runners’ families, the Root stood with his arms folded. Shade knew he wasn’t about to be praised for failing to win, but he had fought off the challenge of the snailhead, and Shade could see a kind of grim satisfaction in his father’s face under the bull’s black muzzle.
Knuckle grabbed his lower arm, sweating, panting, evidently winded from his fall. ‘Well done, boy. You fought dirtier than me.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’ Shade tried to shake his arm free.
But Knuckle was strong. ‘I made promise. Come on - priest over there.’
The snailhead priest was a skinny man who looked extraordinarily old, with a tube-like head grotesque even by snailhead standards. He grinned and waggled his tongue at Shade; it contained a plug of stone so wide he couldn’t close his mouth around it.
Knuckle said, ‘I told you - honour you. Today you become a truth-talker, one of us. Oh, don’t look for your father. I spoke to him. He knows. Doesn’t mind a little pain for you.’
Shade saw it. ‘You’re going to make a hole in my tongue, aren’t you?’
‘Clever boy. Here.’ He held out a narrow flint blade, very sharp, blood-stained, and folded Shade’s fingers around it. ‘When priest working, squeeze hard.’
‘I’ll cut my palm to shreds.’
‘True. But you forget other agonies . . .’
Now the priest stepped forward. Because of his own tongue plug he could barely speak, but his mime was clear enough. He had a bone needle that he would push up through Shade’s tongue. That would be followed by a length of aurochs horn, narrow-tipped but quickly widening. And then would come the stone plug, as wide as Shade’s thumb. The priest beckoned with one hand, holding the needle with the other, while Knuckle shoved him forward.
But a snailhead woman ran up. It was Eyelid. She had her baby on her hip, but she was pointing. ‘There.’ And she gabbled snailhead speech so fast Shade couldn’t follow.
Knuckle screamed in anger. He immediately let go of Shade and went running.
Shade turned to see. A group of snailhead men had hold of a struggling figure. The Root and his Pretani hunters were running over too.
The man the snailheads held was Shade’s brother, Gall.
For the second time that day, Shade ran after Knuckle.
At the centre of a mob, Knuckle faced Gall. Both were held back by their countrymen, snailheads and Pretani. Others were running up, even children, intoxicated by excitement, eager to see the day’s latest spectacle. Kirike the Giver came running up too, pulling people away; his daughters followed, Zesi with an anguished expression on her face.
The Root forced his way through, brushing lesser men aside. Shade ran after his father.
Gall was filthy, ragged. He must have been living wild for months, since the incident at the summer camp. But tracks ran down his muddy, sand-coated face, as if he had been weeping. Knuckle, the muscles in his neck distended, was screaming abuse in his face, in his own language. As he strode up, the Root roared back in the Pretani tongue.
‘Enough,’ Kirike cried, trying to force his way through. ‘Enough! Speak in the traders’ tongue, all of you. What has been happening here while I’ve been away? Who is this man?’
‘My son,’ the Root rumbled.
‘I saw you were here,’ Gall said, his voice thick. ‘Father - I have not been far from here. I hunted. I lived as a man - but alone. And when I saw you—’
‘When you saw me, what?’ the Root said, silencing him. ‘Did you expect me to fix the mess you have made for yourself? Did you expect me to take you home like a lost calf? What sort of a man expects that?’
Kirike asked again, ‘What has happened here? Knuckle, what do you want?’
Knuckle pushed his face at Gall. ‘I want to know why this man killed my brother, and then ran away.’
‘Is this true?’
The Root glared at his son. ‘Well?’
‘Yes! Yes, I killed Gut! I can hardly deny it - all saw the spear thrown - it was a good kill, father, clean. Look at my brow. I fixed my own kill-tattoo.’ There were two lines cut into his forehead now, Shade saw, one more ragged than the other, and half-healed.
But the Root showed no pleasure. ‘A man does not kill for no reason. Why? What had this snailhead done to you?’
‘Nothing,’ Gall admitted.
‘Nothing? Nothing?’ Knuckle was screaming now. ‘Then why kill him?’
As if goaded, Gall yelled, ‘Because I could not kill my own brother!’