The dawn sky was visible only in glimpses through the endless canopy, and the trees grew dense, their massive root systems sprawling, always ready to trip a careless foot. The Pretani moved silently, all but invisible in the homogenous gloom of the forest in their brown tunics and green and black faces, and Zesi had to concentrate hard to keep them in sight at all. She saw no animals – no deer, no boar, no sign of cattle. Evidently they knew to keep out of the way of Pretani hunters.
The light was brighter when the Root at last called a halt, at the base of yet another massive tree. Jurgi was breathing hard, but the Pretani didn’t look as if they had worked at all. Some of them glanced up at the canopy, wary, narrow-eyed.
The Root beckoned to the priest and Zesi. ‘So,’ he whispered. ‘What do you imagine we are hunting?’
Zesi said immediately, ‘Aurochs.’ The wild cattle, a huge and ferocious prey, had always been the target of the wildwood challenge.
‘Not today,’ the Root said.
Jurgi frowned. ‘The hunt is a custom. A way of binding our two peoples. And we always hunt aurochs. It is central to the meaning. Your own priest should advise you that to defy tradition is to court problems.’
But Zesi glanced at the Root’s priest, hunched over, grinning, showing green-dyed teeth. ‘He won’t help you, Jurgi. Look at him. He does what the Root tells him, not the other way round. If not aurochs, what are we to hunt?’
The Root glanced upwards. ‘Leafy Boys.’
Jurgi looked up, squinting. ‘And what are Leafy Boys? There is no Etxelur word-’
‘Of course not. Not all knowledge resides in salty Etxelur heads. It will be a new challenge for you, Zesi, daughter of Kirike.’ He pointed to the tree behind her. ‘Here’s how we will organise it. Each of us will climb a tree. You, Zesi, take this one. Priest, yours is over there-’
‘I’ve never climbed a tree,’ Jurgi moaned.
The Root sneered. ‘Then you can thank me for a new experience. If you see a Leafy Boy up there-’
‘What do they look like?’ Zesi asked.
‘You’ll know when you see them. If you find one, drive it out along a branch. In distress they call to each other, bring each other out of the foliage. And they leap from tree to tree – flit between the branches like birds. It’s a marvellous sight. We’ll soon see where they’re congregating, which tree. Then we’ll close in. Got that?’
It sounded simple enough to Zesi – just entirely unfamiliar.
The Root stalked away, and his hunters dispersed. Zesi saw Shade looking at her. He had an expression of confusion on his face, faint concern. But he trotted after his father. The priest, with an uneasy frown, jogged over to the tree that had been picked out for him.
Zesi was left alone with her tree. She was distracted by all those looks of disquiet. Something wasn’t right here. But she was in the hands of the Pretani. There was nothing for it but to climb. She had spare rope around her waist. She took this now, tied either end to her spear, and slung the spear over her back, leaving her hands free.
Then she walked up to the tree, stepped on its roots, and stroked its bark, which was sagging and wrinkled. It really was a very old tree. ‘Forgive me,’ she whispered to it. She looked for her first foothold, and found it in a bulge in the bark – some infestation, perhaps. She stepped up, fingers probing at cracks in the bark. The lower branches weren’t much more than her own height off the ground. When she had hold of the lowest she was able to pull herself up. From here the next branch, oddly bent back on itself, was only just above her.
On she climbed, up through the branches, arms and legs working, her back soon aching, the breath coming short, her palms scraped by the bark. When she glanced down, the tree trunk seemed to narrow to its roots, far below in the litter of the forest floor.
If her Other had been a squirrel this might have been enjoyable. She took a deep breath and climbed on.
Something moved, above her.
She stopped dead, peering up. A shadow shifted in the dense canopy, something massive, silent save for the faintest rustle of the leaves.
Her spear was useless, for there was no room to wield it here among the branches; she might have been better to leave it on the ground. But she had her blade, which she took from a fold in her tunic and tucked into her mouth, leaving her hands free. If she climbed higher, got a bit closer – she remembered the Root’s instructions about chasing her Leafy Boy to the end of a branch-
She saw the stone out of the corner of her eye, flying up from the ground, a whirling blade. She flinched back, but it caught her on the back of her shin, just above the ankle. Blood flowed, hot, and she cried out, her voice loud in the stillness of the forest.
Her injured leg slipped, slick with blood. She lost her grip and fell, landing heavily on her back on a thick branch. She would have fallen further if she hadn’t grabbed onto branchlets with both hands. The branch creaked and swayed, and her leg ached, but she held on.
It was deliberate! Someone had thrown the blade, and injured her, deliberately. Maybe even tried to kill her.
She tried to sit up, moving one hand at a time. If she could bandage her shin with a bit of tunic it would hold until she got down to the ground and the priest could treat it properly. Even so climbing would be difficult, with one weakened foot, and she had dropped her blade in the fall. She searched for her spare.
And it came down on her from above, a heavy, meaty tangle of thrashing limbs and muscles and teeth, a row of white teeth before her face.
She fell back on her branch, clutching with one hand, and got the other hand around the beast’s throat. She pushed back the face, those teeth. The creature thrashed and twisted and pummelled her with feet and fists and knees. It was so close in the green gloom she could barely make out what it was. A boy! It was a boy, with a scrawny torso and stick-like arms on which muscles bulged, skin stained green with leaf fragments, hair long and filthy, and a bright emptiness in the eyes. He might have been eight, nine, ten years old; he was strong, and wild.
She lost her grip. She fell backwards and crashed through one branch, two, before slamming down on another, winded, still high above the ground.
She backed up against the trunk of the tree, scrambling to find her blade.
But she was too slow. The boy swung down, grabbing onto whippy branchlets with a clean instinct, and he was on her again. All she could do was cling to him, trying to push him away, kicking feebly with her one good foot.
And now there were more of them, a second, a third, a fourth, heavy, lithe shapes crashing down through the foliage and joining the pile on top of her. She couldn’t move, she could barely breathe, as the squirming bodies pinned her and fists and feet slammed into her face, her sides, her belly. She couldn’t even see their faces. She thought of the baby lying helpless inside her.
Now she felt small hands dragging at her tunic, pawing between her thighs, and something pressed against her bare stomach – a penis, hard. All this was wordless, the boys silent save for grunts and snarls.
Something heavy slammed into the pile of boys, with a sound like chopping meat. One of them gurgled and fell away, and she felt the weight lift. It had been a spear; she could see the shaft. The other boys screamed and spat. Another spear flew, missing the boys.
With a final volley of blows and punches they scattered and spread. She could hear them go, crashing through the branches with no regard for the noise they made.
She was a mass of pain. She tried to hang onto the branch under her, but it was slick with blood.
She fell again. Another branch slammed into her back, stunning her, and she dropped towards a distant, leaf- strewn ground.
35
The priest woke her.
She had been dreaming of falling. She grabbed at his arm, the pallet under her body.
‘It’s all right.’ Jurgi’s face was over her in the gloom of the Pretani house, his hands on her shoulders, reassuring. ‘You’re safe. You’re down.’ His smile was dimly lit by firelight.
