Kalik by Jack Lasenby

using their weight to shift the log back on to the skids. And beside me, Kalik levered, gave the huge tote log the smallest movement. It hung, shifted, and whispered downhill.
    The Salt Men looked up. For a moment I saw the man’s face, the one who had almost struck me with his axe. Then they were both diving aside. Their log had just begun to move. The tote struck its butt a clear smack! The smaller log sprang like a spear. The huge tote swung across the gully, tearing bark in a strip which shot vertical. A scream! The skidding tote rolled over the two Salt Men and was gone. Bucking, thundering, exulting down the last slope, it shot across the beach, threw up water its whole length, and rocked still in the bay.
    The guards cheered. The remaining Salt Men picked up the axes where they had been dropped, walked on down, not looking at the smeared hillside.
    By dark, three rafts were moored. The tote trunk was fastened to a post dug upright into the beach, what Kalik called a dead-man .
    It rained as we ate. Comfortable in the guards’ hut, I wondered how the Salt Men slept in their rough shelters. Next morning the three rafts set off, poled by the slaves. The tote log towed behind. Guards’ canoes circling lazy.
    It was as we paddled back to the headland that I asked Kalik something about the dance-worship of Hekkat.
    “Who told you about it?”
    “Raka.”
    “No wonder she died.”
    “Dead! Why?”
    “The Maidens are sworn to secrecy.”
    “But everyone knows Lutha is Hekkat’s priestess.”
    “Yes,” Kalik smiled. “But the worship: the dances, the prayers, the songs, it’s death to talk about them.
    “Raka was Lutha’s favourite. She fell from grace. It happens. Usually the girl is expelled from the Maidens, and Lutha takes another lover. But Raka disappeared. Lutha might have done it because she knew Raka had been talking to you.”
    “Nobody saw us!”
    Kalik turned, paddled dripping on the silent lake. “There is always somebody watching, Ish. Listening.” He smiled at my face.
    “How did she die?”
    “Bound and left on the Island of Bones. For the next flood.”
    Was it my fault? Had Lutha killed Raka for sleeping with me? Or was it something she had done earlier, even before she put her spear to my throat? Was Raka a sacrifice, like the two men who died on the skids?

Chapter 15
A Flash of White
    The canoe ran silent. I looked at the mountains south. Several notches that looked promising on the way up the lake now had blue ranges piled behind. None offered escape.
    Getting up Lake Ka to the Western Mountains would be difficult not just because of the guards at the logging camp. I had learned slave will betray slave rather than see them escape. Besides, how could the Children survive that climb? And for those who did, life on the Western Coast? Dried riverbeds, desert, the insane sun spinning across a brazen sky….
    The Salt Men had come from the north, down the valley under Grave Mountain. Kalik would search there first. Even if we escaped successfully, life amongst the Salt People? Exchange one bloody society for another?
    Grave Mountain cut off escape to the east. Kalik had talked about the Cold Hills to the south-east. Grim country. Whichever way we went, the Children must have a chance of surviving.
    “We’ll have a look at Lake Weah,” Kalik said. “Where the swans went.”
    We crossed our lake to its northern side, climbed the cliffs on to the shoulder of a spur. Lake Weah lay below, surprisingly close. Mountains crammed its upper length. It was too near Lake Ka.
    We descended and paddled on. There were Chak, Kimi, and the smaller children to consider. Two older girls, Kitimah and Sheenah, were pregnant. Then there were the sick. Far easier to take only the fit…. As well escape on my own! Was that what I wanted? Survival without the Children would be a mean, pinched thing. Escape meant taking them all. Again I looked at the mountains south.
    Kalik shook a trickle of water off his arm.