But they did not thrive, and Onos T’oolan knew the reason for that.
He stood at the edge of the sinkhole, anguish deep in his soul, and he longed for the return of the great beasts of his youth. Eyes scanning the lie of the land to the sides of the pit, he could see where the harvest had been processed-the slabs of meat brought up to the women who waited beside smaller, skin-lined pits filled with water that steamed as heated stones built it to boiling-and yes, he could see the rumpled ground evincing those cooking pits, and clumps of greenery marking hearths-and there, to one side, a huge flattened boulder, its slightly concave surface pocked where longbones had been split to extract the marrow.
He could almost smell the reek, could almost hear the droning chants and buzzing insects. Coyotes out on the fringes, awaiting their turn. Carrion birds scolding in the sky overhead, the flit of rhizan and the whisper of capemoths. Drifts of smoke redolent with sizzling fat and scorched hair.
There had been a last hunt, a last season, a last night of contented songs round fires. The following year saw no one in this place. The wind wandered alone, the half-butchered carcasses grew tough as leather in the sinkhole, and flowers fluttered where blood had once pooled.
Did the wind mourn with no song to carry on its breath? Or did it hover, waiting in terror for the first cries of bestial pain and fear, only to find that they never came? Did the land yearn for the tremble of thousands of hoofs and the padded feet of tenag? Did it hunger for that flood of nutrients to feed its children? Or was the silence it found a blessed peace to its tortured skin?
There had been seasons when the herds came late. And then, with greater frequency, seasons when the herds did not come at all. And the Imass went hungry. Starved, forced into new lands in a desperate search for food.
The Ritual of Tellann had circumvented the natural, inevitable demise of the Imass. Had eluded the rightful consequences of their profligacy, their shortsightedness.
He wondered if, among the uppermost level of bones, one might find, here and there, the scattered skeletons of Imass. A handful that had come to this place to see what could be salvaged from the previous year’s hunt, down beneath the picked carcasses-a few desiccated strips of meat and hide, the tacky gel of hoofs. Did they kneel in helpless confusion? Did the hollow in their bellies call out to the hollow wind outside, joined in the truth that the two empty silences belonged to one another?
If not for Tellann, the Imass would have known regret-not as a ghost memory-but as a cruel hunter tracking them down to their very last, staggering steps. And that, Tool told himself, would have been just.
‘Vultures in the sky,’ said the Barghast warrior at his side.
Tool grimaced. ‘Yes, Bakal, we are close.’
‘It is as you have said, then. Barghast have died.’ The Senan paused, and then said, ‘yet our shouldermen sensed nothing. You are not of our blood. How did you know, Onos Toolan?’
The suspicion never went away, Tool reflected. This gauging, uneasy regard of the foreigner who would lead the mighty White Faces to what all believed was a righteous, indeed a holy war. ‘This is a place of endings, Bakal. Yet, if you know where to look-if you know how to see-you find that some endings never end. The very absence howls like a wounded beast.’
Bakal uttered a sceptical grunt, and then said, ‘Every death-cry finds a place to die, until only silence waits beyond. You speak of echoes that cannot be.’
‘And you speak with the conviction of a deaf man insisting that what you do not hear does not exist-in such thinking you will find yourself besieged, Bakal.’ He finally faced the Barghast warrior. ‘When will you people discover that your will does not rule the world?’
‘I ask how you knew,’ Bakal said, expression darkening, ‘and you answer with insults?’
‘It is curious what you choose to take offence to,’ Tool replied.
‘It is your cowardice that offends us, Warleader.’
‘I refuse your challenge, Bakal. As I did that of Riggis, and as I will all others that come my way-until our return to our camp.’
‘And once there? A hundred warriors shall vie to be first to spill your blood. A thousand. Do you imagine you can withstand them all?’
Tool was silent for a moment. ‘Bakal, have you seen me fight?’
The warrior bared his filed teeth. ‘None of us have. Again you evade my questions!’
Behind them, close to a hundred disgruntled Senan warriors listened to their every word. But Tool would not face them. He found he could not look away from the sinkhole. I could have drawn my sword. With shouts and fierce faces, enough to terrify them all. And I could have driven them before me, chased them, shrieking at seeing them run, seeing their direction shift, as the ancient rows of cairns channelled them unwittingly on to the proper path-
