They ran with water bladders slung across their shoulders. They fired bows and crossbows at still and moving targets–a set of concentric rings on a board, a barrel set rolling across the ground by some brave or foolhardy volunteer. They wrestled, barehand and with clubs and staves, despite the broken bones and bruisings that frequently ensued. Some–mainly returning Tenkans, including Lorin–retreated to the settlement camp’s one brewhouse and debated tactics of assault and pursuit.
Flint did as he was asked and was neither among the strongest and fastest nor among those that struggled or suffered injury.
“You scare them,” said Nimmo, at one point. “You stand out from them.”
Flint bowed his head, holding his friend’s look. “It’s not a bad thing to be different,” he said.
A short time before this exchange Flint had been involved in a wrestling bout with a pale-skinned labourer from one of the Willarmey settlements in the west. It had started out as just another exercise, with reputations and side-bets at stake. But then ... Flint had met his opponent’s look and known there was more, some undercurrent he had missed, something more than mere physical competition.
He dipped his head towards the man, the traditional sign that he was ready. His opponent spat in the dirt and took a few paces towards Flint. All around them, a crowd pressed, as close as they could without encroaching on the fight circle marked on the ground.
The man ducked down and swung. His fleshy fist missing Flint by a long way.
Closer, the man swung again and Flint swayed backwards, out of reach again.
Flint kept control of his breathing and clung onto that point of stillness deep within. He had the Lordsway on his side, while his opponent had only his clumsy strength and innate aggression.
“Come on, muttfucker! Fight like a man!”
The labourer lunged, trying to get a hold on Flint, but again, he was left clutching at air. Almost immediately, the man turned and swung and Flint sidestepped smartly. At each swing he leaned this way, that, ever a short distance out of reach.
There were complaints from the crowd, abuse and insults. They wanted a real fight, not one man out-smarting another.
Buoyed up by the support, the labourer charged again and this time Flint met his assault with a chop, and then a well-placed kick as the man sagged to the ground. He stepped back and stood quietly, looking at the Tenkan overseer who was supposed to be in charge of this bout. The man raised a hand, the signal that the bout had come to a close, shaking his head as he did so.
“I heard ’em,” said Nimmo now. “Asking what kind of a way’s that to fight a fight?”
“It wasn’t a fight,” said Flint. “It was a wrestling bout, a test. I did what was needed. It wasn’t entertainment, it was training. Or at least, that’s what they tell us.”
“They’re not used to religious men out here,” said Nimmo. “They think you’re setting yourself up as better or something.”
“I’m not a preacher,” said Flint. “I just learnt from them.”
“They’re calling you the muttfucker,” said Nimmo. “All that time you spend with the mutts.”
“I talk to them and ask them if they have seen my sister,” said Flint. He was aware of the insults, but had not dwelled on them. The atmosphere here among the purgists was juvenile at times–playful and vicious, as childish gatherings can so easily be. Flint knew that he stood out as an easy target, simply because he acted differently. It did not seem a big issue.
But now Nimmo added, “You should be careful, you hear? The troubles they’ve been having in the Ten makes everything different for us. Don’t want to be mixing it with the mutts at times like this. People ... they’re looking for differences, for ways to mark people out. You don’t want to stand out too much, Flint.”
Nimmo was right. The normal rules were different in this place, at this time. Flint nodded. “I’ll be careful,” he said.
~
Lorin came back from a discussion with Marshall Elmarc, and Flint knew that things were changing again.
“Flint, Nimmo,” he said. “It starts.”
Nimmo tipped his head up, eyebrows raised. “How’s that then?” he asked. “What’s happening?”
“We head north,” said Lorin. “About a day and a half on foot, and then we head west into the forest for a short way until we find a small logging settlement by the river Leander. There’s been trouble there–some kind of skirmish, a raid by the Lost.”
They weren’t the first to be sent north from this settlement camp, but still Flint felt surprised that their time had come. He realised that he had not really known what to expect of this purge. At first he had expected to be right in the thick of things from the moment they entered the Ten; later, their time in this settlement camp had seemed interminable, and the purge little more than a distant rumour.
“There will be five of us,” said Lorin. “And some bondsmen and mutts. Are you ready?”
Flint nodded, uncertain.
~
Lorin led them into the jungle.
The squad consisted of Flint, Nimmo, and two barely-adolescent Tenkans, Slater and Jona. Ahead of them the bonded mutthound handler, Martoftenka, chaperoned his team of four hounds with a ceaseless sequence of whistles and claps. Fanned out in the trees were thirty mutts, armed with canes, spears and hardened-fibre swords.
Flint swallowed, trying to find calmness, trying to keep his head clear because at any moment his life might depend on his speed of reaction and thinking.
He held his staff, sharpened at both ends, tight across his chest and followed the narrow path through the trees.
A sudden crashing sound made Flint freeze in his tracks, and then he realised that it was just a bird, startled from its roost in the trees.
He glanced at Nimmo, who had a short bow raised, ready to fire. “Fuck,” said Nimmo. “Just...
fuck
.”
They carried on their way, catching up with Lorin and the young Tenkans, who had barely paused.
Some time later they came to the settlement. It would have been much quicker to follow the main riverside trail, but purge squads had been ambushed in that way too many times in the past.
They could see the podhuts of the settlement over the top of a low defensive stockade. It was a small place: maybe fifteen families had lived here.
Lorin gestured at Martoftenka and the bondsman whistled to his hounds, sending them off across the razed buffer zone. The four big dogs raced across the open ground and over the stockade in flowing movements.
The squad waited and listened for the baying calls that would come if the mutthounds found a fresh scent, but there was none.
A short time later, Lorin led them across the buffer zone and, all around, his team of mutts emerged from the trees.
The settlement had been stripped bare. Some of the podhuts had been slashed–some time ago, judging by the dried wounds of the deflated buildings. Others had been left undamaged, but their contents looted.
“There was a raid here,” said Lorin. “The Lost came in one night and ransacked three homes, killing their occupants, before they were driven away. The next day everyone left. Some of the settlers are hopelessly over-optimistic when they set up camps like this: you saw their pathetic attempt at defences...”
He turned away from them. Flint saw that the Tenkan was crying.
~
They spent the night at the settlement, mutts and hounds deployed around the low stockade to warn of attack.
Flint drank soup from a wooden beaker with Nimmo and Lorin, the three of them seated on a log by the river Leander. The river, whilst a mere stream compared to the great rivers of the region, was still wide enough to provide the settlement with some degree of security. The fetid pools along its banks also gave home to legions of biting insects and Flint was continually swatting at the things and scratching at the bites they inflicted on any exposed skin.
Lorin lit one of the candles he had brought from Camp Sixteen and it helped keep the insects at bay.
“You lived in a settlement like this?” asked Flint. “Before you left the clan?”
Lorin nodded, his movements just about visible in the gloom, the whites of his eyes flicking nervously, awkwardly. “Other side of Tenecka,” he said. “A place maybe twice the size of this. More established.”
“Back in Farsamy, Pastey told me your home was raided.”
“It was,” said Lorin. “I kept warning them. They felt safe because we weren’t out in the wilds like some of the other settlements. We had stockades, but they had never finished building them. I kept telling them, and then one night there was a raid. They killed my cousin Marc with a stick through his gut. Killed his wife, too, but more slowly. These attacks are mindless: they stole very little.
“I heard the disturbance and then cousin Marice came raising the defences. We saw them off, killed two and hunted down six more over the next few days.”
“Pastey–he says they got your wife, Lorin,” said Nimmo, rocking back and forward on his seat.
Flint thought Lorin was not going to respond and for a long time no words were spoken. Then Lorin said, “That’s what I tell people.”
Another long pause ensued, and Flint stared at Lorin, trying to make out his expression, trying to make out his mood.
“I was out with my neighbours for much of the night, chasing off the raiders and checking to see what harm had been done. When I returned home, the podhut was in silence and darkness. I was puzzled. I couldn’t understand how Tora could have gone back to sleep on a night like that. I went up to our room and stroked a light patch. Our mattress was red with her blood and she lay there staring up at me. Her face was relaxed. The muscles must have gone like that when she died.”
“Had you missed some of the raiders?” asked Flint. “Were they hiding while you saw off the others?”
“That’s what I thought,” said Lorin. “And then I heard a sound. In the doorway... there was Redgrass, one of our mutts. He was covered in blood and he was naked and he had come back for another go at her. He didn’t seem to understand that he had done anything wrong. He smiled at me...
smiled
at me... and pushed me out of the way.
“He was on her again by the time I managed to gather myself. I had my bow and a spear. The spear went through them both.”
Nimmo was shaking his head. “No, Lorin. No,” he said. “Mutts don’t do that. Mutts
can’t
do that. It’s impossible.”
“That’s what Marshall Fostenka and the others said. Even when confronted with the evidence of the two bodies... They said I was confused in my grief. That I had come in and found them like that, a tableau of dead bodies left by the Lost raiders. It is not unknown for them to do such things.”
“No one believed you?” asked Flint, unsure if
he
even believed him.
“No one. That’s why I had to leave. No one would believe that a mutt could act like that, breaking one of the most fundamental elements of their nature: their bondage to true humankind. No one would contemplate the fact that one of our clan’s greatest fears had come true: there are so many mutts in the Ten–how could we control them if some changing vector stole in and robbed them of their bondage to our kind?”
~
Later, much later, it was Nimmo’s turn and, characteristically, he came directly to the point.
“Me?” he said, still rocking back and forward on the bench, but faster now, his movements more staccato.
“I came here to kill someone.”
“Who?” asked Flint, aware that Nimmo was waiting to be prompted and Lorin had retreated within himself for now and would say nothing.
“Oh, no one in particular,” said Nimmo. “Just someone. The Lost are as good as any. I want to see what it’s like to be the one who snuffs out someone else’s light, to be the last thing another person sees, their last source of hope. I wants to experience that moment when they’re about to take their last breath and then the moment immediately after and I want to see if anything is different.”
Suddenly, he stopped rocking, and his head swivelled, lizard-like to fix on Flint.
“Does that shock you?” he asked. “Does it disgust you?”
“I–”
“Good. It does me.”
He started rocking again.
“Last year, right at the end of Carnival. I’m standing door at Muddy’s. Big fight starts up and there’s only me and a couple of others to try and sort it all out. Me, I picks out one of the big guys. Little fuck like me takes out the big guy then everyone else is gonna think twice. That’s my thinking. So I take him with a chair leg and he goes down like a bag of shit.
“We drag him out later and dump him in Mason’s Way and I waits behind, still surprised that I took out this big guy. So I kick him in the guts. Feels odd... no resistance cos he’s out cold. Makes me mad so I kick him again, and in the head, too.”
Nimmo swiped at his face with the back of a hand. “Fucking bugs,” he said, even though the flies had dispersed now.
“I had to make myself stop,” Nimmo went on. “But ever since I wonder what it would have been like if I’d carried on. It’s been haunting me, scaring the shit out of me. I have to find out, Flint. You can see that, can’t you? It’s not that odd, is it?”
Chapter 17: Flint’s story
Lorin had some sticks of beer. Rather than share them out, he cracked them open one at a time and the three passed each around until it was drained. “The Tenkan way” he had called it.
A half-moon hung over the trees, and Flint found that he was staring at it, keeping himself awake.
“So,” said Lorin, eventually. “What’s your secret, Flintheart of the Riverwalkers? What’s the dark truth in your heart of stone?”
Flint swallowed, but said nothing.
“You know Lorin’s,” said Nimmo. “You know mine. So what is it, Flint?”
“I changed a man,” said Flint. “Or at least, I helped. I was one of the ones who pushed him into the changing vat with a mutt stick.”
“Why?”
“That was the judgement, the verdict of the Clan Elders. My teacher, Cedero, was to be changed and then banished.”
“What did he do?”
Flint dipped his head. He had suppressed these memories ever since, or at least tried to.
“What did he do, Flint?”
“Nothing. Cedero did nothing.”
~
Nine years old and Festival time and Flintreco Eltarn was in his element. He had dumped little Amber on Aunt Clarel and he had done all his chores and now he was free for the rest of the evening.
He met up with cousins Mallery and Jenna at the foot of the great stone wall that enclosed part of the yard behind the Hall.
“Hey,” he said, in greeting. Mal and Jen were two years older than Flint. They’d taken to holding hands when they thought no one was looking. But Jen liked having Flint around, or so she said.
“Hey, Flint,” she said now, and Mal grunted a greeting of his own, his voice gravelly, breaking.
Within the enclosure, there were sounds of partying. “Stiffs,” said Mal. That was what they called the grown-ups. In the Hall and its grounds there was a party for the stiffs. Clan members had descended on Trecosann from all around for this Festival.
“So?” said Jen, pulling her hand out of Mal’s and pouting.
“Come on,” said Mal, heading past her.
Soon the stone wall ended and they passed into the area at the southern end of the enclosure. Here, there was a scattering of fibre cabins and some new-grown podhuts. Festival guests would stay in these buildings, and there were noises and light within some of them even now. Grown-up things, Flint knew: Festival parties usually moved indoors at some stage, for drinks and smokes and sex and whatever else they did.
Fires burnt high, over in one of the cleared areas, and people moved about and danced to the music of the drum and banjar players.
Mal walked confidently in the open, and Jen and Flint followed. No one bothered about them. They had been told this wasn’t a party for children, but no one seemed to care now that they were here.
Mal took a beer stick, bit its top off and tipped it into his mouth. He passed it to Jen and she drank. Flint coughed and spluttered at the smoky taste of the brew, not at all what he had expected.
Jen taught him to dance later that evening, forcing Mal to watch and be patient. Flint thought the beer probably helped him with this, but he couldn’t be sure. The rhythms seemed to keep changing just as his body found time, his limbs uncoordinated. Not like Jen, who had a natural knack–he now saw–for moving with smoothness and continuity.
Exhausted, he wanted to rest afterwards, but Jen was excited, teasing Mal about the way his voice jumped from low to high, demanding that the two boys chase her through the seed-patch thickets. “First to the river,” she cried behind her. Flint never did know what she had been promising, although many years later he had, indeed, gone with Jenna to the river and had held her and kissed her and had been stunned at the intensity of feelings it inspired: the passion and awe and the dark fear that had made him turn and run–from Jenna, from this
thing
that made people feel so intensely that they became different people altogether.
On this Festival night, though, alone and nine years old, he had wandered. Had he abandoned Jen and Mal, or they him? He did not really know.
The sounds of the party seemed terribly distant, and he feared for a moment that he had gone too far, stumbling beyond the safe confines of Trecosann and into the wilds.
But no: fibrecane grew in a boggy bed to his right, a twin row of dwarved fleshfruit trees to his left. He was still in the seed-patches, where the mutts were encouraged to grow supplies to supplement their keep.
Voices.
A woman: laughing, drunken, teasing.
First to the river
–those were not her words, but her tone.
And a man: his voice softer, less excitable. “Old times’ sake, eh?” he said, and laughed.
Oddly, it was the man’s voice Flint recognised. It was Cederotreco Elphil. Cedero was a wanderer, a man who was both popular and unpopular. He had argued with Clan Elders many years before and left to live in Farsamy. When, eventually, he returned, many Trecosi thought he had been allowed back into the clan too readily, while others envied and admired the life he had led.
Cedero had become a teacher, living on the charity of the Elders in return for teaching the clan’s young about the dangers of the wilds and the big city, and the importance of following the established ways. He had managed to do so with double meaning at every opportunity: the city is dangerous, the city is fun; the wilds will kill the uninformed, so be informed; your elders are wise, but they have not seen the world as I have!
The ladies liked Cedero, too. The teacher is a dangerous man but, oh, how safe your husband is! That was what Mallery, Jenna, Shemesh and the others said of him, anyway, and Flint always nodded, as if he understood, just as he laughed when they laughed and swore when they swore.
The path twisted away from the river here. Flint came to a wall of bellycane and peered through the slotted screen it formed.
There was a clearing, and there was a man, naked, standing with his back to Flint. Dark hair grew over his body, and for a moment, Flint thought it might be a mutt.
But no, the man reached up and scratched at his head. He half-turned as he did this, and Flint saw that it was indeed Cedero, standing naked in the clearing, his penis standing out a long way from his body in startling fashion.
And the woman–how could he have failed to recognise her voice...?
Eyes drawn to her by sudden movement as she discarded an undershirt on the ground, Flint saw his mother, Jescka. Her dark skin caught the light of a candle one of them had lit, and that of the moon, too.
Shorter than Cedero, she was broader at the hips, and whilst not greatly overweight, her flesh settled in gentle swellings around her belly and butt. Her breasts hung flat, her nipples dark pools like the wedge of black at her groin.
She moved towards Cedero and Flint felt himself drawn towards them, driven to flee, the forces balancing out and so rooting him to the spot.
She kneeled before Cedero, her hands on his hips, and took him deep in her mouth.
Flint saw a sudden twitch in his teacher’s buttocks as she drew him in, and he felt excited, sickened, amazed.
Cedero’s hands worked the hair on the back of Jescka’s head, kneading, caressing. He shifted, moved a foot between Jescka’s thighs, and she drew her head back, gasping, before dipping forward again, running her hands over his legs, and then between them, one hand passing up, finger sliding along the dark crease between his buttocks, parting, prying.
“Wha–?”
A dark figure staggered into the clearing, started to speak, stopped.
More words were exchanged, slurred and excited. Flint could not make them out.
Cedero pulled away from Jescka, trying to cover himself with his hands.
Jescka stood, partly shielding Cedero from the intruder.
Tarn! It was Flint’s father...
“Tarn,” Jescka said, then more words that Flint could not distinguish.
She stepped aside and then reached for Cedero, took him in her hand and started to rub him, still talking, still teasing.
First to the river
–that tone again.
Cedero said something, raised his hands defensively as he flinched back from her touch. Jescka laughed–at him, at Tarn, Flint could not be sure which.
Tarn lunged, arms flailing, and Cedero tried to step back, but somehow Jescka still had a hold on him and he cried out. Tarn swung at him and still Jescka laughed, rubbed, doing her utmost to taunt and humiliate both men.
Cedero swung his fist, striking Jescka across the side of the head. She fell away, finally releasing him, and he ducked to gather his clothes, then ran from the clearing.
It was over! Flint felt a breath releasing, realised that his trousers were wet, his face soaked with tears.
Tarn made as if to follow, but stopped. He was drunk. He would not catch Cedero tonight.
He turned to Jescka instead. She was still standing, despite reeling under Cedero’s wild blow.
Tarn thumped her and she fell.
He kicked her and when she tried to crawl away he kicked her again, knocking her over onto her side, the blow almost enough to lift her from the ground.
“No!”
Flint did not know that he had called out aloud, but moments later Tarn’s hands were on him, hauling him into the clearing.
And then the beating began.
Later, he lay, unable to move, and the only sounds he heard were his mother’s whimpering, his father’s rhythmic grunts and cursing, and the distant sound of courting dawn oaks, their flowers calling to birds and bats, offering up their dark nectar.
~
“You changed a man–it was Cedero, wasn’t it?” Lorin’s voice was subdued, gentle.
Flint nodded. The dawn oaks were calling, even now.
“There was a hearing,” he said. “Jescka was hurt so badly... and so was I. They had to act. Tarn said Cedero had attacked Jescka and then attacked me. Jescka told them Cedero was responsible–those were her words:
Yes, Cederotreco Elphil is responsible for this!
The Elders asked me. ‘Yes,’ I told them. ‘I was there. I saw it. I saw... Cedero... hit her...’ I could hardly speak, I could hardly think. I agreed with my parents before the Elders.”
“Would they have believed you if you had claimed any different?” asked Nimmo.
Flint shook his head.
“Then it’s not your fault, is it?”
“People don’t believe what they don’t want to hear,” said Lorin, now, reminding them of his own story.
“I held the mutt stick,” said Flint. “That night, at Festival. I helped prod and poke him into the changing vats. I saw the moment his life stopped and he became something else.
“That night, I slipped back into the stock pens and saw Granny Han tending him as his bones shifted and the changes stole over him and he became something different.” He smacked the side of his head. “I’m there now: I can see him, I can hear his cries of pain and fear.”
“You’re in the wilds of the Ten,” said Nimmo. “And you’re talking shit.”
Lorin cracked another beer stick and passed it around. It tasted smoky and acrid and it was like the first beer Flint had ever drunk. But it was cool and it was wet and it was the only beer they had. They drank, and talked shit late into the night.