The Unkillables (2 page)

Ignoring Spear, Chert addressed himself to Antler: “It was no ordinary thing,” he said. “It is special and valuable, and we should take it. When I saw it, I felt how I wanted it.” In the People’s tongue, there was a certain way to inflect the verb “to want” that made it signify “I plan to take,” and Chert used that form now. He was strong enough a hunter that this assertion ended all debate.

“Well,” Spear said. “Good. I will lead the raid down upon the Big-Brows.” Jealous of Chert’s prestige, Spear was eager to grab whatever glory he could.

Chert looked at Spear, but did not argue. Spear pretended not to pay attention to Chert, while checking his reaction out of the corners of his eyes. Once it was plain no one was going to fight him for the right to lead the raid, he continued: “I’ll take Gash-Eye with me, to be our eyes. Bring the noose.”

Immediately the thick knotted vines of the noose were slipped over Gash-Eye’s head and neck, then tightened; someone had been holding it ready.

Emboldened, Spear flung his hand in a disdainful gesture at the Jaw, and said, “And take the half-breed, some of you, and hold him in the back! Hold him somewhere away from Chert.”

Now Chert stepped toward Spear. “Why?” he said, voice as hard as his name yet suddenly quieter than ever. “Why should I not be trusted near the Jaw?”

The excited murmurs that had been building were hushed. Spear faltered. Casting his eyes about the group, he said, “You all know why.”

But no one stepped forward to help him. Eyeing Spear coldly, Chert said, “I’ve always brought as much meat to the People as any man. Does Spear claim he’s brought more than me?”

Spear kept quiet.

“Does Spear claim to have brought even as much as I have?”

Still Spear stayed silent, except that now his teeth could be heard grinding together.

Chert continued to watch him, waiting to see if Spear would dare challenge his right to say all he did. When Spear volunteered nothing, Chert said, “The Jaw stays with me. He and I will flank the Big-Brows on one side, Antler and Stick can lead the flank on the other. Spear may go in first.”

There was some muttering at this. Plenty of heads more level than Spear’s had noted Chert’s unnatural attachment to the half-breed; for example, no Jaw before this one had ever been accorded the privilege of participating in the Ceremony of the Mushroom of the Inner Eye, but Chert often (but not always) demanded it for his son, as he had done today.

It didn’t take sharp eyes or a keen nose to understand that such an attachment might destroy the Jaw’s value as a hostage to hold over Gash-Eye. If Gash-Eye misbehaved, the Jaw would be easier to kill if he were separated from his father. But neither did one need a keen nose to smell that Spear had angered Chert past the point at which it would be safe to argue with him. Not on the subject of his son.

As far as Gash-Eye was concerned, things could not have gone better. For her son, at least. She was jerked back as someone tugged on her noose. She, Spear, and the hunter holding her noose began to slink down the hill. Though they made no sound, she knew that Chert, the Jaw, Antler, and Stick would be falling in behind them.

Spear crept alongside her a ways, long enough to hiss in her ear: “Remember your purpose! You’re here to see their numbers, see where they are, and tell me with hand signs.
Quietly.
Don’t try to plan anything else, dummy, or we’ll roast your son and feed him to you. And don’t think soft Chert will protect him, not against us all. And even if he
did
save the boy, remember, he won’t stop us from leaving you empty-socketed in the forest, after we’ve had our fun first.”

Even though Gash-Eye was supposed to be seeing on his behalf, Spear couldn’t help himself from walking a few paces ahead of her. Gash-Eye shuddered behind him. Not because of the threat to take her eyes, but because of what he’d said about the Jaw. She didn’t take his threat to cook her own son as hyperbole. The People had told her the tale of a former Gash-Eye who’d rebelled; they’d built a little enclosure, roasted her Jaw, and walled her up alone with him, offering her no other food but her son. She’d held out more than a week, drinking rainwater. Finally hunger had gotten the better of her, and when she did die it was from eating the meat after it had spoiled.

It wasn’t worth the risk to save her fellow Big-Brows below. (In the language of her girlhood, they hadn’t called themselves Big-Brows, of course—they’d called themselves the People, too. Every people Gash-Eye had ever heard of called themselves the People, in their own tongue.) She reminded herself that these were not her band, the band of her youth. They would speak a language she would not recognize; they would have strange ways. Her people, her true people, had been left smoking and hacked apart in a clearing, and animals and birds had long since stolen their bones.

No, she wouldn’t be fooled by the fact that the bodies of the people below were shaped like hers. The only blood-tie she had left was her son, and she couldn’t depend on Chert to defend him. No matter how well Chert might sometimes treat the Jaw, it was only sometimes, and the truth was that Chert was her enemy, and that the Jaw was not of the People. The People would kill him if she rebelled. So Gash-Eye would obediently lead Spear and the others to the band of Big-Brows. Once the killing started, she could close her strong eyes.

In the shadows among the trees she saw a shape moving. That was a person, she could tell.

She was about to signal to Spear, when the person stepped out from between the trees into a patch of moonlight.

Gash-Eye gasped. Even at this distance she could make out the features of his face. Spear looked at her sharply, then faced forward again. The figure ahead was lit so brightly in the moonshine, soon even Spear would see him.

Not since she was a child had Gash-Eye seen another of her own kind, alive. She hadn’t realized how strongly she would be affected by the sight of one’s pale face. Meanwhile, the Big-Brow hadn’t noticed her and the others yet.

She tried to twist around and look over her shoulder, to assure herself that the Jaw was safe with Chert; but the man holding her noose jerked on it and growled close to her ear, much too soft for the still-distant Big-Brows to hear. Spear heard, though, and turned to glare at her in alarm, wondering what she was up to.

Gash-Eye knew from that glare that Spear was on the verge of silencing her forever—after all, there was bound to be a replacement for her in the band below—so she grabbed her chance before it was gone. “Run!” she screamed, not in the People’s language that she’d spoken for sixteen years, but in her native tongue. Even as she cried out she wondered what madness had possessed her.

The hunter behind her yanked her noose and cut off her breath. But, although Gash-Eye had been so cowed over the years that her captors and even she had forgotten how strong she was, now desperation spurred her on, and she smacked the hunter in the temple, sending him stunned to the ground.

Spear gave away his position to the Big-Brows by turning on her with a cry of rage. Maybe she could have swatted him aside just as she’d done the man behind her, but she knew that if she struck Spear he would stop at nothing to kill the Jaw, not to mention her. She danced out of the way of his spear thrust and ran back uphill, shouting another warning as she went.

She was tackled by someone. With relief, she realized it was Stick and Antler, instead of Chert. Perhaps that was because Chert was busy jabbing his spearhead through the Jaw’s throat; but Gash-Eye felt certain that his absence meant Chert was ushering the boy back uphill, keeping him away from Spear until tempers calmed.

Spear caught up an instant after Antler and Stick brought her down. While they held her, he kicked her furiously in the face and chest.

They were too busy beating her to pursue the Big-Brows, and Gash-Eye imagined they were hurriedly disappearing from the patch of forest below. She nearly grinned—but since her lips were the only things defending her teeth from Spear’s rampage, she kept them sealed.

G
ash-Eye knelt in the middle of the circle, head bowed. She was naked—they had stripped off the skins she wore. Dawn had broken just as Spear was beating her, and the ensuing commotion had given day time enough to arrive. Three boys stood poised to beat her head with long sticks if she raised it, but by rolling her eyes all the way to the side, she was able to see the last blue sky of her life.

That was all right, that it would be her last. Her gamble had worked. They weren’t going to kill the Jaw.

Not that Spear had given up trying. “It’s the custom!” he was shouting again. “It’s what the Jaw is for!”

“The reason we hold the Jaw under threat is to control Gash-Eye.” Chert didn’t deign to look directly at Spear, but addressed the circle at large. “It’s too late to control Gash-Eye, she’s already betrayed us. We’re going to kill her for it. There’s no point in killing the Jaw, too.”

“The point is to punish her,” said Spear.

“Punish her by killing her,” said Chert. “The Jaw is a good hunter. Better than many. It makes no sense to kill him on your whim, Spear.”

“I am not the one acting on a whim. We’ve always known that the custom is to kill the Jaw if the Gash-Eye rebels. That’s why he’s called the Jaw—because he’s the way we can hold Gash-Eye. Don’t worry, now that we know you can’t face the necessity, we won’t let you father the next Jaw....”

“I can face as much as you can and more,” said Chert, and stepped close to him, looking into his eyes. Spear didn’t step back. “I say he lives. My blood’s in him. I know what I agreed to when I fathered him, but now that he’s here I’ve changed my mind. Do what you want with the Big-Brow mother, I don’t give a damn about her. As for the Jaw, if you can manage some way to kill the Big-Brow blood in him while leaving mine be, then go ahead. But if you harm the part of him that is mine, then I’ll kill you. It is Chert who says so, Spear.”

Spear’s face had gone dark with fury. “Consult the People!” he sputtered. “See what the other hunters say, you see if they don’t agree that I’m right!”

“I don’t care what the rest say.” Chert turned his calm and defiant face to the onlookers. “What I say to Spear, I say to all. I have brought much meat to the People, and my word has strength.”

The gathered People looked on, in disquiet. There were a lot of them, more than sixty individuals (not that anyone had ever counted)—so far as anyone knew, it was the biggest band of humans that had ever existed.

Spear and Chert stood together, looking out at the group. Chert stood half a head taller than him and was broader. His head was like a big rounded block. Spear’s face was shaped like a triangle, the point of his chin and the long thin shaft of his body making his name a fitting one. When Spear had only just begun to grow hair on his face, he had challenged his father, and demanded he yield his place in the front ranks of the fire. That was a traditional right of the People, albeit a rarely-exercised one. The father could either yield, or refuse and fight a duel. Spear’s father had chosen the duel, and the next day had been food for birds.

More than anyone else, Spear hated the unnatural interest Chert sometimes took in the Jaw, as if he were grooming him for manhood. Usually when young hunters were groomed it was so they could one day take their fathers’ places by the fire. But the Jaw would not be able to do that the peaceful way, when Chert died, because he was not of the People, he was the Jaw. And even less conceivable was the idea of him challenging his father for the place, the way Spear had done—no Jaw would be granted that privilege due only to humans, and if the Jaw ever killed his father it would be considered plain murder. Whenever Chert did include his son in the group, even when the People went along more or less uncomplainingly, there was always a whiff of mockery to their cooperation. It was akin to the amusement far-future humans would feel at seeing chimps dressed in human clothes, except that the People honored animals and would never treat one with the same disdain they did the Jaw.

Stick raised his hands. “Peace, peace,” he called. “Spear is right when he says that custom demands we kill the Jaw. But Chert is right when he says the Jaw has proved a mighty hunter. He is not an ordinary Jaw—perhaps because of his father’s blood, perhaps because of his father’s favor. So Stick says, let there be peace. Stick’s advice is, let the Jaw live, if only in thanks for the meat Chert has brought us. Let the Jaw live among us as before, except for the days of rites and sacrifices, when he must keep apart as always. Meanwhile we will kill Gash-Eye. And when we find the next Gash-Eye, I say let Spear have the honor of fathering the Jaw upon her, and let us return to the old ways with that.”

The tone of the murmuring that rustled through the onlookers was uncertain, but basically approving. Gash-Eye closed her eyes, at peace. They were going to kill her, send her into the darkness. Her passage there might be unpleasant, but all she need do was have patience.

Even Spear was almost ready to relinquish his hope of killing the Jaw. He said, “All right—but only on the condition that I be the one to take out her eyes and kill her in the forest.” Traditionally, the man who’d fathered the Jaw was also the one who killed the Gash-Eye, if and when the time came.

But Chert gave no sign of resenting this impingement on his privileges. Looking at Spear with eyes half-lidded in contempt, he said, “As you wish.”

So it was done. Now that Spear was mollified, no one else was likely to fight to have the Jaw killed. With her son’s life secured, Gash-Eye had room to feel the first sharp needles of fear at what Spear had in store for her.

But all was not over yet. Her eyes still closed, she heard a voice say, “Don’t touch her.” Then she recognized the voice as the Jaw’s. She opened her eyes.

Spear was jabbing his finger at the Jaw. “You be quiet!” he said. “You’re lucky enough to be living through this. Don’t press that luck!”

“That’s right, boy,” said Chert, turning toward his son, body tense.

Gash-Eye tried to catch his gaze, to appeal to him to stop, but he was glaring down at his clenched fists. “I won’t let my mother buy my life with her own,” he growled. He was in the grip of another of his strange ideas that no one else would understand. The Jaw sometimes had a dreamy air about him, that would have alienated the People even if he hadn’t been a half-breed—or maybe it was because of his alienation from them that he would retreat into uselessly tracking the trails of his own mind. To look at his absent eyes sometimes, one would think he was looking into the hidden places, the way his Big-Brow mother could—as if there were another, mysterious world beyond this, that interested him more than this one—it was the kind of faraway gaze that offended those who were perfectly happy to live in the world around them.