Stone Spring by Stephen Baxter Page A

won’t come back without a kill. You’ll see . . . The walk is useful.’
    That word made her laugh. ‘Useful? How?’
    ‘The children are learning how to live on the move. In the forest. As your ancestors might once have lived. They are learning old skills, that might be needed again.’
    She grunted. ‘You sound like our priest. He likes to say how useful things are. You sound like an old man, not a kid.’
    His cheeks burned under his sparse beard. ‘I am older than your sister!’
    She tried hard not to laugh. ‘Does Ana treat you like a kid?’
    ‘She treats me badly. I don’t know why. I—’
    ‘I can tell you why.’ The voice was Gall’s. Suddenly he was here, a massive presence silhouetted by the low sun. Zesi saw that he had something heavy and limp draped over his shoulders. He was breathing hard, his tunic bloodied. ‘Because you’re a skinny runt. Here, little boy, I bought you a present.’ And he threw his burden to the ground.
    It was a deer, a young female, and pregnant.
    ‘Be a man,’ Gall said. ‘Finish it off. This is your chance to show cold-faced Ana you’ve got balls - and I don’t mean those shrivelled-up nuts she sees you washing every morning, hah!’
    Zesi could see the swelling of the doe’s belly clearly against its slim form. Panting, salivating, exhausted, obviously terrified, it tried to stand. But the backs of its legs were matted with blood, and every time it rose it fell back to the ground.
    There was something fascinating in the deer’s agony, Zesi found herself thinking. And the power Gall had over it.
    Gall was watching her, amused.
    ‘This is not how we hunt, Pretani. A quick kill, an apology to the beast’s spirit - that’s our way. Not this, not a half day of agony for a creature like this, all to play a kind of joke on your brother.’
    But maybe Gall saw something darker in her, under her bluster. He winked. ‘Fun, though, isn’t it?’
    She turned to Shade. ‘Go and get the priest. The deer is his Other.’
    Shade ran.
    Zesi got to her knees beside the frightened doe. She stroked its neck and held its head. ‘There, there. I am sorry. It will be over soon. Soon, soon.’ The deer seemed to calm, its eyes wide.
    Gall scoffed. ‘I think we’re more alike than you want to admit - what a beauty you are when you are bloody—’ ‘Out of my sight, you Pretani savage.’
    He held his place for one more heartbeat. Then, growling obscenities in his own tongue, he walked away.

11
    They climbed out of the valley of the Milk, and crossed higher, hilly land.
    It took days to cross the First Mother’s Ribs. But by the fifth afternoon you could smell the salt in the air, and hear the cry of the gulls. The children clambered up ridges and climbed trees, competing to be the first to spot the water.
    The sun was low in the sky when the group broke through the last line of trees, and the Moon Sea lay open before them. Here the rocky ground tumbled down to a shallow beach. The tide was low, the beach of this inland sea wide and glistening. Far off to the west Zesi saw movement - probably a seal colony. And even from the treeline you could see the oysters like pebbles on the beach, the promised gift of the moon.
    The day had been unseasonably hot, and adults and children alike, worn down by days in the forested hills, dumped their packs, threw off their heavy cloaks and ran down the slope towards the water. Some folk made their way along the coast to an area of salt marsh, a place of thick, sloppy, grey clay, cut through by a complicated network of creeks and channels and small islands, all washed regularly by the tide. Here they spread out, inspecting sea aster, golden samphire, glasswort: plants that liked salt and fed on what they trapped from the tidal flows.
    Shade stood uncertainly with Zesi at the head of this beach. ‘We have walked from sea to sea,’ he said.
    ‘The people who live hereabouts have legends of when this wasn’t a sea at all, but a lake. Fresh