The Wind on Fire Trilogy: Firesong

Now Kestrel joined them, beckoning Bowman aside for a word in private. Her companion, the young woman who had once been a princess, met his eyes and immediately looked away. She had always been proud. Now that she had nothing, now that even her beauty had been taken from her, she was still proud, but in a different way. Her great liquid amber eyes now watched the world go by saying, I ask for nothing, I expect nothing. But those scars! Those two soft mauve wounds that ran down her cheeks, two diagonal furrows from the cheekbones to the corners of the mouth, they fascinated Bowman. They changed everything in that once so sweetly pretty face. The man who had cut her had said, ‘I kill your beauty!’, but in its place had come a new beauty: harder, older, more remarkable.

Kestrel turned his attention towards their mother, who was just now reaching the resting place.

‘Look at her, Bo. She can’t go on like this.’

‘While she can walk, she’ll walk,’ said Bowman. ‘That’s how she wants it.’

‘You know what it is that weakens her.’

Of course he knew. The prophet Ira Manth had said, My gift is my weakness. I shall die of prophecy. This was the secret that all knew but none spoke. Ira Hath, their own prophetess, was dying of the warmth she felt on her face.

‘It’s how she wants it,’ said Bowman again.

‘Well, it’s not how I want it.’ Kestrel felt trapped and angry. She heard in Bowman’s voice the same note of resignation that now softened her mother’s words: as if they had both decided to suffer for the good of others, and so refused to do anything to help themselves. ‘I’d rather never get to the homeland than have her like this.’

‘I don’t think any of us have any choice.’

‘Then let it happen soon, whatever it is. Let it come soon.’

Dock! Dock! Dock! It was the sound of Tanner Amos’s axe ringing out over the cold land. He and Miller Marish were felling one of the trees for firewood.

Kestrel returned to the women by the wagon, where a fire was already burning. Mrs Chirish, rooting among the husks on the ground, picked up one kernel and after a short inspection declared,

‘Sourgum. These are sourgum trees. We can eat this.’

Branco Such had already tried.

‘Eat them? They’re vile! I shouldn’t be surprised if they were poisonous!’

‘You have to boil them first, don’t you? Strip off the husks and boil the kernels. That’s how you get the gum.’

‘The gum is edible?’ said Hanno.

‘Certainly it is. A rare treat, too.’

So Hanno set the children to gathering the husks and shelling them, while the biggest cook-pot was half filled with water and put on the fire to boil. The Mimilith boys spotted that here and there in the bare branches of the trees were other husky nuts that had not yet fallen, so they raced each other up the knobbly trunks to pull them down.

‘Be careful, boys! Make sure the branches can take your weight!’

‘Stand back! She’s coming down!’

Tanner Amos’s warning cry was followed by a long rending crash, as the tree he had been felling toppled at last. He and Miller Marish and Mumpo then set to work with axes and cleavers to cut up the branches into cordwood.

Mrs Chirish sat over the pot and stirred the sourgum kernels as the water seethed. Seldom Erth unharnessed the horses and let them join the cows, grazing the sparse wiry grass. A group of women found places round the fire where they could lay out their blankets and their needles and thread, and get on with the making of bedrolls against the coming cold weather.

Bowman stood apart, looking towards the group of sewing women, telling himself it was better for all of them if he kept his distance from her. The Johdila Sirharasi of Gang, once a princess, now plain Sisi, sat beside Lunki, the stout woman who had been her servant, and who still, despite the changes, insisted on serving her. Sisi held her back straight, her head bent over her work, and did not speak. Every day Bowman expected her to fail under the hardships of the march, but she proved him wrong. She bore more than her share of the tasks, ate less than her share of the food, and never complained. Bowman reflected on what Mumpo had said, that he seemed to be avoiding her. That was not right.

He crossed over to the women by the fire. For a few moments, as if warming himself by the fire, he stood near Lunki and her mistress. Sisi was stitching the heavy blankets with small tight stitches, working with care and concentration. He could see from the groove the needle made in her fingertip how hard she had to push to drive the point through the stiff fabric. He could also see the smooth curve of her neck, and the rise and fall of her breast as she breathed.

‘That’s good work,’ he said. ‘That’ll keep out the cold.’

She looked up, her eyes grave, questioning.

‘The tailor taught me,’ she said. ‘I’m doing my best.’

‘Hard on the fingers.’

‘Is it?’ She looked at her needle-finger as if unaware of the pressure she was putting on her soft skin. ‘Oh, that doesn’t matter.’

Bowman heard the clatter of falling nuts, and looking up saw that Pinto had joined the Mimilith boys in the sourgum trees. They had already stripped the lower branches of nuts, and were now climbing higher, each in an adjoining tree. He could think of nothing more to say to Sisi, who sat, head bent, steadily sewing, so he moved away once more. As he passed the wagon, Mist the grey cat uncurled himself from his bed on the tent-cloths, and jumped down to rub against his legs.

‘Well, boy,’ he said. ‘Are we nearly there?’

‘No, my Mist. First we must reach the mountains.’

The cat did not speak aloud, nor did Bowman answer him aloud. But they understood each other well. The cat asked this question every day, and every day received the same answer. There were never any mountains to be seen, so Mist had come to believe that Bowman chose to conceal their true destination. Mist knew that Bowman had great powers, greater even than his former master, Dogface the hermit, who had been able to fly. If the boy had such powers, he could not possibly be leading all these people with so much effort for so long, without knowing where he was going. Therefore their destination was a secret. So reasoned the cat, clever but not wise.

‘And on the other side of the mountains, your homeland.’

‘Yes. We believe so.’

‘It must be something very wonderful, this homeland.’

‘We shall see.’

‘Do the cats there know how to fly?’

‘I don’t know, Mist. I don’t know that there are any cats there. But if there are, I doubt if they can fly.’

‘I shall teach them.’

Bowman smiled and stroked the cat’s head. This annoyed Mist. It had always been his heart’s dream to fly, and just once he had made a jump that was so immense that it must have been flying. He had told the boy, and the boy had said he believed him, but the look in his eyes had shown that this was no more than a polite pretence.

‘You don’t believe me.’

‘If you say you flew, Mist, then I believe you.’

‘Well, I did fly.’

The truth was, he couldn’t be entirely sure. The time he had flown, it had only been a short distance. A short flight is very like a long jump.

‘Take care, Pinto!’

This was Hanno, calling out in warning. Pinto had seen a plump husk on a very high branch, and she reckoned she was light enough to reach it without danger. Looking across to the neighbouring tree, she saw that Mo Mimilith was also climbing, and he saw her. At once, instinctively competitive, they began to race each other.

Mo Mimilith was three years older than Pinto, and much heavier. At first his greater strength enabled him to outclimb her. But then he felt the branches bending beneath him, and realised he was at his limit. Pinto kept on climbing, her skinny little body easily supported by the upper branches; and so was the only one to reach to the very top of the tree.

She looked down and saw the wagon, with the horses among the cows, snuffling out what coarse grazing they could find. She saw the huddle round the fire, where the sourgum was being boiled, and she smelled its strange sharp-sweet smell. She saw her mother, seated on the ground with her father beside her, holding her hands and stroking them, as he so often did. Then she looked across and saw Mo Mimilith on his way down his tree.

I’ve won! she thought, exulting. I’m the highest one of all!

Only now, turning and looking up and ahead, did she think to take advantage of her high vantage point. There were the rolling hills, receding into the distance. But beyond them, far off, she could clearly discern through hazy low cloud a range of jagged white-capped peaks.

‘Mountains!’ she cried. ‘I can see mountains!’

No one else would be able to climb so high. She must be the eyes for all. She looked and looked, and memorised.

Some way off, the rolling land levelled out and became rocky and craggy: it seemed to be a huge desert of cracked and shivered land, a rubble of boulders and fissures. On the far side of this broken plain, where the cloud lay low over the land, there was a belt of dark forest running from side to side of the visible world. Within this forest gleamed a river; and beyond the river towered the mountains. They rose through the cloud, to rear their bare-toothed peaks all along the white horizon.

Bowman called up to her.

‘Can you really see the mountains?’

‘Yes! Far, far away!’

People were gathering below, staring up at her.

‘Be careful!’ That was her father, who could see how the treetop swayed under her weight.

She came scrambling down, a little too fast, showing off, and grazed one arm. She pretended not to notice. The marchers gathered round her, eager to hear what she had seen.

‘There’s a river,’ she told them. ‘And a forest. But before that, empty land, for miles and miles, all full of cracks.’

‘Cracks? What kind of cracks?’

‘Like cracks in dried mud. Only much bigger.’

‘Did you see any people? Any houses? There must be people living somewhere.’

‘No. I didn’t see anyone.’

‘How far to the mountains?’ asked the teacher, Silman Pillish.

‘Miles and miles. Days and days.’

‘Days and days!’

‘And how far beyond the mountains?’

This question was addressed to Ira Hath. She was the prophetess, the one who knew the way to the homeland; though, as she told them again and again, she would only know it when at last it lay before her. She had seen it in a dream. They would find it on the other side of mountains, at the end of a path rising between steep slopes of land. It would be snowing. Ahead, the sun would be setting. Red sky, falling snow: and framed in the V of the hills, a land where two rivers ran to a distant sea.

‘I’ll know it when I see it,’ she said. ‘First we must get there.’

‘It’s just beyond the mountains,’ the people told each other. ‘The homeland!’

Even though the mountains Pinto had seen were so far away, this news gave everyone heart. They felt the end of their journey had been sighted. Their task now was to survive the getting there.

While Hanno Hath questioned Pinto more closely about what she had seen, Kestrel went up to Bowman.

‘It’s only mountains,’ she said, very low. ‘We don’t know the homeland’s on the other side. There might be a desert on the other side, or a swamp, and then more mountains, before we get to the sea.’

‘There might.’

‘So there’s nothing to get so excited about.’

‘No,’ said Bowman. ‘But people need hope.’

‘I don’t. I don’t want hope. I want what’s real. I won’t believe we’re getting to the homeland until I see it.’

‘You don’t really want to get to the homeland at all, do you, Kess?’

‘Of course I do.’ Kestrel was irritated that Bowman could think this of her. ‘I don’t want to be wandering about for ever, always tired and hungry. Why would I want that?’

‘I don’t know. I just feel that you’re frightened of the homeland.’

‘Oh, you feel. You’re always feeling. Why would I be frightened of the homeland? It’s the place where we all sit about being happy for the rest of our lives, isn’t it?’

Too angry to wait for his reply, she took herself off to the far side of the trees, where Mumpo and Tanner Amos were chopping wood. For a few moments, as she listened to the dock, dock, dock of the axe, she thought how maddening her brother could be, with his assumption that he knew her better than she knew herself. Then as she calmed down she realised he was right. She was afraid of getting to the homeland; and not only because of what it meant for ma. There was something else.

She tried to make out the shape of her fear. She could imagine the journey ahead, but when she tried to imagine the end of the journey, all she saw was a blank. It was like a book without the last few pages. All at once there was nothing. That was what she was afraid of: the nothing. But nor did she want the journey to go on for ever.

What is it I want? she thought, shivering. What’s wrong with me?

Tanner Amos and Mumpo between them filled the bed of the wagon with firewood. And now Mrs Chirish’s sourgum was beginning to set. She dipped a spoon in the sticky froth and drew out a scoop of the amber-coloured gum, and waved it back and forth until it cooled. Then she nibbled at it.

‘There it is,’ she pronounced. ‘Fetch some dishes.’

All the people round the fire had a taste. Some liked it and some didn’t. It was odd, both sweet and sour at the same time, and it got stuck in the teeth; but it was edible, no question about it.

Guided by Mrs Chirish, they spread the gum over all the tin dishes they had, and let it cool. It hardened quickly in the cold air. Then when it was hard, they banged the underside of the tin plates with spoons, and the gum cracked off in clear amber fragments. The fragments were then packed in barrels, with layers of flattened husks between them to stop them sticking to each other. By the time they had done, they had filled four barrels, and there were enough crumbs left for everyone to have a snack.

Hanno was quietly grateful to Mrs Chirish. Their supplies of food were running very low. Now he calculated they could survive on a barrel of sourgum a day, which gave them four days to find the next supply of food. Water was another matter. He checked the level in the big water barrel, and made another simple calculation. The people must drink; the horses and cattle too. No doubt they would find a stream soon. But just in case, it would be wise to save all they could.

‘From now until we find water,’ he ordered, ‘the ration will be two cups a day each. And no washing.’

‘No washing!’ exclaimed Lunki. ‘How is my precious one to keep clean?’

‘It won’t be for long,’ said Sisi. ‘We’ll find water soon.’

Hanno made his rounds, speaking softly to Creoth about the cows, and to Seldom Erth about the horses, saying nothing new, giving no instructions they would not have carried out for themselves, but showing a care for each person on the march. This was the nature of his leadership: not the shouting of orders, but the letting himself be seen as the link between all of them, the one to whom they all turned their eyes, so that as they went on their way, they went together.

Now he gave the signal to resume the march. The group round the fire put out the flames, stamping out the embers and rescuing the unburned faggots to be used again. Others bent down to lace up boots that had been loosened to ease their weary feet. Bowman moved to the front of the column as it formed, and took up his place as the lead watchman, his eyes alert for danger. So it was he who found the body.

It was not the first body they had passed on their long march. In these lawless times, the robber bands that attacked travellers on lonely roads often left their victims dead or dying; when what knives and clubs had begun was finished by the night cold. The Manth people could do no more than pause on their way, and cover the sad remains with stones, as an act of respect.

This was the body of an old man, lying face down on the ground, his hands raised as if to cover or protect his face. Bowman knelt down by his side, and gently eased the body over, to satisfy himself that there was no hope of saving him; though the utter stillness of the body told him that life was long gone. The hands remained clutched to the dead face, concealing the features. Bowman let his sensitive probing mind reach gently into that lifeless skull, and as he did so he felt for an instant that something was moving within it; then the moment passed, and all was still. He took hold of the dead man’s hands, and drew them away from his face.

The eyes were open, and unseeing. The old cheeks grizzled, unshaven. The dry lips apart, as if calling. But most shocking of all, the skin of his face, from brow to chin, was lacerated: scratched and torn into a hideous wreck, the blood dried black in the dead white skin.

Mumpo now joined him, and stood looking down at the dead man in silence.

‘What would do that to him?’ said Bowman.

‘He did it to himself. Look at his fingernails.’

Mumpo had noticed what Bowman had overlooked: the dead man’s fingernails were black with dried blood. For some terrible reason, as he was dying he had torn at his own face.

The rest of the marchers were approaching. Creoth came up to them, and looked.

‘Oh, the wretched man!’

‘Let’s cover him,’ said Bowman. ‘No need for the others to see.’

He scraped up handfuls of stony earth and began to sprinkle it over the corpse. Mumpo and Creoth did the same. Bowman hurried to cover up the torn face. He thought again as he let the earth drop over that dead open mouth that something moved: a brief flurry in the air that shivered the falling dust. He thought he heard a faint whine pass close by his head, as of some small flying insect. But then the wagon was rolling near, and with it his father.

‘Poor fellow,’ said Hanno Hath, kneeling down to help with the roadside burial.

When the body was entirely covered, a dusty mound that would not long resist the wind and the rain, the Manth people stood round the stranger and Hanno Hath rose to his feet to speak the customary funeral words.

‘We who are left behind watch you on your way.’

He fell silent for a few moments. No one spoke or moved. Then he went on with the old words in his quiet clear voice.

‘The long prison of the years unlocks its iron door. Go free now, into the beautiful land. Forgive us, who suffer in this clouded world. Guide us and wait for us, as we wait for you. We will meet again.’

He bowed his head, and they all repeated,

‘We will meet again.’

They could do no more. Hanno gave Bowman a quick sad smile, and turned to his wife. Bowman caught the faint whine he had heard before, and the quick shimmer in the air. He saw his father give a small start, and raise one hand to his throat. Bowman suddenly felt the close presence of danger.

‘What is it, pa?’

‘Nothing. Some little stinging insect. Nothing to worry about.’

He turned away, a little too quickly.

‘Pa, look at me.’

Hanno turned back, frowning with annoyance.

‘I’m alright, I tell you. We have to get moving. We’ve wasted enough time already.’

For the last time Bowman looked down at the long mound by the roadside, and wondered fearfully what would make a man tear at his own face. But now the column was reforming, and it was time to go.

2

Drunkenness

While the wagon had been stationary, Seldom Erth had loosened the horses’ harness, and Mrs Chirish had decided to wrap the cook-pots in an extra layer of cloth, afraid that the shaking of the wagon-bed would shatter them. The cows had drifted off in search of grass. Many of the people had sat down.

Now that it was time to move off again, Hanno Hath started to shout at them.

‘You! Cowman! If you can’t control your animals we’ll have them for dinner!’

Creoth was speechless with surprise. Hanno never spoke like that.

‘You! Old man! Did I say you could unharness the horses?’

Ira Hath, aware that something was wrong, tried to take him aside.

‘Hanno –’

‘Not now, woman. Come along, everybody! We’ve wasted enough time!’

Kestrel heard him, and reached out for Bowman with her mind.

What’s wrong with pa?

I’m not sure. Something bad’s happened to him. I need to feel him.

Come on. I’ll help you.

Kestrel knew what her brother meant when he said he wanted to ‘feel’ their father: he wanted to enter Hanno’s mind. For that he needed close physical contact, preferably brow to brow. But Hanno was moving fast, never staying in one place for long. The twins didn’t want to alarm everyone by making a direct attack on their father.

‘Pa,’ said Kestrel. ‘Before we set out again, let’s have a wish huddle.’

‘No time,’ said Hanno.

‘Please. It won’t take a moment.’

‘Ma! Pinto!’ called Bowman. ‘Wish huddle!’

Hanno turned on them, eyes blazing with anger.

‘I am the head of this family! You heard me say we have no time! How dare you disobey me!’

Pinto had come running.

‘But I’d like a wish huddle, pa –’

Smack! He struck Pinto across the face with the flat of his hand.

‘You will do as I say!’

The blow hurt. Pinto bit her lip to stop herself crying, not understanding how her gentle father could hit her so hard.

‘I’m sorry, pa.’

Hold him! Don’t let him move!

Bowman and Kestrel hurled themselves forward in the same moment. Bowman got his arms round his father’s chest, pinning his arms to his side, while Kestrel wrapped herself round his legs. Hanno struggled, and fell to the ground, but Bowman did not let go. He pressed his head to his father’s head, and summoned all his power to force his way into his father’s mind. He found it at once, felt its shape without seeing it: it was like a grub, curled up tight, with a thick and slimy skin. He tried to grasp it, but it was slippery, and it wriggled out of his grip. It was strong, and growing stronger, feeding on its host that was his father.

Bowman set about flooding his own mind into his father’s mind, filling him up, leaving the grub no room to breathe. None of this was apparent to the others, who saw only that Bowman and Kestrel had fallen to the ground with their father in their arms, and were holding onto him. They crowded round, not sure what to do.

‘Leave them!’ said Ira.

Bowman found his father’s brow at last, and pressed his own brow against it, and the force pulsed from him in waves.

Out! Out! Out!

Suddenly he felt all resistance cease. His father’s body gave a juddering jerk, and went limp. The creature was gone.

Hanno Hath let his head fall. Bowman released his hold. He took his father’s face and turned it, so he could see it. It was mottled with pink blotches, and beaded in sweat. Bowman gathered up his loose sleeve and wiped his father’s brow. Kestrel let go of his legs, and moved to his other side, resting his head on her lap. Ira sat down close by, as did Pinto. Hanno’s eyes opened. He looked dazed.

‘Are you alright now, pa?’ asked Pinto.

‘Yes, darling.’

Bowman stood up, to reassure the anxious crowd.

‘He’s alright. Nothing serious.’

As he spoke, he looked round all the watching faces, searching for signs of any others who had been attacked in the same way. But everyone seemed as they had been before.