murky light Knot could see abrasions around their necks and ankles, and bruises and scars on their backs.
As they approached, the Leafies stared at Acorn and Knot, their empty gazes more animal than human. Knot could smell stale shit. One big buck fixed his gaze on Knot, challenging. Knot raised his club, and tried to think through the moves he would make if the buck tried anything.
But Acorn walked up to the Leafies without hesitation, and counted them. Their muddy limbs were so tangled up, it was hard to tell one from the other. ‘Three, four, five. There’s one missing. A girl.’
‘Maybe the men took her.’
‘Anyhow, this is the one.’ Acorn was pointing to the smallest Leafy under the net, a boy, very small, thin and slight, looking no older than four or five. His eyes were huge in a skull-like head, and his ribs showed through papery flesh. Acorn made a cooing noise, as if he was a baby. ‘Look at you. You’re so sweet!’ And, to Knot’s astonishment, the small Leafy seemed to respond. He moved towards her. ‘Look how little and skinny he is!’
‘The Leafies snatch kids and train them to run in the canopy. There’s bound to be some little ones.’
‘Well, they got it wrong with this one. He’s too weak – you can see that. And he’s not able to feed properly. He can’t fight with the others when the men bring the food.’
Knot’s head spun as he worked out what was going on here. ‘You’re feeding him. We’re not supposed to be feeding Leafies! They’re not puppies! They’re killers!’
She snorted. ‘Look at him. Little Shade isn’t going to kill anybody. Unless they die laughing.’
He stared at her face, pale in the gathering dawn light. ‘Little Shade? You’ve given him a name? Your father’s name?’
She pouted. ‘Why shouldn’t I give him a name?’
‘He’s a Leafy. Leafies don’t have names.’
‘He got snatched from some house, didn’t he? He must have had a name there, given him by his mother, poor thing.’
‘Yes, but – if your father found out-’
‘Well, he won’t as long as we both keep our mouths shut.’
Whatever he had come out here for it hadn’t been to make her angry. ‘All right, all right,’ he muttered. ‘Anyway if you’ve been feeding him already, what do you want me for?’
‘Because the handlers have changed the way he’s being kept. He was with other little ones before – not with these big ones. It was easier when it was just little ones. These big ones are more trouble.’ She dug the food out of her pack. It was deer meat, raw, the way the Leafies preferred, and a paste of crushed hazelnuts. All the Leafies stirred at the scent. ‘I thought the two of us would be all right, we could fight them off while he feeds.’
‘I’d rather not fight anybody at all.’
‘Let’s just try.’
He had no choice. He stood at her side, and pointed his stick at the Leafies. ‘We’ll go in together. But stay close to me.’
Cautiously they crept in towards the net. Knot felt his heart hammer even harder. Acorn, calm and determined, made straight for Little Shade and held out a slice of meat towards him. Another Leafy girl made a grab for it, and Knot prodded his stick at her and she fell back, hissing.
Little Shade was able to reach out through the net and grab the meat. He shoved it into his mouth and chewed enthusiastically.
When he’d done, Acorn tried him with another piece. The other Leafies stirred, eyes wide, but this time the big buck growled, and the others stayed back, letting the little one take the food.
Then Acorn went in a third time. Knot kept his stick raised, ready to attack.
77
On the morning they were to enter Northland, before the rest of the camp stirred, Shade walked out of his house and into the gathering light.
He was in a broad clearing in the world-forest, here at its ragged edge. The black mounds of the Pretani tents and lean-tos, hastily erected after the march the day before, were angular shapes in the grey-blue light. The men’s footprints had churned the ground to mud, and trails led off to the spring to the west, and to the south where the Leafy Boys lay in their night traps by the big old oak.
He hadn’t slept well – he never slept well with Zesi in his house. Now in the uncertain light he felt disoriented, as if the boundary between the waking and sleeping worlds had become blurred. This was one reason he’d come out for an early walk; it was best to face the day with a clear head.
In the hearth at the centre of the clearing the big communal fire still smoked, though the huge fallen trunk they had hauled from the forest was disintegrating into crimson embers. Stepping towards the hearth, Shade passed a heap of spears, and a row of buckets of shit. The smell was rank, and flies buzzed in the dark. This was one of Zesi’s tricks. Dip the tip of your spear in shit, and the chances were that even a grazing wound would become infected; even if you failed to kill an opponent quickly, you could do it slowly. The hunters, always proud and protective of their weapons, grumbled about the mess and the stink, and some had proposed poisons made of various herbs, but they were hard to prepare and dangerous to apply. Shit was always available, easy to apply, and safe enough to handle as long as you washed it off.
And here was Bark, squatting on his haunches by the hearth, with his stabbing spear propped before him. He might have been resting like this half the night; Shade had never known a man so patient, with leg muscles so immune to cramp. Bark had smeared soot from the fire over his bare limbs and face, the better to blend into the night’s dark. When he grinned at Shade his teeth showed white, with gaps inflicted by years of fighting.
‘No trouble?’
‘None.’ Bark pointed towards the forest wall around them; Shade could see one of the hunters Bark had posted to keep a look-out. ‘I swap them around every so often.’ He yawned, stretching his jaw, and shook his head. ‘Keep them awake.’
‘You ought to get more sleep yourself. Night after night you’re out here.’
‘Do you trust anybody else? I don’t. Besides, plenty of time to kip when we’re in Etxelur, and I’m lying back on a bed of those lovely flint nodules, with Ana’s lips around my cock.’
Shade didn’t react. Nobody here but Zesi knew about the tentative relationship he’d once had with Ana – certainly no Pretani left alive. He pointed east. ‘I’m going to take a look from the ridge. See how the lowland lies in the dark.’
Bark was predictably reluctant. ‘You want me to send somebody with you?’
Shade patted the flint axe he carried at his waist. ‘I’m never alone. Anyhow you’ll be busy soon enough, kicking the sluggards out of their beds.’
Bark nodded warily.
Shade set off east, out of the clearing. The forest swallowed him up, but his eyes, open to the blackness, picked out a trail from chinks of light and the stirring of dead leaves. He remembered the trail from the daylight, leading towards the ridge that rose up out of the forest cover.
It was an easy walk, for him. He had grown up in the forest. It had been strange for him to learn that others feared its enclosure, like the sea-coast folk of Etxelur, or marshland dwellers like the Eel People.
He soon found the trail rising, the forest growing less dense. Then he broke out into open ground, a rising bluff on which heather grew, thick and purple and waist-high at this time of year, a month after midsummer. He was facing east towards the dawn, and a crimson glow striped the horizon.
And, on the crest of the bluff, he saw a figure standing alone – stooped, shivering from more than the faint chill of the late summer morning. Shade stopped, silent, cautious, until he recognised the man. ‘Resin? It’s me.’
The priest whirled, startled. But then he had always been jumpy, even before he had cut back on the poppy juice. ‘Shade? That is you, isn’t it? My eyes aren’t so good in the dark.’
‘Then what are you doing out here?’
The priest clutched his hide robe closer. Adorned with cryptic symbols and networks of lines like tree branches, the robe was old, shabby, worn, and it stank of piss. He had a mane of ragged grey hair, a face that was lined and sunken, a mouth that was often slick with drool. Resin was younger than Shade, but he looked much older, the
