The Unfinished Song: Taboo (11 page)

The men placed the notched log flat along the length of the megalith. They rolled the cube, notch by notch, to the far end.
Right over Kavio’s head.

His pissed himself.

They
held both
stones, rectangle and cube, in place with ropes while they removed one wood block from under the megalith.

“Control the drop!” Rotten Tooth yelled. “Control or the stone could split!”

The cube shaped rock weighted down the megalith, which pivoted on the remaining wooden block fulcrum. The men strained against the ropes to keep it from falling.

Kavio dislocated both thumbs, freed his hands and heaved himself out of the dirt furrow under the megalith.

“Wait! Hold it!” screeched Rotten Tooth. “He’s moving!”

Rotten Tooth jumped into the pit, holding an obsidian dagger.  “I wanted your last vision to be the stone crashing down on you, but I can just as easily slit your throat first.”

“We can’t hold it much longer!” shouted one of the men sweating at the ropes.

Rotten Tooth rushed Kavio. Their bodies tangled. It was an animal fight with no elegance or skill, just rage on one side, desperation on the other. Kavio kicked, finger jabbed, bit. He shrieked. The obsidian dagger flashed like black lightning. Kavio smelled sour milk, felt something warm sluice over his chest.

“The rope is breaking!”

Before the warning was even complete, the stone giants hurled like mountains into the pit. Kavio shoved Rotten Tooth, then rolled the other way.

The crash reverberated, an earthquake, and the boulder cracked a blink later as an aftershock. Dust billowed, blinding him, and the men above. When it settled, Kavio crouched in the far corner of the pit, soaked in blood and piss. Nothing remained of Rotten Tooth except one hand flung out from under the upright megalith.

Kavio emerged from the Vision lying face up in the bottom of the depression. Panic clawed inside, and only by sheer force of will did he not piss himself again as he had as a child.

Hertio peered at him from the rim. The fat man could not readily jump down. “Do you need help?”

Kavio’s legs shook, but he stood. “No.”

He climbed out alone.

“I forgot you were prone to fits,” Hertio said jovially. “Too much faery in your blood.”

Kavio wanted to lash out,
You
fool, this place is hexed for me
, but he bloodied his tongue between his teeth until he could swallow the words. The men pulling the megalith stared wide-eyed at him. The whole hillside had seen him quiver and trip like an idiot headfirst into the hole. He felt shame in all the vivid shades of a boy caught masturbating by his mother. This day, his remaking, smeared.

The new megalith was positioned using the same technique Kavio had witnessed as a child, though without squashing anyone. He watched in silence. Hertio yammered on about his family. His hints weren’t subtle.

Hertio had seven wives, all
clan
-cousins from Yellow Bear’s “chief-maker” Sun Ladder clan. Two dozen of the large number of Sun Ladder children claimed him as father. He made a point of extolling not only his eldest daughter Lulla,
but
a slew of younger Sun Ladder nieces.

“In ten years, they’ll be ripe and your spear will still be strong.” Hertio nudged him with an elbow.

“I’ve been giving some thought to paying the deathdebts,” Kavio said.

“Always serious.” Hertio shrugged. “You’ll lead the raid on
Jumping Rock clanhold.”

“No.”

“You’ve just sworn an oath to obey me, Kavio. You can’t let one sun set before you break it?”

“The War Chief Nargano is the one who rallied warriors for the attack on the Initiates. We must deal with him. Anything less would waste spilled blood.”

“To kill Nargano, we’d have to take the Blue Waters tribehold, which happens to be on an island in the Blue Vast, surrounded by shark-infested waters and flesh-eating crabs the size of wolverines. Also—don’t repeat this, or I’ll deny it and feed you to bears—Blue Waters warriors are fiercer than ours. Our men fill their bellies through farming and smithing. Theirs hunt killer whales and plunder clanholds. We grow food; they steal it. It’s always been that way. It’s not going to change, Kavio.”

“I didn’t say we must
kill
Nargano, I said we must
deal
with him. War is not the only way to pay the deathdebts. If Blue Waters agreed to give tribute to our dead instead, we can avoid the blooded spear. Invite War Chief Nargano to treaty.”

“He won’t come.”

“We have Rthan.”

“They aren’t kin, by birth or marriage. Nargano may mourn the loss of a strong war leader, but he won’t give tribute for thirty-one dead to have him back.”

“I think he might. Rthan is the Henchman of the Blue Lady.”

“How can you be sure?”

Kavio tilted his head.

“Why do I even ask?” Hertio threw up his hands. “Suppose Nargano pledges tribute but breaks his word.”

“Then we use Rthan for a different kind of leverage.”

“Killing him won’t budge Nargano either.”

“I wouldn’t have given him to Brena if I wanted him dead. We’ll use the small rock to leverage the big rock.”

“There’s such a thing as trying to get
too
clever,” Hertio said sourly. “What’s your stake in all this? Why go to so much trouble to avoid one raid against an unimportant clan?”

“What’s your stake in all this?” Kavio gestured to the Unfinished Tor. “You want to build mountains. So do I, Hertio. But I know this. One death leads to another death. One raid leads to another raid. One war leads to another war. Before you know it, everything you’ve tried to build is washed away. Without people, mountains are just piles of dirt.”

“Your father used to say that a dog might bite you once but become your friend the next day if you gave him meat. But a snake that bites once
—
”

“
Bites twice.
I know what my father says. So?”

“So, how do you know if Nargano is a dog or a snake?”

“Give him meat.”

“Easy to say when you’re in another man’s
store pit
.”

The earth shook as the megalith thundered into place. A dust cloud rose from the pit. The hundreds of men on the hillside cheered.

“We’ll try it your way for now,” Hertio said.
He jabbed a finger at the river. “What
is
that?”

Kavio tensed at once, prepared for another attack. It’s what his father would have done—follow up the attack on Yellow Bear quickly before the enemy was ready to retaliate—but he saw no war canoes in the river.

“Is that man pulling that boulder
by himself
?” Hertio asked incredulously.

Hertio was not pointing to the river, but to a man walking in the gravel beside it, in the torn up track of the many men who had rolled in the megalith on logs. This man walked alone, but he pulled behind him, by innumerable ropes, a boulder almost as large as the megalith. Kavio felt a shock of recognition.

“Gremo,” he said.

“You know him.” Hertio threw up his hands. “How am I not surprised?”

“I tangled with him on my way here.”

“Is there anyone you
haven’t
tangled with?”

“I’ve never had any run-ins with the Deathsworn.”

“Something to look forward to, then,” said Hertio. “Is it possible for one man to pull a rock that size? No. No, it’s not. Yet he is.”

“Gremo is very dangerous,” Kavio said. “At least, to his enemies.”

“Who are his enemies?”

“That’s what I intend to find out.” Kavio grinned tightly at Hertio before he loped down the hill to confront Gremo for a second time.

A line of young women with jars of water balanced on their head passed by Kavio. He scanned their ranks automatically for Dindi; she wasn’t one of them. But his focus never left the man in the distance pulling the boulder.

Kavio reached Gremo, who had paid no attention to Kavio’s approach, and began to walk alongside the grunting, sweating man.

Step after step, Gremo ignored him.

“I’m surprised to see you here,” Kavio remarked.
To put it mildly
.

Gremo huffed and heaved, as if each step were a victory won over the ground.

“If it’s so heavy, why do you drag it behind you?” Kavio asked.

By now, he did not expect an answer. So he was surprised when Gremo tilted his head, very slightly, to let one eye gleam at him from under his shock of wild hair.

“You know why,” growled Gremo. “You know why I’m here.”

“I really don’t.”

“I followed
you
.” Gremo shuddered, but he kept staggering forward, heaving the boulder behind him. The ropes were taut but did not snap. It must have taken him weeks to walk overland the whole way, pulling the huge rock every step.

“To attack me?” asked Kavio.

“You freed me once,” said Gremo.

“I made a mistake.”

“You can do it again.”

“I try not to repeat old mistakes. There are so many new ones waiting to be made.”

Gremo folded into a crouch.

Concerned, Kavio gripped the handle of his obsidian knife. He couldn’t tell if Gremo had collapsed from exhaustion or was preparing to spring into a deadly leap.

The man wiped his shaggy hair from his face. His expression was taut, but not broken. “I didn’t know what else to do. You were the only one who came close. I want… it felt good to be free, even if… I couldn’t take it. I want to feel that again. I want to be free for real. For good.”

“I’d like you to be free for good too,” Kavio said cautiously, “But not free for evil. Can you pledge to me you can control your power without the stone?”

“I can’t let go of the rock,” said Gremo.

“Then what do you want from me?”

Gremo stared back at him bleakly. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

Kavio considered.

“Will you pledge your service to me as my henchman?”

Gremo did not hesitate. He fell to his knees at once. “If you will accept me.”

“I accept your service,” Kavio said gravely. He held out a hand to help Gremo back to his feet. “At least this is the right place to bring big rocks. Maybe we can find a way to add yours to the mountain. You think you can drag that thing uphill?”

Gremo took his hand, stood up, straight and tall, and began to heave.

It looked like the uphill battle might take a while, so Kavio jogged ahead to report to Hertio that Gremo would not be a danger, at least for the moment.

“He kneeled to you,” said Hertio. “You took his pledge as a henchman?”

Kavio shrugged. “It seemed like he wanted guidance.”

“It didn’t occur to you to tell him to pledge himself to me? I
am
the War Chief.”

It had
not
occurred to him. Kavio spread his arms apologetically. “I’m not sure he would have made his pledge to you, Uncle. He is a bit…strange.”

“It won’t hurt if you have an attendant,” Hertio conceded. “But Kavio, I do not want you accepting the loyalty of men in my place. I am the big man here. No matter your power, you still must obey me.”