Authors: Stephen Baxter
Ana said, ‘So the threat is real. The question is what we do about it.’
‘We fight,’ Novu said immediately. ‘We can’t let them take our wealth, our flint. And we can’t let them destroy what we’ve made of Etxelur.’
Jurgi glanced at Dolphin and Kirike, the young folk standing together, their hands gently touching. On impulse he asked, ‘Do you two want to fight?’
Kirike considered. ‘It depends what we’re fighting for. Once, if the sea flooded your house, you just moved away and built another one. That was how you did things in the days before the Great Sea - that’s what you tell me.’
‘You didn’t have slaves either,’ Dolphin said now, flaring. Jurgi knew she had been helping the slaves, for she had come to him for medicines. ‘You were a different people then, with different ways of thinking. Better ways, maybe. It’s all changed because of you, Novu.’
‘You weren’t even born in the times you speak of,’ Novu sneered. ‘You are an outsider. Like your mother.’
‘As are you—’
‘What would you have us do? Run like whipped dogs?’
Kirike took a step towards him, fists clenched. ‘You old people hate us, don’t you? I think you wish your precious Great Sea had just washed everybody away, so you would have been spared raising ungrateful runts like us—’
‘This isn’t helping,’ Ana said softly. ‘Kirike, you’re right. Once just walking way from problems was what people did. But we can’t do that any more, because the sea has eaten away so much of the land. The snailheads walked away, and ended up here. There’s nowhere left to go.’ She glared at Kirike and Novu. ‘But I won’t have division among us. Things are bad enough without that. Whatever we decide to do, we do it together.’
Novu turned on her, all but shouting. ‘ “Together.” Who are you to say “together”? You who have brought this horror down on us.’
Jurgi heard gasps. He was alarmed, fearing where this direct challenge to Ana might lead. ‘Novu, be careful what you say.’
‘What is there to be careful about? How much more peril could we be in? Think about it. Why is the Root so determined to bring us down, determined enough to plot and scheme over months, to whip up his entire people into a war party? Because before he was the Root he was called Shade. And for Shade it’s personal. It’s because of her - Ana - her and her sister, the disaster they caused that ended up with Shade’s brother and father both dead, at his own hands. Now he’s the Root, and when he looks over Northland, what does he see? Ana. Ana the survivor, the Giver, the big woman of Etxelur. This is why the Pretani are coming. Shade is coming for Ana.’
Jurgi knew Novu had a point. Jurgi had been talking to Eel-folk slaves all day about their planned revolt, and had heard other rumours, spread at second or third hand from the travelling camps of the Pretani. Rumours about another presence at the camps, a woman who stayed close to Shade - a woman with hair once a vivid red but now shot through with grey, a woman once beautiful but now grown old with bitterness. He’d said nothing of this yet to Ana, unsure how to broach it. But if all this was true, if this woman was who she sounded like, the matter was indeed personal, and it really was all about Ana.
But they couldn’t afford for Novu to attack Ana. Ana was all that held Etxelur together. Resented she might be at times, but she was like the knotted leather rope at the crown of a house that strapped together its timber supports. Novu was sawing away at that rope - and if Ana failed, everything might come crashing down even before the Pretani got here.
But Ana herself seemed calm. She linked her hands under her belly. ‘It’s always personal. Everything is. Novu, you’ve had it in for me since I took Jurgi away from you. Oh, don’t try to deny it; our relationship soured from that day. And besides, what if it is personal, the whole Pretani attack targeted at me? What would you have me do? Would you truss me up like a pig for the spit and hand me over?’
Novu glared at her. ‘If that’s what it takes to save the work—’
Ice Dreamer said, ‘I’ve always thought you were crazy, Jericho, but if you put your heaps of mud and stone ahead of the people they are supposed to protect then your mind really has gone soft.’
Ana held her hands up. ‘Enough. We’ve worked together well in the past, Novu. When this incident is over we will work well again, I’m sure, for there is much to be done. I don’t believe I will ever call you a friend again. But then, I’m not trying to make friends. I don’t need friends. I need allies.’
She stepped away from Jurgi and Dreamer, away from the group, and she looked around, at the sweep of the midden, the great arms of the dykes reaching out to embrace the ocean. She was terribly lonely, Jurgi thought. Since being taken as her lover he had grown to understand that loneliness, if not to alleviate it.
She said now, ‘I will always believe we had no choice but to try to save this land from the sea. It was that or run, and there was nowhere to run to. But we are doing something that has never been done before, so far as we know. And if you do something new, how can you know if you are doing it right?’ She walked up to Wise. He was taller than she was, thinner; he looked down at her gravely. She switched to the traders’ tongue. ‘Can you understand me? Dolphin Gift is right. When I was a girl there was nobody like you in Etxelur. No slaves. There was only us, and our friends, and a few enemies. We were all the same. No wonder the Pretani were able to convince you to rise against us. I would rise up. Perhaps there’s something of Novu in me. Perhaps I’ve been so intent on getting the work done I’ve lost sight of how we should be doing it. Well, here’s a promise. If we push away the Pretani, we will continue to build our walls. But we will do things differently. Let them have slaves in Pretani and in Jericho. Not in Etxelur.’
Jurgi heard a murmur of support, a joyful clap from Dolphin.
Ana turned back to Wise. ‘You, your people, will be welcome to stay. Not as slaves.’ She waved a hand. ‘As friends.’
He smiled down at her. ‘I think about it.’
Jurgi was amazed. ‘By the mothers, man, what is there to think about?’
‘Don’t like sea food.’
They all laughed, save a fuming Novu.
Ana regarded the Eel man. ‘Well - stay or not, you have decisions to make of your own. Will you support the Pretani?’
‘Pretani worse than you. We’ll fight them with you.’
‘Are you sure? How can we count on you?’
‘I believe your promises more than I believe the Pretani.’
‘Good,’ Ice Dreamer said fervently. ‘But we should be clever about this. Not a word to the Pretani. Pretend you continue to side with them. Turn their ruse back on them. It will double the shock when they come to destroy us.’
‘Good idea,’ Ana said. ‘We have much to think about - much work to do if we are to survive this, even with the help of the Eel folk. We must talk to the snailheads too, and the estuary folk. But for now - are we agreed? Are you still with me?’
There was a murmur of support. Jurgi was heartened by relieved grins on the faces of Dolphin and Kirike. After all, it was the young who mattered most, in the end, no matter what the old folk agreed among themselves.
Only Novu was scowling. But he said, ‘If it will get the work done, I don’t care what you do. Now - are we done here?’
81
The Seventeenth Year After the Great Sea: Autumn Equinox.
On the morning of the attack on Etxelur, the Leafies were kicked awake, as usual.
Me hunched over, protecting his face, his groin, the thick net heavy on his back. He had slept little. The strangeness of the place they had been brought to - the crisp, empty saltiness of the air, the sandy soil they had to lie on - had disturbed all the Leafy Boys profoundly.
When he opened his eyes he saw the stripe of the net, the huge shapes of the grounders standing over the Leafies. All this picked out in blue-black light. It was still dark, still long before the dawn - earlier than they normally woke. Me had learned to dread change. Change meant danger, and that somebody was going to die.
With a skill born of practice the men made a ring around the Leafies, and worked together to lift the net off. A little one got caught in the tangle, but with a couple of brisk shakes he fell down like an overripe fruit.
The Leafies moved stiffly, pissing, licking leaves on the ground for their dew. Then the men moved in on the Leafies with their knives, knotted rope and clubs, and tested the tethers attached to the loops at their necks, getting ready to move them.
Soon the men started calling to each other, big gruff bellows like bull aurochs, and they formed up into their groups.
And then they started to run, heavy in their huge leather cloaks, their faces dark with blue and black paint, the scars over their brows vivid. The Leafies had to move too, only heartbeats after they had woken, driven ahead of their handlers on their leashes.
Me could barely see what he was running into. The light, such as it was, came from the dawn sky to his right, slightly paler than the rest. It felt like a nightmare, as if he had not yet fully woken up. But as he ran his muscles warmed up, and his nighttime aches started to fade, as they always did.
They came to a line of hills, low, grassy, sandy. Here the Leafy group was split in two. Some were kept back at the foot of the hills, and were taken off to the east. But Me and others were driven forward, to scramble over the soft dunes. He had no time to think about that - scarcely time to wonder if he would ever see the Leafies in that other party again.
When they got to the crest of the hills, though the light was still uncertain, Me could see the ground fall away to a shallow beach, littered with rock and mounds of some dark weed - and beyond that there was water, nothing but water, a great lapping lake of it that stretched off as far as he could see. Me froze in shock. This endless blank flatness could not have been a greater contrast to the enclosing green of the forest canopy where he had spent almost all of his conscious life. It was as if the world had been stripped away.
The advance broke up into chaos. All around him Leafies were crying, or standing, shocked. But the men were soon on them with their fists and spears and boots and snarls, and yanking their tethers. Me was driven on at a stumbling run.
The Leafies were sent down to the beach, and then turned to the right, towards the light of the gathering dawn. They ran and ran.
And, somewhere in the blocky dunes at the head of the beach, a point of fire flared brightly.
82
When Jurgi touched Ana’s shoulder she woke slowly.
Oddly, as word had come of the Pretani’s approach, she had slept as well as she had for years. Maybe it was the banishing of doubt: better to face a real enemy than to fear worse in ignorance. Or maybe these deep, dreamless sleeps were merely a rehearsal for her own imminent death.
She opened her eyes. Jurgi’s face, above her, was just visible in the low glow of the house’s night hearth. She reached up and cupped his cheek, feeling the priest’s tattoos he had worn since he was a boy, the circular mark of Etxelur. He covered her hand with his. One last moment of tenderness.
He murmured, ‘The signal fires have been seen. They come.’
‘Today’s the day, then.’
‘I think so. The others are waiting for you.’
She nodded.
He withdrew, and hurried out of the house. She saw from the loose door flap that the dawn was not yet far advanced.
She rolled off her pallet and sat up, aware of the weight of her belly, how heavy and slow the pregnancy made her. Well, she wouldn’t have to fight today, not unless all their elaborate schemes failed. She pulled on her tunic, swigging water from a hide flask as she did so. Then she squatted over the night pot, trying to ensure it caught every drop of her piss to feed the tanning pits. Of course by the time night fell even the pits might be in the hands of the Pretani. When she was done she pulled on her boots and cloak, and picked up her own fine-bladed knife and a short-handled stabbing spear.
She took one more deep breath, and glanced around. The house was tidy, the embers in the hearth dying.
Then she pushed her way out through the door.
They were waiting for her in the dawn, Arga, Dreamer, Dolphin, Kirike, Novu, Wise, a circle of grim faces, bodies hidden by heavy hide cloaks.
This house, not her own, was on the northern coast of Flint Island, set on a mound of fresh-dug earth. The holy middens were bulky shadows just paces away, and the sea lapped quietly, the rush of the waves an oddly soothing sound. Thunder was on a tether, tied up to a house post; it wasn’t a day for friendly little dogs to run loose.
Cries overhead made her look up. A flock of birds swept over the sky, cool and graceful, early departures for their winter homes.
Arga saw her looking. ‘Our own autumn migrants are on the way here, it seems. But we’re still some days short of the autumn equinox.’
‘Seven days,’ said the priest, ‘according to my counting sticks. Many of us had thought they would attack on the day of the equinox. Such moments in the year mean as much to the Pretani as to us.’
‘Perhaps they are trying to catch us off guard,’ Ana said. ‘Shade is their Root. Shade was never a fool.’
Kirike said, ‘They came from the south. They seem to have split into two. One group is heading inland, making for the Bay Land. The other is coming in from the west, along the coast. They must mean to use the causeway to get to Flint Island.’
Jurgi said, ‘It’s what we planned for. They’re aiming their forces at the two targets we expected: the flint store in the Bay Land - and you, Ana, here on the coast.’
Novu grinned. ‘I am no fisher. If I was, I would say the fish is nibbling at the bait.’
‘I wouldn’t feel so happy about it,’ Jurgi said. ‘Especially as the “bait” is what is most precious to us. And it shows they have been watching us.’
‘You should take comfort,’ Ana said. ‘We let the Pretani traders stay in Etxelur so they could tell Shade what we wanted him to hear. That was the whole point.’
‘Maybe,’ said Jurgi. ‘I just don’t like being at the mercy of forces I can’t control.’