Stone spring

20

Novu and Chona rounded a bluff and looked down on a valley. Under a grey lid of sky it was raining, and their cloaks and tunics were sodden through.

‘There,’ Chona gasped. The rain hissed on the grass and pattered on the river water, and Novu found it hard to hear what Chona was saying. ‘There! By the river – that place. That’s where we meet. That’s where… Come on.’ He limped forward, and Novu, laden with their packs, followed.

The river ran over a rocky bed, beside a broad flood plain walled by cliffs of limestone. They had followed the river upstream for so long, they had come so far west, that it was barely recognisable to Novu as the huge waterway they had followed from its estuary, through the Narrow of the fish-people, and across the Continent’s rocky heart. Yet here it was, the same river.

And here, Novu knew, Chona had been hoping to find his early-summer gathering of traders, for this place was, uniquely, near the head of several of the great rivers that traversed the Continent, a meeting point of the traders’ natural routes. ‘Always at this time,’ he would say, ‘after the equinox, that’s when the trading is good. Later, at midsummer, all over the Continent the hunters and fishers gather, doling out food and gifts to each other. So this is the time to catch their leaders, early summer, when the big men start panicking about what gifts they have to give. Oh, the aurochs too fast for you this year? The deer too cunning, the fish too slippery? Shame. Maybe your wife’s brothers would be happy with my bits of coloured stone instead…’ Even traders followed the seasons, Novu was learning, from Chona’s increasingly broken talk.

Chona had been desperate to get here. No matter how ill he became, no matter the cough, the pale, blotchy, sweating skin, the feverish broken sleep at night, Chona insisted on pressing on every day, leaning on his staff and on Novu’s shoulder. But for days Chona had been watching the sun’s arc in the sky, muttering, ‘Late. Too late.’

And in the end the illness had slowed Chona down, just enough.

This rainy day the broad plain by the river was all but empty. You could see how the ground had been churned up by many feet, and old hearths lay like black scars on the ground. People had been here, a crowd of them. But now only a couple of houses remained, in the lee of the limestone cliffs, and one of those looked abandoned.

‘Too late,’ Chona said. ‘I told you!’ He raised his hand and clipped Novu’s head; he was weaker than he used to be, but it still stung.

Novu bore this without complaint. ‘It wasn’t my fault. You’re the ill one. So what now, shall we stand here in the rain?’

‘Help me.’ A trail, well worn, led from this elevated place to the edge of the water. Chona led the way, though he reached back for support from Novu. ‘That house, that one there. With the smoke, and the boat beside it. I think I recognise the design on it, the sunburst on the skins…’

They reached the flood plain and limped across muddy grass. Their legs brushed thistles, all that had survived the passage of the traders.

The owner of the house was a big, bluff man who came out and watched their approach, suspiciously.

‘Loga!’ Chona called, in the traders’ tongue. ‘Loga… It’s good to see you, my friend.’

Loga wore a coat sewn together from the black and white pelts of many small animals. ‘Chona. You look like shit.’

Chona stood gasping, his eyes concealed by his hood, the rain dripping from his long nose. ‘We’re soaked. If I can come in-’

‘Who’s this?’ Loga stared at Novu. ‘Son?’

‘No.’ Chona laughed, but it turned into a cough. ‘No, no. Trade goods, that’s all. Hard worker, good walker, and if you want bricks making… Oh, what’s the word for “brick”? Never mind, never mind. Loga, if I can just come in and dry off-’

Loga held up a massive hand. ‘No. Wife in there, and other wife. Kids. Baby.’

‘All right. But look, man – old friend – you can see how I am – this rain will kill me-’

‘Cave.’ Loga jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the limestone cliffs. Novu saw clefts, vertical, almost like doorways set in the cliff, leading to dark interiors. ‘Dry in there. Warm. No bear. We chase out bear. Maybe bear shit. Burn on fire.’ Loga grinned. ‘Sorry. Wife. Other wife. Baby. Get warm, clean up, we talk.’ And he ducked back into his house, sealing shut the skin cover behind him.

It was always this way now. Nobody wanted a sick man near their children.

So Novu led Chona through a cleft in the cliff wall, and into a kind of passageway. It was dark, and Novu wished he had a torch, but the walking was easy, the floor beaten flat by footprints, and the walls were smooth. People had evidently used this passage before.

After a dozen paces the walls opened out to reveal a larger space, a flat floor scarred by old hearths.

‘This will do.’ Chona slumped to the floor and leaned against a wall. ‘Make a fire. Then food… Oh, my bones.’ He closed his eyes and seemed to sleep immediately.

Novu opened up their packs and spread out their skins. Then he looked around the cave. He picked one of the old hearths to build his fire. He found a little wood piled up at the back of the cave, which he collected, and hard round blocks that might be bear turds; he decided to try burning them later. Before it was dark, he would go back out and collect more wood, and bring it in here to dry out.

He dug out the day’s ember, and soon the wood was burning brightly. He got out some dried fish for Chona, and fetched him a bowl of rainwater.

The trader’s appetite had been poor for days, but he forced himself to chew. ‘Here we are at the heart of the Continent. The beating heart, where rivers like veins flow with trade. And I missed the traders’ gathering! I missed it. First time in years. Ten years. More.’

‘You’ve spent ten years as a trader?’

‘More than that. My father traded. He showed me the way it works. I walked with him. The way you’re walking with me, I suppose. Loga thought you were my son! What a laugh.’

‘You don’t have a son of your own.’

‘No family. No wife. Or a hundred wives.’ He cackled, and made a pumping gesture with his crotch. ‘The trading, that’s everything to me. I saw how my father slowed down when he had his family, it ties you down like a tethered goat. Not for me.’

‘Where did you come from? I mean originally.’

‘Nowhere you’d know. Nowhere at all.’ He spat a bit of fish in the vague direction of the fire, and missed. ‘Shut up, boy, you’re annoying me.’

Novu brought him another bowl of water. But when he returned the trader had slumped back to sleep, and was snoring loudly. Left alone, Novu, restless, bored, wandered around the cave. Odd pillar-like formations stood on the floor, and when Novu looked up he could see more pillars dangling from the roof, glistening, damp.

And at the back of the cave more clefts led off, presumably to more hollows deeper inside the rock.

Novu made a torch of a bit of pine branch wrapped tightly with dried reeds. He lit this in the fire, and returned to the back of the cave. He counted four, five, six clefts running off from this chamber, gaps wide enough for him to squeeze through. He picked one and pushed his way in. It was just a little wider than his shoulders, the walls rising above his head.

Maybe the whole cliff was riddled with caves, with clefts and passages everywhere. His imagination ran away. You could get lost. You could wander here for ever! Maybe there were whole tribes of people wandering in the dark, feeding on spiders or rats… Oddly he didn’t feel frightened by this idea. It would be like a huge, natural Jericho.

The passageway closed in, without revealing anything of interest.

He backed out to the cave, where Chona was still snoring, and tried the next passage along. This was clogged by dried brush that he had to push through. But after a few dozen paces the passage began to open out, the roof rising up, and he found himself in another chamber, longer than Chona’s, with tall, smooth, sloping walls. He thought he saw more of those dangling formations on the ceiling. He raised his torch to see better.

A horse bucked at him.

He stumbled back against the wall, nearly dropping the torch, his breath scratchy, his heart hammering. A horse! How could a horse be here? But he heard nothing, smelled nothing. He dared to raise the torch again.

The horse was painted on the wall. It was almost life size. And it wasn’t a stick figure, like the art of Jericho; a bold black outline was filled with shading, brown and grey and white, and the hairs of its mane were picked out one by one. He stared, astonished, and he wondered if some god had made this thing. But then, just below it, he saw the mark of a human hand, outlined in red paint.

He stepped up to the horse and touched it. He could scratch away bits of the horse under his nail, just powder, red ochre, black charcoal. When the torch’s fire had danced, he had thought that this image, so lifelike, had jumped out at him.

He had never been moved much by the spirit world, never impressed by the priests’ capering and gabbling. But there was a sense of age in this cave, age and deep time. If the horse’s spirit was still here, it would not harm him now.

A voice, faint, reached him. ‘Boy? Boy! I need you…’

‘Chona?’

The trader stumbled into the cave. His legs were bare, and his erection stuck out like one of the formations on the cave roof.

Novu snapped, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Taking what’s mine. Come on, boy. I haven’t had a good hump for days. You’ll do. I’ve watched you, the way you look at people. I know you’d like men as much as women, if you ever got the chance…’ Chona reached for him. Novu stepped back. Chona stumbled to his knees.

Novu laughed at him. ‘You sure about this? You won’t be able to sell me as a virgin then, will you?’

Chona knelt, breathing hard. ‘You, you,’ he said, and his speech was broken by coughing, ‘you worthless little turd.’

‘And you’re too feeble for your own hand tonight. Sleep is what you need.’

Chona fell back onto one arm, awkwardly. The erection crumpled. ‘You little turd.’

Novu put one hand behind Chona’s head, and lowered him to the floor. The trader’s pale flesh shone with moisture. Novu pulled off his own skin-shirt and began to dab at Chona’s face. Chona’s eyes closed, as if he was slumping back to sleep. Novu wiped a bit of drool from his open mouth, almost tenderly.

Then he pushed the bit of skin into Chona’s mouth.

The trader didn’t resist. Novu pushed in more skin. Chona gagged, and jerked.

Novu kept one hand over his mouth, and crawled forward so that he knelt over the trader, pinning Chona’s chest with his weight, holding down his arms with his legs. Chona twisted now, and bit. But Novu pushed the whole of his hide shirt over the trader’s face, and folded his arms before him and leaned forward, pressing down with all his body’s weight. Chona couldn’t move his arms or his head, but his legs kicked and thrashed.

Novu, his eyes closed, started to count. ‘One. Two. Three…’ He got to twelve, then twenty, then fifty, and then worked his way up to the big traders’ numbers Chona had taught him.

Long before he reached a hundred, Chona was still. When Novu came out of his cave, the morning was dry and bright. Yesterday’s rain gleamed on the grass, and pooled in muddy footprints. Novu thought the air felt cleansed. He walked down to the river and took a long, luxurious piss.

When he walked back, Loga was sitting outside his house. Smoke from the night fire seeped out of the house’s thatch. Loga was eating something, the baked corpse of some small animal spitted on a stick.

Novu stood before him, and waited.

Loga glanced over at the cave. ‘Chona?’

‘Dead. The sick-the sickness.’ Novu stumbled over the traders’ tongue.

Loga nodded. ‘Jericho curses. Seen it before. Don’t go there myself.’

‘Wise.’ Novu glanced around. ‘This place. Many rivers run from here?’

‘Four.’ Loga used his teeth to pull the last of his breakfast off the stick, and then started using the stick to sketch maps. This was what traders did, draw maps. ‘Four rivers,’ he said. ‘East. Jericho.’ He pinned an anonymous bit of mud.

‘The way we came.’

‘Yes. South. Middle ocean. West. Great ocean. North. Much land, cold ocean. Four rivers, four ways.’ He eyed Novu. ‘Alone?’

‘Me? Yes.’

‘Jericho boy?’

‘Not any more.’

‘Slave?’

‘Not any more.’

‘You go home? Go east. Easy down the river.’

‘I don’t think so. You?’

‘North.’ He sketched again. ‘Big country.’ He jabbed the stick to the left: ‘Albia.’ Right: ‘Gaira.’ Centre: ‘Northland. Big country. Boat, easy on river.’

‘Your boat. Big boat.’

‘Yes.’

Novu considered. ‘I come?’

Loga frowned. ‘Why?’

He meant, what was in it for Loga. ‘Strong,’ said Novu. ‘Paddle. And, Chona’s goods.’

‘Mine now?’

‘Some.’

Loga considered. ‘Fetch goods. We talk.’