“Stop, Brother,” he said and then hunched down.
Fire Ant took several more steps, then stopped and walked back. “What is it?” He panted. “Do you yield the tribe?”
“Look,” Frog said, and pointed east.
At the horizon’s edge, silhouetted below the sun, five squat figures lumbered westward. He would not have seen them if the light had not been just so. He would have recognized that gait at twice the distance.
Mk*tk.
Frog heard his brother’s sudden intake of breath. The two of them turned and ran back south, grateful for the sheltering shadows.
By the time they had climbed back over Shadow Valley’s ridge, their throats burned and their sides ached. Frog felt as if every nightmare that had plagued him for a year and more had suddenly collided, exploded like Great Sky’s peak, spewing a vast pale cloud of raw, blinding terror.
“The Mk*tk come!” Frog screamed. The tribe was gathered across the slope, hands of hands of them scraping hides, curing meat, sharpening and repairing spears, building huts. When his calls echoed from the rocks, they put down their tasks and tools and gathered around him.
“Why? Why do they follow us here?” Ember asked, staring at Fire Ant as she said it. Ant couldn’t meet her eyes. She knew.
“I killed their women,” Ant said. “Their children.”
“Their … children?” Ember whispered, holding her own babe tightly to her breast. “How could you do such a thing?”
Fire Ant’s mouth worked, but he spoke no words.
Frog screamed into that void. “Brothers and sisters! The day we feared has come. Today we must fight or die!”
T’Cori gathered the women and children together and guided them to the center of a circle surrounded by hunters, even as the baboons had once protected their own softness. So many lives. So many children. Would all be lost? Was there no way at all to survive this?
Most hunters stood between their women and the ridge above. Mk*tk could swarm down from the top far quicker than they could cross the valley floor. How long would they be able to resist the onslaught? T’Cori’s breath would not come. Ember came to her, bringing her unnamed child.
“I will keep Medicine Mouse with me,” Ember said, “but the new child …” She looked away. “If it goes wrong, it may be best for you to name her and send her home.”
Yes. Any name at all would be better than none. With a name, Great Mother would know her daughter and welcome her. With a name, Father Mountain might spare a set of bones for the child, that T’Cori might hold her girl again, in the next world.
Perhaps.
Oh, Mother, that it had come to this.
Would their enemy find them? Was it at all possible that those Mk*tk hunters had come upon them merely by accident?
And … how many were there?
The wind shifted, carrying with it a song such as Frog had never heard. No Ibandi throat had ever wailed so. The voices were deeper, stronger, less musical, more like toneless chants than music.
“Death song,” Sister Quiet Water said.
“What is that?” Uncle Snake asked her.
She spit eastward, toward Great Sky. “It is what they do when they wish to die killing their enemies. When they think that there is nothing that they wish so much as to die killing. How many hunters do we have?”
“Four tens old enough to fight.”
“Not enough,” Frog said, and rubbed his hand over his face. He tried to think of another answer, and failed.
Another thought crossed his mind. He wanted to banish it, but could not, and the more he thought about it the more certain he became.
He had to either recruit the Vokka to his cause or else give their new friends the chance to flee.
Her unnamed, newborn infant girl suckling at her breast, T’Cori followed Frog and Leopard Paw to the base of the valley’s eastern rim. Every small pull of the precious mouth against her nipple was like the tug of life itself.
Beneath a sheltering of palm trees, some hands of hands of their thick-faced, slow-moving friends were encamped. At first Kiya welcomed her with a gap-toothed smile and open arms. Then her husband saw Frog’s face.
“I come to you for help,” Frog said.
One hand clutching her infant to her breast, T’Cori translated Frog’s words with gestures and dancing hips. She slipped into a trance, floating up above her body, watching her own actions.
Once, upon the mountain, she had stood on ice above a lake of fire. That was where and what she was now: a woman standing above a lake of burning emotion, feeling only ice.
But the mouth against her breast. Urgent. So alive. She tried to fly above the fear, and the small brown lips brought her back.
“Over the last moons we have shared much,” Tall One said when Frog had finished. “Hunted together. Birthed each other’s children. What do you wish of us?”
“Help us against our enemies,” Frog said.
Tall One seemed more curious than startled. “How many of them are there?”
“We do not know.”
“When do they come?”
“Now,” Frog said.
Tall One’s odd, pale eyes seemed to pierce Frog’s skin, to see his heart. T’Cori knew that Frog was afraid. Could Tall One see it? He spoke, and her heart fell.
She translated the Vokka’s words for Frog. “He says that our enemies are not his. Why should their sons and fathers die for us?”
“We have no right to ask you to bleed with us,” Frog said, voice flat with defeat. “You have been good friends. Stay away from us. From everything that is about to happen. Live.”
Her heart broke as she translated. Hope itself had fled. Why had they not remained in the shadow? Better to die there, for their bones to rest in familiar earth, than to travel so far, in a terrible unclosed circle, and die in a strange place.
But if there was no hope for her, perhaps one good thing could come from all of this.
She blinked back her tears. “Your wife lost a child,” she said, and cradled her infant in her arms. She kissed the sleeping girl’s brow. “I would give her mine, to replace the one lost.” To lose a child was almost beyond bearing. But to keep her girl only to cause her death … that would be beyond endurance.
Silently, she begged Kiya to agree. While another part of her begged her to refuse. Even a few more moments. Even if it cost both their lives …
“What did you say?” Frog asked.
She felt something collapse within her. “I asked her to take our child.” She expected anger, hurt, bluster.
Instead, he softly said: “We should have brought Medicine Mouse as well.”
Kiya looked at her husband. Tall One’s expression remained unchanged as he gave his head the slightest of nods. Kiya stepped forward, and took the baby.
T’Cori made a single strangled cry and turned, walking away into the shadows, Frog and Leopard Paw at her side, broken heart flooded with joy and pain.
Chapter Forty-four
Just before dawn, their lookouts gave a brief cry of alarm, followed by screams of shock and pain.
“Mk*tk!”
Frog had slept lightly, his spear jammed against his ribs. He grabbed it and leapt to his feet.
The dusk sky had cast deep, dark shadows, and Frog could see little. The men threw wood on the fire, seeking to increase the light. The sight nearly made him wish for darkness once again: there in the shadows and amid the low fires, three hands of Mk*tk prowled the camp, killing all they could. Man-shaped shadows already hunched and crouched among them, cracking skulls and breaking limbs
“Lion dance!” he screamed. Swiftly, their men paired in the manner they had practiced for the last moon. The women and children ran to the center of a loose circle, surrounding the twin campfires, as the men faced out into the darkness.
“There!” Leopard Paw called. Almost as quickly as the alarm was spoken, a snarling Mk*tk charged out of the night.
Instead of clambering forward and attacking the
Mk*tk as individuals, giving their opponents the chance to slaughter a man and move to the next, each Mk*tk found himself confronted by a pair.
As they had practiced, Frog and Leopard Paw fought side by side, Frog to the left and Paw to the right. Jabbing and thrusting, Frog drew a slash in response, while Paw thrust up into the exposed armpit.
The Mk*tk roared and turned as if swatting an offending fly, while Frog slashed at the tendons behind his right knee. Another roar, but this one of confusion, as they drew the Mk*tk’s attack back and forth between them, until he buckled.
Snarling, Paw drove his spear into the bunched muscle beneath the Mk*tk’s ribs, then wrenched it out with a cry of triumph.
Without pausing to celebrate, they turned to help their fellows, only to find that the Mk*tk were retreating.
Fire Ant was blooded along the left side of his chest, but his spear was red halfway through. “That … is not like them,” Frog’s brother said. “The last time, when they came for me, they attack and attack, and kill and kill. This time we kill two, and they run. I have never seen them withdraw.”
“No,” Frog said. “After our first battle, south of Great Earth, they ran. There were three of us for every one of them, and they learned we could kill them.”
“How many of them are there?” Snake asked. “Do we have enough?”
“I do not know,” Frog said. “I would give anything to know.” In truth he knew that that was one question to which they were likely to receive an answer.
Out beyond the valley’s rim, Flat-Nose squatted, waiting to hear what his men had to say. He had hunched like this since dusk, staring off into the desert. It was now near midnight.
“What happened?” he said. “How many of them are there?”
“Ten tens, I think,” Brave Tortoise said. “Many old ones and children. We have more fighters. And each of ours is worth a hand of theirs.”
Flat-Nose gave a short, somber laugh. “They are stronger than we thought,” he said. “I have woven my death song. I see it in my dreams: I end here. I sing it for you. Whoever lives, sing it to my children, that they might sing it. That God Blood might be pleased and take me into His belly.”
He sang them the song, and they listened, that they might sing it to Flat-Nose’s many children. And they marveled at its beauty and at the simplicity of the request he made of God Blood:
To die killing.
To kill, dying.
That was all. And for the children of God Blood, that was enough.
Chapter Forty-five
Fire Ant sat on a round, flat rock near the crackling fire. His people huddled in family knots, waiting for the end.
Stillshadow lay above him on her new sitting stone. Sleeping? Awake? Dying? He didn’t know. But his dreams had been … troubling. He saw the death of everything he loved, everything he knew, and for the first time, truly understood what he had done.
Fire Ant bowed his head, and cried.
His mother, Gazelle Tears, and his wife, Ember. His sister. His brother. Now all would die. Because of what he had done.
Because of him. He had led their greatest enemies directly to the heart of their greatest hope.
He cried.
“Hear me, Brother,” Ant said, after his tears had dried.
“What would you say now?” Frog said. “What words? I know you hate me. I know you wish my death. I suppose that your own life is a small price to pay for such a sight.”
Ant set his chin strongly, but his voice betrayed his grief. “Hear me, please, Brother,” he said. “I look out at your children. My nephew and niece. All that is left of us. And now I see I have been a fool.”
Frog doubted the evidence of his ears. “A fool?”
Ant nodded. “This is my doing. All. I never hated you. I hated Sky Woman, and wished you to step aside. My people will die, because I wanted the Circle. Because I believed I was more than a man. I know now I was wrong. I am a man. A foolish, foolish man. Now my mother and sister and you … all will die. And I am the cause.”
Although a cool wind stirred the leaves, Frog doubted if that was the cause of his brother’s trembling. “Brother …” Frog said.
Ant held up his hand, shushing Frog. “I heard them sing of me. Watched the women dance my death. I was the one who returned from the mountain! Returned from the dead! I knew that my grandchildren’s grandchildren would remember my name.”
“Brother …” Frog repeated. He had never seen pain like this on Ant’s face. Not when Ant had lost his wrestling match with brother Hawk. Not even when faced with betrayal by Frog. This was something different, like a man standing on the branch of a falling tree.
“A man must face the truth of what he has done,” Ant said. “I am many things, but I am a man.” He gripped Frog’s hand hard enough to hurt. “You never were false. I was so surprised that you lied about what happened on the mountain. Why?”
“Many love you. It would have hurt them to hear the truth.” He paused. “It would have hurt me most of all.”
Fire Ant released his grip. “You could have led our people. You should have had that chance.”
Frog could say nothing.
“I look at you … and your woman. Great Sky Woman. And I see something I have never seen.”
“What is that?”
“I think … I see what Stillshadow and Cloud Stalker must have been, when they were young. I never understood the way you think. You led us to a new home and proved the myths a lie. You are the best and wisest among us. And Sky Woman?” He shook his head. “I never understood the dream dancers. And now I know that it does not matter if I understand. And that, I know too late.”
“Not too late,” Frog said, clasping his brother’s shoulders. “Just in time.”
Chapter Forty-six
To Frog, it seemed that most of the tribe had fallen into a kind of sleepwalking grief, keening and moaning around their cookfires, saying goodbye to one another as if already convinced Father Mountain had demanded their bones.
His uncle Snake sat with a knot of other hunters around the central fire, the orange-red light lapping at their faces, the shadows flattening their expressions into pictographs, fragments of genuine human emotion.
“I have thought,” Frog said, sitting beside him. “There may be something we can do. We can run and hide. Or stand and fight.”
“Is there something else?” Uncle Snake asked.
“We can trap them. As we trapped the giraffes.”
“In the same way?”
“And in the same place.” Frog squatted, drawing a circle and a curve with his fingertip. “Here along the western wall is the canyon,” he said. “If we flee, but we leave a trail, we could trap them here”—he touched the ground— “and could have the high ground if our men were here.”
Snake peered at the scratching and shook his head. “They are not long-necks. We can’t use fire to drive them.”
“No. We will have to draw them,” Frog said.
“With what bait?” asked Leopard Paw.
“Living bait. Some of us will have to wait there.”
“They will think ambush,” Snake said. “They will never believe it.”
“They must,” Frog said, slamming his fist onto the ground. “They have to. What else—”
“They will believe,” T’Cori said, “if we bait the trap with the one thing that they would never expect.”
He stared at her, at first uncertain of her meaning. Then he understood. “You cannot mean …”
“Listen to me,” she urged. “The thought did not come to me until you spoke of giraffes. Stillshadow dreamed of women with long, spotted necks. And now I know what it meant.”
“What are you saying?” Frog’s mind spun. What insanity was this? This was no time to speak of dreams!
“That the only bait that would work would be something no Mk*tk would ever expect. And there are only two things of this kind: women and children. We will not use children,” she said.
Of cou
rse not children. But if not children, then …
Then …
Father Mountain. No.
He thought to protest, but the stone in her eyes left no room for argument or doubt about her intent. They had lost a hand of men in the first skirmish. Including Fire Ant’s men, they had four tens of hunters who could fight. Not enough.
“Any who did this thing … would not survive,” Ant said.
T’Cori shrugged. “What matter? What matter the risk? If we do not act, we die. This way, some of us may live.”
Frog narrowed his eyes. No. No. No matter his trust of T’Cori, he could not even contemplate such a possibility. At the very best, it was insanity. “You know that the Mk*tk would look at a man, or men, and know it was a trap.”
“But women …” T’Cori said.
Sister Quiet Water made a keening sound, her eyes so hot they looked like glowing rocks. She rocked back and forth, arms wrapped around her knees. “Please. Give me the chance,” she whispered. “I would kill them all.
“Every night,” Sister Quiet Water went on, “I prayed Father Mountain would send someone. Or that I would find death, as Fawn Blossom and the nameless one did—” she paused. “As I thought T’Cori had. There was no end to my pain. Then I find that T’Cori was sent strength to save herself. That, and a rescuer in Frog.”
“And He sent Fire Ant, for you,” Frog said.
“Too late, Frog,” Quiet Water said. Her face softened when her eyes met Ant. “Sweet Fire Ant. You tried, didn’t you? And look what happened. So it is too late for me. I don’t know where that girl went. But if I could not live as I wished, perhaps I can die as I choose.”
“My heart cools,” Frog said. “I have no words for you. I have been to the mountaintop, seen the gods.” He shook his head in amazement. “But never have I seen courage such as yours. If we can find another way, I ask you to find the strength to live. But if we cannot… I gratefully accept your sacrifice.”
“Better to die saving one’s people,” Fire Ant said, and seemed to Frog to be more … more Ant than Frog had seen since before their days upon the mountain.
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