‘Been lost. Been on the run for days. Got lucky, when I saw your craft come down.’
‘I suppose so. What’s your point?’
‘Point is, Cap’n, who d’you think I was runnin’ from?’
Frey looked over his shouloveont face="der and pointed. ‘I’m guessing it was them.’
Twenty-Four
His past was still here, lying in wait.
The sight of the camp disoriented Silo. How many times had he come up this trail at the end of a day’s hunt, emerging from the rich green undergrowth to find this same clutter of huts waiting for him in the swelter of a late afternoon? It had been nine years since he fled this place, but those years were like the loop of a slipknot, vanishing to nothing with one sharp tug.
The camp had no name. They’d always just called it the camp. To name something was to give it permanence, and they’d always known they must be ready to abandon it at a moment’s notice, to drop their possessions and flee if the Sammies should ever discover them. No one thought they’d be here long.
Yet here they were.
Their three captors were young men, scouts, twitchy with pent-up aggression and eager to pull their triggers. They were new: Silo didn’t remember them. But the mere sight of his own people, even hostile ones, gave him a rush of pleasure that made his head light. And to hear them talk! The rapid, silken flow of syllables, washing over his senses, achingly beautiful in contrast to the ugly surrogate he’d been speaking so long that it had even invaded his thoughts.
But the men weren’t interested in conversation. They had their orders, and followed them rigidly. Strangers were to be taken captive and brought back to the camp. One of them seemed curious about how Silo and Frey had come to be travelling together, but his companion shut him up, and told the prisoners not to speak. Their leader would decide what was to be done with them.
But who’s your leader these days? That’s the question, ain’t it?
It was a question on which their lives might depend. Silo didn’t bother to ask. Knowing or not knowing, it wouldn’t change a thing, so it didn’t matter a shit’s worth. He kept his silence. The Cap’n did the same.
The trail wound up a slope beneath the dense canopy, heading into the heart of the camp. The buildings were made of wood and leaf thatch, arranged haphazardly wherever the massive trees would allow, nestled in the dim, blood-warm world of the deep jungle. Most of them were obscured, hidden by trunks and leaves, but even at this familiar edge, Silo saw new dwellings. The camp had grown.
Some things hadn’t changed, though. There was the pen for the domesticated ari’shu, Samarlan jungle-hogs, who rooted and snuffled in the earth among tery amp;o’she fat black chickens. There was the eating-round, a circular, open-sided hut where meals were taken. The men would sit on their mats in a strictly arranged hierarchy, with the most important closest to the centre, while the women sat wherever they pleased.
Further up, half-hidden by the trees, was the flank of the infirmary, where the witch-sisters treated the sick and the wounded. Next to it was the dreaming-house, where the children went to hear the tales of the old country, and to be taught of the grace of Mother. Silo had spent many a night there himself, listening to the witch-sisters tell of the time before the fall, before the Samarlans swept through Murthia and enslaved its people. Stories of Makkad, who led his armies to the walls of grand Ail and brought them down; stories of Elos and Kaf, whose journey of love and hate was the subject of hundreds of songs and cost thousands of lives; stories of Odadj, who’d slain the Bengist by plunging a spear into each of its three throats. An age of legends and greatness. It had swelled Silo’s heart to hear those stories when they were told to him as a child in the pens and work camps. They were scarcely less powerful as an adult.
Those stories were what bound his people together. Many things had been lost. Many arts and crafts had faded because there was no opportunity to practise them in slavery. The Samarlans had done their best to stamp out the old way of life, but they hadn’t succeeded. Not entirely. The Dakkadians had folded under the yoke and assimilated into their masters’ world. They had no language of their own any more, no culture left that hadn’t been copied from the Samarlans. But the Murthians had held on, over five centuries. It was death for a slave to be heard speaking Murthian, but they spoke it anyway, in secret. They had their own tongue, and their stories, and the promise from Mother that each of them would one day see the end to their bondage. Whether in this life or the next, or the next, or the next.
They kept the flame alive.
As the captives passed through the camp, people began to emerge from their huts, drawn by the news. They were mostly Murthians, a few Vard men, and even a pair of scrawny half-breed children, their skin a warm yellow-brown and their hair blond. Some of them looked in bad shape, walking with the support of their relatives. They seemed malnourished or sick. Even the healthiest were tired and haggard, and they watched the newcomers with a fearful curiosity.
He searched for people he knew. There were many strangers, but there were still plenty of people he recognised, and who recognised him in return with astonished expressions. Jaraz, who’d been a headstrong young firebrand, still here despite his reckless nature. Bahd, that sulky crank, pooching out his lips in disapproval. Ehri and Faclass="underline" the broad-shouldered huntress and the slender, thoughtful man who was her constant companion. She cried out his name as she saw him, and hurried to meet him, with Fal only a step behind her.
Stand off, Ehri, warned one of the young scouts. ~ We’re taking him to ~ Quiet your voice, she said, dismissing him scornfully. She clasped Silo’s upper arms and looked him up and down, a grin of amazement spreading across her face. Then she embraced him.
You live, she said. ~ I don’t believe the thing I see before me.
I live, he said, and he couldn’t stop a grin of his own at the sound of Murthian words rolling off his lips. He stepped back and lifted up her hand: there was an intricate shape tattooed on her left palm, as he’d known there would be. He looked up at Fal, who was crowding in, offering heartfelt greetings over the protests of the scouts.
My deepest congratulations, he said.
Fal slid an arm round Ehri and held up his own palm, which bore an identical symbol to Ehri’s. Their own personal sign, unique to their love. Silo was gladdened at the sight. At least some good had come out of the tragedy, then.
You should not have returned, Fal said, his words in direct contrast to the look on his face.
Akkad?
He still leads us, said Ehri, her grin fading slightly. ~ He hasn’t forgotten.
Silo had expected no less, but the news was a blow all the same. ~ I must see him.
Wait, Ehri, who is this man? demanded one of the scouts.
Ehri and Fal exchanged a glance, then she shook her head. ~ You know your orders, she said. ~ Take them to Akkad.
The scouts nudged them into motion again. As they did, Silo asked ~ The others?
The warrens, Ehri replied, her face grim. That was no surprise, either, but the confirmation of what he’d always known came unexpectedly sharp.
Frey glanced at him as they walked up the trail. No one else came near. They hung back, staring.
‘Old friends?’ he asked.
‘Hope so,’ said Silo, looking over his shoulder. ‘Tell you the truth, I ain’t sure. But if they is, they the only ones we likely to meet.’
Akkad’s hut was new, larger, befitting a leader of men. It stood on a slope overlooking the camp. At its front, a covered semicircular balcony jutted out into the air, supported by tree-trunk pillars. It was an impressively elaborate construction, given their tools and circumstances. Not the kind of thing that suggested a temporary stay.