Yes, his life had started when Herrel had found him and when she had started to teach him to be whole.
He realised he was shivering, hugging his legs tightly to his chest. There was moisture on his face and he flashed back to the fevers.
No, not fever sweat: tears.
The girl, Taneye, was staring at him.
She looked scared and suddenly he felt angry that she should be there, that she should be staring up at him with fear and anger in her eyes.
~
Herrel came back and signalled that all was okay. Henritt Elkyme would be back in his home now, trying to explain why he should appear from the wilds wearing only a badly patched sun cape. The thought gave Cedar some bitter amusement.
“You have a name?” he asked Taneye when, later, they sat with stripped pork and tiffany nuts spread out on a flat palm leaf before them. “You want to eat?”
He took a strip of meat and bit off a piece.
Even though her mouth was now unbound, Taneye said nothing. As well as removing the bonds from her mouth and hands, Herrel had removed the poultice from the side of her face. There was no sign of bruising where Cedar had struck her.
“My name is Cedar and my friend is Herrel. We are Lost and you, in case you do not realise, are Lost too.” He chuckled. “The days of humankind are nearly over,” he said. “We, who have been blessed by change, are the natural successors. You should be proud.”
He saw accusation in her dark eyes. She thought him a madman.
“We must decide what to do with you,” he went on. “We should move on, and we do not want any trouble. Do we take you with us? Do we turn you loose and hope you will not draw trouble in our wake?”
But Herrel wanted to stay a little longer. He knew she had found good supplies of the herbs she used in her healing and he supposed that must be the reason. He shrugged, sensing her unhappiness that he wanted to move on. “Another day, perhaps,” he said, and he saw her relax. He could never deny Herrel what she wanted.
~
And sometimes their wants were mutual.
He took her piggy-style outside under the stars, away from the pretty young runaway.
Herrel, her great rear thrust up towards him, trembling buttocks nut brown in the moonlight; Cedar, parting his layers of clothing only as much as was necessary, still fighting off the cold.
She grunted softly and rhythmically, the closest she ever came to speech, and he loved her more than ever. And, despite the intensity of his love, when he closed his eyes he saw the runaway, was staring into her wide, dark eyes, felt her hands around him, running over his buttocks, stroking and separating with her tiny fingers.
He rolled clear of Herrel and lay staring up at the patterns the stars made in the sky.
She arranged her clothing and moved away.
He could sense from her movements that she knew he was disquieted, that she probably knew he had been betraying her in his head.
~
He sensed again when Taneye roused, late in the night.
He sat in the doorway, as before, listening to the sounds of the jungle. Sleep had evaded him again.
When she moved, he turned his head, aware that she could see him in the doorway.
And she spoke, for the first time.
“Please,” she said. “I need... I need to go outside.”
The voice! Soft, smooth... to be hearing that voice again!
“Of course,” he mumbled. He went into the hut, avoiding Herrel’s sleeping form. He leaned over, found the line of the girl’s arm, ran his hand down until he found her hip, her leg. He left the bindings around her knees, releasing those at her ankles. Thus hobbled, she shuffled towards the door, and outside.
“My hands.”
He untied her wrists, and watched as she pulled at her clothing, squatted and pissed on the forest floor.
Silence. A straightening of clothes.
“Please,” she said now. “Let me go. I... I heard the two of you earlier. I can do that... Untie me. I’ll do whatever you want if you’ll untie me and let me go.”
He went to her, put a hand to her cheek and caressed with the broad pad of his thumb.
“Jescka,” he said. And then again: “Jescka.” His other hand reached behind her, pulled her towards him. “Oh, Jescka. You know I can’t deny you, my love.”
Memories, startled into dazzling life, like a butterfly in a bolt of woodland sunlight: Jescka, his darling, murmuring to him with that voice! Down in the seed-patches where she told him–gleefully: she so loved to shock!–she always took her lovers. Out at night, under the stars. Just the sound of her voice: he never could deny Jescka.
He dropped to his knees, found the knot behind her legs. He pressed his cheek against her belly, basking in her warmth, and untied her.
He should have anticipated her next move, the sudden up-thrust of her knee into his face.
More butterflies: violence was never far from darling Jescka. It followed her like a faithful mutt. That was why they had changed him, why they had punished and banished him. The violence. He remembered hitting her, hurting her.
She seemed surprised that her blow did not fell him. Staggering back onto his heels, he shook his head and laughed.
When she turned to run all he had to do was slap at her trailing foot and she went face-down in the dirt.
By the time he reached her she was scrambling to her feet once again.
“You came back to me, darling Jescka.”
She had come back for him to carry on where they had stopped before.
And that was when he hit her the second time.
~
Morning came, but its sounds and scents did not awaken wonder in him as they so often did.
It was time to move on, and so he gathered his pack and he pulled his marten-skin coat around him, tightening its sable leaf belt. He pulled his sun cap down over his face.
When he looked back, he thought he saw sadness in Herrel’s expression, but now he knew that he could not be sure. He realised that he had never really known much of the inner life of Herrel: had only interpreted from her signs and her expressions.
He could not bear to go near the prostrate body of the runaway called Taneye. She was unconscious and he knew bones had broken when he hit her in the night. He did not think she would live, even in the care of Herrel.
Such a pretty young thing.
He’d spoilt her pretty face. Spoilt her pretty young life.
And lost his love, again.
Chapter 19
The mutthounds found a scent early the next morning.
Someone had visited during the night, climbing the stockades to look within. Someone who was not a True human, leaving a trail of scent distinct enough to excite the hounds.
Flint pulled his reinforced fibre vest over his head and felt it tighten to his form. The garment was hot and uncomfortable, but it afforded him some protection from attack, at least.
He exchanged looks with Lorin and Nimmo. They nodded. The two younger Tenkans, Slater and Jona, hung back as the five stood in the settlement’s small square. It was as if they sensed that something had changed, something that now bound Lorin, Nimmo and Flint together.
One of their mutts swung the settlement’s low gates open and then the bondsman, Martoftenka, unleashed his hounds. Waist-high blocks of muscle, the dogs charged out, baying at the sky, their tails whipping ferociously. They raced along the foot of the stockade and then off into the wilds, finding a slight parting of the green curtain.
Martoftenka set off in pursuit, and Lorin ordered the mutts to fan out in the trees and follow the sound of the dogs. And then the five True members of the purge squad set off after the bondsman and his hounds.
~
“It’s when they fall silent that you need to be ready.”
Flint remembered Martoftenka’s hurried briefing before they had set out from Camp Sixteen on this mission. The hounds know to go quiet when they come near to their quarry.
Now, the dogs were quiet.
Flint rubbed at the sweat on his face, wishing he had taken the time to tie his hair back before setting out. They had been in pursuit for some time now and the sun was much higher in the sky, from what Flint could see through the thick canopy.
Lorin was a short distance ahead, the young Tenkans to either side, Nimmo with an over-sized crossbow just off to the right.
The only sounds were his breathing, the chitter of insects and birds, the soft crunch of footfalls on dry leaves.
And then: a soft whistle from ahead.
Lorin was signalling. Something was happening.
Flint passed through a trail of lianas, holding them aside with his staff, letting them fall behind him. Lorin was on the ground ahead, down on one knee. The bulky shape he had found was a mutthound. A nervous tic still quivered in its hindquarters but the animal was dead. The stubby shaft of a crossbow bolt protruded from the side of the hound’s head.
Lorin glanced back, nodded, rose to a crouch and continued.
They found Martoftenka a short time later, another crossbow bolt sticking out of the bloody mess of his face.
“This is crazy,” hissed Nimmo, as they paused by the houndmaster’s body. “We don’t know what we’re up against. Could be fucking millions of them!”
“We’re up against the Lost,” said Lorin. “That’s why we’re here.”
Light broke through the canopy up ahead where a stream cut a winding path through the jungle. On the far bank there were signs of encampment: flattened patches of woodrush where someone had made their bed, moss scuffed off waterside rocks where someone had moved without care.
“Not many of them, then,” said Lorin.
“Unless they made more than one camp,” answered Nimmo.
He was interrupted by a soft whisper of air and then a thud. Flint looked up and saw a crossbow bolt embedded in the soft trunk of a tree fern, not far above Nimmo’s head.
They dropped to the ground and scrambled on hands and knees for cover.
Upstream, one of the squad’s mutts emerged cautiously from the undergrowth, oblivious to what had just passed. He fell almost immediately, but Flint had seen movement as their assailant changed position to fire. He tapped Lorin on the shoulder, pointed.
Lorin tensioned his bow, aimed, fired. There was a cry and a man fell, wounded, from his perch in the trunks of a thicket oak.
They waited, but there was no more sign of movement.
They worked their way up the stream towards the bodies of the mutt and the Lost.
The man hung from the oak, his hips wedged between two of the tree’s sextet of slender trunks. Nimmo stooped and seized his hair, pulled his head up.
The man’s thickly bearded face was smeared with blood and a fist-sized growth emerged from one side of his head where his ear should be. The tumour looked like some gruesome parasite, a bulbous leech sucking out the man’s life.
But he was still alive.
His eyes flicked open, he grunted.
Lorin’s bolt protruded from where his neck joined his left shoulder–a wound that would normally be instantly fatal.
“Where are the rest?” asked Lorin.
“Fuck ... you.”
At a glance from Lorin, Nimmo raised the man’s head further and then smashed it down against the hard ground.
Flint gasped and turned away.
“So?” said Lorin to Nimmo. “How did it feel?”
“Shit,” laughed Nimmo. “I forgot. Reckon I need to find me another one.”
~
They found more in a clearing some distance further into the woods, drawn by the baying of the three remaining mutthounds and the hollering of battling mutts.
It was another encampment, and this time there were several family groups of the Lost there. By the time Flint and the others arrived, the Lost were cowering behind a defensive screen of logs, greatly outnumbered by the surrounding mutts.
When Flint reached the camp, Slater and Jona had already felled several of the Lost with crossbow shots, but it had rapidly become a standoff, as the cowering Lost were armed with crossbows, too.
“Flint, Nimmo, Jona: go round behind them to cut off any escape.”
They made a wide loop through the jungle, always fearful of ambush, but none came.
They arrived behind the log pile just as the Lost seemed to decide that they should make a break for cover. Two fired crossbows at the distant mutts while the others started to run across open ground directly towards Flint and his two comrades.
Nimmo raised his crossbow and fired. The weapon kicked against his shoulder and he cursed. Its shot lamed one of the fleeing Lost, but the others continued to run towards them.
Flint stepped into the open and held his staff before him.
The first of the Lost came close and stopped, eyeing Flint, fear and confusion in the man’s eyes. He looked perfectly normal, and it seemed incongrous to be facing him like this.
And then he took a knife from his belt and threw himself towards Flint.
Flint waited, timing his move carefully, and then swung his staff with rigid arms.
He struck the man in the midriff, and turned instantly, drawing his staff back before the man could seize it. Stepping closer, Flint swung the staff down across the man’s neck, then raised it and thrust down with one of its sharpened ends, driving it into the fallen man’s chest.
Instantly, he pulled it clear, sidestepping as a Lost woman swung at him with a hardened fibre sword. He caught her with the point of the staff, slicing her neck.
Another man charged and Jona fended him off with a sword until Nimmo managed a second, more accurate, shot and the man fell, clutching at the bolt in his chest.
Those in the log-pile had turned now, and were firing crossbows at them.
Flint, Nimmo and Jona retreated into the trees.
It would be a matter of time now. A standoff until the Lost ran out of ammunition or patience. The outcome was never in question.
~
Another time...
As part of a general sweep of the wild lands between camps Twenty-three and Thirty-five, they found an encampment where the Lost were clearly well-established.
The fighting lasted for two days, a time Flint spent in the jungle, with only flatcakes to eat and sweetwater from bladder flowers to drink. He was in the second line, watching for anyone who escaped. There was no one, and he felt a curious disaffection: a disjointed sense of tedium that seemed out of place when the sounds of fighting came regularly from such a short distance away. He found it hard to concentrate, even though he knew how dangerous it might be to lapse.
After the two days, he followed Lorin and Nimmo into the Lost settlement. Most of the cabins had been gutted and burnt out.
Two remained, and that was where the screaming came from.
Flint joined a crowd of purgists at the doorway to one of the cabins. Inside, a naked man was being beaten with a cane that had been pulped for half of its length to produce a flail of abrasive fibres. The man had the distorted body-frame of one who had undergone severe change at some time in his life. It was impossible to make out what his normal skin colour would have been.
There was a woman, too, and that was why the purgists were pressing to enter the cabin. Not to join in–fear of contamination still gripped these men firmly–but to watch her with Overseer Coletenka’s mutthounds.
Flint left, feeling excited, sickened, disbelieving. The sickness won, even after all that he had already witnessed in this campaign, and he emptied his stomach into the ashes of a cabin.
He recalled Marshall Maltenka’s oft-repeated call to arms.
We are fighting the forces of change. We are fighting for the very life of True Humankind. You should feel proud to be joined in such a noble campaign
.
~
Another time...
Lorin, Flint and Nimmo, leading a squad of twenty mutts, found a group of travellers, six children of varying ages, a man and woman of middling years hauling a hand wagon piled high with fibre-weaving, an old man leaning heavily on a twisted stick, struggling to keep up.
All looked terrified. All looked pretty much human.
“Oh, what a relief to see you!” gabbled the woman, hands clutched protectively around the head of a pup held in a sling across her chest. “Good men of the purge. What a relief for us pure True traders to know that we go protected on our way!”
They were clearly terrified, and from the many indications–the father’s distorted skull, the old man’s cat-like eyes which he had the sense to keep turned away, the abundance of body-fur on two of the children–they were clearly also Lost.
“You travel far?” asked Lorin. He knew, Flint saw.
The woman nodded eagerly. “Oh yes, good sir. We’re heading straight out of the Ten just as fast as my old father can walk.”
Lorin stepped back and, after a moment’s hesitation, Nimmo did too, leaving room for the group to pass along the trail.
Flint watched them go. He doubted very much that they would get far.
~
And another time...
The small town of Minster had its own Oracle, but it was much in demand and the queues of weary purgists stretched halfway around the town centre.
Instead, Flint went to a quiet place by a pool formed from a trapped loop of the river Leander. He stripped to his loin cloth and felt the small hairs on his body standing up in the chill evening air.
He breathed deep and stood with his feet a short distance apart. He raised his hands above his head and pressed the palms together, enjoying the sensation of his ribs being stretched up and apart, drawing the cool air deep inside.
He tried to find the Joyous Breath, the deep solidity within.
He tried for much of the evening, but he never found it.
He tried to find the memory of Sister Judgement’s words, the calming tones of her voice, but they escaped him.
He was, he realised, a Riverwalker no more.
~
“Tenecka,” said Lorin grimly, as he brought more bladders of ale to Flint and Nimmo.
The three sat in a canopy’s shade outside the brewhouse in Camp Twenty-six, their seventh posting in the short time they had been a part of the Tenkan purge.
“Tenecka itself?” asked Flint. “What’s happening there?”
“It’s the mutts,” said Lorin. “No one will admit it, but I heard it from Marshall Maltenka Elmarc himself: some of the mutts are in open rebellion. The Tenkans’ worst fears: mutts who have lost their ingrained devotion to their masters.”
He drank deeply. “It was inevitable,” he added grimly. “We go there in the morning. The purge is turning inwards.”