“We were asked to bring people with combat knowledge and experience, if you must know,” Father Chicanis answered. “You know the simulations we’ve been running, which were also at least partly suggested by our yet absent ally. He also suggested the Quadulan, or Pooka as you call him. There is also the matter of the cargo.”
“Eh?”
“Just judging from it and the evidence otherwise,” the priest responded, “I would say that the Dutchman intends that at least some of us go down there and retrieve or do something he wants or needs done. Something he doesn’t want to do himself, or have any of his other people do, if he has any.”
“Down there. On Helena.” N’Gana thought it over, but didn’t seem totally put off by the idea so long as he thought there was a way out.
“Yes, on Helena. And we’ve invited Doctor Socolov, an expert on primitive and tribal cultures, to come along and keep us from getting speared and maybe eaten by our own grandchildren.”
NINE
Night of the Hunters
Littlefeet only improved so much until they brought Spotty to him.
Something in him was convinced that she carried his child, and she did nothing to dissuade him. In fact, she thought for sure it was his, too, and she very much wanted it to be.
Her company was like strong medicine to him; he recognized her and remembered her name almost immediately. She was concerned, then pleased by his reaction, and took to calling him “Feetie,” a name he accepted because it was from her.
Having her with him was very much against Mother Paulista’s strict rules, but Father Alex, who not only felt guilty but also felt a sense of almost true parentship over the boy after so long, stood firm. The old lady wasn’t used to defiance, but in the hierarchy he did technically outrank her, and he simply put his foot down. All the others could go as before, but, until Littlefeet was totally back to normal, he and Spotty would be a couple.
His verbal skills started to come along nicely as well, and, although there were gaps, he was becoming more like his old self as the days passed.
Now, as Spotty prepared a small meal for him, Father Alex was able to sit down with the boy and get some information.
“You looked at the demon city, didn’t you?” he asked the boy. “And it did something to you.”
“Yes, Father. It—it took something. A part of me. I don’t know any way to say it but that.”
“I know. Up there you are particularly open to it because it is in the direct line of sight. I, too, have been up there, when I was younger, my son, and I, too, looked at the city. In my case, it was God’s intervention, or perhaps chance, that I did not suffer as you did. Just as it was taking hold of me, some snow loosened and came down in back of me, pushing some gravel, and it knocked me off my feet. It took all my will not to stand back up and look at it again, but God was with me and I did not. I had hoped He would be with you, but for whatever reason He allowed it to go further.”
“What would happen to someone who never could look away?”
He became grim. “I have seen them. They were in many ways as you were when you came down the mountain, but we could never get them back. All of their reason, their memories, their very sense of being human, was drained, leaving them no more than mindless animals. Eventually, all were killed lest their souls, now in demon hands, be used against us. I am truly not sure if that is the case, but it was believed so, and it was probably the best for them, as they were truly lost.”
“I—there is a tiny part of me, particularly when I sleep, or when the storms rise in the early night, that is there as well as here. Is that an evil thing, Father? Am I cursed?”
“I—I don’t know, my son. I truly do not. I think you might have been, but for your lady here. Your love of her, and hers of you, has shut them out. They may call, but they cannot come to you so long as this blocks their way. This way—one man, one woman, in love and union—is God’s way. The way we are now is not. It is a plan devised by material humans. Survival!” He spat. “What good is survival if one is always to live like this?”
“I do not understand you when you speak like this,” Littlefeet responded, “but I know you are speaking wisdom from the words of God and so I listen.”
Father Alex smiled. “It is not necessary that you understand. It is only necessary that you let an old man, tired and aching and not much longer for this world, say old man things even if they mean nothing.”
How could Littlefeet, or Spotty, or most of the current generation know and understand? How much did he understand, he who was steps closer to when people had ruled and all the magic was theirs?
“You say they come to you in dreams,” he continued, shifting back to his original focus. “What sort of dreams? What happens? Are they the same dream or different dreams?”
“The same one, which is why I know it is not just a normal dream, Father. We are here. The Families are here. And we dance. We dance around in circles, round and : round, round and round, then we dance up to another Family who dance in the other direction and we bump and then we dance back. I am dancing, too, but at some time I look up, and I see shining things above and they have vines made of lightning and they are spinning them and making us do the dances.”
The priest had heard all this before, he knew, yet he could not keep it in his head, not for long. Why couldn’t he? Why didn’t the Elders remember talking of this very thing the next time they met? And why did Littlefeet seem to be the only one who remembered for any longer?
The priest had the context, which might make sense of it if someone could find a prophet or seer, but he couldn’t keep the puzzle around, real, in his head. Littlefeet kept seeing the vision, but only from the point of view of one who knew only this life and could imagine little else.
“Father?”
“Yes, my son?”
“Did they ever find out what killed that scouting party?”
“Not—exactly. Their bodies looked as if all of them had, at one and the same time, been struck by lightning. We know, though, that this is highly unlikely, and that in any case there was no storm through there when they died. It was decided that, for whatever reason, the powers of the air do not wish us to enter the valley anymore, and we have changed our routing accordingly.”
“Father? Why do we not ever go as far as the great ocean? I saw it, I think, looking almost like sky in the distance, and it looked grand. It is something that I would like to see, if only to see that much water in one place. But we never go there.”
Father Alex considered his answer. “It is—forbidden—to go to the coast. Not for the same reason as the valley or the stone mound are now forbidden, but for very real reasons. There is not a lot of cover near the coast, and roaming bands who follow neither God nor the rules of Families are there as well, like Hunters setting upon any who come and, like them, eating flesh, even human flesh. Many are said to be the children of Hunters gone wild, or escapees from the demon city who know nothing of what is true. We can take on small bands of Hunters because we are a group, organized together, scouting carefully, tight, close. They can get one or two of us, but they do so at the cost of their own lives in some cases. We make the risk too great. But out there, near the coast—there those types would outnumber us.”
“And what of the pretty giant flowers I saw in the middle of the plain, covering it? I have been born and lived my life wandering here, yet I knew of it only by rumor and story.”
“Those are demon flowers! They could suck the blood and soul from anyone coming into their groves, and are tended by minor demons and demon slaves. For whatever evil reason they might have, they are what the demons do here. They plant and raise those huge flowers, and they tend them and they protect them. So long as we stay away from that area, they let us mostly alone.”
Littlefeet should have known a lot of this, but his mind was curiously divided, both clearer than he could ever remember it being and yet curiously empty, with snatches here and snatches there but not a complete pictu
re of what he’d taken for granted growing up.
“How are you doing now?” Father Alex asked him. “I mean, what is healed and what is not?”
“Oh, I am better, much better, and I think clearly,” Little-feet assured him. “But it is as if I see everything except Spotty for the first time. Like everything is new, and some of it does not come. All of the training I had growing up, which I know I had and can see being given to the others, it is not there. I do not seem to know how to do things. I go into the grass and I take scents and I cannot tell Family from others. Without the sun I cannot tell direction, and only from it when I see where it comes up or goes down. Everything looks and smells and tastes kinda the same. It makes me useless. The only one I can tell is Spotty. I can smell her, taste her, know where she is at any time. This is nice, but it does not let me give any work to the Family.”
“I make sure he knows where he is,” Spotty commented with a grin. “If he can always know where I am, then I can make sure he is where he should be!”
The old priest smiled. “Never in my lifetime has God so clearly made two for each other as the two of you. You are a mated pair. I know the others are calling names and making all sorts of jokes, but I tell you that they are the mistaken ones. You two are meant to be together. I shall try as hard as I can to keep you that way.”
“Mother Paulista has said I must return to her for the birth of the baby,” Spotty told him, sounding upset. “And that she believes Feetie is just pretending to still be sick to keep me here.”
Father Alex cocked an eyebrow and looked straight into Littlefeet’s eyes. “Is that so, my son? Do you have sins to confess to me, perhaps?”
He could see the turmoil in the young man’s mind as truth and confession to God warred against Spotty’s continued nursing. “I—I am still not right, Father. You know that. I have said it.”
“That’s not an answer. What about you, Spotty? Do you think he’s faking it?”
She didn’t sense any of the humor in his query that Littlefeet suspected was there. “I—I do not know, Father.”
“And what is it that you want?”
She was taken aback by the question; she’d never been asked such a thing before nor expected to be asked. “I—I want to be with Feetie, and I want to bear the child with him here,” she answered truthfully, if hesitantly. “But I must bear many babies in my life. It is the—-function—of the women, just as protecting is the function of the men. I—I don’t know what to think, Father. Honestly.”
Poor kids. He sighed and got to his feet. “I can promise nothing,” he told them, “but I will see what I can do. And Littlefeet—if your dreams come closer, if you feel them winning, you tell me immediately. A tiny part of you can now feel a tiny part of them. If they sense this, they may react to it. We do not want any demons visiting us with vines of lightning.”
• • •
It was night once more, and once more the thunderstorms built up in the sky, rolling in from the southeast as the breeze shifted to coming off the sea, then rising in the no longer sunlit air and also pushing up against the mountains. It was a regular occurrence; it would have been more unusual if it hadn’t happened, although it wasn’t a clockwork thing.
This time, however, as they spread out and waited for the deluge and covered their ears against the monstrous thunderclaps, there was something else there, something not immediately seen by anyone in the Family.
Shapes—small, stealthy shapes, moving through the tall grass under the cover of the storm, freezing still when the lightning flashed near, then proceeding on in toward the Family group.
They struck an outlying sentry as he waited for the storm to lift, and he was dead before he even realized that he’d failed in his mission.
The Hunters worked quickly, methodically, timing themselves perfectly by the storm, going after those most dangerous to them first, opening up a path body by body into the heart of where the night’s kraals were established.
Suddenly, a more alert and capable sentry deflected a leaping, slashing attack and screamed a mixed scream of warning and terror that those closest could easily hear. It was instantly understood by others, who took up the cry and thus passed it along through the camp.
Littlefeet heard the scream as well, perhaps twenty or so meters over his left shoulder. Far too close.
He had no weapons; they had taken his away and he could not get them back until he was restored to full duty. He hugged Spotty, warned her to stay low and maintain courage, and moved out into the brush along with the older men from the camp.
They fanned out in the pouring rain, each perhaps two outstretched arm’s lengths from the other, until they came upon the first of the bodies. Now they linked more closely together and the outer portions of the line continued to advance and swing in at the same time. Confident that no Hunter had gotten in back of them, they kept a steady mental beat that governed their movements, a practiced sense of timing gleaned from a lifetime of training.
Realizing that their presence was no longer a secret, but unwilling to back off, the Hunters also went into a practiced mode. They were far outnumbered, but they had a natural ferocity in them that their enemies had to create. A Family man, even a tough old sentry, needed some provocation to kill; Hunters loved to do it for its own sake.
The combination of the storm with its ground-shaking thunder, flashes of lightning, and tremendous volume of rain and the discipline of the two groups made for a nightmarish scene, but the momentum had shifted the moment the Family warriors had managed to form a tight V. The Hunters knew it, and decided to use one last-ditch surprise and the weather before they lost all advantage.
There were two of them, and as the two flanks closed in they leaped up as one right at the unmoving center. The center guards, however, had carved spears up, and one of them penetrated one of the two Hunters in midair. The momentum hurled the struck Hunter forward and threw the spear carrier flat on his back, but the wound in the Hunter was a deep and painful gouge.
The other had broken free right into a second guard, who took two feet in the chest and went down hard. Even as the second Hunter rushed forward, toward the kraals, the first one was just trying to get to its feet when it ran right into an equally startled Littlefeet. The boy reacted instantly, kicking and then leaping on top of the injured Hunter, who began to yell and scream like a horrible demon of the night storms. Littlefeet felt pain himself as something on the Hunter tore at his flesh, but he held on and just kept hitting and hitting no matter what. Other warriors came immediately to his aid and two spears came down directly onto and through the Hunter’s skull.
The second Hunter had managed to leap free of the sentry line and now had a straight run at the Family camp.
• • •
The rain was already beginning to slack off, and the Hunter knew that there was little time left. A getaway was primary; while one Hunter could inflict real damage, it would also be at the cost of its life. Thus, it continued to run, slashing at a couple of older males who were standing a rear guard and heading then for the women’s kraal.
The women had arranged themselves as a human wall behind which other women waited. As the Hunter approached, even in the near inky darkness they could smell death and a foreigner in their midst. Then the human wall screamed as the others rose up behind it and let loose a barrage of drugged thorns from blowguns. Most missed, but a few struck the Hunter, who cried out but kept coming. Only when the creature had virtually reached the human wall did it suddenly falter, seem to become disoriented, turn, start striking at the air and anything else around, and then go down.
The moment the Hunter fell, all the women were upon it with cries so terrible it even scared some of the nearby men. There was so little left of the Hunter by the time they were through, it was difficult to tell that it once had looked not unlike them.
Hunters always attacked in packs. Therefore, much of the balance of the night was spent with everyone awake, on guard and waiting, lest more
of these dreaded creatures come. The camp kept quiet so they would not be caught by surprise again. When morning came there had been no more attacks. It was most unusual to find Hunters only in a pair, but perhaps the others had been frightened off.
Littlefeet rushed back to make sure that Spotty was okay. She was, but she gasped when she saw and felt his wounds, and it was only after she made him lie in the grass and went for aid from the women’s kraal that he began to feel it himself. When it finally hit, the pain was incredible, but he did not cry out. Still, when she returned with mud and grain-based salves and some fermented potion that knocked back his ability to feel the pain, or at least mind it, he did not refuse any of the help.
When dawn came, he was asleep from the drugs, and Father Alex was over by him, concerned. Even Spotty gasped at the wounds: slashing strokes, almost as if made to take off skin, across half his face, much of his abdomen, and his right calf.
Sister Ruth, who knew the potions and salves, examined him thoroughly and then applied various salves from gourds she carried around her neck.
“Keep him asleep if at all possible for most of the day,” she told them after. “And I will be here to apply more salve and balm as needed. Only a few of the cuts are deep but all are painful. I do not believe any damage was done inside that will not heal, but I expect him to wear most of those slashes as scars. He was quite fortunate with this, you know. The Hunter’s claws were not poison.”
Father Alex nodded. “Did you see the Hunter? The one that got Littlefeet?”
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