Page 119 of Circle of Days

The two went after the farmers, who would never know how closely they had been watched.

Those remaining finished their suppers and cleared up, then gathered around for the balance ceremony. Bez had already selected a suitable tree, and a coil of rope lay at the foot of its trunk.

The woodlanders were quiet, awestruck, and Bez realized that most of them had never witnessed an execution. Such things were rare on the Great Plain.

It was getting dark when Omun and Arav returned and reported that the farmers had gone home.

Bez nodded. “Get him out of the ground.”

The vegetation was removed and Stam was brought out. His eyes were red with crying and he shook with fear. Bez removed his gag.

Stam began to beg. “Spare me, please,” he said. “I don’t want to die, I’m too young. Have some mercy.”

Bez pointed to the tree he had picked out. “Tie him to that branch,” he said. “Upside down.”

Stam wriggled desperately, but he could not resist, and soon his ankles were tied to the branch, leaving his head above ground by the length of a person’s arm.

Bez began to sing a song of mourning, and the tribe joined in, the massed voices sounding through the wood.

He collected some dry leaves and dead twigs and made a little pile under Stam. Then he took a brand from one of the cooking fires.

Stam saw what was going to happen. “No!” he screamed. “No, please, no!”

Bez set light to the tinder. It caught quickly, and he added dry wood. The fire blazed up.

Bez spoke loudly, for the whole tribe to hear. “Fell’s ashes are far away, but we mourn him here in his home.”

Stam cried out as the fire began to scorch his head and his naked shoulders. Desperately, he began to swing from side to side. Every time he took himself out of the heat, he swung back in,but it gave him some moments of relief. Bez watched patiently, knowing Stam could not keep it up for long.

At last he stopped, exhausted. The fire was blazing high now, and he began to cry out. Fat under the skin of his head liquefied and came out like sweat. The same happened to his face. Drops fell on the fire and blazed briefly.

Bez put more wood on.

Stam’s hair caught fire, and he began to scream. The flames surrounded his head and face, burning his skin off, turning his face black. When the flames receded, his eyes were visible and his teeth showed where his lips had gone. But he was still breathing.

The mourning song continued, soft and low, the sound of sadness and loss.

The screaming stopped but Stam did not die. There came from his awful mouth a low groaning, the sound of a soul in hell.

At last his brain cooked and his body became completely limp.

Bez checked and found that he was no longer breathing.

He built up the fire again, and some of the men untied the rope so that the entire corpse collapsed into the flames. Stam turned to ash.

Bez spoke to the watching tribe. “We can sleep now,” he said. “The balance has been restored.”

The summer grew hotter and dryer. There was no relief even as the Autumn Halfway approached. Pia wondered whether the sweat she produced contained more water than the bag she carried. As well as the bag, she had Olin strapped to her back.

She paused in her work to ease her aching body. The fields stretched as far as she could see along the bank of the river, upstream and downstream, a vista of scorched earth and stunted crops, a landscape broken only by bent, weary figures doing the same grinding toil.

But their efforts were being rewarded. The many pots she and others had lugged up from the river had had an effect. There was a crop growing from the parched ground. The shoots were stunted and feeble but they had come up green and were now turning golden yellow. There would be grain. Her breast milk would be nourishing, and Olin would be healthy.

Poor Olin. He would never know his father. He would not remember the big man who had sung to him. He would have no songs to sing to his own children.

Pia missed Han every moment of the day. She knew she would never have a love like that again. Why not? Because another man might have all the qualities a woman would want, but still he would not be Han.

She tried to remember reasons she had to be happy. She was pleased to be with her mother, she adored Olin, and she was glad that Stam was out of her life.