'We did not sanction this? cried Whin.
Ravan confronted her. The Master's brought us more meat in one day's hunt than our warriors could've managed in two whole seasons.'
These aren't meat,' bellowed Akaisha.
Hand on hips, Ginkga was standing in front of Galewing greyed by the dust of the hunt. 'You allowed this… this sacrilege?'
When the man said nothing, she grew enraged. 'Have you forgotten that heaveners are sacred?'
'So is the survival of the Tribe,' Galewing said in a high clear voice which found many echoes in the crowd.
'Would the other Elders have us set them free?' cried Ravan.
Galewing turned regarding the people. 'If we do, we'll starve. Shall we choose life or death?'
The answer seemed to come hissing like a sandstorm. 'Life.'
This is unholy,' Carnelian heard Akaisha cry, but the rest was drowned out by the rumble of the Tribe stamping on the earth and the chant: 'Life. Life. Life.'
BETRAYAL
Venerate your aged for in their memories the past finds its only refuge.
When Poppy found Carnelian, she prevailed upon him to lift her up onto his shoulders so she might be able to look over the rampart at the heaveners. Carnelian was hardly aware of her gurgles of childish delight. He had watched the Elder women fleeing back towards the Grove. Fern, Sil, the whole Tribe was being marshalled by Galewing. Osidian stood apart, his face swathed, his eyes lazily following the carnival of preparations. It was Poppy's cry and shudder that alerted Carnelian to the first volley of javelins. Perched on the rampart, the younger men cast another volley at their trapped victims. As these dropped from their hides without leaving even a wound, there was a swell of consternation among the watchers. Carnelian lifted Poppy from his shoulders and saw how frightened she was. He did not feel he could send her back to the Grove on her own, but neither did he feel he was free to take her. Finding Sil, he was relieved when she agreed to go with her.
'Look after Fern,' Sil said. There's something wrong with him.'
The heaveners?'
'Something else. He won't tell me… perhaps you…?'
Carnelian nodded solemnly, kissed Poppy, then waved them off and went looking for Fern.
When he found him, Fern was helping some women improvise a billhook: a long pole of scouring-rush with a curved end tipped with flints. To get close to him, Carnelian became embroiled in its construction. When it was finished, many bodies were required to counterbalance it as it swung, swivelling upon the earth rampart. Swarms of children ran about screaming and laughing as if it were a game. The women waited, poised, until one of the heaveners came to eat from one of the magnolias edging the meadow, then swinging the billhook, they slashed a cut into its throat. The screaming head lifted away, seeding the air with blood. As more of the giants fell prey to the billhook, cries of amazement became laughter at how stupid the heaveners were.
Carnelian tried to strike up a conversation with Fern but he was apparently deaf to anything he said. They ended up working together in silent anger making more billhooks.
Under constant attack, the heaveners raged and stamped and backed away but, hungry, they kept coming in to feed. Blood pouring from their countless wounds soaked into the earth and, when the earth could drink no more, blood began trickling into the ditch. The slaughter went on, until, even as the sun shed its own red light over the scene, it was outdone by that gory place where the dying heaveners rolled scarlet in their own blood.
The heaveners' booming death-cries followed Carnelian and Fern all the way back to the hearth. Seeing them, Sil questioned Carnelian with her eyes. He shook his head. Heads were hanging everywhere around the hearth.
Wearing a deep and seemingly permanent frown, Akaisha welcomed her son back to the hearth and everyone else murmured their welcomes.
'I don't suppose your brother's going to join us?'
Fern shrugged.
Akaisha went back to ladling stew into bowls. Carnelian watched her and saw how haunted she looked.
'At least we'll soon have plenty to eat,' said one of the youngsters, going pale as her mother glared at her.
As they ate the only sound was their slurping. The rest of the Grove was unnaturally silent, as if even the mother trees themselves were listening to the heaveners dying.
Poppy had to shake Carnelian to wake him. The first thing he saw was that she had been crying.
'Everyone's going down to butcher the heaveners.'
'Surely just the women,' Carnelian said, knowing it was a false hope.
Poppy shook her head. 'No, Carnie, Mother Whin said the men must help too.'
To give himself a chance to find courage to face the day, he sent her to fetch some water. He had slept badly. The sorry, plaintive heavener cries had haunted his dreams and his half-wakings.
When Poppy returned, he thanked her, drank the water and then rose. Akaisha, Fern and the others were there: men and women, the children too. The women were carrying the scythes the men had made for them the night before. The young were subdued. Fern looked miserable; Akaisha, aged.
'You didn't sleep, my mother?' Carnelian asked her as everyone began moving down the hill.
She looked up at him angrily. 'Did you?'
Fern put his arm about her shoulders and she leaned into him.
They were walking along the Blooding when the massacre came into sight: mountains of hide beneath swirling scavenger clouds.
'So much meat,' Sil said, sadly.
The Bloodwood Tree had been partially pushed over by a heavener that lay against it like a landslide. Its neck formed a dyke running for some distance on the other side of the earthbridge.
'Can we go over?' one child begged, her voice shrilly echoed by others.
'Over to the Killing Field.'
Other children took up the cry. 'Killing Field, over to the Killing Field.'
Gaping, people were clambering up the rampart to peer at the monsters. Ravan was there with Krow and many other youths. They began throwing stones and no one stopped them. Carnelian watched them bounce here and there off the carcasses, causing ravens to screech and hop into the air. He saw a stone roll down the back of a heavener, eventually being swallowed by a brown, blood pool.
They must be dead,' cried Ravan, hurling another stone to prove it.
At last, gingerly, he led others across the narrow earth bridge, holding their scythes in front of them. They tapped the hide wall of the neck then stepped back, anticipating it lifting into the sky, but it might as well have been the trunk of a fallen cedar. Ravan lunged forward, swinging his scythe, tearing a red gash in the wall so deep it exposed white vertebrae. Soon he was joined by others, hacking at the flesh while up to their ankles in blood.
The Bluedancing were evicted from their camp in the Eastgarden. Huge fires were lit and trestles made and set above them. The rituals were to be maintained as best they could. There was not enough red ochre and so
Ginkga commanded the Bluedancing to paint their faces with blood. Hunks of meat were carried on bending poles and dumped on any spare piece of ground, then the Bluedancing were made to fall on them: slicing, hacking, tearing the flesh into chunks which were then packed on to the trestles. It was Osidian who had suggested they smoke the meat, declaring that sun-curing would be too slow. Soon, to feed the fires, they were forced to fell
