The Standing Dead - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 02 (93 page)

Venerate your aged for in their memories the past finds its only refuge.

(Plainsman proverb)

When Poppy found Carnelian, she prevailed upon him to lift her up onto his shoulders so she might be able to look over the rampart at the heaveners. Carnelian was hardly aware of her gurgles of childish delight. He had watched the Elder women fleeing back towards the Grove. Fern, Sil, the whole Tribe was being marshalled by Galewing. Osidian stood apart, his face swathed, his eyes lazily following the carnival of preparations. It was Poppy's cry and shudder that alerted Carnelian to the first volley of javelins. Perched on the rampart, the younger men cast another volley at their trapped victims. As these dropped from their hides without leaving even a wound, there was a swell of consternation among the watchers. Carnelian lifted Poppy from his shoulders and saw how frightened she was. He did not feel he could send her back to the Grove on her own, but neither did he feel he was free to take her. Finding Sil, he was relieved when she agreed to go with her.

'Look after Fern,' Sil said. There's something wrong with him.'

The heaveners?'

'Something else. He won't tell me ... perhaps you ... ?'

Carnelian nodded solemnly, kissed Poppy, then waved them off and went looking for Fern.

When he found him, Fern was helping some women improvise a billhook: a long pole of scouring-rush with a curved end tipped with flints. To get close to him, Carnelian became embroiled in its construction. When it was finished, many bodies were required to counterbalance it as it swung, swivelling upon the earth rampart. Swarms of children ran about screaming and laughing as if it were a game. The women waited, poised, until one of the heaveners came to eat from one of the magnolias edging the meadow, then swinging the billhook, they slashed a cut into its throat. The screaming head lifted away, seeding the air with blood. As more of the giants fell prey to the billhook, cries of amazement became laughter at how stupid the heaveners were.

Carnelian tried to strike up a conversation with Fern but he was apparently deaf to anything he said. They ended up working together in silent anger making more billhooks.

Under constant attack, the heaveners raged and stamped and backed away but, hungry, they kept coming in to feed. Blood pouring from their countless wounds soaked into the earth and, when the earth could drink no more, blood began trickling into the ditch. The slaughter went on, until, even as the sun shed its own red light over the scene, it was outdone by that gory place where the dying heaveners rolled scarlet in their own blood.

The heaveners' booming death-cries followed Carnelian and Fern all the way back to the hearth. Seeing them, Sil questioned Carnelian with her eyes. He shook his head. Heads were hanging everywhere around the hearth.

Wearing a deep and seemingly permanent frown, Akaisha welcomed her son back to the hearth and everyone else murmured their welcomes.

'I don't suppose your brother's going to join us?'

Fern shrugged.

Akaisha went back to ladling stew into bowls. Carnelian watched her and saw how haunted she looked.

'At least we'll soon have plenty to eat,' said one of the youngsters, going pale as her mother glared at her.

As they ate the only sound was their slurping. The rest of the Grove was unnaturally silent, as if even the mother trees themselves were listening to the heaveners dying.

Poppy had to shake Carnelian to wake him. The first thing he saw was that she had been crying.

'Everyone's going down to butcher the heaveners.'

'Surely just the women,' Carnelian said, knowing it was a false hope.

Poppy shook her head. 'No, Carnie, Mother Whin said the men must help too.'

To give himself a chance to find courage to face the day, he sent her to fetch some water. He had slept badly. The sorry, plaintive heavener cries had haunted his dreams and his half-wakings.

When Poppy returned, he thanked her, drank the water and then rose. Akaisha, Fern and the others were there: men and women, the children too. The women were carrying the scythes the men had made for them the night before. The young were subdued. Fern looked miserable; Akaisha, aged.

'You didn't sleep, my mother?' Carnelian asked her as everyone began moving down the hill.

She looked up at him angrily. 'Did you?'

Fern put his arm about her shoulders and she leaned into him.

They were walking along the Blooding when the massacre came into sight: mountains of hide beneath swirling scavenger clouds.

'So much meat,' Sil said, sadly.

The Bloodwood Tree had been partially pushed over by a heavener that lay against it like a landslide. Its neck formed a dyke running for some distance on the other side of the earthbridge.

'Can we go over?' one child begged, her voice shrilly echoed by others.

'Over to the Killing Field.'

Other children took up the cry. 'Killing Field, over to the Killing Field.'

Gaping, people were clambering up the rampart to peer at the monsters. Ravan was there with Krow and many other youths. They began throwing stones and no one stopped them. Carnelian watched them bounce here and there off the carcasses, causing ravens to screech and hop into the air. He saw a stone roll down the back of a heavener, eventually being swallowed by a brown, blood pool.

They must be dead,' cried Ravan, hurling another stone to prove it.

At last, gingerly, he led others across the narrow earth bridge, holding their scythes in front of them. They tapped the hide wall of the neck then stepped back, anticipating it lifting into the sky, but it might as well have been the trunk of a fallen cedar. Ravan lunged forward, swinging his scythe, tearing a red gash in the wall so deep it exposed white vertebrae. Soon he was joined by others, hacking at the flesh while up to their ankles in blood.

The Bluedancing were evicted from their camp in the Eastgarden. Huge fires were lit and
trestl
es made and set above them. The rituals were to be maintained as best they could. There was not enough red ochre and so

Ginkga commanded the Bluedancing to paint their faces with blood. Hunks of meat were carried on bending poles and dumped on any spare piece of ground, then the Bluedancing were made to fall on them: slicing, hacking, tearing the flesh into chunks which were then packed on to the trestles. It was Osidian who had suggested they smoke the meat, declaring that sun-curing would be too slow. Soon, to feed the fires, they were forced to fell some of the magnolias running alongside the Outditch. As well as the Bluedancing, the whole Tribe had joined the race to harvest as much as they could before the heaveners began to rot.

Beneath palls of reeking smoke, taking a rest from the bloody work, Carnelian wandered with Poppy among the fires in a daze. Entrails were draped across the ferns like fishing nets. Expanses of hide were laid out; scarlet rugs dense with flies. In one corner of the ferngarden they were throwing everything they did not want. Much was being put onto that brown hill that usually they kept. With such an abundance of flesh, only the better cuts were being saved.

Telling Poppy to wait for him, Carnelian picked his way across the earthbridge which was slick and treacherous with mud. When he reached the Killing Field, it seemed he was standing on a sunset-reddened strand. Carcasses lay like so many beached ships, half stripped of their hulls of flesh, exposing their white ribbing. The ground was covered by a flotsam of entrails and membranes. Nearby a head as large as a man gave him a macabre grin, its lips pulled back and hanging loose. Carnelian reflected that that head had once woven among the clouds like a bird. The neck that had stretched a link between earth and sky was nailed by its vertebrae to the ground. Ruddy children scurried, laughing and shouting amidst that architecture of death, playing hide-and-seek in the caverns of the ruined heaveners.

'Enough is enough,' Carnelian said under his breath. He decided that that evening he would betray Osidian's scheme to Akaisha.

Night had already fallen when the Tribe returned exhausted to their hearths. In the face of so many people, the Elders had suspended the requirement to wash underneath the Old Bloodwood Tree. Carnelian's hearthmates' skin was caked with blood; their hair matted with gore.

Complaints rising from near the water jar drew everyone to go and see what was going on.

'It hasn't been refilled,' Akaisha said, peering into it, and then began to cry. Everyone stared open-mouthed as she stumbled off towards her hollow. Carnelian felt queasy. He must follow her and betray Osidian.

'Who was meant to fetch water today?' demanded Whin.

Everyone looked at each other but no one seemed to have an answer. Carnelian was not the only one to notice the guilty expressions on the men's faces.

'Do any of you know?'

'We were ordered not to go, my mother.'

'By whom?'

'Father Galewing.'

Whin looked weary, confused. Carnelian grew uneasy, suspecting Osidian was behind this. He realized he had not seen him for a long time. He looked back to the rootstair. Carnelian had imagined Fern was lagging behind him when he had returned with the others. A dark foreboding clutched him. His eyes met Sil's. He was sure they were sharing the same feeling.

'Did he tell you why?' asked Whin.

The men exchanged sidelong looks. It was obvious they were reluctant to speak.

Whin stepped towards them. 'Come on, out with it.'

'We were told to keep it to ourselves,' said one of them.

'So as not to worry anyone,' added another. Whin looked exasperated. 'What're you talking about?' The first man to have spoken looked to the others for permission. 'It's because of the Woading.'

Sil looked startled. 'Our neighbours, the Woading?' They've been threatening us for days.' Threatening you?' said Whin.

'Each day, the men they send to fetch water have grown in numbers.'

'And become more heavily armed,' added one of the others.

'Why have they suddenly chosen to interfere with us?'

The man shrugged. 'Our new earthwork's near where they traditionally come for water.'

'Didn't any of you think of telling the Master that that was likely to provoke them?'

Carnelian thought it unlikely Osidian had needed to be told.

The man shrugged. 'He had us dig it where the lagoon is narrowest and easy to cross.'

'What has this to do with our water supply?' demanded Whin.

The man looked at her anxiously. The Master feared the Woading might attack the hunts we send out to fetch water.'

'So we're to die of thirst instead?' 'It was to be only one day, my mother; so that we could all help making djada.' 'And tomorrow ... ?'

'We'll go in force so that if they try anything, we'll be ready for them.'

'So you're all in on this?' said Whin looking round at the men.

'What do you mean, my mother?'

Whin dug the heel of her hand into her forehead. 'What I mean is, does this conspiracy spread to the other hearths?'

'Just the men.'

Whin smiled coldly at him. 'Just the men. Well, that's fine then. As long as it's just the men.'

Many of them lowered their heads. 'We
a
ssumed the Elders had approved this.'

Whin dismissed the comment with her hand and glanced at Carnelian. 'It's not you I'm angry with.'

Everyone stood in silence watching her brood. She glanced over to the sleeping hollows.

'I'm tired. We're all too tired. It'll keep until morning.'

Carnelian began moving towards the hollows.

'Where are you going?'

Carnelian faced Whin. To speak to Mother Akaisha, my mother.'

Whin shook her head. 'No you're not.' 'But there's something I want to tell her.' 'It'll keep until tomorrow.'

Carnelian saw how determined Whin was. He considered telling her, but was not sure she would believe him.

Whin looked round at her hearth, all of whom were staring at her. 'Well, are you all just going to stand there stinking of blood?'

'But the water,' said Sil.

'We'll take out what we need for drink and then we'll just have to manage with the little that is left.'

They did as she said and Carnelian joined them. There was only enough to soak into the strips they tore from a worn blanket. They used these to wipe off as much of the blood as they could, but it was impossible to get it out of their hair.

Woken by a commotion, Carnelian sat up. Shapes were moving among the hollows, where voices were loud with anger. Poppy appeared beside him. 'All the men have gone.'

He threw on his robe and went to find Akaisha. She was standing near the hearth with Whin, who had her hands on her hips.

'You don't know anything about this, do you?'

Carnelian's and Sil's eyes met.

'What do you two know?' demanded Whin.

'Yesterday, Fern was hiding something from me,' said Sil.

Carnelian began to feel afraid. Osidian was behind this.