She glanced around quickly. The children were out of harm’s way here. ‘Keep hold of Lightning,’ she told Arga. The child nodded seriously. Then Ana ran with the priest to the lagoon. ‘You’ll have a lot of apologising to do today, Jurgi.’
‘I’m good at that.’
The hunters and those who had come running from both camps gathered around the fallen bull. The animal, trapped, squirming, was a mass of muscle and fur, tossed horns and lashing hooves, anger and pain and mud and blood and flying water. Ana could smell how its bowels had loosened in terror, and there was a harder rust stink of blood. More spears were hurled at it, or thrust into its flesh.
Then one spear went flying over the lagoon, high in the air, following a smooth arc. Ana watched it curiously, absently. It was going to miss the bull by a long way. The spear seemed to hang.
Then it fell among the snailheads.
A man went down, the heavy spear in his neck. Few saw this, in the chaos of the slaughter. But those near the man reacted and ran that way.
Ana dropped her own spear and hurried over.
It was Gut, the snailhead who had enraged Gall. The spear had got him in the throat, thrown him back and pinned him to the ground. His mouth with that studded tongue gaped wide, full of blood. He was still alive, his fingers feebly thrashing at a spear big enough to penetrate to the heart of a bull aurochs. Alive, but already lost to the world of the living.
Knuckle stood over his brother, face contorted, veins throbbing along the flanks of his long temples. ‘Where is Gall? Where is he?’
20
Novu and Chona rounded a bluff and looked down on a valley. Under a grey lid of sky it was raining, and their cloaks and tunics were sodden through.
‘There,’ Chona gasped. The rain hissed on the grass and pattered on the river water, and Novu found it hard to hear what Chona was saying. ‘There! By the river – that place. That’s where we meet. That’s where… Come on.’ He limped forward, and Novu, laden with their packs, followed.
The river ran over a rocky bed, beside a broad flood plain walled by cliffs of limestone. They had followed the river upstream for so long, they had come so far west, that it was barely recognisable to Novu as the huge waterway they had followed from its estuary, through the Narrow of the fish-people, and across the Continent’s rocky heart. Yet here it was, the same river.
And here, Novu knew, Chona had been hoping to find his early-summer gathering of traders, for this place was, uniquely, near the head of several of the great rivers that traversed the Continent, a meeting point of the traders’ natural routes. ‘Always at this time,’ he would say, ‘after the equinox, that’s when the trading is good. Later, at midsummer, all over the Continent the hunters and fishers gather, doling out food and gifts to each other. So this is the time to catch their leaders, early summer, when the big men start panicking about what gifts they have to give. Oh, the aurochs too fast for you this year? The deer too cunning, the fish too slippery? Shame. Maybe your wife’s brothers would be happy with my bits of coloured stone instead…’ Even traders followed the seasons, Novu was learning, from Chona’s increasingly broken talk.
Chona had been desperate to get here. No matter how ill he became, no matter the cough, the pale, blotchy, sweating skin, the feverish broken sleep at night, Chona insisted on pressing on every day, leaning on his staff and on Novu’s shoulder. But for days Chona had been watching the sun’s arc in the sky, muttering, ‘Late. Too late.’
And in the end the illness had slowed Chona down, just enough.
This rainy day the broad plain by the river was all but empty. You could see how the ground had been churned up by many feet, and old hearths lay like black scars on the ground. People had been here, a crowd of them. But now only a couple of houses remained, in the lee of the limestone cliffs, and one of those looked abandoned.
‘Too late,’ Chona said. ‘I told you!’ He raised his hand and clipped Novu’s head; he was weaker than he used to be, but it still stung.
Novu bore this without complaint. ‘It wasn’t my fault. You’re the ill one. So what now, shall we stand here in the rain?’
‘Help me.’ A trail, well worn, led from this elevated place to the edge of the water. Chona led the way, though he reached back for support from Novu. ‘That house, that one there. With the smoke, and the boat beside it. I think I recognise the design on it, the sunburst on the skins…’
They reached the flood plain and limped across muddy grass. Their legs brushed thistles, all that had survived the passage of the traders.
The owner of the house was a big, bluff man who came out and watched their approach, suspiciously.
‘Loga!’ Chona called, in the traders’ tongue. ‘Loga… It’s good to see you, my friend.’
Loga wore a coat sewn together from the black and white pelts of many small animals. ‘Chona. You look like shit.’
Chona stood gasping, his eyes concealed by his hood, the rain dripping from his long nose. ‘We’re soaked. If I can come in-’
‘Who’s this?’ Loga stared at Novu. ‘Son?’
‘No.’ Chona laughed, but it turned into a cough. ‘No, no. Trade goods, that’s all. Hard worker, good walker, and if you want bricks making… Oh, what’s the word for “brick”? Never mind, never mind. Loga, if I can just come in and dry off-’
Loga held up a massive hand. ‘No. Wife in there, and other wife. Kids. Baby.’
‘All right. But look, man – old friend – you can see how I am – this rain will kill me-’
‘Cave.’ Loga jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the limestone cliffs. Novu saw clefts, vertical, almost like doorways set in the cliff, leading to dark interiors. ‘Dry in there. Warm. No bear. We chase out bear. Maybe bear shit. Burn on fire.’ Loga grinned. ‘Sorry. Wife. Other wife. Baby. Get warm, clean up, we talk.’ And he ducked back into his house, sealing shut the skin cover behind him.
It was always this way now. Nobody wanted a sick man near their children.
So Novu led Chona through a cleft in the cliff wall, and into a kind of passageway. It was dark, and Novu wished he had a torch, but the walking was easy, the floor beaten flat by footprints, and the walls were smooth. People had evidently used this passage before.
After a dozen paces the walls opened out to reveal a larger space, a flat floor scarred by old hearths.
‘This will do.’ Chona slumped to the floor and leaned against a wall. ‘Make a fire. Then food… Oh, my bones.’ He closed his eyes and seemed to sleep immediately.
Novu opened up their packs and spread out their skins. Then he looked around the cave. He picked one of the old hearths to build his fire. He found a little wood piled up at the back of the cave, which he collected, and hard round blocks that might be bear turds; he decided to try burning them later. Before it was dark, he would go back out and collect more wood, and bring it in here to dry out.
He dug out the day’s ember, and soon the wood was burning brightly. He got out some dried fish for Chona, and fetched him a bowl of rainwater.
The trader’s appetite had been poor for days, but he forced himself to chew. ‘Here we are at the heart of the Continent. The beating heart, where rivers like veins flow with trade. And I missed the traders’ gathering! I missed it. First time in years. Ten years. More.’
‘You’ve spent ten years as a trader?’
‘More than that. My father traded. He showed me the way it works. I walked with him. The way you’re walking with me, I suppose. Loga thought you were my son! What a laugh.’
‘You don’t have a son of your own.’
‘No family. No wife. Or a hundred wives.’ He cackled, and made a pumping gesture with his crotch. ‘The trading, that’s everything to me. I saw how my father slowed down when he had his family, it ties you down like a tethered goat. Not for me.’
‘Where did you come from? I mean originally.’
‘Nowhere you’d know. Nowhere at all.’ He spat a bit of fish in the vague direction of the fire, and missed. ‘Shut up, boy, you’re annoying me.’