As they entered the clearing, Frog saw the boys and men from the other bomas who had arrived before them, rows of tens of tens of hunters: young, mature, and some gray and stooped, all prepared to die for their people. Some were painted, some plain. Some wore feathered headbands or had tied the tails of foxes to their spears.
The young hunt chiefs stood behind her, watching. Stillshadow and Morning Spring presided.
“These are the daughters of the mountain,” Stillshadow said. “They are for Father Mountain alone: Father Mountain, and those found worthy in His sight.”
Arrayed in their splendor, freshly washed and their hair braided in tight spirals, the ripe young dancers faced the tribe’s bravest hunters, their bright eyes and moist mouths an invitation to boil the blood.
One of the young hunters whimpered, and Stillshadow roared in response. “Our great god is not dead! You saw His anger, because He knew that this filth would come to our land, and that His children would feel fear instead of rage! He is disappointed with you, and you must now earn your place in His shadow.”
Snake turned to the boys, who shivered in their ranks. “Say the words!” he demanded.
“We are dead already,” they chanted, as they had been instructed by the hunt chiefs, by Snake and Boar Tracks.
“Let us see your bones,” said Stillshadow, the walking ghost. Frog could not meet her eyes, was happy when those burning hollows floated past him. He was filled with a sense that he, and all of them, stood in the presence of the living dead.
And with that the girls went out among them with bowls of white paint, smearing their ribs and legs with smooth stripes.
T’Cori slid her way in front of another dancer, standing just two hand lengths away. Her fingers dipped into the white paint, and with their tips she drew bones on his skin. The wetness felt to him like fire. “Frog,” she whispered. She did not look at him. Ordinarily, the nearness of her smooth body might have made his root stir, but there was something else happening here, something more than sexual. This was a flame he had never known.
If faith he needed, it was here that he found it.
“Come back,” she said, a tear glistening at the corner of her eye.
“I will return,” he assured her.
She nodded.
They finished the ritual, and Stillshadow stood. “You are our hunters! We, the Ibandi women, kneel before you.” Stillshadow suited her actions to her words, bracing herself with the bamboo staff as she lowered herself first to her left knee, and then her right. The sight of this phenomenal woman kneeling before him was hypnotic.
“You are strong, and we are weak.” Her voice, ragged and trembling, carried both a current of spiritual strength he felt rather than heard, and an aching need. “We beg you to protect us. Know that we are yours, and yours alone.” Gathering her strength, she called to them, “Gaze upon what the Mk*tk would ravage!”
As the older women stood in a half circle and sang to them, the young ones drew the hides from their breasts and waists, standing nude before the men, rolling their hips in invitation. The breath caught in Frog’s throat. Rarely did the dream dancers reveal their pubic hair or breasts in public, rarely did they behave in an overtly sexual fashion, and never, ever as a group.
It was almost more than his mind could comprehend. “Father Mountain,” Frog murmured, “save me.” Now he felt the physical response, as if his eggs nestled in a bed of coals.
“We await your return,” Stillshadow said.
The very moment that the last of the men was out of their sight, the crone collapsed to the ground, spent.
With Raven and Blossom’s help T’Cori plucked her up and tenderly carried her to her hut, laying her on her straw pallet with the greatest care.
“What now?” Blossom asked. T’Cori noticed that Blossom didn’t seem to know where to turn for leadership: to Raven, or to T’Cori?
Raven stepped forward, blocking Blossom’s line of sight to the nameless one.
“Now we wait,” Raven said. “We wait, until it is time to mourn the dead.”
“Many of them will die?” Blossom asked.
“All are dead already,” Small Raven said. “Now come. Back to your tasks.”
T’Cori looked after the path where the men disappeared. She closed her eyes with a sigh and offered prayers to their dead gods.
Stillshadow lay on her side, listening to the chattering from outside her hut. She managed to turn onto her back, exhausted by even that simple motion. The crone stared up at the ceiling, unblinking, a single tear brimming from her eye to slide slowly down her withered cheek. “All gone,” she said, to herself and the darkness and the dead mountain. “All gone. Everything gone.” There was silence for a long moment, and then she said, “We die.”
For all time the Ibandi had lived here in the shadow. Could her people sustain even a dream of leaving? It was possible that they would choose to die here, close to their gods. And if that happened, then all of the generations that had come before them had lived in vain.
She wanted desperately to call out to them, to say, “There is something you do not know,” but realized that this hidden truth would give her people no strength. Better to keep it to herself. Better to wait…
She closed her eyes, spiritual strength failing her at last, num expended. Only the slenderest of vines connected soul and body, a vine that seemed to grow more frayed with every harsh, shallow breath.
Chapter Fifty
A day’s run south of Water boma, the open savannah yielded to tumbles of rocks and ridges overlooking brush and trees stretching all the way to a distant horizon. It was here, far from their homes, that the Ibandi hoped to face the Mk*tk in mortal combat.
The hunt chiefs and tribal elders chose this position after a full night of debate and deliberation.
Their reasoning seemed sound to Frog. Because the days had been unusually hot, the southern route required even more water than usual. If the Mk*tk followed the water holes as they came north, they would have to pass this place, which the Ibandi hunters vowed to transform into a killing ground. The grasslands below, wavering with their bamboo and slender peacock flowers, would soon be drenched with Mk*tk blood.
Boar Tracks returned from his scouting expedition, clambering up over the rock shelves with apparently effortless strength. Despite the dire circumstances, Frog still took pleasure in Boar Track’s serpentine grace and power. But the hunt chief seemed nervous as he approached the brothers, to have trouble meeting their eyes. Was he ashamed of his fear? “I was close enough to smell them. There are many.”
“How many?” Hawk Shadow asked.
“Hands of hands, I think,” Boar said, still not meeting their eyes. “They move through the rocks, there.” He pointed down toward the grasslands.
“We will meet them near the fig trees,” Break Spear said. “Go and light the fire.”
Together, Boar and Lion Tooth strode out onto the plain, built a fire and lit it before retreating to the highlands. The Ibandi had incurred the wrath of other tribes in days past. In most instances, troubles had been averted by the offering of meat and fruit, left in the midst of these grasslands south of Water boma. This time, they knew, such offerings would prove useless.
The fire was lit from the dream dancers’ eternal flame. If the Mk*tk will not have peace, it said, then the fires of death will consume them utterly.
Strong thoughts. Frog hoped that he could live up to them.
Surrounded by his brothers, Frog crouched up in the rocks, their rough grain scratching his belly. In the darkness, they could see nothing save the fire’s glow, but they knew the Mk*tk were somewhere in the grasslands below. The wind shifted, and he swore he could smell them, felt his eggs clench up tightly in response to their alien aroma.
Their mortal enemies were nearby, waiting, as the Ibandi waited, for dawn.
“Do they feel fear?” Lion Tooth asked, stroking his necklace with a nervous thumb.
Fire Ant turned to Frog. “My broth
er knows. When you drove your spear into the mud-man’s belly, did he shriek?”
He saw the plea in Fire Ant’s eye. We must put courage in our brothers. For the first time, Frog truly felt that he was one of them. He was a man.
Why, then, did the memory of the Mk*tk’s animal strength still make his legs weak?
He bared his teeth and lied with all his heart. “He begged as I drove in the spear. He crawled, trying to escape. He was weak, and I was strong!” Frog pounded his spear into the dirt. “I was strong because I am Ibandi!”
“Ibandi!” said Scorpion and Lion Tooth and Hawk and Ant.
“We are all Ibandi!” Frog said.
“Ibandi!” they chanted, joining in.
“This is my little brother,” said Fire Ant, with great pride. “Many here are stronger, faster than Frog. He and a girl slew Mk*tk, and they were alone and afraid! Be as he was, do as he did, and you will return to your huts.”
“We are Ibandi!” they chanted.
“Now sleep,” Fire Ant said.
They curled up in their hides. Frog found an open spot near Hawk and Ant and Scorpion and nestled down. “Did I do right?” he whispered.
“You were perfect, little brother,” Fire Ant said.
“I am afraid,” Frog confessed.
Hawk Shadow nodded. “Fear is here now. Stay close to me tomorrow.”
Fire Ant agreed. “Stay close to us. You will make us proud. Let me see those little fangs again.”
Frog bared his teeth.
“I am frightened already,” Hawk Shadow chuckled.
They wrapped themselves in skins and curled up, waiting for sleep.
Frog lay there, eyes open. He studied the bones painted on his skin.
“Already dead,” he whispered, and closed his eyes.
Chapter Fifty-one
Even as the Ibandi hunters prepared for battle, a small Mk*tk raiding party had circled behind their lines for a raid on the defenseless Water boma, slaughtering women, children and old men, and setting the huts ablaze.
By the next day, refugees streamed into the dream dancer camp on Great Earth. The dancers ministered to them, made certain that they had dried meat, a handful of nuts and water gourds.
As word of the coming battle spread, healers from the entire Circle clustered on Great Earth, hoping to help with the wounded. One of them was a Between from Fire boma, a big, loose-bellied man named Thorn Summer. He helped T’Cori bring water to the refugees, including an old man with a gashed left shoulder and two fingers severed from his left hand. Whirling Pool ministered to him under Blossom’s direction. Despite his pain, the wounded man stared at T’Cori in a way that made her stomach sour.
“I’ve seen your eyes before,” he said. “Who was your mother?”
“Great Mother is my mother,” she said.
He nodded, but continued to stare as Pool tended to his wounds. “What is your name?” she asked.
“Water Chant,” he said.
T’Cori wandered away, puzzling. “What do you know about him?” she asked Thorn.
“His wife, my sister, was killed in the raid,” he said. “It was very sad.”
She agreed it was, but could not stop herself from thinking that there was something familiar about the man.
“Do you know him?”
“Yes. I helped with the birthing of his third daughter.”
“How many children did he have?”
“Seven,” Thorn said. “Three died as babies. Two died since. He has living daughters in Earth and Water bomas.” He nodded, as if agreeing with himself or summoning a difficult memory.
“It was said that one of his daughters disappeared. It was a time of drought. She was born blind, and it is said that he exposed her.”
Something like a lightning bolt crackled up the nameless girl’s spine. All her life she had wondered who her father might be, and now it was possible he was only a few steps away.
She turned back to the old man. Should she say anything? She realized that she did not need to. He could not take his eyes from her.
“Do I look like your wife?”
Water Chant nodded. “Where is your father?” he asked hoarsely.
“Great Sky is my father’s home,” she said.
He mumbled, unable even to speak, and then wandered off by himself. How appropriate, she thought. How dare he face her, a weakling, a coward who had fled his village, a broken man who hadn’t even been able to protect his own wife. And yet…
Just before dawn, their sentries roused them from sleep. Runners dashing in from the brush claimed that they had heard or seen Mk*tk.
Frog had made himself four spears. “Stay here,” Fire Ant said to his smaller brother. Despite Fire Ant’s smile, his long face was drawn and lined. Frog knew that he was saying goodbye. Frog’s brothers bade him stay among the rocks while they crept down into the field.
The new sun’s light was bright enough to cast deep shadows, so that he could glimpse only flashes of the hunters as they met the Mk*tk. He heard screams, and saw clouds of dust rising from the tall grass. Spears and arrows pierced the air, fell into the high grass.
In defending the rear, Frog and the youngest hunters saw little of the fight’s beginning. There was thrashing, brief flashes of men clawing and slashing at one another like rabid leopards determined to consume one another in a cannibalistic frenzy. The Ibandi brothers outnumbered the larger men, were able to swarm them, but he watched their bodies tossed aside and savaged with spears, rocks, long rough arrows, with teeth and hands. The Mk*tk came straight at them, and although outnumbered were so ferocious that Ibandi arrows seemed not to slow them, and they raged on even with Ibandi spears buried in their vitals.
The Mk*tk died, yes, they died, but showed so little fear, were so terrible even in the final moments of their lives, that it was the Ibandi hunters who wavered. Even dying, Mk*tk eyes blazed with hatred.
We want your land, your lives, your women, those eyes seemed to say. You are nothing. Your god is nothing. You are not even fit to be eaten.
Frog threw his first spear, and after that, his mind seemed to break. For the rest of his life, only fragments of memory ever came to him, usually when deep in restless dream.
He remembered arrows, fired by Mk*tk archers in a rain that arched up and fell from the sky into the Ibandi, aimed poorly but still enough to scatter them, so that all their fine plans of standing together were for naught.
Frog had no time to throw a second spear before one of the giants bounded into his hiding place, swinging a great sharp spike of rock. Frog scampered back, clambering up the hill as the Mk*tk warrior came after him. Spotted Slug lunged out and stabbed the Mk*tk in the side. The giant roared and spun, starting after Frog’s cousin. This was his opportunity, and Frog leapt down from his perch, driving his spear before him.
He couldn’t catch his breath. No air. No air. The acid clutch of fear constricted his chest so that he felt as if he was wading waist-deep through mud.
The Mk*tk was wounded front and back, but a swing of a rock clutched in his hairy hand caught Spotted Slug. Blood and brains splashed Frog’s face. He wiped his vision clear in time to see Scorpion lunging in, screaming, jabbing with a spear and then backing up so swiftly he almost fell. Frog seized a second spear and drove it up under the ribs. The Mk*tk screamed and turned back to Frog as Scorpion, bleeding from a wounded scalp, vaulted over the rocks and struck the Mk*tk in the back.
The stepbrothers stabbed and stabbed, and then clubbed the giant with rocks, and then finally, unbelievably, he was dead.
They leaned against each other, gasping like beached fish.
A quarter day passed as they slew Mk*tk. The very sky seemed to take on a crimson pall, as if the sun itself was a bloody eye, weeping over the field of battle.
At last the Mk*tk fled, but only after they had killed more Ibandi than the Ibandi had of them. When they abandoned the field, they slit the throats of their own wounded. More frightening still, so far as Frog could
see, the wounded did not protest.
The Mk*tk howled and shook their spears at the Ibandi, bloodied knives held high as if to say: We kill our own. Think what we will do to you.
In the dark of night, the Ibandi held torches aloft, searching the grass for their dead.
Of the hunt chiefs, only Boar Tracks remained. All the others had perished leading their brothers onto the field. His leg bore a spear wound that needed to be wrapped with leaves and wet moss. He required the attention of a dream dancer as soon as possible.
So. They had not been total cowards, even if they had failed to climb Great Sky to learn what had happened to their brothers.
That day Frog saw many things he would never forget. He helped to bury many dead. He and Hawk Shadow found Break Spear with a broken back, mewling at the sky.
“Kill me,” he begged Hawk, eyes glazed with agony.
“You were kind to me in the circle,” Hawk said. “Only in respect can I do this thing,” and he ended Break Spear’s torment with a spear to the heart.
Frog’s throat constricted when he recognized a body slumped in the grass. His sister’s husband, Lion Tooth, was dead, a Mk*tk arrow in his throat.
He sank to his knees. In his mind he could clearly see Lion Tooth teasing, running, playing games…and fighting bravely. Lion Tooth, dead, slain in a rain of arrows.
Fire Ant and Deep Dry Hole, both covered with wounds, leaned on each other.
Frog’s head spun, and for the first time he wished that his mind did not have the strangeness he had sensed within himself since childhood. He saw too many possibilities, too many ways that things might have happened, or might be in days to come. He wished he could just be with his fear and fatigue and wounds like his fellows, as they sat around the fire, frightened and exhausted.
Finally Fire Ant spoke up.
“We won!” he crowed, and they looked at him as if he was mad. “We live, and remain, and they ran.”
Great Sky Woman Page 32
