Bloodstone (16 page)

T
HE STENCH WAS A living presence, as real as any captive. A reek of sweat and vomit and piss and shit so overpowering that Keirith could taste it, could feel it burning his eyes, staining his lungs, poisoning his skin. All the scrubbing in the world could never clean this boat; the very air reeked of misery and hopelessness.

But the confinement was even worse. Shoulders rubbed against his, bare thighs brushed his legs, elbows dug into his ribs. Even the gentlest touch made him flinch, recalling the terror of those unseen hands that had seized him in the dark.

The first day, the constant pitch of the boat made everyone sick and there were always hands, some light as butterfly wings, others impatient, all groping their way toward the small open space at the far end of the hole that served as a slop area. Those who were too sick to move simply fouled the planks—and the people—around them.

They measured the passing of time by the opening of the door above them. Morning and evening, the raiders tossed down skins of lukewarm water and sacks of food. Keirith choked down the hard flatbread, but the saltiness of the dried meat only made him more desperate for water.

The raiders had moved him to this boat the morning after the rape. He’d made a feeble attempt to escape, but after one lurching step, the halter around his neck jerked him to his knees. After that, he’d splashed through the shallows after his captor, obedient as a bullock about to be slaughtered.

Numbly, he’d observed details: the salty semen stink of the tide pools; the cold water burning every scrape and cut on his body; the man floating facedown in the water, gray hair rippling like lakeweed. And the red-haired men and boys being herded toward two of the boats.

After the worst of the seasickness passed, his fellow captives spent much time discussing that.

“It might mean we’ll be given special treatment,” someone speculated.

“It might mean we’ll be sacrificed,” another muttered.

“They cut down the forests for their fields,” a voice intoned. “They dug stone out of the earth for their altars. They stole the children of The People to sacrifice to their gods.”

“Shut up!”

Only those sitting closest had names. By the second day, he’d come to recognize Sinand’s whimpers and Roini’s muttered curses. Brudien was the voice of calm; Temet, the voice of reason; Dror, the incessant whisper of vengeance.

Although Keirith dreamed of revenge and escape, he grew impatient with Dror’s plotting. They were unarmed, weak from lack of food, and sick from the rough seas. How could they ever overpower their captors? The raiders never entered the hole. They never allowed them to leave it. And when they beached the boat at night, they left guards on board.

Like dogs worrying a bone, the captives spent part of every day sharing stories of the raids on their villages. No one, it seemed, had any warning.

“Normally, our currachs would have been out to sea,” Brudien said. “We could have spotted their boats. But we were still cleaning up after the Gathering. How could they have known that?”

Roini cursed. “The traders. They’d sell their mothers if there was profit in it.”

“Or one of the southern tribes.” That had to be Dror. When he wasn’t plotting escape, he was assigning blame, whether to the neighbor who elbowed him or the chiefs who had failed to take the threat of the raiders seriously.

Talk of home always ended in muffled tears or frightened speculations about the fate awaiting them. The hopeful predicted slavery, the gloomy, death, but the doomsayers spoke only in whispers lest they frighten the others.

Keirith tried to shut out the voices. He didn’t want to share their pain or their memories; he had enough of his own.

In every village, the reek of decaying bodies and clouds of black birds atop the Death Huts gave mute testimony to disaster. In every longhut, survivors told Darak the same tale: families awakened before dawn by raiders storming into their huts; men and women clubbed and dragged to the boats, others snared with nets as they stumbled from their homes. A few managed to slip away in the darkness, their freedom bought with the lives of the men and women who fought back. Once any resistance was crushed, the raiders looted what they could and left, their departure accompanied by the wails of those either too young or too old to be considered valuable as slaves.

Keirith’s warning had spared them from that fate. Their death toll was higher, but perhaps a swift death was better than a life of slavery. It was certainly better than death upon a Zherosi altar.

When their coracles scraped ashore, the hollow-eyed inhabitants straggled down to greet them; even tragedy could not dispel the ancient tradition of hospitality. They shared dried fish, dried venison, stale oatcakes—whatever the raiders had overlooked. Invariably, their hosts apologized for the meager fare. If the great Darak Spirit-Hunter and his friend would remain another day, they would slaughter a sheep and feast him as he deserved. Always, Darak thanked them and declined.

When they heard his mission, the men shook their heads, but after the meal, the women surrounded him, timid hands plucking at his sleeves.

“Please, Memory-Keeper. If you should see my Sinand—he’s thirteen, but small for his age, with bright red hair . . .”

“They took my husband, Memory-Keeper. Varon. You’ll know him by the scar on his chin . . .”

“My daughter Urna. She’s three moons gone with child, Memory-Keeper, and she hasn’t been well . . .”

“My sister Larina . . .”

“My brother Bosath . . .”

On and on it went, the litany of the lost. Darak repeated each name, the weight upon his spirit growing. Urkiat suggested they simply paddle past the villages, but he refused. He might have accepted the position of Memory-Keeper reluctantly, but he had fulfilled his duties: committing the bloodlines of his tribe to memory, teaching the children the legends and songs of their people, sharing those same legends and songs at the rites. But he also had the responsibility of carrying news—good and ill—to and from the Gatherings.

This year, he’d never gotten the chance to tell Erca about her new grandson or comfort Barima with the news that her mam had gotten over the cough that always plagued her around the Freshening. And although he had brought the tale of Rordi’s first tooth and Mela’s first moon blood to their grandparents before he left, the old couples were too shattered by the deaths in their families to do more than nod.

He had left his village with only one goal: to bring his son home. But he could not ignore the anguish of the other parents who had lost children or waited anxiously for news of a daughter who had married into another tribe. The living deserved to know the truth and the lost deserved to be mourned.

Sinand. Varon. Urna. Larina. Bosath. Owan.

Keirith.

Each night, they pursued him in dreams. Some nights, it was only formless hands pushing him down. Other nights, it was the Big One’s mocking smile and the faint whiff of sour wine on his breath as he crouched there, holding his wrists, while the others took their turns. The remembered agony of that first brutal penetration always catapulted him to wakefulness, but other dreams stretched out endlessly, filled with rhythmic animal grunts, the frenzied slap of flesh on flesh, the warm ooze of blood and semen down his thighs, and always, the soft chuckles that mingled with his muffled screams.

Each night, Keirith jolted awake, terrified he had made some sound that would reveal his secret to the others. On the fourth night, he awoke with the Big One’s hands on his shoulders and shrank back, flailing.

“Hush,” Brudien whispered. “It’s all right. No one will hurt you.”

Shame flooded him. He pushed the gentle hands away, hating himself for crying out, hating Brudien for hearing him.

Darak gazed at the promontory overlooking the mouth of the river. A sennight ago, he had deliberated with the chiefs on trade agreements and intertribal grievances. The beach below had teemed with visitors haggling with traders, cheering on those participating in contests of archery, wrestling, and footraces, sharing food and songs come the evening. Now it teemed with carrion eaters.

They had hoped to exchange their coracles for one of the village’s fishing boats, but every currach was hacked to pieces. Even with the help of the survivors, Urkiat guessed it would take three days to build the skeleton, cover it with hides, and seal the seams with pine resin. And even then, he refused to vouch for its seaworthiness. Darak argued for going on in the coracles, but bowed to Urkiat’s emphatic assertion that the little boats would capsize in the rough surf.

So the next morning, they shouldered their packs and headed south on foot. Girn’s village was only a few days’ walk. If it was still standing. Darak refused to believe the raiders had attacked every village along the coast, but he had never imagined the massive scale of destruction he had already seen. Even Urkiat, who had lived under the threat of the raiders for years, was shocked.

Everything Darak had known—or thought he’d known—about the raiders had been proven false. The southern chiefs had always claimed the attacks were haphazard, one village plundered while another a scant ten miles away escaped harm. Although a few reported raids during the spring and early summer, the vast majority came after the harvest was in.

But the last years had seen fewer and fewer southern chiefs at the Gatherings and they only ventured north in the spring. Those from the far south had not attended in more than five years. How could he have been so blind as to believe it would never happen to his folk?

“Why now?” he asked Urkiat as they picked their way along a stream bank, looking for a place to ford. “Why in force? Just because they needed . . . sacrifices?”

“Likely, they needed slaves to work in their fields, too. And their mines.”

“Mines?”

“Great pits they gouge in the earth where they dig for copper or tin. They need those to make bronze.”