The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy) (7 page)

So, why not just go home and
explain what had happened? He could be with his family again and feel
their warm skin against his. Except... nobody would believe his
story. They would think he had run away. And even if the Chief used
his Talker to ask the Clawfolk for the truth of the matter, his leg
would get no better, his arm no faster, and Aagam would still be
living in Centre Square, demanding his death.

All paths ended in the pot as far
as he could see.

The least awful result he could
hope for, was that his own Tribe would get the benefit of his flesh.
His own wife and child. He would try for that.

The walk home was a nightmare.
Many creatures had been attracted by the disaster that had struck the
Clawfolk. Guards were fewer, and everywhere, hunting parties haunted
the alleys and staked out the sources of water Whistlenose so
desperately needed. He spent a full day and half a night on a journey
that should have lasted no more than a few tenths, passing through
all of ClawWays and the no-man's land that lay between it and home.
He avoided Pios, with their thin, sharp beaks, and padded around the
tracks left behind by a pack of supposedly-extinct Climbers. Useful
news, at least, for those back home.

Finally, the outer walls that had
protected the old 'Ways of his youth swallowed him up. Humans no
longer controlled these streets, but the older ones like Whistlenose
knew them better than any enemy.

"I'll have one last night
with Ashsweeper," he muttered. They'd grant him that much at
least, before sending him off again.

He stopped uncertainly in the
shadow of a building, cool with Roofsweat, utterly exhausted.
Starving. What if he got home for that final night only to waste it
by sleeping right through as he had done when he had returned with
Aagam? The thought filled him with sadness. No, he would go into an
old house.
His
old house. The one where he had grown up with an older brother and
two sisters. He would rest on the same floor he had been born on and
return home refreshed.

He found it without difficulty.
The old place had seen better times. Parts of the walls had been
scavenged to build the newer defences closer to Centre Square,
leaving the ceiling to cave in and the first floor to collapse.
Whistlenose crawled in through a gap that remained in the rubble,
into what was left of the family room. He had not the energy to check
it out for enemies or even to pound the stinging juices out of a bit
of moss so that he might make a pillow for himself. He used his
loincloth—the only thing he possessed in the world other than
his flesh, and even that, he had stolen from his Tribe.
You
can have me back, though. You can have me back tomorrow
.

Daylight woke him—a single
beam swirling with dust, coming through a hole in the ceiling. Midday
again already, by the looks of it. This time two days before, he had
passed into the slaughterhouse of the Clawfolk to die. Chafe marks
and scabs on his thighs showed where he had almost slid from the
arch. It had really happened. A piece of the Roof had actually fallen
to the ground with no provocation, to smash entire buildings.

Looking around the ruin in which
he had spent the night, with its collapsed ceiling, he wondered for
the first time if the greatest threat to his people might be
something other than the Diggers. Aagam had said the world was
ending, hadn't he? And who would know better than a Roofman?

Well,
there's nothing I can do about that, now, is there?
His
one remaining responsibility was to turn himself in and win another
last night with his family.

And yet, he stayed where he was.
He found he was breathing hard. He kept hearing the screams of the
slaughterhouse in the dark. His mind's eye returned again and again
to the scene of Charmer's death and that of the nameless girl. He
even found splashes of their blood on his skin. He had to force
himself to lick it clean so as not to dishonour his fellow
Volunteers.

And still he did not rise to turn
himself in.

"Don't be a fool, boy. After
all you've seen in your life!" He'd killed beasts himself, many
times, for all he wasn't much of a hunter. He had hacked and chopped;
stabbed and bludgeoned and crushed them. He had tripped them so
others could finish the job. He had seen hunters die a dozen times
and had been part of honour guards escorting old friends and members
of his own family as Volunteers to the creatures who would end their
lives. It had all been so normal. Yet now, his body refused to take
its turn.

He froze. He heard human voices
out in the street, all women.

Hunting parties would use hand
signals and whispers to communicate. Voices—and the laughter
that came next—could only mean large numbers. It meant safety.
He pulled himself up onto his knees and crawled to the shadowy gap
that was the only way in or out of his refuge. He saw the backs of
two women. One had a sleeping child strapped to her chest—another
sign that there must be a cordon of guards not too far away. Both of
them wore the wraparound sheets of Hopper hide that women used when
collecting moss or rubble.

"No, Chinwagger." said
the taller of the two. She had black hair, tied in ligament twine to
keep it out of her face. The shorter woman, the one with the child,
had just struck at something with a rock. "No, I said! What are
you doing?"

"What does it look like? I'm
getting the juice out."

"He said not to do that,
Chinwagger. The Chief!"

The shorter one threw the rock at
the ground so that it bounced away. "That makes no sense! Who
ever heard of
not
pounding moss? I don't want to bring all that poison home with me."

"Well, he was very careful
to say he wanted it unpounded and to bring only the red stuff too."

"Ancestors, he's mad! The
red stuff? Sure it's only good for smoking meat!"

The black haired woman looked
around to see if anybody else stood nearby. Luckily, she didn't lower
her eyes to where Whistlenose crouched, less than three spear-lengths
away. But he had caught a glimpse of her face at least, and had
identified her as Drumdancer, a friend of the Chief's first wife.
"It's that new Roofman he's adopted. Aagam. What does that name
mean, anyway?"

"If he even is a man!"
said Chinwagger. "That skin... like the false woman he took for
a wife, remember? She fell from the Roof too. He's obsessed with
them. She was no more a woman than he's a man, if you ask me."

"Oh, Aagam is a man, all
right. Poor Ashsweeper had to marry him the very same day Whistlenose
did his duty. Whoever heard of such a thing unless it was one of the
man's own brothers?" She pointed up at the Roof. "I bet
Whistlenose is up there now, fuming with anger."

"Well, he won't be the only
one," said Drumdancer. "That new beast from the Roof wants
more wives, and the Chief is going to let him have them."

Whistlenose didn't hear what came
next. His ears were ringing, his vision blurred. He found himself
lying in the dust of his old house, weeping. Some instinct made him
smother the sounds of it in the flesh of his arms.

Ashweeper, made to marry without
the proper mourning! He remembered the way the hairy Roofman had
looked at his wife when they had returned together into ManWays. Of
course.
That's
the real reason. That's why he was so keen to have me killed.
His hands found his loincloth and throttled it between them.
Die,
monster
! He fell back, sick and dizzy with hunger and
despair.

He had no plan and no more
strength. Less than a thousand paces from the place where he cowered,
his family had passed into the hands of a Waster and there was
nothing he could do about it.

"No more red moss here,"
said Chinwagger. "Stupid task anyway. Come on..."

Whistlenose barely noticed. His
chest felt like it was in the grip of an ever-tightening noose. He
gasped and a sob escaped that had been building and building since,
who knew how long? Since the moment he had been Volunteered, perhaps.

"I heard something!"
said Chinwagger, suddenly frightened. And then, the women's running
footsteps slapped off down the street. No doubt they'd be back in a
few heartbeats with a hunting party that would scrape him out of his
shell.

But what then? There'd be no last
night with Ashsweeper for him. There'd be no revenge. Aagam would
have the pleasure of seeing him die, not once, but twice. Only this
time there would be none of the honour of the willing Volunteer. Only
the humiliation of a husband with no wife. And shame too for
Ashsweeper, for he was sure now that Wallbreaker would say he had run
away from the Clawfolk, regardless of truth.

Whistlenose staggered out into
the light and the air. The hunters would be nearby now, signalling to
each other, using moss to silence their footfalls. He had no idea
even from which direction they would come. But presumably, the two
women had been foraging within a cordon of protection, which would
have extended out from the new walls. So, he turned in the direction
of Centre Square slipping down narrow alleys, as fast as his
exhaustion would allow.

All of these streets had been
safe by day when he was growing up. But now, traps filled them and
hidden pits. He had to keep stopping, to search his memory for a safe
route, while sweat ran into his eyes and
mossbeast
s
swarmed in colourful clouds from house to house.

Here a Flim skull hung above the
doorway of a house he had played in as a child. Near it, some
long-dead woman had practised drawing a tattoo in charcoal—the
faint image of three six-legged beasts, each with a spear in them,
could still be seen faintly under a generation of dust. He wanted to
linger, to trace the outline of the picture with his hand. But a
combination of inattention and a stray rock underfoot knocked him
against the far wall of the alley to trigger a rain of pebbles.

"Down there!" someone
cried, forgetting hunt discipline entirely. A youngster, then.

Whistlenose tried to stand up
again as footsteps reached the mouth of the alley behind him. "Oh,"
somebody said, full of disappointment. A boy's voice. "I thought
for sure it had come this way. Hey! Hey, you there!"

Whistlenose didn't turn around.
"Clear off, lads," he said, his voice remarkably steady.
"You'll catch it down towards the Wetlane if you hurry."

The tattoos on his back must be
invisible under layers of filth by now, for the boy asked, "Who
are you? I—"

But the others were already
turning away, by the sounds of them, too excited to care about
somebody who looked just about ready for the pot. As soon as they'd
gone, he fell to his knees.

He had survived, but only because
nobody was looking for a runaway Volunteer. He had been seen two days
before, after all, walking right into the slaughterhouse. As long as
nobody got a good look at his face or tattoos, Whistlenose could
happily wander around these streets until he died of hunger and
thirst. But the guards would identify him as soon as he tried to pass
through the gates, and once caught, Wallbreaker wouldn't be foolish
enough to let him approach his family. Not with Aagam there. Feasting
and drinking in Whistlenose's house! Sleeping with a wife too kind
for him. Poisoning their son with unworthy thoughts and hatred of his
real father...

But then, the Ancestors took pity
and gave the ageing hunter the plan he needed.

Less than a tenth later, he had
gathered up such a large pile of red moss that it filled his two arms
and covered most of his face. There was barely a gap left for his
eyes. Men did not do women's work unless they were too injured to
hunt, but not so badly injured that the only cure was to Volunteer.
So, he exaggerated his limp and stepped up to the new gates.

Of course, one of the guards,
another youngster, asked him who he was. However, the moss muffled
his reply, and the fact that everybody was still on the lookout for a
"beast" that the women had spotted in the streets, allowed
him to pass into the 'Ways unmolested.

As he walked, sharp fumes from
the moss stung the inside of his nostrils and made his head spin. He
managed to ignore it until he found himself in front of the steps
leading down to his cellar home. Very few people were around. It
looked as if the Chief had ordered the entire population outside the
walls in the crazy search for a moss so full of poison, it couldn't
even be pounded into blankets or ropes.

He dumped the bundle he had
gathered in front of the door. The whole street seemed to be spinning
and he found himself leaning against the doorway, drawing in huge
gulps of clean air. And then, it was down the familiar steps and into
the rooms he shared with Ashsweeper.

He found her there alone. She
gasped, backing away, covering her mouth.

"It's me," he said.

"No."

"It is. Where's the boy?"

She didn't answer, still staring
at him in horror.

"I'm not a ghost," he
said. "I swear it! I'm not! And I didn't run away. You know me,
love. I wouldn't do that!"