Chapter 14
As they continued north the air unexpectedly grew milder. Yaret said it was the beginnings of spring, although the trees were leafless and the birds still huddled disconsolately on their boughs and did not warble.
The trees here were not large, but they were many, scattered across the rocky landscape like giant ragged weeds. And they were not burnt, which reassured Charo, until the horses emerged from a patch of thicker woodland onto a long, wide, charred-black trail. It ran right across their path from east to west.
“Here we go east,” said Yaret to his relief. The trappers had told them that the stonemen had gone west; and he hoped that it was true.
Three miles up the trail, in a depression backed by a long low hill, they saw the town. From that distance it was like a patch of burnt mess in a frying pan. It looked horribly familiar. A thin grey haze lay over the ruins and the smell of smoke was bitter in his nostrils. He swallowed hard.
“What’s it called?” he asked, trying to sound casual, although this place’s name could have no meaning now.
“It was called Erbulet,” she murmured.
“Do you think there’s anybody left?”
She squinted at the haze. “I don’t see any sign of cooking fires. But we won’t know until we go and look.”
Charo did not much want to go and look. Even without the dead town stretched out in the foreground, this land seemed bleak and hostile. The whole place felt as vividly alarming as a nightmare, but one from which he could not wake. Around the corpse of the town the bare trees shrank and crouched like old men weakened to the point of paralysis; but to the north a threatening mass of dark pine or fir forest loomed over the lower slopes of the long hill. Above the trees the hill came to an abrupt flat top where all was bare, raw, grey-purple rock: the colour of dried meat.
He felt that they’d gone far enough. This world was way too dark and hard and strange. Although he knew he ought to hope for survivors, he found that he did not. He didn’t want to see any ragged children creep out of lightless cellars. It had been bad enough for him: he couldn’t wish that horror and grief on anybody else.
But that meant he had to wish them dead. Everybody, the whole lot. He felt guilty for hoping the little town would prove to be empty, so that Yaret would be done with her exploring and they could set off home again.
As he followed her horse towards the fallen town, he looked at its grey silence, and then at his own thoughts. He felt ashamed: deflated. It made no difference what he hoped for in any case. Things were as they were. A nightmare of sad crumbling streets.
He had imagined this trip would be a fine adventure. Somehow he’d seen himself beforehand as a hero, riding boldly across the plain on his high-stepping horse, his sword ready by his pommel, in search of some brave deed or other. But at no point had he had any notion of what that brave deed might be.
So far, the expedition had just brought aching legs from spending too long in the saddle, and inadequate meals, and nightly shivering in his sleep. Although the cellar back home was not exactly warm – there had been winter nights when they had all huddled together and had barely slept for cold – it had at least kept the wind out. They had felt themselves become worryingly weak and tired but they had survived.
Charo had assumed that he was tougher than Yaret, being younger; but now, she seemed unmoved by these chilly wastes, while he just wanted to be home and near a warm fire. Even Poda appeared more eager than he was to reach the ruined town. Yaret turned to him as if she guessed his thoughts.
“Not far now,” she said reassuringly. “We’ll find some building where we can shelter out of this wind tonight. Then tomorrow we can have a look around before we head off home.”
He nodded glumly. They entered up what must have been the main street, passing empty, blackened shells that were full of ash and dotted with occasional charcoal remains. Guardians with nobody to guard. Nobody to name them. He tried to ignore them, but despite their lack of names or eyes they all seemed to be watching.
They rode through the ashen streets seeing nobody apart from the burnt watchers until Yaret stopped abruptly, putting her hand out to make Charo stop as well. He sat frozen in the saddle.
Then he heard it: a faint thump from somewhere further down the road, behind the sooty walls. His own heart thumped as if in answer. The nightmare had come suddenly alive.
Probably an animal, he told himself, it had to be an animal. He wondered what he should do if it were a bear. Sword or bow? His recently made bow was over-firm and hard to use. His sword was buckled to his saddle. Should he draw it?
But it might be just some harmless survivor. While he was hesitating, Yaret quietly dismounted, drew her own bow and nocked an arrow to the string. When Charo saw that, he did the same. She walked noiselessly to the corner of the street: looked round it, and let the bow drop.
He followed her to see what it was. Immediately he recognised this as the market square, with the remains of a hall not unlike Obandiro’s. Its stone tower still stood erect amidst the jumbled ash and debris.
And standing by the tower was a man – a live man, streaked in ash and blood. He did not look their way. As Charo watched, he banged his head against the tower wall.
Then Charo registered the tunic, red beneath its layer of soot; and when the man raised his head he saw a stone there in his forehead, surrounded by dark bruises and smeared with blood.
Yaret laid down her bow upon the ground and walked up to the stoneman. But Charo ran back to Poda to draw his sword before he followed her with its hilt clenched firmly in his fist. He had no intention of approaching the stoneman unarmed and thought her alarmingly foolhardy. She only had her knife. As he came up behind her he held his sword outstretched in warning.
When the stoneman turned he did not seem to see the sword; at least, he did not react. Maybe he was stunned, thought Charo, or blinded by the blood that ran into his eyes.
But he could see them, for he spoke. He voice was husky, with a strange accent.
“Where are they? Are they coming back?”
“Do you mean your companions?” Yaret asked. She was only a yard away from the enemy. Charo gritted his teeth, trying to make himself ready to strike with his sword at any sign of danger. The stoneman seemed to be unarmed, but still…
“Where are they? When are they coming back?”
“They have all gone west, I think,” she said. “At least, we saw the tracks of an army headed out in that direction. There’s nobody else left here in town, so far as we can tell. What happened?” Charo could not believe she was talking to a stoneman in this way, as quietly as if he was – as if he was Dil.
“Kill him,” he muttered. He would have leapt forward and killed the stoneman himself, if he had known how to do it cleanly. But he might so easily get it wrong. And then the man would be enraged.
Neither Yaret nor the stoneman seemed to hear him.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I got left behind on the hills,” the stoneman said. His words sounded thick and blurred as if he could hardly talk.
“Why were you up there alone?”
“I was looking for the burner. I got lost. I don’t know where the others are. Can you find them for me? I need them. I need athelid.”
“Do you mean ethlon?”
“Athelid. Have you got any? Can you find some? I need some athelid! I’ve been waiting so long! It’s hurting! I can’t stand it any more!”
And to Charo’s bewilderment he threw himself at the wall again, hammering it with his head as if to hammer the stones further into his skull.
Yaret caught at his arm. “Stop. Come away from there,” she said. “Stop it. That won’t help. How long is it since you last had athelid?”
“Days, days, I don’t know. Please, give me some athelid.” The words slurred and Charo realised to his horror that the man was crying.
Yaret held the stoneman’s arm, and then his hand, as if he were a child. He raised his other hand to his head as if he could hardly bear to touch it.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Brael. Oh, it hurts. It hurts.”
“How old are you, Brael?”
“I’m ten. Please give me some. I need it. Please.”
“I have no athelid,” said Yaret.
The stoneman stared at them through the blood and tears. He seemed to see Charo’s sword now for the first time, and made a lunge at it. Charo pulled it away, out of his reach.
“Stop,” said Yaret, holding firmly onto the stoneman’s arm, “stop it. No swords.” It was lucky, thought Charo, that the stoneman must have been weakened by pain and maybe hunger too, for he was bigger than either of them. A big stumbling bully. Not so brave now, without his darkburns.
“I’ll kill him,” he said breathlessly.
“Give me the sword! I’ll kill, I’ll kill myself,” the stoneman stammered thickly. “If there’s no athelid and they’ve all gone, I have to. Have to kill myself. Stop it hurting. Or kill me. Please.”
“Wait,” said Yaret. “What were you and your army doing here?”
“Kill me.”
“Answer me first.”
“We came here…” He shook his head as if he couldn’t remember, and then groaned and put his hands to his head again as if the very shaking of it caused him agony.
“You came here to destroy and murder,” Charo said accusingly. His voice sounded too high. He was angry and did not know what to do with his anger except to throw it at the stoneman. Run him through. Cut off his hands. Slice off his head and use it as a football… He began to feel a little sickened, but had this man and his companions not done even worse? Had they not murdered his entire people?
“Wait,” said Yaret again, with commanding patience. “Why this town?”
“The hills,” the stoneman said. “It’s in the hills.”
“What is?”
“The skeln,” he said. “Now kill me. Kill me now.”
Yaret seemed to go completely still. “What is the skeln?”
“Up, up there, on those hills. The trees.” The stoneman waved his trembling arm towards the bare, bruised slopes above the town.
“Trees.”
“All dead. None left any more.”
“What do you use the skeln for?”
“Heads. Please. It hurts.”
“Is the skeln a medicine? Does it make the pain go away?” she asked; again, thought Charo, far too gently.
“No. That’s athelid. Please, give me some athelid! I need it.”
“I have none. Your companions took it. Where can I find them? Where were they going?”
“Somewhere called, called Kelvha. I don’t know where it is. Please find them. Please get me athelid.”
“I’m afraid they have long gone.”
The stoneman began to tremble all over, not just his hands. Then he was crying again. “I have to die. You have to kill me. Hurts too much. I can’t do it. Not on my own.”
Charo’s mouth was dry. He felt sick; but he would have to do this. He just didn’t know how. All these months he’d thought he longed to kill a stoneman: to plunge the sword in through the odious red tunic and see his enemy collapse in fear and disbelief. Now he just felt paralysed. He couldn’t kill a crying man.
He raised the sword without knowing how he would use it. Yaret put her hand against his arm. “Wait,” she said, with the same quiet authority as before, and he lowered the sword again.
“Brael,” she said to the stoneman.
“Kill. Kill me now.” The eyes that stared at her were full of blood. The man was shaking from head to foot.
“Brael. Know that you have served with loyalty, and that you die with honour.”
Then she drew her knife. The stoneman seized her hand and together they drove the blade down through the tunic, deep into the man’s breast. He gazed into her face and let out a long, slow sigh and then began to pant. She supported him with one arm round his shoulders, her other hand still clasped by his around the knife-hilt, as he sank down to the ground.
Eventually his hand fell away. It was another moment before she pulled out the knife. Charo could not see her face; but he heard her say Oveyn, and then he burst out.
“That was a stoneman! What are you saying Oveyn for? Why did you tell him that he died with honour when he killed all our people?” He was shaking almost as badly as the stoneman had, and now he felt ashamed that he hadn’t used the sword himself right at the start.
“He was ten,” said Yaret.
“He was crazy.”
“Yes, he was crazed, that’s true. And he was ten.”
“That’s ridiculous. He can’t have been ten. He was at least eighteen!”
“That was what I thought too, when I asked his age. I expected eighteen or twenty. I didn’t expect ten. But I had to take him at his word.” She was wiping the knife on the stoneman’s tunic. She seemed quite calm. Charo didn’t know how to stop himself from shaking. He was no better than the stoneman. It was terrible.
Thankfully she wasn’t looking at him: she was looking at the stoneman’s hands.
“Such fine skin,” she said. “Uncalloused. His face, too, so unweathered. He was young.” Her voice was meditative.
“I hope you don’t want to bury him as well,” said Charo, trying to sound indifferent, although his voice came out high and harsh.
“No.” She stood up. “What I want to do now is to go and look for the skeln, up in those hills.”
“It’s in the wrong direction!” Then he felt ashamed again.
“Yes, it is; but it’s not far. We can be there and back before nightfall.” She looked at him. “You stay here if you wish.”
“No, I’ll come with you,” said Charo. He didn’t want her to think he was a coward. Nor did he want to be left alone in this nightmarish town, with its pointless guardians and the dead stoneman – stoneboy – stoneman – seeping blood into the gutter.
She nodded and began walking back towards the horses. Charo looked down at the stoneman again. How could he be ten? He was simply mad with pain. Delirious. All that blood around his battered head. Beating it against the wall.
Charo swallowed and said Oveyn hurriedly, underneath his breath, before he stumbled back to remount Poda. His limbs did not seem to be working properly and he was glad when Poda followed Wulchak of her own accord. He wanted to get out of this dead place as fast as possible.