Bloodstone Part 12

THE STENCH WAS A living presence, as real as any captive. A reek of sweat and vomit and p.i.s.s and s.h.i.+t so overpowering that Keirith could taste it, could feel it burning his eyes, staining his lungs, poisoning his skin. All the scrubbing in the world could never clean this boat; the very air reeked of misery and hopelessness.

But the confinement was even worse. Shoulders rubbed against his, bare thighs brushed his legs, elbows dug into his ribs. Even the gentlest touch made him flinch, recalling the terror of those unseen hands that had seized him in the dark.

The first day, the constant pitch of the boat made everyone sick and there were always hands, some light as b.u.t.terfly wings, others impatient, all groping their way toward the small open s.p.a.ce at the far end of the hole that served as a slop area. Those who were too sick to move simply fouled the planks-and the people-around them.

They measured the pa.s.sing of time by the opening of the door above them. Morning and evening, the raiders tossed down skins of lukewarm water and sacks of food. Keirith choked down the hard flatbread, but the saltiness of the dried meat only made him more desperate for water.

The raiders had moved him to this boat the morning after the rape. He'd made a feeble attempt to escape, but after one lurching step, the halter around his neck jerked him to his knees. After that, he'd splashed through the shallows after his captor, obedient as a bullock about to be slaughtered.

Numbly, he'd observed details: the salty s.e.m.e.n stink of the tide pools; the cold water burning every sc.r.a.pe and cut on his body; the man floating facedown in the water, gray hair rippling like lakeweed. And the red-haired men and boys being herded toward two of the boats.

After the worst of the seasickness pa.s.sed, his fellow captives spent much time discussing that.

"It might mean we'll be given special treatment," someone speculated.

"It might mean we'll be sacrificed," another muttered.

"They cut down the forests for their fields," a voice intoned. "They dug stone out of the earth for their altars. They stole the children of The People to sacrifice to their G.o.ds."

"Shut up!"

Only those sitting closest had names. By the second day, he'd come to recognize Sinand's whimpers and Roini's muttered curses. Brudien was the voice of calm; Temet, the voice of reason; Dror, the incessant whisper of vengeance.

Although Keirith dreamed of revenge and escape, he grew impatient with Dror's plotting. They were unarmed, weak from lack of food, and sick from the rough seas. How could they ever overpower their captors? The raiders never entered the hole. They never allowed them to leave it. And when they beached the boat at night, they left guards on board.

Like dogs worrying a bone, the captives spent part of every day sharing stories of the raids on their villages. No one, it seemed, had any warning.

"Normally, our currachs would have been out to sea," Brudien said. "We could have spotted their boats. But we were still cleaning up after the Gathering. How could they have known that?"

Roini cursed. "The traders. They'd sell their mothers if there was profit in it."

"Or one of the southern tribes." That had to be Dror. When he wasn't plotting escape, he was a.s.signing blame, whether to the neighbor who elbowed him or the chiefs who had failed to take the threat of the raiders seriously.

Talk of home always ended in m.u.f.fled tears or frightened speculations about the fate awaiting them. The hopeful predicted slavery, the gloomy, death, but the doomsayers spoke only in whispers lest they frighten the others.

Keirith tried to shut out the voices. He didn't want to share their pain or their memories; he had enough of his own.

In every village, the reek of decaying bodies and clouds of black birds atop the Death Huts gave mute testimony to disaster. In every longhut, survivors told Darak the same tale: families awakened before dawn by raiders storming into their huts; men and women clubbed and dragged to the boats, others snared with nets as they stumbled from their homes. A few managed to slip away in the darkness, their freedom bought with the lives of the men and women who fought back. Once any resistance was crushed, the raiders looted what they could and left, their departure accompanied by the wails of those either too young or too old to be considered valuable as slaves.

Keirith's warning had spared them from that fate. Their death toll was higher, but perhaps a swift death was better than a life of slavery. It was certainly better than death upon a Zherosi altar.

When their coracles sc.r.a.ped ash.o.r.e, the hollow-eyed inhabitants straggled down to greet them; even tragedy could not dispel the ancient tradition of hospitality. They shared dried fish, dried venison, stale oatcakes-whatever the raiders had overlooked. Invariably, their hosts apologized for the meager fare. If the great Darak Spirit-Hunter and his friend would remain another day, they would slaughter a sheep and feast him as he deserved. Always, Darak thanked them and declined.

When they heard his mission, the men shook their heads, but after the meal, the women surrounded him, timid hands plucking at his sleeves.

"Please, Memory-Keeper. If you should see my Sinand-he's thirteen, but small for his age, with bright red hair . . ."

"They took my husband, Memory-Keeper. Varon. You'll know him by the scar on his chin . . ."

"My daughter Urna. She's three moons gone with child, Memory-Keeper, and she hasn't been well . . ."

"My sister Larina . . ."

"My brother Bosath . . ."

On and on it went, the litany of the lost. Darak repeated each name, the weight upon his spirit growing. Urkiat suggested they simply paddle past the villages, but he refused. He might have accepted the position of Memory-Keeper reluctantly, but he had fulfilled his duties: committing the bloodlines of his tribe to memory, teaching the children the legends and songs of their people, sharing those same legends and songs at the rites. But he also had the responsibility of carrying news-good and ill-to and from the Gatherings.

This year, he'd never gotten the chance to tell Erca about her new grandson or comfort Barima with the news that her mam had gotten over the cough that always plagued her around the Freshening. And although he had brought the tale of Rordi's first tooth and Mela's first moon blood to their grandparents before he left, the old couples were too shattered by the deaths in their families to do more than nod.

He had left his village with only one goal: to bring his son home. But he could not ignore the anguish of the other parents who had lost children or waited anxiously for news of a daughter who had married into another tribe. The living deserved to know the truth and the lost deserved to be mourned.

Sinand. Varon. Urna. Larina. Bosath. Owan.

Keirith.

Each night, they pursued him in dreams. Some nights, it was only formless hands pus.h.i.+ng him down. Other nights, it was the Big One's mocking smile and the faint whiff of sour wine on his breath as he crouched there, holding his wrists, while the others took their turns. The remembered agony of that first brutal penetration always catapulted him to wakefulness, but other dreams stretched out endlessly, filled with rhythmic animal grunts, the frenzied slap of flesh on flesh, the warm ooze of blood and s.e.m.e.n down his thighs, and always, the soft chuckles that mingled with his m.u.f.fled screams.

Each night, Keirith jolted awake, terrified he had made some sound that would reveal his secret to the others. On the fourth night, he awoke with the Big One's hands on his shoulders and shrank back, flailing.

"Hush," Brudien whispered. "It's all right. No one will hurt you."

Shame flooded him. He pushed the gentle hands away, hating himself for crying out, hating Brudien for hearing him.

Darak gazed at the promontory overlooking the mouth of the river. A sennight ago, he had deliberated with the chiefs on trade agreements and intertribal grievances. The beach below had teemed with visitors haggling with traders, cheering on those partic.i.p.ating in contests of archery, wrestling, and footraces, sharing food and songs come the evening. Now it teemed with carrion eaters.

They had hoped to exchange their coracles for one of the village's fis.h.i.+ng boats, but every currach was hacked to pieces. Even with the help of the survivors, Urkiat guessed it would take three days to build the skeleton, cover it with hides, and seal the seams with pine resin. And even then, he refused to vouch for its seaworthiness. Darak argued for going on in the coracles, but bowed to Urkiat's emphatic a.s.sertion that the little boats would capsize in the rough surf.

So the next morning, they shouldered their packs and headed south on foot. Girn's village was only a few days' walk. If it was still standing. Darak refused to believe the raiders had attacked every village along the coast, but he had never imagined the ma.s.sive scale of destruction he had already seen. Even Urkiat, who had lived under the threat of the raiders for years, was shocked.

Everything Darak had known-or thought he'd known-about the raiders had been proven false. The southern chiefs had always claimed the attacks were haphazard, one village plundered while another a scant ten miles away escaped harm. Although a few reported raids during the spring and early summer, the vast majority came after the harvest was in.

But the last years had seen fewer and fewer southern chiefs at the Gatherings and they only ventured north in the spring. Those from the far south had not attended in more than five years. How could he have been so blind as to believe it would never happen to his folk?

"Why now?" he asked Urkiat as they picked their way along a stream bank, looking for a place to ford. "Why in force? Just because they needed . . . sacrifices?"

"Likely, they needed slaves to work in their fields, too. And their mines."

"Mines?"

"Great pits they gouge in the earth where they dig for copper or tin. They need those to make bronze."

He plied Urkiat with questions, but it had been four years since the raiders had destroyed his village. Since then, he'd been living inland with a small group of survivors from various coastal tribes. They'd been so shattered by the loss of their kinfolk and homes that only this year had they dared send someone north to tell their story at the Gathering.

If only we had listened. If only we had acted at once.

"Why not try and exact tribute from us?" Darak asked. "As they did your folk."

"That was only after they'd attacked us and we were too weak to fight anymore." Urkiat's expression darkened. Darak knew he hated to talk about what had happened, but he needed information.

"So they'll come back."

"They always come back," Urkiat replied. "Sooner or later."

Although Urkiat's facility at learning their tongue had encouraged the raiders to use him as an interpreter, he knew little about the land they came from. He could only repeat the tales told by the other survivors in his village, and pa.s.s along the sc.r.a.ps of information they'd gleaned during their visits to the coast to trade pelts for grain.

The afternoon was waning when the reek of decay reached them. They discovered the first body as they emerged from the trees-an old woman lying facedown with three arrows protruding from her back. Eight more bodies lay tangled together at the water's edge. Crows rose up in a squawking black cloud as they approached.

Most of them were young, little more than Faelia's age. Although the birds and crabs had been busy, it was clear their skulls had been crushed. When he spied the red hair, he fell to his knees.

"Thirteen, but small for his age, with bright red hair."

But when he turned the body over, he discovered it was not Sinand, but Owan. A tiny crab scuttled out of the boy's open mouth. With an oath, Darak flung it away.

"Is it the boy from your village?"

"Aye." He brushed the wet sand from the beardless cheeks. "Why club them to death? Could they have tried to escape?"

"They probably died on the voyage downriver. I'm surprised there aren't more, given how many captives they took."

Darak folded Owan's hands across his chest and made the other bodies decent. And all the while, the guilty thought echoed in his mind: thank the Maker it isn't Keirith.

He rose to find Urkiat examining the deep furrows that gouged the beach from waterline to gra.s.s. "From their s.h.i.+ps. A dozen of them, at least. They must have beached them here."

But Darak was already walking toward the fire pits. The bones of roasted sheep lay among the ashes. His gaze drifted from the charred logs to the forest. Even from this distance, he could see the fallen trees, the heartwood of the stumps raw and pale.

Urkiat crouched beside a fire pit, sifting through the ashes. "Four days old at least," he said, wiping his fingers on his breeches.

Numbly, Darak walked toward the forest, pa.s.sing scattered fragments of lives: a woman's shoe, a torn strip of doeskin, a tooth crusted with dried blood. The trees lay in miserable heaps, delicate branches of birch peeping out from the ancient oaks. Jagged shards, still bleeding sap, reared up from the scarred trunks. They hadn't bothered chopping them into logs, simply sheared off the limbs to use as fuel.

The sacrilege was even more appalling than the sheer waste. Dozens of saplings had been felled along with five older trees, the spirits that had dwelled within murdered as brutally as the children on the beach. If the raiders had so little regard for life, how would Keirith ever survive?

"We'd best get moving," Urkiat said.

"We have to gather the bodies and build a cairn."

"The light will be gone by the time we finish."

"We can't just leave them."

After a moment, Urkiat shrugged.

Darak swept his arm across the beach. "Doesn't this affect you at all?"

Urkiat's expression hardened. "Aye, Memory-Keeper. But I've seen it all before."

Keirith came to hate Brudien's voice, always so calm, always so hopeful, forever singing the old songs, forever telling the old tales. Forcing him to remember his home, his family. Reawakening the fears that they might have been hurt or killed.

When Brudien sang the song of farewell, hot tears p.r.i.c.kled in Keirith's eyes. Every autumn at the full Goose Moon, his father sang it to honor their ancestors' long journey north, fleeing the invaders who had driven them from their homeland.

He blinked back the tears, but he could not suppress the memories. Memories of days in the forest, drinking in the lessons his father taught. Any child, his father claimed, can observe something in the forest simply by using his eyes, his ears, his nose. A hunter augmented those senses with his skill with bow and arrow, sling and snare. A great hunter not only understood his prey's habits and feeding patterns, but learned to antic.i.p.ate their reactions. A great hunter remembered.

Keirith took strength from those early lessons. He promised himself to watch his enemies. Observe their behavior. Remember any detail that might help him stay alive.

Each time Brudien sang the song of farewell, more voices joined in. "The Oak and the Holly are with us," the song promised, but Keirith knew better. The G.o.ds hadn't saved his people during the Long Winter and they couldn't save him now. He couldn't trust them any more than he could trust these strangers. If they found out what the raiders had done to him, they would scorn him. If they discovered his gift, they would revile him.

The Oak and the Holly weren't with him. He was alone.

Chapter 10.

SOMETIME IN THE MIDDLE of the sixth day, Keirith heard a flurry of activity from above. Instead of the inevitable sc.r.a.pe of pebbles, the boat thudded against something and settled into a gentle rocking. Anxious speculation gave way to silence as the door swung open. The dark form of a raider stood silhouetted against brilliant light. He flung the rope ladder into the hole, drawing startled curses from those below.

For a long moment, no one moved. Finally, Brudien spoke. "We are the children of the Oak and the Holly. Like them, we know what it is to fight and suffer defeat. And like them, we will remain strong to fight again-if we have the courage to face the coming days."

A few murmured a.s.sent, but one man shouted, "The coming days will bring death. Better to fight now."

"Against armed men?" Brudien shouted back. "Twice our number?"

"Should we go forth like sheep to the slaughter?" Dror demanded.

"Nay! Like proud men. Let them see our strength and wonder at it."

Bent almost double because of his height, Brudien edged through the closely-packed bodies and seized the rope ladder. People muttered prayers of protection as he climbed up. Then Dror pushed forward. "If there's a chance to make a break, I'll shout. When I do, take out the nearest guard."

"Good G.o.ds," Temet said with weary disgust. "Half of us can barely walk, never mind 'take out the nearest guard.' "

"And where would we run?" someone cried.

"Make for the forest," Dror replied.

Weak from the days of confinement, Keirith's legs betrayed him, and he had to let the raiders pull him out of the hole. The heat made him gasp; if the air smelled better, it was just as stifling. A raider bound his wrists. Another looped a rope around his neck, tethering him to Temet. A shove sent him stumbling forward.

Images formed before his dazzled eyes: sunlight striking sparks on the blue-green water; a treeless cliff silhouetted against the sun-bleached sky. Below him, a long tongue of stone rose nearly as high as the side of the boat; the line of captives trudged down it toward a beach of white sand. Fis.h.i.+ng nets lay stretched like giant spiderwebs across the snowy expanse. Beyond it, cl.u.s.ters of people shouted and waved. Some of the raiders called out greetings in return. Of course, they must have families. Families who greeted their homecoming with the same joy and excitement his folk displayed when a loved one returned from a Gathering.

Make for the forest, Dror had said. But there was only a sprawling ma.s.s of white buildings marching up the side of a hill, row upon row of small, square houses that reflected the merciless sun back into his eyes. In the distance, a dark crag thrust out from the hills, its peak obscured by a haze of yellowish dust or smoke. On its slopes, Keirith made out a few patches of green. There was Dror's forest, those pitiful clumps of trees. Dror had said. But there was only a sprawling ma.s.s of white buildings marching up the side of a hill, row upon row of small, square houses that reflected the merciless sun back into his eyes. In the distance, a dark crag thrust out from the hills, its peak obscured by a haze of yellowish dust or smoke. On its slopes, Keirith made out a few patches of green. There was Dror's forest, those pitiful clumps of trees.

A shout saved him from tripping as the stone tongue gave way to sand.

Watch, Keirith. Watch. Observe. Remember.

Bare-chested men with whips and clubs. The snap of a whip when a captive faltered. Snowy sand sifting through his toes like hot ash.

The world blurred, then re-formed to show him heads bobbing up and down along the line as captives hopped from foot to foot to escape the burning sand. One of the raiders mimicked them, drawing roars of laughter from his comrades.