The Trials of Koli Page 4

  We come onto a hunters’ track, just square ahead of us. We could run a lot quicker now, on the flat and stamped-down earth where the weeds didn’t grow, and I gun to think we might get away after all.

  Well, that thought was a tempt to the devil. I heard a deep sound from somewhere very close by, like a big-bellied man groaning in his throat. Another come, and then another. A tree in front of me shrugged and shaked, and another further off leaned over, sweeping its branches across the ground so we had got to jump to get over it.

  Between one breath and the next, the whole forest was moving. And us in the midst of it, with nowhere to run to.

  The sun had come out again.

  And we was about to be et by the waked-up trees.

  5

  There’s a reason why trees wake and stretch when the sun comes out. It’s because when they first took it into their minds to move from their places, it was only the sun they was reaching for. But pretty soon, they went on from that to grabbing at anything that might be good to eat. They didn’t have no eyes, but they knowed warm from cold and moved ever towards it. They didn’t have no mouths either, but they didn’t need none. All that got mashed down into the dirt among their roots would feed them with its goodness by and by.

  So now here we was, with the trees waking up all round us. Bright sunbeams was dropping through the high leaves on every side, and it was like they was the light from Stannabanna’s magic staff in the old story. Wherever the sunlight touched, the big trunks leaned down and the branches come round in a sweep to trip and hold us.

  Hunters from Mythen Rood – me included – was trained in what to do if they was catched out like this. You was supposed to find a big trunk and hug it close. That tree’s own branches wouldn’t be able to bend back far enough to reach you, and maybe the bulk of the tree would be a shield for you against the branches of the other trees round about. I heard these words said often enough to sink them deep into my head, and though I never seen nobody saved by them, I might of tried it anyway if it was not for the Half-Ax fighters behind us.

  They was still treading on our heels, and they was still firing. It wasn’t only arrows neither. Right after I seen the nearest branches commence to lean in on us, I heard a sound I never heard before. It was like the noise a set of pipes makes when the piper breathes real slow across the tops of them: a long whistle that got lower in tone and more drawed out even as it got louder.

  Then it stopped, and a second later there was this bright, orange ball off to the side of me, like the biggest flower you ever seen was opening right there. It wasn’t no flower, though. It was fire rising up out of the ground as it opened, throwing branches and leaves and earth into the air and then swallowing them again as it growed. I felt the heat of it wash over me. It wasn’t like the heat you’d feel if you was warming yourself by a fire in your house, nor even at a bonfire on the gather-ground. This was like fire had a fist, and it punched you in your whole body at once. It come close to knocking me right off my feet, only I ducked under it as it tried to lift me and kept on running.

  That happened two more times, though thankfully the fire-flowers was further away from me and I didn’t get the heat of them so much. They was not flowers for long. When they was at their biggest, they went from being orange to being black, and then they turned into smoke that unravelled into long, black streaks in the direction the wind was blowing.

  I knowed tech when I seen it. At least one of them fighters was carrying a weapon from the old times, and though it was somewhat like Catrin Vennastin’s firethrower, it was not the exact same thing. The firethrower sent out a ribbon or a rope of fire. It didn’t throw clenched fistfuls of fire through the air to open just right where you was standing.

  I run even faster, though I thought I was already going as fast as I could. Cup was making ground with every stride, leaving me behind, and the drudge was outpacing the both of us. I had lost sight of Ursala, and I could not stop to look around for her.

  A branch swept across the path in front of us, and I would of run right into it, only the drudge got there first and hit it full-on. The branch broke clean, the free end spinning away into the weeds and the live end rearing back like a snake. I was past it in a second, but I seen the main trunk of that tree thrash and twist, bringing three more branches down right where I just had been. They would of crushed me flat if I was a mite slower.

  I seen Ursala then, some way back. She had left the path and was running through the deep weeds. I seen why she done it too. The branches that missed us had cut her off, so she didn’t have no choice. But the going was a lot harder in them snarls and tangles, and she was falling further behind us.

  The drudge knowed where she was though, the way it always seemed to know even if it didn’t have no eyes. It swung round and angled towards her, breaking down and trampling on everything that was in front of it. Cup turned on her heel, quick as anything, to run along in its wake, since the channel the drudge was making through the shifting forest was the safest place there was right then. So it was just me on the path now, and the rest of them crashing through brambles and knotweed and Dandrake knows what else.

  Another fire-flower jumped up, real close to where Ursala was running. This time I seen where it come from. In between two big trees that was leaning down towards us, I got a glimpse of one of the soldiers. She was all grey, except for that one red splash on her chest and the yellow spikes of her hair. Her tech was grey too, or maybe silver. It was a long metal tube that she held in both of her hands. It didn’t shine, but I knowed it had got to be metal from seeing the bolt gun and the firethrower in Mythen Rood. She lifted it to her shoulder, aimed and fired without ever stopping or slowing.

  Out of the mouth of that tube come a silver slug like a blunted knife blade that soared up high in the air and then fell down again a long way ahead of her. That was what made the piping sound. When the slug hit the ground, the piping stopped and the fire-flower jumped up, with a noise like some big animal roaring in your face before it bites.

  I thought the fire had got Ursala, but she come out of the smoke running hard. There was little fires burning on her arm and on her shoulder, like it had splashed on her. She staggered and almost fell, but she righted herself and kept on going.

  That was all I seen, for I had got to turn my head again and look ahead of me. There wasn’t much path left now. The trees had crowded together into a kind of a wall, right where we was heading. This was something else I knowed about from when I went with the hunters in Calder Valley. Trees when they was waked seemed to work together, almost. They piled in closest at the edge of a copse or thicket, forcing you into the depths of it.

  That meant we was going in the right direction. If we could get past that wall, we would most likely find ourselves out in the open again, or at least nearer to it. But near’s as good as not, like they say. I did not see no way through.

  “Full automatic!” Ursala yelled out. “Scatter. Twelve.”

  I thought she was talking to me, or to Cup, but when the drudge’s gun started to turn I knowed she was not. The gun spinned round to face straight ahead of us, and spit out shot after shot in a quick, rattling burst. It was firing so quick the noises all joined together, so loud I couldn’t hear nothing over it. The leaves was ripped to shreds and rained down on us, and a few of the thinner branches was brung down with them, It wasn’t going to help us though – I seen that well enough. There was no way the drudge’s bullets was going to break through that big wall of trunks.

  But the trees did not like being bit into and cut open. They shrunk from the drudge’s bullets, retreating each from other until there was gaps that got wider and wider. Between one breath and the next, the way opened up for us.

  Cup dived through first, and was gone. I come next, but I had used up most of my breath by this time, and I would be lying if I said I was close behind her. The drudge was firing the whole time, its gun spinning round and round so the bullets went right over our heads, making sure the trees didn’t snake back down to grab us. It waited until Ursala had run through the gap and then it cantered through after.

  “Strafe,” Ursala gasped. “Six.” She was as spent as I was, and could just barely stay on her feet. The drudge stayed right where it was, beside her, but its gun spun half a circle and fired back through the gap into the forest as we staggered on, away from the last few clutching, swinging branches.

  We was in a meadow. There was no trees around us any more, only grass, and there was no beasts to be seen. Ursala bent from the waist, her hands clasping onto her knees, and drawed some breaths that was ragged and hard. She was shaking all over.

  “We’re not out of it yet,” I told her, though I was not in any better state than she was and could not of run no further if Dandrake come down from Heaven and whipped me to it.

  “Give me a minute,” Ursala said between two of them effortful breaths.

  I looked all around, but Cup was not anywhere to be seen. Ursala got to her feet at last and went around to the back end of the drudge. She lifted up the trailing end of the rope, that was cut through none too cleanly.

  “Was she carrying another knife,” she said, “or was this you?”

  “It was me,” I said. “The drudge was going too fast for her. She would most likely of died if she got pulled down again.”

  Ursala give me a look that said she would not of shed too many tears on Cup’s account, but she didn’t waste no time in chiding me again. “I hope she gets back to Calder,” she said. “Or at least a long way away from us. If I see her again, I’m going to tell the drudge to shoot her through the head.”

  The drudge lifted up one leg and stamped it down again, maybe because it heard its own name being spoke. Its gun was still pointing back behind us at the forest, and it was still making the clicking, popping sounds it made when it was firing, only no bullets was coming.

  “What’s it doing now?” I asked Ursala.

  “What I told it to. Only it’s run out of bullets. Ceasefire.”

  The gun spun to the rest position and settled down in its cradle. Ursala started walking, and the drudge followed.

  “It can make more bullets though,” I said. “Can’t it?” I was looking back at the treeline, hoping not to see anyone else coming out of there.

  “Given time,” Ursala said. “It will take a few hours, at the very least.”

  “What if something comes on us before then?”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t.”

  The grass had edges to it, like it was made of knives, but the drudge pounded it down with its heavy tread and we walked along behind it, in a line, so we was not much hurt.

  Spinner

  6

  There ought to be a rule in the telling of stories, my husband complained to me once, after I had brought him some dismay with a sad one. You ought to say before you start whether things will be brought in the end to a good or a bad case. That way them that are listening can gird themselves up somewhat, and be ready when the ending comes.

  I told him I was sorry for the hurt to his heart and promised to give him fair warning next time. But I thought more thereafter, and in the end I came to this thinking on the subject. There can’t be any rules in the telling of stories. They’ve got to go where they go, which is not always where you would want them to. And as to the happiness or the sadness of it, that depends on where you’re standing. A happiness for one is sometimes a sadness to another. Or it might only be a happiness when you squint one eye. Or you might not know, even after it’s all done, whether it came out well or badly.

  What there is – all there is – is a language. When you tell the story, you don’t talk the way you do the rest of the time. You put on the storytelling voice, and the storytelling way, which sets you at a distance from what you’re saying even if you’re aiming to pop up in the story as your own self. That’s what I’m doing here, because I don’t know how else to go about it. Anyone who knows me and hears this may believe they spy a falseness in my voice. To any such, I say: you’re right, and then you’re wrong. I’m talking to you as straight and honest as I can. But I’m being a storyteller when I do it, and that’s why I use strange words from time to time, and a strange way of putting them together. This is me, not as I am in my own life but as I am in the story of that life, which is a different thing than the living of it. When I come into the story as a character, you’ll hear the words I spoke at the time, which will not be nearly so fine and polished as these words.

  My name is Spinner. Spinner Vennastin. I am of Mythen Rood. On testing day, that fact is spelled out as plain as plain can be. Woman of Mythen Rood you are and shall be, under what name you choose. Maybe that means less now than it used to. Maybe, to you, it means nothing at all. Well, that’s no sin, and nothing to say sorry for, but it’s the main reason why I’m telling this. I am not ready yet to let our story be nothing. I don’t agree to it. I lived through great things and terrible things, and played a part in both. I will tell them to you exactly as I remember them. That might make me loom larger in the telling than I have any lease or leave for. I can’t help it. You’re free to listen to what others have to say on the matter.

  I said my name was Spinner, but the name I had in growing up was Demar. Demar Tanhide, the daughter of Molo Tanhide and Casra Ropemaker. Why am I not a Ropemaker then, instead of a Tanhide? I was at first. But Casra died when I was still very young, and after that I took my father’s name.

  I do remember Casra, and I think in some sense she shaped me. She was a sickly woman, and thought herself sicker than she was. In most of the memories I have of her, she is complaining of aches or cramps or fevers, screaming at my father to bring Shirew Makewell as quick as he could.

  “But we brought her last night, Cas, my love,” he would say.

  And she: “Bring her again now, Molo, if you don’t want to watch me die here in front of you.” Then she would curse him, calling him all the heartless bastards and cruel monsters that ever were.

  I saw my father every day, humouring Casra and comforting her and doing everything he could to please her. And I saw my mother digging in with her heels, refusing to be humoured or comforted or pleased. In a way, I think, the sickness itself was her solace. “Oh, I won’t live much longer,” she cried most nights. “I can’t last with this suffering.” In the long run of it, she killed herself, opening up her veins with one of my father’s knives, and so proved her point.

  This was my understanding of marriage. That one would be sensible and the other mad. One would work, and one would lie back and be carried. Both would weep, but only one would mean it.

  On the day when Casra was laid in the ground, I became a Tanhide, though I did not take my other name, Spinner, until my testing day. It was a childhood nickname I liked enough that I chose to keep it.

  I was my parents’ first child, and their last. Molo never wed again, nor even tumbled again that I knew of. There were just the two of us when I was growing up, and we were happy enough. He was a kind father and a gentle man, and he tried in all things to keep me safe and content. That was not an easy task, in Mythen Rood and in those days. But has it ever been easy anywhere?

  Molo died when I was sixteen, leaving me alone in the world. But I had known the day would come, and made such preparation as I could. I had set myself to win the love of Haijon Vennastin, whose mother was Rampart Fire.

  Perhaps that name, Rampart, is strange to you. In times of great change and great trouble, the remembering of past times is often cut off short. Rampart was the name we gave, in my village, to the people who could wake the tech of the ancient world, and make it work for them. It was a rare thing. The tech itself was rare, most of it having been lost or broken long since, and the skill was rarer still.

  In Rampart Hold, under the guard and watch of the Ramparts themselves, there was a room where we kept such tech as we had. There were hundreds of strange tools and workings there, whose purpose was mostly unknown. And out of all of them, there were only four that still worked: the firethrower, the bolt gun, the cutter and the database. Our Ramparts took their name from the tech that waked for them and obeyed them.

  Rampart Fire.

  Rampart Arrow.

  Rampart Knife.

  Rampart Remember.

  These were our protectors, our champions. They lived in the great keep of Rampart Hold, which was made not of wood but of stone. They were first to speak in the Count and Seal, and decided many things on their own authority without troubling the Count and Seal about the reasons. They took no part in share-works since their labour, all the same and everlasting, was to keep us alive.

  From the day I was born, and for a long time before that, all of our Ramparts had belonged to one single family. The Vennastins. If a Vennastin died, another was always ready to take up their name-tech right after, having waked it at their testing. All of us were tested when we reached the age of fifteen, but somehow only Vennastins were ever found to be synced to the old tech. And Vennastins never failed.

  Well, they did, just once. Vergil Vennastin, Rampart Fire’s own brother, did not succeed at his testing but was allowed to live in Rampart Hold just the same. He had only one arm, having lost the other to a choker seed, and was seen as slow besides. His kin feared he would not thrive alone. And one time too, a man of the Stepjacks, Gendel, tested well and became second in line to Rampart Arrow. He also became Rampart Arrow’s husband very soon after.

  Yes, these things were gossiped about. Of course they were. It seemed strange that the old tech cleaved so strongly to the one bloodline. It happened again the year I was tested. There were three of us testing together that year, but only one of us, Haijon Vennastin, was found to be synced. The cutter knew him as soon as he picked it up, and shone bright silver in his hand.

  Yet the testing happened in the Count and Seal in front of everyone, so how could there be any cheating or lying about it? And Rampart Remember told us these things moved in big, slow circles: that others had lived long in Rampart Hold the way the Vennastins did now.