The Inferior by Peadar Ó Guilín

Tallies of the Traveller, or Treatymaker or other great Heroes of the Tribe. No man could tell one stick from another. But a woman might. It was said they could even use them to tell which marriages would produce bad children.
    ‘There,’ said Treesinger, plucking one from the pile.
    She held it up before his eyes, careful not to touch him with it. His mother’s Tally, a stick no longer than his forearm, marked all the way up with tiny slashes in complicated designs.
    ‘Do you see this little cross, Stopmouth? No, that one’s Wallbreaker; the second one, see it? That’s you.’
    ‘My b-birth?’ He felt tears coming to his eyes. How he’d missed her.
    ‘Of course not! Birth days are never marked. This was when you were accepted into the Tribe. Your naming day. I remember it well, because there were many who didn’t want you named.’ He’d have been volunteered quickly if that had been the case, but Mother had protected him, it seemed, and not for the last time.
    ‘She was so happy you’d been saved,’ said Treesinger. ‘She smiled for tens of days afterwards.’
    ‘Well,’ said Watersip. ‘Good thing they kept him. My Rockface says the lad’s a fine hunter even if he is a bit simple.’
    ‘He’s not simple,’ Mossheart said suddenly, her beautiful eyes rubbed raw with crying. ‘It’s just his tongue.’
    Watersip opened her mouth, but Treesinger silenced her with a look that said:
Don’t upset the girl–you know how she gets
.
    But Mossheart was already upset. She got up quickly and pushed her way out of the house, almost knocking Stopmouth into the Tallies behind.
    Treesinger shook her head. ‘That brother of yours…Why can’t he be as charming at night as he is during the day?’
    The other women laughed again, but this time Treesinger looked serious, holding the young hunter’s gaze and resting her free hand against his shoulder. Stopmouth had never felt more uncomfortable in his life.
    ‘Stopmouth, am I the only one who thinks she should have picked you instead?’
    He pulled away from her, stumbling outside into the glare.
             
    By now Wallbreaker had organized many successful ambushes and was respected enough that when he asked people to travel from building to building shoring up the barricades broken by the invaders, they readily agreed and even seemed grateful for his orders. He often met with sympathetic hunters. Some of them had served on the Flesh Council and took him seriously despite his age. He was busy, always busy, but he still had time for Stopmouth and Indrani, although she never seemed to welcome his visits.
    ‘We’ll have to kill the Armourbacks,’ he said to Stopmouth one day.
    ‘Of c-course!’
    ‘You don’t understand, brother,’ said Wallbreaker. He’d been supervising the building of new defences. Dust picked out the muscles of his body, hiding the tattoo of Bloodskins falling into a pit of spikes. His voice cracked for want of water, but he was too intent on what he was saying to drink from the skull at his hand or to even pour it over the blond hair plastered to his scalp. ‘We’ll have to kill them, even if we don’t get to eat them.’
    The concept was a strange one, but once Stopmouth had swallowed it, it seemed to make perfect sense. The Armourbacks had learned to co-operate with other species. Even now that the humans had a few Hairbeasts living among them, co-operation between the two was non-existent.
    Stopmouth had tried, of course. He was teaching Indrani adult talk and she now understood much of what he said. But when he tried to teach the Hairbeast refugees, they ignored him. He never stuttered in front of them, but it didn’t matter; it was as if they couldn’t hear half the words he spoke. Once, when he grew too persistent, a large male butted him with its chest, knocking him flat. Only the mythical Treatymaker had ever managed any kind of communication with the Hairbeasts. It was said that even he’d understood them very