The Inferior (8 page)

Her hands, like all women’s hands, were heavily callused from pounding moss for cloth; she reached out with them and pulled him into the House of Honour before he could protest.

‘Look what I found outside!’

Three other women smiled up at him, all in various stages of pregnancy. They sat where they could amidst piles and piles of Tallies, each stick representing a life spent in honour, a soul that might someday return. The house had four other rooms just like this. It also had a place for broken Tallies, but nobody liked to think about that.

In one corner, Mossheart wept, ignored by all the others. Lots of people were weeping these days, Stopmouth supposed. She didn’t look up at him and he didn’t know what to say to her even if he could have won control of his tongue.

‘He was waiting outside,’ said Watersip. ‘Thought I was going to take a bite out of him.’

‘You should,’ said Frownbrow’s wife, Treesinger. ‘With those blue eyes he looks almost as tasty as his brother.’

Stopmouth blushed amidst the women’s laughter, his tongue a stone. He wished he’d never come, or at least that he hadn’t hesitated at the door. But the truth was, hunters feared the House of Honour. Bad luck followed any man foolish enough to touch a Tally stick, and tales were told of Dryspear, who’d ruined his life by coming here and falling in amongst the stacks of sacred wood.

‘Forgive us, Stopmouth,’ said Treesinger. She was old to be having a child, her face lined by thousands of days of mischief and good cheer. She was carving new Tallies from a pile of branches that the other women were stripping for her. ‘We shouldn’t make fun of you—’

‘You mean,
you
shouldn’t!’ said Watersip. ‘A woman in your condition…’

Treesinger smiled, deepening the crinkles at her eyes. ‘Yes, I’m a bad girl, it’s true.’ She put down the Tally she’d been carving and reached up to take Stopmouth’s hand. ‘You did the right thing coming here. I thought, after the bad times we’ve had, there’d be a lot more visitors.’ She shrugged. ‘Wait here. I know exactly where she is.’

Treesinger stood carefully, one hand on her swollen belly. The top of her head reached no higher than his chest. She ran her hands over one pile of Tallies near the door.

Stopmouth shivered. Somewhere in that stack, preserved from rot by berry juice, might lie the Tallies of the Traveller, or Treatymaker or other great Heroes of the Tribe. No man could tell one stick from another. But a woman might. It was said they could even use them to tell which marriages would produce bad children.

‘There,’ said Treesinger, plucking one from the pile.

She held it up before his eyes, careful not to touch him with it. His mother’s Tally, a stick no longer than his forearm, marked all the way up with tiny slashes in complicated designs.

‘Do you see this little cross, Stopmouth? No, that one’s Wallbreaker; the second one, see it? That’s you.’

‘My b-birth?’ He felt tears coming to his eyes. How he’d missed her.

‘Of course not! Birth days are never marked. This was when you were accepted into the Tribe. Your naming day. I remember it well, because there were many who didn’t want you named.’ He’d have been volunteered quickly if that had been the case, but Mother had protected him, it seemed, and not for the last time.

‘She was so happy you’d been saved,’ said Treesinger. ‘She smiled for tens of days afterwards.’

‘Well,’ said Watersip. ‘Good thing they kept him. My Rockface says the lad’s a fine hunter even if he is a bit simple.’

‘He’s not simple,’ Mossheart said suddenly, her beautiful eyes rubbed raw with crying. ‘It’s just his tongue.’

Watersip opened her mouth, but Treesinger silenced her with a look that said:
Don’t upset the girl–you know how she gets
.

But Mossheart was already upset. She got up quickly and pushed her way out of the house, almost knocking Stopmouth into the Tallies behind.

Treesinger shook her head. ‘That brother of yours…Why can’t he be as charming at night as he is during the day?’

The other women laughed again, but this time Treesinger looked serious, holding the young hunter’s gaze and resting her free hand against his shoulder. Stopmouth had never felt more uncomfortable in his life.

‘Stopmouth, am I the only one who thinks she should have picked you instead?’

He pulled away from her, stumbling outside into the glare.

By now Wallbreaker had organized many successful ambushes and was respected enough that when he asked people to travel from building to building shoring up the barricades broken by the invaders, they readily agreed and even seemed grateful for his orders. He often met with sympathetic hunters. Some of them had served on the Flesh Council and took him seriously despite his age. He was busy, always busy, but he still had time for Stopmouth and Indrani, although she never seemed to welcome his visits.

‘We’ll have to kill the Armourbacks,’ he said to Stopmouth one day.

‘Of c-course!’

‘You don’t understand, brother,’ said Wallbreaker. He’d been supervising the building of new defences. Dust picked out the muscles of his body, hiding the tattoo of Bloodskins falling into a pit of spikes. His voice cracked for want of water, but he was too intent on what he was saying to drink from the skull at his hand or to even pour it over the blond hair plastered to his scalp. ‘We’ll have to kill them, even if we don’t get to eat them.’

The concept was a strange one, but once Stopmouth had swallowed it, it seemed to make perfect sense. The Armourbacks had learned to co-operate with other species. Even now that the humans had a few Hairbeasts living among them, co-operation between the two was non-existent.

Stopmouth had tried, of course. He was teaching Indrani adult talk and she now understood much of what he said. But when he tried to teach the Hairbeast refugees, they ignored him. He never stuttered in front of them, but it didn’t matter; it was as if they couldn’t hear half the words he spoke. Once, when he grew too persistent, a large male butted him with its chest, knocking him flat. Only the mythical Treatymaker had ever managed any kind of communication with the Hairbeasts. It was said that even he’d understood them very poorly indeed, unable to copy some of the sounds they were making. They’d captured him as a child and, for motives known only to themselves, had failed to eat him. In the end they’d sent him home, half mad, dressed in sweltering furs and almost incapable of speech with his own kind. Almost.

‘The Hoppers will also have to die,’ said Wallbreaker. ‘And the Flyers too.’

The brothers sat in the doorway of their mother’s house. Inside, Indrani was performing kicks and punches at a hide bag she’d strung up to the roof. Strange behaviour.

Stopmouth didn’t want to tell Wallbreaker that Indrani made him do the kicks too. ‘For to get unsick,’ she said, ‘and to be…to be…’ She flexed her arms.

‘Strong?’

‘Yes. Strong.’

So Stopmouth kicked and punched, just not where anybody could see him. Especially not his brother.

‘Y-y-you were s-s-saying?’

‘What?’

Wallbreaker had lost track again. He kept looking over Stopmouth’s shoulder at his new wife, seemingly fascinated by her strange exercises. Stopmouth wanted more than anything to leave the two alone together, except he knew Indrani would make him pay for it later if he did. And he didn’t see what good it would do anyway. She spoke enough Human to understand Wallbreaker’s demands and still she refused to share his blankets or even talk to him about her origins. Sometimes Stopmouth wanted to shake his brother. ‘You have Mossheart waiting for you every night! How could you possibly want another woman?’

But he knew that Wallbreaker had great ambitions, and keeping two wives at such a young age could bring him the respect he needed to realize them. Having one of those women refuse him, however, would have the opposite effect entirely.

Stopmouth tried to bring Wallbreaker back to the conversation they’d been having. ‘Too many Ar-Armourbacks,’ he said, ‘with Flyers and H-Hoppers. How c-can we b-beat them?’

Wallbreaker turned his eyes back to his brother and sighed. ‘We have to learn from them,’ he said. ‘That’s the most important thing. See how well they worked together? Armourbacks, Hoppers and Flyers combining their different strengths? It’s as if they were one body. When humans go on a hunt, we don’t work together half so well, and we are only one species. I tell you, brother, if we don’t learn from the Armourbacks, we deserve to feed their young.’ He shuddered. ‘I need to become chief. I don’t think anybody else can learn from our enemies the way I can.’

Stopmouth agreed, except he wondered how a man too terrified to approach an Armourback could possibly defeat them.

‘Tomorrow at the meeting I will put myself forward as a candidate.’

‘But, Wallbreaker…If s-somebody else w-wins, he could make you v-v-volunteer next trade!’

‘I will win,’ Wallbreaker told him. ‘And when I do, I won’t waste any hunter strong enough to challenge me!’

And if you don’t win, Stopmouth thought, you’ll be too clever to keep around.

Fifteen days after the death of Speareye, the weakest men, and even a few women, were sent to guard the watch towers. Every male old enough to hunt crowded into Centre Square and trampled the smoke fires to make more room for themselves. The only woman present was Speareye’s wife Housear, who, being pregnant and unaffiliated with any of the potential candidates, had convened the meeting. Other women crammed onto nearby roofs and into surrounding windows to try and watch the Choosing.

Two hunters hoisted Housear onto their shoulders and her little boy, Bonehammer, blew on a Clawfolk trumpet to silence the crowd. The strain of recent events showed on her face, especially around the eyes. It would be hard for her to feed her children now, and the younger ones might even be refused names and volunteered if things became desperate. Nevertheless, she kept her voice steady and brave.

‘Speareye,’ said Housear, ‘is waiting for us with all our ancestors and he hunts the ancestors of our enemies.’

The crowd murmured its agreement. Not even death would keep great Speareye from the hunt.

‘We must now find a man to lead us out of trouble and bring us Home; a man the Heroes will possess in times of need, as they often possessed my husband. Let those who would take the place of the chief step forward.’

Wallbreaker pushed through the crowd to the front. One of Speareye’s deputies followed him, a man named Lingerhouse who’d lost most of his family in the Armourback raid.

Then the crowd parted of its own accord and Crunchfist passed through. Everyone applauded him, even Wallbreaker. Crunchfist seemed to have no skin; only tattoos. Muscles that would have put Rockface to shame bulged and rippled all over his body. Whispering began. Here and there, men told tales of Crunchfist’s exploits. How he had made his first kill while still a child; how he had broken a Hopper’s back across his knee; how he had been separated from his hunting pack once only to return after eight days dragging a Bloodskin with one hand and a Flim with the other. People said he was the only hunter who still dared enter Hairbeast territory. Stopmouth remembered him on the night of the disaster, breaking through the enemy almost single-handed, his body possessed by a mighty Hero, maybe even the Traveller himself! Stopmouth was filled with excitement at the thought of Crunchfist as chief. He had a brutal nature, but that’s what the Tribe needed now, and with Wallbreaker whispering in his ear, surely the glory days of humanity could not be long in returning.

After a suitable pause, during which no other candidates presented themselves, Housear asked each of the three men if he truly wished to lead the Tribe.

‘I wish to withdraw from the contest,’ said Lingerhouse. ‘I am sure that Crunchfist will feed the Tribe better than I could. I support his candidacy and will be a part of his pack if he will have me.’

The crowd applauded. Wallbreaker joined in, much to Stopmouth’s relief. Surely he would be next to withdraw.

Crunchfist curled his lip. ‘No, old man, I will not have you in my pack. Go back to your place quickly or I will remember you next time we need volunteers.’

Lingerhouse opened his mouth, but thought better of it and pushed himself angrily back into the bewildered crowd.

‘And what of you, Wallbreaker?’ said Housear. ‘Do you also wish to withdraw?’

‘Withdraw!’ shouted someone from the back.

‘Why should I?’ asked Wallbreaker, his voice shaking. ‘I am going to win.’

Crunchfist laughed, but some hunters applauded his bravado in the face of death. From a nearby window Mossheart began weeping, but only Stopmouth noticed and his heart went out to her.

‘Change your mind, Wallbreaker,’ Housear commanded. Her face was stern in the flickering light of nearby torches. ‘We need every hunter we can get. The ancestors will not approve of you throwing your life away.’

Wallbreaker didn’t reply.

‘Very well,’ she said. Then she turned her face Roofwards. ‘I speak to Speareye now! I call to you, husband! Two men would take your place, and you must show us which of them can better feed us. Choose us a man strong enough to lead us Home!’

She turned back to the candidates. ‘You can take five men each. You have a day and a night to bring flesh back to Centre Square. Whoever brings the most flesh will show himself worthy of leadership. Now, pick your men.’

Crunchfist shouted first, asking for men to join him. He rejected most of those who showed up. Finally, however, he had five heavily muscled hunters, one of whom was Rockface.

Crunchfist grinned at his new pack. They were clearly the strongest hunters in the Tribe. Then he turned and pointed at Wallbreaker. ‘His ambush trick won’t work on any of our neighbours now!’ he shouted. ‘And when the Tribe needs volunteers, I will remember anybody who joins him! I will remember your wives! I will remember your children!’

Rockface looked at him in disgust. ‘I have changed my mind,’ he said. He left the group and moved to stand with Wallbreaker while Crunchfist could only blink in surprise.

‘Will you have me, Wallbreaker?’ asked Rockface. ‘I would have joined you first, only…Well, with all your plans, it’s too easy, hey? We spend more time digging ditches than hunting!’