Stone spring

83

Shade and Zesi followed True onto the causeway to Flint Island. The Eel-folk slave, decked out like a Pretani in hide tunic and cloak, led the way cautiously along the narrow path across the sea. Behind Shade the Pretani warriors walked, two or three abreast, moving silently, visibly uneasy.

The causeway was an arc of stone that sliced the world in two ahead of Shade, excluding the blue sea to his left from the Bay Land that stretched away to his right, several paces beneath the crest of the wall along which they walked. Shade hadn’t been here in years. He was stunned by the changes that had been wrought. And he had never in his life seen anything like this wall that stood against the sea.

But today the Pretani had come to Northland. Already he could hear yells and screams drifting up from the Bay Land, see smoke drifting. Bark and his men, making their move. So they had got the timing right, with the two thrusts into the Etxelur heartland launched at the same moment. But he did not let himself be distracted by looking that way, for he had his own fight to win.

And there would be a fight, for their way was not clear, Shade saw, looking ahead. A gang of Etxelur folk had gathered at the far abutment of the causeway, where it met the island.

‘We’re going to have to fight our way across,’ Shade said to Zesi.

At his side, she too was dressed as a Pretani warrior, lacking only the kill scars. Now she scowled at him, the lines in her face deepened by the low light of the morning sun. ‘What did you expect? That Etxelur folk would just give up and let you walk in? You don’t know us very well if that’s your opinion, Pretani.’

He shook his head, irritated. ‘Now’s not the time for posturing, woman. You’re sure Ana is where she’s supposed to be?’

Irritated, Zesi snapped, ‘My sister has been sleeping on the midden shore for months. Who knows why? Maybe she wants to be close to her grave, where she’ll be lying soon enough. That’s where we’ll find her this morning, and that’s where we’ll kill her-’

There was a roar, coming from ahead of them. The band of Etxelur folk had broken into a run.

Shade had no doubt his Pretani warriors would be able to bring down these wall-builders and ditch-scrubbers in an open fight – but this wasn’t an open fight, and wasn’t the kind of encounter Bark had trained them for. Suspended between ocean on one hand and a steep drop on the other, with warriors closing on him, he suddenly felt extraordinarily vulnerable.

‘Those aren’t all Etxelur,’ Zesi said now, peering ahead at the approaching warriors. ‘I recognise those twisted skulls. Those are snailheads. So Etxelur is calling on its friends to fight for them.’

‘We Pretani don’t need friends,’ Shade said.

‘Just as well, as you don’t have any. And, look! The man on the right – the tattoo around his thigh.’

The man, short, squat, yelling and stabbing his spear into the air, was still a good way from Shade, but he could see the tattoo. It was an eel, wrapped around the man’s leg.

Furious, Shade stepped forward and punched True’s shoulder. ‘That man’s of the Eel folk! You promised the slaves would rise against Etxelur, not fight the Pretani!’

True turned and faced Shade. Then he broke into a savage grin. ‘I lied. For my children!’ And he roared, raised his own stabbing spear, and drove it down with two hands into Shade’s shoulder.

Shade staggered back, stunned, the spear sticking out of this shoulder, its heavy mass tearing at him, the pain coming in waves.

Zesi lunged forward and with all her strength drove her own spear up into the soft flesh beneath True’s chin, through the man’s skull and up into his brain. True’s body fell away, shuddering in death, and slid down the wall and into the ocean water.

Shade’s men supported him to keep him from falling. But the world seemed to freeze around him, the sea, the wall, all icy clear, as the pain washed out from the hot wound. Was this his last moment of life?

Without warning Zesi yanked the Eel man’s spear from his shoulder. He felt his flesh rip, and he had to work hard to keep from screaming at the blistering pain.

‘You’ll live,’ she growled. She ripped a handful of cloth from her own tunic, wadded it up and pressed it against the wound. ‘Hold this. You’ve still got one good hand.’

‘Just as well.’ For the charging Etxelur warriors were about to close. Shade pushed away his support, stood alone, and braced, spear in his good hand, hunching over his injured shoulder. To Zesi he muttered, ‘They were expecting us.’

‘Obviously. This is a trap.’ She hefted her weapons. ‘But whatever it takes, however many lives I have to waste, I’m coming for you, little sister-’

‘Be ready! Here they are!’

The first man to come at Shade was a heavy snailhead. Shade got his good shoulder down and used the man’s own charge to shove him off the wall and into the sea. The second man stabbed but missed, and Shade managed to grab the shaft of his spear and shove him back. But then came the third, and the fourth.

And then a woman, tall and dark, called to them. ‘Hello, Zesi. Remember me?’

‘Ice Dreamer? Aren’t you dead yet?’ Zesi screamed and lunged, but the woman, tall, muscular and dark, fended her off easily.

Shade, dizzy with pain and loss of blood, battling for his own life against snailheads and estuary folk and former slaves, could offer her no protection or help. Bark led the Pretani charge across the floor of the Bay Land, heading straight for the heap of flint at the foot of the eastern barrage. When they got the chance they smashed down houses and stands on which hides cured and fish dried, and kicked over hearths to start fires. In places the Etxelur folk and their allies stood and fought, and blood yells and screams echoed across the bowl of a landscape. But mostly the Etxelur folk jabbed, fell away and scattered, to regroup further back.

Hollow was hot and already out of breath. He was a trader, not a fighter. But he seemed determined to keep up with the rest. ‘Not far now. We’re cutting through this Etxelur rabble like a flint knife through a calf’s scrotum.’

Bark wished he had somebody more experienced with him; he wished he was at Shade’s side. ‘It’s too easy.’

‘What?’

‘It’s too easy! These Etxelur folk are barely putting up a fight at all.’

‘They’re cowards.’

‘No! Think, man. Where are the children? Where are the sick, the lame, the old? They’ve been moved out of our way, is where they are.’

Hollow shook his head, panting as they jogged across the heavy ground. ‘You’re too suspicious. Just because it’s easier than you thought doesn’t make it any the less glorious. We’re driving across this unnatural land just as tonight you’ll be driving your manhood between the thighs of some Etxelur virgin – you mark my words.’

It was all a trap, Bark thought. The more he considered it, the more certain he became. But there was no point talking to Hollow about it, for the man’s head was full of greed for the flint.

And besides, there was nothing he could do about it now. Many of his men had fallen already, and lay broken or dead across the ground behind the advance. Those who survived and could still fight had the sniff of victory, as did Hollow, and were chasing down the scattered bands of Etxelur fighters. Their blood was up. Trap or not, all they could do was fight, or die.

They were almost on the flint stockpile. The sea wall towered above them, its face of Pretani stone many times the height of a warrior. They had been drawn here right across the expanse of the Bay Land, Bark saw. If the flint was bait, it had worked well.

Hollow ran to the flint, picking up rattling armfuls of nodules. ‘Look at this stuff. Look at it! Enough to last a lifetime, a generation, more! Now the whole world will tremble before the singing blades of the Pretani.’

Some of the warriors joined him. They stood panting beside the flints, and fingered the nodules, or looked up at the great wall, or back the way they had come, uncertain. Some looked at Bark, hoping for guidance. What now? But he had no answers.

And there was a groan, like the branch of a giant tree straining in the wind. A scrape of stone on stone. The men looked bewildered, alarmed. Even Hollow fell silent.

The noise had come from overhead.

Bark looked up. He saw pale faces looking down at him, and glimpsed long, stripped branches being rammed into place and used as levers. And he saw the upper section of the wall tipping over, huge blocks of Pretani sandstone folding grandly. Water gushed into the air behind the blocks, breaking up into droplets, like rain.

Hollow screamed, high-pitched, like a trapped deer. The warriors, yelling, jostled to get away from the wall. Bark was knocked to the ground, face down. And he heard a yell, a single savage word in the Etxelur tongue. Raising his head he saw Etxelur folk on the plain, boiling up out of nowhere, advancing with their stabbing spears to trap the fleeing Pretani.

Above him the vast blocks fell slowly, as if they were thistle-down, not stone, and sea water splashed his face. In the end, the block that came for him filled the sky.