Stone spring

77

On the morning they were to enter Northland, before the rest of the camp stirred, Shade walked out of his house and into the gathering light.

He was in a broad clearing in the world-forest, here at its ragged edge. The black mounds of the Pretani tents and lean-tos, hastily erected after the march the day before, were angular shapes in the grey-blue light. The men’s footprints had churned the ground to mud, and trails led off to the spring to the west, and to the south where the Leafy Boys lay in their night traps by the big old oak.

He hadn’t slept well – he never slept well with Zesi in his house. Now in the uncertain light he felt disoriented, as if the boundary between the waking and sleeping worlds had become blurred. This was one reason he’d come out for an early walk; it was best to face the day with a clear head.

In the hearth at the centre of the clearing the big communal fire still smoked, though the huge fallen trunk they had hauled from the forest was disintegrating into crimson embers. Stepping towards the hearth, Shade passed a heap of spears, and a row of buckets of shit. The smell was rank, and flies buzzed in the dark. This was one of Zesi’s tricks. Dip the tip of your spear in shit, and the chances were that even a grazing wound would become infected; even if you failed to kill an opponent quickly, you could do it slowly. The hunters, always proud and protective of their weapons, grumbled about the mess and the stink, and some had proposed poisons made of various herbs, but they were hard to prepare and dangerous to apply. Shit was always available, easy to apply, and safe enough to handle as long as you washed it off.

And here was Bark, squatting on his haunches by the hearth, with his stabbing spear propped before him. He might have been resting like this half the night; Shade had never known a man so patient, with leg muscles so immune to cramp. Bark had smeared soot from the fire over his bare limbs and face, the better to blend into the night’s dark. When he grinned at Shade his teeth showed white, with gaps inflicted by years of fighting.

‘No trouble?’

‘None.’ Bark pointed towards the forest wall around them; Shade could see one of the hunters Bark had posted to keep a look-out. ‘I swap them around every so often.’ He yawned, stretching his jaw, and shook his head. ‘Keep them awake.’

‘You ought to get more sleep yourself. Night after night you’re out here.’

‘Do you trust anybody else? I don’t. Besides, plenty of time to kip when we’re in Etxelur, and I’m lying back on a bed of those lovely flint nodules, with Ana’s lips around my cock.’

Shade didn’t react. Nobody here but Zesi knew about the tentative relationship he’d once had with Ana – certainly no Pretani left alive. He pointed east. ‘I’m going to take a look from the ridge. See how the lowland lies in the dark.’

Bark was predictably reluctant. ‘You want me to send somebody with you?’

Shade patted the flint axe he carried at his waist. ‘I’m never alone. Anyhow you’ll be busy soon enough, kicking the sluggards out of their beds.’

Bark nodded warily.

Shade set off east, out of the clearing. The forest swallowed him up, but his eyes, open to the blackness, picked out a trail from chinks of light and the stirring of dead leaves. He remembered the trail from the daylight, leading towards the ridge that rose up out of the forest cover.

It was an easy walk, for him. He had grown up in the forest. It had been strange for him to learn that others feared its enclosure, like the sea-coast folk of Etxelur, or marshland dwellers like the Eel People.

He soon found the trail rising, the forest growing less dense. Then he broke out into open ground, a rising bluff on which heather grew, thick and purple and waist-high at this time of year, a month after midsummer. He was facing east towards the dawn, and a crimson glow striped the horizon.

And, on the crest of the bluff, he saw a figure standing alone – stooped, shivering from more than the faint chill of the late summer morning. Shade stopped, silent, cautious, until he recognised the man. ‘Resin? It’s me.’

The priest whirled, startled. But then he had always been jumpy, even before he had cut back on the poppy juice. ‘Shade? That is you, isn’t it? My eyes aren’t so good in the dark.’

‘Then what are you doing out here?’

The priest clutched his hide robe closer. Adorned with cryptic symbols and networks of lines like tree branches, the robe was old, shabby, worn, and it stank of piss. He had a mane of ragged grey hair, a face that was lined and sunken, a mouth that was often slick with drool. Resin was younger than Shade, but he looked much older, the poppies had seen to that. ‘Oh, I can never sleep. Not in a house full of your hunters, Shade, with their farting and belching, and the women they take from the Eel folk – and, worse, a Leafy girl, it takes two or three of them to subdue one of those, it’s like having a mad aurochs calf in the house with you.’

Shade laughed out loud. ‘You’ve become funny since I made you give up the poppy.’

‘Funny? I’m glad something good has come of it.’ He held out his hand, which trembled violently. ‘Look at me. I can’t sleep, can’t eat. Can’t get it up, as your hunters never cease to point out to me.’

‘You were useless under the juice,’ Shade said sternly. ‘I feel like I’m getting a priest back.’

‘Maybe you’re right. Anyhow if you hadn’t stopped me the poppies would have killed me soon enough. But you didn’t come out here to talk about me, did you?’

‘Walk with me.’ Together they stepped forward, towards the crest of the ridge.

And from here, they looked down over Northland.

There was no obvious boundary between Albia and Northland, nothing like a river to mark off one territory from another. But standing here you could see how the nature of the country changed. Looking east from this high point the land sloped down, with forest clumps and copses dark in the grey dawn light. Beyond that the land stretched away as far as Shade could see, low and glimmering with water and folded gently into rolling hills, a plain that merged into the mist of the horizon. A flock of birds rose up in a cloud from some distant lake, their cries just audible. You could see how rich the country was just standing here, with all that standing water and the easy hills.

And all across the plain he could see the spark of fires, twinkling like orange-red stars, the people of Northland dreaming in the dark.

‘It’s so vast.’ Resin pointed at random to a fire. ‘So many of them.’

‘Yes. And most probably have never even heard of Etxelur, or Pretani. And yet here we are preparing to make war.’

‘Yes. And a war like no other waged before.’

‘Why do we hate Northland so much, do you think?’

The priest looked at him, startled. ‘That’s an odd question.’

Shade was the Root, after all, and he saw that Resin wasn’t sure how to answer his question safely. ‘I know I have my own history with Etxelur. My brother, my father, both dead at my own hands.’ He touched the scars on his forehead, his body’s memory of those terrible times. ‘That wouldn’t have happened if not for Northlanders. And Zesi has her own grudges. Maybe we wouldn’t be mounting this war if not for her. But it was easy enough to stir everybody up for the campaign, even though it’s turned out to be so complicated, with the trading, the stone and the slaves, all Hollow’s schemes. We were ready for the war, even if we didn’t know it.’

Resin nodded. ‘I remember your father. He loathed Etxelur, and all Northlanders. Fat lazy rooting pigs, he called them. He always tried to stir up trouble with them.’

‘Why?’

‘He hated their country, for it is so easy.’

‘Easy?’

‘You know the stories of our gods as well as I do.’ Resin rapped his head with his knuckles. ‘Better, probably. How our earliest ancestors were hunters carved by the Old Gods from twigs of the World Tree. They stalked giant animals over the open plains. But then the Old Gods lost a war with the forest gods, the walking trees. The forest took over the land, and the giant animals all died, because they couldn’t live in the forest. New animals were born from the leaf mulch that covered everything, the pigs and the roe deer and the aurochs, but they were small and clever creatures that were much harder to hunt. Our grand-fathers survived, but had to work hard for it. Thus the Old Gods abandoned us. Maybe your father, contemplating such stories and looking down on a prospect like this, envied those who lived so easily there. Because it’s like how things were for us in the olden days.’

Shade rubbed his chin. ‘But I grew up here too. Why don’t I think that way?’

Resin sighed. ‘Because your father had a decent priest at his side. A man who would sit with him in the evenings, and chew over the old stories. Whereas you have had me, a poppy-ridden half-ghost, weak and useless and addled.’

Shade patted him on the back. ‘I’m glad to be getting you back. I have a feeling I will need your wisdom in the coming months – win or lose.’

Resin looked faintly shocked. ‘You’re not thinking about defeat?’

‘In this mortal world, nothing is impossible. But even if we win Etxelur, what then? We’ve come so far, fighting and conquering, all the way to the edge of Northland. If I take Etxelur, who shall I fight then – the sea, the clouds?’

‘Hmm. You’d better think of something. Your hunters are used to fighting now, the rush of blood, the rewards. They need it the way I needed the poppy – and I know how bad a need like that can be.’

‘And must it go on for ever?’

The priest turned to the dawn light. ‘I don’t know. We’ve changed so much, just in the months since Zesi came to us and started showing us this way of war. We were always a combative lot, brawling with each other as soon as we broke out of our mothers’ wombs. But now it’s different. You and Bark and Zesi have assembled the largest and most organised group of fighters in the history of the world – or if there’s ever been a mightier band I’ve never heard of it. On this quest for Etxelur our bodies are undertaking a great journey. And so, I believe, are our spirits.’

‘For better or worse,’ Shade said grimly.

‘Indeed. For better or worse-’

‘Shade!’ It was Bark’s voice; they both turned. Bark was walking up the slope towards them. Over his shoulder he had a sack of netting that contained something that squirmed and wriggled.

Behind him two children followed, half-running to keep up with Bark’s powerful, impatient strides. They were Acorn, Shade saw with dismay, and Knot, Alder’s son, the boy his daughter had been spending so much time with.

Resin glanced at Shade and rolled his eyes.

Bark stood before them, panting. ‘I thought I’d better come to you with this.’ He dumped the net sack on the floor. Inside was a Leafy Boy, a young one, small and scrawny, underfed – no use to the hunters, and probably close to death, Shade thought dispassionately. The child struggled, feebly, tangled up in the net, and he reached out skinny arms towards Acorn.

‘There’s your problem,’ Bark said. ‘We found it when we kicked the Leafies awake this morning. Acorn wasn’t far away. As soon as this one got the chance it ran across and attacked her.’

‘He didn’t attack me, stupid,’ Acorn snapped. ‘Little Shade was just frightened.’

The priest was grinning. ‘ “Little Shade”? Well, I can see the resemblance, though the boy has better manners-’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Shade said tiredly.

‘Your daughter’s been feeding it,’ Bark growled. ‘Trained it to get used to her.’

Acorn said, ‘What does it matter? Look how skinny he is! He’s hardly big enough to fight, is he?’

‘Why it matters,’ Bark said heavily, ‘is because it stirred up the other Leafies. Confused them, you might say. They went crazy, and had to be beaten.’ He glared at Acorn. ‘We were going to have a mock battle today. I’m sorry to say it, but you’ve wrecked the whole day.’

Acorn stared back at him, and then looked to her father for support. When none was forthcoming she burst into tears. Knot went over to her protectively, but he didn’t quite have the nerve to put his arms around her, Shade saw, amused.

The storm of tears blew itself out. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was doing wrong. But it was wrong, wasn’t it?’

Shade nodded approvingly. That was the kind of response he’d always encouraged in her. ‘I think it’s obvious what you have to do. This little one can’t go back to the other Leafies. Can it, Bark?’

The burly man shook his head. ‘She’s spoiled it, and it spoils the others. Sorry, child.’

Acorn’s eyes were round. ‘Father, why’s he sorry?’

‘Because you’re going to have to get rid of it.’

Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘No! I can’t… How can I kill him?’

‘You have your knife.’ A flint blade with a handle wrapped in thread and resin to protect her small fingers, but as sharp as any Shade owned himself. ‘Don’t let it out of the net. Just take it off somewhere. You’ve killed before.’ Hare, a small calf; any Pretani child had to become used to killing. ‘Do it quickly and it won’t suffer.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You must,’ Knot said. He looked up bravely at Shade. ‘I’ll help her carry it away. Am I allowed to do that? She’ll have to kill it herself, of course.’

He was so young himself, but he seemed to care for Acorn. His presence would be a comfort for the girl. ‘Get it done. Then come straight back to the clearing. All right?’

‘Yes,’ both Acorn and Knot mumbled.

‘Come on,’ Shade said to Resin and Bark. ‘What a start to the day.’ He strode off, leading the others back towards the camp. He deliberately didn’t look back at his daughter.