The Standing Dead - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 02 (54 page)

The outer world is perilous.

Carnelian grew inflamed and pulled at Osidian's shoulder to make him look at him. 'Do you stoop, my Lord, like Jaspar did with my brother, to use threats against another as a means of controlling me?'

Carnelian's Quya made Ravan fall silent. The whole hearth were staring at the Standing Dead.

Osidian's eyes burned furiously. 'You should remember why we have ended up here, Carnelian.'

Carnelian was painfully aware of the people round about.

Osidian smiled at Ravan, who smiled back. 'Do not imagine when the time comes I will have mercy on the boy.'

IRON SPEAR

Husband, you are the sky

the angry one

the winged sower of rain.

Come, quench my thirst.

(from a marriage ritual of the Plainsmen)

The Grove was waking when Carnelian picked his way among the sleeping hollows towards Fern and Sil's. He knew where it lay even though he had never been there. It was Sil who first noticed him approaching and raised her husband.
Little
Leaf began to cry and Sil put her to a breast to quieten her.

Carnelian felt he was intruding. 'Can I speak to you, Fern?'

Seeing that Carnelian wanted to talk to him alone, Fern rose. Both men made an apology to Sil, who looked concerned.

They moved up the slope a
little
to where the branches of the cedar forced Carnelian to bow his head.

'I won't be returning to the Bloodwood Tree,'
Carnelian
said.

Fern
frowned. 'You've decided to stay with the hunt?' As
Carnelian
nodded, he could see
Fern
was waiting for some explanation, but how could
Carnelian
tell
him
what Osidian had threatened to do; how could he tell Fern that he had made Osidian swear on his blood that, if Carnelian went with him, Osidian would not deliberately harm any of the Tribe?

'Well, you've told me,' Fern said at last and returned, still frowning, to his wife.

That day Crowrane's hunt was warding so Carnelian, Osidian, Ravan and several others accompanied Akaisha and her women down into the ferngardens. Akaisha had watched Fern go off to work alone and Carnelian had to endure the pressure of her scrutiny. She was clearly unhappy not only with his decision but with the way in which he had made it without giving her an explanation.

In the perfumed shadow of a magnolia, he spent that day, wretched, watching the women harvesting termites from mud towers and trying to ignore Ravan and Osidian. In the evening, he made himself blind to Sil's enquiring looks and, studiously, tried to behave towards Fern as if nothing had happened.

The following day, he helped keep watch over Akaisha and her women as they dug fernroot. He would have helped if Ravan had not insisted that it was tradition that men should rest on their warding days.

Next morning the women had to return to the earth-working. By coincidence, Crowrane's hunt were working in the ditches too, so that Carnelian went with Akaisha and was able to work with Poppy by his side all day.

Three days he laboured thus under the resentful gaze of Crowrane and Loskai. Carnelian saw the deference with which the other members of the hunt were treating Osidian. It was the youngsters, Krow among them, who were most in awe of him. Some dared to ask him questions through Ravan, but the Master remained aloof and worked as if he were alone, carrying the baskets filled with earth up the ladders to the ramparts, his strength fully returned. The women who worked alongside them outnumbered the men almost three to one. The men had to work hard to match them. The older people oversaw the repair of the ditch, or did the lighter work. Carnelian took turns at digging, carrying the dislodged earth up the ladders, or beating it into the ramparts with paddles. The sun was merciless. Carnelian was sheathed in the slime his sweat made of the red earth on his skin. During the hottest part of the day they hid in the depths of the ditch where its high walls, or one of the trees fringing it, cast delicious shadow. They ate, sipped water, napped. At the end of each day they returned to wash under their mother tree and slumped exhausted around the hearth, almost too tired to speak.

The way it worked out, the hunt and Akaisha's women completed their stint in the ditches on the same afternoon. In the morning, Carnelian had to leave Poppy in Akaisha's care when she took her hearth down to the Bloodwood Tree. For the next six days, it would be Crowrane's hunt in company with that of Ginkga's husband who would make the journey each day to fetch water for the Tribe.

It was a relief to ride out from the Koppie to the vast spreading lagoon. At first, Carnelian maintained a careful watch on Loskai and his father. In full view of both hunts, Crowrane made a point of telling the Master that more heroics would not be tolerated. The Elder might as well have directed his tirade against a statue. Osidian's impassivity drove Crowrane and Loskai into an anger which only served to reveal how powerless they were.

That first day, water was brought back to the Koppie without mishap. The aquar pulled the drag-cradles right up to the Homeditch. From there it was unloaded and everyone made at least two journeys up the Lagooning rootstair with a waterskin to pour the precious contents into the cistern that lay in a cleft in the Crag.

The second day they saw riders moving on the other side of the lagoon. Ravan claimed they were from a neighbouring tribe, the Woading.

It was on the fifth day that Carnelian learned why it was the Plainsmen considered fetching water perilous. They were returning from the lagoon when they found themselves in the path of a stampede. Burdened with their fully laden drag-cradles, the hunt could not evade the charge. The bleating earthers thundered through their line. Many of the monsters managed to swerve around the obstacles; others were skilfully deflected with bull-roarers; but one gored a man and another crashed headlong into a cradle, exploding its waterskins everywhere. The hitched aquar was hurled over onto its side. Screaming, it flailed its clawed feet. The earther, tossing its head to free its horns from the ruins of the drag-cradle, ripped open the belly of the aquar and was, in turn, gashed by the aquar's claws. One of the Plainsmen leapt in to end the aquar's agony, others dared to approach the earther to hack it loose. Erupting free, the monster trampled a man. It was clear nothing could be done for him. Crowrane put an end to the man's agony by slitting his throat. They carried the body back on a drag-cradle. For fear of raveners, they used earth to cover the trail of blood they were painting across the plain.

That night the Tribe mourned their loss. Akaisha took Carnelian with her to watch the blackened body being carried up to the summit of the Crag. Osidian came too, with Ravan. At one point, Carnelian overheard them discussing the next day, which was to be his first hunt. He forced the anxiety from his mind by trying to pick meaning from the song of lamentation rising up with smoke into the sky. The dead man's soul would soon be carried up into that blueness by the birds that fed on him.

Akaisha and Poppy came down to the Southgate to see
them off. In the predawn twilight many other women had gathered to bid their men farewell. Everyone spoke quietly.

Carnelian was holding his shoulder where
Fern
had touched it when he had wished him a safe hunt.

'You'll be careful, Carnie, promise me you'll be careful?'

Crouching, Carnelian looked into Poppy's dark eyes and nodded solemnly. Kissing her, he rose and saw Osidian standing apart from them, aloof and remote as he examined a huge spear he was hefting in his hand.

'I'm not a child any more,' said Ravan, looking aggrieved, as he confronted his mother. '
Fern
had no right to it. It came to me from my father. It is mine to give away.'

Carnelian looked back at the spear in Osidian's hand and realized it had been fitted with Stormrane's iron blade.

As Akaisha watched her son join the Master, she had the look of someone who had just been slapped. Carnelian looked away so she would not become embarrassed. Harth, who had come down to see her son and husband off, was regarding Osidian with baleful eyes. Krow stood behind them, forgotten, sullen.

A hand on his arm made Carnelian look round into Akaisha's face. She made a point of glancing at Harth, who was hugging Loskai while her husband, Crowrane, stood by. Akaisha looked at Carnelian and raised her eyebrows to see if he understood her warning.

'I'll be careful, my mother.'

As her gaze moved to Ravan, she seemed suddenly old and frail.

'I'll keep an eye on him too,' he whispered and was rewarded by a squeeze of thanks.

'Come, child,' she said, offering her hand to Poppy. Today's our last day in the ditches for quite a while. The sooner we start, the sooner the day's work will be done.'

'And tomorrow we'll weave, my mother?'

Akaisha shook her head. The day after.'

As Akaisha led her off chattering along the Homewalk, Carnelian waited for Poppy to sneak a glance back at him. He grinned when she did, waved and then he turned grimly to the business of the day.

Once the hunt crossed the Newditch, they rode southwest with the morning breeze, their shadows streaming like pennants. At first curious, Carnelian looked around him at the land they were riding through, but he soon grew weary of the infinite fernland where only the acacias showed they were making steady progress. They had brought drag-cradles with them piled high with fernwood. He whiled away some time trying to imagine what they were going to do with it. He played with the javelins Ravan had given him. Though crude, they were nicely made. Scouring-rush shafts had been split to take a blade of sharpened flint. Many windings of gut held the blade in place. Though sharp enough, he was sure the blade would prove brittle and he was envious of Osidian's iron spear.

It had grown torrid when the first glimmer appeared on the horizon. He knew it must be water and for a moment wondered if they had been riding in an arc towards the bellower lagoon. A glance at his shadow was enough to convince him otherwise. Squinting, he saw that to the east of this lagoon there lay another smaller one he had never seen before.

When he spotted the specks of a saurian herd, his heart began hammering. No doubt the hunt would soon begin. A thousand fears took possession of him, chief among these that his inexperience was going to make a fool of him. To quell these anxieties, he busied himself moving his grip up and down a javelin to find its balance.

When he found it, he realized it was marked with notches. All his weapons were.

Eventually, there was nothing left to do but watch the steady approach of the herds, motes barely visible against the quivering dazzle of the lagoon. Soon they would be close enough to hunt. He wondered how it would be done. Who would choose their victim? What part would he be expected to play? Most likely, he and Osidian would be assigned positions of danger. There was nothing he could do about it. He would have to see the business through to the end.

Crowrane veered their march towards a stately acacia. As each rider entered its shade, he dismounted. Relief at the reprieve flooded through Carnelian, but was soon replaced by an ache anticipating the coming ordeal.

As he rode in, the shade slipped its cool delight over him. He dismounted, taking care to keep his hand on his aquar's neck so that he would not lose her. He was puzzled to see that people were unhitching waterskins, food bags and all manner of other baggage from their saddle-chairs. He found Krow.

'Are we stopping here long?'

The youth looked startled. 'All night, Master.'

'All night?'

'We must make many preparations.' 'Preparations?' said Carnelian.

Krow smiled and reached up to pat Carnelian's aquar. 'Come on, I'll show you where to put her.'

The Plainsmen cleared ferns from ground that lay just beyond the roof of branches and in the direction of the lagoon. They scraped a shallow crescent in the red earth and filled it with some of the fernwood they had brought. Hobbled, the aquar were near the trunk of the acacia. The hunters settled between the aquar and the fernwood crescent which they lit, taking care to keep the fire from spreading from the centre into either horn of the arc. Cooking pots were produced, bundles of fernroot, fernbread, some fresh meat wrapped in fronds. Ravan, Krow and the other young men began to prepare a meal while the older men busied themselves checking what appeared to be brooms whose twigs were matted with yellow fat. Leaning on his spear, Osidian stood gazing off towards the lagoon, now only a smoulder in the dying afternoon. Carnelian sat quiedy, seeking release from the general tension by watching the men cooking

Dusk creeping over the land was curdled by a screaming roar. Carnelian huddled closer to the fire with everyone else. The heat of the day had not lingered long and he clasped his hands to his bowl of broth to warm them. They ate in silence. When they were done, Crowrane sent Loskai to one of the drag-cradles that had been propped up against the tree. He returned, carrying a piece of an earther's hom which might have been a carving of the
moon and which he laid, reverentl
y, in his father's hands. The old man muttered something before plunging the fragment deep into the embers.