Chapter Forty-seven
At the west end of Shadow Valley was the narrow canyon they called Giraffe Kill. It was wide at the mouth and in the middle narrowed sharply before opening once again. There, they would make their stand.
There, surrounded by sun-bleached bones, the two hands of Ibandi who had volunteered to be living bait spent their last moments together. Several were young women: T’Cori and her sisters, Morning Thunder and Flower, and a few others. Some were old and tired. Tired of running, tired of fear. If their bodies could make good bait, so be it.
And six were the best fighters that Frog had trained, Leopard Paw among them.
Snake had chosen to stay as well, and nothing Frog said could dissuade him.
Young Bat Wing begged to join them, but Frog held the boy, hugging him close. “Medicine Mouse will join you,” he whispered. “Be a brother to him. Grow strong. Teach him to hunt.”
Bat Wing sniffled and nodded his head. Frog ruffled his hair and pushed him away, swatted his bottom and waved as, crying, Bat sought safety.
Frog took T’Cori and Medicine Mouse to a private spot near the rear of the defile, past the place where the rock walls narrowed and almost touched, before they widened again. Mouse suckled happily, and then fell asleep. Frog and T’Cori placed him on a grass mat, and then sat together, sighing.
“I have dreamed,” T’Cori said.
“What were these dreams?” Frog asked.
“I dreamed that our new child was safe with the Vokka. And that we were spirits …”
“No dream,” he said. “Tomorrow’s truth.”
“Hush, my love. What comes will come. I dreamed that Great Sky welcomed us and Medicine Mouse forgave us.”
“I would be with my son,” Frog said. “But I would wish that he grows tall, has a chance to hunt and love before his bones return to the earth.”
“We cannot control such things,” she said, and leaned her head against his shoulder. “But if we die, would it not be best to be welcomed home?”
Welcomed home. There was no home. No heaven. Nothing but death. But he would not say such things now. There was no longer any point to it. Wasn’t a comforting lie better than a cruel and hopeless truth?
Stillshadow had said it once: Who is more wretched than he who knows no gods, yet dreams of demons.
“A good dream.” He paused. He did not want to say the next thing, but the certainty of his own approaching death weakened him. “T’Cori. On the mountain … I did not see Father Mountain. In fact, I saw nothing but dead water. But … I heard voices, and one of them may have been my father. I don’t know.”
“I saw. I felt. It was all there, my love. I carry those visions still.”
“They speak to you still?” Frog asked.
“Still.”
“Did you see my father?”
“I saw things,” T’Cori said. “Jowk, woven into egg cocoons. One may have been Baobab.”
“Did he say anything about me? To you? Did he give you anything to tell me?”
He heard the fear in his voice. With all his certainty that the world contained nothing save rock and flesh and fang, he knew that he was asking her to lie to him. Her soft brown eyes were filled with nothing but love, nothing but caring. And nothing but truth. Especially at such a time, no dream dancer could speak a lie.
“I do not know,” she said, and brushed her lips against his. “But tonight, as I sleep, perhaps He will come to me.”
“Perhaps,” Frog said, “we go to Him, instead.”
“Frog,” she whispered, “do not think of death. Even if this is our last night, let us think instead of life.” He pulled her into his arms.
Hunters had carefully broadened the trail from the rim ledge to Giraffe Kill, while wiping away the trail the rest of the tribe, those who had not elected to be bait, had left escaping toward the south. If their efforts were insufficient, the Mk*tk would follow the wrong tracks, find their women and children, root them out and slay them all.
But for now there was little to do save wait and hope.
And perhaps to love for the last time.
“Life,” they whispered into each others’ mouths. Were there tastes that were beyond taste? Smells that were beyond smell?
This was not the last time. It was the first, and perhaps the only time. Her skin was not merely smooth, it felt like grazing his fingers along the surface of a warm pool. When his lips touched hers she clutched the back of his head, pulling his mouth down on hers as she never had before, as he had never known before.
Her tongue was fire, darting into his mouth, probing against his teeth, her eyes opened so wide and urgently that he felt he was falling into them.
T’Cori’s hands were everywhere, pulling at him, her nails scraping against his skin, raking, pain and pleasure mingling so that each became the other. His mind spun.
Then her hands slipped to his loincloth, and had grasped the thickness beneath. His own hands were moving now, sliding up her thighs, pushing aside the deerskin flap, until he found the moist folds at the juncture of her legs.
His tongue pushed hers back into her mouth, and she sucked at it, desperation driving away all emotion save the urge to join, to be one, to dissolve all distinctions between them until their flesh burned away and all that remained was the jowk.
Sex was the heat of burning.
Male and female was a lie. Jowk was the truth.
They joined.
Her moist flesh moved against him, pulsed, rolled, squeezed him and then released. On the outside she was calm, they were unmoving, but within her body she was taking him where he had never been. He groaned, beginning to tremble.
“Make a fist at the bottom of your root,” she whispered in his ear. And he did, and the sense of imminent release retreated. Again and again she took him to the edge, and then coaxed him to drive his seed back.
On and on she went, until the world retreated and all consciousness contracted to a single point of light, and then her mouth was on his again, her tongue soft, not urgent, upon his.
His world died in fire and was reborn.
There was a time without time, when he did not know what was Frog and what was not-Frog. And then slowly, he came back to her.
Remembered his name, and her name, and where he was. For a moment, he had glimpsed something … different. Something beyond flesh. Just a glimpse, given to him by his woman.
And he marveled. When he regained his breath, Frog whispered: “You … never showed me that before.”
“Shh,” she said. “It was a secret for the hunt chiefs.”
“I am no hunt chief,” he said.
“Who is to say?” she said, and they laughed together, and then held each other and whispered until his body told him it was ready once again.
And when at last they fell asleep holding each other, he thought that if he died on the morrow, it would be a small price to pay for a night such as this.
Within Shadow Valley lived an entire world of contrasts: swamp, desert, trees, arid ground, grasses and cactus. Flat ground at the bottom, sharply rising green-choked walls around the edges. Sun and shade, each in abundance.
Tall One liked a drier campground than did the Ibandi. The brown folk loved the dense green, while the Vokka preferred the ground beneath and around their huts to be burnt grass and wood flakes. Vokka huts had sharper, more pointed roofs than the rounded roofs of the Ibandi. They tended to build their huts where the ground felt right, rather than according to some strange pattern the Ibandi carried in their heads.
Tall One sat on a log between the two largest huts, sharpening his favorite knife with a flat stone. Across from him his wife, Kiya, whose name meant “Changing Seasons,” held Sky Woman’s unnamed brown daughter. She rocked back and forth, keening.
She rose, and came to him, holding the child tight in her arms. “She took my milk,” Kiya said. “My breasts no longer ache.”
“That is good,” Tall One said, without looking up.
“Sky Woman gave me a great gift,” she said.
His broad, flat face did not change. “You should not have taken the baby,” Tall One said.
“Then I will take her back,” Kiya said, stepping toward the east.
Her husband glared at her, then looked more carefully at the infant. The child was strange, with tangled hair and shadow skin. Then again, it had all the fingers and toes, and was full of squalling life. “She will die if you do.”
Kiya stood still, child held tightly in her arms, as if daring her husband to say more.
Tall One’s mother extended her hand to Kiya’s, who pulled her upright. The old woman’s spine was twisted by seasons. Her toothless mouth gaped, but she could still see and still speak. Once, Tall One remembered, she had been beautiful.
“I gave birth to you, my son. I know you grieved when you lost your child. I saw your pleasure when Sky Woman gave you hers. And I say that you owe a debt.”
Tall One glared and turned his back, gazing out across the valley. This was not his fight. His grandfather had told him stories of the journey south, how wanderlust had led his people to travel on and on, over generations. Of their hardships and glorious victories.
Tall One was a peaceable man. He liked these Ibandi. In all his family songs, there had been nothing quite like these brown-skinned folk. Had they not sheltered his niece, Vokka and Ibandi might have bled over these hunting grounds. But …
He was confused. His obligation was to protect his own.
But who exactly were “his own”?
As turn the seasons, the falling of night and the coming of dawn, all things destined come in their time. And in Shadow Valley, the time had come for good-byes.
Frog kissed the soft, warm skin above Medicine Mouse’s eyes, then gave his boy to Ember. He watched Fire Ant embrace her and his children, and stood with his brother as two hunters took her away.
He watched his mother and Uncle Snake hold each other, fingers playing with each other’s hair. Last night, he knew that Snake had taken Gazelle into the shadows and loved her as they had not in many moons. He knew this because, despite her sadness, this morning Gazelle walked like a girl again.
Snake rubbed his grizzled cheek against hers, then sent her with the children and old ones to a place of hiding on the valley’s south side.
No matter what happened next, this was a good day.
Frog sat crouching in the sand near a heap of bones, shaving slivers off the point of his spear. “You did not have to come,” Frog said to his uncle as Snake watched his wife disappear into the grass.
“Yes,” he said. “I did.”
“This will be hard.”
“Everything in life is hard.” Snake took his hand. “Frog, I died on the mountain. Everything I thought I was, I was not. Did I ever really live at all?”
“Sky Woman says this—” he waved his hand at the valley “—all this is a dream of a dream,” Frog said. “That when we sleep, we are more awake than when we walk.” Frog rubbed his temples with his palms. “It makes my head hurt.”
“If I do not try to become the hero they think me to be, it is worse than death. Can you understand?”
“Uncle … perhaps none of us are ever really known.”
“Frog,” Snake said, “give me this one thing. I have lived too long without pride. Perhaps one day you … and your sons … will see my face in the clouds.”
Chapter Forty-eight
Flat-Nose ran down the valley wall, following sign. His clumsy prey had attempted to hide their tracks, but their efforts were in vain. Soon, he would show them. He would show them for days.
They had no chance of escape, now or ever. He and his men trotted across the valley floor, amazed by the health and number of the herds. Now this was a hunting place! Surely, his people could kill the Ibandi and move here and live like godlings until the end of days. Food! Water! Fat, lazy animals to hunt and, only days to the east, weaklings to kill.
Life was good.
The grass here was withered and black. Lightning fire? Something cautioned him to slow, but the tracks led into a narrow canyon, and he didn’t want his enemies to get too far ahead of him.
There! Around the corner of one of the bruise-colored bushes appeared one of the fragile Ibandi women. Her head jerked at the sight of him. She screamed and then ducked her head back into the crevice. The weaklings were trapped! Flat-Nose would slaughter their men and take their women. His mouth watered, contemplating many happy moons of their pleasing slickness against his root.
Three tens of Mk*tk fighters entered the defile. Was there another way out? Could the valley wall break here, and their prey already be fleeing back out onto the savannah? Of little matter. By dusk, their guts would steam on the sand.
By the time the Mk*tk had gone two tens of paces, he saw enough to guess that the cleft dead-ended far up ahead. Sobs echoed from beyond the rocks, and he knew them trapped. His blood burned, boiled, until his vision narrowed into a tunnel. Soon. Soon. Ibandi blood would slick his spear.
The walls narrowed further. The ground was littered with half-bleached, well-picked skeletons. Bones of the spotted long-necks. Someone had done great killing here. Even for these weaklings, hunting had been good! He hoped that some of that spirit would be left to resist. Where was the sport in slaughter without a struggle? Without the opportunity to watch your enemy’s courage dissolve into terror? To steal a man’s spirit was far more satisfying than merely tearing his flesh.
The mud-colored rock walls narrowed again. The first worms of doubt gnawed at his gut. Where were his prey?
And then … there they were. Just beyond a tangle of yellow-green brush he spied four women, hiding under a rock shelf. Before them crouched a knot of their pitiful males. Hiding with their women! What manner of filth were these?
Flat-Nose felt disgust. He had hoped for a battle to thrill God Blood, and then this! He wouldn’t wipe his ass with such weaklings.
Best to end this and get on with the pleasurable business of seeding their women. He waved his men forward.
Anger and disgust warred with a grudging admiration. The monkeys hadn’t been entirely stupid in choosing a place to make their last stand. Good. He would break their pitiful defense, and even if Flat-Nose had no hope of a decent death here, he might get a thrilling wound.
Howling, the Mk*tk raced forward. After five hands of paces the walls narrowed. Flat-Nose could see that beyond the narrow space, the walls widened again.
Flat-Nose smiled. No, they weren’t stupid at all. This fight might be a good one. God Blood would enjoy it.
Just before the Mk*tk reached the narrow gap, the Ibandi stepped back and braced themselves and the Mk*tk crashed against a forest of spears. Blood and screams sprayed the air. Two Mk*tk made it through, but two of Flat-Nose’s cousins were speared through throat and groin, and those behind them tripped over their bodies.
There was the monkey! The coward who had escaped torture. He stood beside a smaller man, and Flat-Nose went at him.
He lashed his spear at the small man to move him out of the way, and the weakling ran to the side. Good. Flat-Nose turned to the one-eyed Ibandi and jabbed—
And roared as one-eye flinched to the side, body moving faster than his mind, twisting away from a spear thrust. The smaller man had danced out and in, in the instant Flat-Nose’s attention had wavered.
Before he could move, Flat-Nose was forced to the side as the eager young ones behind him pushed through, and by the time he spun and forced his way back to the gap, he saw his two men beyond the gap speared by six Ibandi without landing a single blow in their own defense.
But every time they tried to work through, spears bristled in their faces. The gap was so narrow that only two of their fighters could attack at a time, but on the far side, four of the Ibandi filth poked spears at them.
They were not strong or fast. But Flat-Nose stabbed at one, and as he did, a spear from the other jabbed up into his armpit. He barely managed to get his arm d
own in time, and even his slight deflecting turn nearly exposed his armpit to a stab from the right. Blocking it gave the other monkeys a chance to slash his cheek. He backed away, blinking and wiping blood out of his eyes.
As well as any man could be in such a horrible place and time, Frog was happy. To his right was Fire Ant. To his left, Uncle Snake. For the first time in their lives, they fought side by side by side.
The Mk*tk were packed tightly here as they tried to force their way through the spot where the walls narrowed. Ibandi spears drove them back. And those spears were not only sharp and well positioned but some were also dipped in the juice of the poison grub and the red-jawed fire beetle mixed with the gray, sour-smelling bark of the stinger bush. This place belonged to the Ibandi. If the Mk*tk wanted it, they would have to take it.
Snake and Leopard Paw worked as a team, drawing a Mk*tk in, stabbing with poisoned spears. It was not honorable. It was not a thing ordinarily done to men. But the Ibandi were not a people of war, and they had no traditions for times such as this.
They had run as far and as fast as they could, and the Mk*tk had followed them. The attackers did not deserve to be treated as men. So, for the first time in Ibandi history, the poison used on animals was used on men.
A single scratch was death.
Snake fought with courage and with the speed of the hunt chief he had once dreamed of becoming, the hero he had dreamed of being since childhood.
Here, where the walls closed in, Frog fought with the men of his family, bleeding, panting, sweating.
Some part of his mind said: This, this melding of mind and heart, this human dance of fang and flesh … It is good.
Something within him bared its teeth and howled.
Frog. Snake. Ant.
Together.
First, the trap. Then, the poison. Then …
Death from above.
Flat-Nose’s frustration took flame when the first rock fell.
He glanced up, and barely avoided a crushed skull as a stone crashed down from the top of the canyon, hammering against his shoulder.
Shadow Valley Page 25
