The Volunteer (The Bone World Trilogy) (20 page)

All of this sped through
Whistlenose's mind as he ran through the undergrowth, stumbling
occasionally as his leg let him down, or when a root tripped him up.

The Chief had no such problems,
it seemed. Although his spear had not tasted blood in the longest
time, Wallbreaker, the supposed coward, fled towards danger. It made
no sense.

The screaming had grown louder.
Directly in Whistlenose's path, a great old tree, began to topple
over, groaned its agony as it fell. It would come down between
Whistlenose and the Chief; between him and the tribe. He would be too
late to help if it blocked his way.

With a great cry of pain, he
launched off his injured leg and dived forward into a roll, even as
one heavy branch raked across his back. He came up on the far side of
the trunk, spearless, helpless. In front of him, there was only
chaos. Women and men seemed to be fighting the ground. They screamed
or wept. They stabbed spears into the soil while dust filled the air
and whole clumps of people fell suddenly into nothing.

Immediately ahead of Whistlenose,
Wallbreaker was shouting orders: "Don't stop! Leave them, it's
too late for them. Run! Everybody run!" He had gathered his own
family about him and was pushing them forward away from the action,
until others started to obey, and in moments, everybody was fleeing
for their lives.

Whistlenose felt he had no choice
but to join them. He too ran, ignoring the pain, leaping over holes
in the ground where people cried piteously. He wept, knowing he must
stop to help; knowing he couldn't. The rule was to keep running,
after all. The Tribe, the Tribe needed to survive more than any
individual. But he heard children down there too and knew that by
nightfall, they would be buried in a field somewhere.

Whistlenose had seen a planted
human once. While the expressions of beasts were unreadable to him,
the agony on the man's face had been obvious, and horrifying. And now
those children would suffer like that for fifty or a hundred days.
How could it be borne? Was the life of the Tribe worth so much?

But of course it was. Tribe was
everything. And so, still crying, he kept running.

Although the trees had stopped
falling around them, nobody slowed, their movements still full of
panic. Even packs of food lay abandoned in the path. But Whistlenose
had almost caught up with the main body now and he breathed a little
easier. He felt wretched, knowing he would never forget the cries of
the lost.

Wallbreaker's family, at the very
back, began falling further behind. Mossheart hobbled along on an
injury she had picked up, while Treeneck carried the girl and the
Chief kept watch for enemies, his face shining with sweat.

Whistlenose came to a stop, not
wanting to catch up with them. He was supposed to be the rearguard,
after all. And he wasn't sure he was ready to talk to a Chief who had
ordered him to abandon children to the Diggers.
You
wanted to run, though, boy.
But how he hated it! How it
hurt!

Wallbreaker and Mossheart started
arguing in heated whispers, while Treeneck walked on ahead with the
girl. And then, as if, Whistlenose had merely imagined them, the
woman and child were gone. Straight down into the earth without a
sound.

The old hunter didn't even think
about it. He sprang forward, all pains forgotten. He passed by the
Chief and Mossheart. He had no spear, but it didn't matter. His mind
knew nothing. He dropped into darkness, landing amongst a writhing
pack of Diggers with his knife already in his fist. He was yelling
and stabbing all around him. The brain. Go for the brain and maybe,
like the creatures in the fields, they wouldn't come back to fight
him.

He left his knife in an enemy's
skull. He bit at their faces, he clawed at their eyes. One of the
monsters served him as a shield, as others, a stream of them, their
pressure relentless, forced him up against the chill damp walls of
the tunnel.

All was darkness. But then,
suddenly, a ball of the purest, blinding light, dropped down from
above—the Talker, of course. Heartbeats later, another man was
in the tunnel beside him, both of them fighting and screaming
together, possessed by an insane Ancestor. A Digger threw itself over
the Talker and it was as though dusk had come, allowing the enemy to
surge forward once more. Whistlenose's companion went down, swamped.
Now, Diggers tore at the creature Whistlenose was using as a shield
until it came to pieces in his hands. But they weren't trying to kill
the old hunter. No, they fought to pin his limbs down, to steady his
head to receive a grub...

He shouted, "Ancestors, kill
me! Kill me!" He could feel tiny beasts crawling down his scalp.
One of them pushed up into his left nostril and he lost control of
his bladder. The slimy creature's boneless body met an obstruction
and began to eat through it. The pain! Oh, the pain!

But out of the corner of his eye,
he saw the other man rise again. Wallbreaker! It was Wallbreaker, the
coward, the Chief! He was on his feet, stabbing about himself with a
spear when he should have been calling for his "mother."
And the strange thing, the really strange thing, was that the Diggers
were just... taking it. He killed them and
none
of them fought back. It was as though they couldn't even see him.

He uncovered the light of the
Talker, and all at once, the enemy fled.

Whistlenose, crying his disgust,
flung grubs away from himself and pulled out the one that had got
stuck in his nostril. A stream of blood followed it to the ground.

"Daddy?"

Gore dripped down Wallbreaker's
cheeks, glistening in the light of the Talker. He seemed not to
notice. He was shaking and weeping and hugging his daughter to him.
Treeneck's body lay trampled beside them. At least she would never be
planted.

"Treeneck had a thousand
days left in her." Whistlenose said. Or wanted to, anyway. He
couldn't quite make anything come out of his mouth. His throat was
raw. He kept seeing images of Wallbreaker killing Diggers without any
of them fighting back. He couldn't understand it.

"Give her to me," cried
Mossheart from above. "Give me my girl!"

They cut a little flesh from
Treeneck to remember her by. That was all there was time for. They
left their kills behind them too. Then, they climbed out and resumed
the march.

Whistlenose should have gone back
to the rearguard, but couldn't quite manage it any more than the
Chief knew how to give orders. So, it was Mossheart who took charge,
shouting at Browncrack and the others to spread out.

And then, night fell, normal in
every way, except it came too early, and, instead of Roofsweat, human
bodies rained from the sky.

Nobody
knew what was happening.

A hundred heartbeats after the
tracklights had come on, great thumps and clatters in the forest sent
dozens of hunters running for their spears. "It's an attack!"
somebody cried. How wrong he was. But nothing could have prepared the
exhausted men for what they saw: a dark-skinned woman lay dead in the
first clearing they came to, her body twisted, her face mercifully
out of view beneath her fine black hair.

Whistlenose and
Fearsflyers
were at the back of the group that discovered her. "In the
trees," whispered the young hunter, pointing up. Right above
their heads, the branches had caught another man in a weave of
foliage and floppy limbs. Nearby were others, all Roofpeople: men
with beards like Aagam's, their faces stark with fear, their arms
spread wide as a Flyer's wing; a mother who had wrapped herself
around a boy in the vain hope of cushioning his fall; a creature so
shrivelled and wrinkly, it was some time before they could even
recognise it as human. On and on through the trees, in bushes, burst
against rocks, were ever more corpses, covering an area as large as
ManWays...

Here and there, men began to
weep. They hugged each other or threw themselves down on their knees.
"Thank you, Ancestors!" they cried. "Oh, thank you!
Thank you!" In the Tribe's hour of greatest weakness, when food
had run low and Diggers pressed from all sides, their forebears had
sent them a feast of brave volunteers from the Roof itself!

The night that followed was the
most joyful of the migration.

"Dada! Dada! I'm eating
liver! Like a real hunter!"

"Your father's tired,"
said Ashsweeper. So he was, but Whistlenose grinned, clutching a hot
bowl of brains and watching those with greater energy who were
dancing or arguing over the fantastical array of garments with which
the Roofpeople had been clothed.

"There's enough for
everyone," said Ashsweeper. "Even the Diggers. A pity they
wouldn't take their share and leave us alone for a while."

Whistlenose smiled, or thought
he did. He felt his eyes glaze over as he scooped little bits of food
into his mouth. He tried to savour the taste, but his mind kept
wandering. There were those who asserted loudly they could tell the
difference between a male and a female brain. "A man leaves
richer flavours behind," they would say, only for the nearest
woman to scoff back with "More simple, you mean!"

Sadly, Whistlenose wasn't
quick-witted enough to join in these games and, truth be told, it all
tasted the same to him in the end.

The last time he'd had this much
human meat had been after the passing of Laughlouder, his first wife.
The body of his second wife, brave Sleepyeyes, had never been
recovered, so he hadn't been able to honour her in this way.
Are
you there, my sweet?
he wondered.
Have
you been protecting us all this while?
He felt arms
around his shoulder, and for a moment, he really thought—but
no. This hug came from the woman whose life Sleepyeyes had saved.
Ashsweeper.

"There's something different
about you, husband," she whispered. "I know, I know. I said
I wouldn't bother you, but you're not the same since you came back
from the rearguard."

He tried to guess what she meant,
but he was so, so tired. He had fought Diggers in their own tunnels.
He had seen more people fall from the sky than he even knew were
alive. Of course he was different... But that wasn't what his wife
meant at all.

"Your nose," she said,
at last. "It doesn't whistle any more."

"It doesn't?" if he
hadn't been so exhausted, he would have realised it himself, but yes,
yes, it was true! A Digger grub had tried to eat its way through a
blockage in his left nostril, the one that had caused him such
humiliation all his life.

Whistlenose had no recollection
of dropping the bowl, but he found himself hugging Ashsweeper and
laughing like a fool. That was how the Chief found them a few
heartbeats later.

"Whistlenose?"

He looked up to find Wallbreaker
waiting for him at the edge of the fire.

"Won't you join us, Chief?"
asked Ashsweeper. "We have more than enough."

"No, thank you. I wish to
consult with your husband."

"We were sorry about
Treeneck," Ashsweeper continued. "She had a thousand days
left in her."

"Ten thousand," agreed
the Chief, but he was too agitated for real courtesy. "Come with
me, hunter."

He sighed and put down his bowl.
The two men trudged away from the firelight, although the breaking of
branches all around them told Whistlenose that they were never
completely alone or unprotected. They pushed through bushes and over
drooping trees until soon, the nearest hearth was little more than a
flicker between the branches.

Whistlenose struggled to stay
focused. Part of that was tiredness and part of it was all the
attention he paid to his own breathing. Amazing, he kept thinking.
The sound is gone!

The Chief too seemed lost in his
own mind. He said nothing for what felt like hundreds of heartbeats.
He was just a shadow to the older hunter and when at last he spoke,
it was barely louder than the voice of an Ancestor heard in the
heart. "I ordered you dead."

Whistlenose froze. "What?
I—"

"No, no. I don't mean now."
The Chief actually gripped Whistlenose's shoulder, as though they
were the dearest of brothers. "No. I mean before. Aagam wanted
you gone, and anyway, everybody knew about that limp of yours. It was
nearly time." He snorted. "It's funny, that, because since
then, you've been a better hunter than you ever were as a young man."

He paused, breathing heavily now,
his grip still tight and sweaty. "You saved my daughter today."

"No, Chief. I only delayed
her capture. You were the one to save her... And... I'm sorry to say
this. I always believed you were a coward, but you jumped right into
that hole too."

"I
am
a coward, hunter. More than ever now. That's
why
I jumped into the hole."

"I... I don't understand."

"I don't care. What matters
is that if you'd had the decency to die when I ordered it," his
voice shook, "my daughter would be gone."