Travellers #2 Read online

  “Let it cool.”

  Taur nodded. I turned back. Eyes wide open, jaw slack, the slave lay. The rustle had been the sound of his dying.

  As the moon came up, we scraped a hole in the beach. The slave had been left behind to die by the Salt Men just as, years ago, I had been left behind by Karly Campy. I tore a wisp from my cloak and buried it and a mussel shell of the cooked food beside the man, for his lonely journey.

  Several nights later, we squirmed through thick fern and counted five Salt Men lying around a fire. Nine slaves with them. We watched long enough to be sure they had no sentries. Fourteen altogether. No sign of Squint-face. He must be with another party – ahead or behind, we did not know.

  Several days we shadowed this group. At the beginning of a long beach or clear stretch of country, they crept to a vantage point and scanned every step of the way ahead, shading their eyes. We watched and smiled at each other, Taur and I.

  The lighter-skinned slaves trudged with large flax baskets on their backs. Their owners strolled, carrying only weapons. At one camp we watched the slaves fell a large-fronded tree. Where the fronds sprang from the trunk, they chopped open the swollen bulb, unpeeled it to its creamy core. The Salt Men gorged themselves on this but, although they had too much, gave none to their slaves.

  When they moved on we tried a piece. Like crunching cream, rich in my mouth. I remembered Taur describing the palm tree, how a rash slave had boasted about eating it and died for his rashness. Looking at Taur, his mouth full, eyes closed, I remembered how back in his valley he had broken down, after describing how Squint-face killed the slave. What they did next to his corpse, Taur could not bring himself to tell me. I wondered again what could be more terrible than murder.

  Surely we must be near the source of the green stone. I put my hand to the neck of my tunic. Taur saw what I was touching and looked away.

  “Why,” I asked him, “why do they value it so much? Why is Squint-face ready to lose so many men for it? It’s only stone.”

  “One fine piece of carved green stone will buy many slaves,” Taur nodded. “Gorurgh!” He gulped and tried again. “Gorugh!” It was what he had said before. “It is their god. Throw it away, Ish. It will only bring us trouble.”

  But it was my only link with Tara. Besides, it brought us luck, I told myself. It was no use saying that to Taur.

  That night, having caught up on the party ahead, I hid the green stone dolphin in my pack, told Jak and Jess to guard it and wormed my way down to the Salt Men’s camp with Taur.

  “Urgsh…” Taur muttered, swung his head and stared away. He would have been happier to avoid the Salt Men altogether. He would rather not know anything about the green stone. As we crawled together towards the firelight, I knew he was uneasy, but he would not leave me to risk it alone.

  The Salt Men sprawled comfortable around a fire, laughing, telling stories, joking at each other’s expense. It looked good fun, and I thought of Taur’s words about a family.

  In the shadows behind the Salt Men, out of the warmth of the fire, the slaves had chopped down a palm tree and were preparing its flesh. Some were cooking fish for the Salt Men, dragging in firewood, heaping fern for their beds. I would like to belong to a group but didn’t want to be a slave.

  They were nine, the Salt Men only five. Why didn’t the slaves overthrow them? I thought of the way Taur had stayed in the valley of the cows. Perhaps just being a slave made it impossible to rise against their owners. Perhaps that inability to act was what it meant to be a slave.

  Taur tapped my ankle in warning, but I kicked at his hand, crawled closer through ferns. The slaves had a mean, rank smell, probably the food they ate. I knew birds and animals tasted according to what they were eating.

  By the way the biggest Salt Man ordered the others around, he was their leader. I wriggled through the leaves of a fallen branch. Taur disapproved, but I must see and hear. The big man was telling a story. A slave knelt, rubbing his legs. I was close enough to see how the slave separated the muscles, lifting each away from the others, working it, and letting it fall back into place. He took oil from a pot and rubbed it on the skin so it gleamed brown in the firelight. The big man groaned with pleasure, turned over for the slave to work on his back, then kicked him aside.

  Impassive, the slave corked the pot of oil, returned to his fellows. Again, I wondered at the way the slaves suffered their owners’ cruelties, as if indifferent to pain. And what makes a man so cruel, I asked myself, he can see another’s pain, not feel it himself?

  The Salt Men arranged themselves on their comfortable beds of fern. Several, owners and slaves alike, had wandered off into the dark. His back to the firelight, one pissed not far from where I lay and returned to the others without seeing me.

  A twig cracked. A fern rustled behind me. Taur must be crawling up. Something fell upon my back and knocked out my breath.

  Chapter 16

  The Green Stone Valley

  Thrown at the feet of the big Salt Man, breath knocked out again, I saw who had caught me. A slave had gone further out of the firelight to piss and, picking his way back, saw me spying. Knees first he jumped on my back, winding me. Later, when I could think of it, I realised again how limited is a slave’s mind. I might have helped him escape, but all the wretch could think of was to please his cruel masters.

  Gasping, dazzled by painful tears, I looked up at a circle of faces. The big man kicked me. “This is the one Squint-face really wanted. No sign of the dolphin on him, though.” He called another slave who ran and stood beside the one who had caught me. “Tie him tight,” the big man said. “Let him escape, you’ll both die.”

  I cursed my curiosity, cursed leaving behind the green stone dolphin – my good luck with it. The slaves tied my arms behind my back, a rope from ankles to wrists as well. Every part of my face itched. Hands and feet ached – the tight ropes. Each time I moved, the slaves examined their knots again. The one who had captured me was called Cark, the other Otnip. When I tried to speak to them, using their names, they cuffed me brutally.

  I slept at last and dreamed of Tara. “Bury the green stone dolphin under the red tree,” she said again. But it was in my pack with the dogs. Taur would have it now. What was he doing? I tried to stretch my cramped legs. Feeling me move, the slaves woke, too, checked the ropes, shoved me on to my face, kicked me when they had done.

  In the morning they jerked me to my feet. Salt Men stood by with spears, but I collapsed. The Big Man himself loosened the ropes, looked at my wrists and ankles. “Do you want to kill him before Squint-face has a chance to get his hands on him?”

  He ordered the slaves to rub my arms and legs, made them walk me around until the pain went out of my feet and hands. I was lashed between Cark and Otnip and led south. I could do nothing but follow. When I asked Cark to go slower he clouted my face. The Big Man saw and knocked him down.

  “If anyone’s going to torture him, Squint-face is the one to do it.” The big man laughed, and everyone laughed dutifully with him, Cark loudest of all.

  Two more days and nights of torture, stumbling, keeping up in the column of slaves, arms tied, only my legs freed to walk. Unable to balance, I kept falling until my face was bruised and raw. The slaves’ food was rough but sufficient. Warned against hitting me, Cark and Otnip turned away indifferent when I tried to speak. Had they hated me, it would have been easier. I wanted to shout at them that I was a captive like them, that we were brothers in suffering.

  I woke one night to feel tugging at the rope. Otnip did not wake. Cark stirred, said something in a thick voice, and slept again. More tugs, and a coarse rasping so loud it must wake the guards.

  The rope fell away. My hands were free! I stretched my fingers, waggled my wrists, feeling the blood course. One of the Salt Men had taken off his knife belt to sleep easier. I reached over Cark’s body, eased the knife out of its sheath, and cut through the rope around my ankles. Again, the coarse rasp.

  So slowly I seemed not
to be moving, I slithered away, knife naked in my hand. Neither of my guards woke – as well for them. Then I was sliding, crawling, scuttling on all fours, slipping half-upright between the ferns and into the trees, standing, and – at last – running after Taur who had crawled silently between the sleepers to free me. I hugged him as we stumbled through the dark, giggling now we were far enough away to feel safe.

  Jak and Jess waited with our packs. Unable to stop myself laughing now, I hugged all three. My laughter turned to shudders, and I sat to calm myself, hung the green stone dolphin around my neck, felt it warm at once against my skin. Taur was busy, bent over his pack, but I knew he did not want to see the carving.

  That same night we followed up a spur on to high ground, retreated towards the row of snow-headed giants at the head of a valley. The cold struck up from the ground as we climbed. We dared not cross into the icy land beyond, but we could traverse the ridges and rivers down their enormous sides, travelling parallel to the coast track. It would be such difficult going, the Salt Men would not suspect us of going that way.

  In the first light next morning Taur pointed. Down towards the coast three smoke signals ascended vertical, trembled on the air, and rising wind scattered them.

  It took much longer, travelling against the grain of the country. In one river we found a leaning rock, swept out the dirt, dried deer pellets and a few animal bones. By the ancient scorch marks up the stone walls, others had lit fires there, too.

  “Urgsh,” said Taur, and I saw ancient grooves cut into the rock, a pattern of straight and round marks, rows of them, done deliberately, as if they meant something. I thought of the Painted Cave at the Hawk Cliffs, of the pictures which told the story of the Travellers, and drew our escape from the Salt Men. As always, Taur watched fascinated and drew some pictures himself, but his were clumsy things without meaning. His inability to draw was curious when I compared it to the beauty of anything else he made with his hands, his arrowheads, the materials he wove on a loom.

  We ate trout and deer meat. Occasionally we found rolled fern heads I knew were tasty. A couple of times there was watercress. We ate it greedily, and pissed green the rest of the day, laughing, pointing at each other, holding our noses. Jak and Jess watched and thought we were silly.

  One evening we came down a long scree into yet another river, fast, cold, clear, where something flashed. “Hurrgh, Urgsh!” said Taur. He hoped it was a great fish we had seen before, bigger and stronger than trout. He had managed to spear only one, and we had to leap into the water and struggle it ashore. A muscular fighter, its pink flesh delicious, especially smoked. Taur rolled his eyes, took his spear and crept towards the river.

  But I could see the flashes came from white rocks under the water, crystalline stone that gleamed and looked just like a fish turning. There! The flash again. As Taur knelt to crawl around a boulder I grinned. And just then Jess nudged me with her head. I almost lost my balance, went to growl at her, but Jak murmured deep in his throat. I froze.

  Both dogs stared at the curve of the boulder Taur was about to round. There was a clink. I ran and leapt up the back of the boulder, its stone warm against my feet. Below me, just out of sight of Taur, a Salt Man, a rock in his hand, raising it again to hit a round dark rock.

  “Found a good lump here,” he grunted, as my spear crunched through the back of his neck. I spun, looking for the man he had spoken to. By the tracks in the sand, someone else had turned and climbed left. I swung to Jak and Jess, to check what they were smelling and hearing, and something flickered across the air. Light glinted off an arrow’s spinning point as I flung myself sideways, heard it ring and glance off the stone.

  Taur ran pointing up the hillside. Jak and Jess leapt past and tore out the other Salt Man’s throat. Taur dragged him down. The rock between the first man’s knees was now drenched with his blood. I washed it off, knowing already what the dead man had found. The boulder was heavy, dark, rubbed dull by the river, but there was enough of the colour to be sure.

  I had wanted to discover the source of the green stone, and here it was. Suddenly, it seemed meaningless. I wanted nothing more of it, the cruelty and bloodshed.

  Tara had died because of the green stone dolphin. Het and the other dogs, the animals and how many Salt Men? And now, because we had found the source of the green stone, two more were dead. I could not throw away the dolphin, but we would hide the great rock of green stone from Squint-face.

  Taur plaited a flax net about it. We lashed both bodies to the net, and shoved the rock into the deep pool. It sank, dragging the bodies out of sight. We washed away all sign of blood and kicked sand over our tracks, especially the dogs’.

  “They must have a camp somewhere,” I whispered to Taur. Upstream of the pool where the dead men lay, we stepped down across rocks, avoiding the sand between them, carrying Jak and Jess so they left no tracks. I hitched up my pack, linked arms with Taur for the crossing, glanced down and saw a footprint in the wet sand beside the water. Unthinking, I went to kick water over it, to wash it away, then stopped. It was small, perfect, so fresh the edges were crisp, as if cut with a knife. Whoever had made the footprint had crossed just ahead of us.

  “It’s the same footprint,” I said to Taur. “The one we saw in the river coming up from the coast, after we abandoned the raft. Look how small and slim it is.”

  “Gaw!” Taur kicked water over the footprint. Took my arm, pulled so I had to link mine through his. We waded out through the fast water.

  “But you saw it!”

  “Gaw!” said Taur, half-dragging me through the river.

  We climbed out the other side and took a spur to a terrace finishing in bluffs above. Darkness came on as we searched for a way up. The terrace continued downstream a long way, cliffs dropping below as well as rising above. I whispered we had to follow it now, and Taur nodded. With his hands he shaped trees and shrubs, patches of flax. He meant we would find a place where we could pull ourselves up the bluffs. The dogs would find a way for themselves. As we worked along the terrace to what looked a promising spur, light sprang directly below us.

  We slithered along a stone gutter. At the cliff edge I lifted my head, looked straight down into a camp between the base of the cliff and the river. Thatched with fronds from the palms we had seen on the coast, several huts surrounded a fire whose heat and smoke lifted past our faces. Salt Men were arriving back at the huts. Some sat on logs in the warmth. To one side, slaves were lighting and building up a second fire. I could not see Squint-face and crawled back from the edge before anyone looking up saw my face lit by the glow.

  The way we had come was now lit by the firelight. We must lie quiet until the Salt Men slept, but they seemed to be waiting for something. I heard the Big Man’s voice and took a hasty glance. Into the second fire, slaves were now rolling a number of smooth stones.

  The two fires lit even more of the terrace. We edged our packs and gear into ferns at the foot of the spur and found a safer place to spy from.

  Commotion. Two slaves, screaming, being dragged to the edge of the river. Cark and Otnip, my guards. Grovelling, crawling, begging. As Squint-face shambled out of the dark, they abased themselves at his feet. Squint-face took a curved club from his waist, raised it above Cark’s head, shouted – it sounded like, “Galug!” – and smashed the side of his skull, twisting the blade of the club so it wrenched the roof off his brain. I lay paralysed, unable to turn away. “Galug!” he shouted and slew Otnip.

  When I dared look down again, two slaves were bleeding and gutting the men’s corpses as if they were animals, taking off the arms and legs, butchering what had been living humans.

  Other slaves prodded white-hot rocks from the second fire into a hole. They threw joints and pieces of flesh on to the hot stones so smoke and the smell of roasting meat rose to our nostrils. To my horror, my mouth watered: the human flesh smelled like any other meat that cooks. I retched and remembered the reek of Tayamoot and the Metal People’s village.
r />   The slaves threw leaves and ferns to cover the meat, sprinkled water, and spread soil over them. The Salt Men settled around the fire, telling stories. Laughter rose. There was something terrible about the way the scene appeared so ordinary: people relaxing after a day’s work. Two of the Salt Men wrestled. One tripped the other with a clever side-step; the others applauded and jeered. Taur and I often played the same tricks on each other. Jak trembled against me. He would like to jump down and join in the fun. I laid my hand on his back. For a moment, the sight of the men wrestling, the others watching, was so ordinary, but a slave went over to where steam rose from the mound and flung soil on to keep in the heat.

  This was what Taur had been unable to describe to me, I realised: the cooking and eating of the slave Squint-face had killed years before. The one who had boasted of eating the white core of the palm, and was betrayed by a fellow slave. I could not watch the cannibal feast, but lay clutching the carved dolphin. Why I had ever wanted to know the source of a bit of coloured stone?

  A couple of Salt Men went to the edge of the light below and shouted up the valley. Calling the two we had killed earlier. The rest of the men below looked into the dark, expecting to hear their companions shouting back. We slithered to the rear of the terrace, felt for our packs and gear in the dark. There was light only from the one fire.

  We crawled, found a spur, climbed silently. When the moon came up we were still climbing, able to move faster now. We kept going next morning until the sun became too dangerous. That afternoon, as soon as it dropped and lost its power, we continued.

  Squint-face would scour the valley for the missing Salt Men. We had been careful, but might have left tracks somewhere. And now we knew the source of the green stone, he would hate us all the more. We came down shattered scree, bruising, tearing our feet, and camped, still afraid to make a fire. I was beginning to fear Squint-face as if he had powers greater than human.