The Kin Read Online Free PDF Page B

on the hill.
    â€œWait,” called Noli from the rear. “I smell juiceroot.”
    Suth stopped. Yes, there was that thin, bitter odour. He would have noticed it himself if his mind had not been so set on the scents of danger. Exploring down into the scrub they found a bush almost smothered by a straggling creeper with small dull brown flowers. They traced the vines across the ground to the place where they entered the earth. Stoneweed and juiceroot, growing so close together, Suth thought—this was indeed a Good Place.
    The ground was too hard to dig with bare hands. With a lot of difficulty they chewed off branches from another bush and made themselves digging sticks with which, morsel by morsel, they began to chip and move the soil away. It was slow work. Among the Kins the men used heavy stone cutters to make themselves strong digging sticks, and hardened their points with fire. The ones Suth and Noli had made were blunt and weak.
    Bit by bit they dug a hole. At last they came to the top of the tuber from which the vine grew, and saw that it was fat and pale. That was good. Juiceroot was different from stoneweed. It was full of water, with a faint bittersweet taste, very refreshing and far nicer than the dribble they’d found running out of the cliff below. After you’d sucked the juice out you could eat the stringy flesh as plant food. It was poor stuff, but better than nothing.
    They forgot about anything else. The sweat streamed from them as they worked steadily on, until every muscle ached and their hands were torn and sore. This was how you got juiceroot out of the ground. It took all day, but it was worth the effort.
    The little ones understood that too. They had seen it all before, so they sat and watched in silence. Noli broke small pieces from the top of the tuber for them to suck. Time passed. Suth was quite unprepared when Tinu gave the sharp hiss that meant Danger.
    He looked up and saw her and the little ones staring beyond him.
    He straightened and turned.
    Men.
    Four of them, standing in a line, just a few paces off. They had digging sticks in their hands. They looked like the men in the Kin, with scars on their cheeks to mark them as grown men, and very dark skins. But one of them had eyes of two different colours, dark brown and pale. Shakily Suth rose and faced them. His throat was dry. His heart pounded.
    There was no point in fighting, no hope in running. He had done wrong. Even among Kin it would be wrong. Snake didn’t dig or hunt in Weaver’s Good Places, not without giving gifts, not without many words of asking. Men had been killed for this, and women taken.
    He kneeled and spread his hands, palms forward, and bowed his head and then looked up at them. Their faces were unfriendly. The man with strange eyes stepped forward, raising his stick for a blow. Suth did not know if he would strike. It might be only a threat, a warning, but he flinched, and tried to cover his head with an arm.
    Noli, from behind him, spoke. “Moonhawk sent us.”
    The man hesitated. “Moonhawk?”
    He said the name strangely.
    â€œMoonhawk sent me a dream,” said Noli.
    Another man strode to her, snatched her up by the arm, and shook her.
    â€œWhere are your others?” he said. “Where are your grown men? How many?”
    He too spoke strangely.
    â€œFive men left only,” Noli gasped. “Strangers came. They killed our fathers. We fled.”
    â€œThese five—they are here?” snarled the man.
    â€œNo,” said Noli. “I think they are dead. Bal led us to an empty place—no food, no water. Moonhawk came in my dream and said I must come back to the little ones. These. Bal left them behind. Suth came too.”
    The man who had been about to strike Suth now grabbed him by his hair and hauled him to his feet. He seized his wrist and twisted his arm up behind his back, almost to the breaking point, but Suth didn’t struggle or cry