Page 87 of Circle of Days

Seft climbed the fifth stone, grabbing the ropes to pull himself up, carrying his bow slung across his shoulder and a quiver of arrows at his belt. Tem followed him up. At the top they stood upright and looked around. There was a full moon that intermittently disappeared behind clouds.

All around the fourth and fifth stones hundreds of volunteers lay on the ground, most of them sleeping, all with weapons beside them.

Jara had picked out the strongest and most aggressive young men and placed them at the western edge of the camp, forming a front line.

Beyond the camp, the herd stretched west across the plain as far as Seft could see.

The cattle were quiet and calm, undisturbed, which meant the farmers were not yet on the move.

Seft was deeply unhappy. When he had left his father and formed a couple with Neen, he thought he had left violence behind forever. That was how he had lived, never even smacking his children when they were naughty. Now he was preparing for a battle.

When he thought of all the problems he had solved, and the obstacles he had overcome, to bring the stones to the Monument, it seemed outrageous that all his efforts might be brought to nothing by jealous farmers with bows.

Neen and the three children were not here, but in Riverbend, which was a comfort.

He stared across the plain. Was there movement in the distant herd?

Darkness could play tricks with eyesight.

He thought he saw a black mass within the dappled herd.

The moon came out from behind a cloud, and he saw that he was right.

A dark wave was moving slowly through the cattle, and he thought he heard the distant hooting of protesting cows.

He said to Tem: “Do you see what I see?”

“Yes,” said Tem. “The farmers are coming.”

Joia dreamed that she was lying on a grassy bank of a stream, with Dee next to her, enjoying the sunshine.

They were watching Dee’s flock. Dee thought she should walk around the sheep to make sure they were all still there, but Joia counted them every now and again and told Dee she need not worry.

Then the sheep began to make noises of shock and distress, first one then another and soon all of them.

Dee seemed not to know what to do, and Joia was close to panic.

Then she realized that the noise came not from sheep but from people who were shouting: “Alarm! Alarm! Alarm!” She opened her eyes and saw that it was the moon, not the sun, that was shining on her, and in the same moment she jumped to her feet.

“It’s the farmers!” she said, and Dee stood up too.

She could see the great black shapes of the two stones and their sleds, one behind the other on the mended track.

All around the stones, four hundred men and women were jumping to their feet, finding their weapons, shouting questions and advice at one another.

In the distance, startled cattle hooted in distress and dodged out of the way of an approaching crowd.

The attackers were making noises, whoops and roars and animal sounds, to help them feel brave, she imagined, and to scare their enemies.

Someone thrust a flint knife into her hand. It was Jara, moving through the crowd, arming those who had not armed themselves. Joia saw Dee take a bow and arrows, and tie a leather band around her wrist to protect it from the impact of the bowstring.

She wondered despairingly how it had come to this. She had had a vision of a stone Monument, and now a little girl called Lim had lost her parents because of it. She wished she had never had the vision. She realized that Dee was going to be a target for the farmers’ weapons, and she wanted to weep.

A dozen or so archers climbed up on the two stones with Seft and Tem.

Seft had had very little practice with the bow. Just to pull the string and bend the bow took a surprising amount of effort. When aiming at a tree trunk six paces away, he sometimes missed. But he was good at estimating the trajectory of an arrow fired into the air.

As the archers put arrows to their bowstrings, he said: “Not yet! They’re too far away.”

The youngsters were impatient but they did what he said. They all watched the army approach.

“Get ready now,” Seft said, and he put an arrow to his bow. “Aim upward, like this.” He showed them. “Copy my angle.”

They did so.

He waited another moment, then said: “Shoot!”

The arrows showered down on the close-packed farmer army, and Seft heard shouts and screams as some of them found targets. The youngsters cheered with delight and took out more arrows.

Seft did not cheer. When the farmers were in range, the reverse must also be true: the herders were now in range of the farmers’ arrows.

Joia heard a hissing sound, and suddenly there was a rain of arrows.

In front of her a woman fell to the ground with an arrow in her shoulder.

Someone screamed behind Joia. Joia screamed, too, not in pain but in fear.

She felt they would all be savagely killed.

She looked at Dee and saw she was unhurt. She wanted to grab Dee and run away.

Then she noticed Seft and a group of young people with bows standing on top of the stones, shooting arrows as fast as they could.

The oncoming farmers were closely massed and there were shouts and screams of pain as several of them fell.

Their advance faltered, and Joia felt a surge of hope: perhaps the farmers would retreat, recognizing a larger force in front of them.

But the top of the stone was a vulnerable place for archers, for they had to stand up to shoot, which made them highly visible targets; and now several of those were hit, and fell, some tumbling off the stone all the way to the ground. She yelled: “Seft! Get down!” but he did not hear.

More archers climbed the stone, and fresh fusillades hit the farmers. Joia was shocked at how courageous the archers were, and that made her realize that she was behaving like a coward. If I must fight, I should fight bravely, she said to herself.

As the farmers approached, Seft saw, they drove some of the cattle before them. Seeing the massed volunteers, most of the cows turned aside, but some came on, charging into the camp, panicking, shouldering people aside, creating confusion.

Seft and Tem clambered down from the stone.

When the two armies met and fought at close quarters, bows would be useless.

Seft dropped his and took an axe from his belt, and Tem changed his bow for a hammer.

They ran forward through the crowd, dodging the cattle.

They reached the edge of the camp just as the farmers got there.

A few volunteers were running away, but others fought back fiercely with axes and hammers.

A wave of angry herders fell on the farmers’ front line, driving them back.

But the farmers regrouped and attacked again, and this time it was the herders who fell back.

Joia moved forward with the knife in her hand, scared but determined, and many other volunteers did the same.

Then she was in the thick of the battle. She knew many of the fighters by sight, but the only way to tell whether someone she did not know was a farmer or a herder was the direction in which they were moving.

Next to her a farmer swung a hammer at Cass, the brother of Vee, and Joia foolishly yelled: “Leave him alone!” and not so foolishly stabbed the farmer with her knife.

Its point went into the man’s forearm and he dropped his hammer.

Cass, who seemed to have arrows but no bow, stuck an arrowhead into the man’s throat, and he fell.

It was the first time Joia had ever drawn another person’s blood, but instead of thinking about that she looked around wildly for Dee. She saw a man running toward Dee, but Dee had already drawn her bow and she shot an arrow into his belly, and he bent double and hit the ground.

When Joia turned to face the enemy again, a farmer was in front of her with an axe held high.

His mouth was open, his teeth were bared, and an animal noise came from his throat.

All Joia could do was scream. Then the man collapsed, and Joia saw behind him a herder called Yaran, wielding a hammer.

Yaran looked pleased with himself, but only for a moment, because in the next breath an arrow hit him from behind, piercing his neck and then, horribly, coming out through his throat.

Joia realized she had dropped her knife. She could not see it anywhere so she picked up an intact arrow from the ground.

She could not tell who was winning the battle, if anyone was.

She saw Narod, who had pretended to be a volunteer last year and had wrecked a section of track.

He spotted her and grinned widely, coming at her with a flint axe.

She jumped backward, and he stumbled, tipping forward.

Without thinking, she thrust the arrow at him.

She aimed at his belly, but he fell so far forward that his face was level with the arrow, and it went into his eye.

Joia instinctively pushed harder, and the arrow sank deep into Narod’s head.

He fell to the ground. Joia jerked at her arrow but the shaft came out without the arrowhead. Narod lay still.

The hand-to-hand fighting was vicious, and people on both sides fell, but Seft could see that the onward rush of the farmers had stalled. They had been stopped by the more numerous herders with their two-to-one advantage. Now the herders pressed forward.

Then Seft found himself in front of Troon.