The Standing Dead - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 02 (21 page)

(Plainsman lore)

The plain lay under an immense blue weight of sky. A distant herd appeared to be foothills. Stands of scouring-rush, groves of ginkgos, a few vast spreading acacias were all that alleviated the blank horizon. Trudging along the spine of black rock, it took Carnelian a while to notice the mound rising green from the plain.

He fell back until he was walking beside Fern. That is the first hill I've seen since we came up into the Earthsky.'

'It certainly is a hill of sorts,' said Fern. 'Of what sort?'

Amusement raised the corners of the Plainsman's mouth. 'A tumbling of stones among trees.'

'It's a koppie isn't it, and the one we seek?'

Fern beamed. 'Yes, the koppie of the Twostone.'

Clearly, they were not the only ones that had seen it. Murmurs of excitement were passing among the youths, putting new strength into their legs.

Krow ran up grinning. They'll have been watching us for ages and no doubt will soon ride out to see who we are.'

Some of the youths broke into song. One cracked a joke that made his companions fall about laughing. For a moment their gaiety lifted Carnelian's foreboding, but then his stomach began churning as he imagined the reception the Twostone were likely to give him and Osidian.

Fern led them down from the Backbone, making directly for the koppie. This island in a fern sea made Carnelian remember the stories Ebeny had told of the hills on which her people lived. If these koppies were not as grand as his childish imaginings had made them, neither were they the paltry things his Masterly cynicism had later reduced them to.

Carnelian became aware of the deathly silence and saw how serious the faces round him had become.

'What's the matter?' he asked Krow.

'We should've seen riders by now.'

'Perhaps they're in no hurry. After all, we're approaching on foot.'

'If it were only that,' said Fern, grimly and pointed. 'Look.'

Carnelian looked. 'I can't see anything.'

'Exactly.' Fern turned. 'Smoke should be rising. Even this far out we should be able to see a stubble of lookouts on the koppie's brow.'

They walked on in an uneasy silence until they came close enough for Carnelian to discern that the hill was clothed with cedars. From their midst, two stone towers rose, uneven crags of boulders piled one upon the other, the whole mass bright in the sun. The hill lay within a swathe of land enclosed by a circuit of magnolias. With unblinking stares, his companions were searching for any sign of the Twostone Plainsmen.

Krow cupped his hands together and blew a note that echoed among the trees, but the koppie remained stubbornly still. The cedars on the hill seemed the only living beings as, languidly, they slipped sunlight over their flat canopies.

Krow took them in closer. The ground began sloping down to a ditch the other side of which rose steeply as an earthen rampart along which the magnolias formed towers. The youth led them alongside the ditch, until they were moving through the shadows the trees spilled out over the plain. At last they came to where a bridge of packed earth crossed the ditch to a narrow cutting in the rampart framed by two magnolias. They lingered for a while peering across at the cutting, which was barred by a spiked gate.

'Shouldn't this be guarded?' Carnelian whispered to Fern.

His friend dismissed the question with an angry flick of his hand. They watched as Krow crept across the earth-bridge then leant forward, avoiding the horns studding the gate, to peer through the chinks in its wicker. Krow pushed against it and it opened and he was left standing black against the green beyond, beckoning them to follow.

Carnelian crossed with the others. On either side a ditch held mirrors of dark water. Passing through the gate, he beheld a path shaded by cone trees running in the direction of the hill. They carefully closed the gate behind them before setting off along the avenue. Another wall of trees lay ahead. When they reached them, these turned out to form a double circuit between which there lay a ditch deeper than the first. An earthbridge led to a second gate and, once through this, Carnelian found they had entered another fern swathe, not as wide as the first, at the heart of which lay the hill with its cedars. His gaze was fixed on those giants as he approached. Their wide-spreading branches each held a flat roof of needled leaves; the whole mass shifting in the breeze made a creaking that seemed almost speech.

At the margin of the hill lay a final ditch deeper and wider than the previous two. Immense cedars grew on either bank, their roots so densely reinforcing the ditch its walls seemed made of wood. The further rampart rose to a parapet of skulls from which horns curved the length of scythes. Krow led them over a bridge towards the rampart. Between two sentinel cedars a more substantial gate barred their way, before which stood the ghostly figure of a man.

They can't have returned yet,' whispered Ravan.

Krow regarded him with a fixed, pale expression. This late in the year?'

Ravan shrugged and looked unhappy.

'What manner of creature is that?' Osidian demanded, pointing at the ghost.

'A huskman, Master,' answered Ravan. Though he turned towards Osidian, he made sure to keep one eye firmly on the ghostly man. The youth saw Osidian wanted more. 'For his sins against the Twostone he's been denied skyburial. They set him here as a sentinel to protect their koppie while they were away in the mountains.'

'Why is this considered a punishment?' asked Osidian.

Fern glanced round. 'His soul's trapped in his sun-dried corpse like a flame in a lantern.'

Carnelian looked at the mummy with unease. 'For ever?'

'Until those he sinned against consider he's suffered enough.'

'Or until he fails in his duty .
..'
said Ravan.

Krow, who had been examining the huskman, gave the youth a look that silenced him. 'Help me.'

As Ravan's face grew pale, Krow frowned. Though we're not Elders, he'll recognize I'm Twostone.'

Ravan looked unconvinced as together they advanced upon the mummy. When they drew close, Krow began mumbling some charm. Gingerly they reached out and touched the mummy. Ravan shuddered visibly, as if he had felt the huskman move. Then, carefully, they lifted it and carried it to one side, leaning it upon its face against the tree. As they backed away, Fern pushed against the wicker of the gate. When it did not open, he shook it.

He turned to Krow. 'It is secured on the other side.'

The youth was soon scaling the thickly woven gate. He struggled for a moment to climb over its spiky top before dropping down on the other side. Soon the gate was swinging open. Careful not to touch the huskman, the other Plainsmen filed past into the gloom beyond. Carnelian could not help peering at the mummy as he passed it. A man shrivelled like a fruit. Feeling it might turn to look at him, Carnelian hurried on.

Through the gate, he found himself within the cedar grove. The towering trees not only cooled the air but sweetened it with their resinous perfume. The rafters of their branches and their spiny leaves made a ceiling delicately pierced by the sky's blue. A yielding carpet of russet needles muffled his footfalls as he began to follow the others up the hill. Shade spread off between the column trunks. Clearings shone like courtyards, in many of which Carnelian could see ashen hearths ringed with stones. Here and there boulders crouched all scabbed with moss.

Krow sprang away ignoring Fern's call that he should wait for them and was soon lost. As they climbed after him, Carnelian caught glimpses of the twin crags crowning the hill. When they reached them, he saw their flanks rising blue-grey splashed with lichen roundels. He craned his head back to see the jagged summits.

'Fan out and look for any sign they've been here,' said Fern.

Carnelian dropped his gaze to find the youths already slipping off among the trees. 'Can we help?' Carnelian asked. Fern frowned and shook his head. 'You'd better stay here.'

He looked over at Ravan. 'Stay with them.' With that, he was loping off down the hill and had soon disappeared.

'What do you think might have happened?' Carnelian asked Ravan.

Peering among the trees nervously, the youth shrugged.

Carnelian could see between the branches the plain of the Earthsky laid out as a shimmering sea. The twin shadows of the crags were spilling down over the forest and out onto the plain. The sweet air could not lull his feeling of foreboding. His gaze strayed down to a nearby cedar, among whose roots some shards were nestling. He went to pick up a piece. By its curvature, the crude earthenware had come from a large jar. He could tell from the different hues that several vessels had been shattered. Something stirring above him made him start. Looking up, he saw that the shoulders of the branches were hung about with bags and bundles, many of which had been torn open. Wrapped around one bough he saw what appeared to be a rope-ladder dangling crookedly, its rungs here and there torn or missing. Looking at it more closely, he discovered that the stumps still hanging in the twine were the ends of wizened roots. Stowed in the angles of the branches were more bundles in disarray.

Voices behind him made him turn. Seeing it was Fern returned, he ran back.

'Isn't it possible the Twostone are simply delayed in their return from migration?' Osidian was asking him.

Fern shook his head. 'No tribe would dare cross the Earthsky once the raveners have returned.'

Carnelian was about to tell Fern of the signs of looting he had found when a cry shrilled, so thin with panic it might almost have been the calling of a bird. Fern careered down the hill in the direction of the sound. Carnelian's urge to run after him made his heart race. Standing in the shade of an immense branch with Ravan, Osidian looked fearfully pale.

'Had you not better run after him?' he said.

There was a menacing coolness in his tone which Carnelian was in no mood to engage with. He looked down the hill and saw Fern dappling in shadows as he sped under the trees.

'Yes, I want to, but will you not come?'

'Masters do not run.'

Carnelian heard the shrilling cry again, uttered some excuse and sprang down the hill. Osidian's disapproval only served to spur him to greater speed. Resined air blew in his face as he rushed through the flickering shades. Hurtling round a rock, he saw Fern with one of the youths, whose tears showed how dirty his face was. He was sobbing words. Fern's grimace showed he could not understand.

'Show me,' he bellowed. The youth gaped at him, stunned, so that Fern had to shove him into motion. The youth ran off as if a ravener were after him. Carnelian and Fern gave chase.

The youth took them through another gate in the skull wall in the mouth of which another huskman lay, discarded. They crossed the two inner ditches and were tiring when they approached the outer ring of magnolias. Reaching the gate that led out onto the plain, the youth came to a halt. He stood transfixed, staring. Carnelian saw in the glare that the plain seemed to have been ploughed up.

'You had better stay here,' Fern said to the youth, before, setting his face into a grim mask, he walked out across the bridge. A premonition made Carnelian hesitate, but then, cursing, he left the shade and followed his friend.

Drag-cradles and saddle-chairs were scattered everywhere under a smashed littering of bones. Stained brown, crushed for their marrow, skulls cracked open for their meat: the inedible remains of people and aquar.

Carnelian heard footsteps. Glancing round, he saw the youth had trailed after them. His eyes were weeping like wounds, his lips glistening with mucus as he gaped at the carnage.

'You,' roared Fern, 'go back to the koppie, find Loskai and send him down here.' He made sure the youth was moving away before he turned back.

'A battle?' Carnelian asked, as his eyes flickered over the corpses.

Fern rounded on him. 'Can't you see this was a massacre?'

Carnelian lifted his hands. 'I didn't mean
...'
'No,' said Fern and wandered a little deeper into the carnage.

Carnelian followed. 'Who could've done this?'

Fern shook his head slowly. The shock had frozen his mouth open. As they walked in among the dead, they had to pull their ubas over their faces as a filter against the charnel stench. Carnelian concentrated on putting his feet down without treading on splintered bone. A skull tumbled alongside a twisted drag-cradle still had grey wisps of hair. Another was too small to belong to an adult.

'These are the Twostone,' he breathed.

Fern's eyes twitched as he scanned them. The whole tribe as near as I can tell,' he said, speaking through the cloth pulled across his mouth and nose. 'Men and women. Young and old.'

Carnelian could not judge how many people were lying there but their bones were like shingle on a beach. An arrow projecting from a ribcage caught his eye. He stooped and withdrew it. It was as long as his arm, with a stump of obsidian where its arrowhead had broken off. It was fletched with black feathers.

He held the thing up for Fern to see. 'Is this a Plainsman arrow?'

Lunging towards him with burning eyes, Fern snatched it. He had to allow his uba to fall away from his face so that he could examine the arrow in both hands. He looked up to say something, then was distracted by something he saw behind Carnelian, causing him to turn.