V
THERE WAS A LOT of talking late into the night, and it went nowhere. The Lawgiver, that frightened boy, he spoke, and his ghost spoke, and neither of them had anything useful to say. Amorket is living proof that villages and their ghosts are not good at reacting to new things.
Melory stood before the tree at Tsuno and sent word to the House of our Ancestors. The invisible voices there would remember what she had said and speak it back to Ostel and the others. There would be no help from so far away, though. And if the ghosts couldn’t help, then likely the ancestors couldn’t help, either.
I spoke to my people of what we saw at Portruno, and that the brackers might not be driven off like beasts are. As for the supposed prisoner, none of us was missing, and Graf didn’t think any other band of the Order would be travelling near here. The brackers had some poor Severed outcast from Portruno, perhaps.
Erma came to our camp to say she would go to the bracker village. She would try the traditions of her mystery. “It’s all we have,” she said. There was no hunter ghost to guide her, but if there was, it would be in the same position as the rest. The brackers had lived as careful neighbours of the people here for as long as anyone knew; Erma’s mystery was old when her Great-Grandma took her Grandma out into the woods, showed her the carving and blew the soundless whistle.
They wanted us to go and fight, in the morning. Because the ghosts had no words and they were all frightened, they wanted to hide behind their part-built wall and have us go and drive the brackers away. For our part, the Order had to do something. This was what we were for, the greatest service we gave to the villages. In return for this, they overlooked our nature, they let us have their unwanted and did not hunt us. Their hate for us became just the fear of children. The Bandage-Men will get you. They knew that if both sides respected the traditions, they would be safe. But part of those traditions was that, when people and animals cannot live together, the Bandage-Men fight for the people against the world.
I did not see this going well and so I talked to Erma about how she might use her mystery, and how we could help her. The whole night was one kind of talk or another. Of those who had come to the aid of Tsuno, only one wasn’t talking.
In the morning, Amorket had already gone.
For just a moment I thought she might simply have gone back towards Jalaino, or even wandered off into the woods to die. Melory knew better. Amorket was the doctor ghost’s patient and, just as she could track me all those years ago, she knew exactly where Amorket was headed. Towards the new village the brackers were building. She had gone to fight for Tsuno, alone.
For me, I said let her go, but Melory and Erma both insisted we follow her. Erma feared Amorket would rile up the brackers even more and make the work of her mystery that much harder. Melory . . . At first I thought it was just the duty of the doctor to a patient, but on the way she told me, “Amorket is not the problem, Handry. Jalaino is the problem. Other villages might go the same way. That is what we need to solve. And Amorket is my only tool, to understand them.”
* * *
Erma, Melory and I, with half my people, followed the clear set of tracks Amorket had left. We heard her before we saw her: a thin, high human voice raised in angry challenge. We didn’t hear the bracker. When we burst from the trees and saw it, I felt very much like turning around and just going away again. I’d imagined something like a harboon, only bigger.
Like most animals, it had six legs. The first set were largest, elbows higher than its body, feet like the knotted heads of clubs. I could imagine them smashing down a house very easily. Its hide was greyish and warty, thick and ridged about those front legs. Its back legs were short and stumpy; if nothing else, I reckoned I could outrun it easily enough. The middle legs were arms, slender and folded under its broad, flat body. I saw three thick pads on them like fat fingers.
Its head was small for its body. Four eyes jutted on thumb-like jointed stalks, one either side, two below. Unlike most animals it couldn’t see straight up, and I was already thinking about treetop ambushes, dropped rocks. In front of the eyes there was a clutch of mouthparts like a webbed hand with six long fingers. Behind them were round discs of smooth skin, big ones and small ones.
It had been painted. There were designs on the armour of its forelegs, and on its back, where it couldn’t even see. They were symmetrical, flowing, reminding me of the shape of certain plants, how they branch and put out leaves. Some of the markings had worn away, which is how I knew it was paint and not just pattern.
The edges of its body were horny and jagged, and holes had been drilled there for ropes. On the ropes swung a clattering collection of . . . rubbish, I thought. Stones, pieces of wood, different colours and kinds. They served no purpose I could see, save to make noise and weigh the thing down. Although, at half the size of a house, it wouldn’t be slowed much.
Amorket was standing right before it, surely within smashing range of those club-like arms. Her wasps were all out, whirling about her in a frenzy, and when they widened their circle, the bracker’s head retracted halfway under the shield of its body, flinching. Amorket was shouting at it, telling it to go away, telling it to fight her. The bracker flared its mouthparts back at her, and I saw the circles of skin behind its eyes fuzz in and out. At the edge of my hearing something was tweaking my ears, like some of the sounds the House of our Ancestors made sometimes. Then the animal reared up and stomped its forelegs into the ground, hard enough that I felt the shake of it, and from deep within its body came a single sound, Brack!
I thought it was about to turn Amorket into paste, wasps or no wasps, but then it backed off from her, attention turning to us. Erma had a pipe out and was blowing into it, no more than a wheeze of empty air, but the bracker marked her.
Melory darted forwards and pulled at Amorket’s arm. The Jalaino woman stood stubbornly for a moment, wasps landing on her and taking off again, blundering at Melory’s face and veering away at the last moment.
“What were you thinking?” my sister demanded, but I knew what Amorket intended. Many an outcast ends up Severed because sometimes a fight is simpler. A fight meant she wouldn’t have to deal with me. A fight would help Tsuno, or would end things for Amorket. I reckoned she wouldn’t much care which.
The bracker knuckled closer, Amorket forgotten. Its eyes kept turning to me and mine, and it made several mock approaches, shying away each time in a way I knew from animals the world over. Wrong, and yet its eyes kept twitching my way, and normally once an animal has decided it doesn’t like me, it wastes no time in putting space between us.
Erma was watching it very carefully, reading some truth from it by long experience. She started pulling things from her bag: a sealed gourd, a comb, rope. I saw some of the cords hanging from the edge of the bracker’s body looked human-made.
Again that faintest of witterings ghosted from the bracker. Its middle legs unfolded and it picked up each object in turn, rejecting most of them, keeping the rope, testing the texture between its thick fingers. It gave another abortive lunge in my direction, but I and my people stood firm. The digits of its mouth flexed and fidgeted anxiously.
“Scared of you,” Erma said quietly. “Doesn’t like you one bit.”
“Enough to clear out and take its people somewhere else?” I asked her.