The Standing Dead (The Stone Dance Of The Chameleon) Page 4

  Lightning brought Carnelian a blinding realization. He could return alone to Osrakum. He saw his father’s and his people’s joy on the day of his return. He clung to the warmth of that vision but then, quietly, let it grow cold and dark. He opened his eyes to look at Osidian. It was hard to see in this battered creature the boy in the Yden. His love for that boy had been so fierce. Though it still burned, it had become as small in him as the slavers’ fire was in the rumbling night.

  ‘Then it is hopeless,’ he said, aloud. He would rather tear his heart out than abandon Osidian. Whatever might come, he was determined to share his lover’s fate.

  Carnelian lost count of the days as he ran obedient to the rain’s relentless rhythm. It drove his heart, his rasping breath, even the blinking of his eyes that saw nothing but two pale feet churning mud the colour of old blood. When he fell, he was up again before the leash pulling his wrists tugged taut. Once he saw stone and, for a moment, recalled the feet were his from the cold, and the impact shuddering up into his head.

  Night would return him to a kraal. As the numbness of the running faded, he would be delivered to the torture of his ropes. Worse was the sight of Osidian suffering. The crusted weal around his neck drew Carnelian’s eyes however hard he tried to look away. Even swollen by blood and rain, the rope had worn so deep it had become flush with the ruptured flesh. Waking feverish with agony, Carnelian would find Osidian twitching as he ran on in nightmare.

  But it was Osidian’s eyes Carnelian dreaded most. Once he saw a stirring in their depths and fear possessed him that some darkness had climbed down into Osidian’s soul and was peering out.

  When something crept across his flesh, Carnelian awoke. He saw the glimmer of the sartlar’s eyes and jerked back from the hand it was extending. The rope biting into his flesh squeezed out a moan that closed his eyes. When he opened them again he saw the sartlar open a maw rimmed by rotten teeth.

  ‘Blood?’

  The word grated from nowhere. Carnelian wondered if he had spoken without knowing it. His eyes fixed on the sartlar, he tried the word but his tongue was leather in his mouth. The creature lifted its hand again, a gnarled wooden thing straying up, extending a finger. He shuddered as it touched his wound, then watched the sartlar draw it back and taste the fingertip. The lips moved.

  ‘Blood.’

  Carnelian stared. The word had come from the sartlar. He was certain of it. He peered at the creature and saw the empty sags of skin hanging on the chest. Breasts. A female then. A woman even. He saw through her lank hair her eyes watching him.

  ‘But dead,’ she said.

  Carnelian tried to soften his tongue by chewing some moisture into it. His first word was just a groan. The second worked. ‘Dead?’ Perhaps the woman was only parroting words she had heard from an overseer.

  She regarded him for a while, fearful, perhaps a little puzzled. ‘Painful?’

  He touched the rope and smiled inquiringly.

  She made a grimace that might have been a smile.

  ‘Yes, it is painful,’ he said.

  The woman poked among her rags and fetched out a package that she laid on his stomach. As she leaned forward the hair fell away from her face. He looked with distaste on the twin holes where her nose should have been. A scar channel ran over the holes climbing to her brow, there dividing, cutting deep into the flesh over her eye ridges, round to catch the edges of her eyes, down through her cheeks to meet again on her chin. He winced, imagining the agony of such a branding.

  The bone of her wrist was moving against his thigh. Her crippled hands were opening the package on his stomach. The odour rising from it almost made Carnelian wriggle away. It was fear of the rope that kept him where he was. She poked a finger into the package and, raising it, showed him the tip swollen with pungent fat.

  ‘ ’ll sting.’

  He realized the brand on her face was the womb glyph for earth. She opened her eyes wider, asking for permission. He gave her the merest nod and she reached out to touch her finger to his wound. He trembled with agony as she rubbed it round under the rope. As she returned for more ointment, his flesh, where she had touched it, ignited. His clenched teeth chattered with the burning while she smeared more on. As the fire died, he realized he could no longer feel the rope. He allowed her to treat his ankle wounds. When she was done, she rewrapped the salve and took it back.

  ‘Bless you,’ he sighed, euphoric from a lack of pain.

  Her hair once more hid her eyes, but he could still feel her stare. She hobbled off into the night, releasing snorts among the sartlar as she pushed into their doughy mass. It was only then Carnelian groaned, cursing that he had not thought to have her treat Osidian’s wounds.

  Carnelian came suddenly awake, staring blindly. The air had died. It took him a while before he realized what had happened. The rain had stopped. It was as if he had spent all his life dancing to a drum and then, without warning, it had fallen silent. He held his breath, yearning for the next beat. The silence stretched, swelling louder, unbearable. Silence so deafening he tried to shout to fill it, but nothing came but a rattling cough far away in his lungs.

  When the slavers came, Carnelian found he had forgotten how to move his body. As the sartlar funnelled through the kraal gate, he struggled to make his legs obey him. He lifted his head as much as he could bear, grating his eyes up in their sockets to be able to look further. Hunched, Osidian was already stumbling after the last few sartlar through the gate. That sight blinded Carnelian with tears. Grimacing, putting one foot before the other, he followed.

  The gate gave out on to a narrow bridge that crossed a ditch to where four tracks met in the mud. Every kraal had its ditch and crossroads. Before the slavers beat him into the midst of the sartlar herd he craned round. The reflection of the kraal wall was twisting in the moat. Towards the horizon stood the prong of a watch-tower.

  It was a struggle to stay on his feet as they ambled away. Without the rain, he had to make his own rhythm. Bowed beneath the tyranny of the brooding sky, he prayed for the dullness his mind had lost. The pace was merciless; his back, an arch of pain. The rope threatened to prune his feet off at the ankles and his head off at the neck. He was a running crucifixion.

  His misery seemed to have already stretched for days when they came suddenly to a halt. Carnelian felt his heart give a flutter and almost go out. The mud and his feet were melting together. He crumpled to his knees thirsting for death. The hunger for it had set like concrete in his stomach. He could feel the sartlar settling to the ground. He was seeing the world through a window of water. A flicker of green caught at the centre of his vision. The colour was a salve for his eyes. He blinked his vision clear. A shoot was pulling its curled leaves out from the rusty earth. Fresh, reborn, it sought the sky. Its freedom mocked him. He dribbled as he cursed it for giving him just enough hope not to let him die.

  They came to the edge of a lake of curdled blood. Carnelian caught glimpses of it as they were herded along its shore and up on to a road. He ran with the sartlar upon its stone.

  When they began slowing, he stumbled, but was immediately pulled back on to his feet. The groan his lungs expelled brought a blow crashing into his head.

  ‘Shut up!’

  Through surging pain, he became aware of a commotion up ahead. His leash went slack and a long, dirty flint was shoved before his eyes.

  ‘If you make as much as a whisper,’ a voice hissed in his ear, ‘I’ll gut you with this.’

  Eyeing the flint, Carnelian began building the strength to cry out. He longed for the relief of having that knife in his body.

  A clamour of young voices, followed by the sound of the Ichorian answering them, made Carnelian listen.

  ‘You’re a half-black, a Bloodguard of the Masters.’ A young voice speaking in thick-tongued Vulgate.

  ‘Nothing …’ Carnelian heard the Ichorian say.

  ‘Not even a bronze blade?’

  This time the accented voice was a man’s. The pavi
ng brightened around Carnelian’s feet as the sartlar shuffled away. He was gathering the courage to lift his head against the rope, when a huge, taloned foot settled on to the stone. He watched it spread as it took the weight of its leg. Another came down in front of it as the aquar came walking towards him.

  ‘What’ve we here?’

  The Vulgate fell from the sky. Carnelian tried to see the aquar’s rider. He felt as much as heard the impact of the man’s weight as he vaulted down. Carnelian could smell his sweat. Two, dark, thick-toed feet came into sight.

  ‘But …’ The man gasped and began rubbing at Carnelian’s ear. ‘You’re white under the black. A marumaga? A M-Master?’

  Before Carnelian could find his voice, the man slashed with a blade. Carnelian felt it as a stabbing in his back. He heard the screams and the cries of battle as if he were coming up out of water. It confused him that the blade he could feel was filleting him up his back and yet the man was in front of him. He waited for oblivion, his heart pounding eagerly as if death were a lover. He wondered at the screams and anger. He saw without seeing the two ends of his ropes dangling under his chin. His eyes focused on them. They had been cut. The realization took hold. He erupted a roar, unfolding upwards to reach and breathe free air. Too late. Fire leapt from his white-hot spine to consume him. Aflame, he fell into blackness; a torch dropped down a well.

  THE RAIDERS

  A smooth bead is earned for each complete season of service. More may be threaded on to an auxiliary’s service cord for any action deemed by a superior to go beyond those stipulated in the Legionary Code; such awards subject to ratification by a quaestor who shall index the action

  against the Categories of Valour.

  Rough beads are threaded on to a service cord according to statute infringements as listed in the Categories of Offence.

  The Protocol of Remission states that smooth beads may be given up to redeem rough beads subject to the Laws of Remission.

  The Laws of Remission are: first, that a rough bead may be redeemed by the loss of a smooth bead; second, rough beads may be redeemed by mandatory or voluntary chastisement as determined by the Laws of Punishment; third, three rough beads can only be redeemed by the concurrent loss of three smooth beads.

  The Laws of Punishment are: first, that a rough bead may be redeemed by a standard flogging; second, that three rough beads may be redeemed by progressive mutilation as described in the Schedule of Removals and according to the corresponding protocols; third, that at any time a service cord should have on it five rough beads, the auxiliary to whom it belongs shall, without recourse to appeal, be put to death by crucifixion.

  The Schedule of Removals is applied as follows: on the first occasion, the middle fingers of both hands with associated knuckles; on the second, the ears; on the third, the nose; on the fourth, the right eye; on the fifth,

  the left eye.

  (Extract from the Law of Legionary Service compiled in beadcord by the Wise of the Domain Legions)

  IT WAS THE SUDDEN STILLNESS THAT PULLED CARNELIAN UP FROM HIS nightmare. He could no longer feel the sway of the black water. Confused, he wondered if the boat had brought him at last to the opposite shore? Opening his eyes, he found he was wedged in, buttocks pressing against a crossbeam, his knees almost in his face.

  Somewhere, a man was speaking. Though his voice was harsh and nasal, its pouring of almost-words had a familiar sound that made Carnelian smile even as he strove to pluck out meaning.

  ‘… the lads are scared enough already,’ another voice was saying with a strange accent.

  Dream still clouding his mind, Carnelian became convinced it was one of his marumaga brothers speaking. Grane perhaps, though Carnelian had a notion it was his Uncle Crail he had been expecting, who Aurum had had killed. Carnelian wanted to see Grane’s face, but was unable to clear his head enough to call out.

  ‘Do you imagine I’m any less afraid than they are, Father Cloud?’ asked the nasal voice, speaking as if to the deaf. ‘Through no choice of mine, I’m now as much involved in this sacrilege as the rest of you. If that weren’t bad enough, what possessed you two to bring the Standing Dead with us?’

  Carnelian did not recognize the voice, nor the strange term.

  ‘Leave them be, Ranegale,’ growled a weary voice Carnelian had not heard before. ‘Can’t you see their uncle and their brother lying there dead?’

  Carnelian grew uneasy. All this talk of death and the strange names; worse, there was something peculiar about their speech that was making it hard to follow.

  ‘Leave them be?’ said Ranegale, the man with the nasal voice. ‘You may be an Elder, Stormrane, but I don’t believe even that gives you or your sons the right to let the dead ride.’

  Realization came to Carnelian as a shock. The voices were speaking neither Vulgate nor the tongue of the Masters, Quya, yet he understood them. Incredibly, they were speaking the same barbarian language his nurse Ebeny had used with him and his brothers when they were children.

  ‘… my doing, not theirs,’ Stormrane was saying.

  To hear the cadence of Ebeny’s speech in a man’s voice was startling.

  ‘And was it you, my father, who ordered some of the lads to double up so as to free saddle-chairs in which to put the Standing Dead? I see by your silence it wasn’t. Will you deny it was Ravan who first saw the Bloodguard and Fern who then found the Standing Dead? No? Then it seems we all agree it was your sons who drew us into that bloodbath, so don’t ask me to leave things be. If they’d let things be, your brother and your eldest son would still be alive; you yourself and the rest of us unwounded and, even now, we’d all be safely on the road to Makar. Instead of which we’re out here tainted by this sacrilege, the Mother forgive us and, if that weren’t enough of a curse, we now have these white scorpions to deal with.’

  White scorpions? Was Ranegale talking about him? More than one Master. Guilt at having again forgotten Osidian gouged Carnelian’s mind clear. As Ranegale continued droning accusations, Carnelian became desperate to see his beloved. His knees were blocking the view and he found that his head was wedged too tight against his chest for him to turn it. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied two youths squeezed one behind the other into a wicker saddle-chair.

  ‘I won’t allow you to accuse Ravan,’ Stormrane was saying.

  Forcing life into his hands, Carnelian swivelled them until they caught the edges of the saddle-chair. Gripping as hard as he could, he strained to pull himself up. The resulting spasm caused him to roll his eyes up into his head. Nausea surged in waves. Everything from neck to thighs was aching pulp.

  ‘I don’t recall you warning us of danger when my son spotted the Bloodguard among the slavers nor any complaints when we went in to rob them.’

  The words pulsed with the blood hammering at Carnelian’s temples.

  ‘Sky and Earth! What’s that got to do with anything?’ Ranegale replied. ‘It was only when Fern found the Standing Dead among the sartlar that the Bloodguard began to kill us.’

  Sartlar? That word made the memory of his suffering seep in like rain through a cloak. He fumbled his hand up to his neck and trembled as it touched the raw crusty edges of his wound. He endured the agony as his fingers probed for and did not find the rope. That he felt naked without it made him weep bitter tears.

  A voice carried from the distance and Carnelian heard creakings as the barbarians turned to look. He tried peering down the tunnel between his knees and saw that his saddle-chair curved up into a basketwork prow. Beyond stood his aquar’s neck, past which he could make out, against the brooding sky, a giant from which the voice appeared to be coming.

  ‘Thank the Skyfather that at least we’re not pursued,’ said Cloud, the man with Grane’s voice.

  ‘What need have they to chase us,’ said Ranegale, ‘when they know the dragons will do their work for them?’

  ‘We must get back on to the road then?’ A youthful voice taut with fear.

  ‘There we’d h
ave no chance at all, thanks to you, boy.’

  ‘Ravan …’ said Cloud, gently. ‘The fight was sure to have been seen from the watch-tower. Our descriptions will have been sent all the way down the road. Patrols will already be on their way up from Makar as part of the scouring. On the road they’d trap us as easily as if we were on an earthbridge.’

  ‘Then we must hide deeper in the fields,’ said the youth.

  ‘Without the watch-towers to steer by we’d soon be lost.’ Cloud gazed out, sadly. ‘This enslaved earth has no trees, no hills, no landmarks at all save only kraals, each identical to every other.’

  ‘How far are we from the road?’ bellowed Ranegale in the direction of the giant.

  ‘We’ll still see the tower flares,’ a reply came back.

  The voice seemed to Carnelian ludicrously thin for such a giant. He was still dazed. He focused on thoughts of Osidian, desperate to know if he still lived. Fearing another spasm, he gingerly applied pressure with his thighs and, gritting his teeth, slid himself back and up his saddle-chair.