Page 57 of Circle of Days
Bez and his tribe raided the far eastern end of the farming country, almost halfway to the Monument, where the strip between river and woodland was narrow, and the houses were far apart.
The trick with the dogs worked a second time, and they came away with lavish prizes of meat, grain, and cheese.
They made their escape through East Wood and met up on the edge of the Great Plain.
From there they set off west, following the border line between wood and plain.
They had a long walk ahead of them, but Bez thought they could make it before daybreak.
Everything was going well. Bez congratulated himself on a second triumph. They would go to the remnant of West Wood and give some of this food to the young and old there, then carry the rest to their hideout. His tribe would survive, despite all efforts to wipe it out.
They had almost reached the Break when they came upon a herd, and quickly knelt down to be less visible. They had no interest in stealing cattle—they already had too much to carry—but the herders would assume the opposite. However, they could not see any herders, and they moved on cautiously.
A strong wind sprang up, and it began to rain.
It came down so hard that Bez could not even see the length of a cow. In no time he was drenched. It was difficult to maintain his grip on the slippery pottery jar he was carrying.
It was exactly like the rainstorm that had occurred at this time last year, and Bez wondered whether it represented a new pattern.
He heard dogs barking in the distance. They must belong to herders, Bez thought. Fortunately they sounded far away—though it was difficult to be sure in the wind and rain.
They stumbled on, slipping on the muddy ground, wiping the water from their blinded eyes. The rain would revive the dried-up hazelnut bushes, Bez thought, then he remembered that nearly all his bushes had gone up in flames.
The barking was suddenly loud and close, and before Bez could react, a pause in the rain revealed a line of herders, no doubt alerted by their two dogs. Every herder had an arrow to his bow, ready to shoot.
In a moment that lasted as long as the blink of an eye, Bez considered saying We’re not robbing you, we’re robbing the farmers! then realized the herders would kill them anyway; and he decided to flee.
The woodlanders dropped their burdens and ran, but Bez saw two fall to arrows beside him, and another stumble then run on. While the herders were putting fresh arrows to their bowstrings, the woodlanders made it to the edge of the wood and burst into the vegetation with two dogs at their heels.
They split up then, all finding different routes away from the herders, who were crashing through the bushes behind them.
Now, Bez thought, his people were in their element, and could move a lot faster than the herders.
If they had remained together, they might have turned and fought back, but it was too late to wish for that now.
However, they could not outrun the dogs. One was behind Bez. He turned and struck it with his club. The dog whimpered and ran away.
He came to a tall tree and considered taking refuge in its invisible heights, but decided it was wiser to put more distance between his pursuers and himself.
The herders quickly became discouraged. They must have realized they were losing ground, and anyway, they were probably tripping over tree roots and falling in puddles, being unused to the terrain.
Soon Bez could no longer hear them, and he stopped to rest. They would not be able to sneak up on him because, unlike the woodlanders, herders could not move silently.
He hooted like an owl, and immediately heard an answering hoot. He repeated the sound, and a few moments later Omun appeared. They both hooted, and a second woodlander, Arav, arrived. Then three more.
Two had fallen to arrows, and another had been hit and probably had not escaped the herders. This was all that was left of the raiding party.
“Our bounty is lost,” Bez said to the others. “The herders will have taken everything. We should head west, through the wood as far as it goes, to make sure we don’t encounter them again.”
They were a dismal party, trekking through the rain in the dark. Three companions had died and they were empty-handed. Bez’s idea that they could live by stealing was not working out. Still, he did not know what else they could have done.
They reached the Break. There was no risk that they might be seen at a distance by farmers, for the rain was still blinding.
The sky was black with rain clouds, but Bez sensed that a hidden dawn was near.
They hurried across the fields in the dark.
When the ground underfoot changed, they knew they had reached what had been West Wood.
As they continued to walk west, the rain eased from downpour to drizzle, and Bez saw a faint light in the east.
There was no sunrise, for the clouds were still thick, but the light strengthened, and as they approached the remnant of woodland they were able to see clearly.
Before they reached the houses, Bez was shocked to see a woman lying on the ground in the rain-wet mud. She was on her front, but her head was turned to one side, and he could see her face. It was Naro.
She was not breathing.
He knelt beside her and touched her. She was cold.
Poor old Naro. The children would weep.
She must have got up in the night, he supposed, with nobody noticing, and then wandered, perhaps being confused. And for some reason she had fallen down and died. That was the only explanation he could think of for her body being out here, untended.
The villagers would still be asleep. He would take her body to them and rouse them. He bent down and picked her up. She was a thin old woman and she weighed little.
Ahead of him he heard Omun say: “Bez, look at this.”
He walked on. Omun was staring at something on the ground. Bez followed his gaze. It seemed like a child, but it could not be. He looked harder. It was a child, a boy, six or seven midsummers old, lying on his back, eyes open and staring lifelessly at the branches above.
His throat had been cut.
“No,” said Bez. “No, no.”
Omun picked up the child and they walked together into the clearing in front of the houses, and there they saw a scene so vile, so horrifying, so unbearably tragic that Bez could not take it in.
They were all dead.
All the children, all the old folk, the pregnant woman and the nursing mother and her baby. Some had been clubbed to death, some had had their throats cut. Some had run and been caught, and their bodies lay on the ground in poses of flight.
Bez put the body of Naro gently on the ground. As he did so, he saw something he had not noticed before: a bloodstained hole in her tunic, just over her heart.
The faces of his companions all wore the same look: mouths open in shock, eyes staring in disbelief.
He walked around, looking at each corpse. He wanted to weep, but he could not; he was too stunned.
At last he began to think sensibly. The bodies must be treated with respect.
He tried to speak, but his throat constricted and he could not utter words.
He breathed in and out slowly, and tried again.
“We should lay them all down, side by side, here in the clearing,” he said.
“With their legs straight and their arms folded. Come, let’s do right by the dead. ”
They did as he said.
The mother and baby were left until last, perhaps because their deaths were hardest to contemplate. In the end it was Bez who bent over her. Mother and baby were both naked. He lifted the baby from her chest. It was a boy.
The baby cried.
Bez was so shocked he almost dropped it. “Alive!” he said.
He wondered whether the child had been overlooked. Or perhaps the murderers, despite the evil they were doing, had simply found themselves unable to cross that final line of depravity.
He stood up with the child in his arms. Its eyes were open and its legs kicked.
Its skin was cold, but probably it had been kept alive by the warmth of its dead mother.
Bez fell automatically into the eternal position, holding the baby to his chest, one hand under its bottom, the other hand protecting the head.
He felt its lips moving on the skin of his shoulder and realized it was seeking a nipple.
Omun said: “What are we going to do with him, Bez?”
“Take him to Round Wood. There will probably be a nursing mother in the tribe. They will take him, when we tell them the story of… this.”
The child cried again, and Omun said: “He’s hungry now.”
Bez looked at the baby, then at the dead mother, then back at the baby. Why not? he thought; it’s life or death.
He knelt down. With his left hand he lifted the dead mother’s shoulders until she was in a sitting position.
Then he held the baby to her chest. It turned its head, lips making a sucking shape, until its mouth found what it was searching for; and at last its eyes closed in contentment and it began to feed.