Iwa shuddered and sank into the dark. Even now, after all that had happened, she could scarcely believe what she’d heard. All her life she’d sung paeans to Karnobog as the men slit the throats of animals over his shrine and burned the best cuts of meat before his bones. He couldn’t have deserted the clan.
‘Don’t prattle such foolishness, child,’ Katchka said, as she passed Tomaz over to one of the other women. ‘The lords of earth and leaf are slow to forget their children. Karnobog lives. I have seen his bones on the sacred litter. The god watches over us.’
‘Where was he last night?’ Alia said, and the women murmured. ‘Where was Jezi Baba when the Poles attacked? Did she fly through the night on her birch branch and grind the Poles into dust with her pestle and mortar?’
‘Do not be so quick to think that we are alone. The forest works in its own time; the lords of root and leaf keep to their own seasons.’
The women murmured and nodded. Katchka’s words still carried weight with them. But for how long? Iwa wondered.
‘Alia is right,’ a voice said. The words were soft and halting, but cut easily across the gloom. ‘We can rely on the gods no more.’ Over at the far end of the boat a figure stirred. It was Jacek; many times it had been he who’d killed the first boar of the hunt and there were few to better him with spear or bow. Now he levered himself from the floor with a gasp of pain. His face was pale and bathed with sweat, and the skins about him lay matted with blood. ‘We must make our own way now, without gods or spirits. We are forsaken, we must do what we can.’
‘What can we do?’ Alia wailed. ‘Most of our men are dead, or have fled into the forest.’
‘If we could get to the other ship we could free the men there.’ Jacek coughed as a thin stream of blood ran through his broken teeth.
‘For them to run off into the trees like rats?’ Katchka said as she steadied herself against the side of the ship, her fingers flinching as if not wanting to touch such a profane thing.
‘What about the guards?’ Alia said. If she noticed the old woman’s pain she gave no sign of it. Perhaps she was too preoccupied, her fingers twisting around her beaded necklace, the wood clinking. ‘They’d kill us before we even made it out of the boat, or else…’ She stopped short, her words trailing into the darkness. Some of the other women looked pitifully around them, the young casting glances at the narrow break in the tarpaulin.
Iwa sank against the ribs of the ship and let the conversation drift over her. If only she could get her hands on the water skins, and then perhaps a little food. I should have run into the forest when I could have; there’d be roots and berries and maybe even a little honey.
‘What I wouldn’t give for a handful of poisoned mushrooms,’ Katchka was saying. ‘Those woyaks would regret the day they forced me to cook for them, when they’re clutching at their bellies with their guts bled raw as spit pork.’
‘But we haven’t any mushrooms,’ Alia whispered, leaning against the side of the ship and staring blankly into the dark.
‘Do you think we’d be sold as slaves?’ someone asked. ‘To the Arabs, maybe?’
‘Only the young and the beautiful,’ Katchka muttered to herself. ‘They could do worse than be bonded to some noble lord.’
Around her the women murmured. Surely nobody believed in such things? Men and women had been taken before or sold themselves as slaves, but nobody believed in the strange, treeless Arab land they had heard about from the traders.
Often the traders used Arab coins, and everyone knew stories of treasure buried in the forest, but nobody thought of the Arabs as anything more than a wild tale to excite children or beguile women into the sleeping skins. The coins probably came from another part of the forest.
But could the place be real? Where did people go when they became slaves? A wave of fear closed across the ship, anxious glances cast from woman to woman. Would they be pretty or useful enough to be sold as slaves? What would happen to the others, would that be worse?
‘Iwa could pick the mushrooms.’ Jacek’s voice was so quiet that Katchka didn’t appear to notice. Slowly Iwa moved away and looked for somewhere to hide. ‘She knows the forest paths.’
‘Well, she’s always been one for skulking,’ Katchka said softly.
‘She can go in the night. She’s so small, like a rabbit. Who would notice her?’
Grunmir, Iwa almost said as she sank into the shadows. She’d seen plenty of gutted rabbits hanging from the branches.
‘Would you trust anything as important to a girl like that?’ one of the women said; but there was no one else. Most of the other children kept close to their mothers and picked berries – it wasn’t as if any of them had ever strayed far from the forest paths or knew where the poisoned mushrooms were to be found. Not like Iwa, who had always run off as far and as fast as she could.
‘Who else knows the best places?’ Jacek said.
‘That’s right,’ Katchka replied in triumph, ‘she’s never to be found when there’s work to be done.’
But you always got me in the end, Iwa thought sulkily, and if Grunmir catches me I’ll get more than a beating.
‘Now you know the kind of mushrooms I need,’ Katchka continued, ‘the tiny red-capped ones.’
‘With the white spots that look like stars,’ Iwa replied.
‘And the wide skirt underneath. Don’t forget to check for that – we don’t want to give this scum a taste of anything
