Kalik Read Online Free

myself.
    Ever since my father’s death, and my sister’s disappearance, I had wanted a family more than anything else. Yet here were Lutha and Kalik, almost unaware of their baby. And the girl who looked after it, they treated as less than human.
    Kalik’s support had given Lutha the chance to fortify the Headland, to build up their strength. So long as she got advantage from the relationship, it might last. Kalik and Lutha were both beautiful, attracted physically, to each other. Both ambitious, they would be equally ruthless.
    Ambitious people might wait years for the right moment to seize power. Did Lutha understand that about Kalik?
    Had the sacrifice of Jak and the Shaman been a grim waste? The lake was so different from what I expected … I tried to grin at the irony, but my mouth would only pucker.
    I worked Lutha’s cord over my head. On it hung a silver bow and arrow. A perfect bow, like a mouth smiling. I slipped it on again.
    Later, the guards woke me. Somewhere in the dark above, Lutha’s voice was giving quiet orders. Canoes had been run up on rollers and chocked between the buildings. Children with large pots were filling them from the spring.
    “Handy if the Salt Men try their trick with flaming arrows again!” Kalik appeared beside me, laughed, and kicked a child who had spilled a pot of water. A hard kick, indifferent yet vicious, like the blow Lutha had struck the girl with the baby. Humped in pain, the child scuttled into the dark. As if nothing had happened, Kalik continued talking about the Salt Men.
    He seemed to be thinking only of the battle. “I killed a dog that attacked mine–” I began to say, but he waved away my words. It was unfortunate. They had few dogs. A fever had swept through killing them. Still it had been the dog’s fault, trying to attack mine. But I knew Kalik was making light of it.

Chapter 5
The Lost Cries of Children
    “Stay with me.” Kalik’s voice shook. “You’ll see some action!” By the causeway gate, he shifted, tried the point of his spear. One hand brushed the knife on his belt, went back to it, half-pulled it, thrust it down in the sheath, loosened it again. He breathed fast. Whenever I think of the battle with the Salt Men, I hear Kalik’s breathing, excited.
    The darkness rustled, warriors slipping into place behind fences and palisades, climbing to the fighting platforms over both gates. Bows being strung. Fingers trying them, the quick-silenced twangs. Silence gripped as if the Headland dreamed beneath a spell. So quiet, I heard Kalik swallow. Someone pissing against a post, someone else sniggering nervous: the whisper that hushed them both. From the platform of the Roundhouse, invisible herself until the light strengthened, Lutha would be able to see everything spread below.
    I trembled and touched my lips, tight, drawn back in a nervous grin. I reached for Nip’s head, and remembered she was in the hut, nursing her bruises.
    To the approaching Salt Men, it must seem the Headland slept bandaged in darkness. Their rafts edged across the lake, canoes circling, keeping them together. Hugging the ground, more Salt Men slithered out of the hills and across the causeway. The place would be theirs by surprise.
    A bird twittered. One bird waking. Then silence as if it had gone back to sleep. The twitter again. A long silence. A third twitter. Its note of uncertainty picked up by another. And another. As they began every morning. One over there. One a bit closer. Another across there. Tentative, trying out their voices.Unsure about the grey in the east.
    Then I realised one call had changed. A sharp whistle from the Roundhouse platform. A bird replied from the lake gate, another from beside me, and their calls were lost under the malicious susurrus of arrows riding the air. Shrieks from the lake and the causeway. Horns thrilled and boomed. Cheers. And tock! tock! – arrows from the Salt Men hitting posts, huts, the ground. The sodden knock as, here and