‘I think we’ve found the Tattooed People,’ said Finn.
*
Kiall sat on the slope above the devastated village and watched his companions moving about the ruins. Finn and Maggrig skirted the round huts, reading sign, while Beltzer and Chareos walked from hut to hut looking for survivors. There were none. Kiall felt a sense of despair creeping over him. This was the third time in his young life that he had seen the results of a raid. In the first Ravenna had been taken, but other, older, women had been raped or abused. Men had been slain. In the second he had witnessed – and taken part in – a wild, frenzied slashing of swords and knives, his blood hot, fired by a need to kill. Now here was the third – and the worst of all. From his vantage point he could see the bodies of women and children, and even his unskilled eye could read the mindless savagery which had taken place here. This was no slave raid. The Tattooed People had been exterminated.
After a while Maggrig shouldered his bow and strode up to sit alongside Kiall.
‘It is revolting down there,’ said the hunter. ‘It seems that nothing was taken in the raid. Some two hundred warriors surrounded the village earlier today, moved in and killed almost everyone. There are some tracks leading north and it looks as if small groups of the Tattooed People fought clear and fled. Maybe a dozen. But they were followed.’
‘Why would anyone do this, Maggrig? What is gained by it?’
The hunter spread his hands. ‘There is no answer I can give you. I took part in a raid on a Nadir camp once. We had found several of our men tortured over camp-fires, their eyes burned out. We followed the raiders to their village and captured them. Our officer, a cultured man, ordered all the children to be brought out to stand before the captives. Then he slew them in front of their parents. After that the Nadir were hanged. He told us the Nadir did not fear death, so to kill them was no real punishment. But to butcher their children before their eyes – that was justice.’ Maggrig fell silent.
Kiall looked back at the village. ‘There is no justice in any of it,’ he said. The others joined them and the group moved back from the slope to make camp. Finn was unable to light a fire because the wood was too damp, and the questors sat in a circle, saying little.
‘Was Okas among the dead?’ asked Kiall.
Chareos shrugged. ‘Difficult to tell. Many of the corpses have been stripped almost clean, but I saw no tattooes I could remember.”
‘Have we arrived in the midst of a war between them?’
‘No,’ answered Finn. ‘The Tattooed People are small, and pigeon-toed. The tracks of the raiders show them to be tall. I found this,’ he went on, pulling a broken gold wristband from the pocket of his deerskin jerkin. Behzer gasped as he saw it.
‘Sweet Heaven!’ he exclaimed. ‘How heavy is it?’ Finn tossed it to him. ‘It must be worth around a hundred Raq,’ said the giant.
‘The owner threw it away when it broke,’ said Finn. ‘Gold cannot be worth that much here.’
‘It isn’t,’ agreed Chareos, producing a small, barbed arrow-head – it too was gold.
‘I am beginning to like it here,’ remarked Beltzer. ‘We could go back to Gothir as rich men.’
‘Let us be content to be going back as live men,’ snapped Chareos.
‘I am with you on that,’ whispered Finn, holding out his hand to Beltzer, who reluctantly returned the wristband.
Chareos rose. ‘It is coming on towards dusk,’ he said. ‘I think we should make our way back to the Gate and camp there.’ He shouldered his pack and led the others towards the north-west. They moved warily, stopping often while Finn scouted the trail ahead, and Kiall grew increasingly nervous. There would be little chance of hearing the approach of a legion of enemy warriors, not above the cluttering of the dark creatures in the trees, the distant roar of hunting cats and the rushing of unseen rivers and streams. He kept close to Chareos, Beltzer bringing up the rear with his huge axe in his hands.