KINGDOM OF THE STONE -- a Wattpad featured novel

Chapter Thirty Five

"Yes and we're bringing it to the nearby koria if someone will show us the way," Kaelis added.

"I will!" the boy snatched up his net of fluttering doves and stepped out onto the path. "Why are you bringing them food?" he asked after they had walked for a few minutes.

Kaelis shrugged. He thought it pretty stupid, himself, but he repeated the words he'd been told to say. "When hard times come, people have to help each other out."

The boy looked up at him skeptically. "I hope you're not expecting them to help you back."

"Oh?"

The boy nodded to a strange ram-shackle structure that slumped together in a confusion of awnings and make-shift roofs propped up on sagging poles from which canvas sides had been hung to keep out the weather. "They're not much use," he said. "The adults just lie around dreaming all day. If it were not for some of us children, they'd all starve."

"Well, perhaps we can find some work for them to do in Nur."

The boy's eyes lit up with excitement. "Are you going to take us to Nur?"

"Yes. If they are not going to work the fields, we'll bring some other men who will. There's plenty of work in Nur this lot could be doing."

"Can I learn to use a spear like you?"

"When you get bigger."

"But I want to go with you now."

Kaelis laughed and threw a nervous glance to Ctonos who shrugged his indifference. "Very well. You can come with us. "We'll find some chores for you to do around Straton's field while you're growing bigger."

The boy led Ctonos and his men up to the village's central structure. Kaelis pulled back one canvas side releasing the stench of sweat, feces and the rot of putrefying flesh.

Ctonos recoiled. "Are they dead?" he asked the boy.

"No. Just dreaming." The boy kicked a middle-aged woman's leg. "Hey! Wake up!"

The woman sighed, mumbled something then lay still, taking long slow even breaths.

"Why are they like this?" Ctonos asked.

"That stone." The boy pointed at a chunk of black rock resting on a sawed-off stump.

Ctonos gave Kaelis a "deal with it" look. Kaelis sighed and tromped through the crowd, stepping on sleepers' arms and legs. When his foot slipped off someone's thigh, and he nearly fell, he slowed and picked his footing more carefully. No one stirred when he snatched up the stone and carried it outside. He placed the stone on a small boulder and smashed it with another rock.

A collective groan rose up from the structure. Ctonos nodded his approval. "Again."

Kaelis lifted the rock and smashed it until a loud crack sounded from the stone.

"Ah!" a man cried out from inside the structure. A woman's voice joined his, followed by other individual cries of shock and surprise which no longer came in unison.

Kaelis held up the broken pieces of stone and smirked.

The first man staggered up to the edge of the structure, clung to a support pole and squinted into the light.

"Getting these people ready to travel is going to take some time," Ctonos said. "Kaelis, leave me a couple of hands and take the rest of the spears to the next korion. With any luck, we'll be on the road to Nur by the time you get back."

"Take me with you," the boy pleaded, pulling on Kaelis' tunic.

Kaelis gave Ctonos a helpless look.