humans barely slowed. Men fought
as though insane, desperate to reach their families, while the
Diggers still seemed to think they could take prisoners for their
fields. Spears jammed in corpses and men used knives and teeth
instead. A few of them risked putting grubs from dead Diggers in
their mouths again and these were able to kill without being attacked
in return, taking dozens and dozens of enemies each before the pain
began to lead them astray.

The Volunteers proved no less
effective. They knew the buildings here better than anybody. They
climbed walls to rain rocks down on Diggers or led them into traps,
careless of their own lives and brave as any hunters Whistlenose had
ever seen.

The little, malnourished one, a
pet of Stopmouth's called Tarini, had a magical ability to pass
through knots of combatants without being touched to pull injured
people free of trouble.

Whistlenose killed and killed.
His terror of the Diggers and their grubs had gone entirely away. He
didn't care if they caught him now; he'd been planted, he'd felt what
it was like and not even that pain could compare to the deaths of his
precious wife; his innocent son. Wounds had no effect on him, his
spear cut the air so fast it hummed and every hunter around him
fought the same way. Every volunteer too. The Ancestors possessed
them all and filled them with a cold and bitter fury.

And then, he faced a new creature
altogether. A human being, dripping with gore from tooth and
fingernail and the shattered grip of a spear. They almost fought,
each holding himself back with the greatest of effort. It couldn't be
over. It couldn't be. But already a touch of sunlight reddened the
sky enough to drive off the stars and Whistlenose realised he'd been
fighting an entire night already.

In all directions, lay a layer of
enemy corpses two or three thick, while a small number of survivors
fled in all directions. A few men had been overcome again by the
grubs in their mouths and these raved for their mothers. This was the
only sound.

The filthy creature spoke. "You
will n-not eat them, Whistlenose, you hear me? I w-won't l-let him
t-touch a h-hair on their heads."

Whistlenose was confused. The
Diggers had been killed in great numbers. Did Stopmouth—for
that is who the creature was—intend to waste so much flesh? But
the young hunter had used the word "him." "I won't let
him
touch a hair on their heads."

"Wallbreaker's gone,
Stopmouth. He... he led the Diggers away from us with the light of
the Talker. He gave us a chance to escape so that we could come to
you here."

A sigh and Stopmouth, an
exhausted Stopmouth, fell to his knees amongst the enemy corpses. "He
volunteered? W-wallbreaker
v-volunteered
?"
His tone was both incredulous and hopeful at once.

Whistlenose found himself on the
ground too, all of a sudden. He was bleeding everywhere. His very
bones ached, especially his knee. It had given way to dump him on the
ground. But he didn't care about that.

"I want my wife," he
said to Stopmouth. "I want my son."

As
always, these days, a pall of smoke hung over the streets. Digger
meat cooked and popped on a hundred fires of dried bones and moss
kindling. But nobody tended to them today or hauled rubble, or worked
in the fields.

Hands clapped. Drums pounded and
throats pealed with the first easy laughter in what seemed like ten
thousand days. Ship People shared food with Religious who made clumsy
hand signals to men and women of the old Tribe. Fourleggers sniffed
curiously at everything, and Ashsweeper, leaning on the shaft of a
spear, hobbled after that mad little boy of hers.

Alone, out of everybody,
Mossheart seemed unhappy. "Look at that old fool, Rockface!"

Mossheart had taken to spending
time with Stopmouth. "Oh, I won't marry you," she had told
him, as if he had been thinking to replace Indrani before her soup
had even cooled! "But, I miss that brother of yours. I don't
care that he was a coward or that he tried to bring in other wives to
set above me. He was a man who dreamt of more than the next slice of
meat from the spit. And you can do that too."

Mossheart's daughter had taken to
playing gently with Flamehair and was a comfort to her while her
father was off dealing with Digger attacks. New generations of the
enemy were maturing all the time, away out there in the dark. But
they arrived in scattered, disoriented groups, many of them with no
grubs of their own so that they died easily. With no new flesh coming
from the Roof, the rest of the enemy would soon starve.

Stopmouth closed his eyes,
listening to the strange songs of the Roof People and feeling the
heat on his face from the fire. But Mossheart wouldn't let him rest.
"Oh won't you look at him!" she said. "That old man
should be soup long ago."

She was still talking about
Rockface. The hunter had just landed from a leap over the fire. His
face was flushed with pleasure and only the slightest hint of pain.
But he waved towards his bride, beckoning her forward. "Jump!"
he cried, repeating the word with his hands as all the children did.

"It's a waste of food
feeding him," Mossheart continued. "The Tribe needs the
strongest to survive."

"It's n-not about the
strongest any more. It's the best we need to survive now. And
Rockface is the best."

"Stupid Roof talk. That
Indrani poisoned you."

Sodasi leapt without hesitation,
crashing into Rockface as everybody cheered. But then, worried
hunters were stepping in to help the couple back to their feet. "It's
all right!" Rockface cried. "It's just my back! It does
that sometimes, hey?"

Flamehair squirmed in Stopmouth's
lap. "You want some rice, baba?" he asked her.

"Rice!" Mossheart spat.

"She'll have to g-get used
to it. There won't be any m-more Diggers to eat when she's older."

"Pah! There's no strength in
it. She'll never get a name like that."

"She already has a name."

"A proper name. Her
own
name. Not something you just stole from your poor mother."

The time had come for Sodasi's
last dance among her unmarried friends. Far too many people were
joining in to suit tradition, even men. Tarini was there, making
friends with Vishwakarma and a few others. But Rockface knew the
proper way to do things and he came over to lie beside them in a
cloud of his own sweat.

"Oh, I know I should
Volunteer," he said to Mossheart's disapproving look. "But
she wants me, my poor girl, and I won't refuse her anything, hey?"

"You won't last her the time
it takes to make a child!" said Mossheart.

"I don't know." He
grinned at his dancing bride and she waved back from the far side of
the fire. "We have to talk with our hands, so I don't always get
what she means. But she says I'm only forty—whatever that is!
Forty what? Days? I ask her. But she says no, that's not it. She says
I'll be around a long time. Long enough. We'll see. Things are
different now. I know it's not right." He grinned. "But I
don't care, hey? I mean, look at her!" He shouted, "I don't
care!" And all the dancers cried gibberish of their own in time
to the drums and Flamehair laughed.

"I love you," Stopmouth
told his child. "R-rockface? Show F-flamehair how to s-say 'I
love you' with the signs."

"I'll show her. I'll show
both of you, hey? And you'll never have to worry about that tongue of
yours again."

Stopmouth had stopped worrying
about that long ago, but he grabbed Rockface with his free hand and
pulled him into a fierce hug. He wished more than anything Indrani
could be here now. At the end of the world with him. At the beginning
of everything.