The food they had already gathered would not last them forever. About twenty Dokra had died and a handful of Buginese. And three hundred hungry folk could easily eat one or two carcasses a day. Maybe even three. Assuming they did not eat their own folk—and cannibals, he knew, seldom did—if you took the worst scenario, this village would run out of food in about eight or nine days. Maybe a week.
Another way of looking at it was that there were a hundred and sixty walking food carcasses trapped in the fort a mile or so away from here. Why would they ever give that up? Farhan racked his brain: what could he offer these people that would make them forgo two or even perhaps three months’ worth of free meat? Nothing he could think of.
Farhan’s increasingly insane calculations were stopped by a movement in the grass curtain at the front of the hut. A long, thin, gray hand emerged through the dried fronds, followed by the long, gray emaciated body of an ancient man. Farhan stared at him, agog. He had the usual scythe on his forehead but the whole of the rest of his body was also covered with markings, old tattoos once in black, now faded to a dusty gray: scythes, yes, many, many of them in all different shapes and sizes but also charging buffalo, leaping tigers, sinuous cobras and several images of a muscular and rather beautiful young man with long black hair, sitting with his legs crossed and his eyes lowered. The old man’s groin was covered with a tanned leather loincloth, of the same kind that everybody else in the tribe wore, but every inch of his long legs, long arms and shrunken belly and chest was covered in these marvelous designs. Even his face, his eyelids, his earlobes were marked. Though the color had faded with age these tattoos still looked magnificent, and the way the man held his skinny body, proudly, carefully, as if he were an actor on a stage, gave Farhan, despite his disgust with these people and their vile habits, a powerful sense of the majesty of this patriarch. Indeed it almost seemed as if the images of the divine Vharkash printed on his sagging skin had given his person a touch of godliness.
The old man seated himself on the tiny wooden stool, extended his arms and legs to display them, laying his heels a pace apart on the ground and putting his hands on his bony knees. He said in Old Yawanese and in a surprisingly deep voice for someone so seemingly fragile, “I am Patka Du, Father of the Hantu Harimau, priest of Vharkash the Harvester—I grant you an audience under the Palms of Peace.”
He looked into Farhan’s eyes, and said, “Speak, long pig, that I may hear your squealing plea for mercy and consider it with the wisdom of all-mighty Vharkash.”
Suddenly, out of nowhere, Farhan felt an insane urge to laugh. The respect, even awe, in which he had held the old man fell away, crumbling to nothing. The old man’s conceit, his self-puffery, his ridiculous papery skin, the smeared, fading tattoos, his fragile, ancient body. The parochial absurdity of thinking himself a great lord of men. A power in the world. Farhan felt an urge to reach over, grasp the ancient arm before him and snap the bone like a stick of kindling. And to all the Seven Hells with the consequences. Who did this spindly octogenarian think he was? Farhan was a representative of the Indujah Federation, the greatest trading power in the world. A single regiment of Dokra, suitably armored against their darts—or provided with a viable antidote—could wipe out these half-human ghouls in one short campaign. These folk could be expunged from the face of the Earth—they should be expunged from it—in a matter of days and weeks. And yet this rheumy-eyed old worm had the temerity to call him a “long pig.”
Farhan’s courage rose like a pot of water boiling over. They might kill him—so what? He was ready to die. He would not bow down to these ridiculous monsters. His honor, the honor of the House of Madani, the honor of the Federation would not permit it.
Farhan stared haughtily at Patka Du. He did not speak, deliberately letting the silence stretch out painfully, until at last the old man began fidgeting and broke the silence by saying peevishly to one of the white-painted men sitting at his side, “This fat beast does understand our tongue, does he not? I was told he spoke the correct words of the Palm of Peace to Ngushu earlier.”
“I can speak your degraded tongue,” said Farhan in Old Yawanese. “I sucked that skill from the souls of the men we slaughtered in battle. And there were so many of these dead souls to learn from that I nearly choked on the lesson.”
The old man goggled at him. Farhan smiled.
“I am Farhan Madani, Lord of Dhilika and Singarasam, General of the Amrit Shakti, traveler, gambler, man-killer and merchant prince. And I come before you with a dread warning from President Madani of the High Council of the Indujah Federation, my esteemed father and the most powerful man in the Laut Besar, indeed in all the wide world. My father says: ‘Do not meddle with my son or his people or you will be utterly destroyed, flicked from the world like a troublesome fly. You have seen the power of their weapons. You will have seen that they are able to wipe out scores of your warriors in the blink of an eye. Know that you could, all of you, easily, be put to death, if it pleased my son.’ And I tell you now, we have only stayed our hand because we share your devotion to Vharkash the Harvester. We worship Him, too. All praise to Him. But know this, also: our patience is not infinite.”
Farhan was rather pleased with his nonsensical bombast—the high hand, that was the only way to deal with these ignorant cannibals. He also knew that his own long-dead father, a moderately successful provincial merchant, would have enjoyed being posthumously promoted to President of the Indujah Federation and the most powerful man in the world.
Patka Du was conferring in a furious whisper with one of the white-painted warriors. It seemed that they were arguing, although Farhan could not make out what they were saying.
The old man turned back to him. “We prayed to the Harvester to feed us. We had been hungry for a long, long time. We used all our magic, all the wisdom we possessed to persuade all-mighty Vharkash to send us food—and he answered our prayers. I heard the God myself. He came to me in a dream and he said he would send us sustenance—but that the gift would come at a price. When you came, we believed that you were that gift, and the price was the lives of our warriors, which we gladly sacrificed for the Harvester. Now, you say we were wrong. That our sacrifices have been in vain and you offer insults and threats. And you claim you are not human swine, but also the people of the Lord of All the Gods.”
Patka Du looked at Farhan and something in his rheumy gaze disconcerted him.
“Some of the warriors here believe that you are truly Vharkashta—how else could you harness the power of lightning in your terrible weapons? Your people are warriors, as Vharkash himself once was, and you fight with great courage. That is what some of my own warriors say. Those who have faced you in battle. I am not so certain—pigs in the herd do not willingly bare their necks to the slaughter man. I believe you might say anything to preserve your lives, even pretending to have more power than you truly possess, even claiming the protection of the God to whom you owe no allegiance, and for whom you have no love. So . . . we will put it to the test.”
Farhan said, “There is a fleet of Federation ships, not ten miles off the coast of Yawa—thousands of fighting men with guns, cannon. I will not hesitate to call . . .”
“Be silent, long pig. And listen to my judgment. You will answer one question, and only one. If you are a true child of Vharkash, you will surely know the answer. If you are a liar, Lord Vharkash will reveal your deceit to me through your own failure to give the only true answer. Are you ready?”
Farhan’s mouth was ashy. He thought briefly of summoning more of his threats, more imaginary hordes of Federation troops, but that mental well was now dry. He merely nodded dumbly to the old man’s mild inquiry. What else could he do?
“The Lord Vharkash always rides into battle on a great fierce beast. All who worship the Harvester know this legendary animal and revere it, along with all its lesser brothers and sisters. Tell me, Farhan Madani, you who claim the mantle of Vharkashta, wha
t manner of beast is this?”
Farhan’s mind went blank. He had studied the religion of Vharkash at his university in Dhilika—as he had learned about all the ancient religions—but it had all been so very long ago. He looked at the old man’s skin, at the aged tattoos on its gray, sagging surface: he saw the image of the handsome young man with the crossed legs and the long hair, Vharkash himself, of course, and the myriad scythes and tigers and cobras and the strange phallic symbols and . . .
He had it. It came flooding back: he knew the beast on which Lord Vharkash always rode to war. Anyone who had even briefly studied the religion did so, too.
“The beast is Bantung, the Great Bull Buffalo,” said Farhan triumphantly, looking directly at the image of the same buffalo which was tattooed on the old man’s belly.
There was a murmuring from the group of seated white-painted warriors. The old man stared at him for several long moments, and then he said, “Bind him!”
Farhan’s mouth dropped open, and suddenly he was at the center of a scrum of white-painted bodies. His arms were seized and lashed to a bamboo pole, and then his wildly kicking legs were quickly subdued and bound there, too. And two big warriors grasped the ends of the pole and hoisted him into the air. Hanging under the pole like a terrified sloth, Farhan tried one more salvo of bluster, “What is the meaning of this! I have answered your question—and correctly. Furthermore, I have been granted audience under the Palms of Peace. I warn you that there will be repercussions if you do not release me immediately! Fire, plague, the slaughter of all your children . . .”
“Stop that pig’s squealing,” said Patka Du. And a filthy rag was shoved into Farhan’s mouth and tied there with another around the back of his head.
The old man came to stand next to him: his eyes were burning with a dark, fiery rage. “You are not true Vharkashta. Our Lord does not ride into war on Bantung the Buffalo—any child knows that. Bantung is his creature, yes, but never his war mount. That is the foul heresy of the Western Lands, as if the Lord would defile himself with a dumb slave of the rice fields. The war beast of Vharkash is the Ghost Tiger Raal—the mighty gray jungle cat after whom we take our name—the Hantu Harimau—and from whom we are descended. If you were a true follower of Vharkash, you would surely know that. But you are not. You are a liar, a deceiver—you and your kind are merely two-legged swine sent to us to be harvested by the Great Harvester himself.”
Patka Du stepped in. He put his skinny thumb on the charcoal scythe on Farhan’s forehead, and with a hard sweep he wiped the mark away. Then he poked a stiff finger into Farhan’s soft middle, the digit sinking into the fat around his waist.
“You’ll make fine eating, my lying little pig, in a day or so, when the Hantu Harimau have finished with the other carcasses the God has generously provided.”
CHAPTER 32
Jun sprinted for his pack and in moments he had the bow in his hands and the full war quiver of thirty-six arrows strapped to a belt at his waist. He jumped up onto the masonry foundation block beside Tenga, and gazed out over the field of rubble and grass. He could see nothing at all. No sign of the Mbaru, no sign of slave-hounds or bear-dogs. He looked questioningly at Tenga. The big woman’s face was bleak.
“Yes, they have found us,” she said. “It is only a matter of time, now.” She had a stone in her left hand and she spat on the long, steel parang in her right, and began to run the stone, slowly, carefully down the edge.
Jun turned to look for Semar. He saw that he was in earnest conversation with Ketut. She was shaking her head and he was insisting.
Eventually, she agreed, got up and came over to Jun and Tenga. She handed the older woman the parang. “I won’t be using this,” she said. “But you might find it useful.”
“What are you doing, Tut? You know what will happen if they catch you.”
“Semar wants me to try . . . something else.” Ketut turned away from them and walked over to the offering block in the center of the temple. She settled down on top of it with her legs crossed. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
“Is she mad?” said Tenga. “They’re out there now. It is no time to take a nap.”
“She is trying to summon the personage you would call Queen of Fire,” said Semar, who had come close to them. “You and I know her as Dargan,” he said to Jun.
“Can she really do that?” Tenga looked genuinely shocked.
Jun was looking out over the wall—there was still no sign of the Mbaru. “She has done it before,” he said, without looking at her. “She is what we call a Vessel. I saw her do it in a temple ceremony in Sukatan. She was inhabited by the Goddess.”
Jun turned to look at Semar now. “But can she do it, cold, like this, with no orchestra, no drums, no obat smoke—no religion, at all?”
“I have been helping her to open her heart to the Goddess. I think she might be able to achieve it—cold, as you put it. Perhaps. Anyway, it is certainly worth a try with the Mbaru here. What use would one small girl with a parang be against them?”
“Could we run?” asked Jun.
“Can you run anymore?” Semar countered.
Jun thought about it for a second. “So we fight,” he said.
“You two will fight,” said Semar. “I shall pray.”
Jun stared at him, incredulous. Semar caught the look. “I told you that I was once a priest here at the Mother Temple. In fact, I was the High Priest, lord of all the others. I took my vows as a novice no more than two hundred paces from here, over there where the main temple used to be. I made the same vow that every novice has made there for hundreds of years: I swore that I would spill no human blood.”
“Yes, I understand,” said Jun, “but these people are Mbaru—they are killers, murderers, man-hunters. They would drag us back to that hell under the mountain. Surely you could spill their blood—surely you could make an exception. Vharkash would forgive you. I know he would.”
“Are they not human? I swore I would not spill their blood. I shall never break my oath. Even if it be the cause of my death—and a thousand other deaths.”
“Couldn’t you blast them with fireballs, or explode their heads with a wave of your hand, or turn them into frogs or something?”
“No,” said Semar, smiling. “I don’t do that. I’m not a sorcerer. I’m a priest. I pray.”
Jun found he had nothing to say.
Semar said, “That does not mean that you cannot spill their blood. You have taken no oath. Spill as much of their blood as you like—splash it all over the temple walls. Shoot them full of holes. Chop them into little pieces. You have my blessing. I shall be just over there praying, humbly asking my God to come to our aid.”
The slave-hounds sounded again: they were very close now.
“It’s just me and you, King Jun,” said Tenga, scraping the blades of the two parangs that she held, one in each hand, together. “One last good fight before the end.”
Jun was not listening: he realized that at some level he had long known that Semar was more than a servant. He was a man of power, clearly. The way he persuaded people to do things; the way he could speak inside one’s head. He had always thought that when it came to the extreme, Semar would have some magical trick, or at least some clever stratagem to save them. His disappointment was a vast hole in his being.
He watched Semar, frail, ancient, his wispy hair wild about his wrinkled old head, settle himself against a block of gray stone. He put his crossed feet up in his lap and settled himself, eyes closed, staff at his side. He pressed his hands together in the attitude of prayer. And Jun could hear, very faintly, the sound of his humming. And something strange and magical did happen: Semar seemed to merge with the gray stone. His gray sarong, his gray skin and hair were the exact same color as the broken rock at his back. Jun found that if you looked away and looked back, it took a few moments and the certain knowledge that the old m
an was there, before he could make him out. He was almost invisible. He was like one of those lizards who take on the colors of their backgrounds to hide from enemies.
Was that what Semar was doing? Was he planning to hide from the Mbaru in plain sight?
“There they are,” said Tenga. They were both crouched behind the wall, only the tops of their heads visible from the outside.
Jun’s attention snapped back outside the wall. There was a man in a wide-brimmed, black-leather hat coming across the field of rubble, picking his way carefully, with a long, lean hound with a massive square head straining at the leash in his right hand. The man was about fifty paces away, and he came on cautiously, stopping every few paces to look around him. The hound was eager, pulling the man forward, and sometimes stopping to let out the wolflike howls that had spurred the fugitives on in the jungle. When he was thirty paces away, the man stopped: the hound was pulled back onto its haunches and began to give off a different sound, a series of short, high, chopped barks. Then it stopped. Its blunt nose pointed at the Temple of Burunya.
“They have us now,” said Tenga.
Jun shot the man in the stomach. He stood up, nocked, drew and loosed, and the man in the black hat was looking at a shaft of straight bamboo, with a narrow steel tip, that was stuck right through the center of his body. He fell to his knees, the blood blooming on his grubby white shirt; he released the leash and grasped the bamboo shaft with both hands. The hound, suddenly freed, leaped forward, racing toward the temple at a terrifying speed. Jun loosed again, and missed.
The dog was a mere five paces away when Jun’s arrow took it in its hindquarters, striking just below its pelvis and knocking the animal over to tumble into the rocks. The animal was howling, screaming, its back legs useless, its front paws pulling it forward toward the stone wall. Jun shot it again, at a sharp downward angle, and the shaft punched through its skull and quieted it forever.
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